Page 8 of Breakout Year

Eitan

@da_stars_baby: Good thing Rivkin is single cause that’s my husband. He just doesn’t know it yet.

@queens_king: Think you might be barking up the wrong tree.

@da_stars_baby: Yeah but I’m still barking

“How come this city doesn’t believe in air conditioning?

” Eitan tugged at his collar again. It was the same dress shirt he’d worn for his introductory press conference, though he probably shouldn’t have in case it was infused with bad luck.

Maybe he should tell his laundry service to lose it or possibly burn it.

Either way, it was pressing against his throat, the cuffs tight at his wrists.

He had been in New York for ten days, and he wasn’t looking for things to dislike, but they seemingly kept finding him.

Gabe was sitting a few chairs down the hotel conference room table. He slid Eitan a bottle of water along with a portfolio of pictures. “This is still a bad idea.”

Because they were doing auditions for the role of fake boyfriend. Ones that involved headshots.

Eitan scanned the first two photos. Both guys were hot. Not just best-looking guy in the clubhouse hot—because contrary to popular belief, ballplayers looked like people, except for relief pitchers who mostly looked like handsome gnomes—but hot-hot . “What if I like everybody?”

Gabe shot him the eye, then popped something—potentially an antacid and, really, he should get his stomach looked at—and slugged back half of his own water.

“If you don’t want to do this, why are you here?” Eitan asked.

“Would you still do this if I wasn’t here supervising?”

Eitan had considered chickening out a half a dozen or so times in the last seventy-two hours but had grown more resolved with each snap of Dave’s camera. “Yes.”

“So here I am, supervising.” Gabe took another swig of water and muttered for better or worse . “Speaking of, Camilla called about interviewing you—she is very persistent—and I told her to clear it with the team.”

“Oh, Camilla called,” Eitan said, because Gabe mostly referred to reporters as that one from whatever media outlet.

Gabe went slightly pink; frustration at Eitan possibly. “The team also mentioned they offered to put out a statement on your behalf.”

“They did. I didn’t want to do that.”

“Yeah, well, getting photographed all over New York with a male model serves as a pretty big statement.”

“We can do something more official…” When I’m sure I actually want a boyfriend. “Later.”

A muscle in Gabe’s jaw pulsed. “If you’re gonna do this, people are gonna ask about it. You should be prepared for what they’re gonna say. Have you told your parents?”

“More or less.”

“More or—” Gabe cut himself off. “Did you talk with Kiley?”

“I’ll tell her.” I’m just not sure how yet.

“Someone probably already sent her the press conference video.”

Eitan’s stomach churned. He’d felt brave under the glare of media attention. Perhaps a touch less so when it came to picking up the phone. “Then I don’t need to tell her.”

Gabe looked equally dyspeptic. “This kinda news most people don’t want to hear from someone else. I know you don’t want to hear it, but really, I’m trying to look out for you, kid.”

“I’m twenty-seven,” Eitan said evenly. “I want to see what dating is like—” And his voice caught around with someone I want to date. Because he’d wanted to date Kiley. They’d had a good time before deciding to just be friends. “I want to see what dating is like on a new team.”

Gabe frowned and dropped the subject—possibly calling a temporary truce. Or possibly he’d just decided it wasn’t worth arguing.

A few minutes later, the first guy came in: he was tall and lean, with a shock of white-blond hair and an expressive mouth. If he recognized Eitan, it didn’t show. He signed the nondisclosure agreement they put in front of him, asked about the requirements for the “role.”

A few dates, an acknowledgement that he was okay being photographed, a promise not to spill the details of this arrangement to the press.

The guy nodded. “What kinds of dates?” He said dates a little disbelievingly, like Eitan was paying for more than his time.

“How do you feel about baseball?” Eitan asked.

A one-shouldered shrug. “Don’t feel any particular way.”

And Eitan thanked him. “We’ll let you know.”

The second guy was less tall, less lanky, and couldn’t have been that great of an actor, because his jaw fell when he saw Eitan before he recomposed himself.

They went through the same procedure—NDA, discussion, opinions on baseball.

(“Too bad about the Cosmos botching the postseason last year,” the guy said, and Eitan decided to let that slide.)

“What’s the last book you read?” Eitan asked, because even if they weren’t dating for real, they should probably have something to talk about other than the Cosmos’ playoff prospects and how Eitan factored into those. He got a scrunch of the guy’s forehead in response.

“Thanks for making the trip,” Gabe said.

Eitan didn’t get a chance to ask the third candidate anything.

A tall guy with sandy blond hair came in, spotted Eitan—his eyes widened behind his glasses—then turned around and strode right back out.

“Well,” Gabe said, “definitely not him.”

It all happened so fast that Eitan barely had time to register the guy’s face as anything other than a handsome blur. A handsome vaguely familiar blur.

Was that…?

Eitan didn’t bother waiting to see if the guy would regain his nerve and come back. He hopped out of his chair and sped out into the hotel hallway to Gabe’s vocal objections, mind going momentarily dizzy at the swirling paisley-patterned carpet.

“Hey”—Eitan called to the guy who was standing at the elevator, studying his own reflection in the buffed surface of its doors—“you okay, buddy?”

The man was tall, taller than Eitan, certainly. Tall enough to be comment-worthy any place but a locker room. Slowly, he turned.

Brown eyes. A pronounced jawline. A kippah.

It was funny how it always took a second to recognize someone you knew but hadn’t seen in a long time. Then, suddenly, it clicked, and the world went swimmy.

Akiva .

Who was here and not wherever he’d disappeared to years ago. Who, judging by the elevator’s lit-up call button, might vanish again like a desert mirage.

“Hey,” Eitan said, because that was easier than saying something like: It’s good to see you . Which it was. Or how long has it been? Because Eitan knew the exact answer to that question. Seven years was a long time. He settled for, “You should come back.”

For a second, Akiva looked like he might flee anyway.

His shoulders—not quite as pitcher-broad as they had been when they’d played in the same league, but not that much narrower either—fell from where they were bunched defensively by his ears.

He touched his kippah, clipped to his hair, a not-quite-brown, not-quite blond like the sand of the Arizona desert.

Eitan had forgotten he did that, had forgotten the way his glasses magnified the intense brown of his eyes.

Time hadn’t changed the challenge in Akiva’s jaw. “All right,” he said finally. Somehow, impossibly, Eitan had forgotten the depth of his voice.

Akiva walked back toward the conference room. Eitan followed at a distance he calculated as far enough to be nonthreatening, but close enough to intervene if Akiva made another break for it.

Inside, they resettled around the table, Eitan and Akiva sitting across from one another like it was a job interview, which Eitan supposed it was.

Gabe looked between them, confusion wrinkling his forehead.

Eitan’s manners kicked in, even if the rest of his brain was firmly occupied with shuffling through questions like flashcards. What happened and why and what Akiva was doing here and why he’d spun around as soon as he’d seen Eitan.

“Gabe, this is Akiva Goldfarb. We played together in the Arizona Fall League. Akiva, this is Gabe Medlinger, my agent.”

“Akiva?” Gabe flipped through a stack of paperwork. “You’re not on the list.”

Akiva didn’t look surprised. “I use the name Spencer Lattimore for modeling work.”

“Fine,” Gabe said grudgingly, just as Eitan said, “ Spencer Lattimore —really?”

“Yes, yes, what was it before Ellis Island?” Akiva waved a dismissive hand.

Annoyed looked much better on him than spooked.

Even if he bit his lip like he hadn’t meant to say that.

His mouth went white, then deeper red, and seven years was a long time, but not so long that Eitan had forgotten that Akiva always did that.

That, for whatever reason, he’d always watched Akiva do that.

“Man, it’s really good to see you,” Eitan said. The wrong thing to say, because Akiva’s back stiffened again. Eitan pressed on. “I think there’s a form.” He slid an NDA across the table.

Akiva looked it over, eyes quickly scanning the page.

He really did look good. Seven years older: time enough for his face to thin out, revealing sharp cheekbones, for his hair to get slightly longer than he’d worn it when they’d played together in Arizona as prospects.

Thinner than the last time Eitan had seen him, when they’d exchanged a perfunctory hug on the last day of the short fall season like it was the last day of sleepaway camp along with promises to see each other at spring training the following year.

Except Eitan had shown up to spring training and Akiva never had. He’d left without so much as a text, just a simple transactional statement from his team saying he wouldn’t be returning.

Then he’d been gone. For seven fucking years.

Now he was looking at Eitan from across the table, the overhead lights reflecting off his glasses. “Any preference for what name I sign this as?”

“You don’t have to,” Eitan said, just as Gabe said, “Your real one.”

Akiva signed, a dash of his signature across the page, like his skill at giving autographs—which they’d both done a lot of in the Fall League, for kids willingly and for collectors banking on getting a souvenir from the next big-name player more grudgingly—had faded. He slid the agreement back to Eitan.

“What’s the last book you’ve read?” Eitan asked.

“How long you got?”

And right, he remembered Akiva toting around books, brick-heavy things with bent-back covers like he hadn’t wanted other players to give him a hard time about what he’d been reading. “How do you feel about baseball?” Eitan said.

That got a less enthusiastic response. “Baseball’s fine.” Said in a way like it wasn’t.

“Great, you’re hired.”

“Eitan”—Akiva’s voice rumbled off the hard-top surface of the table—“what are you actually hiring me to do?”

“I need a boyfriend,” Eitan blurted. A statement followed by a pronounced silence.

“Right.” Akiva pushed his chair back, then stood carefully like he was holding himself together by a few weakening threads. “I don’t know what this is, but it’s not particularly funny.”

As if Eitan had sought him out after seven years to pull a prank .

Gabe cleared his throat. “I can assure you that—despite my best attempts to intercede—this is a serious offer. That piece of paper is as much to protect you as it is Eitan from this mishigas.”

Akiva sat. There was something wary in the set of his shoulders.

Not wary: skittish . Like he’d spent the past seven years being rightly suspicious of things.

“Okay.” He folded his hands. It was hard to tell from across the table, but pitchers’ hands were usually ridged in calluses, imperfectly tanned from being outdoors, one darker from the other as an effect of wearing a glove.

Akiva’s hands looked smooth, and Eitan got the urge to slide them between his own, to check for the roughness of his calluses, the freckles sun brought out.

To catalog all the other subtle ways Akiva might have changed since that month in Arizona.

When they hadn’t been friends, exactly. Friendly, the way that Eitan was friendly with people he’d gone to high school with, like Akiva was merely a guy from fourth period who’d drifted away after graduation.

Why’d you quit? A question Eitan couldn’t ask, not in front of Gabe, not now, when Akiva had just been convinced to stay. Along with its corollaries. Why’d you ghost me? Was it because of something I did? Or didn’t do?

“Well,” Gabe said, when it’d become clear that Eitan wasn’t going to provide more details, “here’s what we’re thinking.”