Sex & Sourdough (8 page)

Kevin laughed and held his hand up to help Anders get down. Anders took it without any hesitation, and the warmth that shot through Kevin at the easy contact had nothing to do with Anders’s body heat. As soon as Anders had his feet solidly on the ground, Kevin let go and turned back toward the small side trail they were climbing down. They could see the waterfall from the top of the trail, where an overlook had been built out on the dark cliff, but Kevin had seen the small, unmarked trail leading down over the edge, and he’d had to try it.

“Franklin is a decent-sized town, with real live hotels and everything,” he explained.

“A hotel? With cable? And Wi-Fi?”

“In a town with restaurants, grocery stores, and vending machines.” Kevin smirked. He tested his footing on a large ledge and then climbed down. They were going to be walking along this stretch of highway anyway, to get into Franklin from the trail, so going to see this out-of-the-way waterfall had seemed like a good idea. Seeing it from the bottom of the ravine it fell into might not have been Kevin’s most brilliant plan ever, but he was still determined.

As he skidded down to the next ledge, Kevin saw a small, clear pool. At the top of a dark cliff, an innocent-looking stream turned into a long, crystal cascade that tumbled over ledges and fell in clear sheets like ice until it finally ran into the pool. Boulders had tumbled down from the cliff, probably hundreds of years before, and formed a natural dam. Half of the boulders were flat and dry, and water from the pool spread out and poured over the other half, where it fell hundreds of feet to another pool hidden beneath the canopy of trees.

“Okay,” Anders said beside him. “This was worth it.” He unbuckled his pack and leaned it against one of the higher stones, then sat down and began to unlace his boots.

“What are you doing?”

“Cooling off,” Anders said, setting his boots aside. He stripped off his long-sleeved shirt and the thin tank top he wore beneath it, zipped the legs off his convertible pants, and waded into the water. “Come on! You didn’t drag us seven miles just to sit there, did you?”

Kevin rocked his head from side to side. It had gotten up to seventy-five this afternoon, and the water did look nice. It also looked cold. “I think I’ll pass. There’s a real shower and a hot tub somewhere in Franklin with my name on it.”

“Come on, this feels great!”

“It’s wet!”

“Yes,” Anders said, nodding, “that’s one of the features people tend to like about water.”

Kevin grinned. “Fuck you.”

“You shouldn’t insult the guy who’s already soaked!” Anders shouted. “I don’t have anything to lose by splashing you!”

“I’m out of range!” Kevin shouted, not quite sure if he was.

Anders bent down and raced back toward him, scooping up a handful of water as he moved.

The water arched toward him and dropped, as if by magic, right over his head.

“Bastard.” Kevin wiped the water away from his eyes, glared at Anders, and stood up. He hadn’t even taken his pack off yet. He dropped his pack quickly, though, and slipped out of his trail-running shoes and thick wool socks. He had more layers to shed than Anders, and the skinny man laughed and scooted away, making use of the extra time to go deeper into the pool.

Kevin tossed his shirt aside and plunged into the water after Anders. He stopped three steps into the pool, struck by the cold and the openmouthed shock on Anders’s face.

His first thought, aside from trying to block out the stabbing pain as the blood vessels in his toes constricted, was that he probably looked like shit. He tried to cover up his chest, sure the dusky pink splotches that made his skin look speckled were obvious. He felt the blush rising through his neck and he knew he couldn’t do anything to stop it. He backed out of the water and reached for his shirt again.

“What’s wrong?” Anders dove after him, laughing. “You can’t possibly be shy.”

Kevin pulled his undershirt on and turned away. He didn’t need to hear any jokes about it. He knew what his body looked like. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t care, and he wasn’t sure why it bothered him now.

“Kev, what’s wrong? I was just teasing.”

Kevin sat down to dry off his feet and pull his socks back on.

Anders waded toward him and climbed up onto the rock. He left wet footprints as he made his way toward Kevin. “Is this the whole ‘definitely not interested’ thing? I didn’t mean to stare. I was just surprised, that’s all. But, hell, man, if anyone here has a reason to feel shy, it’s me.”

Kevin slipped on his shoe and began to tighten the laces. “Anders,” he said quietly, “it’s okay. You can ask.”

“Ask what?”

“About the marks on my skin. It’s not my favorite subject, but I’m not ashamed of it, either.”

“Are you serious? Do you really think a sunburn is going to make you any less hot?”

“Sunburn?” Kevin raised a single eyebrow. He ran his fingers over the muscles on his own chest, wondering how Anders could be so distracted by the muscle definition that he wrote off the alternating areas of pink inflammation and white skin on Kevin’s chest as a sunburn. Looking at his own arms and shoulders, though, Kevin was relieved to see his skin didn’t look so bad.

“It’s not a sunburn?”

Kevin shook his head slowly, the humor of the situation vanishing.

“So what is it, then?” Anders sat down beside him, but made no move to retrieve his own clothes.

Kevin took a deep breath and stared at the water. The ripples and sediment Anders had stirred up playing in the water had settled, and the pool was clear down to the bottom now. “I’m sick,” he admitted. He took another deep breath. “I’ve got a disease called lupus. It’s an autoimmune disorder that causes inflammation everywhere in the body. It’s like….” He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. The clinical definition, with all of the many ways it could impact the body, was long and drawn-out. “It’s like a combination of arthritis and an allergy to sunshine.”

“An allergy to sunshine?”

“Basically, yeah. Sunlight makes it worse.”

“But you spend all day outside. Every day.”

“In case you didn’t notice,” Kevin said, nodding up toward the trees above them, “there’s not actually much sunshine on this section of the trail. And I stick to long sleeves and sunblock.”

“And four prescriptions?”

“That too. And Motrin.”

“What all do you have to take for it?”

“Basic stuff. One’s an arthritis medication, one’s a malaria medication that helps control the immune response, prednisone to reduce the inflammation, blood pressure medication, and Motrin—lots of Motrin.”

“Damn. So, you’ve got to take all of that medication every day? For the rest of your life?”

“Yeah.” Until his kidneys failed or his immune system started to cause fibrosis in his lungs. Theoretically, treating the condition early could help him avoid those complications, but Kevin wasn’t putting much stock in that. The same treatments hadn’t stopped it from killing his dad in the end.

“Is it serious?”

Kevin picked up a small shard of rock and tossed it into the pool. “Yeah.”

“How serious?”

“Well—barring random car accidents, my own stupidity, and plagues of zombies—it’ll probably kill me.”

Anders went quiet beside him, but Kevin could almost feel the air around them getting colder.

“Not for a while, though, so you don’t need to worry about dragging my corpse off the trail. My doctor’s pretty optimistic.”

“But you’re not optimistic,” Anders observed.

Kevin tossed another rock into the water. “I have my optimistic moments. Most of the time, I’d gladly put money on the whole ‘plague of zombies’ thing.”

“Because no one ever gets killed by something as mundane as a car accident.” Anders nodded.

“Exactly. That’s so normal it could never possibly happen.”

Anders rolled over and stretched his whole body to reach his pack. He came back a moment later with two candy bars and dropped one into Kevin’s lap. “I’d bake something, but….” Anders gestured around at the rocks and water.

Kevin looked down at the candy bar and reluctantly picked it up. “You know,” he muttered, tearing into the wrapper, “when pity comes in the form of chocolate, it’s not so bad.”

The walk into Franklin was cut short when a pickup truck offered them a lift. They got a room at the Sapphire Inn, and Anders began stripping off his clothes again as soon as the door shut behind them.

“You want to shower first?” Anders asked, hesitating at the bathroom door.

“You go ahead. I intend to use all of the hot water in the hotel, so I can wait.”

Anders hurried into the bathroom, his grin huge. In a moment, Kevin heard the shower start running and finally let himself relax. He went through his pack, emptied trash from his garbage bag and sorted through his laundry, wishing he could wash his pack and sleeping bag. He knew he would feel better as soon as he was in clean clothes. When Kevin ran out of things to do, he fell back onto one of the queen-size beds and enjoyed the soft give of the mattress. The moment he shut his eyes, he saw Anders’s openmouthed stare again. He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to get that image out of his head.

Anders had covered up his shocked reaction well enough, and Kevin was touched that he would even bother. Anders really was a nice guy, emasculating himself just to save Kevin’s ego. Somehow, being able to laugh about it was a relief. He knew Anders had just been humoring him, but the wish that he hadn’t been had shocked him. He felt the desire to see Anders look at him like that for real.

The water shut off far too quickly. Kevin sat up, wishing Anders would just stay in the bathroom. He needed more time to clear his head. Even if Anders’s expression had just been indulgent pity, the image had worked its way into his brain and refused to quit niggling away at him, making him imagine things he needed to stop imagining.

When Anders walked out of the bathroom dripping and wearing nothing but the small hotel towel wrapped around his waist, Kevin wanted to scream.

“Shower’s all yours. If you toss your clothes out, I’ll go throw all of them in the wash together.”

Kevin groaned as he pushed himself off of the bed. His muscles and joints all ached, but enough hot water would get him moving again. He nodded slowly, not trusting himself to speak, and hurried into the bathroom. As soon as the door was closed, Kevin turned the water on to its hottest setting. He leaned on the counter while the bathroom filled with steam around him. He met his own gaze in the mirror and felt like breaking the glass. He could see the pink tint beneath his beard, and the last thing he wanted to do was take off his clothes and obsess over the splotches. He didn’t want to see what Anders actually saw when he looked at him.

When the mirror was coated with steam, Kevin stripped off his clothing and adjusted the shower temperature to the hottest he could stand. Under the spray of the water, he rolled his shoulders and stretched his hands and wrists, trying to work some of the stiffness out of his body. He kept his eyes closed and let the heat wash over him. Despite himself, he let his imagination wander. With his eyes closed, he didn’t have to see the strange colors of his skin. He imagined the way his body had looked before he got sick. Holding fast to that memory, he could delude himself into thinking someone like Anders might actually want him. His body, so long condemned to being isolated and alone, surged to life in an instant. He used what was left of the hotel conditioner and stroked his already weeping cock. Just thinking about Anders’s narrow hips and tight ass, along with imagining Anders looking at him the way he had pretended to that afternoon, was all it took to push him over the edge. He barely had to stroke himself at all. He swallowed the cry that nearly escaped as he spilled into his own hand and then collapsed against the tile wall.

“Fuck…,” Kevin whispered.

As he came back down, he opened his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and reached for the shampoo. He heard the echo of metal clicking against metal and froze.

That couldn’t have been what it sounded like. Because it sounded a hell of a lot like someone trying to close the bathroom door very quietly. Kevin poked his head around the shower curtain. The door was closed and the bathroom was still empty. As Kevin’s eyes began to take in details, he realized the bathroom was completely empty. The clothes he had dumped on the floor by the door were gone.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Kevin tangled his fingers in his hair. He had agreed to put his clothes outside the door, so Anders could throw them in the wash. Anders must have come in to get them.

Kevin smacked his forehead against the tile wall. “Fuck,” he whispered again. “Talk about bad fucking timing….” He smacked his head once more, just for good measure. He took his time washing the grime from a week on the trail from his hair, beard, and body. He took more time to work the kinks out of his muscles and soothe his aching joints beneath the hot spray. He stepped out of the tub but left the shower on so the steam could keep the bathroom warm. He took his time drying off, making sure his hair was dry, and wishing there was a window he could escape out of in the bathroom.

When he finally turned off the water, he heard the television blaring in the room. He wrapped his towel around his waist, bit his lower lip, and prayed Anders wouldn’t make a big deal out of what he’d walked in on. Logically, he knew Anders probably wouldn’t even consider it strange, even if they were both gay. It was totally normal to jack off in the shower. It wasn’t totally normal to jack off in the shower so you’d have the willpower to avoid pouncing on your roommate, but Anders didn’t need to know that.

Kevin gripped the doorknob so tightly his knuckles turned white.

As soon as he opened the door, the smell assaulted him like a physical force. It was strong enough to override his embarrassment, shame, and common sense.

“You ordered pizza?” Kevin found Anders dressed in a pair of boxer shorts and a T-shirt, sitting on one of the beds next to an open box. There was another box beneath it. Anders nodded toward the half of the pizza still left in the box. “You’re amazing!” He grabbed a piece and took three quick bites. “What’s my share come to?” he asked after he finished chewing.