Page 63 of Breakout Year
“I got dumped. Kind of.” I found out I was gay after everyone else in my life did. I found out I was dating someone a month into doing it. I found someone who I really like, and we can’t be together because I have too much money and he has too little. All of which seemed like a lot to spew out in front of Isabel’s notebooks. He might end up in one, under an entry that said Eitan Rivkin—mess. He leaned over her desk to more closely examine the community center’s webpage. “It says most volunteer applications take a month to process. By then it’ll be the offseason.” And he’d be somewhere else.
“We could see if they’ll expedite paperwork for you,” she offered.
“No, that’s okay. But could you—I mean, I’d like to get back there at least one more time this year to say my goodbyes.”
“You gonna miss New York?” Isabel asked.
Eitan considered the last few months of breakfast sandwiches, the belligerent and jubilant crowds. Williams, smugly covered in glitter. The way Eitan’s sweat-shirted name sat between the wings of Akiva’s shoulder blades like it meant something. It was strange to miss somewhere he didn’t want to be in the first place. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m happy to be here.”
“Well, if you all play right, you’ll get another few weeks.”
Eitan’s eyes drifted to the wall-mounted monitor showing a dizzying array of baseball commentators in split screen. They were displaying the Cosmos’ place in the division standings, close to the playoffs, but not a sure thing. He’d been playing well, but the rest of the team had floundered and somehow, in the minds of the New York sports media, this was also his fault. Rivkin the Distraction? paraded across the chyron in fifty-point font.
“Huh,” he said, “I didn’t know show-boat-ery was a word.”
On TV, Camilla was on a panel with a few other sports reporters. Eitan braced himself for her assessment. “He plays with flair,” she said. “Lord knows we need some of that.”
But the other commentators disagreed: Eitan was apparently arrogant, selfish, dramatic. And Eitan knew he was sometimes oblivious, but even he could pick up on that as barely veiled subtext. “By dramatic, do they just mean gay?” It felt strange to say the word aloud in a baseball stadium when it wasn’t being used as a clubhouse insult.
“Fuck, you shouldn’t have to see that.” Isabel rummaged through her desk, eventually pulling out a small black remote as if she wanted to spare Eitan from having to hear the unavoidable. That New York was no better of a fit than Cleveland. That maybe, a part of his gut whispered, no place in baseball was a good fit at all. I was always gonna have to shove some part of me to the side in order to play. What Akiva said about quitting: something Eitan took as both brave and fatalistic. Now he wondered if it was just inevitable.
“Well, I was happy to be here, anyway,” he said. “Let me know what the center says.” At least someone might be sad to see him go.
The good thing about a Friday night in Queens was the crowd noise could almost drown out every other bad thought in Eitan’s head. His jersey—black, because they wore their special black jerseys on Fridays—stuck to his back. He pulled it from his sides again. Took his hat off and wiped his forehead. Summer was lingering this year. At least something should. Dramatic.
Well, Eitan had hit a dramatic home run earlier in the game. It didn’t make much of a difference: their starter had imploded, the rest of the offense had swung their bats and come up empty. It didn’t matter how long of a ball he could hit if no one else was on base.
He wondered if Akiva would have a better word for this churning sensation in his gut he couldn’t seem to shake. His bad mood must have been radiating off him because Bishop patted him on his hip during their jog out to take their fielding positions, a baseball gesture that could mean congrats, I’m sorry, and you good, bro?, sometimes all at once.
At least third base kept him busy. Two outs, a runner on second, a left-handed pitcher on the mound determined to wring every second out of the pitch clock. Fans behind him expressed their opinions as only fans in New York could—“Don’t fuck up!” was a common theme.
On most nights, he’d take it as a compliment. Now he listened for other worse words. They came, some nights, aimed indiscriminately at some misplay on the field. Tonight, they might stick the way his jersey did to his back. Tonight they’d be about him, even if they were aimed elsewhere.
He tugged his uniform, feeling the weight of the stitched-on letters. Across town, they just wore numbers, no names, and he didn’t know if that’d be better or worse: an expectation not to be an individual counteracted by the fact that he was.
I never gave Akiva a jersey. Something he’d meant to do. Most of the longtime wives-and-girlfriends spent their games circulating between the stands and the family room to get some relief from the heat and the crowd’s fickle moods. Wearing your boyfriend’s or husband’s jersey was considered gauche, Eitan had gathered. It didn’t stop him from wanting to see Akiva in one, like a claim.
Goodwin, a Cincinnati player, was standing on second, though he kept moving off the base, half-heartedly scurrying back whenever Aguila, their shortstop, whistled so the pitcher knew Goodwin was drifting. He was a big guy—big for a first baseman, even, built like a linebacker and with a reputation for being kind of an irritable red ass. Eitan didn’t think he was likely to swipe a bag, but he stayed vigilant just in case.
It didn’t matter, not when the Cincinnati batter hit a sharp line drive. Not when Goodwin took off from second, barreling toward Eitan.
Without Eitan right at third base, Goodwin would take it easily, and then they’d have a guy ninety feet from home plate when the Cosmos needed to prevent every run possible. With Eitan standing on third, he was probably gonna get run over. But hell, no matter what commentators said, baseball was a physical game. If a guy wanted to paste Eitan to prove some kind of fucking point, he was more than welcome to try.
Some itch in Eitan’s brain wondered if Goodwin knew about Eitan specifically—from his disaster of a press conference, from everything that’d happened since—and decided to shove him around. He could just be a regular-flavor non-homophobic asshole. Baseball was full of those too.
Goodwin sped toward him just as Eitan caught the relay throw, and Eitan expected a slide: headfirst, so Eitan could tap a glove against his back, could make a case to an ump that he secured the out, even as he was spitting ballpark dirt from his mouth.
Goodwin slid all right—a thrust of a cleat-first slide, the shining plastic spikes on his soles aimed right at Eitan’s ankle as if provoking him to jump back.
Eitan didn’t. This is my bag, I have as much right to be here as anyone, and I’m not gonna fucking move. So Eitan planted himself right where he was and braced for whatever came his way.
24
Akiva
The first text Akiva got when he took his phone off airplane mode on Saturday night was from Eitan.
Eitan: It’s not as bad as it looks.
