Sex & Sourdough (2 page)

If Anders had known that he was going to be trying to find those shelters and roads on his own, he would have paid more attention.

“You made it!”

Anders’s head shot up toward the sound. Fifty feet from the trail, free of the heavy blue coat, hat, and gloves, stood the man with the thick brown beard. He had also stripped off his pack and was leaning against it, eating a sandwich. Anders felt his breath catch as he took in the way the man’s tight Under Armour turtleneck clung to his body like a second skin, highlighting muscles that most amateur body builders would have killed for.

Anders dropped his gaze quickly. He had been with Joel for two years now, and just because the man had decided to take a summer class instead of going on the hike they had spent six months planning didn’t mean Anders could drool over random strangers. “One foot in front of the other.” Anders tried to shrug. A sharp pain shot through his shoulders as the weight of his pack shifted.

“That’s right. You should take a break and come sit down.” The man gestured to several cut logs set in a circle.

Anders was only too grateful to get the pack off, but he kept his eyes down while he unbuckled the hip and chest straps. Once the buckles were undone, he swung the heavy bag down to the ground and collapsed onto an empty log. He dug out his water bottle and drained it.

“So, are you doing this on your own?” Anders asked.

The man shoved the last of his sandwich into his mouth and nodded. “Yeah, I’m on my own. There are plenty of places to get food, towns at least once a week. It’s not bad.”

“Have you done this before?”

“I hiked it going the other direction last year, came south from Maine. I wanted to finish the trail going north this year, but I’m off to a late start. Most people start in March, but I hate the cold.”

Anders knew that was true. He’d rearranged finals exams and done extra papers to get out here as fast as possible. It was only the last week of April, but it would be almost impossible to finish the entire trail before the park service closed Mount Katahdin, the last peak on the Appalachian Trail, in October. Or rather, it would have been impossible for him. The stranger in front of him had hiked up the trail like a mountain goat, as though he’d been born to it, so he would probably finish in time.

“But you’ve already finished the whole thing?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve hiked the entire Appalachian Trail? The hard way?”

The man leaned close. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret. It’s the same trail, both directions. It’s no harder going south. There just aren’t as many people. After the hike I did before, doing the southbound hike wasn’t that difficult.”

“What did you hike before?

“The Pacific Crest Trail.”

Anders gaped. “Shit….” He’d heard Joel talk about the much longer, much harder Pacific Crest Trail with awe. The isolated, difficult trail ran from Mexico to Canada, and unlike the popular Appalachian Trail, there were very few towns nearby and none of the shelters and amenities that made the Appalachian Trail seem hospitable. On the Pacific Crest Trail, hikers had to rely on themselves and outside support for their survival. Anders hadn’t given it that much thought, since Joel had said hiking it would be a logistical nightmare.

Spending a lifetime hiking long-distance trails would explain those rigid, lean muscles, if nothing else. Not the shoulders, or the arms that looked like they could break Anders in half, but maybe the man had lifted weights before he started hiking.

“I’m from the West Coast,” he explained. “Yosemite was practically in my backyard growing up, so the Pacific Crest Trail was kind of familiar territory. I loved it by the end, so I thought I’d come out here and see what all the fuss was about. What about you?”

Anders looked around, honestly surprised he had even made it this far. “This has been sort of an obsession of mine for the last six months or so. There’s not a whole lot of outdoors stuff in Florida, and what there is, everybody ignores. There are miles of jogging trails on the University of North Florida campus, and there’s never anybody on them. People there would rather wait in line for an hour so they can hop on a treadmill. I was trying to get my partner to hike out to this really cool beach with me, and he started talking about hikes he’d done before. He said he had done a few big sections of the Appalachian Trail, and he wanted to do the whole thing, so….”

“And then he didn’t show up?”

Anders sighed. He didn’t need to tell a complete stranger about his issues with Joel. He had decided in his freshman year of high school that he was never going to live his life in the closet, but he had grown up a lot in the years since he defiantly told his family, and anyone else who would listen, that he was gay and proud. Most of the world, Anders had learned, was filled with decent people who responded to others with whatever attitude they were met with. So if Anders didn’t point out that he was gay, if he didn’t act like it was a big deal, no one else acted like it was a big deal either.

“Just because he had something come up doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy the hike.” The man smiled.

“He didn’t have something come up. He found an excuse not to come with me. The day before we were both supposed to get on the bus to Atlanta, he petitioned to get into a summer class instead.”

“Hmm. Bad timing, or did he just not want to go?”

“Really bad timing,” Anders lied. “I spent all this money buying stuff”—he gestured to his pack—“and saving up so I could afford to not work this summer, and he’s the one who couldn’t make it. But this is all I’ve been able to think about for weeks, so I figured I’d give it a try, at least.”

“Give it a try?”

“Yeah.”

The man leaned forward, staring with his mouth open. “You’ve never been hiking before?”

“I’ve gone hiking before, just never overnight.”

“If I had known down at the parking lot, I’d have told you to go back to the visitor center. It’s still the fastest way back to civilization.”

“I don’t want to go back,” Anders said. The sooner he went back to Jacksonville, the sooner the rest of his life would start. He was willing to do whatever it took to steal a few more weeks of freedom, even if it meant making a fool of himself and inciting Joel’s wrath. “I haven’t done this before, but he walked me through the equipment and stuff. It’s camping. Walking and camping. Like you said, most of it is putting one foot in front of the other.”

“Look,” the man said as he fished out a clear plastic bottle filled with water, “your friend would be the first to tell you that you shouldn’t be out here. And if not, he’s an idiot. This might be Georgia, but it’s still the mountains. It’s going to get cold tonight. Not below freezing, but cold. People die on hiking trails every year—the quickest way to become one of them is to jump into a situation you’re not prepared for.”

“I know there are shelters where you can stay overnight, and I didn’t buy cheap gear. I think I’ll be just fine.”

“Do you have a map? A guide listing shelters, water sources, things like that? A water filter, lighter, and all that stuff?”

“Well, most of it. I mean,
we
had a map, but it was in his pack. I meant to buy one down at the visitor center, but I….” He’d been too stunned by Joel’s voice mail to walk, much less to think clearly. “I forgot.”

Anders didn’t think it was possible for the man’s mouth to drop open farther, but it did. The man didn’t have to look at Anders like he was a complete moron. He had read the guidebook, even though he didn’t have his own copy. He had never tried to set up his tent except in Joel’s living room, but it was fairly simple. He had never slept in his sleeping bag, but it was rated to well below zero, and he had a good sleeping pad to go with it.

The stranger closed his mouth and tightened the cap on his water bottle. “Huh. You know, I like to get a slow start myself,” the man said carefully. “You can hike with me for a bit, just in case you run into trouble.”

“I’ll be fine,” Anders insisted.

“You probably will be. But meeting new people is part of the experience, isn’t it? Besides, I am a hell of a good cook.”

“You cook?”

“Well,” the stranger said, looking sheepish. “I bake.”

“You bake?” Anders laughed. “Out here in the middle of the forest?”

The man smiled brightly. “I bake everywhere. Except hotels—they get a little touchy about smoke detectors.”

“You seriously bake?”

“Bread is cheaper than crack.”

“What?”

“I mean that it’s addictive. It’s my addiction, anyway. That’s how I got my trail name. I’m Kevin, Kevin Winters, but folks call me Sourdough.”

“Trail name?”

“Your
friend
didn’t even mention that? Female hikers started it a long time ago, going by a pseudonym so hikers coming behind them wouldn’t be able to see they were a single woman from reading the shelter logs. Everybody uses one, at least for signing the logs and registers.”

“They do?”

“Usually.”

“Oh.” Anders felt like an idiot. He might as well have tattooed the word
NEWBIE
across his forehead. “Was I supposed to do that down at the visitor center?”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. Someone will give you a nickname or two before long, you can bet on that. Or I’ll just keep calling you Butch.”

“Butch?”

Kevin nodded with enthusiasm.

“Why Butch?” Anders gestured down at his skinny chest.

Kevin’s smile didn’t falter. “I’m not very creative.”

Anders sighed and nodded. “Okay, I’m game. I don’t want to be called Butch, though.”

That night, Anders followed Kevin to a shelter just past Springer Mountain. When he went toward the shelter, Kevin tugged on his shoulder, pulling him toward a couple of small tents set up about fifty yards away. “Toilets are great, a big fire pit is great, but the shelters aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”

“But what if it rains?”

“Unless you bought your tent at Walmart, it’ll keep you dry,” Kevin made a noncommittal grunt. “And there are mice and chipmunks in there.”

“Chipmunks?” Anders chuckled. “A guy your size is afraid of a few chipmunks?”

“Those mice and chipmunks will eat through your pack just for the salt that’s soaked into the fabric from your sweat. If you aren’t an active sleeper, they’ll eat through your sleeping bag too. They’re evil. Tents are better. You don’t have to put up with twelve other people snoring, no one trips over you in the middle of the night, and you can sleep naked. Tents are always better.” Kevin hesitated. “Unless there’s a flash flood, anyway. It’s hard to climb a tent.”

“You sleep naked?” Anders whispered before he could stop himself.

Kevin nodded, laughing, and strolled toward a small campsite, where another tent was already set up.

Anders huffed. He definitely wasn’t planning on sleeping naked without Joel around. He set up his tent in an area that had obviously been used before, cleared of rocks, with a bit of soft grass beneath it. He rolled out the ground cloth, staked out the tent and tarp, and then tossed his air mattress and sleeping bag inside. He opened the small valve so that mattress could inflate, fluffed the down sleeping bag, and then set his backpack in the corner of the tent. The tent was large enough for two men. It fit him, his equipment, and had room to spare. It was also four pounds heavier than a single-person backpacking tent, but he hadn’t been planning on carrying it, or sleeping in it alone. If he couldn’t talk Joel into joining him, he would have to buy something lighter.

His treacherous brain conjured up images of what all of those muscles on Kevin’s chest would look like as the man slept naked in his tent, but he shook his head and forced those thoughts aside. Joel got angry enough when he imagined Anders was thinking about other men. It was better just to avoid it altogether.

When he was finished, he crawled outside and saw Kevin fiddling with pots, plastic bags of food, and tiny plastic bottles.

“So what were you planning on doing for food?” Kevin asked, looking up at him from his spot by the fire.

Anders froze, struck dumb by Kevin’s intensely chocolate-colored eyes. While they were hiking, Kevin had kept his sunglasses on, and Anders hadn’t actually seen his eyes. The sheer depth and sparkle of them was so striking Anders didn’t even realize Kevin had asked him something. As Anders stared at him, Kevin reached into a large plastic bag filled with flour. He pulled out a flour-coated mass, turned it in his hands until it formed a ball, and then set it into the center of a small frying pan.

“Did your friend pack all the food too?”

“What?” Anders shook his head. “No, I brought food. Hang on.” He sat down by the fire with a bag of freeze-dried pasta he’d bought from a sporting goods store. “I just brought these….”

“Lasagna?” Kevin read the label. “That one’s okay. Or it was the last time I tried it. Too pricey for me, most of the time. If you want to share, I can spice it up and turn this into garlic bread to go with it.”

The package was supposed to feed two anyway. “Sure.”

Kevin fiddled with a tiny clear bottle of spices. Anders watched him sprinkle the top of the white ball of dough with water, then with a mixture of white and green spices, and then set his cooking pot on top of the frying pan. Kevin nestled the whole thing directly into the coals in the fire ring, then began boiling water to prepare the freeze-dried dinner. Within ten minutes, the area around the fire pit smelled better than the Italian restaurants Anders enjoyed in Jacksonville.

The food turned out to taste even better than it smelled. “How did you do this?” Anders asked once he had a pie-shaped piece of hot bread in his hands. “This is amazing,” he went on, between bites.

“Told you I can bake. It’s not hard—just flour, water, salt, and time. And garlic.”

“But it’s awesome! Better than real bakery bread! And you forgot the yeast. I know it’s there, I can taste it.”

“You know what they say—hunger is the best spice.”

“If I were
that
hungry, the lasagna would taste better. It’s okay, but it’s not like this.”

“I take my bread seriously. Thank you, though.”