Page 36 of Breakout Year
Unlike Akiva’s house, Mark and Rachel’s house looked like adults were meant to inhabit it permanently: a colonial with wooden siding, four bedrooms—one for them, one for each of the children, and a guest room Akiva had slept in during the worst month of his life—the luxury of an unleaky roof. It was also a shade of piss off the HOA chartreuse that saved it from looking just like Akiva’s parents’ old house.
Despite Mark’s protestations, Akiva showed up with two bottles of wine and a box of offseason hamantaschen, which was what happened when you showed up at the kosher bakery two minutes before they closed on Friday.
Rachel took the bag, pressed a kiss to Akiva’s cheek in greeting, fussed at Noah to get out from underfoot, and pulled a chicken from the oven, seemingly all at once. “Come look at this and tell me if it’s done,” she said.
“Let him pour some wine first.” Chava, another friend from synagogue, sat at the kitchen table, shelling peas into a white casserole dish.
“I don’t really know anything about chicken,” Akiva insisted, as Rachel tutted at the meat thermometer as if it had personally betrayed her and Noah got in the way enough that Mark chased after him.
“Akiva brought wine.” Rachel returned the chicken to the oven and skimmed her hands down her apron. “Which was unnecessary, because he already was bringing gossip.”
“Uh,” Akiva said.
“We get Instagram in New Jersey, you know.”
Chava put down the peas, opened Akiva’s wine—the finest screw-top kosher red in the store—poured herself a glass, followed by ones for Rachel, Akiva, and Mark, a fifth that she sat on the table.
“Who’s that for?” Akiva asked, stalling.
“It’s for Elijah,” Chava said. “Who do you think? Jess is coming after she gets off work, and I get the sense we might have to save some for her.”
Akiva picked up his wine and took a restorative sip. That morning, in a fit of hungover pique, he’d vowed never to drink again. This obviously didn’t count. Kosher wine was closer to table syrup than liquor, anyway. He paused mid-sip at the inquisitive silence—or relative silence, anyway—emanating from the room: Mark and Rachel whispered to each other, Noah chased a ball, the three cats attempted to unionize for more food. Anna was seated in a highchair. She beat her tiny fists against the plastic tray like a drumroll.
“I think Rachel means that I’m hanging out with someone,” Akiva said.
“Someone—ha!” Rachel sent her hands skyward. “What this one means is that he’s hanging out with Eitan Rivkin.”
Two beats of quiet, then a burst of noise.
Mark: “So that’s why you were texting me about the Cosmos.”
Chava: “Jess is gonna faint. She’s obsessed—obsessed.”
Noah and Anna both yelled because that was what the adults were doing.
Even the cats got in on it.
And Akiva had considered, briefly, what it’d be like to lie to the press, the general public, but he hadn’t thought about what it’d be like to lie to the people in this kitchen. He took out his phone, sent a cash app payment to Mark. It wasn’t the largest of Akiva’s debts, or the first, or even the one he’d paid back the fastest, but it was the one he most wanted to designate green in The Spreadsheet.
Mark’s phone chimed. He tapped it, then frowned. Payment declined.
“For real?” Akiva said.
Mark scooped up Noah, who was still yelling, then blew a raspberry on his belly before he set him back down. Mark and Akiva weren’t that different in age—Mark was maybe seven years older than he was—but fatherhood had thinned his hair and gifted him softness at his waist, a coach’s authority. “Don’t change the subject.”
Akiva re-opened the app, and hell, Eitan must have just gotten a free moment with his phone. Because there was a payment from him adorned only with an emoji of a man dancing. For a second, Akiva wanted to decline it similarly, like if he did, it might make things with Eitan different than how they were.
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” he said, finally.
“Are you seeing him?” Mark said.
“Yeah.” Akiva took another sip of wine. “We played together, before. In Arizona. It’s…complicated.”
Mark frowned. “Complicated?”
He’s paying me and not like that. Akiva glanced around the room. Rachel was pretending not to eavesdrop while tenting the chicken pan in foil, and Chava was pretending to help her but was mostly just drinking and waiting for Akiva to finish. He shrugged mulishly. Maybe Mark would let this go.
“I was going to make cholent once Rach is done with the chicken if you want to help,” Mark said. So he wasn’t letting this go.
