Christian sighed. “It’s a lot of money, Bear. And I own a camera company. I’ve got a dozen guys who can make a film. If I’m going to spend this much cake on your film, I need to know that people will go out to see it. Hank isn’t just a face. He’s newsworthy. Viewers will want to see how he’s doing.”
And now Bear felt sick. “It’s not that kind of film. He’ll be the expert, not the subject.”
“I read your proposal,” the rep said quietly. “The slant you’re taking is a good one. But Hank will draw curious eyeballs. He must know that. If he doesn’t want the attention, he won’t do the film. And if he won’t do the film it doesn’t have the same audience. I’m sorry, but that’s just true.”
Shit. “Listen. I’m not giving up on Hank. But I can’t promise him. And I won’t use him as a bargaining chip.”
Now it was Christian’s turn to choose his words carefully. Bear could hear the man’s gears turning in the silence before he spoke. “It’s in your hands, Bear. My board needs to see me committing money to projects that will pay off. So let me know if you think you can meet our specs.”
Specs. That’s how you’d refer to a piece of equipment you were building. But his relationship with Hank was not a mechanical object that could be disassembled and rebuilt at someone else’s convenience.
Fuck you, he thought.
“I’ll let you know if there’s a change on my end,” Bear said aloud.
“Thanks, man,” Christian said. “Best of luck, too.”
I’ll need it, Bear thought as he disconnected the call.
After that unpleasantness, Bear bumped around their little house feeling empty. The TV was on in their small living room, but he didn’t think he could sit calmly beside his father and watch a football game tonight.
What he needed was a glass of scotch — just a couple of fingers of the well-aged single malt he used to order once in a while when he needed cheering up.
But that cost money. Which he did not currently have.
Instead, he swiped one of his father’s cans of cheap light beer out of the refrigerator, something he usually avoided because, one, it was crappy beer and, two, he didn’t want to give his father more ammunition on the topic of Bear not pulling his weight.
Desperate times, though.
Back in his bedroom, he sat on his twin bed and opened the file where he’d kept all his notes about the film. Without OverSight, he couldn’t do ninety percent of what he’d planned. The best he could hope for was to make a short little film and leverage the results to fund a longer one next year.
He tipped his head back against the wall and tried to imagine another year in his childhood room. There were dusty trophies on the top of the bookshelf from the juniors competitions he used to enter. He hadn’t started winning until after Hank went west. After that, Bear won them all.
Not that it counted for anything now.
With a sigh, he turned back to his movie notes, wondering which bits he’d be able to pull off without traveling too far, or hiring much help. If he did something nearby, it would be that much easier to get Hank involved at the last minute.
Distracted, Bear didn’t immediately pay attention to the sound of someone pounding on the front door. It stopped, anyway. But it was followed by the sound of two feet stomping through the house.
Even as Bear wondered who had come by at ten o’clock on a Sunday night, an unexpected face appeared in the doorway to his bedroom.
“You’re making a film?” Stella yelped. “A feature length snowboarding movie?”
Oh, shit. “I hope to,” he said. “Someday.”
Stella’s dark eyes flashed with fury. “My brother dropped this bomb on me today. And I thought, ‘that can’t be true, because Bear would have told me that.’”
The force of her gaze made him squirm. “Maybe if you didn’t run out of every room I walked into, I would have had the chance.”
“Oh, hell no!” She crossed her arms and glared. “You don’t get to lay this whole thing at my feet. You want the awkwardness to go away? Then you actually have to look me in the eye.” She was yelling at him now. At full volume.
“Stella.” He dropped his voice. “Calm down.” His father was just a room away. Because that’s all the further you could be from one another inside their little house.
“Calm down? I don’t think I can calm down right now, Bear. That is not how I feel when I’m standing in front of you.” Her chin dipped as she said this, her dark lashes fluttering over red cheeks. “Look. It’s bad enough that once every decade I throw myself at you. But can you stop looking guilty every time we run into each other?”
Christ. He hadn’t known he was so easy to read. But there was really no point in denying it. “Stella, I am guilty.” In Tahoe, he’d taken advantage of her kindness, and nothing good had come of it. He’d never make that mistake again. In the meantime, he felt like a heel every time he saw her sweet face.
“God, why?” she asked. “It was just sex, right? Those were your words. And once was enough for you. Fine. But don’t make me feel like I’m a bad person over it.”
“Stella,” he practically growled. “I don’t want you to feel guilty. That’s ridiculous. Christ. It’s me who’s guilty.”
She gave her glossy hair a single shake. “Get over yourself, already. We’re both adults.”
A quick glance around Bear’s room provided no evidence that was true. “Sit down, buddy,” he said quietly.
For a second he thought she might turn around and march out of the house. But she pressed her lips together in a straight line and took a seat at the foot of his bed.
Bear closed the bedroom door, then sat down in his desk chair, turning to face her. The little space made for a more intimate conversation than he was ready for. Bear was conscious of the fact that he didn’t have a shirt on.
There was a heavy silence between them, and he hated the uncertainty in her brown eyes. “I’m sorry if I ever made you feel bad,” he said quietly. “You never did anything wrong.”
“Why are you so sure that anybody did, then?” she asked.
The answer was obvious to him, but he didn’t know if he could explain himself without hurting her worse. The night they’d had together had been amazing. But it had allowed her to imagine that there was something bigger there. Christ. The way she’d looked at him that night? It scared him senseless. Nobody should look at him like that — as if Bear could be trusted with that kind of love.
“I make a mess of things,” he said, hoping she’d take it at face value. “My movie thing? It’s a mess. And I made a mess of our friendship. Hank is a mess.”
Stella sighed. “What does Hank have to do with it? Our timing sucked, Bear. But leave him out of it.”
He reached for the T-shirt he’d left on the desk and shrugged it over his head. Of all the places Stella could choose to chew him a new one, it had to be here, in the cramped little prison of his failure. There was a reason that they’d always hung out up the hill at the Lazarus house. His room was not even ten-feet square. And the red-and-white checked curtains on the windows predated his mother’s departure.
Maybe this was for the best, though. If, for even a moment, Stella had imagined she wanted him, this glimpse of him would surely squash her fantasy flat.
“Look,” he said. “There’s a lot that’s broken right now, and most of it I can’t fix. I thought I had a shot at helping Hank.” What he left unsaid was that he didn’t have a clue how to repair his friendship with Stella.
“Is that why you want to make a movie?” she asked. “He said you wanted him involved.”
Slowly, Bear nodded. “It wasn’t just for him. I think I’d be good at it.” He might not have had the balls to try it, though, if he didn’t think he had a shot of dragging Hank out of his funk.
“You would be good at it,” Stella said. “I love the footage you take.”
Her cheeks pinked up again when she said that, and Bear had to look away. “It wasn’t just ab
out the shots, though. Hank’s whole life was out west, you know? He has a thousand friends. And I thought I could get him talking to people again if he had a project. Distraction, and all that.”
“And he turned you down?”
Bear shrugged. “For now. But I was going ahead with it anyway, as soon as my funding came through. I thought I could pull him in at the last minute. Ask for his help. But now it’s all for shit.”
“Why?” her eyes got wide.
“Can’t fund it,” he said simply. “I thought OverSight was going to come through. But they had a stipulation…” He let the sentence die.
“What?”
He shook his head.
Stella made two fists and struck them against her knees. “Just tell me, okay? For once, just level with me.”
Bear grunted with irritation. “The sponsor insists that Hank sign on, or they won’t give me the green light. So I’m going to have to drop most of the project.”
“Why?”
“Because I won’t pressure him to do something he’s not ready for, just to further my project. Jesus.”
Stella winced. “Okay.”
“It was supposed to help both of us.”
“But not me.” Stella sighed. “Because that would be taking things too far.”
“Buddy, don’t.” He leaned over and yanked a file folder off the bed. Flipping through the itinerary to the back, he handed her a page.
She read it. He could tell the moment she found her name on the page, because her chin snapped up. “You want to shoot in Bella Coola? With me? And Duku?”
“I know you wanted to go to Alaska. But there are too many bad-weather days in the Chugach. I was afraid we’d get all the gear and the crew there and get nothing. So I chose British Columbia. And I knew you’d be awesome.”
Her face softened. “Wow. I would have really loved to go.”
“I know, buddy. I wasn’t going to talk to you about it until I was sure it would happen.” That was almost the whole truth. He didn’t reveal that he still hadn’t figured out how he could take Stella to a remote mountainside in the wildest part of Canada and not make a fool of himself again.
Her gaze dropped to her lap. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“It’s okay.” There was a long moment of silence, but it was an easier one than they’d shared in a long time. “Can I offer you a really shitty brand of beer? It’s the house special here at the Barry Bachelor Pad.”
A smile flared in Stella’s glassy eyes. She tipped her chin and laughed. “Thanks, but no. I get enough shitty beer at work these days.”
“I’ll bet.”
Stella’s eyes traced the wood beams over her head. “I always liked this house.”
“Jesus, why?” He’d never been ashamed of their little house, but the place didn’t have the magic of the Lazarus home, with its soaring stone fireplace and floor-to-ceiling windows.
“Your house always reminded me of storybooks. I had a picture book about a family of bears who lived in a log home.”
“Did someone named Goldilocks come along and drink the good beer?”
Stella laughed, and the low, rough sound of it touched something inside his chest. “I think she did.”
“What a bitch.”
She gave him one more smile, and Bear wondered if maybe one little part of tonight had gone okay.
After he walked Stella out, Bear put his beer can in the recycling bin, and poured himself a cup of many-hours-old coffee. He’d need to spend tonight cyber-stalking alternative sponsors for his film. But it was probably hopeless. It was snowing out west already, and time was short.
While his coffee spun around in the microwave, his father walked into the kitchen with his own empties. “Why was she here?” he asked without preamble.
Bear bit back the urge to give his father a teenager’s answer. None of your business. “We had a misunderstanding,” he said instead. “It’s sorted out now.”
“Whatever you did to that girl, apologize. And stay the hell away. You cannot get involved with her.”
Bear just stood there, choking on his anger. He didn’t know which was worse — the fact that the man would tell his own son to his face he wasn’t good enough for Stella Lazarus, or the fact that it was true. “I am not involved with her,” he said through a tight jaw. “We’re not kids though. So I don’t see why anyone but the two of us would care.”
He couldn’t even look at the old man right now. His dad didn’t actually give a crap about Bear’s feelings for Stella. He only cared that Barry Electrical might be passed over for a contract if his wayward son was boinking the boss’s daughter.
He removed his mug from the nuker and stalked past his father.
Sixteen
SEVERAL DAYS LATER, STELLA received a six a.m. call from the manager at the ski hill asking her to sell season passes behind the desk that day.
Stella didn’t bother arguing. When your family owned a ski hill, it was all hands on deck for the first powder day of the season. When the mountain needed to open two weeks ahead of schedule, there was no point in arguing you were no longer an employee. If it snowed on November eighth, you were an employee, whether you wanted to be or not.
November eighth was early for skiable snow in Vermont. Very early.
For most people in the world, the weather was just a backdrop. Skiable snow in November meant children got an unexpected day off from school. And Vermonters without garages spent an unexpected hour or two digging out their cars. Merchants in town probably felt a little less guilty about sneaking Christmas decorations into the store windows before everyone’s Halloween candy was eaten.
For Stella the snow wasn’t a distraction or an inconvenience. It was a harbinger of the competition season. As she stood behind the counter of the Members Services Desk at the ski lodge all day, she felt her first wave of optimism in months. Each time the doors opened to admit another customer, Stella got a whiff of snowy air. That smell — like pine needles and ice — was the scent of her whole life.
She’d been on her feet for seven hours when quitting time finally arrived. Thankfully she wasn’t on the schedule at Rupert’s tonight.
She locked the cash drawer and waved to Mary, the manager. Her jacket under one arm, she stepped out into the white. It was four o’clock, and the sun was low over the ridge. Gently-falling flurries stuck to her eyelashes. She shook them off, hurrying toward the Red Barn, the on-mountain bar. Her brother had texted her an hour ago, urging her to join him over there when she could.
As she pulled the door open, the sound of après ski revelry greeted her ears. The Red Barn was packed full of skiers and snowboarders, all of them still wearing snowpants (and, in many cases, unfortunate helmet hair.) Stella scanned the place, looking for Hank. Naturally her gaze snagged on Bear’s broad shoulders first.
Stella’s heart tripped over itself, the way it always did when she spotted him across the room.
Steady, she coached herself. After their chat last week she’d promised herself she would put on her big girl panties and stop hiding from him. Stella wove through the crowd towards the table Bear and Hank had somehow snagged in a prime spot right up against the window.
Closing in on them, Stella noticed a couple of important details. First, Callie Anders was sitting with Hank and Bear. Though he hadn’t really confided in her about it, Stella knew Hank had been pining after the doctor for the last month or so. From the looks of things, it seemed Hank had won her over. The two of them were smiling at each other like a couple of lovesick teenagers.
Instinctively, Stella’s eyes flicked to Bear’s. Since the two of them had quietly endured Hank’s last relationship, they’d become very good at exchanging silent information.
Look who’s here, Bear’s eyes said.
This is good, right? Stella replied silently.
Bear smiled at her, and Stella felt a rush of love for him. It was a knee-melting smile, for sure. But it was also good to have back even a narrow edge of the
ir old friendship.
“Stell-Bell!” her brother called. “They let you out of the salt mines already? Somebody get this girl a drink!”
“Hi, Stella,” Callie greeted her.
“Hi guys. How was opening day? Tell me everything.”
“It was awesome,” Hank said immediately.
Hell. Stella couldn’t even guess how long it had been since Hank had last used that word. Maybe a year.
“…My new toy works great,” Hank went on. “You should see me go.”
He’d been given a sit-ski by one of his sponsors after the accident. Stella had been shocked this morning to hear he’d planned to try it out on the first snow day of the year. But her brother was a hardcore athlete and a hardcore personality. Always had been.
“I wish I could have seen you ride it,” she said. Although the sight of Hank taking a run down the hill would probably only have made her cry.
Bear took out his phone, tapped the screen a few times and handed it over. Stella touched the “play” icon on the video he’d queued up, and squinted at the whiteness on the screen. She was about to say she couldn’t see anything when a figure came into view at the upper left-hand corner of the screen. Moving fast, Hank’s seated form made gorgeous s-turns down the hill, alternately extending a pair of odd, ski-footed poles to either side as he curved through the snow.
It looked effortless.
“Oh, damn,” Stella whispered, blinking back tears.
Her brother reached across the table and punched her in the arm.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“Lighten up already. Life is good.” Hank lifted his beer and drained it.
Stella glanced at Bear again, because it would have been impossible not to. Lighten up? She telegraphed. It was the very thing Hank had been unable to do for the past eleven months.
I know, Bear’s eyebrow lift replied. Be happy, his smile suggested.
Good point.
“So.” Stella cleared her throat. “How did the skiing go today, Callie? Was it really your first time?”
The pretty doctor beamed. “I was on my backside just as often as my feet. But I’m still counting it as a success.”