Page 39 of Breakout Year

Eitan’s bathroom was large for a New York apartment bathroom and small for a space in which Akiva was being glared at accusingly. “Why didn’t he get out of the way of that slide?” Akiva asked.

“Fuck if I know. Maybe he didn’t have time to react. Maybe he thought the guy was gonna pull away. I don’t think anyone expected Goodwin to destroy his ankle.”

“I’m not that surprised someone would do that.”

Williams scrubbed a hand down his face. “Yeah.”

“I’m planning to spend a few days here,” Akiva said. If Eitan still wants me around once the painkillers have worn off . “I know the injury-recovery drill.”

“That’s good. You seem…organized.” Said like Williams knew Eitan would refuse help if given the option.

“I’m glad he has a friend— friends —looking out for him.”

“You say that like it wasn’t a sure thing.”

Akiva gave his own version of the You have to be fucking kidding me expression that made Williams huff a laugh. “Yeah,” Williams said, “I wasn’t too sure either.”

“About having a gay friend?”

Williams shrugged and didn’t deny it. “I got a gay cousin. I see him at Thanksgiving. It’s not the same.”

“No,” Akiva agreed, “it’s not.”

“I didn’t know what Eitan was gonna be like.”

“You mean, if he was gonna be all”—Akiva raised his eyebrows meaningfully—“ queer ?”

Williams didn’t get angry, and he didn’t flinch, either. “Like I said, I didn’t know. It worked out okay.”

“You can never be sure about this kind of thing,” Akiva said. “Every space you walk into, you’re doing a calculation of if people are going to be cool or assholes or whatever.”

“Eitan doesn’t seem like the calculation type.”

“He isn’t. He probably should be, but I’m glad he isn’t.”

“Eitan said you used to play.”

“I did. I don’t anymore.” And if Williams could hear the distance between those two statements—what they cost Akiva to figure out—he didn’t say anything. Just clapped Akiva once on the shoulder and said he could show himself to the front door.

After Williams had left, Akiva cleaned what he could. Ballplayers, even ones attempting to be conscientious, left trash in their wakes. He put away food, shuffled cards back into their pack, swept the kitchen floor.

Eitan didn’t stir, not even when Akiva lifted the ice pack off his ankle—the instructions had been clear about twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off, and Akiva didn’t want him to get frostbite, even if there was a towel between the ice pack and his wrapped ankle.

Eitan, quiet, unmoving except for his slight snores, was particularly disconcerting.

Every time his face tensed in his sleep, something clenched hard in Akiva’s chest.

“Hey,” Akiva said, low, “we should get you to bed.”

Eitan’s eyes blinked open. “Akiva, hey.” Like he didn’t remember Akiva was there. “I thought I dreamed you.”

This isn’t real . Except for all the ways it was. “You were pretty asleep. I can stay over if you want.”

Eitan’s eyes fluttered as if he might go back to sleep. “You don’t have to.”

“That’s what I’m supposed to say. Now, c’mon, you don’t want to fall asleep on this thing.” Even if Eitan’s couch looked as luxurious as any bed Akiva had ever owned.

“I have—” Eitan reached for where two crutches were stacked near the couch.

Akiva held them up and waited for Eitan to swing his legs around, for him to put his good foot on the floor and accept the support of his crutches, clipping his arms into their hard plastic cuffs.

He got up, testing his weight, then began crutching fluidly toward his bedroom, and Akiva shouldn’t be surprised at Eitan acclimating seamlessly to a new physical task, but that was apparently how Eitan was: a disaster, followed by an elastic recovery.

Akiva followed in case Eitan needed to ford piles of clothing in order to get to his own bed.

But the floor was clear, possibly the team trainer or Eitan’s housekeeping service or even Williams’s doing.

Akiva would not feel any kind of way about someone else cleaning up.

He didn’t even like cleaning. He just mostly did it to procrastinate something else.

Email, usually. He didn’t want to pick Eitan’s clothes up off the floor.

But some small part of him didn’t hate the idea that Eitan needed him there—that he could use that as an excuse to stick around.

So he watched as Eitan made it to the bed and sat down heavily, leaning his crutches against his nightstand. “I don’t even need those,” Eitan said.

“If the trainers say you’re supposed to use them…”

“Shilling for the team, Goldfarb?” Eitan said it with a tilt to his grin, the way he might have in Arizona when they were both pretending to look past one another. “And I already got a ‘firm directive’ from Gabe to do what the team tells me to do.”

“What other firm directives have you gotten?” Akiva asked unthinkingly.

Eitan smirked. Per Sue’s instructions, Akiva was allotted exactly one smirk per draft he wrote for her, so he had to make it a good one. This smirk was accompanied by the angle of Eitan’s jaw, the dark stubble of his neck that Akiva wanted to firmly direct with his teeth.

Akiva ignored that smirk, giving only a lift of his eyebrows that probably bordered on schoolmarm.

Eitan deflated. “I think you got the rundown from Williams, but basically, I’m supposed to take it easy—no baseball activities—so they can check to make sure I haven’t busted my ankle. Mostly it’s just a pretty gnarly bruise. Good thing that guy wasn’t wearing metal spikes.”

Did you know that before he slid into you? Akiva didn’t ask, mostly because he already suspected the answer. No, Eitan hadn’t known, and he’d let himself get plowed over anyway.

Akiva didn’t ask that question or any of his other questions, going back to why Eitan had texted him.

If he was just texting everybody he knew or if he’d wanted Akiva in specific not to worry.

They’d only been apart for a week: not long enough for Eitan to change his emergency contacts.

It was possible they really were just friends—two people who happened to be in the same rented bedroom in a city full of rented bedrooms and vague acquaintanceships—and Akiva was once again being melodramatic.

Then Eitan tugged off his shirt and winged it toward the overflowing laundry basket.

“When does your laundry service come?” Akiva said to distract himself from Eitan’s chest and arms and the ripple of muscle under his belly as he moved.

Akiva had a lifetime of practice aiming his gaze at the most disgusting parts of a locker room, seven years to become unimpressed with ballplayers’ bodies.

What he couldn’t ignore was the memory of Eitan against him, his breath warm in Akiva’s ear, his gasps at each new thing that brought him pleasure.

Akiva needed something, anything to distract himself. Chores . “I could do a load.”

“I think the laundry people are coming tomorrow.” Eitan yawned through the word. “Monday? I don’t know what day it is.” He shifted around, then brought his ankle up to the bed and sighed like that took all his effort.

“Do you need to brush your teeth?” Akiva asked before Eitan could get too comfortable.

“Did that before I got on the couch.” Eitan tapped two fingers against his temple. “I hate sleeping in shorts—I need to get these off.” But he didn’t budge, like the mere thought of moving again had him winded.

“I could help.” The words got caught somewhere in Akiva’s mouth and came out strangled.

“You don’t—” Eitan fidgeted like he was going to wriggle out of his shorts. “I can pay, you know. For your time.”

Briefly, Akiva considered how satisfying it might be to storm out. It’d be hard to slam Eitan’s door—he’d have to stop to reengage all the locks—but it might be worth it.

Instead, he took a deep inhale and sat himself on the bed, next to Eitan but not touching him. A relatively safe distance, though Akiva was beginning to think the only safe distance might have been the one between New Jersey and Cleveland, and the big leagues and everywhere else.

“I’m not here to get paid.” He ground a finger into the comforter for emphasis. “I’m here because I’m your— Because I’m your friend. Now stop being stubborn and let me help you.”

Eitan laughed. “All right.”

Akiva wasn’t sure if there was a friendly way to take off someone’s clothing, especially not slippery basketball shorts whose fabric clung to everything. Eitan was wearing underwear, the elastic rising above the waistband of his shorts. The same brand he’d been wearing a week ago.

Akiva scrubbed his hands down his thighs reflexively, trying to overwhelm his nerves with a sensation of something other than what Eitan’s boxers might feel like.

Tried to forget how Eitan had looked up at him, dark eyes hooded, flushed at his lips and his nipples and the tip of his cock.

How he’d said, I think I’m gay in any state , then kissed Akiva like he’d been dreaming of it for seven years.

They were friends. Only friends. Akiva was someone Eitan felt he could rely on in an emergency, and here one was. “Is it easier to take these off slowly or all at once?” Akiva asked.

“Um”—Eitan bit his lip consideringly—“let’s start slowly.”

So Akiva seized the bunched waistband of his shorts and extended it to give Eitan room to lever himself up one-footed.

Together, they inched the fabric past his hips and from under the curve of his ass.

Eitan’s underwear turned out to be bright blue trunks that clung to his thighs.

Akiva would not look at them. Think about them.

Well, one glance, if only to make sure Eitan could undress the rest of the way. Eitan did, sliding his shorts off one leg and then the other, mindful of his wrapped-up ankle.

Which left Eitan in just his underwear lying atop his dark green comforter.

Summer had painted his skin different colors of gold—darkest at his hands and forearms, then in a gradient leading to the paler olive of his chest. Worse, Eitan stretched—a flex of his non-wrapped toes, the arcing tendon in his ankle, the heavy muscle of his thigh and all the rest—and sighed again in relief.

“They said today was gonna be the worst of it.” He smiled. “But it couldn’t be—not with you here.”

That same feeling in Akiva’s chest returned.

Tomorrow could be for questions—for the whole story.

For now, Eitan was here and he was here, and Eitan’s hand was close to his on the bedspread, and everything felt somehow more real than it did the night Akiva thought of as That Night. “I should let you sleep.”

“Will you—” Eitan began. For a heart-rending second, Akiva wondered if Eitan was going to ask Akiva to kiss him. If he’d have it in himself to say no, a word that felt impossibly distant. “Could you turn off the picture frame?” Eitan asked. “It lights up.”

“Oh.” Akiva picked up the frame, feeling its side for buttons.

A slideshow of images appeared: Eitan with his parents in what must be their front yard right after the draft, holding signs that said Number One .

Eitan, in the locker room in Cleveland, playing cards with a few teammates.

Eitan, that sweaty night at the club, with his arms around Williams and Botts, all of them drunk and ecstatic.

Then another picture. Akiva blinked as if his eyes were deceiving him.

Because there were him and Eitan, faces pressed together in a selfie they’d taken on some walk in the Park, because Eitan loved to just amble around and exclaim at ducks and babies in strollers and kids playing catch and artists drawing well and people dancing badly.

Akiva had modeled enough that he thought he was immune to feeling much emotion at pictures of himself.

Except he couldn’t stop looking at this one—how he could practically feel the scrape of Eitan’s jaw along his, the warmth of the sun made warmer by Eitan’s body pressed close.

Eitan had said, “Take a selfie, your arms are longer.” And even after Akiva secured the picture, he’d seemed reluctant to let go.

A charade they needed for the world outside—or at least Eitan had felt he needed, and Akiva went along with it so long as the cash was the same—and not for in here, in Eitan’s bedroom, where the only person who’d see it was Eitan before he fell asleep.

Seven years ago, Akiva had learned that everything was ignorable until it wasn’t.

And he couldn’t ignore it now: this feeling that expanded like it was taking up his entire chest cavity but somehow giving him air.

That he was someone to Eitan. That they’d been something to each other—something complicated by money.

The other thing Akiva had learned seven years ago.

He’d just thought he’d read the fine print this time around.

There was nothing for that now, not as Eitan maneuvered himself under the covers and was clearly fighting sleep.

So Akiva dimmed the picture, and replaced the frame on the nightstand, and said, “Get some rest.” And he took himself out of the room quickly enough that he almost didn’t hear Eitan’s mumbled request for him to stay.