Sex & Sourdough (3 page)

Anders reached for a second pie-shaped piece of bread. “I normally don’t even like bread. Our housekeeper makes soda bread once in a while, and I can’t stand it. It always tastes like metal or something.”

Kevin stared at him for a moment then shook his head. “Well, that would be because baking soda is an alkaline. A lot of cooks add sugar to try and counter the bitter flavor, but it takes an acid to balance it out. The next time you talk to your housekeeper, you should suggest adding a teaspoon of lemon juice to the recipes that bug you.”

Anders groaned. That hadn’t come out right. “My parents both worked long hours when I was young,” he said defensively. “We’re not rich or anything, they had to hire somebody or let me and my brothers live off Pop-Tarts.” That was technically a lie, but Anders didn’t want to mention that between his father’s real estate practice and his commercial development ventures, his family wasn’t exactly middle class. When he was growing up, they had employed three housekeepers, a nanny, and a full-time grounds keeper. It always made Joel uncomfortable, reminding him that they came from very different backgrounds.

Kevin smiled at him. “Nothing wrong with having a housekeeper, or with working long hours.”

“Yeah, whatever. I just meant that this is really good.”

“I should make you pancakes in the morning. Ah, but that means I’ve got to get stuff ready….” Kevin picked up a small plastic container. He scooped a handful of flour into it, added three glugs of water from his bottle, then put the cap back on and mixed it up. “It’s sourdough starter,” Kevin explained. “It’s a wild bacteria and yeast culture. It’s kind of like a pet. You’ve got to feed and water it twice a day.”

“Feed?”

“Flour. The yeast and bacteria in the starter feed off the sugar in the flour. It makes long strands of gluten to hold the bread together, and the bacteria produce a tangy flavor.”

“So you have to carry food for your little science project and food for yourself?”

Kevin laughed and tucked the bottle into his food bag. “It’s all food. Since I did dinner, you get to do the dishes.”

“Dishes….” Anders looked at the pots and pans. There weren’t many dishes, but there was also nothing resembling a sink within ten miles. “I can’t really make more of a fool of myself than I already have, so would you mind telling me how to wash the dishes?”

Kevin dropped his head into his hands, and Anders was pretty sure that the man was trying not to laugh at him. “Seriously?”

“Well, there’s no sink….”

“Take that pot over to the pump by the shelter, fill it with water. Bring it back and boil the water. Pour half of it into another pot. Add soap. Then you take a washcloth, dip it into the soapy water, and use it to wipe the dirty dishes clean. If that doesn’t do it, there’s a tree about ten feet over there. Grab a handful of pine needles.”

“Pine needles?”

“Hold them like a bristle brush, and scrub. Rinse the soap off in the other pot. Again, not rocket science….”

“I understand the mechanics of washing a plate, thanks. What do I do with the water? And with the food in the pot?”

“Oh.” Kevin pulled a bright green bandana out of his food bag. “Hold this over the wash pot. Pour the water out into the other one. Put the crumbs in the garbage bag, put the garbage bag back in the food bag, and hang it all up. Then take the water out into the woods until you can’t see the tents or the shelter and dump it. Easy.”

“Oh. That’s a good idea.”

Anders felt Kevin’s eyes following him as he washed their combined dishes and set them out on rocks to dry. He almost wished Kevin would put his sunglasses back on, because the weight of his eyes on him was unsettling. When he was finished, he went to dump the water and came back to find Kevin tying a length of cord around a small rock. He flung the rock high into the trees, dragging the cord with it. Kevin retrieved the rock and used the cord to hoist both of their food bags high into a tree, then carefully tied the cord off.

They sat next to the fire pit, and soon the older couple who had started up the trail at the same time joined them. They prepared a simple meal of peanut butter and jelly on flour tortillas, and Anders was grateful for the warm, comforting weight of the pasta and bread inside of him.

Anders noticed that the man had his gloves on again, even though the sun had just set and it wasn’t cold yet. As the night got cooler, Kevin’s blue down coat came back out, along with a thicker pair of gloves and a hat. He stayed by the fire, sharing hiking stories. The older couple introduced themselves as Bumblebee and Doc, a retired police officer and a retired physician from Louisiana, and explained they had hiked the entire trail five years earlier. Now they were just hiking for the summer, planning to finish however much they could before the weather turned cold.

“We tried to talk our grandkids into coming this time, but even suggesting they could live without text messaging for more than an hour traumatized them,” Bumblebee explained. “I wish we could have spent more time out here when we were younger, like you two.”

As the warmth of his dinner faded, Anders found himself watching Kevin’s eyes in the firelight, listening to him tell stories of the Pacific Crest Trail, including how he had once thought he was delirious and suffering from heat stroke when he came over a ridge and found a McDonald’s in the middle of nowhere. “It was actually a truck stop. I just couldn’t see the highway ramp or parking lot,” he explained. “But I really thought I was hallucinating until I had four Big Macs in my hands.”

“Four?” Anders groaned. Of all the fast food in the world, the McDonald’s Big Mac was one of the few things he couldn’t stomach. Even the ads for it made him nauseous.

“Four, plus fries and two milkshakes.”

“Oh yes.” Bumblebee grinned. “After a few days out here, it’s all about the food. You’ll burn three thousand to five thousand calories a day, once you get going. That’s when you stop thinking about flavor and start thinking about density.”

“So long as you still think about cholesterol,” Doc added.

Bumblebee rolled her eyes. “If someone breaks a bone, you can do your thing,” she drawled. “Too many nights of Thai takeout before I retired, you know? I’ve got to watch salt and cholesterol now. But one of the things I love about doing this is that I have an excuse to eat an entire pizza all by myself. Trust me, honey,” she said as she patted Anders on the arm, “if he’s the one responsible for the dinner we smelled coming down into the clearing—” She nodded at Kevin. “—he’s a keeper.”

“Oh.” Anders blushed furiously. “We’re just hiking together…. We’re not, well, we’re not together….”

That just made everybody laugh. On his left, Kevin laughed too. A few weekend hikers joined them in the darkness, and Anders discovered that even though he was the youngest and most inexperienced hiker among them, everyone was friendly and welcoming. And everyone, regardless of how much older or more experienced they were, seemed to share the same obsession with dirty jokes, beer, and food. It had been a long time since Anders had had any time to just hang out and spend an evening talking with his friends, and it was nice. He’d never expected to find such easy camaraderie with a group of strangers, particularly when half of them were older than his father, but none of them treated him like a child because he’d just finished school. It was a bit unsettling feeling such an unconditional welcome.

After Kevin said good night, Anders crawled into his tent, surprised by how the day had gone. He expected the resentment to rise up inside of him again when the emptiness of the tent finally sank in, but it didn’t. This hadn’t been the grueling, horrible experience Joel had warned him about—at least, not so far. He turned on his flashlight and scurried out of the tent.

“Hey, Sourdough,” Anders said, outside Kevin’s much smaller tent.

The tent flap was open, leaving only the mosquito screen zipped. Inside, the bearded man was fumbling with a prescription pill bottle. Another three pill bottles were laid out on the man’s sleeping bag, along with his hat, gloves, and the Under Armor shirt that had clung to his skin all day.

Anders swallowed hard as his flashlight illuminated the ripples and angles of the man’s shoulders and arms. The man really did sleep naked.

“Yeah?” Kevin looked up at him through the screen. Anders saw his eyes dart toward the pill bottles, and his fingers twitched toward them, but he didn’t make any effort to hide them.

“Ah….” Anders looked at the pill bottles again, just to avoid looking at the man’s chest. His first instinct was to assume he’d fallen in with a junkie, but he forced that thought down. He didn’t know anything about Kevin, aside from the fact that he could bake and he dressed like he was in Antarctica when it was fifty degrees. It wasn’t fair to jump to any conclusions one way or the other. “You want help?”

“No. I just don’t like the cold. I’ll open them up in my sleeping bag. What’s up?”

“I just wanted to say thank you for helping me out today. I probably would never have left that parking lot this morning on my own, and this was fun.”

“Sure.” Kevin nodded. “I wasn’t being altruistic, though. I’ll do damn near anything to get out of washing dishes.”

“Ouch.” Anders held his hand to his chest. “My knight in shining armor was just manipulating me so he’d have someone to clean up after him?” When Kevin picked up his powder-blue down coat with a raised eyebrow, Anders sighed. “It’s kind of shiny. Actually, it’s kind of girly.”

Kevin grinned. “That’s because it is a woman’s coat. I needed a new coat, I didn’t have much cash, and this was the warmest one the thrift store had that fit….”

“A woman’s coat fits you? That had to belong to a big lady.”

Kevin tucked the coat into a tight ball and set it behind him to use it as a pillow. Then he leaned back on his elbow and flashed Anders a huge grin. “Fortunately, I am secure enough in my masculinity that I can wear pastels and still look awesome.”

“Few men can manage that,” Anders agreed. Whether he was a junkie, vagabond, or baker, Kevin’s smile made his head spin. “Good night.”

“Yeah. See you in the morning.”

As he stripped off his clothes and scooted into his sleeping bag, Anders realized that if Joel had been with him, they probably would have disappeared into the tent right after dinner. That would have been fun, but Anders would never have realized what they were missing out on. He was positive this trip would be worth every hardship. But if he could persuade Joel to come with him, Anders would have to make damn sure they stayed away from Kevin Winters. Watching him gawk at other men wasn’t something that Joel would put up with, and Anders didn’t think he could help himself.

I
T
STARTED
to rain at ten the next morning, and Kevin said a silent prayer of thanks that it hadn’t started before breakfast. He had fun making sourdough pancakes, which his new hiking partner said were incredible even without syrup. He had snagged a few condiment packets of pancake syrup from a Denny’s the last time he’d been in a town, but he’d used them up in oatmeal, figuring they weren’t big enough for pancakes anyway. Kevin’s folks had always served real maple syrup with pancakes at home, and Kevin tended to believe pancakes needed to be saturated with syrup to be perfect. Still, a warm breakfast always woke him up, helped loosen up his stiff fingers and joints, and made him happy.

Now that it was raining, the prospect of a warm lunch or dinner was dwindling. He had a camp stove, like everybody else, but working with cold metal pots in the damp was a sure way to make his hands feel like he was moving with ground glass beneath his skin. He stopped as soon as the rain came and pulled out his large coat, a full rainsuit, and a poncho to drape over his pack. The skinny little blond trailing behind him had a rain shell that went with his fleece, and a large black trash bag he optimistically hoped would keep his pack dry. After rain gear was arranged, they kept plodding along down the muddy trail. Whenever he caught a glimpse of the sky through the long tunnel of leaves overhead, he tried to gauge the weather. It wasn’t supposed to get worse than a drizzle, but in the mountains, the weather could always change quickly.

It was still raining when they stopped for lunch, so Kevin pieced together sandwiches before moving on. By three o’clock, he was stiff, cold, and miserable. All he wanted to do was wrap his hands around a cup of coffee, or even hot water, and curl up in his sleeping bag.

When Anders walked ahead of him a few feet and began to hum, and then to sing, Kevin moved a bit faster so he could stay close enough to listen. He found himself smiling, despite the cold.

Anders really was too cute for his own good. Even beneath his jacket and pack, it was obvious his body was compact, tight, and perfect. His blond hair was clipped into a near buzz cut, and the tight curls forming in the centimeter-long hair made Kevin guess that Anders kept it short to keep it under control. He found himself trying to imagine what Anders would look like after a few months of long-distance hiking, and he couldn’t decide if Anders would end up with a blond afro or long, dread-locked curls. He’d look cute either way.