Page 95 of Breakout Year
Eitan shucked his clothing with the ceremony of a pro ballplayer—so none at all. He got in Akiva’s shower but didn’t pull the curtain completely shut. Groaned under the spray, a noise that lengthened until it was halfway to a sob.
Not knowing what else to do, Akiva shed his own clothes, folded them neatly, and set them on the closed lid of the toilet. His shower was snug, but they both fit. Eitan was standing under the showerhead a little numbly. After a moment, Akiva took him in his arms, Eitan’s back to his chest, the damp ends of Eitan’s hair brushing his mouth.
Eitan’s shoulders were tense. His teeth chattered occasionally as if he couldn’t get warm. His eyes were shut, and it was possible he was crying. Akiva kissed his hair, the side of his neck. Kissed him, held him, waited until Eitan drew in a few great shudders of breath.
“I’m quitting baseball,” Eitan said, finally. “I decided on the plane.”
“Hey.” Akiva tightened his arms, dropped his chin to the top of Eitan’s head. This feeling he knew—the same one he’d had seven years ago, when he’d made it all the way home before he’d collapsed into his childhood bed in a house where someone else now lived. “Hey.”
“A team asked me if I was still gonna be—” Eitan hiccupped. “If they didn’t want to sign me, they didn’t have to bring you into it.”
“It’s only one team.”
“Yeah, well, they were the only ones who bothered to show up.”
Akiva couldn’t lie to him. Couldn’t tell him there would be another team, another chance, without some guarantee. Sometimes you closed doors, and sometimes you had them closed for you. He held Eitan tighter, putting his strength into it, and let Eitan lean against him as the shower sputtered warm water over both of them.
“I shouldn’t complain,” Eitan said, after a few minutes. “I have enough money—more than enough, really. More than I ever thought was possible. I’ll be fine.” His voice cracked a little on fine.
“You don’t have to decide now.” Akiva kissed his neck, his ear, any place that might ground him. “You shouldn’t decide now. Take it from someone who’s been there.”
Eitan’s hair brushed Akiva’s lips as he settled back into Akiva’s arms. They stood like that for a while longer until Akiva’s water heater decided enough was enough. Akiva turned off the water, grabbed two towels, handed one to Eitan, who accepted it and then Akiva’s offer of clothing and his insistence on a cup of tea.
“This is the brand I like.” Eitan cupped the mug between his hands and blew steam off its surface as they sat close on the couch.
Akiva nodded. “Yeah.”
“I didn’t think you drank tea.”
“I don’t. I like the way it smells.” No, that wasn’t the whole truth. “It reminded me of you.”
Eitan put his mug down on the coffee table. His hands were warm as they covered Akiva’s. “I missed you. I don’t know how to say this other than to say it. I made the wrong decision when I picked baseball over you. I’m making the wrong decision if I pick anything over you.”
“You shouldn’t—” Akiva started.
But Eitan looked more like himself: bright-eyed, determined. “I had five hours to think about this on the plane. Four if you don’t count the hour we spent in turbulence. I want to be with you. I want that more than I want anything else. Whatever I need to do to make that happen, that’s what I’ll do.”
Now it was Akiva’s turn to shake his head, to insist. “You get both. You should get both.” Someone should. Someone should come out of this intact. He was suddenly, incandescently angry at whatever team did that to Eitan. At Goodwin for slamming into his ankle. At every camera flash and rude comment online. At those guys at the bar in Arizona. At everyone who’d picked on them or denied them or spat on them, just because they could. “None of this is fair. None of this is right.”
Eitan closed his hands tighter over Akiva’s. Kissed him. “Someone has to be the optimist.”
“Wanting to punch the entire baseball establishment in the face on your behalf doesn’t make me an optimist.”
Eitan tilted his head back. Laughed, big-throated. “I’m a bad influence, clearly.”
And so Akiva had to gather him up, to kiss him. To hold him close as the wind outside howled its discontent.
40
Eitan
Eitan woke up slowly. Somehow, he was in Akiva’s bed. Somehow, it was Friday. He’d missed about a million messages from Gabe but that didn’t matter now. It was late for Eitan—almost nine a.m.—and Akiva was understandably still asleep. Eitan could sneak out and make coffee, could probably secure breakfast in bed, an apology for showing up on Akiva’s doorstep like a castaway.
Both would involve moving, and he didn’t want to do that. Akiva’s chest rose and fell as he breathed. If Eitan focused on that, the world was simple: he had been a ballplayer; he wasn’t any longer. The rest probably involved paperwork, but right now, Eitan was of the mind that paperwork, much like professional baseball, could burn.
The light from Akiva’s blinds—they were still bent—played across his freckles. The anemic heating made him cuddlier in the night. Eitan had fallen asleep next to him and woken up next to him and wanted nothing more than to do it all again that night, and the night after that, and the night after that. For once, he had very little to do, the future greeting him like a cliff’s edge. Maybe if he was smarter, he’d be more afraid. For now, he stroked a hand up Akiva’s ribs. For all his consternation at Eitan not taking care of himself, he clearly needed someone to do the same. That seemed like as good a calling as any.
Akiva’s breathing went uneven. He blinked his eyes open. For someone with short hair, it could go in a lot of directions. Eitan wondered if there was a word that encompassed liking someone’s morning breath and cowlicks and utter stubbornness about living in a place with bent blinds and found that there was, but maybe not one he should say before Akiva was fully awake.
