Page 104 of Breakout Year
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. But what came out was, “I need to think about it.”
Kanitha nodded. “We imagined you’d have questions.”
He did, a few dozen of them, all hovering just beyond his mind’s reach. Finally, he arrived on one. “Are you getting another assistant?” he asked Sue.
“Is that what you want to know? And yes, I would need someone else to harass me about logistics.”
“And you’ll listen to them?”
“Spencer,” she said, “do you want to know how I got the typewriter that I used to write my first book? My ex-husband, may he rest in hell, gave it to me. He said it was so I could become a better secretary—mostly he wanted me to be his secretary. For free. So I wrote that book just to spite him. There’s nothing wrong with being a secretary. But you can aspire to something different.”
“I just—” Akiva started. “I worry about you.”
“Famously, I can do for myself when a man leaves me,” she said, a touch acidly. But she extended one of her gloved hands across the surface of the table. “I am very proud of my son. He’s off living his life. But you get to be my age, and you start reflecting on how you’ve shaped the world. What ceilings you’ve busted through. What ladders you’ve extended to other people to ease their climb.”
“I don’t—” Deserve this. Akiva’s gut reaction. That he couldn’t be trusted not to squander a big opportunity. “I don’t know if this would work,” he said, finally. On his walk, he’d thought about how to broach this conversation with her, but he hadn’t imagined he’d be witnessed by anyone else. “I was thinking about moving.”
That got a slight raise of Sue’s dyed-black eyebrows. “Oh. Where?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“By coincidence, is someone else moving with you?”
“That’s, uh, the idea.”
Sue relaxed back into her chair. Turned to Kanitha. “Would our being in different states raise complications for the arrangement?”
“Nothing we couldn’t navigate,” Kanitha said, as if the answer was relatively obvious and she was mostly saying this for Akiva’s sake.
“Do you think that someone who is moving to be with a partner should develop their own income streams to maintain their financial independence?”
Kanitha smiled. “I can’t speak to that from a legal perspective.”
“Do you think?—”
Akiva put his hand up. “Point taken, Sue.” He studied the papers in front of him. “I want to get this reviewed by another agent.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“The last page is an NDA,” Willow chimed in. “So that we can begin that negotiation process.”
Akiva’s heart started going again, a beat rapid enough that it’d be better suited to a leap from a moving train than a midday conference table. He was going to do this. He resisted the urge to race down a dozen sets of stairs, to yell into the street. Instead, he reached into his bag, pulled out a pen, a nice ballpoint that had been sitting on his dresser when he’d woken up. Eitan had grinned, asked if he liked the feel of the pen in his hand. When Akiva had said he did, Eitan had kissed him, whispered, “Write me a book,” then contradicted himself by coaxing Akiva right back into bed.
The NDA didn’t have a designated signature line. So he signed, a big cursive version of his signature, different from the one he’d spent his teenage years perfecting for autographs. His name. Not Spencer. Not anyone else.
“Right,” he said, “so what comes now?”
Akiva was a stop away from home, ruminating out the window, when he registered which station he was at. He startled, shook his head slightly, took in the familiar surroundings. It was barely noon, and today had already been full. If he stayed on board, he could go home, see Eitan. Eitan would probably insist on celebrating, and Akiva would insist right along with him. Still, there was one more thing that, the second he’d thought of it, he knew he couldn’t leave unfinished. He got up, flung himself toward the eclipsing doors, only got a little of his shirt pinched as he made it to the platform. Common sense would prevail if he thought about any of this, so he didn’t and just hailed a cab and had only a moment’s hesitancy as he told the driver his destination.
Ten minutes later, they arrived on Akiva’s parents’ street. His parents’ new house was white with dark blue trim. They must have painted it since the last time Akiva had looked at it on Google Maps, not that he’d done that. “Here?” the driver said, when he’d braked and Akiva hadn’t gone for the door handle.
“Here,” Akiva confirmed and got out of the cab before he could tell the driver that he wanted a ride back to the train station.
It was midday. It was possible his parents weren’t home. Cars were parked on the street out front, but none he recognized. Maybe they had a parking spot out back. Maybe they’d gone carless after the move. Maybe he should turn back. His hands, he realized, were empty. He should be bringing wine, food, flowers. His much more famous and successful boyfriend who might deflect some of the shame that Akiva shouldered along with his bag.
If he went to the store to buy something, he’d lose his nerve entirely. So he took himself up the concrete steps, past the lawn now going brown with winter. His mother had presided over a large garden at the other house. He wondered if the path would bloom come spring.
The door knocker was cold under his palm. He rapped it a few times, then waited. He could hear movement from inside. The peephole darkened as if someone was looking through it. Finally, the lock turned.
