Page 42 of Breakout Year
“A feed?”
“I don’t own a TV.”
“Oh, you’re one of those,” Eitan teased. He wondered what Akiva’s house was like. If there was something about it he didn’t want Eitan to see or if he simply didn’t invite people he had only business relationships with inside.
“It’s not like that,” Akiva said. “It was cheaper not to get cable and local games are blacked out on various streaming apps.”
“Cable isn’t that—” Expensive. Except Eitan’s mother taught him to never count someone else’s money unless they needed it and you had some to give. “Interesting,” he finished.
Akiva snorted like he knew exactly what Eitan was about to say. “Work doesn’t allow me much time to watch TV anyway.”
If you didn’t have to work… A possibility Eitan couldn’t let himself even think. Or its simpler corollary: How much do you need?
He didn’t offer; Akiva would obviously say no. He wanted to offer, just in case he’d say yes. He adjusted his hands on the wheel again. Didn’t let any of that spill out. “Let me know if you change your mind about the tickets.”
Akiva sat for a moment, possibly waiting for Eitan to clarify why he’d driven all the way to the impossibly distant land of New Jersey to see him. “So are you gonna tell me what those texts were about?” Akiva asked when Eitan hadn’t said anything.
“Yeah.” Even if all Eitan wanted was another few minutes sitting here with Akiva before Akiva removed himself from Eitan’s car and possibly his life. “Oh, I got you this.” Eitan reached and dug in his backseat for the package he’d bought that morning. He hadn’t had time to get wrapping paper, and he probably should have. Newsprint left smudges on Akiva’s hands as he took the parcel from him. Eitan couldn’t quite seem to look him in the eye, gaze caught on the slightly grayed tips of his fingers. If they held hands, Eitan’s fingers would look the same. Williams’s You got it bad replayed in his head for whatever reason.
“You don’t have to open this now if you don’t want,” Eitan said.
Akiva smiled. “Can I?” Eitan motioned that he should go ahead, and Akiva peeled back the tape, careful, like it wasn’t just a newspaper Eitan picked up at a bodega in a frantic rush that morning.
“Eitan…” Akiva stared down at the package as if he was trying to find words.
“When I first got called up, everyone called me Ethan.” Something Eitan meant as a funny ha ha thing but came out different. “You say my name how people back home do.”
Akiva blinked at him once, his cheeks coloring. “You didn’t need to do this.” Even if he was tilting the package toward Eitan to display the gift—a carved Havdalah candle, tall and elaborately braided, with white and green curlicues cut in the sides. “It’s beautiful.”
“It seemed like something you’d like.”
“I do.” Akiva brought it to his nose. “It smells like Havdalah.”
The box had said it smelled like cloves and cinnamon and orange peel—reminders of the sweetness of Shabbat as you transitioned back to the rest of the week. Akiva sniffed the candle again. His eyes closed momentarily, the pale tips of his eyelashes aglow. “I don’t know what you think you did to necessitate this but thank you.”
Eitan couldn’t put it off any longer. “Did you watch that interview I did?”
Akiva nodded.
“The ‘reconnecting with old friends’ thing. Someone might figure out who you are—were. That you used to play ball. I mean, you sort of fell off the face of the Earth, so I got the sense you didn’t want people to put that together.”
Whatever reaction he’d been expecting, it wasn’t Akiva’s slight laugh. “Is that what this is about? I thought you might have told people about me writing Sue’s books.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Eitan resumed gripping the wheel. His hands weren’t tense, exactly, but his knuckles pulled white. “You said not to.”
“Hey.” Akiva reached for his hand, fingers dragging across Eitan’s. A nothing kind of touch, except for how it wasn’t.
Eitan had thought his hands were desensitized from wearing batting gloves, from the callus-generating task of fielding baseballs for a living. Maybe no one had touched him right in that spot, in just that way, before. Certainly not in a way he could remember, and he was certain he’d remember that. He breathed purposefully.
Akiva withdrew his hand. “I left baseball because I wanted to quit?—”
Eitan cut him off. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” You don’t owe me, or anyone, that.
Akiva smiled a little sadly. Lifted his hand like he might touch Eitan again, before resting it on his own knee. “Things were hard in the minors: they stuck me in this small town where I was the only Jewish person anyone had ever met. No synagogue, no kosher food in the clubhouse if I didn’t bring it, no nothing. I had to pitch on Saturdays. That was hard. Then I got to the Fall League, and you were there.”
“Shit.” Eitan scrubbed his hands over his face. “Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”
“Remember that night when we went out to the bar? Guys were asking me questions about my kippah. I went to the bathroom, and when I came back, you were telling them to lay off me. That you were Jewish too and that they should consider shutting the fuck up. I just thought, Maybe I should’ve done that months ago.
