Page 32 of Breakout Year
“Yeah, just a little distracted.” By you.
Akiva laughed. “I’ll take you back to your place.”
“You don’t—” Eitan cut himself off before he could say have to, but Akiva seemed to hear it all the same.
“Do you not want me to?” Akiva’s eyebrows furrowed. Eitan wanted to kiss that little wrinkle between them or possibly the curve of his mouth. How did you not know? some part of himself seemed to be shouting, one Eitan wanted to douse in more vodka rather than answer.
“I have a bed,” Eitan began, then quickly amended. “Extra bed. Guest bed.”
That got the momentary shutter of Akiva’s eyelids. It was possible he was trying not to laugh. It was possible Eitan was being drunk and needy, that he was hoping for something that wasn’t really there.
It didn’t matter, not when Akiva wrapped a hand around Eitan’s arm. “Well, I’m sure Dave can take our picture getting into a cab.”
But he dropped Eitan’s elbow as they left the club and hailed a taxi, when the only flashes Eitan could see were those of the streetlights above them and the glint of Akiva’s small smile.
11
Akiva
Akiva woke up with a grunt. He reached an arm out and batted at the stuff on the nightstand—his phone, his glasses, a bottle of ibuprofen whose rattling hurt his ears. It took a minute to realize where he was: Eitan’s guest room. What time was it? The numbers on the alarm clock yelled at him; the sun did the same through a gap in the partially drawn curtains. He rolled over and wished he hadn’t. Lots of things got better as you neared thirty, but hangovers definitely weren’t one of them.
How was Eitan going to play after going out like that? Memories from last night came back like strobe-light flashes. Eitan dragged him out, dragged him to the dance floor, kept dragging his eyes all over him. Must have been the liquor, the high of a win.
Eitan appeared at the doorway as if summoned, looking better than Akiva felt. He had two bottles of sports drink; he handed one to Akiva. “Heard you get up,” Eitan said. “The walls are pretty thin.”
Akiva sipped from the bottle. He must’ve been bad off if red electrolyte water had lost its melted popsicle taste. “How are you so…” Akiva nearly abandoned the second half of the sentence “…vertical?”
Eitan smiled. “Couldn’t sleep. Also, there are a bunch of pictures of us, so welcome to being famous.”
“Fuck.” Akiva fumbled open his phone, checked social media.
The pictures were there, all right.
Akiva scrolled through the comments, which was his first mistake. Everyone had something to say about those photos of him and Eitan. Who’s that with him? a comment asked. Because they were dancing…close. Purposefully. Intentionally. Which must have been why Eitan’s hand kept finding its way around parts of him: his waist, his arm, once, pressingly, on his lower back.
Someone posted a video. Fortunately, the only sound was the (good at the time, awful in retrospect) music, because whoever captured it had gotten the exact moment when Eitan breathed an I missed you right in his ear. The video was entirely too grainy to see Akiva’s eyes go wide—surprise mixed with something else he wasn’t ready to think about—but he knew they had and that was worse.
This was what Eitan wanted, right? They were out. Well, they were kind of out. None of the Reddit comments seemed decided on the matter. More than once, they referred to Akiva as Eitan’s bro. “People seem a little unclear that you and I are…” Akiva wasn’t awake enough to come up with more than gesturing between them.
Eitan snorted. “Yeah. Anything short of a coming-out press release isn’t gonna be clear enough for some people.”
“I don’t know that I want to do that,” Akiva said. Because there was a world of difference between pretending and outright lying, and Akiva wasn’t being paid anywhere near enough for the latter. If such a thing could even have a price.
“I wouldn’t ask you to.” Eitan said it almost wistfully, as if he was thinking about dating someone for whom such a press release wouldn’t be a problem.
For both their sakes, Akiva needed to get out of this apartment. “I should get up.” He didn’t move.
“You want something to eat?”
“Maybe some plain toast?” Even that thought made Akiva queasy.
“Coming right up.” Eitan padded off like he was going to bring Akiva breakfast in bed. If Akiva’s chest ached, that was blamable on how much vodka he’d had in the past twenty-four hours.
Akiva didn’t get up so much as he threw himself toward the floor and mostly missed. The floorboards were gratifyingly cold under his feet; the walls stayed relatively still.
He navigated his way down a narrow hallway decorated with family and team photos. A sudden flash of memory: Eitan helping him up the hallway last night, the two of them hanging onto one another for balance before Akiva had collapsed onto the mattress and into the long plunge of sleep.
Out in the main area, Akiva hoisted himself onto a stool at the island that separated the kitchen from the living room. The apartment smelled like tea and warming breadcrumbs. He closed his eyes and drank his sports drink. It tasted red.
