Page 69 of Breakout Year
“Eitan, I can go to the bodega and get you a bacon, egg, and cheese. I get nonkosher food for Sue sometimes.”
Akiva had to know that saying Eitan’s name like that—correctly, demandingly, warmly—was a cheat code. If he kept doing that, Eitan would have no choice in trying to give him anything he’d ever wanted. Except he wouldn’t take it, even if you offered. “Yeah, but you don’t have to,” Eitan said.
“I know.” Akiva closed his laptop and moved his emptied coffee cup to the sink. “You need anything else? Ice? To re-wrap your ankle?”
“Nah, I’m good.”
“If I asked the team doctors that question, what would they say?”
Eitan gave Akiva a look and Akiva gave him one right back. “Fine,” Eitan said. “Ice would probably be a good idea.” He crutched over to the couch, propped his ankle up on a pillow, accepted the ice pack when Akiva brought it over.
Akiva skimmed a look over him. Eitan wasn’t a stranger to being looked at. He’d been drafted number one overall, a process that had come with a lot of scouts and team personnel and commentators who had a lot to say about his body. A risk for Cleveland had been the general consensus: that despite Eitan’s fielding and pitch-recognition skills and bat speed and all the other things his body could do, he’d still been undersized. Still the wrong fit.
Akiva didn’t react other than busying himself with something at Eitan’s end table as if he had the sudden need to organize Eitan’s spare phone charger. The tips of his ears went very slightly red. “If I’m not back in twenty minutes,” Akiva said, “you should take the ice off.”
“You gonna abandon me up here?” Eitan batted his eyelashes a few times. Against the rules, but he was the one writing those.
“No.” Akiva laughed and ducked down like he might press a kiss to Eitan’s forehead, the way he might have when they’d been dating. But there wasn’t anyone up here to impress and they weren’t doing that, besides. So when Akiva patted Eitan’s couch cushion a few times, then left like his heels had caught fire, Eitan couldn’t even be that disappointed.
Time moved slower without Akiva there. Eitan listened to five minutes of a book. At minute six, he conceded that he hadn’t heard much of anything. His ankle was throbbing in a way that was becoming harder to ignore. All his phone served him were baseball highlights and videos of himself getting hit in the leg over and over, neither of which he wanted to watch. He composed a long message to the team group chat apologizing for being a distraction, then deleted it. He composed a long message to Akiva apologizing for scaring him, which Eitan obviously had, and then meandered his way around the point—that Eitan was really, really grateful to have him in whatever way Akiva would allow.
He deleted that too and FaceTime’d Connor instead. It rang exactly once then disconnected. No answer. He has a game, probably. That thought tasted like dirt. Eitan couldn’t even blame the pain meds.
When he called Kiley, she answered immediately. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and her hair was piled into a messy dark blond bun. It was easier to understand that she was beautiful when he wasn’t attaching a corollary: that her being beautiful meant he had to be attracted to her.
“Is your ankle okay?” she asked.
“I’m good!” Though his ankle gave another throb. “I realized I hadn’t told you that.”
She smiled. She had a few freckles dotting her nose. He had a type, apparently. “You texted me on Friday.”
He scrolled up through his texts. Sure enough, there was a succession of messages he’d sent after they’d dosed him with painkillers and given him an ice pack. He’d insisted he was physically fine until the trainer left and then he’d been alone.
Sorry, read his text to her. Sorry about all of this. Sorry that I didn’t tell you.
Fuck. Fuck. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“Are you okay now?”
He considered his current situation—lying on a couch with a handsome man fetching him a bagel sandwich. “I have a, uh, friend here for a few days. Bringing me breakfast and everything.” There wasn’t a cool way to gloss over that the friend was a he, but now it sounded like Eitan had a new girlfriend he wasn’t telling Kiley about, judging by her skeptical expression. He was screwing this whole thing up. “Really, I’m fine. How’s Cleveland?”
“Everything here is good.” With an unstated Are you? he didn’t know how to answer.
“Does the whole city still hate me?”
“Maybe only half.”
Are you in that half? He didn’t know if she knew about Akiva from Instagram or wherever. Eitan hadn’t told her, but it was possible—probable—someone else had, and now she was angry with him for wasting her time. For lying to her, even by omission. It was possible she didn’t want to talk about their relationship after its natural expiration point—or about his personal life now. He should respect that. Surely, he’d caused her enough trouble along the way. Early in this whole fiasco, he’d wanted someone to answer his questions. What do I do when I’m talking to my ex-girlfriend, who I was never really that attracted to but told her I loved her because I did, just not in the way I should have, and now I don’t know who we are to each other or if there’s a right way to be sorry about this sort of thing or?—
It was also possible he was spiraling. She’d answered when he’d called after all. More than he could say for Connor.
He fumbled for what to say next. When they’d been together, they’d never really lacked for conversation. But when they’d been dating, most of their life revolved around him and how the team was doing and his contract and… He wanted things to be different, without having to actually say if and how they were. Cowardice, he knew, but he’d be brave once his ankle stopped hurting. “Looks like I’m laid up for a while. Tell me what spooky murder shows I should watch,” and listened intently as she gamely began listing her top ten.
Akiva came back twenty minutes later with a paper bag that smelled like grease and ketchup. “Don’t get up,” he said when Eitan clicked off the TV—it turned out true-crime shows were equal parts cheesy and scary—and was about to rise from the couch.
“I’m fine!”
“Sit, eat.”
