Page 15 of Breakout Year

Eitan

Big Day…Out? Rivkin Tells Fans Scram in Back-Room Door Slam

After they’d finished, Eitan paid their check and the bar tab, then navigated them into the still-raining streets. “My apartment’s nearby if you want a ride home.”

“The train is probably faster.”

“I don’t mind.”

Akiva shook his head definitively. It was possible he wanted to be done with this date and was humoring Eitan.

Eitan resolved to change the subject. “How does anyone understand the subway with all the colors and numbers and letters, anyway? I keep worrying I’m gonna end up on an express train when I meant to take the local or?—”

“Kiss me,” Akiva whispered. He nodded across the street. “I think Dave’s over there.”

Eitan craned his neck to look. “So he is. Are you sure?”

“Just on the cheek.”

Eitan nodded, slow. He tightened his hand minutely in Akiva’s shirt.

Akiva was much taller than anyone he’d ever kissed, his body leanly muscled.

If Eitan kissed him on the cheek, he’d feel his stubble.

He’d smell the faint scent of his deodorant.

His lips might accidentally brush Akiva’s mouth.

He laid a kiss at Akiva’s jaw that was scarcely more than how he might kiss someone in greeting.

I am kissing a man . A bare nothing of a kiss. Still, it counted. It had to count.

He drew back just far enough that Akiva’s stubble rasped against Eitan’s neck. This close, he wondered if Akiva could feel the flutter of his pulse in his throat. “Can I see you again?” Eitan asked.

Akiva studied him for a moment.

Eitan braced himself for a no . If he needed to go back to the agency for another fake boyfriend, he always could. But do you want to? Still, he decided that begging would be beneath him, especially if it didn’t work.

“A few more dates might be okay,” Akiva said, finally.

Eitan couldn’t stop himself from grinning. “Let me walk you to the train.”

He did, to an entire half a block away, umbrella raised above them both. He paused there in case Akiva was going to do something rash like kiss him goodbye.

“Dave’s still down the block,” Akiva said.

“Right.” Because Eitan needed to remember what this was all about. “Let me know when’s good for you.” And he waited until after Akiva had safely descended into the subway, bag of leftovers bouncing against his thigh, before raising his arms in victory.

Later, after Eitan was back at his apartment—after he’d brushed his teeth and splashed his face with water and spent five minutes not being soothed by his meditation app and thirty minutes rolling around in the sheets his laundry service over-bleached, after he’d read through Akiva’s texts looking for something he couldn’t quite put into words—he put in his headphones and opened the app where he’d downloaded Sue’s book.

Akiva’s book. And then he began to read.

He kept listening on his drive to the ballpark the next day, as he was milling around the clubhouse. As he said ’sup to Botts, and to Vientos, and to Bishop, and a handful of other guys.

To Williams when he came in and stood over where Eitan was sitting in a padded rolling chair beside his stall.

Eitan removed his earbuds reluctantly. “Morning.”

“How’re you doing?”

Mostly, Eitan wanted to know what was gonna happen next in his book, curiosity a sharp pull in his belly. “I’m good?”

Williams held out his phone. “There are pictures of you online. Not sure if you knew.”

There were—on Insta, on a newspaper website so overloaded with popups that it nearly crashed Williams’s phone browser.

Images presented in reverse chronological order: Eitan and Akiva, saying goodbye on the sidewalk, though from a distance, it just looked like they were hugging.

Eitan and Akiva at dinner—those must have been from the waiter in the back room, and Eitan mentally scratched off giving that restaurant a good Yelp review.

Eitan and Akiva disappearing into said back room, his hand around Akiva’s wrist. Even fifteen hours later, Eitan could feel the reassuring beat of Akiva’s pulse, the warmth of his reluctant smile.

The headlines were curious but inconclusive like Cosmos Third Baseman’s Day Off itself was news .

The kind of thing that never happened in Cleveland.

The only pictures of him that got posted were the ones Kiley shared to her Instagram with lots of heart emojis.

Now, Eitan was almost tempted to find Dave just to yell at him.

Akiva and I were on a date! Print that so we can all move on!

But no, they were in pictures chaste enough that he hadn’t even gotten an inquiring text from his family group chat.

“Yep,” Eitan said, “those sure are pictures.” He handed Williams back his phone.

“Some guys… it might bother them.” Though Williams said it like it might bother him for whatever reason.

Mostly, it bothers me that I can’t date for real without this happening.

“Guess I’m just an attention hog,” Eitan said.

A deflection, but if Williams wasn’t going to be cool about Eitan dating—even fake dating—a man, Eitan would simply find another friend.

The city was big. Eitan was friendly. He was sure the ache in his chest would go away any second.

Williams rolled his eyes. “You sure your friend wants that attention too?”

Yes, because I’m paying him to want that attention.

What Eitan could absolutely not say. He was just happy that was Williams’s objection—to Eitan feeding Akiva to the paparazzi, not that Akiva existed at all.

Still, he had to make sure. “Guess I’ll find out, ’cause I’m seeing him again.

” He held up his phone illustratively. He should send Akiva a good morning text.

A bodega cat picture. Akiva hadn’t been unfriendly, really, but he hadn’t been friendly either—save the occasional laugh that slipped through his reserve.

Save the kiss Eitan could somehow still feel.

Eitan didn’t usually have trouble winning people over, save the New York press who were no prize.

Akiva was…different. And Eitan would examine the scope of that difference just as soon as he’d texted Akiva good morning. The worst that could happen would be Akiva charging him for the time it took to answer. That would be fine. That would be in keeping of the spirit of their arrangement, even.

Williams put up his hands defensively. “All right, man, just asking.” Then he walked off and Eitan waited until he was at a safe distance to put his headphones back in his ears.

A heist. A chase through a train, a heroine who was a governess and also a safecracker.

And oh, she and her nemesis-slash-love interest—the insurance agent who was pursuing her—were in a private train car now.

Breathless, cornered, she grabbed his shirtfront.

They struggled, briefly, hotly, until he spun her around.

“If we had more time, I’d cut this chemise off you,” he growled.

Eitan had no real idea what a chemise was, but he imagined it anyway, the careful draw of a blade against stitching, a pop-pop-pop of the fragile threads holding in their inhibitions.

The scene continued. Eitan wasn’t entirely sure he should be listening to this in a clubhouse, even if guys sometimes showed each other porn.

Heat licked up his neck. Breathe . He shifted.

These clubhouse chairs were deep. He was wearing exercise tights with shorts on top of them.

There was no gracious way to get half-hard in a dressing room.

It wasn’t about the words themselves. Akiva wrote this .

His mind came back to it again and again.

Akiva wrote this. As if Akiva had reached across the vast expanse separating them—the span of seven years and millions of dollars—and tapped him on the shoulder. Whispered in his ear.

He shifted in his seat again. Someone might think the worst. Most guys hadn’t said anything else about the press conference, something he should have been grateful for—except the baseball version of being cool about something was to chirp it aggressively, not to ignore it completely.

He was already here on borrowed time. He was doing his job—playing well.

Maybe that bought him some latitude. It was one thing for guys to let stuff go; a total other thing if he was in the clubhouse with a semi.

It’s not about you , he practiced saying.

For the first time in his life, he wished he were wearing a cup.

He went to withdraw his earbuds from his ears, then stopped. Just one more chapter, he told himself. He really wanted to see where this was going.