Sex & Sourdough (28 page)

“Two sides of my heart, so, two surgeries…. They went in through catheters. No incisions. Just giant puncture wounds on both sides of my groin.”

Anders cringed. “Was it worth it? Did they fix whatever was wrong with your heart?”

Kevin shrugged. “They fixed part of it. It’s complicated. The surgeon had to bring in a little animation thing to explain all of the electrical pathways involved. As far as I understand it, it’s basically a trial-and-error thing, poking different parts of my heart with a live wire, trying to trigger an electrical short-circuit, and then frying whatever spots they find that trigger it—all by X-ray and remote control. It was that or a pacemaker.”

Anders’s mouth dropped open. “And you let them do this? Are you kidding?” Anders’s prodded Kevin’s chest again, centering his palm over the steady thump of Kevin’s heartbeat. “That’s insane. What if they got the wrong spot?”

“If they get the wrong spot, nothing happens and they move on to the next spot. It worked. More or less.”

Anders tightened his grip on Kevin’s chest. “But it could have killed you!”

Kevin shrugged again. “The chance of that was pretty slim. And I’m still here.” Kevin touched the stubble on Anders’s chin again. He wanted to feel the scratch of Anders’s chin against him. With the fresh scars on Anders’s face, Kevin couldn’t possibly kiss him the way he wanted to, regardless of whether or not he could move enough to pull it off. “I’m sorry,” he said at last, “for making you worry about me.”

“You didn’t
make me
do anything,” Anders insisted. “Going out of the way to find out if a friend is alive or dead is something friends do, especially when the answer isn’t obvious. I figured we were friends.”

“Friends….” Kevin knew he should feel relieved. Part of him had expected Anders to read too much into what they’d had. He had expected to be the one saying they were ‘just friends,’ no matter how much he hated that fact. Anders might be able to be friends, but Kevin didn’t think he could be close to Anders without wanting to touch him.

“Yes, friends.” Anders laughed at him. “Friends with benefits, friends without benefits—that’s up to you. I’m not going to break down and get all emotional on you if you’re uncomfortable with it. I’m here for you.”

“This isn’t a good idea,” Kevin said seriously. “Even being friends is a bad idea. I… I’m going to fuck this up. Even if I try not to, it’s still going to happen. I’m going to start feeling sorry for myself, I’m going to get angry and resentful when you try to act supportive, and then I’m going to turn into a total dick. I’ll start picking fights over stupid shit, and it’ll all just fall apart.”

“Is that what happened with your mom and your sister?” Anders asked thoughtfully.

Kevin wished he could turn away from Anders, but he didn’t even have the strength to do that.

“You once told me you didn’t have any family who cared enough to come looking for you. They still care, you know. When I couldn’t find out what happened to you, I thought maybe you’d gone home, so I went to Bishop to try to find you. Your sister talked about how you turned into an ass a few months after your dad died.”

“You went all the way to California to see if I was okay?” Kevin asked, stunned.

“You’re avoiding the question. You started getting pissed about stupid things to push them away, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Kevin whispered. “I didn’t mean to, I swear I didn’t, but when I found out I was sick, trying to go through each day like everything was normal, like there was nothing wrong…. I just couldn’t do it. Every time my sister came into the shop ranting about some new catastrophe in her social life, I wanted to strangle her. But I figured at least she wasn’t doing algebra homework in the hallway of a hospice. My mom was finally starting to get over losing my dad, finally getting out of the house again. I didn’t want to put them through who knows how many years of waiting for me to die.”

Anders leaned back. “You should have told them.”

“How could I?” Kevin whispered. “My dad had just died. My sister was still a kid, my mom couldn’t get out of bed half the time, and there was no one else. When he got sick, everything in our lives fell apart. When he died, it was such a relief, just finally being able to grieve, being able to let go. I wanted them to get on with their lives. I wanted them to move on, but then I also resented them when they did because I would never be able to do it too. Every time I was in the same room with either of them, it became a battle, and it really was my fault.”

Anders ran his fingers over Kevin’s heart again. “Have you ever gone back to visit? Even called?”

“No,” Kevin admitted quickly. “But they’re okay. The doctor who diagnosed me, the same guy who treated my dad, is in Mammoth Lakes. It’s about ten miles from Bishop. He lets me know how they’re doing. And there are a few other people in town too. The attorney who manages bills and stuff for me—he checks on them for me.”

“You pay someone else to pay your bills?” Anders looked incredulous.

“It’s not like I’ve got a PO box I can go check,” Kevin insisted. “And it’s just insurance premiums and medical bills, and managing my trust fund. And the bakery. He takes care of that too.”

“Trust fund?” Anders laughed. “You gave me weird looks about having a housekeeper and you’ve got a trust fund?”

“My dad had a lot of life insurance. My mom got a lump-sum payment. She used it to pay off the mortgage on the house and the bakery. The money for me and my sister went into trust funds. I’m guessing Jennifer’s pissed hers away since she turned eighteen, but I don’t need a lot of money to get by. When I’m hiking, I usually don’t spend more than the fund earns in interest, even with private health insurance, and the extra just gets reinvested. More or less.”

“More or less?”

“Things like this happen,” Kevin explained, rolling his eyes at the hospital room.

Anders bent at the waist and dropped his forehead against Kevin’s, smiling even though he looked like he didn’t want to. “You’re something else.”

“I’m pathetic.”

“What makes you say that?”

“For hoping that someone like you would….” Kevin grimaced.

“Would what? Care about you? Miss you? Get turned on every time I come within ten feet of you?” Anders kissed him gently again.

“You shouldn’t say things like that. I can’t do this….”

Anders shrugged. “Then we’re just plain friends. If I get drunk and grope you, though, don’t get pissed about it.”

Kevin couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Anders couldn’t seriously still want to be with him, not knowing all the things he had wrong with him. “You… you’d be willing, even knowing?”

“Knowing what?”

“That’s I’m….” Kevin gestured toward his chest.

“Sick?”

“A jerk. And, yes, that I’m sick,” Kevin said. “I’m covered in weird rashes every time my immune system acts up. I’m never going to be able to finish this hike because it’ll increase the damage to my heart. I’m on so many drugs I probably wouldn’t be able to get it up to fuck you. I’m never going to do anything again.”

“So.” Anders pursed his lips. “Beds from now on, I’m on top until you’re healed, and we might need to get creative.” He trailed his fingers down over Kevin’s stomach to the soft bulge of his cock beneath the blanket. “Although you feel fine to me.”

“On top?” Kevin couldn’t help laughing. “That’s the only thing you’re worried about? I’m practically a cripple, Anders. And I’m still covered in weird pink splotches.”

“Stop right there.” Anders leaned closer. “You’re just as hot now as you were that day at the waterfall, Kevin.”

“You can stop humoring me, Anders.”

“I never did understand why you were so self-conscious that day. You’ve got an incredible body, you’re gorgeous, and honestly, you’re damn near perfect. You’re also the strongest person I’ve ever met, and that’s a hell of a turn-on by itself.”

“That’s not going to last, Anders. The most exercise I’m going to be able to do is walking, if I don’t want to go through open-heart surgery next.”

“Not the kind of strength I was talking about.” Anders took hold of his wrist and brought Kevin’s arm to his lips. He kissed the inside of Kevin’s wrist and then guided Kevin’s hand down. He pressed Kevin’s palm over the zipper of his pants, allowing Kevin to feel just how hard he was. “This”—he pressed Kevin’s hand down harder—“is just from sitting next to you. Just seeing you again got me hard.”

Kevin couldn’t help himself. He wrapped his fingers around Anders’s cock and rubbed him through his pants. Anders dropped his gaze and shifted against Kevin’s hand, panting. Kevin felt his cock stiffen in response to the soft pants, and he was relieved. At least his body wouldn’t have any trouble performing with Anders, no matter what the listed side effects of his new blood-pressure medication said.

“Knock, knock!” called his nurse, then entered the room without actually knocking.

Anders cleaned his throat and stood up, keeping his back to the nurse and blushing furiously. Seeing the blush on Anders’s face made Kevin grin, despite the circumstances.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you had a visitor. Are you another hiker friend, or family?”

“Uh….” Anders looked down at Kevin. “Your call, Kev.”

“Does it matter?” Kevin asked the nurse.

“Well, generally we ask that only family stay after visiting hours. You’ve got an hour until visiting hours are over at eight, though.”

“He’s family,” Kevin said.

Anders glanced in his direction and raised his eyebrows.

Kevin felt his heart racing, but for once it wasn’t a reason to panic. “We’re together,” he said carefully. “
Together
together. And he came all the way up from Florida.”

“Oh. That’s kind of a gray area. In this ward, it’s fine. If you go into another episode, we’d need—” The nurse clicked her fingers, at a loss. “You know, I don’t know what the form is even called.”

“An affidavit of domestic partnership?” Anders suggested, his gaze locked on Kevin.

Even thinking those words made Kevin nervous. Since he had resolved to spend what was left of his life alone, he had never seriously thought about them before. Oddly, it wasn’t the idea of spending his life with Anders that didn’t sit well with him. The casual tone, the idea that what they had on the trail, what he would give anything to keep, could be given such a cold, impersonal label made him squirm. It made what they had sound like some kind of contract between roommates.

Except they didn’t even have that.

They hadn’t even come to terms with being friends, with sharing any aspect of their lives beyond the Appalachian Trail. Kevin shut his eyes, stunned by that realization.

“That sounds right. I guess you two have probably had to deal with this before, huh?”

“It’s a headache a lot of homosexuals have to cope with,” Anders said diplomatically.

“It should be fine if you stay. I just need to take a quick set of vitals and then I’ll let you two visit.”

When the nurse left them alone again, Anders pulled the chair over to the side of Kevin’s bed. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I guess that was a bit presumptuous.”

“Why are you sorry?” Kevin asked. “I’m the one who….” Outed them both, declared that they had a committed relationship when at best they were former fuck buddies, and assumed Anders wanted to stay badly enough to play along. “I’m the one who should be apologizing.”

“You looked like you might get sick when I said domestic partnership,” Anders said.

His tone made the comment sound like a joke, but Kevin reached out and took hold of Anders’s hand. “Just bad timing.” Kevin shook his head. “Five minutes ago, you were trying to persuade me we were friends.”

“Not quite friends to basically married? Yeah, weird timing.”

“I don’t want to be friends,” Kevin said with absolute certainty. Kevin held on to Anders’s hand when he tried to stand up and walk away. “I can’t be around you without wanting to go back to the way we were on the trail. Can we go back to that?”

Anders looked down at their hands, then met Kevin’s gaze again. “The way we were on the trail?”

Kevin didn’t know if there was a word for what he wanted. “Boyfriends” sounded cheesy, “friends with benefits” made it sound like what they had didn’t matter, and “domestic partners” was too big and too cold at the same time. “Lovers,” Kevin stammered, shivering as the word escaped.

“That’s more than friends,” Anders said, his voice flat.

Kevin shut his eyes and released Anders’s hand. He felt like he really would be sick as the hope he’d been nursing since he woke up to find Anders beside him shattered. He wished he had the strength to turn away, but he was too wiped out. “Maybe it’s better if you go home,” he whispered.

Anders ran his fingertips over the back of Kevin’s hand. Kevin looked at him again. “I didn’t say that was a bad thing. Just that it’s different.”

“I know,” Kevin whispered. “Believe me, I know. It’s not like I meant for this to happen. I really didn’t. I know I said I don’t do attachments, I know I said this had to be just sex, and I know you’re still getting over your last relationship, but….” Kevin swallowed and laced their fingers together again. “Somewhere over the summer I fell for you without even realizing it. The past few weeks have been hell, just because you were gone. I thought about calling you every day, but I know the last thing you need is another psychotic ex leaving you a hundred voice mails a day, and….”

Anders dropped his head onto the bed and sighed.

Kevin gasped when he felt Anders’s chapped lips against his knuckles. “Anders?”

Anders grinned up at him. “I’m just glad I’m not the only one. I was kind of worried I was turning into the psycho stalker this time around.”

“Are you serious?” Kevin gasped, surprised.

“Absolutely serious.”

Kevin tightened his grip on Anders’s hand and pulled him up as hard as his rigid muscles allowed. Anders took pity on him, stood, leaned forward over the head of the bed, and brushed his nose against Kevin’s. Kevin wrapped his arm around Anders’s neck and pulled him down, pressing his lips against the top of Anders’s head.

“Can you stay with me?” he asked, running his hand over the stubble on Anders’s jaw again.