Page 66 of Breakout Year
“Eitan said you used to play.”
“I did. I don’t anymore.” And if Williams could hear the distance between those two statements—what they cost Akiva to figure out—he didn’t say anything. Just clapped Akiva once on the shoulder and said he could show himself to the front door.
After Williams had left, Akiva cleaned what he could. Ballplayers, even ones attempting to be conscientious, left trash in their wakes. He put away food, shuffled cards back into their pack, swept the kitchen floor.
Eitan didn’t stir, not even when Akiva lifted the ice pack off his ankle—the instructions had been clear about twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off, and Akiva didn’t want him to get frostbite, even if there was a towel between the ice pack and his wrapped ankle. Eitan, quiet, unmoving except for his slight snores, was particularly disconcerting. Every time his face tensed in his sleep, something clenched hard in Akiva’s chest.
“Hey,” Akiva said, low, “we should get you to bed.”
Eitan’s eyes blinked open. “Akiva, hey.” Like he didn’t remember Akiva was there. “I thought I dreamed you.”
This isn’t real. Except for all the ways it was. “You were pretty asleep. I can stay over if you want.”
Eitan’s eyes fluttered as if he might go back to sleep. “You don’t have to.”
“That’s what I’m supposed to say. Now, c’mon, you don’t want to fall asleep on this thing.” Even if Eitan’s couch looked as luxurious as any bed Akiva had ever owned.
“I have—” Eitan reached for where two crutches were stacked near the couch. Akiva held them up and waited for Eitan to swing his legs around, for him to put his good foot on the floor and accept the support of his crutches, clipping his arms into their hard plastic cuffs. He got up, testing his weight, then began crutching fluidly toward his bedroom, and Akiva shouldn’t be surprised at Eitan acclimating seamlessly to a new physical task, but that was apparently how Eitan was: a disaster, followed by an elastic recovery.
Akiva followed in case Eitan needed to ford piles of clothing in order to get to his own bed.
But the floor was clear, possibly the team trainer or Eitan’s housekeeping service or even Williams’s doing. Akiva would not feel any kind of way about someone else cleaning up. He didn’t even like cleaning. He just mostly did it to procrastinate something else. Email, usually. He didn’t want to pick Eitan’s clothes up off the floor. But some small part of him didn’t hate the idea that Eitan needed him there—that he could use that as an excuse to stick around.
So he watched as Eitan made it to the bed and sat down heavily, leaning his crutches against his nightstand. “I don’t even need those,” Eitan said.
“If the trainers say you’re supposed to use them…”
“Shilling for the team, Goldfarb?” Eitan said it with a tilt to his grin, the way he might have in Arizona when they were both pretending to look past one another. “And I already got a ‘firm directive’ from Gabe to do what the team tells me to do.”
“What other firm directives have you gotten?” Akiva asked unthinkingly.
Eitan smirked. Per Sue’s instructions, Akiva was allotted exactly one smirk per draft he wrote for her, so he had to make it a good one. This smirk was accompanied by the angle of Eitan’s jaw, the dark stubble of his neck that Akiva wanted to firmly direct with his teeth.
Akiva ignored that smirk, giving only a lift of his eyebrows that probably bordered on schoolmarm.
Eitan deflated. “I think you got the rundown from Williams, but basically, I’m supposed to take it easy—no baseball activities—so they can check to make sure I haven’t busted my ankle. Mostly it’s just a pretty gnarly bruise. Good thing that guy wasn’t wearing metal spikes.”
Did you know that before he slid into you? Akiva didn’t ask, mostly because he already suspected the answer. No, Eitan hadn’t known, and he’d let himself get plowed over anyway.
Akiva didn’t ask that question or any of his other questions, going back to why Eitan had texted him. If he was just texting everybody he knew or if he’d wanted Akiva in specific not to worry. They’d only been apart for a week: not long enough for Eitan to change his emergency contacts. It was possible they really were just friends—two people who happened to be in the same rented bedroom in a city full of rented bedrooms and vague acquaintanceships—and Akiva was once again being melodramatic.
Then Eitan tugged off his shirt and winged it toward the overflowing laundry basket.
“When does your laundry service come?” Akiva said to distract himself from Eitan’s chest and arms and the ripple of muscle under his belly as he moved. Akiva had a lifetime of practice aiming his gaze at the most disgusting parts of a locker room, seven years to become unimpressed with ballplayers’ bodies. What he couldn’t ignore was the memory of Eitan against him, his breath warm in Akiva’s ear, his gasps at each new thing that brought him pleasure. Akiva needed something, anything to distract himself. Chores. “I could do a load.”
“I think the laundry people are coming tomorrow.” Eitan yawned through the word. “Monday? I don’t know what day it is.” He shifted around, then brought his ankle up to the bed and sighed like that took all his effort.
“Do you need to brush your teeth?” Akiva asked before Eitan could get too comfortable.
“Did that before I got on the couch.” Eitan tapped two fingers against his temple. “I hate sleeping in shorts—I need to get these off.” But he didn’t budge, like the mere thought of moving again had him winded.
“I could help.” The words got caught somewhere in Akiva’s mouth and came out strangled.
“You don’t—” Eitan fidgeted like he was going to wriggle out of his shorts. “I can pay, you know. For your time.”
Briefly, Akiva considered how satisfying it might be to storm out. It’d be hard to slam Eitan’s door—he’d have to stop to reengage all the locks—but it might be worth it.
Instead, he took a deep inhale and sat himself on the bed, next to Eitan but not touching him. A relatively safe distance, though Akiva was beginning to think the only safe distance might have been the one between New Jersey and Cleveland, and the big leagues and everywhere else.
