Unwritten Rules--A Gay Sports Romance by KD Casey

Author:KD Casey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carina Press
Published: 2021-07-21T20:20:05+00:00

* * *

The three days between the All-Star Classic and the start of the second half of the season always feel like the shortest and longest days of Zach’s life—but this year especially so. He prints out their season schedule, circling when the Swordfish are playing against New York: a series in a few weeks, like Eugenio said, and another in New York in late September. He crosses off the days each morning, checking, and then rechecking his phone each time it buzzes to see if Eugenio texts him. And he’s disappointed when he doesn’t, though Zach doesn’t text him either, unsure of what to say.

It’s hot in Miami in July, the kind of hot they only get in Baltimore on the worst days of the year, the pressing, insistent kind of heat that makes Zach sleep all afternoon before going to the beach. He spends time at the ocean, watching the mild Florida surf, the lights that come on as the sun sets.

He eats dinner at his favorite restaurant, the one where the owner has stories about the Dominican winter league and forgives Zach’s emerging Spanish. He thinks about bringing Eugenio there. About if Vladimir, the owner, has any stories about legendary Venezuelan players. About what Eugenio would think of the food.

He ponders texting someone, an old hookup, one who’d probably come over if Zach asked, but he doesn’t. He ponders the under-decorated walls of his apartment, trying to see them through someone else’s eyes, and then spends the day filling them, hanging a few things he got while in Oakland. A framed scorebook page from his first big-league game. Prints from a comics convention: Hawkeye, with a hearing aid curving over one ear; Bobby Drake, commanding ice.

A picture of Julia Child wielding a mallet he got Eugenio for his birthday, after Eugenio mentioned her show was one of the first to have closed captioning. The one that Eugenio left behind when he left.

He finds a box at the back of one of his closets, tape still on it from the move. He works it open with a key. In it are a bunch of graphic novels he forgot about, and he puts them on his increasingly less bare bookshelf, next to a William Hoy biography and his mother’s New York Times Jewish Cookbook.

The box also has a digital picture frame. Once charged, it takes a minute to blink on. A set of pictures his mother loaded appears: Zach, dressed up for Purim. Eitan in his too-big Bar Mitzvah suit, Aviva next to him in a floral dress and shiny beige tights. A Havdalah dinner at their house, the one where their cousin set his shirt moderately on fire holding a candle, and Zach grabbed a pitcher of water and dumped it over his head.

“I found the picture frame you got me,” he says, when he calls his mom. “I guess I never finished unpacking.”

She flew down to Miami when he first moved in, when all he had was a couple suitcases and his plants, whatever stuff he crammed in a U-Haul.

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