Shooting for the Stars (14 page)

* * *

Several hours later, Stella’s phone woke her from a deep sleep. As she came to, it stopped ringing. When it started up again, she grabbed it and peered sleepily at the screen. Bear. Now
that
was unusual. “Hello?”

“Stella,” he said immediately, his voice a rasp. “I fucked up.”

Later, she would be angry with herself over the conclusion that her feeble heart had leapt to. She heard the words
I fucked up
and hoped, for one golden second, that Bear was calling with the wee-hours epiphany that they should be together. “What’s the matter, honey?”

“It’s all my fault, Stella. I need you to pick me up from Hank’s house and take me to the E.R.”

“What?
” She shook herself awake.
“
Who’s hurt?”

There was a deep sigh on the end of the line. “He’s fine, okay? Hank got really drunk tonight on tequila. He started vomiting, and he wasn’t responding to me. So I called an ambulance. He’ll probably kill me in the morning.”

It took a few seconds for Stella’s brain to catch up with the roller coaster ride her heart had just taken. “Are you sure he’s okay?” she had to ask.

“Yeah. I probably overreacted. But his health isn’t the same as it used to be. I was afraid to make the judgment call by myself on whether he could just sleep it off.”
 

Though Bear sounded stressed out, Stella felt a wave of prickly anger. “What do you need me for, then?”

“I need to get to the hospital, buddy. Can’t drive myself.”

“Oh. You’re drunk, too.”

Another deep sigh could be heard on the other end of the line.

“You know it’s two in the morning, right?”

“I know.” His voice was low and miserable.

“I could just leave your ass there and go to the hospital myself.”

“You could. But I fucked up, and I like to clean up my own messes.”

Not all of them
. Bear had infinite patience for her brother’s needs. And none for hers. “Never fear,” she snapped. “The Cheerful Drunk Man’s Taxi Service is on its way.” Then she hung up on him.

Twelve

B
EAR
STOOD
UNDER
H
ANK
’
S
shower head for only a minute or so. Given his druthers, he would have spent an hour in there, letting the hot water beat down on his stupid self. But there wasn’t time. Shutting the water off, he grabbed one of the perfectly folded towels that had been placed on the handicapped-accessible rack by Hank’s housekeeper.

The shower had helped to sober him up, at least. After toweling off, he was able to step into his jeans without swaying. In Hank’s bedroom, he checked once more for any mess he may have missed.

The night had gotten ugly, and fast.

Bear walked out of Hank’s bedroom, startled to find Stella already standing in the living room looking pissed. Just the sight of her, cheeks flushed, arms crossed under her breasts, caused a hitch in his breath. She was so fucking beautiful that he honestly needed, like, prep time before seeing her. “Hi,” he said stupidly.

“What happened here tonight?” she asked without preamble.

Bear noticed he didn’t even get a “hi.” Not that he deserved one. “I brought over a bottle of tequila, and Hank drank too much of it. He was pretty upset.”

“Because of Bitchy Barbie, right?”

Bear nodded. “He took it even harder than I thought he would.”

Stella flinched. “He’s better off without her.”

“I know that, and you know that,” Bear said. This was actually the longest conversation they’d had in many months. “But Hank would have preferred to come to that conclusion himself.”

Bear hadn’t expected his friend to take it quite so hard, though. It wasn’t until after Hank got truly sloppy that Bear began to understand why. “I’m never finding someone,” Hank had slurred, face in his hands.

“That is not true,” Bear had said immediately. Hank had been a total babe magnet his whole life. Even
before
he’d become a pro snowboarder. Women would always find him attractive. Wheels or no wheels.

“Yeah, it is true,” he’d said. “I’m never having sex again.”

Bear had just snorted. “Me neither, apparently.”

Hank had looked up from his hands, a horribly serious look in his eye. “You don’t get it. No woman will want me this way. My
last time
was with that bitch.”

For a moment, they just stared at each other. Bear had risen abruptly and gone to the sink to fetch a couple of glasses of water, because it was his job to stay upbeat. Tonight, however, he didn’t think he could keep the look of devastation off his own face. Hank thought his life was over. That no woman would ever see past the chair.

And Bear didn’t have the right words to tell his friend to hang in there. Bear had never felt so fucking helpless than he had this past year. He hadn’t known what to say last winter, when Hank woke up unable to move his body.
If only I was a better friend, then I’d know what to say
. If he had a dollar for every time he’d thought that, he could buy the his own car in one easy payment.

Helplessness had had been the theme of his spring and summer. And now it was fall already, and he was
still
flailing.

The only thing he knew for sure was that he could not go to Colorado. Not when Hank was still like this. There was only one thing he knew how to do: show up. He’d shown up at the rehab facility during visiting hours, when Hank was stuck in that joint for eight weeks. He showed up when Hank moved into this house, to move books and shit around, and bring the first six pack for the empty fridge. He showed up for Patriot’s games on TV, and to drag Hank out of the house for happy hour.

He showed up. And it never seemed to help. But still, he had to keep trying, until one of these days Hank rejoined the living. Every time he pulled up in front of Hank’s house, he hoped that today would be the day Hank said, “Sorry, I can’t hang out tonight, man, I’ve got a date.” But months had passed, and Bear was terrified that it would never happen.

That gave him the cold sweats.

When he’d returned to his seat, Hank had the bottle of tequila in his hand, and the level of the liquid had decreased dramatically.

“Hank?” he’d asked, looking around for the spill.
Please let there be a spill
.

His friend’s head had sagged on his neck. And then the real fun began. It was a good thing that Hank’s bachelor motif favored sleek wooden floors. It had made the cleanup a whole lot easier.

Standing in front of him, Stella cleared her throat. “Is there a mess?” she asked. “I’ll clean it up before we go.”

“Already did that,” Bear said. “Took care of it. Started a laundry.”

Her eyes flashed. “Of course you did,” she muttered. “Let’s go then.” Stella turned and stomped out of the house.

Bear grabbed a bottle of water out of Hank’s fridge and followed her. Stella’s car was already running when he folded himself into the passenger seat. It was an awfully tight fit. Stella did a three-point turn on the gravel in front of Hank’s woodsy house and headed down the driveway.

On Vermont’s deserted roads, the trip to the hospital took the same fifteen minutes whether driven at two-thirty a.m. or at nine in the morning. Almost all of those minutes dripped by without Stella saying a word. “How’ve you been?” Bear finally asked into the uncomfortable silence.

“Just peachy.”

Bear was still woozy from his portion of tequila, but he wasn’t too drunk to pick up how she felt about him right now. And he knew he deserved it. “I hope that’s really true, buddy.”

She gave a little snort. “Let’s see… I’m chained to a desk. My sponsors dumped me after I disappeared last year. I don’t have the money to compete. There’s a first-descent trip to Alaska that I’m not invited on, because I don’t have any backing, and therefore any visibility. And I don’t see my brother as often as I used to, because your car is in his fucking driveway all the time.”

Whoa
. Bear flinched. “I didn’t know that. What if…” Bear rubbed his forehead with a fist. “You could take certain days of the week, and I’ll stay away.”

“What a great idea!” she said with too much zeal. “We could be like divorced people who were never married.” Stella made the turn into a hospital parking space a little quicker than absolutely necessary.

Shit
. His head was too fuzzy to figure out what to say. “I’m really sorry that you don’t want to see me, Stella.”

She yanked the parking brake into place and leveled him with a stare. “I think that’s my line, you
ass
.” Yanking the door open, she hopped out of the car and then slammed the door again.

Bear leaned back against the headrest of her little car and closed his eyes. Stella’s anger confused him. Their drunken fling would have sorted itself out had it happened at any other time. Without the tragedy of Hank’s accident, she would have realized by the time her plane’s wheel’s lifted off from Reno that Bear wasn’t good boyfriend material. She would have moved on.

Instead, nobody had moved on.

He had to admit that Hank’s drink-yourself-to-oblivion plan didn’t seem quite so crazy just then.

Thirteen

“O
H
MY
GOD!” A
NYA
squealed.

Bear couldn’t see the computer screen, because there were too many heads clustered in front of it. But since he’d spent a dozen hours editing this footage, he knew precisely what had set her off. It was the awesomely comical clip of the little kids falling down like bowling pins and then the chairlift scraping them forward, like the pin return at the end of the alley.

Since the safety team had begun screening Bear’s training video two minutes ago, there had been grunts of appreciation and chuckles of amusement.

That was good. Very good.

Because he couldn’t help it, Bear risked one more glance into the corner where Stella’s desk was. There was still nobody over there. And the computer screen was dark.

It had been three weeks since that grisly night when he’d had to call her for a ride to the ER. He’d been to the ski mountain office five times since then and had only managed to glimpse her once. He’d given her a friendly smile but she had not returned it.

Big surprise.

His audience of five
oohed
and
ahhed
through the video, while Bear stood there worrying. His favorite pastime.
 

“This is awesome,” Anya said finally.

“It’s great,” Toby agreed. “Can I tweak a couple of words in the narration?”

“Sure,” Bear agreed. “Watch it a few more times and email me your changes.”

Anya clapped her hands. “Does this mean we get to talk about the marketing video now? If you can make a training video entertaining, then I can’t wait to see what happens when we turn you loose on the fun stuff.”

“But no pressure, right?”
 

She grinned. “It’s going to rock.”

Bear thought so, too. In fact, this gig was just about the only shiny thing in his life right now. His eyes flicked once more to Stella’s empty corner. When he looked back at Anya, she was studying him.

Busted
.

Bear cleared his throat. “Is she here today?” Anya would know exactly whom he meant. She wasn’t slow.

The girl shook her head, making a blue lock of her hair wag back and forth. “Nope. And she isn’t coming back.”

“What?” His heart sank as a reflex, but then lifted again. Maybe Stella had gone off somewhere exciting. She’d mentioned an Alaska trip. It was only October, though…

“She quit,” Anya shrugged. “Told her dad she was through.”

Quit
? Bear wanted to pry, but anything he said to Anya would go directly back to Stella, as soon as the airwaves could carry it. Curiosity won out. “She got a better offer?” he asked hopefully.

“Depends how you define better,” Anya said. “She’s working for Travis.”

“Doing what?”

Anya spread her hands. “Tapping beers, of course. It’s not like Travis made her the chef.”

“Oh. That’s probably a good thing, though.”

A smile began at one corner of Anya’s mouth and spread slowly across her face. Stella’s inability to cook was widely known. “Yeah.”

Bear realized he’d shown way too much interest in the topic already. “I’ll show you a few ideas for the marketing video. Maybe… next week?”

“I can’t wait.”

Bear got into Hank’s SUV and warmed up the engine. Before the meeting at the office, he’d spent much of the day hanging lighting fixtures at a new McMansion on the ski mountain. Now that it was quitting time, he reviewed his choices. He could drag Hank out for a burger or a pizza — those being the two most prevalent food groups in a ski town — or he could go home and make himself yet another lonely bachelor sandwich.

For once, he chose a third option.

Bear reversed out of his parking spot and headed into town. Idling past Rupert’s Bar & Grill, he saw Stella’s car parked out front. Bear nabbed another of the parking spots on Main Street, but decided to take care of some business before he went inside.

He pulled out his phone and checked the signal. He did the Vermont Two Step — holding the phone in the air and pacing around until his phone showed four bars — which was about as good as it ever got in Vermont.

Bear needed to work some magic before the guys who worked on Rocky Mountain time went off for their own cocktail hour. He dialed, tapping a foot until he got an answer.

“Hey! How are you?” was the greeting Bear received from Christian, the rep for his favorite ex-sponsor.

“I’m doing great,” Bear lied. “And you?”

“Couldn’t be better. We got our first flurries last night. Three more weeks until we’re skiing on it.”

“Awesome.”

“How’s Hazardous doing these days?”

Funny, but Bear used to hear Hank’s nickname all the time and think nothing of it. Now it hit way too close to home. “He’s coming along,” Bear said, his second lie in fifteen seconds. “I lost some money to him on the football game last weekend.”

“Sorry to hear that.” Christian chuckled.

“Me too,” Bear said, keeping it light. “So I got this new gig I want to tell you about. I’m making films for a living.”