Page 43 of Breakout Year
“But it was also…being Jewish and queer, I was always gonna have to shove some part of me to the side in order to play, and I didn’t want to do that. So I quit. I guess I didn’t have your guts.”
Eitan cycled through what to say—how I’m sorry doesn’t seem adequate for what Akiva had gone through. “Oh.”
“And turns out, if you break your contract with your team, they can recoup your signing bonus. My parents spent a lot on baseball over the years—more than I knew—so I gave them my signing bonus when I got it. It didn’t go so great when I had to ask for it back.” Akiva twisted one of the strings of the hoodie he was wearing. “They had to downsize to a different house.”
Which, fuck.
Akiva exhaled audibly. “So it wasn’t really a good time. For a while.”
“What’d you do after?”
“I was twenty-two, couldn’t live at home—things got pretty rough between us—and didn’t have any skills other than throwing a fucking baseball. I went to community college then to Montclair State and worked as—well, I worked. I figured stuff out, I guess.”
“You got a degree?”
Akiva made a circle with his finger, a whoop-de-doo. “Communications. Still paying off those loans too. Do yourself a favor and don’t spend a quarter million dollars without knowing what happens if you quit.”
Eitan looked at him: at the lines of his eyelashes, the strong set of his shoulders, the stubborn cut of his jaw. “You did all that on your own?”
Akiva nodded slowly.
“How could you possibly think you don’t have guts?”
He didn’t have time to say much more, not when Akiva kissed him, a dart of a kiss, scarcely more than a press of his mouth against Eitan’s, quick enough that Eitan would miss it if he blinked, so he didn’t.
The moment held for exactly one breath, then Akiva retreated to the passenger’s side, leaving a buzz of air between them. “Sorry.”
“Um.” Because that was easier than saying, Why are you apologizing? Easier than saying, Kiss me again. “It’s all right.”
Eitan’s phone, mounted on his dashboard, sent up a notification: a text from Williams about paying Eitan back for something or other along with an accompanying cash app alert. Eitan swiped at it, futilely, fingers moving blindly on his phone screen to clear the message. The app opened. The money he sent Akiva on Friday sat there, unaccepted.
“Did you not want…” Eitan started, then trailed off. He was paying for Akiva’s time, for the minutes he spent sitting in Eitan’s car, for nothing else. Because he had money and Akiva didn’t, and Eitan could not—should not, and therefore would not—exert that kind of power over him.
His pulse jumped: the scream of his conscience telling him to make the right decision, even if it was hard to imagine any decision being the right one other than drawing Akiva to him and doing that again and again.
They sat. Night sounds poured in—birds, insects, the shush of passing cars. The sky wasn’t much darker than it was in the city, but it was dark enough that a handful of stars cut their way through the light pollution. He turned to say as much to Akiva, only to find him chewing on his lower lip.
“We probably shouldn’t,” Eitan said. “Given everything. Like the, uh, money.”
“Yeah.” Akiva’s voice came out breathy, and Eitan wanted to feel Akiva’s chest under his hands, to drink the word from his tongue, and either his car had gotten smaller in the past five seconds, or the world had gotten immeasurably wider, because all his thoughts turned into I could.
Or: I could if he wanted me to. If, if, if.
It hadn’t been like this. In Cleveland. Ever. Hadn’t been like having something inside him, awake and roaring. He hadn’t known, and he was only beginning to learn the exact scale of his ignorance right at that moment, with Akiva’s teeth on his lip, his eyes reflecting starlight that was somehow, impossibly, here.
Fuck. Eitan needed to get out of this driveway, possibly out of this vehicle, possibly out of the entire state of New Jersey. “I should let you get some sleep, huh?”
“Probably.” Akiva unlatched his door, stepped out. Eitan only had a second to admire the strong, spare line of his body before Akiva peered down at himself. He was still wearing Eitan’s sweatshirt. “I can give this back.” Like he might just strip off standing in his driveway.
“Keep it,” Eitan said. “Wear it next time.”
“Okay, next time.” There was a hint of a promise in it, a faint but present smile.
“Have a good night.”
Akiva said the same and closed the door before Eitan could do something foolish. Like call him back and try to kiss him again.
So Eitan spent the ride back humming to the music of his tires against the highway asphalt. He touched his hand to his lips, once, again, imagining the fleeting taste of Akiva’s mouth as he drove toward the city’s advancing lights.
