Page 61 of Breakout Year

Eitan

“Just to warn you, there are going to be questions,” Akiva said as they stood on Mark and Rachel’s front stoop and knocked.

Akiva was carrying a cake along with flowers Eitan had bought after checking that they weren’t the kind that were harmful to cats.

He wasn’t above bribery to make Akiva’s friends like him, if a honey cake and a bouquet of zinnias counted as bribes.

Eitan was holding a box containing three bottles of wine and two baseballs he’d apparently had in his luggage. He didn’t need them anymore, and perhaps the kids would like them. When he’d told Akiva that, he’d gotten a frown in response.

Eitan shifted the box to one arm, knocked on the front door, trying for his friendliest knock. “The Cosmos gave me a whole bunch of media training,” he said. “So I’m probably ready.”

“My friends aren’t the New York media.” Akiva sighed with an air of put-upon affection. “They might be worse.”

Eitan didn’t think any of them were going to flash a camera in his face or publish an exposé about how his choice in bodega breakfast was an affront to another equally as good sandwich shop right down the street.

But he wanted them to like him, to think he was good for Akiva.

He wanted to be good for Akiva, and he didn’t entirely know what that meant, but he could spend a decade or six figuring it out.

Mark answered the door, and Akiva held the flowers out as if in his own defense. “Eitan’s doing,” he said as he entered the house.

“Thank you.” Mark sniffed them. “They’re pretty.

” It didn’t sound grudging, but Eitan was familiar with that tone from past coaches who were waiting for Eitan to convince them that his merits outweighed his ability to make trouble.

Still, Mark took the flowers, the cake, directed both of them toward the kitchen, up a gradient that carried the scent of roasted chicken.

“Everything smells great,” Eitan said as they went past the living room with its scattering of toys. The house was older than Akiva’s, larger and with a certain lived-in feel from its slightly worn couches and rugs that had been freshly vacuumed but still bore the occasional grape juice stain.

Akiva had said he’d stayed here when he hadn’t had any other place to go. Eitan was glad for that, for having a community to catch him, for having friends good enough that they were clearly worried that Eitan might break his heart again.

In the kitchen, Rachel was doing something to a chicken in a roasting pan while two other women sat at the table. One waved, said her name was Chava; the other let out a strangled noise of recognition.

“This is my wife, Jess,” Chava said. “She is, unfortunately, a Cosmos fan.”

“Is this all who’s coming?” Akiva said.

“Unless you decided to invite the remainder of the Cosmos roster.” Rachel attempted to take the box holding the wine from Eitan and gave him an exaggerated scowl when he refused.

“It’s heavy.” He found a spare bit of counter to set it on. Might as well get this out of the way early. “I’m not playing for the Cosmos anymore. I’m not sure where—if—I’ll be playing next season.”

He hadn’t expected jubilation or outrage. These people weren’t the media. What did they care what he did so long as he was with Akiva? But he also hadn’t expected a sticky sensation in his throat, either.

Next to him, Akiva and Mark were having a conversation that was mostly composed of shaking their heads at one another. Rachel was giving him a look that made Eitan want to apologize to her, like one might to an aunt or a teacher.

“We’re still deciding,” Akiva said evenly. He went to the box holding the wine, opened a bottle with a twist, then held it out to Rachel. “Can we all be nice to my boyfriend?”

Rachel took the bottle of wine and glugged it into six mismatched glasses. “We are being very nice to your boyfriend .” She handed them each a cup.

Eitan’s glass was a small jam jar with grooves for a lid at its mouth.

He sipped from it gratefully. Boyfriend .

A title other than ballplayer , even if he was desperately trying to cling to both.

But boyfriend he could do. He sidled up behind Akiva, put a hand at his waist, rested his chin on Akiva’s shoulder when Akiva ducked down.

He smelled like the cheap soap he used, like late fall air.

Eitan closed his eyes for a moment, and there was an aww that came from somewhere.

“Fine.” Rachel said it with a certain finality. “No talking about work on Shabbos.”

So they milled in the kitchen for a while, Eitan caught in the volley of conversation.

Everyone was loud and no one was in too much of a hurry—the kids had snacks but were more interested in kicking an inflatable ball around the dining room in a game that was a hybrid of soccer and chaos.

Eitan ended up next to Mark as he marshaled things into and out of the oven, and Eitan accepted two potholders and a charge to find space for everything and offered his reassurances when Rachel worried they might not have enough food.

“So,” Mark said, in between removing one casserole dish and putting in another, “remind me how you two met.” As if he was going to collect Eitan’s story and compare it to whatever Akiva had told him to look for discrepancies.

Despite Rachel’s proclamation that work was off topic, Mark had mentioned he was an accountant, and Eitan worried momentarily that he’d be added up and found wanting. He was, technically, unemployed.

“We played in the Fall League in Arizona together,” Eitan said.

“That was seven years ago?” Mark asked it as if he knew the answer and continued on when Eitan nodded. “What was Akiva like back then?”

He was the best pitcher I’d ever seen. He was going to be a star. “He’s happier now.”

“Is he?”

Akiva was sitting at the table, drinking wine from a juice glass with a peeling plastic decal on it. His lips were stained slightly purple, and he was talking with Jess about something, calmly for anyone else, but effusively for him, the hand not holding his glass waving for emphasis.

“I’m going to work very hard to keep him that way,” Eitan said.

Mark gave him another penetrating look as he handed over a pan of broccoli that Eitan placed on the counter. “Does it need something under it?” he asked, because his mother was always fussing about that even if he’d paid for granite counters that could probably resist the apocalypse.

Mark shook his head. “The countertop can handle rapid changes in temperature.” With its implication: Can you?

Eitan didn’t have an answer for him. His phone buzzed in his pocket.

He pulled it out, switched it to airplane mode.

He understood why Akiva did this now—to rest, to have space to breathe.

His other life could wait for twenty-four hours.

His other life could wait forever, as far as he was concerned.

Only the slight drop in his belly disagreed.

“Can you tie someone up on Shabbat or does that constitute work?” Eitan asked after they’d walked back to Akiva’s laden with leftovers, huddled close against the icy November wind.

Akiva paused from where he was unloading bags into his fridge. Pressed his fingers to his eyelids, then promptly cracked up. “I’m not laughing at you,” he clarified between gasps. “Just no one’s asked me that before.”

“No other guys you’ve dated have wanted that?” Eitan underwent a momentary panic: guys who liked tying people up probably sought out guys who liked being tied up. It was possible Akiva was humoring him.

“No other guys I’ve dated have cared that much about what you could and couldn’t do on Shabbat.

” Akiva tucked the last two containers in the fridge, then folded the paper bag they’d brought them back in.

He leaned against the counter, gaze pointed at the peeling linoleum tile of the kitchen floor.

“Honestly, I haven’t really actually dated a whole lot.

” He smiled a little sardonically. “Mostly just fucked. No one that recently.”

Eitan cupped his jaw, tilted his head up. “I like that we get to figure all this out together. It makes me feel less like I’m playing catch-up, you know?”

“You really find the best in everything.”

Eitan kissed him, and it was strange to do with Akiva leaning like this, so they were about the same height.

Strange to find something new even in the narrow line of Akiva’s kitchen.

Eitan relished the possibility that every day could be filled with other small excitements. “With you, it isn’t hard.”

It turned out you could tie a knot on Shabbos so long as it was composed of a single loop and not intended to be permanent. “I looked it up,” Akiva said as he tightened a soft cord around Eitan’s wrists with a knot Eitan could undo simply by rotating his hands. “In September.”

“This rope seems like it was made for this,” Eitan said.

“I went shopping.” It was difficult to see the gradations in Akiva’s skin color in the half dark of his room, but Eitan thought he looked slightly flushed. Akiva muttered something that sounded like logistics and re-checked the cord.

“I’m fine.” Which Eitan was. Better than fine.

He was shirtless, still in his underwear, possibly vibrating out of his skin.

Apparently, some of the spontaneity he expected from sex—that it was a circumstance he sometimes just found himself in—was at odds with Akiva’s need to plan.

He liked being someone Akiva planned for.

Akiva’s plans consisted of a long shower with a series of deliberate instructions for Eitan to follow, a discussion of past partners and various test results and lines of consent.

Now a set of meticulously tied knots. It was possible Akiva had a checklist. Eitan would not be attracted to a checklist, except for the fact that he was.

Akiva had asked him more than once what he wanted. He asked again as he adjusted the knot.