Page 106 of Breakout Year
Akiva winked an eye open, teasingly wary. “I hope you told everyone to buy my book.” He hissed under his breath as Eitan hit what must have been a sore spot.
“I might have been a bit excessive.”
“You? Never.” But Akiva kissed him and melted into Eitan’s side as Eitan worked his thumbs up Akiva’s forearm.
The interview came on, a segment on the local sports channel that Gabe said would be picked up nationally.
Camilla asked questions, and Eitan turned to the camera as he answered them. He only mentioned Akiva—not by name, but as my boyfriend, a title that was already feeling somewhat incomplete—a mere twenty times. Eitan felt like the picture of restraint.
“Do you think it’ll work?” Eitan said, after. His phone sat quiet on the coffee table. He wasn’t expecting teams to call immediately, but this silence felt markedly louder.
Akiva was fully sprawled against him, head on Eitan’s shoulder. He tipped his mouth up and kissed the underside of Eitan’s jaw. “If the goal was to make everyone fall in love with you, it already worked.”
No teams called that night, and none called the next morning—but many other calls came in: reporters, a bunch of players. Williams, who told him to keep his head up. Hairston, who said he had no doubt he’d see Eitan at spring training. A handful more who told him that even when he wasn’t on their team, he was on their team.
Eitan was sure there were people who didn’t call, those who blocked his number or would tell people they always knew he was a little—you know. He could live with their absence if it meant Akiva muttering to himself from his couch and the gurgle of his coffeemaker and the sound of the winter wind through the trees as he davened outside. Eitan could live with it all.
Hannukah came mid-December. They lit candles, bought Rachel and Mark’s children an excessive number of presents, hauled toys to the community center. Akiva was a sour cream on latkes person, and Eitan favored applesauce, but you couldn’t have everything, really.
One afternoon, Akiva met him at the door as Eitan was coming back from a run. He was carrying Eitan’s phone. “This rang a few times,” Akiva said. “I think Gabe wants you to give him a call.”
Eitan wiped his hands on the slick fabric of his running pants. Took the phone. Hit Gabe’s number.
Crunching greeted him. “So, kid, how do you feel about Philadelphia?”
Epilogue
Eitan
Early April
On Opening Day, Eitan stood on the first-base line, ballcap held over his heart. The stadium was raucously full. A few days in Philadelphia had shown him that the city was always raucously something. He liked anywhere with that kind of energy. He’d said so in his press conference, during innumerable interviews with various media, most of whom asked the same thing over and over: What’ll it be like playing now that everyone knows? A question he wrestled with as a singer belted her way through the anthem as if reminding those assembled that they were in the town where the country’s liberty had been born.
Somewhere in the park, his parents were standing, his mother’s hand shading her eyes. She always claimed her tears were from the sun, even at night. She didn’t like the anthem, she said, but she liked the idea of it. Maybe the idea was the most important part.
Akiva was with them. He’d taken the train down from their new house, which was close enough to Akiva’s synagogue so that he could still walk, but a touch nearer Akiva’s parents’ house than his old house had been. He and his parents had graduated from the occasional coffee to the occasional family-therapy appointment, which gave Akiva worksheets he didn’t mind and feelings he did but was working through.
It was also close enough to the train station that Eitan could get himself to the ballpark if he didn’t want to drive the whole way or take a car service.
“Won’t you hate having to go back and forth like that?” Akiva had asked, as if he somehow wasn’t worth an hour’s commute.
“Not if I’m coming home to you.” A declaration that had made Akiva flush and call Eitan a ridiculous sap and kiss him all the same.
Still, they had an apartment in Philly for when he had a day game after a night game or for when Akiva wanted to come down. “This feels like an excessive amount of space for two people,” Akiva had said, then promptly proceeded to fill it with books.
He’d accompanied Eitan to spring training and spent six weeks getting freckled in the heat while Eitan played scrimmage games. The books were coming along; he’d read passages to Eitan then stop halfway through, frown, and commence rewriting. Eitan would listen to them again when they came out, voiced with the practiced diction of an audiobook narrator, but he doubted they could sound any more perfect than coming from Akiva’s mouth.
On the field, the anthem ended; the mayor declared it was time to play ball. Eitan jogged across the diamond, taking his position at third, toes scuffing the chalk line. He greeted the umpire, received an amicable nod in response. On the mound, Philadelphia’s starter was warming up. He was a ground ball guy, and his and Eitan’s conversations had begun and ended with how Eitan might go about fielding third base. Still, he wasn’t unfriendly, just intense in that particular pitcher way, and he spent most of his time outside the ballpark on a fishing boat and quote ignoring all that social media shit. Eitan could work with that.
Around Eitan, the crowd was restless in the stands, eager for the start of the ballgame, for the commencement of the season that wouldn’t begin until the first real pitch. The ballpark had relatively shallow foul grounds, and he could hear the swell and dip of spectators’ conversation, their hopes, their speculation. The question hovering over every fan at the start of the season. Will this be our year?
Eitan’s contract went for three years, technically, but he had an opt-out at the end of each one. An escape hatch, Gabe had called it, in case Eitan decided Philadelphia was not the city for him or he wasn’t for it. When he’d asked Akiva if the uncertainty bothered him, Akiva had said, “Who’s uncertain?”
Eitan knew it was too soon to think about anything else. They’d been together for less than a year, living together for only a handful of months. But the fans weren’t the only ones wondering if this year would end in the presentation of a ring. He’d started looking at options, just in case.
On the mound, the pitcher declared himself ready. The first batter strode into the box. Boos rained down. Eitan wasn’t sure if it was particular bad blood with him or just a generalized bad opinion of the Atlanta team. Still, it felt as if the stadium spoke with one voice.
From the response to Eitan’s signing—a frenzy of social media posts that he’d mostly tuned out other than the rainbowed highlights Gabe sent him—it was impossible to predict if they’d do the same to him.
