Sex & Sourdough (26 page)

“They sound good.”

“And they’re only in our shop. Max Lancaster—he’s the poor soul Kevin left in charge of his share of the bakery—came up with funding to open up three wholesale bakeries, so we could sell some of our regular breads to supermarkets. Our plain sourdough is in grocery stores all over, so the seasonal stuff and the desserts are what really draw people into our shop. And then they’re more likely to look for our label in the grocery stores too. These”—Gwen passed him the recipe with a grin—“are amazing. Knock yourself out.”

“Three wholesale bakeries?” Anders asked, stunned.

“Yeah. It was always hard to make ends meet with just the store. I originally agreed to expand because I was hoping maybe Jennifer would consider leaving the shop to go to school once we could afford to hire more help.” Gwen looked at her daughter pointedly.

“I don’t need to go to school. I’ve got a job, thank you very much.”

“Well, someone is going to have to be able to manage the mess this has grown into, and you can’t count on Max being around forever.”

The blush on Jennifer’s cheeks was so similar to the way Kevin blushed that Anders could hardly believe it.

“Where are the commercial bakeries?” Anders asked just to change the subject.

Gwen shrugged and grinned. “Modesto was the first one, and then Seattle. The newest one in Atlanta’s only been open for about five months. I’m nervous about that, because we’ve got a decent name here, but no one’s ever seen our trademark on the East Coast.”

“Max wants to open up another one somewhere in New England next,” Jennifer added, still blushing. “He was in the shop on his lunch break talking about it.”

“He’s a local guy, then?”

“Yes. He and Kevin were friends in school. Both of them played high school football, until Kevin dropped out. Max went away to school, and right about the time he came back, Kevin took off. Every now and again, Kevin still gets in touch with him, but Kevin won’t tell him where he’s at, either.”

“So they were friends?” Anders knew he shouldn’t be asking. He knew he shouldn’t be delving deeper into Kevin’s past than he already had. With the cuts across his cheek still itching because of his own ex, Anders felt like a jealous ass for even asking. But he asked anyway. “
Close
friends?”

Jennifer stared at Anders for a moment and snatched the recipe away. “You’re his lover! Aren’t you?”

“Max’s?” Gwen looked shocked.

“Kevin’s!”

Anders watched Gwen process that and held his breath. She set her hand on her daughter’s shoulder supportively. “Jen, honey, do you really think anyone would travel all the way across the country to check on a hiking partner? And I don’t think Max helps out in the bakery each afternoon because he’s waiting for Kevin to come home….”

“You knew!” Jennifer shrieked. “You knew Kevin was gay!”

“Of course I knew.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t think it was any of your business.”

“Not my…. What? But he told you!”

“Not exactly. I’m your mother. I figured out what you were trying to say when you were eleven and told me you wanted me to buy you a box of tampons so you would be prepared when you finally got your period, didn’t I?” Jennifer blushed furiously.

“When he was fifteen and said he wasn’t sure if he was ever going to get married, that he wasn’t sure if he’d ever find a girl to spend his life with, it wasn’t that hard to decipher.”

“But why wouldn’t he tell me?”

“Because he didn’t want to tell you. He didn’t want to tell me. He also didn’t want to tell either of us that he was sick. He’s a lot like your father was, always keeping things close if he thinks they might hurt us. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you, or doesn’t trust you, just that he was worried about what you’d think.”

“He also might have been trying to spare your feelings. My family was angry when they found out. It’s a pretty normal reaction.”

“But you… and Kevin?” Jennifer turned away from the counter, shaking her head. “Which one… how… are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, are you serious about him!”

Anders grimaced. “He doesn’t do serious,” he said gently. “Whether I’m serious about him doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want a relationship—any kind of relationship. I think he wants to avoid having anyone get attached to him. Or at least, he said something like that once. He’s so convinced he’s dying that he doesn’t want to let anyone close.”

“Why did you come all the way out here, then?”

Anders shrugged. “I said he doesn’t want a serious relationship. He seemed like he was totally on board with having a hiking partner.”

“So, friends with benefits?”

“And hiking.” Anders took a sip of his tea to give himself time to think. “Look, I just… I’m going to find him. If I can, I’m going to convince him to come back here. But I don’t have any right to pretend there’s more between us than that.” Even if he wished there was more between them.

“I….” Jennifer shut her eyes and raised both hands, signaling she had had enough. “I’m sorry, I need a minute….” She strode out the door still wearing her apron. Before the door closed, Budapest went from rubbing against Anders’s legs to a full sprint. “Goddammit!” Jennifer nearly tripped on the huge ball of speeding fur.

Anders dropped his head. “I’ll get her.”

“Better you than me. I’m going to stuff her if she tries to trick me into chasing her through the briars again,” Jennifer snapped.

“I’ll help,” Gwen said.

As soon as Anders was out the door, his new phone vibrated in his pocket. He didn’t recognize the number, but it wasn’t a Florida area code, so it wasn’t Joel. “Hello?” he answered, half-hoping maybe Kevin had found his way to a payphone after all this time.

“Ah, hi, is Anders there?”

The voice on the other end of the line wasn’t Kevin, but it still made Anders smile. “Spider?” he asked, grinning.

“That’s right. How are things back in Jax, Butch?”

“Good,” he lied. “How’s the hike going?”

“Bad. Between shin splints that turned out to be a stress fracture, baby-sitting Sourdough, and trying to figure out where the hell Chex went, it’s been a bad couple weeks.”

Anders saw the cat slink into the backyard. Gwen touched his upper arm, shook her head, and stalked after the cat on her own. “Do you know where Kevin is? I tried to find him, but I didn’t have any luck. And what happened to Chex Mix? I tried to find him too, but it looked like he got off the trail.”

“Chex was going to stay there in North Adams and camp. He said New York was too expensive. But he’s gone. Even his mom hasn’t heard from him. I’ll find him once I get moving again—don’t worry about that. I’m calling about Sourdough.”

“Is he okay? I heard he had a heart attack or something.”

“You heard what happened?”

“Just gossip.”

“Well, the gossip’s not far off. I’ve never seen somebody not have to wait in an emergency room, but they took him right back. Then they took him out the door and flew him to Albany. They kept him hooked up to monitors for about a week, trying to fix his heart with drugs. But this last week he had to have heart surgery on Tuesday, and then another one Friday. He’s still in the hospital, but he’s okay. I’ve tried to get him to tell me if he has any family I should call, but he keeps blowing me off, so I poked through his stuff when he was asleep. I found your number in his wallet. Figured I’d better call before he gets back on his feet and kicks my ass.”

“Holy shit, thank you,” Anders cried into the phone.

“Your number was all there was. Well, there are pictures of family in there, a California driver’s license that expired four years ago and was so scratched up I couldn’t read it, and a business card for some law firm, but nothing else.”

“I can believe it.” Anders kept the phone to his ear and jogged to his car. He popped the trunk with his key fob and took stock of his gear. He would have to stock up on easy food for the trip. “He has family, but he doesn’t want them to worry about him. He’s been sick for a while,” Anders explained.

“Fuck that. Family gets to worry. Do you have their number? Or hell, even their name? Hometown? I’m stuck in town, waiting for my leg to heal, so I’ve got time to go to the library and look them up online.”

“I can get in touch with them,” Anders said, looking at Kevin’s childhood home. Kevin hadn’t talked about his home life with anyone except Anders during their hike. He always had stories to share, but the stories he’d told about his family were always private, almost sacred. Anders had already betrayed his trust enough. “I’ll let them know where he is, that he’s all right. And I’ll try and talk some sense into him and get him to actually call them.” Anders scrambled for a pen and pulled an old gas receipt out of the center console. “What town is he in? What hospital?” He wrote down the information and shoved it into his pocket. He thanked Spider again, then shoved the phone back into his pocket and raced after Gwen.

“A
RE
YOU
ready to try walking again?” the nurse asked, flashing him a reassuring smile.

Kevin wanted to move, to get out of bed and begin to work the spasms from his stiff muscles, but the last time he’d tried getting up, he passed out before he made it five steps. His blood pressure was a bit higher now, after three bags of saline had dripped into his veins, and the doctor told him he could try getting up after his blood pressure had stabilized.

“Honestly? I’m worried I’m going to fall flat on my face before I make it out of the room,” Kevin admitted.

“I can get a walker, if that would help you feel more comfortable. And I’ll be right beside you.”

“I don’t need a walker, I swear. I’d rather fall.”

The nurse increased the angle on the back of the bed until he was nearly sitting up straight. “If you can manage it without triggering another arrhythmia, we can transfer you to a regular room tonight. You won’t get much sleep here in the cardiac unit.”

“Yeah, okay.”

The nurse shifted his legs over the side of the bed until he rested his feet lightly on the floor. “Now, just sit up for a minute, make sure you don’t get dizzy.”

Sitting up this time didn’t make him light-headed, like it had earlier. He nodded. “Okay.”

“All right, now push down hard on the catheter sites and gradually shift your weight to your legs.”

This time, Kevin managed to walk around the nurses’ station. He still didn’t understand how the equivalent of two big IVs could leave him feeling so weak and helpless. The catheters they had threaded through the veins and arteries at his groin, so they could send long, thin wires to his heart, were half an inch thick and about five inches long. Even though they’d left him with puncture wounds instead of a full incision, they were still the equivalent of being stabbed by two large knives. And they’d had to do it twice.

Lying absolutely still and flat in bed for twelve hours afterward had been a whole different kind of torture. In a matter of hours, the muscles in his lower back had locked, followed by every other muscle in his body, just from being still.

He was acutely aware of his heart beating inside his chest. When he felt the flutter of a skipped heartbeat, he stopped, bracing himself for the crushing pain that had followed each flutter on the trail. The pain didn’t come. His heart continued beating after the flutter as though nothing had happened at all.

“You okay?” the nurse asked, holding his upper arm with a strength that seemed inhuman in such a petite body.

Kevin nodded. “My heart fluttered, but it wasn’t anything like the pain before.”

“Dr. Isaac said that’s normal, it can happen for a month or so, but you shouldn’t go into another full-blown episode again.”

Kevin nodded. That was the point of the two surgeries, known as catheter ablations. They threaded wires into his heart, prodded around until they triggered the short circuit that left his heart racing and beating irregularly, and then burned and cauterized the nerves that were short-circuiting. Because of his damaged immune system, he had malfunctioning nerves in either side of his heart triggering episodes that felt like heart attacks. The surgeries were supposed to fix the short-circuits for good, but with his disease, nothing was ever as simple as it was supposed to be.

Kevin walked around the nurses’ station two more times and then he had to get back into bed. The nurse hooked wires up to the conductive stickers scattered over his chest, back, and ankles to take another EKG.

An hour later, the cardiac surgeon came in on his final rounds of the evening. “How are you doing, Kevin?”

“Better. Still sore. Why does sitting still make you hurt so much?”

“It’s not just sitting still. The procedure isn’t as invasive as open-heart surgery, but it’s still subjecting your body to a major trauma. You’ll get better faster than you think. In a week or so, you’ll be able to resume most normal activities again. Nothing strenuous for another four weeks, though.”

“Four weeks?” Kevin didn’t mean to complain about it, but his words came out as a whine anyway.

“Yes, four weeks. And I don’t mean you can get back on the trail in four weeks. Your doctor in California faxed your old records this morning. Your old echocardiogram was totally normal, and the one we took last week when you were admitted shows some mild leakage around your aortic valve.”