Page 25 of Breakout Year

“I haven’t been doing much of that lately.” Except for the part Akiva was doing right at that moment—but if he didn’t acknowledge the room was watching them, perhaps that didn’t count.

“So Akiva the writer, then?”

“I don’t know if I qualify as that either.”

Eitan actually frowned at that. “It doesn’t really matter what the front of the book says if you wrote it.”

“If you only played rec league ball, you wouldn’t call yourself a ballplayer.”

“People can be things without being labeled as them.” Eitan sounded adamant, different from his normal enthusiasm. “And, you know, if you wanted to play some rec league ball…”

But whatever Eitan was about to say was interrupted by their waiter coming over.

Eitan listened intently to the waiter’s recommendations, scanning to where he tapped the menu for emphasis. “You go ahead,” he said to Akiva.

Habit told Akiva to order the least expensive dish. Even after telling Eitan about his debt, doing that felt like too much of an admission—that he’d struggled. That he was still struggling. So he selected a chicken dish that was the second least expensive.

The ploy didn’t work, because Eitan leaned farther into his space and stage whispered, “Who orders chicken at a steakhouse?” while Akiva fondly rolled his eyes.

“He wants a steak,” Eitan said to the waiter. “He’s just too shy to ask for it.”

Akiva attempted to discourage him by squeezing his knee.

Eitan’s hand covered his, the work-roughened surface of his palm settling over the back of Akiva’s hand.

He had wide hands, broader than Akiva’s, fingers that, even resting, felt like they were in motion.

Akiva should tell him that no one could see them under the table.

That this was unnecessary. Instead, he took another sip of ice water as Eitan ordered the prime rib for two with all the attendant sides, along with the chicken.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Akiva said after the waiter confirmed their meal and departed.

For that, he got another contraction of Eitan’s hand atop his.

“You’re good at this dating thing. Very convincing.

Oh!” Eitan pulled his phone from his pocket, scrolled through something.

“I was listening to your book earlier”—and he dropped his volume at Akiva’s hissed shh , but only slightly—“and I have a question.”

He looked up from his phone, eyes bright.

Someday, he’d have creases by his eyes that didn’t quite fade, and Akiva might not get to see them.

Tampa or wherever . Eitan could end up in one of twenty-something other cities next year, barring Cleveland.

This was just temporary: any of it, all of it.

Except for the shine of Eitan’s smile and the pulse in Akiva’s wrist ticking like a clock.

Eitan hadn’t said anything, hadn’t followed his I have a question with an actual question. “You’re not going to ask?” Akiva said.

“I’m trying this thing where I wait to speak.

The team had some, uh, notes in general about my relationship with the media.

” Eitan pressed his lips together as if in demonstration, and he had a wide mouth, as generous as the rest of him, and Akiva thought he’d left lusting for unattainable men in the Arizona desert, but it turned out unattainability was much worse when it was sitting right next to you and paying for you to kiss it goodnight.

“They didn’t like hearing the truth?” Akiva washed that thought out of his mouth with a sip of water. “Eitan, whatever it is, ask.”

“In the book, you named a character Austin .”

Akiva inched away from him. Surely, distance would bring some kind of sanity. All it did was leave his side cold. “What about him?” he prompted, even though he could guess why Eitan wanted to know.

Eitan used Akiva’s new position to spread his legs under the table.

His kneecap rubbed against Akiva’s and Akiva couldn’t bring himself to object.

“Austin is just the worst .” Eitan punctuated this claim with a waved breadstick.

“Like there’s the villain, of course, but then there’s Austin at the boarding house table chewing with his mouth open. He doesn’t even like art .”

Akiva laughed. Because of course, the true antagonist in a book about art theft was someone who thought that pointillism was just a bunch of dots , and that no one made nice paintings of bowls of fruit anymore. “Yeah, everyone hates Austin.”

Eitan cast a glance toward the rest of the dining area.

They’d been noticed—people were looking and not bothering to pretend they weren’t.

New Yorkers might gawk through taking clandestine photos, but a room full of other Jews was mostly preoccupied with wondering loudly if Eitan was related through their mother’s cousin’s side.

Eitan cupped his hand over his mouth, leaned into Akiva, breath warm on Akiva’s ear. “Is Austin named for…you know?”

The thing of it was, Austin had been named for exactly who Eitan thought he was named for: one of the guys at the bar who Eitan told to leave Akiva the fuck alone.

Naming a character for him—a boorish little mouth breather, no less—would be what Akiva hoped a therapist might call closure, if he’d been able to afford therapy.

Akiva could deny it. Austin was a common enough name. “Yeah, that’s who he’s named for.”

Eitan tilted his head back and laughed with his whole body, loud enough that any diners who hadn’t noticed them before surely did now. “That’s so mean. I love it.”

His smile took on a teasing edge, and Akiva wanted to press his teeth to the corner of Eitan’s mouth. He drove his thumb into the side of his thigh instead.

“Is that why you write?” Eitan asked. “To name characters after terrible men?”

“It’s not like there’s a shortage of them.”

“If you named a character after me, what would he be like?”

Infuriating. Perfect. Out of reach . “Talkative.”

That got another of Eitan’s laughs, practically an announcement that they were there together and having a good time. Except that was exactly what they were doing. “Should’ve seen that one coming,” Eitan said at the same moment Akiva whispered, “Kiss me.”

Eitan blinked. “What?”

“We’re here. People are looking. That’s the whole point of this, right?

You wouldn’t want me to write you as a character who couldn’t take advantage of a situation?

” And it was possible Akiva had gone too far, because Eitan made a noise of disapproval at take advantage .

“Get your money’s worth, at least,” Akiva added.

“Right.” Eitan swallowed. “Good thinking.”

Akiva had long been of the opinion that the first few kisses of a relationship—not that this was one—should be done in private.

Noses bumped, teeth clashed, you never knew how chemistry was going to translate.

Sometimes people were lax about flossing.

Sometimes people viewed kissing as a thing to be rushed through and not a destination in and of itself.

Eitan’s eyes snapped to his. His hand found Akiva’s leg under the table again.

No one would see, but Akiva supposed it’d align their bodies the right way.

Verisimilitude and all that. He braced himself for a quick kiss, for the darting press of Eitan’s lips—for Eitan performing for an audience no less rapt than the one at Cosmos stadium.

The hand not on Akiva’s thigh slid to his jaw, angling his chin.

“I haven’t…” Eitan began, then shook his head, and Akiva was about to tell him not to self-censor when Eitan’s lips touched his.

Eitan kissed him long and closed-mouthed, lips firm, breath a soft fall on Akiva’s cheek.

Akiva was about to declare this a success, very realistic, entirely for the click of phone cameras, when Eitan made a noise somewhere between an approval and a groan, then slid his tongue past Akiva’s.

And for a single fluorescent minute, Akiva let himself be kissed.

I should stop this . It wasn’t fair to Eitan.

There was no fairness to be found in the brush of his nose or the way his mouth tasted like toothpaste and the whiskey from his drink—like something slowly aged—or the clench of Eitan’s hand on his thigh as if he was reluctant to let go.

This wasn’t fair, not to him or to Akiva, a lopsided sort of unfairness that Akiva thought he’d left behind seven years ago.

“Hey.” Akiva pulled back and rested his forehead against Eitan’s.

His cheeks were warm for reasons he’d like to chalk up to embarrassment—they really were being photographed—but he knew weren’t just attributable to that.

He pitched his voice low. Some things were for performance and some were to be whispered in the space between them, something so new and uncertain that Akiva wasn’t sure if it could even make it across that bare distance.

“Hey,” he said again, like that was the only word he knew.

Eitan’s eyes were intent on his. “Hey, yourself.” He was smiling, breath quick. “How was that?”

Good, good, good, say it was good , some part of Akiva advocated. Another more sensible part told him that he shouldn’t want like this, openly, or as openly as their arrangement would allow. He told that part to shut the fuck up. “I could ask you the same thing.”

Eitan’s grin broadened. “Like I just jumped off a high dive.”

“In a good way or—” Akiva didn’t have time to answer the question, not when Eitan closed the distance between them for a fraction of a second, then held off right as his lips were about to make contact with Akiva’s.

“In a good way,” Eitan confirmed, but he forced himself back.

Akiva sobered slightly. They were here. They were being watched. There was verisimilitude and there was exhibitionism. He was going to get an earful from Mark and Rachel and possibly Sue either way, if she figured out how not to call Instagram “Instant Graham.” “You don’t have to use tongue.”

Eitan laughed. He had one of those laughs Akiva could feel all over, like he couldn’t keep the joy out of his throat. “I guess instinct took over. I’ve never paid someone to fake date me before.”

Akiva could say something—that he hadn’t ever been paid to date anyone, even if date felt uncomfortably close to kiss . “You were very convincing,” he reassured Eitan.

Eitan scanned the room. “You think this is gonna be all over social media tomorrow?”

“If it’s not, we’ll just keep trying.”