Page 96 of Breakout Year
“Thank you,” Eitan said, “for everything last night.”
Akiva smiled. Kissed his cheek. “How are you feeling?”
“Can you be emotionally hungover?”
That got him another smile, another kiss, the sight of Akiva pulling himself out of bed and rooting through his dresser. He put his kippah on before his shirt, which Eitan wouldn’t have expected. “I can make you some tea.”
Eitan shook his head. Not that he didn’t want tea, and breakfast, and probably to go for a run in the November cold air, the kind that would cleanse him by stabbing him in the lungs. Mostly, he wanted to be with Akiva in whatever shape that took. “What’re you planning to do today?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“Probably need to let Gabe and my parents know I’m alive.”
“You haven’t told Irene?”
Eitan tapped out a message to her and one to Gabe. A simple I’m in New Jersey. I’m fine. Then muted all incoming texts. “I told them where I was.”
For a moment, Akiva looked like he might press the point. Then he leaned down and kissed Eitan instead. “I’m glad you came here.”
“I was worried you weren’t going to—” Eitan gulped around the end of the sentence. He’d knocked on Akiva’s door and wondered what would happen if Akiva didn’t answer. “I was worried you might not want to see me.”
That got him another kiss. “That was my fault. I thought it would hurt less if there was distance between us.”
“Did it?”
“No.” Akiva bit his lip, studied the floor. Color spotted his cheeks. So this separation hadn’t been any easier on him, even if he’d handled it a touch less dramatically.
“I love you.” Eitan’s words came spilling out like they normally did, but for once he didn’t regret saying them. “I think I fell a little in love with you sometime around when you told me to kiss you on the sidewalk so Dave could take our picture.”
“I have you beat. I think I fell a little in love with you when you told those guys at the bar in Arizona to go fuck themselves.” Akiva smiled. “For the record, I love you more now.”
It was still mid-morning outside, the weather an indeterminate sort of gray. People had called Eitan distractable all his life, but nothing could have distracted him from that moment: not the clouds or jetlag or the reality that he was going to have to find something to do with his life other than play baseball. “For the record?” he teased.
“Just so there isn’t any ambiguity.”
There wasn’t any in the way Akiva wrapped his arms around him, in the press of Akiva’s forehead to his and the comingling of their breath. In the careful attention of Akiva’s mouth and the grip of his hand at Eitan’s wrist. In how he put an I love you between each kiss like they were the only words he knew.
“I’ve never hung out with you on a Friday,” Eitan said, later, after breakfast and a run and a shower and a conversation with Gabe that resulted in Gabe telling him to not make rash decisions while he’d devoured what sounded like a metric ton of antacids.
I want to quit. A sentence Eitan made himself think over and over. He didn’t want to quit. He just didn’t see what else he could do and emerge with his dignity intact.
Well, he could see what Akiva did with himself on Fridays.
Akiva was also up and dressed, nursing a cup of coffee and glaring at the general idea of being awake. Eitan had apologized, again, for rousing him in the middle of the night, but had gotten only Akiva’s kiss, and an I love you, said casually, like Akiva had wanted to practice. “Usually I do what I’m doing now, but outside.” Akiva glanced at his phone, yawned, and then suppressed that yawn. “I should daven.”
Which he hadn’t done yet, but maybe he preferred to pray when he was fully awake. “Were you going to do that now?” Eitan asked.
“It’s cold.” Akiva tucked his T-shirt closer around himself. It had a hole at the collar that Eitan wanted to put his fingers in and tug. Kiley had said she’d known before. How had he not? But he was here now and determined to make up for lost time.
“It’s not that cold—I went running earlier.” Which had felt great, right up until Eitan had to huff frigid air up a hill and had been bitterly reminded that, even though he was in the best shape of his life, teams didn’t want to speak with him.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you are very Midwestern.”
Eitan laughed. “What’s that mean?”
“Tolerant of intolerable conditions.” Akiva rose from the couch, drained his coffee, dropped a kiss on Eitan’s temple. Went into his bedroom and came back with his tefillin still in their plastic cases, but didn’t immediately take them out. “I’ve never really done this with someone I was dating.”
It was possible he didn’t want to pray in front of Eitan. Akiva’s house didn’t have a great deal of space: barely five rooms, including his sliver of a kitchen and an attempt at a second bedroom that was mostly a closet. Still, Eitan could remove himself from the immediate vicinity. He probably needed somewhere else to live, anyway. Maybe he should start searching for rentals nearby. “I can go”—he gestured to the bedroom—“in there if you want some privacy.”
