Page 13 of Breakout Year

“It must be if you’re smiling like that,” Eitan said, and so Akiva scowled on general principle. For whatever reason, Eitan was grinning at him again.

A few minutes later, Sue’s talk ended in a burst of applause. Attendees pushed forward, all intent on getting her signature stamped on their books. Eitan rose and stretched, arms pressing against the sleeves of his T-shirt, testing the limits of their seams. Akiva suppressed the urge to shoo him.

“I didn’t know there was so much to all this.” Eitan waved a hand, like he was indicating Sue or possibly books in general. “I learned some stuff.”

“Some stuff? ” Akiva tried, and failed, to keep the tone of slight outrage out of his voice.

“Yep, stuff. Like that there’s something about this book that makes you want me not to read it.

” Eitan held up his phone, which displayed an order confirmation for the audio version of the book.

“Looking forward to reading about…” He recited the promotional text about a garment worker who must choose between the charming new-money scion of a local family and the dashing, masked union agitator who’d come to organize her factory.

(Neither of whom had dark hair and olive skin and eyes that laughed even when he wasn’t smiling.

And both of whom might just be the same person, but, ahem, spoilers.)

Akiva was well acquainted with embarrassment: this particular wash had a strange tinge of pride. He absolutely didn’t want Eitan to read that particular book, but if he did, he wanted him to love it. Which he probably wouldn’t.

Also there was fucking, and Eitan might read that too. Akiva didn’t think he could shock someone who’d spent most of his life in baseball clubhouses, but there was proportionately a lot of fucking. A lot .

He went a swift red.

Eitan laughed. “That good, huh?”

“You don’t need to read it.”

“I know.” Eitan tapped him on the arm. A smile tugged at the edge of Eitan’s lips.

Turned out, there was a certain vestigial power to being smiled at by a man you’d had a crush on in your early twenties, even years later. Akiva would not do anything about it. At most, he’d put it in a book.

“You doing anything after this?” Eitan asked. “We could grab dinner.”

“You want to do—” Akiva would not say our fake date out loud, not near Sue, who had an ear for this sort of thing . “You want to do this now?”

Eitan grinned. “My treat.” It was unclear if he meant he was paying for dinner—Akiva’s stomach reminded him that he should eat something—or if this fell under the purview of the document Akiva’s brain served up as The Contract .

Nothing he could clarify in a room full of readers, many of whom were surrounding Sue in such a way that Akiva should intervene.

Being six foot four wasn’t great for a lot of stuff—pants, doorways, fooling around in backseats—but it was occasionally helpful in establishing physical boundaries between Sue and her admirers.

Eitan eyed the commotion. “Your boss is kinda getting mobbed.”

“Yeah, I should take care of that. If you want to head out, you don’t have to wait.”

“Stop trying to get rid of me, Spencer.” And he sent Akiva off with a baseball-ish tap to his hip.

Up front, Akiva glared the crowd into submission and took his customary place next to Sue’s elbow. She had an autograph stamp, an ink pad. She chatted and stamped, stamped and chatted. “Was that your friend who was sitting with you?” she stage-whispered to Akiva between signatures.

There was a certain futility in lying to someone who wrote mystery books. “Yes.”

She threw another look toward Eitan, who was leaning against a chair. Handsomely , if a lean could be classified as handsome, which Akiva wasn’t certain of. “Now I understand,” she said.

“It’s not what you’re thinking.”

“I didn’t say it was anything.” She took a book, stamped it, smiled for a picture with a reader. “Don’t let me keep you from your plans.”

“I can stay,” Akiva said once the fan had left.

“I survived before you just fine.” Even if she’d been wearing her gloves more and doing her PT less. “Actually, you’re fired until tomorrow morning. Go have fun.”

Fun . If Sue knew about the whole arrangement, she’d howl or climb on a step stool so she could pat Akiva consolingly on the shoulder. Which was why he had no intention of telling her.

He picked his way through the crowd to where Eitan was standing, thumbs hooked casually in his belt loops.

“You want to get out of here?” Akiva said.

“Thought you’d never ask, Spencer.”

“It’s Akiva now.”

“Even better.” Eitan smiled. His teeth were very white, though one along the bottom was just a touch crooked. Not real, not real, not real . Reset. Akiva mentally clocked in like he was punching an old-fashioned timecard. Not real .

“There’s an Italian place around the corner if you want to head over,” Akiva said.

“Lead on.”

On their way out to the street, they paused by the door while Eitan retrieved an umbrella from the pile of them, a large black domed one of the kind that Akiva associated with funerals or royalty.

He also tried to hold it over Akiva as they left, and Akiva had to duck to keep from getting whacked by its awning.

“I don’t think that’s going to work logistically,” Akiva said as they walked out into the rain. The umbrella sent his ballcap askew. Before he had the chance to adjust it, Eitan leaned in and wrapped one arm around him in a half-hug that Akiva momentarily mistook for a delayed greeting.

“See over there”—Eitan nodded toward where someone was standing down the street—“that’s Dave, my biggest fan.

Smile for the camera.” His breath was warm on Akiva’s neck, and his hand was still on Akiva’s shirt, and Akiva just needed to survive the next few hours, something that would be a lot easier if Eitan stepped back.

Instead, Eitan insisted on adjusting the brim of Akiva’s ballcap. “No kippah?” Eitan asked.

“Hat is easier sometimes.”

“Well, you look great.”

“I don’t think Dave can hear you from across the street.”

Eitan glanced over. “I don’t think Dave looks that great, but don’t tell him I said so.” He yielded the umbrella to Akiva, even if Akiva had a ballcap on and Eitan’s hair was already starting to gather rain.

“You’re getting wet,” Akiva said.

Something in the way he’d said it made Eitan laugh. “I’m not gonna melt.” But he ducked under the umbrella, close enough their shoulders brushed.

Ballplayers pretty much came in two smell groups: excessive cologne or chewing tobacco juice.

Eitan somehow belonged to neither—he smelled like shampoo and a little like mint.

Akiva ran his tongue over his own teeth to check them.

He’d brushed them before he’d gotten on the train because that was the polite thing to do before one went out.

He definitely wasn’t checking because he and Eitan were going to do more than smile at one another.

When they got to the restaurant, they got a wide-eyed expression from the hostess, then were swiftly seated at a table spread with a neat white tablecloth. Beneath it, Eitan’s sneaker brushed his before Akiva withdrew his foot.

“So,” Eitan said, once they’d ordered a beer for him and wine for Akiva, “you spend a lot of time in bookstores?”

“Sue does, so I do too.” Akiva took a deep sip of his wine. “How about you?”

“I just needed somewhere my agent—and my parents—wouldn’t yell at me for going that wasn’t my apartment. It still has new apartment smell.” Eitan wrinkled his nose. “You know, fresh paint, new carpet, that kind of thing.”

“Sure,” Akiva said. “I mean, my house mostly smells like it’s been raining for three days.”

“It has been raining for three days.”

“It smells like that all the time.”

“See, that sounds nice.”

“Mostly just damp.”

Eitan laughed, then traced his hand across the tablecloth. He had ballplayer hands, wide palms, thick fingers, calluses obvious at this distance, not that Akiva was looking. He dragged his gaze to his menu just to be safe.

“Is Sue the only author you’ve worked for?” Eitan asked.

“She’s the only one right now.” And Akiva listed off a few others, including an author he did some basic transcription for back in the day who was almost as famous as Sue.

“Really? That’s so cool.” Eitan’s grin was open, unguarded. How he was going to survive the vocal Cosmos fanbase, Akiva didn’t know.

“What do you do for them?” Eitan asked.

It occurred to Akiva that he should probably keep up his side of the conversation, though he didn’t get paid more to be interesting. His life wasn’t that interesting anyway. “Emails, research, social media. Whatever needs to be done.”

“You ever do any writing?”

“This feels like a press conference,” Akiva said.

“Well, not one of mine, because you’re doing a good job. Including avoiding a question you don’t want to answer.”

And Akiva couldn’t help it—he laughed.

Eitan’s eyebrows rose. “I take it you watched that one?”

“I needed to know what I was getting myself into.” Even if Akiva wasn’t entirely sure of what that was.

“How’d I look?” Eitan asked.

Overwhelmed. Handsome . “Like you’d had a long day.”

“I had.” Eitan didn’t add anything more than that. He just studied his menu and fiddled with the shining ring he was wearing on the index finger of his left hand. “Oh shit, can you eat stuff here? I should’ve asked.”

“Eitan,” Akiva said gently, “I suggested it.”

“Right, right.” Eitan folded the menu, twisted the ring again, scanned the room.

Akiva tapped the ring, the metal band warm from Eitan’s body heat. “You get married and not tell me about it?”

That got a laugh out of Eitan, lighter than before. “No, the team gave me this. It’s supposed to monitor my heart rate.” He looked up at Akiva, eyes bright. “Which is, uh, going pretty good right now.”

“You don’t have to be nervous. This isn’t a real date.”

“Who said anything about nerves?” Another smile, followed by, “Too much?”