Shooting for the Stars (16 page)

His lot in life was to admire her from afar. And there was really no way around it.

Hank gave up on the football. He transferred to his wheelchair, rolled into the kitchen and opened the under-counter refrigerator. When he returned, he held two beers. Hank had perfected a method of holding a long neck with the fingers of each hand, while propelling his wheelchair forward with the heels of his hands. It didn’t look comfortable, but Bear had learned months ago not to offer help unless it was blatantly necessary. Hank didn’t want to be babied, and Bear totally got that.

“That’s who you need in your movie,” Hank said.

“Sorry?” Bear took one of the beers.

“Stella. A film could do her a lot of good. I heard her asking that useless agent of hers whether Nike was going to make another snowboarding movie. She needs the visibility.”

“I thought about asking Stella,” Bear said, in a whopping understatement. He’d thought about it plenty. But without Hank involved, it would be so awkward.

“If you don’t ask her, she’ll never speak to you again.” Hank chuckled. “Besides. If you want big mountain shots, who’s better than her?”

“Nobody,” Bear admitted. Hank didn’t seem to have noticed Stella was avoiding him.

Hank took a sip of his beer. “My parents really won’t give her the money? Seriously?”

“Well…” Bear cleared his throat. “I don’t have all the details. I don’t know how hard she pressed her case. I think she hates that she has to ask for help. She hates that she’s twenty-seven and still not earning enough to cover the travel. You made snowboarding pay the bills before you could legally drink. She’s pissed it hasn’t worked like that for her.” It didn’t matter that Stella hadn’t spelled all of that out to him lately. It was his own life story, too. He had that fucker memorized.

Hank traced the lip of his beer bottle with one finger. “It’s not her fault that freeriding doesn’t pay that well.”

“Or that the women never get paid like the men.”

Hank looked up to meet Bear’s eyes, a smirk on his face. “Bear, I never took you for a feminist.”

“Very funny.” Bear took a slug of his beer, paranoid about Hank’s scrutiny. He’d always been tuned into Stella, even before he’d stepped over the line with her.

“You’re right, though.” Hank ran his hand across the overgrown whiskers on his chin. “Poor kid. She must be so frustrated. I’ll go find her tomorrow, and see if there’s anything I can do.”

Bear chuckled in spite of himself. “Just don’t be surprised if she won’t take your help. Trying to talk her into something is like trying to talk
you
into something. Impossible, really.”

Hank grinned. “We’re just here to give the whole world a hard time.”

Wasn’t that the truth.

Fifteen

O
CTOBER
SLID
INTO
N
OVEMBER
while Bear became even more frustrated by all the things in his life which could not be resolved — big and small.

Hank wasn’t returning his calls, and Bear didn’t know why. He could only hope the new therapy regime taking up more of Hank’s time. And Bear had his fingers crossed that Hank had started spending time with that hot doctor he admired.

There was, however, no evidence that had happened.

Meanwhile, he’d sent Hank a check in the mail for two grand, which had gone uncashed. Which could mean that Hank didn’t open his mail. Or that he’d opened it, and shredded the check.

Most pressing, Bear was still waiting to hear from OverSight. He’d sent in a detailed proposal and cost estimates, and had been promised an answer within “a few days.” Days had turned to weeks, and Bear had taken to checking his cell phone every half hour during the work day to be sure that he hadn’t missed anything. But all that turned up on his voicemail were pleas from his Colorado friend who wanted him to commit to the Aspen job.

The call he’d been waiting for finally came at about ten o’clock on a Monday night. Bear had just finished showering the sawdust from one of his father’s job sites out of his hair. As he pulled on a pair of jeans, the phone rang.

“Working late?” he asked Christian when he picked up the call.

“Yeah, man. You know how it is in the fall.”

Bear did know. Everyone who worked with the snowsports industry put in overtime to set up for the season. As soon as that crisp, leafy smell hit the air, it was time to book flights, work the kinks out of the equipment and spend a whole lot of time getting into shape.

Now that snowboarding was no longer his life, Bear didn’t know what to do with autumn anymore.

“So, we think your proposal has legs,” Christian said. Bear’s heart skipped a beat. “We want to do it. There’s just one stipulation.”

“What’s that?” Bear asked, while mentally jumping up and down.

“We need Hank Lazarus to sign on with the project before we’ll fund it.”

Crash
. His private celebration suffered a hard landing. Bear took a few seconds before answering, because he needed to make himself clear without losing his temper. But it wouldn’t be easy. “I hear you,” he said slowly. “But that’s not the way this works. Hank is going to do this project with me, but he’s doing it on his own time frame. And I will not rush that man. It’s only been a
year
, Christian.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line then. “I get it. But maybe this project works better next year, then.”

Bear felt like screaming. Another year like this past one would kill him. “I don’t have a year. And there’s no better investment than a film made by me.”

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 about 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.