Glacier Gold Read online

  There’s no point in stalling when your time frame for a quality hookup is seven days.

  I might lack in discipline when it comes to stuff like completing my bachelor’s degree, but I can be trusted to do a thorough job when it comes to hitting on a ten.

  And Andi Fankhauser is a fucking twelve.

  WHEN WE’VE put our boards into the ski room next to the hotel garage and step inside the spacious lobby of the Fankhauser, into the intense coziness emanating from resin-scented wood paneling, fluffy vintage couches, and softly illuminated Alpen-themed oil paintings, he is there.

  Up on a ladder, helping an employee mount Easter decorations on a beam under the ceiling. He must have gone down that mountain at the speed of light.

  Andi fucking Fankhauser.

  The problem is, save for that one time in the Glacier Cave, he has never really looked at me so far. He acts as if I were invisible. Has been doing so from the start, from that moment when I first saw him standing behind the reception desk looking so improbably drop-dead perfect I felt like someone punched me in the gut.

  He told us about meal times and the opening hours of the snowboarding school and shit, and all the time, he kept only addressing Jay and Carl. He didn’t even look at me when he handed me my key card and lift pass.

  It was the same at breakfast today. He said good morning right over my head, then seemed to need all his concentration to enter our orders into his electronic waiter pad.

  And now it’s happening again. On seeing us, he directs a vague nod at Jay and Carl, looking straight past me.

  I rip off my hair band and shake out my mane.

  It’s a blond platinum-highlighted surfer mane.

  It’s a surefire move.

  Without as much as blinking, Andi turns back to the stuffed Easter bunny in his hand to plant it on a hook on the beam.

  He’s still in his snowboard pants and a tight-fitting sports shirt. I decide to take the downer I just got dealt in my stride and use the moment to treat myself to an eyeful of his backside.

  He’s taller than me, but he isn’t as butch as I am. He’s more like the lean type. But I can tell he’s pure chiseled muscle under that shirt. Oh yes, I know he would offer the perfect view in bed. I love a bottom with good definition. There’s nothing more beautiful than the movement of shadow and light on a man’s back when he’s taking it up the ass.

  I did an animated sketch of it on my graphic tablet once. It’s the most successful bit of doodling I’ve ever posted on my Jumbler blog. It’s probably still multiplying somewhere out there on the World Wide Web.

  “Right, are we done ogling the natives now? Come on, I want my strudel,” Carl mutters under his breath.

  “Yeah, Justin, come on,” Jay whispers. “Your man doesn’t seem to be in flirting mode. Or maybe he’s just not interested. You know.”

  “HE HASN’T as much as looked at you so far, has he,” Carl says when we are in the elevator, going up to our suite. “Not a single time, has he.”

  “He hasn’t, has he,” Jay says, nodding and shaking his head at the same time.

  God, I hate them both, I really do.

  I wish I could tell them about how Andi checked me out in the vapor bath. How he told me in so many words that he liked what he saw. But I basically swore an oath of silence, so it seems I’ll have to deal with my friends’ dumb comments for now.

  It is getting a bit unsettling to be so consistently ignored after what happened, to be sure.

  Well, I hope that’s all going to change very soon, as soon as I get the chance to talk to Andi again. He seemed kind of shy about his reaction to me. I guess I need to reassure him that I meant it when I said I liked him back. He’s probably afraid I might yet decide to go to his father and complain about him or something. Or he’s trying to play it cool after having been less than subtle at the outset. Or this is simply his way of playing.

  At any rate, he seems to have decided that it’s up to me to make the next move.

  “Justin?” Carl asks, observing me.

  I shrug. He heaves an exaggerated sigh.

  “He’s got the look,” he says to Jay. “The ‘I will win this’ look.”

  “I will,” I affirm.

  Because.

  I will.

  I AM going to win this little game. I will get Andi Fankhauser to look at me again and hopefully into bed too.

  Why won’t I? He told me he liked my looks. And that’s not, like, totally surreal either, whatever might be Jay’s and Carl’s opinion on the matter. I have stuff going for me. My hair, my quarterback physique. My face isn’t bad either. Guys I’ve fucked have called me handsome. Sure, you shouldn’t put too much stock in what people say when they’ve just come into your fist with your cock up their ass, but there it is.

  And also I simply know how to score.

  Maybe I’m not the most intellectual guy on the planet, maybe I’m not the ultimate pro when it comes to conversations about the national product and shit, but I can do charming. And even more importantly, I’m no quitter.

  “DON’T GET obsessed, Justin,” Jay says through the open bathroom door when we’re getting ready for dinner in our suite a little later.

  He has already changed into his evening gear—blue dress pants and a GameFair T-shirt that doesn’t do his waistline any favors—and is applying the finishing touches to this appalling look in front of the bathroom mirror.

  “Lots of fish in the sea,” he says, trying to force his thinning hair into a spiky style. “That’s what I live by, and my love life is flourishing.”

  It is, funnily enough.

  The man is a professional nerd, literally. He’s got his own gaming channel and claims he’s making a living out of it. In truth, “Jaymer” has like ten followers, and his bills are being paid by a doting aunt. Plus he’s a severe case of fashion challenged. And still he’s getting all the girls, so I guess he must possess some kind of secret dating superpower.

  But I don’t have time for his wisdoms.

  I’m sitting on my bed, touching up my own hair with the curling iron and contemplating a picture of Andi Fankhauser I found in the hotel brochure.

  It’s a diagonal shot of him at the keyboard with his band. It’s quite the fancy image, blurry at the edges and with a purple tint. Only much too small. I hate that about analog pictures. You can’t resize them to your convenience. I angle the brochure to get a better view.

  Andi is wearing Austrian lederhosen over a black tank top in the photo, and he looks incredibly dishy.

  Maybe there are a lot of fish in the sea, but a guy as hot as this is a rarity. As a matter of fact, I can’t remember having come across someone in this league outside of movies or magazines, and I’ve been around the block a few times.

  “Carl?” Jay says, apparently feeling he wants support.

  Carl is rummaging in his closet, sorting through the stuff he saved from breakfast for emergencies. He did have his two strudels just an hour back, but apparently he needs another snack to prepare for the trip to the dining room.

  “Jay’s right, man,” he says, emerging from the closet with something that’s wrapped in a fat-stained napkin in his hand . “Stop the pining, Justin. You’ve got other options. Have you seen the guy behind the bar, the one with the blue hair?”

  I have seen the guy behind the bar with the blue hair. I know he’s interested. I know I have options, more than Jay and Carl here even know of.

  There’s this couple in the room below ours, two guys from Germany. Thirtysomethings, hipster look. Not exactly tens, but well above average, both of them. Last night, when Jay and Carl were still down in the spa, they walked up to where I was sitting in the lounge by the fireplace and invited me to join them for a glass of Gletschergeist.

  I had intended to have some fun with my graphic tablet, play around a bit with the photos I took when we flew into Innsbruck. My trip to the spa had left me kind of shaken and hyperawake, and I needed something to help me unwind. Drawing on my ta
blet relaxes me far more effectively than any old vapor bath. I’d say it’s my favorite pastime outside of sports and sex.

  On the other hand, it’s always nice to have people tell you they would love to buy you a drink, especially when it’s in a tone that says “Great package, dude.”

  The Gletschergeist turned out to be an apricot schnapps and nothing short of hellish. It tasted like the spray paint I use to give my board a fresh style each season. Or like I imagine spray paint would taste. Anyway, five minutes into our chitchat, the two Germans informed me they were absolutely open to “sreesomes.”

  Which is well and good, obviously, but the simple fact is, I have no time for second best, not at the moment.

  Not when there’s someone like Andi within flirting range.

  Fuck, within sniffing range!

  When Andi put my espresso in front of me at breakfast this morning, it nearly gave me a heart attack, and not just because of the overdose of caffeine I already had in my system from the two caffè lattes I’d ordered earlier.

  That’s what the guy does to me: he makes me order drinks I don’t even want just for the chance to inhale his scent.

  It’s woodsy and kind of super clean. Like snow on pine trees or something.

  And speaking of pine. Justin Bennet doesn’t pine. He scores.

  Pointedly ignoring my friends, I pick a neon green scarf from the selection I brought with me and tie my hair back, then put on a touch of turquoise eyeliner, checking the effect in my makeup mirror.

  Perfect. The bright color of the scarf works nicely with my new glacier tan and fir-green glitter shirt, and the eyeliner makes the specks of emerald in my eyes pop, upgrading them from average muddy brown to mysteriously fascinating. Or at least to mildly interesting. Alas, muddy brown isn’t the sexiest of eye colors.

  But then, at least in my experience, eyes are overrated when it comes to scoring. All you really need is a good body, a spandex shirt, and a pair of jeans that fit well. And mine do. I get up and take a turn in front of the mirror on the door to check again.

  Carl is looking on, munching away on a Krapfen. I brace myself, and there it comes. Again.

  “No offense, man, but I’m afraid you’re not his type. You did that thing with your hair, and he didn’t bat a lash.”

  He doesn’t even mean to be bitchy. It’s just what he does, the skinny little prick: spell out painful truths.

  “Why would you even think he’s gay? I understand he’s got a pretty face and all, but he still might be straight,” he goes on. “It happens, you know.”

  “Well, he’s not.”

  “And how would you know?”

  I promised to keep silent about how I know, so I have to make something up.

  “He hasn’t got a girlfriend,” I say.

  “And how would you know that?”

  That’s Jay.

  “Maybe I’ve asked a few questions.”

  I did too. I want to be sure he’s not in a relationship before I get involved. It’s what I call best practice. I want fun, not drama.

  “No girlfriend doesn’t equal gay,” Carl observes, not one to let stuff go.

  “It does too, when someone looks like Andi.”

  All cheekbones and biceps and sky-blue eyes.

  Oh my God, those eyes.

  “But—”

  “I do have gaydar, okay?”

  I tune out Carl and Jay and their gratuitous opinions to focus on Andi’s picture in the flyer once more.

  Oh yeah.

  I’m not a champ when it comes to defending a point in a discussion; I wasn’t the president of the debate club at school like Carl was. And I’m not even sure there is such a thing as gaydar.

  But I can discern beauty if nothing else, and Andi is it.

  HE’S PLAYING again with the Fitschtalers tonight, in the Funk House.

  In the tank top and the lederhosen.

  They look even better on him in real life. They are knee-length, revealing his muscled calves, while the suspenders and the broad leather strap across his chest seem to have been specially designed to accentuate the perfect lines of his upper body.

  And then there’s that pretty embroidered flap covering his midsection, the codpiece. He’s playing standing, and I don’t know how anyone can look at him and not think of undoing it.

  I know I’m staring, but I don’t give a fuck.

  Hell, he’s magnificent.

  And so very different from what he’s like when he does his job around the hotel during the day.

  His thick black hair won’t stay in place. It keeps falling into his eyes as he plays. Watching him in the dim, reddish light, drawn into the rhythm of the music, body swaying, fingers dancing across the keys—it’s enough to keep me half-hard all through the evening.

  I can’t stop imagining him in bed with me. I imagine him swaying in the rhythm of getting fucked or using those deft fingers for a nice old-fashioned hand job on yours truly.

  Maybe I am getting a bit obsessed.

  Taking care to be discreet, I pull out my phone and take a couple of videos of him from where I’m sitting at a table by the dance floor with Carl. The music is too loud to allow Carl to comment, but he raises a very expressive eyebrow at me from across his bowl of potato chips.

  At least Jay is too busy with his own shit to copy him. He means to score with the Dutch girl tonight and is giving his all on the dance floor.

  I don’t know how he does it. With the first day of boarding like lead in my back and legs, I have trouble even moving in my seat. But I guess I should take a leaf out of Jay’s book and pull myself together for the greater good.

  Yes. Instead of acting like a creep and pretending I don’t get what Carl’s problem is, I should try to impress Andi with some cool Cali hip-hop moves.

  But the moment I get up from my seat, Andi takes the microphone from the singer and announces the band is going to take a fifteen-minute break. He switches on the stereo, and Rihanna’s “We Found Love” blasts through the room.

  Okay. Even better. Fifteen minutes should be more than enough to finally get him to talk to me.

  Time to act.

  Jay comes back to our table with two ladies in tow. One of them is the Dutch girl, Antje. She’s giggling and laughing and has both her arms around Jay like she needs to hold on to his ample middle for balance. I leave my friends to their chicks and chips respectively and head for the stage.

  The dance floor is still crowded, and it takes me a while to push my way through. When I’ve made it to the stage, Andi is gone.

  Well, it’s not like I’m doing this kind of thing for the first time. There’s just one place people disappear to in bars.

  Without missing a beat, I make for the hallway leading to the bathrooms.

  Stepping from one foot onto the other, I wait for him in front of the door with the sign saying Herren. As a matter of fact, I’d really like to take a leak myself, but the urinal is obviously not how this works.

  Trying to keep my calm, I focus on the fat scented candle glowing away inside its glass cover on the floor by the bathroom door. It exudes a strong cinnamon aroma. After a few minutes, I start to feel slightly nauseous.

  Man, the guy is taking like forever in there! I won’t be able to hold it in much longer if he doesn’t speed up a bit—

  With a bang, the door opens and Andi steps through. I jump and almost wet myself for seriously wrong reasons, then quickly step forward and say, “Hi!”

  His eyes meet mine, opening wide, and for a couple of long moments I look into that strange, luminous blue.

  I forget to breathe, I forget where we are and what I’m here for. He’s holding my gaze, and it’s like I’m losing myself in his eyes, it’s like he’s taking me along on a trip into eternity. But then something gives. His lids start to flutter, his gaze slips. It lingers on the expanse of glittering green spandex that is my chest for another moment or two. He’s breathing hard, biting his lip. Then he turns away from me, presenting me w
ith his gorgeous profile and a vivid, blotchy blush on his neck and cheek.

  My brain kicks back into gear. He just eye-fucked my soul or something, and I have to man up now. I have to seize the moment and do what I came to do. He gave me a compliment down in the Glacier Cave, and it’s time to return it.

  Grateful I’m prepared, I say my next line.

  He doesn’t say thanks or anything or even turn back to me. All he does is utter a kind of choking cough that could mean just about anything. Then he walks off. He simply walks off, down the hallway, tugging at his lederhosen like he needs to make sure they’re covering his butt.

  And that’s it.

  Fuck, why?

  I know he got my meaning. Hell, how many ways are there to read “I really love your lederhosen”?

  And it’s not like the guy doesn’t know any English. He talked completely fluently about eggs at breakfast this morning when Carl wanted all the dirty details about the options on offer. I was pretty impressed about that conversation, actually. It might have been about shit like the specifics of an omelet as opposed to scrambled eggs, but it left no doubt about the fact that Andi speaks English as if it were his mother tongue.

  I myself don’t know any foreign languages. All I ever managed was a D in Spanish back in high school.

  Hell, how could I not want to get Andi into bed?

  Clever, great body, can play the piano. Plus he’s a half god on the snowboard.

  And he does have the most beautiful profile—

  I DON’T tell Jay and Carl about what happened. Who would want to share a story like that? But somehow they still get that something didn’t go right.

  That’s the thing with friends. With sharing a suite with friends. They can see you fight the blues as you lie in bed and look at your phone in the dark, at the videos you secretly took of Andi fucking Fankhauser playing the keyboard.

  Maybe it wasn’t quite correct that I did that; maybe it’s bordering on stalking. Maybe it is full-on stalking. But I can’t be expected to live on just a blurry photo with the wrong color filter in a frigging hotel flyer all through this vacation.