Page 72 of Breakout Year
26
Akiva
“You can stop eavesdropping now—I’m done on the phone,” Eitan called.
Akiva was not eavesdropping. He was simply overhearing, an inevitable circumstance of being in Eitan’s apartment with Eitan talking on speakerphone. He just happened to be overhearing while in the doorway to Eitan’s guest bedroom with the door open and his ear pointed toward Eitan’s living room, where Eitan had been talking with Gabe as of a few minutes ago. He’d ended the call, then spent a little while doing…something Akiva couldn’t see without being totally obvious about it. He wished for a door between them so he could peek through the keyhole to snoop. He wished Eitan hadn’t been so adamant that they were just friends even if that’s exactly what they were.
Akiva pulled himself from the doorway and returned to where Eitan was sitting on the couch. His ice pack was resting on a coaster. Akiva took it and put it in the freezer. Came back to the living room and tried not to sit down too heavily in Eitan’s overstuffed armchair. For a moment, he wanted to be sitting on the familiar cushions of his own slightly lumpy couch. Barring that, he wanted to crawl back into Eitan’s exceedingly comfortable guest bed and possibly coax Eitan in there with him. He slumped.
“I’m not sure how much of that you heard,” Eitan said.
“Some.” Enough. Akiva had mostly gleaned two things: that Eitan was apparently under some kind of gay house arrest and that baseball remained baseball—seven years could change a lot, but not that. “So I guess we’re stuck here for a few days?”
“I’m stuck here for a few days. You can do whatever you want.”
What if that’s taking care of you? Nothing Akiva could say out loud. He’d drawn a boundary, Eitan respected that. Akiva couldn’t renegotiate that just because of something as foolish as feelings. “I think Gabe would prefer if you didn’t re-injure your ankle by not using your crutches. I’m here to ensure that.”
“I think Gabe would prefer if I put myself into cold storage until after my contract negotiations are done.”
Privately, Akiva thought Gabe sounded mostly exasperated and fond, a combination Akiva knew well. “You don’t agree?”
“Gabe’s in L.A. right now. That’s very far from here.” Eitan grinned. Akiva knew that grin: Eitan had worn it during his press conference right before he’d decided to launch himself out of the closet. Akiva should probably be worried—hell, he was worried—but mostly he just leaned forward when Eitan said, “Let’s see what the docs say tomorrow. But I think I have an idea.”
“How do you fit in there?” Eitan asked as he was studying Akiva’s car the next morning. If his car looked bad in his driveway in Newark, it looked even worse here amid the luxury vehicles of Eitan’s building.
“Carefully,” Akiva said. “We can take your car if you want.”
“Sure. I need to check something in the trunk anyway.” But Eitan didn’t elaborate as he led Akiva toward his SUV. Whatever he was planning, he hadn’t said, just ridden out most of yesterday in twenty-minute ice-no-ice cycles while Akiva had edited in his living room. It’d been…nice working next to someone.
Eitan had been quiet—he’d listened to an audiobook and played around on his phone and insisted Akiva pick out dinner as if Akiva was the one who needed taking care of. Mostly, though, he’d rested as if making up for lost time, falling asleep with his hair across his forehead. Each time Akiva got the urge to sweep it back, he wrote another hundred words. He’d written three chapters yesterday, and the only time they’d touched had been when he’d helped Eitan back to his bedroom before Akiva had retired next door.
When they arrived at Eitan’s car, Eitan tossed him the keys. “Can you make sure that there’s still a black duffle bag in the back?”
Akiva popped the trunk and located a zipped-up black duffle—nothing to indicate its contents and Eitan hadn’t asked him to get anything from the bag, so Akiva didn’t even have an excuse to snoop—while Eitan swung his legs up into the passenger seat and grumbled good-naturedly about having to move his seat forward.
Whatever Eitan was planning, he still had that fuck you look of determination. It made Akiva want to kiss him. He adjusted Eitan’s seat and mirrors and steering column instead. “Ballpark?” he said to confirm their destination, then slowly pulled out of the parking lot.
Somehow, in all of this, the city had kept going around them. Akiva had done enough mythologizing of New York in books that he refrained from doing it in his own brain, but still, there was something comforting in its ceaselessness, how the stride of interweaving pedestrians reminded him of the mechanics of an infield when everything goes just right.
They drove out to Queens, a drive usually about as romantic as poured concrete. Sunlight picked out the auburn notes in Eitan’s hair. He was watching the city through his window, pointing out ordinary things: the etch of the skyline, the light off the river, the conversation of horns. Before, Eitan had been almost wistful when he’d said he’d miss parts of the city.
Will you miss me? A question Akiva hadn’t asked, mostly because he knew his own answer. That he’d miss Eitan more than he had any real right to. He didn’t want to know if Eitan didn’t feel the same.
They arrived at the ballpark. Akiva pulled in the players’ lot at Eitan’s instruction—after Eitan had leaned over him to wave to the security personnel and ask after their kids by name—then cut the engine. “I can wait here.”
“Nah, come on. That’s item one on the to-do list—you getting a ballpark tour.”
“Thought we were here to get your ankle looked at.”
Eitan held his ankle up. “Still there. You wanna feel just to make sure?”
Akiva did. He wanted to wrap his hand around the muscle of Eitan’s lower calf. He wanted to feel the strength in that particular tendon, the resiliency that let Eitan speed down a basepath or scramble toward a groundball that had taken a funny hop off the dirt. Friends. They were friends. Practically ordered by Gabe to keep a platonic distance where anyone could see.
He rolled his eyes at Eitan and received his laugh in return, the scan of Eitan’s gaze that lingered on his lips. For a moment, he thought Eitan might say fuck it and lean across the car and kiss him. Instead, Eitan popped open the passenger-side latch and hopped down to the pavement with an oof.
“You’re supposed to use your crutches,” Akiva called.
“Whoops, forgot. Better scowl at me some more so I’ll really learn my lesson.”
