Excerpt from UNWRITTEN RULES

Excerpt from Unwritten Rules

By KD Casey

Zach stands in the All-Star Classic clubhouse, his feet rooted to the floor. It hasn’t actually been that long since he saw Eugenio. The Gothams and Swordfish play each other about twenty games a season, the Gothams the closest thing Miami has to a rival.

But usually one of them is wearing a mask, set up behind the plate, and the other is at-bat, and they don’t say anything to one another beyond the basic interactions necessary to complete a game of baseball. A task made easier by the chaperoning presence of an umpire and spectators in the stands. Not that Zach would know what to say even in their absence.

Now he stares at Eugenio for a minute, long enough to be awkward, before Eugenio says, “Hey,” and Zach says, “I didn’t know you were coming,” at more or less the same time.

Around them, players continue to greet each other, giving the sort of back-slapping hugs that Zach and Eugenio have, conspicuously, not tried, one that would confirm if Eugenio still smells the same: like cologne and the cigarettes he sneaks when he’s having a bad day. He looks good, like he was at the barber recently, a neat fade to his sideburns. Like he got a few years of good nights’ sleep, even if he’s been on a bunch of New York nightlife websites that Zach definitely doesn’t follow, connected with this or that actress or musician.

“Here.” Eugenio points to the chair next to where he’s sitting, which Zach eyes, wondering if he’s only talking to him now because of the forced proximity of the game. “I was gonna go get another.”

He holds up a mostly empty beer, the kind of craft thing he used to drink and convinced Zach to try, even if Zach thought it tasted like soap and flowers. “You want one?”

Zach’s tempted to tell him to go ask the bartender for an entire bottle of bourbon, or possibly a swimming pool full of it. “No, I’m good, thanks.”

Eugenio goes over to the bar, where the bartender looks like he’s giving him the same spiel about bourbon he gave Zach, except this time it ends with him handing Eugenio another beer and a napkin on which something is obviously scrawled.

Eugenio comes back holding his beer, napkin wrapped around it, condensation making the ink feather. But he sets his beer down and then wads the napkin up, making a dead-on throw into the nearest trashcan with the accuracy of someone who’s caught more base stealers than Zach has this season. “How’ve you been?” he asks, sitting down in the chair next to Zach, like they’re just two former teammates catching up.

“You know.” Because what else is there to say about living in a half-decorated apartment in Miami playing for a half-good team?

“Not really, Zach.”

“First All-Star Classic.” He shrugs, like there’s not more to it than that.

“You’re not excited?”

“I might not even get to play.” Zach’s probably the fourth or fifth catcher down on whatever endless depth chart governs the game. Certainly below wherever they have Eugenio, who’s having a career-best year. Not that Zach has been following it. Or checking his stats. Or watching his interviews.

“Thought you’d be good with that,” Eugenio says. “All of the good parts, none of the effort.”

It hangs there for a second. For a long second. And it’s gotta be a joke—has to be—considering they’re sitting around drinking, surrounded by other ballplayers, in a clubhouse that for once doesn’t stink, about to go play on national television. Talking to each other like that’s just something they do.

“Fuck,” Eugenio says, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yeah, no worries.” Zach waves his hand like he’s brushing it off. He fumbles around for what to say next, cuing up the stuff ballplayers talk about when they get together—the season, the weather, the pitching matchups—before casting each one away. As if there’s something that will soothe the bruised feeling of what Eugenio said, a feeling like taking a thumping pitch off his chest.

Next to him, Eugenio is drinking his beer. Zach doesn’t study his face, the angle of his nose or the possibility of his lips, not in a clubhouse filled with fifty other players. Not when it’s been almost two years since they had a real conversation. Not with how that conversation ended. “Do we need to game-plan with the pitchers?” Zach says, finally.

“I think we just need to be sober enough to know which way the mound is, though—” Eugenio nods over to where a player for the Millers is already swaying to the music with the confidence of someone not quite sober “—maybe not.”

“You haven’t been planning with anybody?”

“If it’s like the last time I was here, no one really expects us to take this seriously.” A reminder that, unlike Zach, this isn’t Eugenio’s first time as an all-star. That his career really took off when he left Oakland for New York. That this is ordinary for him.

“You mean, you’ve already game-planned with the Gothams pitchers,” Zach says, and Eugenio rewards him with the flash of a grin, a slight shrug of confirmation.

Zach fumbles in his pocket for the schedule again, but it doesn’t say anything different from when he looked at it before. Sit and wait and wonder when he can go back to Miami where he doesn’t have to deal with Eugenio’s over-preparation or the way his beer bottle wets his mouth. Or that he’s looking at Zach like he wants him to say something, though every word feels slippery, just beyond his grasp.

“We could go look around.” Eugenio gestures to the tunnel leading from the clubhouse to the dugout.

And Zach needs to get out of the dim clubhouse lighting, the din, the airlessness in his lungs. If they’re going to have a conversation, or an argument, it would be better to do it away from a clubhouse full of the all-star players, most of whom are also all-star gossips.

Outside, it’s a nice day, sunlight picking out the glints of red and blond in Eugenio’s hair. He has another tattoo, one Zach can just see the edge of through the long armhole of the sleeveless T-shirt he’s wearing, an outline of something. And Zach wonders what else has changed since they last talked to one another with anything more than a passing grunt during a game. Wonders who else has seen that tattoo and in what context.

If they’re why Eugenio looks so well-rested or why Zach gets occasional text messages from him asking when they’re going to meet up for dinner, always immediately followed by a Sorry, wrong person. Texts he can’t bring himself to delete, even if he should.

They walk around the perimeter of the field. It really is a little bandbox of a place, every long fly ball a home run. It’s smaller than the cavern of Swordfish Park, and if Zach played at a place like this, he might actually have twenty homers to his name at this point in the season the way Eugenio does.

“Glad I don’t have to call games here,” Eugenio says, like he can tell what Zach is thinking.

“Glad I don’t have to call ’em in New York.” Because Gothams Stadium is loud and raucous and full of people from Queens.

“It’s not so bad. But, yeah, the noise can be a little much.”

There’s a pause, a long enough one that Zach’s half-tempted to try to make an escape, though that would mean retreating back into the relative darkness of the clubhouse, away from watching Eugenio drink his beer in the sunlight. “Listen—” Zach says, right as Eugenio says, “I was wondering—”

“Uh, you first.” Zach waves his hand, relieved when Eugenio continues.

“I was wondering, a bunch of us are going out after the game. If you want to come.”

“Really?” Zach asks, before he can stop himself. He glances around, like Eugenio might have asked him out of some misplaced sense of politeness. A “hey, we got room for one more” instinct that led him to continually update reservations back in Oakland.

Because he expected something else. An argument, an old one like a reaggravated injury. Or a reminder why they haven’t spoken in two years, after Eugenio left him in a beach house on the California coast and then the team entirely after demanding a trade. Like he couldn’t even stand being in the same city as Zach.

“Are you, uh, sure you want me to?” Zach asks.

“I wouldn’t have asked if I weren’t. Unless you already have plans with your family?”

“They couldn’t make it. You know how they are about me paying for them.”

“Then you should come.”

And Zach imagines them all packed into a restaurant, ordering steaks and bourbon and all the food most players don’t usually eat on their meal plans. There’ll probably be enough of them that he’ll spend dinner struggling to hear in the noise, not being able to track half the conversation and having people think he’s stuck-up. “It’ll be loud.”

“I’ll sit next to you.” Eugenio always did that, before, when they went out together, sat next to Zach in a group or across from him when it was just the two of them. He’s being insistent, like he planned this, like Zach is the one being weird or difficult. Like they’re friends.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Zach says. Because it’s one thing to stand in the sunlight of the stadium, a pace apart. Another to be pressed together, surrounded by other players. A reminder of how things were in Oakland and aren’t anymore.

Eugenio starts to say something else. But he’s interrupted when the league’s social media team spots them.

The social media people are a matched set, Carter and Caitlin, like unfortunately named twins. And they seem young to Zach, even if he’s only about five years older than they are, faces unlined from not working out in the sun or squinting in the deep shade of the roof of Swordfish Park.

And of course, two former teammates reunited at the All-Star Classic is too good an opportunity for them to let go of. “Just a quick video,” Carter says. “Something authentic.” They hold up their phone a little threateningly.

“Authentic” apparently takes a long-ass time and a lot of coaching, at least for Zach, since Eugenio shows off every inch of his New York sports media training, smiling and gamely answering questions.

“Okay, let’s run through this,” Caitlin says, “once in English with both of you, and then we’ll do yours—” she nods to Eugenio “—in Spanish too. So, when was the last time you guys saw one another?”

“Oakland,” Zach says, which isn’t an answer, especially not when Eugenio says, “We play each other a bunch during the regular season.”

“Let’s focus on your time in Oakland then.” And Zach wonders if the grounds crew can come out and dig a ditch for him to crawl into, and then possibly bury him. “So, again, when was the last time you guys played together?”

“We were in Oakland for a long time,” Eugenio says, like two years constitutes a long time in a sport as enduring as baseball.

It leads to the next question, about what they miss most about playing on the same team. One followed by a long pause. “Oh, you know,” Zach says, finally, “not worrying our pitchers are gonna give up free hits to this guy.”

“You’ve both been in the league a while,” Caitlin says. “What would you say is your biggest career moment?”

“Probably playing for the pennant last year,” Eugenio says. “Even if it didn’t turn out how we wanted.” And he laughs, like losing the league championship series in six games is something that can be brushed off.

“Zach, how about you?” she says. “You’ve been in the majors for seven years. What would you say the highlight has been?”

And Zach thinks back to his seasons in Oakland: A loss in the division series. Another loss in the division series. A heartbreaker of a loss in the Wild Card game. His time in Miami, the highlights of which have mostly been being able to go to the grocery store without being asked for his autograph.

“Uh,” Zach says, “I’m here, I guess. So that’s pretty cool.”

Next to him, Eugenio’s forehead creases a little, before he schools his face back to a pleasant, handsome neutral.

Carter chimes in, saying they’ll mention that Eugenio’s hit twenty home runs this season when they film the clip for real. “Think you got twenty more in you?”

“For sure.” Eugenio mimes his swing. It’s the same swing he’s always had, that compact quick-handed swing that elevates the ball just right. The same one he does during games when he takes one of the inexperienced Swordfish starters yard on a pitch Zach called.

“Sorry,” Zach says, because Carter is saying something.

“That’s a good question,” Eugenio says. “When we first met. I think it was spring training about three years ago. Right, Zach?” And he asks it the way he used to, when Zach couldn’t hear something a teammate or an interviewer said, something he misses now that he’s on his own with Miami media.

“Yeah,” Zach agrees, “spring training. Your first big-league camp.”

“This guy taught me everything I know about framing.” Eugenio elbows Zach in his ribs, like this is something they just joke about. “Though he might regret that now that we play against each other so much.”

It’s a cue for Zach to say something funny or witty or charming or anything, but his brain feels like it’s been replaced by an unwavering blank, dull and uninteresting as the roof at Swordfish Park.

“Do you?” Carter says, with the tone of someone who spends all their time on the futile task of trying to wring articulate answers from inarticulate ballplayers.

“I mean, who doesn’t have regrets?” Zach tries to smile at that, to shrug it off the way Eugenio did. Something easy. Marketable. Unflavored by truth. “If I had to do it again…” He trails off.

Carter smiles at him indulgently, already on to the next topic. And Zach pretends he doesn’t see Eugenio looking at him, like he wants to know what Zach was going to say. Like Zach has the answer to what he’d do differently. Other than everything.

You can read an interview with KD Casey, the author of Unwritten Rules.

You can also read her short story, “The Wise Men of the New York Gothams.”

KD Casey is a romance writer and baseball enthusiast living in the Washington, DC area. Her debut novel UNWRITTEN RULES, about a Jewish catcher who unexpectedly reunites with his ex-teammate—who’s also his ex-boyfriend—is available from Carina Press. Come talk baseball and writing with her on Twitter or Instagram, and subscribe to her newsletter for periodic freebies and updates.

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