Page 48 of Breakout Year

Eitan

Super-Nova or Black Hole: Cosmos Reckon with Late-Season Collapse

It was after midnight by the time they got back to Eitan’s apartment.

They’d cleaned themselves up enough to get dinner, had sat in a U-shaped booth in a train car that was definitely watching them, and ate while the world flew by.

Eitan was sure the food was good. For the price of the tickets, everything was good, but he didn’t remember a single bite of it or the taste of his drink or anything other than the feel of Akiva next to him and the buzz under his skin and the slight dishevelment of Akiva’s hair that no amount of finger-combing would solve.

People know . It’d been obvious in the bursts of giggles aimed their way, in the older woman dressed in a wide-brimmed hat who’d shot him a wink. People had known and hadn’t cared or if they had, it was the kind of caring one aimed at a stranger with whom you were sharing a momentary secret.

That same buzzing feeling had lasted through dinner, through more champagne and the return of the train to its station and the long commuter rail ride south.

This time, Akiva had sat beside him, body close, arms brushing, and if anyone around them had taken their picture, Eitan wouldn’t know, because he’d been too busy memorizing the exact pattern of Akiva’s freckles and the way his mouth would tip up ever so slightly when he caught Eitan doing that.

Back at his apartment, Eitan reached for Akiva’s hand as they went through his front door, held it again as he did up his locks.

“Do you want—” And he was going to offer a drink or more dessert or tea or whatever Akiva wanted, including the apartment itself, when Akiva leaned down and cut him off with a kiss.

“Do you think we’d both fit in your bed?” Akiva asked.

Eitan would sleep sideways and possibly upside down to ensure they did. “Come and find out.”

The next morning, Eitan was woken by a series of Instagram alerts—a handful from the community center, more from the park, and a few taken clandestinely on the train—and two text messages that were opposite in tone.

One was from the Cosmos general manager, telling him that, based on his medical reports, they were expecting him to join them in DC for the team’s next road trip, so he needed to get himself back into a condition to play.

The other was from Gabe and was just the letters WTF , along with a set of voice notes that Eitan wasn’t going to listen to. The yelling might wake Akiva up.

Eitan dropped his phone back on his nightstand.

Next to him, Akiva’s face was slack with sleep.

He was a stomach sleeper, hand under Eitan’s spare pillow, feet poking their way out from the comforter.

No matter what happens, I’ll know that. A strange morning thought: that Eitan’s time in New York was coming to an end, that he was going to offer his baseball services elsewhere to whoever gave him the best contract.

That he’d take with him a tiny pockmark of a scar on his ankle, and an understanding of the confusing tangle of the subway map, and possibly an understanding of this tangled feeling he’d had for so long that was finally coming undone.

He kissed Akiva behind the rim of his ear where his glasses had left an apparently permanent indent. Another thing Eitan now knew. Akiva made a noise, a pleased grunt, so Eitan kissed him again.

“It’s early,” Akiva said.

It was early, the morning light grayish outside Eitan’s window. “Sorry. Do you want me to let you sleep?” Even if that meant leaving the magnetic pull of the bed.

Akiva didn’t answer in words. He rolled, wrapped an arm around Eitan’s waist, and encouraged him back down.

Eitan went. Settled against Akiva, fingers in the spaces between his ribs.

Thought, not for the first time, about those players in a bar in Arizona who’d given Akiva a hard time.

How they’d withered when Eitan told them to cut it out.

How of all of them, only one made it to the big leagues, with a career short enough that Eitan hadn’t even gotten the opportunity to homer off him.

Maybe they were somewhere on a Friday morning, rushing through their too-hot coffee or grousing at their kids to go to school.

Maybe they were happy with their small portion of the universe.

Maybe it’d make them angry to know he was happy too, here with Akiva.

Three words sat in Eitan’s mouth. It was too soon to say them, too soon to even think them. For once, Eitan held his tongue.

“You want breakfast?” he asked instead, sometime later, when Akiva’s breathing was just uneven enough to indicate he was waking up.

Akiva sat up, stretched. He slept in his underwear, and the elastic drooped slightly at the taper of his waist. Eitan slid his hand below it, onto the rise of his ass, because he wanted to, because he could.

Because Akiva smiled when he did and leaned down and kissed him, and his breath was stuffy with sleep and it was Shabbat tonight and Eitan had to be back in baseball shape soon and in DC soon after that, a city he normally bore no real resentment toward and now wanted to fall into its various rivers. Still, there was no avoiding it.

“The Cosmos sent me a train ticket. I’m supposed to join them Sunday.”

“You’re not flying?” Akiva asked.

“They said they’d charter something if I wanted. Turns out I don’t really like flying alone.”

Akiva smiled at that. “Rough life.”

“It’s just down to DC, but they’re leaving from there to…” Eitan searched for the next city they were supposed to be in before realization washed over him. “Cleveland. We’re going to Cleveland.”

“Oh.” Akiva dipped down and kissed him reassuringly on the cheek.

“Do you want to come with me?” Eitan blurted it before could stop himself.

He wanted Akiva there. Eitan’s parents always insisted on sitting in the stands and he’d arranged for tickets for them already, but if they were all together, maybe a box would be better, and he could probably arrange for kosher food to be catered or delivered to the stadium or?—

Akiva’s shoulders were creeping up to his ears. “I can’t. I have work. Sue has to go to physical therapy, and I really can’t miss much more time.”

I can pay you . A mistake Eitan wouldn’t make twice. “What if I get you a plane ticket?” Before Akiva could object, he added, “I have points.”

Akiva’s face twisted. “You’ll be fine.”

Eitan was less certain of that. Words would get thrown at him, surely.

Possibly, a fist. That depended on his former teammates—most of whom were good guys when he was playing with them, some of whom might not be now that the situation was reversed.

There was also the small matter of playing baseball in his hometown.

It didn’t matter if he won so much as he absolutely couldn’t lose, not in front of a crowd already prone to hate him, not in front of his parents, who’d told him that the country would love him as much as he loved it—and he didn’t want to see them proven wrong.

All of which would be easier with Akiva there. All of which were probably the reasons why he shouldn’t be. Akiva wouldn’t be with him next year in whatever city he ended up playing in. Eitan needed to get used to this.

“You ever see yourself living anywhere but around here?” he asked. Too honest a question for before coffee but fuck it.

Akiva wrapped his arms around him again.

He was wider than Eitan at the shoulders, narrower everywhere else.

The exact right dimensions, yet they couldn’t seem to make their lives fit together.

“I worked for a long time to get where I am,” Akiva said, eventually.

“I felt like I was drowning for so long—that one bad month would be enough for me to lose everything. I don’t want to owe anyone more than I have to. ”

You wouldn’t owe me . But of course, Akiva wouldn’t see it that way, if he lived somewhere else. If he had to start over again or just sat, dependent, on whatever Eitan provided for him.

“Sue has…” Akiva continued, and he looked like he was struggling with the next part.

“I write for her and it’s an opportunity I might not get with anyone else.

She has a tremor that’s been getting progressively worse.

Most people don’t know about it. She can dictate, but she can’t type anymore or write by hand.

She’s pretty independent, but her son lives in California and the rest of her family is mostly her dead ex-husband who sucks. I don’t want to leave her.”

Wouldn’t leave was a much different thing than couldn’t . Akiva had a life here, one Eitan couldn’t ask him to abandon.

“Will you watch the game against Cleveland?” Eitan asked instead. “That way I know at least one person’ll be rooting for me.” He knew he was being pathetic—whiny, even—but he felt raw the way he had when he’d first come to New York. Somehow, he didn’t expect the opposite journey to be even worse.

Akiva’s arms tightened around him. “People are rooting for you. That lady at the park said she’d punch someone on your behalf. That’s not nothing.”

“If this was a book, what would you have happen?”

Akiva hummed at that. “Concealed pistols. Maybe an explosion. Or possibly someone could derail a train.”

Though Eitan felt that way now: like he was veering off track and couldn’t stop himself.

He checked his phone again. The ticket the team sent had come through.

He turned to Akiva, cupped his cheek in his palm.

Stroked the pad of his finger over that freckle.

Whoever did that next should know how special it was.

“I’ll be back a week from Sunday,” Eitan said. To pack up his apartment. To watch the standings to see if Cosmos made it into the postseason, though the odds were looking less and less likely. “I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me. Like on a date.”

Akiva laughed and kissed him again and Eitan’s heart had beat nervously against his chest when he’d asked Akiva on that first date, an entirely different sort of rhythm from asking him out and knowing it was for the last time.