Sex & Sourdough (5 page)

“I’m sorry.” Anders’s hand came to rest on his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

“It’s not your fault,” Kevin whispered. “I miss my family. But you know what they say—you can never go home again.”

Anders nodded. “They also say ‘you should take the bull by the horns.’ My brother Aaron tried that once, in a pasture down the road from our house, when he was fourteen. The damn thing almost killed him. Taking figures of speech literally is seldom a good idea.”

Kevin wasn’t sure if that was bullshit or not, but it made him smile anyway.

That night, Kevin spent twenty minutes stretching and kneading bread dough, lost in memories he would rather have forgotten. He tried to pull himself out of it, but by the time he tipped the bread out of his frying pan and onto a rock to cool, he had lost his appetite. He was vaguely aware of Anders taking care of their dishes and building up the fire, but he didn’t really notice the other man until Anders touched his hand gently.

“Teach me how to make bread. I think I’ve got dishes down, and I could already boil water. But even the other hikers who have done this before can’t stop their eyes from bulging out when they see you come up with fresh bread. Show me how?”

Kevin nodded. “Everybody should know how to make bread.”

He showed Anders what the sourdough starter looked like when it was fed, when it had been given time to proof into a sponge, and then the crumbly dry texture that meant you had just enough flour to form it into stiff dough.

“You don’t time it?” Anders asked, as he mimicked the motion Kevin used to knead the dough. “Any of it?”

“No. It’ll take a different amount of time if the proportions are off, or if the starter has had more or less time to proof. You can tell when it’s been kneaded enough, and when it’s finished rising, just by the way it feels.”

“So is this done?” Anders stretched the dough and folded it over itself.

“Here.” Kevin pulled off a tiny chunk of dough, worked it into a ball, and then pulled it apart from the center. It tore in half. “If you can stretch it until it’s thin enough to see through, then it’s perfect. It’s got to stretch enough to let light through. If it rips, it’s not quite there.”

Anders kept pulling the dough apart and folding it in half. After a few more minutes, he pulled off a tiny ball and stretched it like Kevin had shown him. “Good?” Anders leaned against Kevin and held the tiny sheet of dough up in front of him.

The warmth radiating from Anders body pulled Kevin like a magnet. He caught himself before he leaned too close, shifting his weight back.

“Perfect,” Kevin said. “Now just throw it into the flour, hang it up with the rest of the food, and in the morning it’ll be ready to go.”

“That’s it? Just let it sit over night?”

“Yes. You just made breakfast. Mostly.”

“Cool. You better?”

Kevin looked at the innocent smile on Anders’s face and wanted to laugh. Anders Blankenship might not know the first thing about hiking, but he was better at reading people than most folks Kevin met on the trail. “Yeah, I think so. I wish we had some beer, but I’m good.”

“Honest?”

“Yes. I honestly want a beer.”

Kevin laughed when a small blob of bread dough smacked him in the head.

They came down from the Blood Mountain shelter to a little store called Mountain Crossings in Neels Gap in the late morning. As much as Kevin wanted to relax and take a shower, he was already suffering from the preoccupation with food that always set in after he’d been hiking for a while. He dropped his pack outside the retail store and nodded for Anders to do the same. He grabbed four candy bars and plopped them on the counter. The clerk didn’t even look at him funny when he pulled two more candy bars out of a display by the cash register and added them to the pile. Anders came up behind him with a pile of candy bars and cream-filled cupcakes in his arms.

They made it a whole three steps out of the store before Anders began tearing into a cupcake.

“Told you!” called Bumblebee, the retired police officer they had camped with the first night. “It’s all about the food!”

Anders tried to mumble something around a mouthful of chocolate cake, but he didn’t quite manage it. Kevin thought about teasing him, but he couldn’t say anything with his own mouth filled with nougat and caramel.

“Yeah, fine,” Anders said, even though it came out muffled.

Kevin finished the first candy bar in two bites and finally felt the hunger quiet down. He stared at the other five, trying to decide if it was worth eating all of them. “So, what time is your boyfriend supposed to show up?” he asked, opening a second candy bar.

“Fuck if I know,” Anders said, waving him off to open another cupcake. Then he froze, with his fingers wrapped in the plastic, as Kevin’s question sank in. Anders looked up at him, his expression a mixture of defiance and fear. “Do you care?”

“That I was right about the boyfriend thing? Not really. That he’s not here? A little. Seems like he could have at least told you what time to expect him.”

“Oh. Well, he just left me a voice mail. And he was… he was kind of pissed off. He didn’t want me to come up here on my own. I kept my phone off from the bus terminal on, to save the battery. He was pissed about that too. How did you know?”

Kevin couldn’t believe that Anders could be that oblivious. “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.”

“Gaydar, man. You might as well be walking around with eyeliner and a rainbow T-shirt. Your looks and mannerisms scream gay. And you turn pink whenever you talk about this mystery ‘hiking partner.’”

“I do?”

“Big-time.” Technically, he turned pink or got pale and trembled, but that wasn’t any of Kevin’s business.

“Oh.” Anders seemed more nervous still. “So, by gaydar, do you mean….”

“Well, yeah,” Kevin admitted. He had thought that was pretty obvious too.

“So, you’re…. What exactly do you… I mean, what are your expectations here?”

Kevin stepped back, not sure if he should feel hurt or furious. How the hell could Anders spend three days hanging out with him and assume that the only reason he had helped him was to take advantage of him?

“Look, Anders, if you saw someone broken down by the side of the road, you probably wouldn’t pull over to help them. But if they were wearing a letterman jacket from your old high school, you might, right?”

“No. I hated high school. What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Are you really the type of person who wouldn’t lend a hand without trying to figure out how to take advantage of the situation?”

“I…. That’s not what I meant!”

“Really? Because that’s what it sounded like.”

“I didn’t mean it the way it came out. I just….”

“Just what?”

“I just assumed that you wouldn’t have brought it up unless you were interested. I didn’t mean that… that I thought….”

Kevin rubbed his eyes. “All right.”

“All right?”

“Yeah.”

“So…. You’re….”

“Not interested,” Kevin said, his voice flat.

“You’re not?” Anders gaped at him.

“No. It’s nothing personal,” Kevin said quickly. “You’re cute, but I don’t do relationships. I don’t do hookups, either. I don’t do….” Kevin wagged his fingers, as if that might help him figure out what to say. “I don’t do attachments. To anyone.”

“Oh.” Anders shrank as a sigh escaped his lips. “Okay. I’m sorry, I just assumed that… I shouldn’t have assumed anything. But, to be fair, every other time someone has outed me all of a sudden, they’ve either wanted to hook up or beat the shit out of me. And this is Georgia, after all.”

“Slow down there, Butch.” Kevin tried to laugh. “This is Georgia, but it’s also the Appalachian Trail. Long-distance hikers like to tell people to hike their own hike. Usually, they mean to find a way to survive that works for you, instead of just copying what everybody else is doing. But they apply it to real life too. They live the lives that work for them, and they respect when other people do the same. You won’t find more tolerance anywhere else in the world. Well, not outside of a gay pride parade, anyway. Whether you’re straight or flaming, no one out here cares. Just about the only thing they don’t tolerate are assholes. So, relax, okay?”

Anders sighed again, but then a soft smile broke across his lips. “I’m sorry,” he said as he rubbed the back of his head nervously.

“It’s fine. Why don’t you go ask about your friend in the store? He might have left a message for you there.”

Anders nodded with a sheepish smile.

Kevin slapped Anders on the shoulder and wandered toward the hostel. Hikers who had stayed the previous night were still lingering outside, taking their time packing, repacking, and adjusting their gear. Kevin checked in, dropped his pack on a bunk, and fished out a handful of quarters, his clean set of clothes, and his shower kit. After he washed off the dirt, mud, and grime of the trail, he looked at the light disposable razor in his kit. He thought about shaving off his beard, but changed his mind.

The beard was nice when it was cold. It also covered up half of the sunburn-like rash that he got on his cheeks when he spent too much time in the sun. The rash was just one of many symptoms that made it impossible to hide his condition. It was the most obvious and the most embarrassing of all of them.

He remembered weekends when he was a child, when his dad would take him and his sister skiing in Mammoth Lakes. No matter how much sunscreen his dad slathered on, or how much time he spent in the lodge instead of on the slopes, he always ended up looking sunburned. He also spent more time holding a hot cup of coffee than he spent skiing. Looking back, the symptoms had been obvious for a long time, but no one in Kevin’s family had known to pay attention to them. Only in the past few years had Kevin realized just how much pain his dad had been in—not just toward the end, but for decades before others noticed how sick he was.

When Kevin was cleaned up, he tossed his dirty clothes into a coin-operated washing machine and went to buy fresh supplies. When he came out of the outfitter and general store with fuel for his stove, flour, pancake mix, pasta, and everything else he saw that looked light and tempting, he saw Anders standing with his arms around the neck of an attractive, tall young man in the parking lot.

A
NDERS
FELT
like a bastard. Kevin had done nothing but help him, and he’d repaid that kindness by insisting that the man was either a gay-bashing asshole or was trying to get into his pants. The wounded look in those chocolate eyes made Anders want to smack himself. Instead, he’d taken Kevin’s advice and gone into the outdoor gear section of the store and asked about Joel. The clerk said he hadn’t seen him. Anders was less disappointed than he should have been. He thought about asking the clerk what they charged for a ride into town, but decided against it.

When he turned toward the exit, he saw Joel’s familiar red Jeep Wrangler pull into the gravel parking lot, kicking up mud as it skidded to a halt. Anders could make out Joel’s uneven brown hair through the windshield. His hair stood up at impossible angles, courtesy of an expensive stylist and even more expensive hair gel, so there was no mistaking him.

Anders stared at the Jeep, wondering if Joel was still going to be angry. He watched as his boyfriend climbed out and slammed the door shut, then scanned the gravel parking lot. Anders could tell just from his posture that Joel was still mad, even though his face looked calm enough.

He flashed Anders a bright smile and strode toward him. As soon as he was within reach, Joel pulled him into a quick, hard kiss. Anders had to wrap his arms around Joel’s neck just to keep from being swept off his feet.

“You made it!” Joel grinned into the kiss. “I was so worried about you that I couldn’t sleep last night! I’m so proud of you, baby!”

“Joel, Joel, stop! Put me down!”

“I’ve just missed you so much! Come on, get your stuff!” Joel opened the back door of the Jeep with the key fob. Anders looked into the storage area and realized there was no chance he would be able to convince Joel to come with him. Joel had left his own backpack and gear in Jacksonville.

“Where’s your stuff?” Joel asked again.

“Over by the store,” Anders said, trying to slip out of Joel’s arms.

“Go on, go get it already.”

“Why?”

“So I can take you home. I’ve got to be back by Monday so I can start on my project for this workshop. If I do well, I’m all but guaranteed a spot in the master’s program next spring. I told you all about it. Or I would have, if you had kept your phone turned on. You know I hate it when you don’t answer your phone, Anders. I worry about you.”

“I didn’t want to waste the battery.”

“You should have brought a spare or two. You have to leave your phone on, Anders, especially when we’re apart.”

“I don’t have a spare. I didn’t think we were going to be apart,” Anders pointed out.

“I know. And I’m sorry, but I can’t walk away from the English program right now. If my career stalls at this point, I’m going to be stuck in some minimum-wage job in Ocala forever. I need to stay involved with the university writing program. I don’t have to be back until Monday morning, though, so I thought we could get a hotel in Blairsville tonight, just you and me, and drive back to Florida in the morning.”