by KD Casey
“I caught Garza up in Cincinnati,” Zach says.
“You think we didn’t all watch you at the All-Star Classic?”
“I, uh, normally don’t bother watching it.”
Something about that makes Womack laugh and throw a handful of gum from one of the nearby buckets at Zach, who flings a towel at him in retaliation. “But for real,” he says, settling, “what was it like?”
“It was fine, I guess.” And Zach struggles to find words to summarize how un-exciting it was. How his heart beat against his ribs going out, catching in front of all those fans, expecting a playoff atmosphere, only for it to feel like a scrimmage. “I thought it’d be different. Just a lot of buildup and then, I don’t know. It felt like spring training.”
“Spring training?”
“You know, kinda pointless ultimately. My parents couldn’t make it, and I guess most players bring an entourage or whatever. It probably would have been different with other people there.”
“You really didn’t have a good time?”
And Zach’s mind flashes to Eugenio sitting next to him on the dugout bench and at the restaurant, ordering drinks, wrapping his arm around Zach’s shoulders. Eugenio lying next to him in his hotel room bed, sated and content, before he walked away.
It must show on his face because Womack’s looking at him, eyebrows raised.
Zach’s throat feels dry, even in the Miami humidity, a scratchiness that a swig of water doesn’t calm. “I guess, sometimes things don’t work out how you expect.”
* * *
Days go by. The closer the series against the Gothams gets, the slower time seems to go. Zach goes to the ballpark, works out, hits off a tee, hits in the cages, does fielding drills, lifts. He rides the bench for a third of their games, maybe getting one pinch-hit appearance in the late innings or maybe just standing at the dugout railing and spitting.
He hasn’t texted Eugenio, and Eugenio hasn’t texted him, but it wasn’t unusual before the All-Star Classic for them to go months without sending anything.
One night, after a game against the Millers, he sits in bed, squinting at the glare of his phone screen in his otherwise dark bedroom and reading through their text thread with one another. The thread itself only goes back two years, a total of fewer than twenty messages, though that’s mostly because Zach purged them on his road trip from Oakland to Miami. He sat in various hotel rooms that dotted long stretches of highway, scrolling through them, screenshotting a couple before deleting the rest.
He pulls up the screenshots now. A lot of them are hotel room numbers for when they were on road trips together, Eugenio coming to Zach’s room to “discuss game-planning,” the entirety of their relationship in a set of three-digit numbers and thumbs-up responses.
Now the thread is mostly a string of texts from Eugenio followed by Sorry wrong person, and then the number from Zach’s Cincinnati hotel room. Dots appear while Zach has the thread open, Eugenio typing, and Zach sits and stares at them until they disappear again.
He considers what he could write, as if it could be distilled into a text message. That he’s alone, floating, in a city barely above sea level. That he might not have the guts to say anything to Eugenio during their upcoming series. That Eugenio could fly back to New York with nothing different between them, and that Zach might let him. The thought of it makes him ache.
It’s possible Eugenio is sitting in whatever New York loft he probably lives in thinking the same thing. Or he could have accidentally opened the text thread and typed a message intended for someone else before catching himself. It’s possible he’s moved on, leaving Zach adrift.
Zach looks at the thread, at the dots that have disappeared, and then at the walls of his bedroom. The shelves in front of him are scattered with the detritus of his playing career: dated game balls, his baseball card encased in clear polymer, a picture of the Elephants clinching a postseason berth, everyone radiantly happy and soaked in champagne. Looks at them, and the spaces between them, now gathering dust.
He opens up a search tab on his phone browser, pausing for a second before typing in therapists. And then revising it to therapists coming out Miami, not expecting much to appear. The top search result is advice for therapists on how to help their patients, but the next leads to a set of names and numbers, a few reviews from clients willing to put their names—or at least their user handles—to them.
He could call. It’s late, and any office is liable to be closed. He could leave a voice mail, asking them to call him back.
And risk getting a return call at the ballpark the next day, telling Womack or Pinelli or any of their bullpen pitchers that it’s a call from a doctor, not a team doctor, and that he’ll be back in a second. Hoping the walls are thick in whatever room he ducks into, that his phone for once interfaces correctly with his hearing aid. Asking if they do appointments by video so he doesn’t have to go to a building with their name listed on a letter board in the lobby. Of beginning the session and having the therapist go, “Hey, aren’t you that guy who plays for the Swordfish?” Thinking about it puts a metallic taste on the back of his tongue, an invisible compressive loop around his chest, restricting his breath.
He doesn’t call. But he clicks the phone number associated with one of the therapists, a clean-cut guy who looks like he does triathlons in his spare time and has rave reviews. He lets his phone dial the number and cancels the call, then saves it to his contact list as the guy’s name before revising it to Todd Miami.
He reopens his texts to the thread with Eugenio, types and hits Send before he has a chance to stop himself. See you soon.
He’s about to close the thread, silence notifications, go to sleep, when his phone flashes an alert, a text that just says, Wrong person?
No, Zach replies. A pause, three dots appearing and then disappearing, before Eugenio responds.
Looking forward to seeing... And there’s delay, Eugenio typing. Another message comes through ... Miami pitching.
And Zach laughs loudly, echoing off the walls of his apartment, sound filling in all the empty spaces before it fades.
Chapter Twenty-Three
October, Two Years Ago
They return to the familiar beach house in Cambria the next year, three days after their Wild Card game loss. Eugenio drives, arm propped on the door frame, music playing from his phone that makes it hard to talk.
Zach doesn’t much feel like talking anyway, still physically and mentally sore from the season, which ended in a single-game elimination. He slept for almost eighteen hours after, the blackout curtains drawn, Eugenio restless on the couch, flipping TV channels, unsleeping when Zach got up to get himself a glass of water. And Zach feels like he hasn’t slept now, hip aching, head against the window of Eugenio’s truck, vaguely watching the highway roll past.
It’s midafternoon when they get in. Last year, the house felt luxurious even compared with their normal big-league accommodations. Not that they used most of it, going from living room to deck to bedroom, spending most of their time lying around or eating.
Now it feels both unaired and cavernous when Zach steps in, like he’s expecting to see dust motes hanging in shafts of light, even if the whole place smells like lemons and disinfectant. The kind of place most players rent in groups, not just the two of them rattling around in a house where their footfalls echo against the high ceilings.
“Which bedroom?” Eugenio asks, because there are three of them. He pointedly doesn’t roll his eyes when Zach shrugs a response. He hauls in their suitcases, dropping them in the bedroom Zach would probably have picked anyway. “You gonna be like this the whole time?”
“Give me a day.”
“Yeah, all right.”
They go swimming; it’s cold enough that Zach doesn’t last in the water for long, even in a wetsuit, but it’s good, bracing, the kind of water Zach swam in when his parents
decided to take a trip to Rhode Island one summer. Enough to shock him out of his bad mood, abraded by sand and the bottle of bourbon Eugenio pulled from a bag and handed him before they headed down to the beach.
Eugenio is lying in a beach chair, pretending to read, but mostly just sitting there with his eyes closed. He’s wrapped in one of Zach’s hoodies, complaining about the chill, sleeves pulled down past his wrists.
“Hey,” Zach says, and he checks to make sure they’re the only people on this particular stretch of beach, before leaning to kiss him, “where do you want to go for dinner?”
They eat out that night, go hiking the next day, get day drunk at a winery the following one. Sleep late. Swim. There’s baseball on—they both get periodic alerts on their phones that neither mentions—other teams playing in the division series, then for the pennant.
And Zach doesn’t take pictures of Eugenio there, warm, dozing, with an autumn tan. Not of his face or the tattoo he got last offseason, a set of leaves vining around the curve of his hip and up his side, the one Zach helped pick out. But Eugenio takes ones of him, by the water, across a restaurant table, in bed.
“Don’t get my face in it,” Zach says, and Eugenio rolls his eyes.
They’re sitting out in deck chairs, watching the sun climb over the course of the morning, when Zach’s parents call.
“I’m gonna take this.” Zach points to his phone. He doesn’t slide the door closed behind him when he goes back into the kitchen, propping the phone against the counter facing away from the deck, then swiping to accept the FaceTime call.
“Where are you?” his mother asks by way of greeting.
“Just visiting a friend.” Zach studies the house, the enormous shining vent over the kitchen range, the sofas made to accommodate a party, a billboard of a television in the living room. The vista of the ocean out the windows, the rolling push of the waves against the shore. “They have a beach house.”
“Anyone I know?”
Outside, Eugenio rises, picking up his coffee mug and Zach’s. “We were gonna head out soon,” Zach says, because if she doesn’t get to the point quickly, he’ll be on the phone for the better part of an hour. “What’s up?”
“Send me your flight info for when you’re getting back.”
“I haven’t booked it yet.” Because they have the house here for at least another two weeks, and he’s sure he’ll get bored eventually, even if he wakes up feeling better each day than he did the previous, like there’s a bag of sand sitting on his chest that’s slowly draining.
“Let me know when you do.” She glances down at where she must have her day planner open. The last time he was home, there were Friday dinners, a series of insistences, always with their friends from shul, often accompanied by their now-grown children and the relative comparisons of each of their successes. “You know, Charna Friedman’s eldest is back in town.”
“Is she?” Because Zach hasn’t seen her since they were in high school together.
His mother starts telling him about her new veterinary clinic, which is already thriving, and how she’s mentoring one of Aviva’s research students and how she’s coming over for dinner whenever Zach decides to fly himself back to the East Coast.
And Eugenio is standing in the doorway between the deck and the kitchen, looking at Zach as he says, “Sure, Mom, that sounds good. I’ll, uh, let you know when I book my tickets.”
Zach says goodbye, hanging up the call, fast enough to see Eugenio place their mugs in the sink, setting them next to each other, handles touching.
Eugenio grabs his pack of cigarettes and lighter from the coffee table along with his keys. “I’ll be back later.” And he’s out the door before Zach can ask where he’s going.
He’s gone for the better part of a day. Long enough that Zach texts him a few times. He doesn’t respond. Zach goes down to the beach, not to swim, but to watch the water, the way the tide pools fill and drain, the little waving creatures eking out an existence in the rocky shore. He cuts his feet on some of the rocks and has to douse them in rubbing alcohol, wincing at the sting.
Eugenio comes back when the sun is already starting to sink below the horizon, casting the house in amber light. He smells like cigarettes, face reddened like he was outside too long, lips chapped. “I don’t need to tell everyone,” he says when he gets in the living room to find Zach, legs up on the ridiculous couch. “But I need to tell someone.”
“I—” But Zach stops when Eugenio holds up a hand.
“This isn’t a fair way to live. It’s not fair to me, and it’s not fair to you, even if you don’t see that. I’m done with this. I love you, but I’m done.”
Zach’s throat feels tight, his chest, his entire body, like his skin is sitting too close to his bones. “What does ‘done’ mean?”
“My agent thinks I have a good case in arbitration.” Which is the understatement of the year, since he hit the cover off the ball in the second half. “The team’s not going to want to pay me what I’m worth. I was going to tell you.”
“You want to see if they’ll trade you?” And Zach imagines Eugenio, flying on some charter plane elsewhere. To the friendly confines of Ivy Field or the wide splendor of Chavez Ravine. From Oakland’s crumbling infrastructure to any one of twenty-nine other ballparks, and away from Zach.
Eugenio nods. It’s somehow more devastating than if he yelled.
“You’re just going to leave?” Zach says. “It’s been two years.”
“Yes, Zach, it’s been two years. I’m not saying I’m going to tell the world, but I have to tell someone. And you’re not going to.”
“I’m trying.”
“Are you?” Eugenio snaps. He’s not loud, really, but seems to echo off the decorative beams of the living room ceiling. “I hear you say it, but it’s always you promising to get to this later.”
“You know they cut my salary by twenty percent this year. And I agreed to it so that they didn’t trade me or send me down.” Something his agent and his mother both yelled at him for acquiescing to.
“I didn’t ask you to do that. And you didn’t ask me about it either.” Eugenio’s voice starts to shake, one of his hands, the one gripping his keys, jingling against his pant leg enough that he sets them down on the table. “There’s a car rental place. I can drop you there tomorrow if you want to stay here, but I’m going back to Oakland. And I think it’s better if we weren’t together. For a while. Maybe for a long while.”
“No.” Because Zach woke up with Eugenio there, draped next to him, complaining of the early morning cold, about Zach’s feet against his legs, about how coffee doesn’t make itself. He pressed his face into Zach’s shoulder and talked about how he wanted to rent bikes that day. About a new restaurant he picked. About a hundred things lying before them, the possibility of years together, now set aside. “No, you don’t have to drop me off. I’ll figure it out.”
Eugenio goes into the bedroom, leaving Zach to watch his own expression where it’s mirrored in the blank screen of the television. He emerges a few minutes later, rolling a suitcase behind him.
“I think that’s everything.” There’s a piece of fabric protruding from the zipper, and Eugenio usually insists on folding his clothes, even his dirty laundry, when he packs. He stands, waiting for Zach to do something other than lie there. Like he expects Zach to scream or cry or dig in with his fingernails and not let go.
But Zach doesn’t know what to ask. If this was a sudden decision or a long time coming. If he should have seen the cracks between them broadening into fractures instead of being surprised when it all caved in so quickly.
Eugenio leaves the suitcase. He comes over and slips his hand under Zach’s chin, focusing his gaze up. Leans and presses his lips to Zach’s forehead, the bridge of his nose. Once, glancingly, to his mouth.
“I wish,” Eugenio says, and his voice sounds strai
ned, “I wish you cared about yourself, the way I’ve seen you care for other people. I wish you cared about me enough to—”
“Eugenio.” And it’s desperate, pleading. Like Zach might drop to his knees and beg, if his body wasn’t pinned to the couch, held by an invisible weight.
Another kiss, this one simple. Finite. Over before Zach can acknowledge it.
Eugenio gets his suitcase, wheels loud against the wood floors, echoing off all the empty space between them. And he walks out, shutting the door, the soft snick of the bolt in the lock. Leaves Zach to watch his taillights fade as he drives away.
Zach sits there for a long time, body unable to move from the couch. Sits there and thinks, I should call someone. But doesn’t. Scrolls through his phone, an endless list of contacts—players he knew in high school, the minors, who played for the team years ago and who’ve cycled out to play in Korea or the Mexican leagues. Some who’ve left the game entirely, felled by injury, exhaustion, financial hardship. The ones who look back on their playing days as a lark, a sun-dappled adventure from their youth.
And he can’t call any of them. Can’t call Aviva, though he considers it. Or his mom, just to hear gossip from their shul. To put his father on and have him talk about what old men talk about—amateur radio, police procedurals—and not why Zach is calling for no particular reason.
Morgan—he hovers his thumb over her number. She asked, occasionally, if he was seeing anyone, with that interest that married people get about their single friends. And he could tell her. She left the Elephants and didn’t come back even when the team, finally done with its waffling, offered to hold her position. Went to Korea to play in the tournament. The US team finished seventh, and when he asked her if she regretted it, she shook her head and said she mostly regretted not trying out before.