Sex & Sourdough (11 page)

“I….” Anders reached for his water bottle and turned away, then took a few quick drinks to calm his overactive libido. Hiking up a mountain he could manage. Hiking up a mountain with a hard-on was not something he wanted to try. “I need to save my water….”

“There’s water right at the top,” Kevin promised. “Two more hours, tops. Come on. I’ll walk with you and poke you every time you start getting slow.”

Anders fell into step behind Kevin and tried to keep up. As he followed Kevin up the mountain, his gaze trailed over Kevin’s body. His leg muscles were so well defined that Anders could make out the individual hills and valleys of each section of his legs beneath the tight khaki hiking pants, and the slight dip before Kevin’s thighs snaked up into the curve of his ass was so tempting that Anders wanted to run his fingers over the fabric. It didn’t help his imagination to know the thin seam encircling each of Kevin’s pant legs hid a zipper designed to turn the pants into equally tight shorts. He wanted to run his fingers over every single contour of Kevin’s body. By the time they finished the second half of the climb, Anders was so turned on he wanted to throw Kevin down on the shelter floor and grind his cock against him, audience be damned.

“Butch and Sourdough made it to the top!” Chex Mix shouted the moment they rounded the last corner.

Spider waved at them. “Hey! Congrats, Butch! Sourdough didn’t have to carry you, did he?”

Anders panted a little more than necessary. “Only for a few miles.”

Anders watched Kevin make dinner, letting his imagination run wild every time Kevin moved in a way Anders could imagine taking advantage of. Anders took his water filter, all of their water bottles, and Kevin’s large cooking pot, and went to fetch water. Before he began filling the water bottles, he slipped away from the shelter into the woods.

In a thick clump of trees, he stroked himself off quickly, and felt guilty about it as soon as he was finished. As hot as Kevin was, Anders wondered if he was subconsciously using Kevin’s image so he didn’t fantasize about Joel.

In the three weeks since he’d told Joel to find someone else, the numb desolation he’d been expecting hadn’t actually happened. Part of it, he knew, was the endorphin-based euphoria that came from hiking all day. But part of it was also that he hadn’t had to face the reality that he was alone yet. Thanks to Kevin’s company, his jokes, and his stories, Anders hadn’t felt broken up about his relationship ending. Anders loved hiking with Kevin, loved his easygoing and forgiving nature. He didn’t want to risk the friendship they were building by using Kevin to rebound from his relationship with Joel, even if it was only in his head.

It didn’t seem fair to fantasize about Kevin when there was a very real possibility Anders was just using the fantasy as a Band-Aid to make himself feel better. And the fantasy didn’t even make him feel better. It just made him feel guilty. Kevin didn’t want him. Kevin had insisted he wasn’t interested, even after Anders told Joel to leave. The reason Anders had stayed with Joel for as long as he did was because so much of his sense of self was wrapped up in being wanted, in being desired. On some level, he had come to recognize that Joel never desired him as a person, but he had been able to delude himself into thinking Joel’s possessiveness was actual desire.

Anders wiped his hand on the grass and went back to filter water, feeling even more unsettled than he had before, and now disappointed too. He tried to tell himself it was a good thing Kevin wasn’t interested. The attraction he felt was too intense to be genuine, too new to be anything but displaced feelings he still had for Joel. It would just end badly if Kevin was interested.

Even after coming in his own hand, the moment he returned to the shelter and saw Kevin sitting and laughing with the other hikers around the fire, lust hit him like a sucker punch. He was relieved the shelter was packed. Kevin set up his tent in a designated spot next to the shelter, and Anders breathed a quiet prayer of thanks that the only other designated tent sites were on the opposite side of the shelter. Anders doubted he would be able to sleep if they stayed together in the shelter, and he was desperate for rest. Every muscle in his body felt like it was burning. When he blew up his sleeping pad, it took a few moments before he found the willpower to resist throwing himself down on it and passing out.

Anders joined the others, where he could already smell the now familiar tang of sourdough bread. Caboose was there, sitting with Spider and Chex Mix from Pensacola. They were all fixing their own meals. Anders pulled out a large foil packet of dried tortilla soup and two Little Debbie brownies. He ripped the top off the soup and dumped it into the pot of water Kevin set onto the fire grate. He grabbed Kevin’s bandana, lifted the pot slightly, and swished it to mix everything together. Kevin touched his elbow, and Anders passed the bandana back to him. Kevin wrapped the bandana around his hands and pulled the frying pan, with their bread baking in it, out of the coals.

“Oooh,” Caboose cooed. “You two are so cute together! Like an old married couple. How long have you two been friends?”

“Actually,” Anders admitted, “we just met a month ago. We started hiking together on the first day at Springer Mountain.”

“Really?” Caboose grinned. “Damn, did you ever get lucky!”

“You have no idea,” Anders said. “I’d never been backpacking before. I probably would have survived the hike from Springer Mountain to Mountain Crossings, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it enough to keep going if Sourdough hadn’t come to my rescue.”

Spider looked up at him from behind a steaming cup of hot chocolate. “You’d never gone backpacking before and you decided to jump right into hiking the Appalachian Trail?”

Anders didn’t want to explain it. He met Kevin’s eyes and the worried expression he saw there was comforting. Kevin didn’t want him to get upset about Joel again, either.

“I like to jump into things headfirst,” Anders lied. “Anything else just gives me an excuse to back out.”

“Damn,” said Caboose again. “No wonder he calls you Butch. That takes balls.”

Anders shook his head. “No, I’m afraid it only takes stupidity. Sourdough calls me Butch because I’m such a big guy.”

“Obviously.” Chex Mix nodded as though it made perfect sense.

“I might start calling him Switchback,” Kevin broke in. Anders watched him cut a triangle out of the loaf of bread. He passed it up to Anders without a word. “When we stopped for lunch, he spent five minutes bitching about how North Carolina doesn’t seem to believe in putting switchbacks on the trail.”

“No, that doesn’t work. Switchback and Sourdough doesn’t sound quite as good as Butch and Sourdough,” said Spider.

“Why does it matter?” asked Anders. He didn’t want to sound ungrateful, but he didn’t see what the big deal about a trail name was. It was just like a handle for online forums and chat rooms—it wasn’t really you and no one else paid attention to it, just to what you had to say. And he really didn’t want to pick one based on how it sounded paired with Kevin’s trail name. “Can’t I just be Anders?”

“No,” Chex Mix and Spider said together.

“You’ve got to embrace the tradition,” Chex Mix said whimsically. “It’s all about getting out into nature, connecting with the world and your fellow man… or woman,” he said, nodding at Caboose. “That includes connecting with those who’ve come before, you know?”

Anders thought about asking to share whatever Chex Mix was on, but that would probably just offend him. He nodded, smiled, and kept his cynical side to himself.

After he finished washing their dishes, he turned in early, crawling into his sleeping bag and thinking about the flush that had colored Kevin’s cheeks the night they spent in the hotel.

Anders wanted to see Kevin without his beard. He wasn’t sure what part of the pink tint to his skin was a blush and what part was from the disease, but he thought if he could see Kevin without his beard, it might be easier to tell if he was actually blushing. And damn it, Anders wanted to see him blush.

The hike the next day proved even more difficult than the first. Anders’s muscles didn’t stop aching when he got moving, and he had trouble catching his breath. He was even panting on the few sections of the Smoky Mountains where the trail was flat. The third morning they hiked up to the top of the concrete observation tower on Clingmans Dome, where Anders turned his phone on long enough to snap a few pictures of the valleys below, including one of Kevin resting both of his arms on the handrail. A tourist snapped a picture of them both together, and then Anders shut his phone off again. He regretted turning his phone off when Chex Mix went insane and attacked a vending machine that refused to give up his purchase.

“I have to buy a point-and-shoot camera,” Anders mused.

“There are disposable ones at the gift shop,” Kevin pointed out.

“Nah. No memory card. I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

“Well, this is the highest point on the North Carolina section of the trail. Buying a camera down the trail won’t get you more pictures now.”

“The highest point?” Anders asked, heading down the stairs. “Does that mean it gets easier?”

“Nope. We can slow down if you want, though.”

Anders nodded. He wanted to get as close to the end of the trail as possible before he had to leave at the end of August, but he couldn’t keep going at Kevin’s pace.

By their fifth morning inside the Great Smoky Mountains, the muscle aches were impossible to ignore. Anders staggered out of the shelter to filter some fresh water and sank to his knees, coughing. He made it to the water pump before another coughing fit left him doubled over and cold. He felt strong arms close around him as the coughing fit shook his entire body. Calloused fingers rubbed soft circles into his shoulders, and Anders felt the tickle of coarse hair against his temple.

“You’re burning up,” Kevin whispered against his forehead. “Come on. Let’s get you back to your sleeping bag. I’ll get you some ibuprofen.”

Anders folded his arms across his chest and shook his head. “You’ve got to stay away…. Don’t want you to get sick too….”

“I’ve already been exposed to the same things you have. One more fun amenity the shelters offer. Come on.”

“Why use them, then? You said you hate shelters.”

Kevin smiled and shook his head. He fumbled with a crumpled piece of paper, flattened it out, and handed it to Anders. The small blue type on the yellow carbon copy blurred as Anders tried to read it. “All backcountry hikers in the Smokies are required to sleep in the shelters, unless they’re full,” Kevin explained.

“Oh. I didn’t know that.” Anders shivered and tried to resist another coughing fit that seized him. Maybe Kevin hadn’t been avoiding camping alone with him after all. “That means I can’t just hide in my tent until this goes away, huh?”

“Not until we get past Davenport Gap. I expected to get there by lunchtime, catch a shuttle into town. Let’s see if we can get your fever down, then we’ll figure out how to get to Davenport Gap.”

Anders gasped when the world fell away from him. His feet left the ground as Kevin tightened his arms around him, shifted, and lifted him up easily. “Hey!”

Soon Anders was tucked back into his sleeping bag. Kevin knelt beside him on the empty sleeping platform and passed him a plastic bottle filled with fresh water. “Take these,” Kevin said as he slipped a couple of ibuprofen into his mouth and then held the water up to his lips. Anders’s chest ached and he had trouble catching his breath, but he was so thirsty he drained the entire bottle, gulping down water between each strained breath. “Once your fever drops, we’ll get to the road and hitchhike into Gatlinburg—it’s about seven miles over the Tennessee state line. You can take a few days to rest, see a doctor if you’ve got to.”

“What?” Anders tried to sit up. The world spun as soon as he lifted his head, so he gave up. “I don’t want to leave the trail! I’m fine, just a little sick!”

Kevin poked him. “You don’t want to be out here with the flu, Butch.”

“What about you?”

“What about me? I’ve had my flu shot. And I’ve been out here long enough to get just about everything.”

“But you’re sick…. Aren’t you taking something that makes infections dangerous?”

Kevin shook his head slowly. “Immunosuppressant drugs? No. I’m not that sick yet.”

“Thank God. Are you going to keep going?”

Kevin looked away from him and sighed. “I think I should.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not like you need me anymore, Anders. You’ve been out here for a month and you’ve survived just fine. And just about anybody you meet will be willing to help you out if you get into trouble. If you want to finish the trail, you’ve got the skills and experience you need to manage it on your own.”

Anders noticed that the pink forever coloring Kevin’s cheeks, hidden beneath his scraggly brown beard, seemed to flow down his neck. That, Anders realized, was the blush he had wanted to see so badly. He’d never imagined seeing it because Kevin was embarrassed enough to walk away from him, though.

Anders shut his eyes, trying to tell himself he was being ridiculous. Kevin had helped him out on the trail. They had shared their food and chores, and Kevin had walked him through everything from camping in the backcountry to hitchhiking into towns. Whatever he had thought he’d seen, whatever he imagined in Kevin’s chocolate eyes, had just been wishful thinking. Or worse, maybe he had just been projecting his own desires onto Kevin, imagining all the caring looks he’d so desperately wanted from Joel. If Anders had been in Kevin’s place, with someone fawning over him and following him around like puppy after a breakup, it would have made him feel uncomfortable too.

“I’ll make sure you get to a hotel, so you can rest and get better. And charge your cell phone if you decide to get off the trail for a while.”

“I can just stay here and rest.” Anders tried to sit up to argue, but he was too light-headed to move. “All right, a hotel might be a good idea,” he admitted.

“When the Motrin kicks in.”

The rest of the day was filled with dizzy walks, a long bumpy car ride in the back of an old minivan, and then finally a warm, soft place to rest that felt like heaven after sleeping outside. Anders shucked off his hiking boots and burrowed into the blankets, waiting for his own body heat to warm up the fabric around him. He felt the bed beside him dip and peeked out to see Kevin, still wearing his pack, sitting beside him.