Page 54 of Breakout Year
“I lied before. I noticed,” Eitan said. “In Arizona. I noticed you looking at me. Mostly because I was looking at you too.”
Akiva blinked once behind his glasses. His cheeks had more color than when they first reconnected: the summer sun, maybe, even if Akiva mostly spent his time inside. “What’d you see?”
An invitation, then, one Eitan was grateful for. He returned his hands to Akiva’s waist, pushed up his tzitzit, took the shirt from Akiva as he pulled it off, and folded it neatly—neatly for him, anyway. Not knowing what to do with the shirt, Eitan placed it on the cushion of the large worn-in armchair next to the plant stand.
“You have freckles,” Eitan said. “I wanted to know how far down they went. I was disappointed we never shared a clubhouse in Arizona. I wanted to see if your nipples were the same color as your mouth.”
“Yours are.” Akiva laughed when Eitan’s eyebrows shot up incredulously. “Did you think I got to the ballpark early in the morning because I was really that into sightlines? You used to run around the field shirtless.”
“I still could,” Eitan said, “if you wanted to come before the game.”
“Queens is a pretty long commute.” Then Akiva took a more direct route and started to unbutton Eitan’s shirt, beginning at his throat.
There was nothing to it—the push of Akiva’s fingers at each buttonhole, the subtle release in tension as Eitan’s shirt opened, a sensation diametrically opposite to the one tightening through him. If Akiva shoved his sleeves down his arms, cuffs still fastened, his hands might be trapped. He might have nothing to do but stand here and watch Akiva look at him or kiss him or touch him or any of a hundred things Eitan wanted and a thousand more he wasn’t sure of but wanted to try.
He felt a momentary swoop of disappointment when Akiva undid each cuff. The fabric flapped over Eitan’s hands before he stripped off his shirt. His skin came up in goose bumps—the air conditioning, possibly, even as it was issuing little wheezing noises that made Eitan want to buy Akiva a new one or possibly a brand-new house. Unlikely it was the chill. Eitan was Eastern European by way of the Midwest. He could go lake swimming in March.
“What are you thinking about?” Akiva asked, as if he could sense Eitan’s mind doing its usual tumbles.
“Jumping in cold water,” Eitan said. Without his shirt on, it was obvious that he was hard in his pants.
He expected a sly comment or possibly Akiva to ignore it altogether. Not the grip of Akiva’s long fingers around his cock, a stroke that made Eitan think of Lake Erie to maintain any sense of his self-control. “The curtains are open,” Eitan gasped. “People will see.”
Akiva smiled at that, then kissed him, long, thorough, his tongue dipping into Eitan’s mouth. A kiss for no one but them. “If you’re so worried about an audience,” Akiva said, “come to bed.” Then walked toward the other room.
Akiva’s bedroom was no more than thirty feet from his living room. About a third the distance between bases on the diamond, a span Eitan, running at a full clip, could cross in a scant few seconds.
He walked slowly now.
His shoes—dress shoes he kept at Cosmos Stadium and changed into after the game—came off, one, then the other, then his socks. The floorboards were cool under his feet. He didn’t really know why he wanted to go to Akiva barefoot, only that he didn’t want to get so much as a speck of ballpark dust on Akiva’s bedroom carpet. The world could stay outside. The world could go to hell, really.
Walking, he had that same sense of being up on a high dive. That the floor was shifting beneath him. That if he took this leap, he’d emerge different than who he’d been before. So what if I am? he wanted to shout at his teammates in Cleveland, at every flash of Dave’s camera, at every drunk fan who was just waiting for the right strikeout or baserunning mistake to let it be known that people like Eitan—that Eitan himself—didn’t belong.
He belonged here now, as he stood in the doorway, feet on Akiva’s threadbare carpet that bore fresh vacuum tracks. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the lower light. Akiva’s dresser and desk, mismatched. The books: shelves of them, crumbling, spine-broken paperbacks, newer hardbacks with stickers designating them signed by the author.
Akiva’s bed—older, heavy-framed with a slatted headboard. And finally Akiva, sitting on the bed—lying across it really—the night coming through the partially broken blinds ribboning him in shadow and light.
He was pale here, freckled down his chest, with a few curls of hair that grew denser under his arms and down his belly. Eitan had called him too skinny, but right now Akiva looked like the exact span of his hands.
Eitan became aware of the sudden emptiness of his palms. Of the relative emptiness of his life until now, devoid of this feeling washing over him. It swept him from the doorway to the floor, from the floor to the bed. To kneeling above Akiva and trailing a hand up his cheek. Their contract said he only got so many hours, but he would have gladly given over his entire bank account for that moment. As it was, he reached to the nightstand and tipped over the glowing digital clock.
If Akiva thought anything of it, he didn’t say. Just angled his chin up as Eitan leaned down. Not every kiss was a prelude. This one was: mouths, tongues, teeth, the clamp of Akiva’s hand on the back of his neck. A thrum went through Eitan.
“You like being held in place?” Akiva asked.
I like being yours. Eitan nodded.
“What else do you like?”
A harder question. “Most stuff is—it’s whatever.” A catchall for how sex hadn’t ever been something Eitan felt particularly motivated to pursue. Something that happened occasionally and was pleasant enough at the time. Nothing like this strong tug like a hook under his ribs, urging him here. “I don’t really know what I like,” he admitted.
He waited for something—pity, possibly, or maybe Akiva’s slightly startled laugh. His question of how Eitan didn’t know, asked the way people had asked him to read aloud growing up, then become exasperated when Eitan had to wait for the letters to resolve into meaning. Eitan told himself he wouldn’t let that hurt, then braced for impact.
“When I first left the game,” Akiva said, “I didn’t know what to do with myself. Even going to school and trying to earn money, the hours felt so empty. I had to relearn who I was when I wasn’t playing. It was easier to make up stories about other people.”
“Your stories are good ones.” Unlike Eitan’s, which, right at that moment, felt incomplete.
“So imagine,” Akiva said, “a handsome, eligible man—highly successful in his field—with a series of broken engagements behind him.”
