Page 80 of Breakout Year
“I’m—” Eitan said, then his entire body tensed, every sheath and plate of muscle. Akiva pushed his fingers up, up, rhythmically, until Eitan came with a gasp and didn’t stop for a while. At the end, Akiva swallowed, once, and kissed Eitan’s thigh and his lower belly and the side of his ribs. Made his way up to his face, where Eitan was staring up at the ceiling, glassy-eyed and a little stunned.
“I thought there was something wrong with me for so long,” Eitan said dazedly. “I tried to ignore it. It was easier to defend everyone else. But this is what I was waiting for. You’re who I was waiting for.”
Long ago, Akiva had discovered that he didn’t cry even when he got hurt or scared or things felt unrecoverable, but now he learned that it only took one good thing—the right good thing—to make him feel like something had cracked in his chest.
He kissed Eitan. Lay so that they were side by side, Eitan’s body solid against his own. “You’re who I was waiting for too,” Akiva said, so quietly he thought Eitan wouldn’t hear him.
Eitan shifted and pulled him close and kissed his cheek. Hummed contentedly and kissed Akiva again for good measure. After a moment, he pulled out his phone. The train schedule momentarily flashed on screen.
“How much longer do we have?” Akiva asked, but he already knew the answer.
Not long enough.
30
Eitan
Super-Nova or Black Hole: Cosmos Reckon with Late-Season Collapse
* * *
It was after midnight by the time they got back to Eitan’s apartment. They’d cleaned themselves up enough to get dinner, had sat in a U-shaped booth in a train car that was definitely watching them, and ate while the world flew by. Eitan was sure the food was good. For the price of the tickets, everything was good, but he didn’t remember a single bite of it or the taste of his drink or anything other than the feel of Akiva next to him and the buzz under his skin and the slight dishevelment of Akiva’s hair that no amount of finger-combing would solve.
People know. It’d been obvious in the bursts of giggles aimed their way, in the older woman dressed in a wide-brimmed hat who’d shot him a wink. People had known and hadn’t cared or if they had, it was the kind of caring one aimed at a stranger with whom you were sharing a momentary secret.
That same buzzing feeling had lasted through dinner, through more champagne and the return of the train to its station and the long commuter rail ride south. This time, Akiva had sat beside him, body close, arms brushing, and if anyone around them had taken their picture, Eitan wouldn’t know, because he’d been too busy memorizing the exact pattern of Akiva’s freckles and the way his mouth would tip up ever so slightly when he caught Eitan doing that.
Back at his apartment, Eitan reached for Akiva’s hand as they went through his front door, held it again as he did up his locks. “Do you want—” And he was going to offer a drink or more dessert or tea or whatever Akiva wanted, including the apartment itself, when Akiva leaned down and cut him off with a kiss.
“Do you think we’d both fit in your bed?” Akiva asked.
Eitan would sleep sideways and possibly upside down to ensure they did. “Come and find out.”
The next morning, Eitan was woken by a series of Instagram alerts—a handful from the community center, more from the park, and a few taken clandestinely on the train—and two text messages that were opposite in tone. One was from the Cosmos general manager, telling him that, based on his medical reports, they were expecting him to join them in DC for the team’s next road trip, so he needed to get himself back into a condition to play. The other was from Gabe and was just the letters WTF, along with a set of voice notes that Eitan wasn’t going to listen to. The yelling might wake Akiva up.
Eitan dropped his phone back on his nightstand. Next to him, Akiva’s face was slack with sleep. He was a stomach sleeper, hand under Eitan’s spare pillow, feet poking their way out from the comforter. No matter what happens, I’ll know that. A strange morning thought: that Eitan’s time in New York was coming to an end, that he was going to offer his baseball services elsewhere to whoever gave him the best contract. That he’d take with him a tiny pockmark of a scar on his ankle, and an understanding of the confusing tangle of the subway map, and possibly an understanding of this tangled feeling he’d had for so long that was finally coming undone.
He kissed Akiva behind the rim of his ear where his glasses had left an apparently permanent indent. Another thing Eitan now knew. Akiva made a noise, a pleased grunt, so Eitan kissed him again.
“It’s early,” Akiva said.
It was early, the morning light grayish outside Eitan’s window. “Sorry. Do you want me to let you sleep?” Even if that meant leaving the magnetic pull of the bed.
Akiva didn’t answer in words. He rolled, wrapped an arm around Eitan’s waist, and encouraged him back down. Eitan went. Settled against Akiva, fingers in the spaces between his ribs. Thought, not for the first time, about those players in a bar in Arizona who’d given Akiva a hard time. How they’d withered when Eitan told them to cut it out. How of all of them, only one made it to the big leagues, with a career short enough that Eitan hadn’t even gotten the opportunity to homer off him.
Maybe they were somewhere on a Friday morning, rushing through their too-hot coffee or grousing at their kids to go to school. Maybe they were happy with their small portion of the universe. Maybe it’d make them angry to know he was happy too, here with Akiva. Three words sat in Eitan’s mouth. It was too soon to say them, too soon to even think them. For once, Eitan held his tongue.
“You want breakfast?” he asked instead, sometime later, when Akiva’s breathing was just uneven enough to indicate he was waking up.
Akiva sat up, stretched. He slept in his underwear, and the elastic drooped slightly at the taper of his waist. Eitan slid his hand below it, onto the rise of his ass, because he wanted to, because he could. Because Akiva smiled when he did and leaned down and kissed him, and his breath was stuffy with sleep and it was Shabbat tonight and Eitan had to be back in baseball shape soon and in DC soon after that, a city he normally bore no real resentment toward and now wanted to fall into its various rivers. Still, there was no avoiding it.
“The Cosmos sent me a train ticket. I’m supposed to join them Sunday.”
“You’re not flying?” Akiva asked.
“They said they’d charter something if I wanted. Turns out I don’t really like flying alone.”
Akiva smiled at that. “Rough life.”
