Page 22 of Breakout Year

Eitan

Saturday. A night game. Eitan watched the summer sky overhead. Three stars would make Shabbos officially over. All he got was a slightly dimming blue. They were playing in less than an hour. He shouldn’t be derailed by the crowd already filling the stadium.

“Hey, Williams, is your brain all”—Eitan rocked his head in a way he hoped conveyed scrambled —“too?”

And got a wrinkle of a frown in response. “You good?”

“I thought I was used to everything, you know? This all feels so much bigger than it did in Cleveland.”

Williams nodded. “Your friend coming to the game or something?” What he’d called Akiva a few times. Friend , with a slight question mark at the end. But he asked, and he was standing next to Eitan on the field, and that was what mattered.

“No, he’s not here.” Eitan aimed for nonchalant, ended up somewhere closer to brittle. “I did something that I probably shouldn’t have. Nothing serious. I mean, it might be serious. Could you just tranquilize me until the game’s over?”

“Sure,” Williams said. “It’ll be…” He looked at the crowd already exercising its lung capacity. “It might not be fine, but it’ll be all right.”

Eitan’s heart ticked down a beat. All right he could work with. He sucked in a breath. “Thanks, bro. Guess we’re gonna find out, one way or another.”

Each time Eitan stepped out on the field, he was greeted by a hail of New York opinions about his, well, everything.

A few fans waved rainbow signs—maybe for him, maybe just for the general idea—but he waved back anyway.

Still, most of the syllables aimed at him were harsher than they were a week or two ago, though the core messaging remained the same: win and keep winning .

So Eitan was antsy at third base, antsy during his at-bats, antsy enough that Bishop, their first baseman, threatened to sit on him in the dugout.

After, Bishop turned pale red. Eitan waited for the accompanying flinch.

But none came, Bishop holding himself still like he was trying not to react.

When he didn’t, Eitan grabbed two cups of water, handed one to Bishop, who took a gulp, then spit a stream onto the dugout floor.

And he didn’t move away when Eitan did the same as if that was the end of it.

After the game in which he’d gotten two hits in three at-bats and worked a walk off a difficult pitcher—and the Cosmos had still lost—Eitan raced back to his stall. Grappled for his phone. The little text notification banner sat on the screen. He swiped it with his thumb, once, twice.

Akiva: This sounds like it’d be easier to explain in person.

Having some sense of chill would mean not responding immediately. Eitan responded immediately.

Eitan: I can come to you

The GPS predicted a forty-minute drive to Akiva’s house. Eitan wished it were either longer or shorter: longer because he didn’t know when he’d see Akiva again and shorter so that he was there already.

Finally, he arrived, pulling his SUV onto the little strip of concrete masquerading as a driveway behind an older model hybrid that must have been Akiva’s car.

The house was a standalone, on a street of them, sitting all of twenty feet from its nearest neighbor, with an exterior flood lamp that activated as he parked, casting everything in a yellowish glow.

This late at night, the street was quiet, leafy and breathing the way that Manhattan usually wasn’t.

Eitan rolled down his windows, like he could bring a carload of suburban-ish air back to the city.

Akiva must have been watching for him, because he came out as soon as Eitan cut the engine.

He was wearing a hoodie—Eitan’s hoodie—and Eitan couldn’t see his own name on the sweatshirt, but he knew it was there, resting across the span of Akiva’s back.

That swoop of…something he felt was not conducive to an amicable parting of ways .

Akiva got in the passenger side. The halogen light picked out the threads of his eyelashes.

I’m so glad to see you, Eitan bit back. He knew when he was being too much even for him, so he settled for a simple “Hey,” that came out a little thready.

“Tough loss,” Akiva said.

“You watched?” You watched me?

Akiva’s mouth ticked up. “The parts that happened after Shabbat was over. But it was nice to watch anyway.”

“You must really miss baseball if seeing us lose is a good time.”

“Next time, I’ll be sure only to tune in for a win.”

“You want to come tomorrow?” Overeager, but Eitan liked the idea of looking up in the stands and finding Akiva there, probably more than he should have.

“I would,” Akiva said, the clear beginning of a no , and Eitan should just interrupt, should tell him never mind, no big deal, though he couldn’t get any of those things out before Akiva continued, “but I have to work.”

Right. Even if what he was doing for Eitan was technically work. “No worries.”

“I’ll watch the replay if I can find a feed.”

“A feed?”

“I don’t own a TV.”

“Oh, you’re one of those,” Eitan teased. He wondered what Akiva’s house was like. If there was something about it he didn’t want Eitan to see or if he simply didn’t invite people he had only business relationships with inside.

“It’s not like that,” Akiva said. “It was cheaper not to get cable and local games are blacked out on various streaming apps.”

“Cable isn’t that—” Expensive . Except Eitan’s mother taught him to never count someone else’s money unless they needed it and you had some to give. “Interesting,” he finished.

Akiva snorted like he knew exactly what Eitan was about to say. “Work doesn’t allow me much time to watch TV anyway.”

If you didn’t have to work… A possibility Eitan couldn’t let himself even think. Or its simpler corollary: How much do you need?

He didn’t offer; Akiva would obviously say no. He wanted to offer, just in case he’d say yes. He adjusted his hands on the wheel again. Didn’t let any of that spill out. “Let me know if you change your mind about the tickets.”

Akiva sat for a moment, possibly waiting for Eitan to clarify why he’d driven all the way to the impossibly distant land of New Jersey to see him. “So are you gonna tell me what those texts were about?” Akiva asked when Eitan hadn’t said anything.

“Yeah.” Even if all Eitan wanted was another few minutes sitting here with Akiva before Akiva removed himself from Eitan’s car and possibly his life.

“Oh, I got you this.” Eitan reached and dug in his backseat for the package he’d bought that morning.

He hadn’t had time to get wrapping paper, and he probably should have.

Newsprint left smudges on Akiva’s hands as he took the parcel from him.

Eitan couldn’t quite seem to look him in the eye, gaze caught on the slightly grayed tips of his fingers.

If they held hands, Eitan’s fingers would look the same.

Williams’s You got it bad replayed in his head for whatever reason.

“You don’t have to open this now if you don’t want,” Eitan said.

Akiva smiled. “Can I?” Eitan motioned that he should go ahead, and Akiva peeled back the tape, careful, like it wasn’t just a newspaper Eitan picked up at a bodega in a frantic rush that morning.

“Eitan…” Akiva stared down at the package as if he was trying to find words.

“When I first got called up, everyone called me Ethan .” Something Eitan meant as a funny ha ha thing but came out different. “You say my name how people back home do.”

Akiva blinked at him once, his cheeks coloring. “You didn’t need to do this.” Even if he was tilting the package toward Eitan to display the gift—a carved Havdalah candle, tall and elaborately braided, with white and green curlicues cut in the sides. “It’s beautiful.”

“It seemed like something you’d like.”

“I do.” Akiva brought it to his nose. “It smells like Havdalah.”

The box had said it smelled like cloves and cinnamon and orange peel—reminders of the sweetness of Shabbat as you transitioned back to the rest of the week.

Akiva sniffed the candle again. His eyes closed momentarily, the pale tips of his eyelashes aglow.

“I don’t know what you think you did to necessitate this but thank you. ”

Eitan couldn’t put it off any longer. “Did you watch that interview I did?”

Akiva nodded.

“The ‘reconnecting with old friends’ thing. Someone might figure out who you are— were . That you used to play ball. I mean, you sort of fell off the face of the Earth, so I got the sense you didn’t want people to put that together.”

Whatever reaction he’d been expecting, it wasn’t Akiva’s slight laugh. “Is that what this is about? I thought you might have told people about me writing Sue’s books.”

“No, I wouldn’t.” Eitan resumed gripping the wheel. His hands weren’t tense, exactly, but his knuckles pulled white. “You said not to.”

“Hey.” Akiva reached for his hand, fingers dragging across Eitan’s. A nothing kind of touch, except for how it wasn’t.

Eitan had thought his hands were desensitized from wearing batting gloves, from the callus-generating task of fielding baseballs for a living.

Maybe no one had touched him right in that spot, in just that way, before.

Certainly not in a way he could remember, and he was certain he’d remember that. He breathed purposefully.

Akiva withdrew his hand. “I left baseball because I wanted to quit?—”

Eitan cut him off. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” You don’t owe me, or anyone, that .

Akiva smiled a little sadly. Lifted his hand like he might touch Eitan again, before resting it on his own knee.

“Things were hard in the minors: they stuck me in this small town where I was the only Jewish person anyone had ever met. No synagogue, no kosher food in the clubhouse if I didn’t bring it, no nothing.

I had to pitch on Saturdays. That was hard.

Then I got to the Fall League, and you were there. ”

“Shit.” Eitan scrubbed his hands over his face. “Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”