Page 30 of Breakout Year

Eitan

I’m gay. What Eitan thought as he kissed Akiva again, feeling the breadth of his mouth, the strength in his shoulders.

He kissed Eitan with the same restraint he’d shown at restaurants when ordering the cheapest stuff off the menu: not like he wasn’t hungry but like he was concerned his appetite might scare Eitan off.

I’m gay . He stroked the lean outline of Akiva’s waist—he wanted to hold him, to buy him everything, starting with another hundred dinners at gaudy New York prices.

To see the bare expanse of his body laid out.

On a bed ideally. Right now, any available surface might do so long as they were together.

I’m gay . A revelation that seemed glaringly obvious in retrospect.

Maybe that was how revelations were, really.

He’d told Akiva he wasn’t certain he was gay, but as he tugged at the fabric bunched at Akiva’s waistband, desperate to see more, he didn’t know if he’d ever felt surer of anything.

“Can I take this off?” Eitan asked, not relinquishing Akiva’s shirt.

Akiva nodded. Ducked so Eitan could relieve him of his shirt.

Underneath, he had on his tzitzit, four strands dangling from the edges of an undershirt that looked like it was designed specifically for the purpose of affixing tzitzit to.

They hung a little absurdly now. Eitan resisted the urge to tug one teasingly.

“Do you want to take those off yourself or…” he asked.

“How do the guys you date usually handle this?”

“Usually I don’t wear them on dates.”

“Because you don’t like people seeing them, or because you didn’t think I’d see them?

” Eitan punctuated his question by running the pad of his thumb under the hem of Akiva’s shirt.

He had hair on his stomach, a line of it Eitan had glanced at a few times but now wanted urgently to see in full.

To trace with his tongue or his teeth. Was it like this, before?

No. Nothing like this cracked-open feeling like every half-fantasized thought was pouring into his bloodstream all at once.

“Because a lot of people think being Orthodox means I don’t fuck.” Akiva said the word fuck a little exasperatedly, different than how he’d said it earlier, when he asked if Eitan woke up and thought about fucking men.

Eitan hadn’t—before. Or if he had, he’s thrown that kind of thought into a box the way he had his Cleveland baseball stuff after the trade, something that he didn’t think he’d ever open.

But Akiva had been wrong. The press conference wasn’t the line of demarcation.

No, that had been Akiva walking into that audition and walking himself right out.

Something had stirred inside Eitan even then, a desire he was just now seeing the shape of.

“Do you?” Eitan asked.

“Do I what?” Akiva’s mouth was doing that thing—that mischievous little tilt that made Eitan want to bite at the corner of his lips.

He did and got Akiva’s gasp, so he did it again.

Repetition builds competence , some coach or another had told Eitan long ago, one who’d also told Eitan he’d always have to work harder than other guys who were taller, broader.

He might totally screw this whole thing up, but dammit Eitan was going to try .

“I wanted to know if you’d fuck me,” Eitan said.

Akiva’s eyes widened at that. Somehow, he was still wearing his glasses. Tiny puffs of vapor fogged the bottom of each lens. “Eitan—” He cut himself off. Eased back, slightly.

For a moment, Eitan wondered if he was going to be sent back to Manhattan, an island he was told was full of men he could probably get to fuck him, none of whom he wanted to.

“You don’t have to prove anything,” Akiva continued. “There’s not a Gay Player of the Month award.”

“Maybe there should be. I just figured, if this is my only chance…” But Eitan dissolved the rest of his sentence into trying to kiss Akiva again.

Akiva held up a cautioning hand. “Only chance to be gay?” he asked, forehead wrinkling.

Only chance to be with you. Which sounded like too much to say right now, even for Eitan. “To figure this whole thing out.” It was nonsense—the vague sort of nonsense Isabel had coached into him when talking to reporters.

Nowhere near what Akiva deserved to hear. Eitan wanted to tell him every good thing about himself—that he had more courage than any other ten people Eitan knew. That he was funny, and smart, and fucking hot in a way Eitan didn’t really know how to put into words.

“I lied before. I noticed,” Eitan said. “In Arizona. I noticed you looking at me. Mostly because I was looking at you too.”

Akiva blinked once behind his glasses. His cheeks had more color than when they first reconnected: the summer sun, maybe, even if Akiva mostly spent his time inside. “What’d you see?”

An invitation, then, one Eitan was grateful for.

He returned his hands to Akiva’s waist, pushed up his tzitzit, took the shirt from Akiva as he pulled it off, and folded it neatly—neatly for him, anyway.

Not knowing what to do with the shirt, Eitan placed it on the cushion of the large worn-in armchair next to the plant stand.

“You have freckles,” Eitan said. “I wanted to know how far down they went. I was disappointed we never shared a clubhouse in Arizona. I wanted to see if your nipples were the same color as your mouth.”

“Yours are.” Akiva laughed when Eitan’s eyebrows shot up incredulously. “Did you think I got to the ballpark early in the morning because I was really that into sightlines? You used to run around the field shirtless.”

“I still could,” Eitan said, “if you wanted to come before the game.”

“Queens is a pretty long commute.” Then Akiva took a more direct route and started to unbutton Eitan’s shirt, beginning at his throat.

There was nothing to it—the push of Akiva’s fingers at each buttonhole, the subtle release in tension as Eitan’s shirt opened, a sensation diametrically opposite to the one tightening through him.

If Akiva shoved his sleeves down his arms, cuffs still fastened, his hands might be trapped.

He might have nothing to do but stand here and watch Akiva look at him or kiss him or touch him or any of a hundred things Eitan wanted and a thousand more he wasn’t sure of but wanted to try.

He felt a momentary swoop of disappointment when Akiva undid each cuff.

The fabric flapped over Eitan’s hands before he stripped off his shirt.

His skin came up in goose bumps—the air conditioning, possibly, even as it was issuing little wheezing noises that made Eitan want to buy Akiva a new one or possibly a brand-new house.

Unlikely it was the chill. Eitan was Eastern European by way of the Midwest. He could go lake swimming in March.

“What are you thinking about?” Akiva asked, as if he could sense Eitan’s mind doing its usual tumbles.

“Jumping in cold water,” Eitan said. Without his shirt on, it was obvious that he was hard in his pants.

He expected a sly comment or possibly Akiva to ignore it altogether. Not the grip of Akiva’s long fingers around his cock, a stroke that made Eitan think of Lake Erie to maintain any sense of his self-control. “The curtains are open,” Eitan gasped. “People will see.”

Akiva smiled at that, then kissed him, long, thorough, his tongue dipping into Eitan’s mouth. A kiss for no one but them. “If you’re so worried about an audience,” Akiva said, “come to bed.” Then walked toward the other room.

Akiva’s bedroom was no more than thirty feet from his living room. About a third the distance between bases on the diamond, a span Eitan, running at a full clip, could cross in a scant few seconds.

He walked slowly now.

His shoes—dress shoes he kept at Cosmos Stadium and changed into after the game—came off, one, then the other, then his socks.

The floorboards were cool under his feet.

He didn’t really know why he wanted to go to Akiva barefoot, only that he didn’t want to get so much as a speck of ballpark dust on Akiva’s bedroom carpet.

The world could stay outside. The world could go to hell, really.

Walking, he had that same sense of being up on a high dive.

That the floor was shifting beneath him.

That if he took this leap, he’d emerge different than who he’d been before.

So what if I am? he wanted to shout at his teammates in Cleveland, at every flash of Dave’s camera, at every drunk fan who was just waiting for the right strikeout or baserunning mistake to let it be known that people like Eitan—that Eitan himself—didn’t belong.

He belonged here now, as he stood in the doorway, feet on Akiva’s threadbare carpet that bore fresh vacuum tracks.

His eyes took a moment to adjust to the lower light.

Akiva’s dresser and desk, mismatched. The books: shelves of them, crumbling, spine-broken paperbacks, newer hardbacks with stickers designating them signed by the author.

Akiva’s bed—older, heavy-framed with a slatted headboard. And finally Akiva, sitting on the bed—lying across it really—the night coming through the partially broken blinds ribboning him in shadow and light.

He was pale here, freckled down his chest, with a few curls of hair that grew denser under his arms and down his belly. Eitan had called him too skinny, but right now Akiva looked like the exact span of his hands.

Eitan became aware of the sudden emptiness of his palms. Of the relative emptiness of his life until now, devoid of this feeling washing over him.

It swept him from the doorway to the floor, from the floor to the bed.

To kneeling above Akiva and trailing a hand up his cheek.

Their contract said he only got so many hours, but he would have gladly given over his entire bank account for that moment.

As it was, he reached to the nightstand and tipped over the glowing digital clock.