Page 34 of Breakout Year

Eitan

Cosmos drop nail-biter in rare late-inning stumble from Rivkin

“Is it normal to have a fight that’s about one thing but really it’s about another thing, and you know you fucked something up but aren’t sure if apologizing will make it worse?

” Eitan asked when he was at the clubhouse the next morning—when he’d already been there for an hour, drifting discontentedly from the weight room to the batting cages.

Now he was standing next to where a few of the pitchers—Williams, Botts, Vientos, and Salenko—were flocked around a card game in progress.

He hadn’t slept after he’d gotten back from Akiva’s, and his skin felt like someone had shrunk it in the wash.

A few guys laughed at Eitan’s question, including Salenko, their third starter, whose bird-call laugh was itself a clubhouse joke.

Williams raised his coffee cup. “Hi, Eitan, good morning, how’re you?”

And Eitan knew he was bad off if Williams was reminding him of his manners. “Fuck.”

“Relationship problems?” Williams tapped the empty chair next to him, a metal folding chair in a set that seemed to spontaneously generate around the relievers.

Eitan circled the chair but couldn’t quite bring himself to sit. “You guys don’t want to hear about this.”

Vientos, who was their fifth starter on a good day and their second worst reliever on a bad one, grunted as he examined his cards. “Beats hearing how Williams got his dick wet last night.”

Williams shrugged and didn’t deny it, so Eitan collapsed himself into the chair.

Seated, he could see half the group’s cards, including Salenko’s, who was holding a full house.

Eitan’s face must have done something because Vientos cast his hand down.

“C’mon, at least try not to do that.” But no one made him leave either.

“So you fucked things up with what’s-his-name?” Botts prompted.

“Akiva.”

“Yeah, him.”

Eitan rolled his eyes. “It’s not that hard to pronounce.”

There was a pause. Briefly Eitan wondered if he was going to start his day by both composing and erasing a bunch of texts to Akiva asking if they’d broken up—if they were even dating in the first place—and getting into it with Botts.

Arguing with a guy who dressed like a Jimmy Buffett cast-off couldn’t be that satisfying.

Botts scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “Fine, you fucked things up with Akiva ?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re not sure what, but you know you did something and now he’s mad?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s your usual go-to apology move? Flowers, jewelry, or—” Botts paused like he didn’t know if gay guys also did that sort of thing—not that Eitan really knew either—an open-mouthed puzzlement that Botts buried in his hand of cards. “Or whatever?”

Eitan didn’t remember fighting that much with Kiley, though in retrospect, he wasn’t sure that was entirely a positive.

That morning he’d considered texting her and asking her the same question, then abandoned that almost immediately.

What if she’d asked why he was asking and he didn’t know what to say?

What if she knew exactly why he was asking and was pissed at him for any number of reasons, the first of which was having dated her when he’d suspected that he was gay?

“I didn’t really date much in Cleveland. ” Not like this.

And if dating but not having Akiva felt awful, driving home after their fight felt like a fresh bruise on his sternum, uncomfortably close to his heart.

It’d been a good night before then. One of the best of his life.

He’d gone out with someone he’d wanted to go out with.

Laughed over drinks, walked home in the warm summer air.

Kissed until his lips felt swollen with it, all his desires pointed toward Akiva like a compass.

After, they’d lain next to each other and Eitan hadn’t known you could like the certain rhythm of someone’s breathing or the casual throw of their ankle under a sheet.

All he knew now was that he wanted to do it again. Was greedy for it, really. Everything felt new and wild and exciting and scary, too big for Eitan to contain. Definitely too much to put on Akiva, uncompensated. So Eitan had left. He’d regretted it before he got to the end of Akiva’s block.

“What does he like?” Vientos stuttered a little over the he but he made it through the question.

“Books.”

“So get him books.”

“He has books.”

“My wife has jewelry. That doesn’t stop me from getting her more jewelry.”

But it wasn’t like he could explain Akiva didn’t need things but money, more than what could reasonably constitute a gift. If I keep giving him money, then we can’t date. If we date, I can’t give him money…right? “You ever pay down your wife’s, uh, student loans?”

Vientos’s eyebrows rose skeptically. “He wants you to pay off his student loans?”

That made it sound like Akiva was after his money, specifically. “No, he doesn’t. That’s part of the problem.”

Williams guzzled seemingly half his cup of coffee in one swig, then said, “Have you tried talking with him?”

“We talk all the time.” Which was true, even if sometimes it felt like they were talking past each other. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Try sorry .”

“I don’t know if—” If I’m actually sorry. Eitan bit that back.

“Ah,” Williams said, once, damningly, as if he’d mentally filled in the rest of Eitan’s sentence. “So you don’t want to apologize but you want this to be fixed?”

“When you put it like that…” When he put it like that, Eitan probably needed more than books and an ambiguous apology.

Salenko inhaled as if he was going to dispense some manner of profound relationship wisdom. But what came out was a belch, followed by a frantic waving of hands by the other guys at the table, and orders for Salenko to go the fuck away.

They didn’t say that to Eitan, though, even as he moped in his chair.

And when Botts asked if he wanted in on the next hand, Eitan let himself be dealt in.

He lost the first round and the second. “You sure you want to keep playing?” Vientos asked as if he hadn’t been the one to relieve Eitan of his money.

“Might as well keep trying,” Eitan said, and he grinned when he got his cards—a handful of nothing, but hey, he could work with that.

After their game—an afternoon game plagued by shadows—Eitan showered and changed and gamely answered reporters’ questions about how it felt to hit a wall-banging double in the sixth—“Good!”—and into a game-ending double play in the ninth—“Less good!”—then hustled out of the clubhouse to his car where he googled the location of the nearest late-night grocery store.

It turned out that in New York most grocery stores were open past nine. Who knew?

Shopping only took a minute. Or should have only taken a minute.

He grabbed his first item, then spent a while in the produce aisle, pondering his options.

Did specific breeds of apples have meanings the way that flowers did?

Was there a certain variety—honeycrisp, Gala, Pink Lady, envy —that properly conveyed that he was sorry for both past and probably future mistakes?

He grabbed a bunch, threw them into the same bag.

When the cashier had to sort them out, because apparently apples all cost different prices by the pound, he slid a fifty into the tip jar and got her grin.

“Buying your way out of trouble?” she teased.

“Here’s hoping.” And he grabbed his groceries and left before she could ask what he’d meant.

Akiva’s house looked even smaller in the light of the fading evening sun.

At least his car was in the driveway. Eitan had spent most of the ride over rehearsing what he was going to say, all of which abandoned him when he knocked at Akiva’s door and Akiva answered wearing a Cosmos hoodie that Eitan knew had Rivkin on the back.

One of the cuffs was starting to fray, and there was something intimate about the poke of Akiva’s thumb through the loosening seam, about the way he shuffled his socked feet back to admit Eitan.

His house was no different than it had been yesterday, though it was noticeably chillier, like Akiva had cranked the A/C to prove a point. “Air conditioner working again?” Eitan asked.

“I’m glad you came over.” Though Akiva’s arms were folded tightly across his chest. “We have to stop doing this.”

Eitan’s stomach dropped. It was clear what Akiva meant by this : that whatever contractual relationship existed between them was coming apart like that seam.

“I’m sorry,” Eitan blurted. Words that none of his careful car speeches had included: he’d practiced saying he wasn’t going to apologize for caring about Akiva, for wanting to solve at least as many problems as he created for him. But he was sorry—that this was ending. That it’d never really begun.

Akiva nodded as if that was the conclusion of the conversation. He said stop, Eitan said sorry, and they’d both go their separate ways and move on. Then Akiva registered the paper bag Eitan was holding and frowned. “What’s that?”

Eitan offered the opened bag for his inspection.

“You bought me apples?” Akiva asked.

“And honey.”

“Rosh Hashanah isn’t for another few weeks.”

A fact that Eitan knew because he’d checked his calendar to confirm.

He’d probably have to play, but he’d done the services-in-the-morning, game-at-night deal before.

“I know. I thought you might tell me that you wanted to end the contract.” The verbiage he picked in favor of breaking up even if it sounded like bullshit.

“And I thought with you and your family not being, uh, close anymore, maybe the High Holidays would be hard. So if this was our chance to spend them together… But you probably have friends you spend them with. Never mind. It was kind of a stupid idea.”