Page 59 of Breakout Year

Eitan

Eitan woke up slowly. Somehow, he was in Akiva’s bed.

Somehow, it was Friday. He’d missed about a million messages from Gabe but that didn’t matter now.

It was late for Eitan—almost nine a.m.—and Akiva was understandably still asleep.

Eitan could sneak out and make coffee, could probably secure breakfast in bed, an apology for showing up on Akiva’s doorstep like a castaway.

Both would involve moving, and he didn’t want to do that.

Akiva’s chest rose and fell as he breathed.

If Eitan focused on that, the world was simple: he had been a ballplayer; he wasn’t any longer.

The rest probably involved paperwork, but right now, Eitan was of the mind that paperwork, much like professional baseball, could burn.

The light from Akiva’s blinds—they were still bent—played across his freckles.

The anemic heating made him cuddlier in the night.

Eitan had fallen asleep next to him and woken up next to him and wanted nothing more than to do it all again that night, and the night after that, and the night after that.

For once, he had very little to do, the future greeting him like a cliff’s edge.

Maybe if he was smarter, he’d be more afraid.

For now, he stroked a hand up Akiva’s ribs.

For all his consternation at Eitan not taking care of himself, he clearly needed someone to do the same.

That seemed like as good a calling as any.

Akiva’s breathing went uneven. He blinked his eyes open.

For someone with short hair, it could go in a lot of directions.

Eitan wondered if there was a word that encompassed liking someone’s morning breath and cowlicks and utter stubbornness about living in a place with bent blinds and found that there was, but maybe not one he should say before Akiva was fully awake.

“Thank you,” Eitan said, “for everything last night.”

Akiva smiled. Kissed his cheek. “How are you feeling?”

“Can you be emotionally hungover?”

That got him another smile, another kiss, the sight of Akiva pulling himself out of bed and rooting through his dresser. He put his kippah on before his shirt, which Eitan wouldn’t have expected. “I can make you some tea.”

Eitan shook his head. Not that he didn’t want tea, and breakfast, and probably to go for a run in the November cold air, the kind that would cleanse him by stabbing him in the lungs. Mostly, he wanted to be with Akiva in whatever shape that took. “What’re you planning to do today?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“Probably need to let Gabe and my parents know I’m alive.”

“You haven’t told Irene? ”

Eitan tapped out a message to her and one to Gabe. A simple I’m in New Jersey. I’m fine. Then muted all incoming texts. “I told them where I was.”

For a moment, Akiva looked like he might press the point. Then he leaned down and kissed Eitan instead. “I’m glad you came here.”

“I was worried you weren’t going to—” Eitan gulped around the end of the sentence. He’d knocked on Akiva’s door and wondered what would happen if Akiva didn’t answer. “I was worried you might not want to see me.”

That got him another kiss. “That was my fault. I thought it would hurt less if there was distance between us.”

“Did it?”

“No.” Akiva bit his lip, studied the floor. Color spotted his cheeks. So this separation hadn’t been any easier on him, even if he’d handled it a touch less dramatically.

“I love you.” Eitan’s words came spilling out like they normally did, but for once he didn’t regret saying them. “I think I fell a little in love with you sometime around when you told me to kiss you on the sidewalk so Dave could take our picture.”

“I have you beat. I think I fell a little in love with you when you told those guys at the bar in Arizona to go fuck themselves.” Akiva smiled. “For the record, I love you more now.”

It was still mid-morning outside, the weather an indeterminate sort of gray.

People had called Eitan distractable all his life, but nothing could have distracted him from that moment: not the clouds or jetlag or the reality that he was going to have to find something to do with his life other than play baseball. “For the record?” he teased.

“Just so there isn’t any ambiguity.”

There wasn’t any in the way Akiva wrapped his arms around him, in the press of Akiva’s forehead to his and the comingling of their breath.

In the careful attention of Akiva’s mouth and the grip of his hand at Eitan’s wrist. In how he put an I love you between each kiss like they were the only words he knew.

“I’ve never hung out with you on a Friday,” Eitan said, later, after breakfast and a run and a shower and a conversation with Gabe that resulted in Gabe telling him to not make rash decisions while he’d devoured what sounded like a metric ton of antacids.

I want to quit. A sentence Eitan made himself think over and over. He didn’t want to quit. He just didn’t see what else he could do and emerge with his dignity intact.

Well, he could see what Akiva did with himself on Fridays.

Akiva was also up and dressed, nursing a cup of coffee and glaring at the general idea of being awake.

Eitan had apologized, again, for rousing him in the middle of the night, but had gotten only Akiva’s kiss, and an I love you , said casually, like Akiva had wanted to practice.

“Usually I do what I’m doing now, but outside.

” Akiva glanced at his phone, yawned, and then suppressed that yawn. “I should daven.”

Which he hadn’t done yet, but maybe he preferred to pray when he was fully awake. “Were you going to do that now?” Eitan asked.

“It’s cold.” Akiva tucked his T-shirt closer around himself. It had a hole at the collar that Eitan wanted to put his fingers in and tug. Kiley had said she’d known before. How had he not? But he was here now and determined to make up for lost time.

“It’s not that cold—I went running earlier.” Which had felt great, right up until Eitan had to huff frigid air up a hill and had been bitterly reminded that, even though he was in the best shape of his life, teams didn’t want to speak with him.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you are very Midwestern.”

Eitan laughed. “What’s that mean?”

“Tolerant of intolerable conditions.” Akiva rose from the couch, drained his coffee, dropped a kiss on Eitan’s temple. Went into his bedroom and came back with his tefillin still in their plastic cases, but didn’t immediately take them out. “I’ve never really done this with someone I was dating.”

It was possible he didn’t want to pray in front of Eitan.

Akiva’s house didn’t have a great deal of space: barely five rooms, including his sliver of a kitchen and an attempt at a second bedroom that was mostly a closet.

Still, Eitan could remove himself from the immediate vicinity.

He probably needed somewhere else to live, anyway.

Maybe he should start searching for rentals nearby.

“I can go”—he gestured to the bedroom—“in there if you want some privacy.”

“No, it’s just…” Akiva felt around for a word. “Personal.”

He took the tefillin out from their cases. Gathered one up and placed it on his biceps, then began winding the leather strap around his arm. He was in short sleeves.

For a moment, Eitan watched the rhythm of it—the wrap of the cord around the relative pallor of Akiva’s skin, the interlay of the lean muscle amid the leather—and thought about what it’d be like to see that in dramatically different circumstances.

He knew that Judaism was not contingent on a belief in a higher power who meted out rewards and punishments, but at that moment, he felt a prickle of guilt up the back of his neck.

Akiva looked up from where he was wrapping the leather loosely around his palm.

Lifted an eyebrow. “Really?” Said less with outrage than faint, fond surprise.

Eitan was about to explain that no, he wasn’t watching Akiva like that , even if he definitely was, when Akiva added, “I would have guessed you’d want to be the person getting tied up. ”

“I—” Eitan gulped around an immediate denial. He’d thought about doing exactly that while they’d been together. In the months since. “Yeah,” he said a little sheepishly.

“I’m supposed to focus when I have these on and not laugh.” Though Akiva was pressing his lips together as if he was trying not to. “You surprise me. It’s nice.”

“Right now, I’m surprising myself.” Which Eitan was. Every desire seemed to unlock another. If he liked seeing Akiva wrapped in leather, who was going to stop him? Still, he was about to transport himself to the next room when Akiva’s phone chimed.

“Can you see if that’s Sue?” Akiva asked. Possibly another rule related to what one could and could not do in tefillin. Eitan should probably look those up if he was going to be sticking around.

Eitan thumbed the text preview to expand it. “Mark and Rachel want to know if you’re coming to dinner. The children are wondering if you’ve gone missing.”

Akiva snorted. “I saw them last week. Usually on Fridays I go to synagogue then to dinner at their house, if you want to come.” He fiddled with the end of the tefillin strap before he tucked it into the loops around his hand. “You don’t have to.”

The last time Eitan had been to temple was for a quick evening service at the end of Yom Kippur when he’d mostly spent his time talking with his friends from middle school who hadn’t left Mayfield Heights. They’d been excited to see which team he was going to sign with.

If he went, Akiva’s friends might ask him similar questions.

Oh well, he needed to get accustomed to that.

I want to quit. No, he revised, I’m going to quit .

No, he revised, I’m quitting because of Akiva.

No, that was worst of all. But he had hours until services to land on the exact wording.

He had to go into the civilian world at some point.

Better to do it with people who loved Akiva the way he did.

“Dinner sounds good. What should we bring?”