First Crush

by Linda Seed

  “Of course not. We get to tell a twelve-year-old that he’s not dying. That’s way more fun than drinking.”

  TJ must have recharged his phone, because he tried to call back while they were on their way to his place. Bianca wanted to tell him the news in person, so she texted that they she would stop by his place in twenty minutes. She deliberately chose the phrase stop by to make it seem more casual than it was. She didn’t want him to think she was rushing over to give him traumatic news that he couldn’t be trusted to hear while he was alone and without emotional support.

  Sofia, Benny, and Martina waited in the car. Bianca went up the front walk, which was lighted only by the full moon and by the small porch light shining beside the front door. Her heart was pounding by the time she rang the bell.

  He answered the door shirtless, wearing only a faded pair of jeans with the top button undone, and at first she forgot what she’d come here to tell him. She forgot to say hello. She almost forgot her name.

  “Bianca?” he said.

  “I … uh …” That seemed to be all she was capable of saying.

  His hair was mussed, and he raked a hand through it. “Come in.” He stepped aside to make room for her.

  She was just over the threshold when he looked out and peered at the car. “Who’s out there in the car?”

  “Oh. Ah … my sisters.”

  “What are they doing out there? Tell them to come in.” Then he looked down at himself and seemed to notice for the first time that he wasn’t fully dressed. “I’d better put on a shirt.”

  Yes, you’d better, Bianca thought, or I’ll never be able to string together enough words to tell you what Peter said.

  She got her sisters, he got a shirt, and they all gathered in his small living room in a way that was not entirely professional yet not quite social. There wasn’t enough seating for everyone, so TJ leaned his butt against the sofa’s arm.

  “Okay.” He scrubbed at the stubble on his face with his hand. “What’s going on?”

  “Where’s Owen?” Bianca asked.

  “He’s with Penny. She took him up to her place in San Jose for the weekend.”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s this about?” he prompted her again.

  “I … we … were at a club in San Luis Obispo tonight, and I ran into Peter,” Bianca began. “He told me about Owen’s test results, and … I didn’t want you to have to wait until Monday. Or even tomorrow.”

  She saw him tense up, saw him assess everyone’s expressions and body language to anticipate just what kind of news he was going to hear.

  “You have a right to keep Owen’s medical information private, so if you’d like my sisters to go into another room, or go back to the car, maybe …”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Nah, that’s okay. They can stay.”

  Bianca stood up, because she thought better when she was standing. “Owen has Wilson’s disease. It means that his body can’t process copper, and it builds up in the organs and causes damage. TJ, this is good news. With dietary changes and chelation agents, Owen should recover completely. He’ll have to monitor it his entire life, but … this is manageable, TJ. With the right care, he’s going to be okay.”

  He stared at her, then blinked a few times. “He is?”

  “Yes.”

  TJ’s eyes reddened, and a couple of tears slipped down his face. He wiped them away and took a deep, ragged breath. “That’s … Jesus.”

  Then he grabbed Bianca and hugged her so tightly she could barely breathe. But that was okay; she didn’t particularly feel like she needed to. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to his embrace.

  “All righty, then,” Benny said. “I think maybe we’ll mosey on home and give you two a little privacy.”

  For the first time since TJ had touched her, Bianca realized that there were other people in the room. “Oh. No. We all should go. We can talk more tomorrow, TJ. I can give you some resources, some reading materials …”

  She’d gone from being lost in his arms to talking about reading materials. Bianca was beginning to get dizzy from the sudden shift.

  If she stayed, it would be clear that she wasn’t here only to deliver medical information. It would be clear that she was here at least partly because she wanted to be with him. Worse, they might end up sleeping together.

  Usually, she wouldn’t consider the danger of sex with a hot man as particularly hazardous. But this man, specifically, could do some real damage to her if he made her body sing and then decided, after the fact, that what they had together was nothing, as he’d told Penny it was.

  The pain she’d felt in high school had been based on a fantasy, an illusion. If she slept with TJ now, how much more intense would her suffering be if he tossed her aside as he’d done back then?

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” Benny hissed at Bianca. “Maybe discuss treatment options? Different therapies?”

  “No.” Bianca shook her head. “Not tonight. We can go over all of that tomorrow. During daylight. In a public place.” She was babbling.

  The four sisters headed for the door, and TJ followed them. Bianca was the last of the women to cross the threshold, and TJ stopped her before she went down the walk toward the car.

  “Bianca? Thank you.” His arm was braced against the doorframe, bringing his body temptingly close to hers. All she had to do was lean in a little and he’d be holding her again.…

  She closed her eyes and shook her head a little to clear her thoughts. “Thank Peter. Wilson’s disease isn’t easy to diagnose. If he hadn’t had the right instinct, this could have gone on a long time—too long—before you got any answers.” Which reminded her of the other thing she had to tell him. “TJ, the disease is genetic. You have to tell Penny. Her mom …”

  “Right. Of course. But … if that’s what Beverly has, can she get better? Is it too late?”

  “I don’t know. I hope it’s not.”

  He was standing so close she could breathe in the warm, clean scent of his body. She wanted to go back into the house, to be with him, to see what might happen. But her sisters were watching her. And she had to be smart.

  Impulsively, she lifted up onto her toes and kissed his lips, just once. Then she rushed out to the car and got in before she could change her mind.

  “Woo woo!” Benny said as soon as Bianca got into the car. “Good for you, going for the kiss. Are you sure you don’t want to stay? The kid’s out of town, nothing but consenting adults here, you never know what might happen.…”

  “Just drive.” Bianca’s cheeks were burning with either embarrassment or passion. It was hard to tell, even for her.

  When they got home, Benny put down her purse, took off her jacket, and gave Bianca an appraising look.

  “You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to get laid,” she said. “I suppose it hasn’t been all that long, what with Peter and all, but I can’t imagine it was earth-shaking with him. TJ looks like he’d be earth-shaking.”

  Bianca glared at her sister. “Why are you thinking about whether TJ would be earth-shaking? Keep your dirty mind off of him.”

  Benny grinned. “Ooh. Jealous, are we? You’ve got feelings.” At the word feelings, she waggled her fingers in the air as though the feelings were tiny, invisible fairies flying all around them.

  “Seriously,” Sofia put in. “Peter was missionary position, scheduled on designated nights, no earlier than seven p.m. but no later than ten p.m. Am I right?”

  Bianca’s jaw went slack in surprise at how close to the truth Sofia had come. While there’d never been any kind of explicitly stated schedule, Peter had such specific preferences regarding when and how they had sex, it reminded her of how he ordered in restaurants—weekend evenings only, plain vanilla, hold the whipped cream.

  She had to admit TJ looked like a guy who would go for extra whipped cream—and know exactly where to put it.

  “You went off somewhere just now,” Martina said. “What are you thinking
about?”

  “Whipped cream,” Bianca said.

  TJ had wanted Bianca to stay—badly. He was so relieved about the news she’d brought him, so giddy with the knowledge that Owen would be okay, he wanted to celebrate. And that kiss she’d given him just before she’d left had offered some definite ideas about how, exactly, he could do it.

  But it was probably best that she’d left, because he didn’t want to do something stupid—and sleeping with her out of relief, without knowing exactly where they stood, might qualify.

  And anyway, he had to call Penny and Owen and tell them what he’d found out.

  Owen was in bed by the time he got Penny on the phone—his illness had made him tired lately—but TJ told her everything he knew, and she promised to give Owen the news in the morning.

  “Are you sure about this?” Penny’s voice was intense as she pressed him for information. “TJ, are you sure?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well …” Was he sure? He’d heard it from Bianca at his house, not from Dr. DeVries in the professional environment of his office. Still, Bianca was Owen’s doctor. This wasn’t a rumor. She wouldn’t have told him if she wasn’t certain. “Yeah. I’m sure. I’m going to call Dr. DeVries on Monday and make an appointment to talk about it and find out what all of it means. But Owen can get better, Penny. It’s not going to be easy, I guess—he’s going to need ongoing treatment—but he can get better.”

  Then he told her the other part: how if Owen had Wilson’s disease, it was likely her mother did, too.

  “God. They were so sure it was the drinking,” Penny said. “They never even considered anything else. And she worked so hard to get sober.”

  All at once, TJ felt guilty for having been happy moments before. Yes, Owen had a good prognosis. But did Beverly? What if it was too late for her?

  “I’m sorry we didn’t find this out earlier,” TJ said. “For your mom.”

  “I’ll tell them,” she said. “Maybe there’s something her doctors can do if they know. There’s got to be something.”

  He hoped so. He’d loved Penny once, and he wished he could give her this, even if their marriage had never been right, even if they’d hurt each other in a thousand different ways.

  “Pen?” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Tell Owen … Just tell him I love him, okay?”

  It was all he could really give anybody, in the end.

  20

  Bianca didn’t hear from TJ for a few days after that, but she refused to call him. She’d been the one to make the last move, after all, when she’d kissed him. The ball was in his court, and if he didn’t sink it into the basket, well, that was his own damned fault.

  Part of her was glad he hadn’t called. Dating TJ would be too dangerous, too fraught with peril. She imagined it would be like one of those thirty-dollar buffets in Las Vegas: just too much of everything to be good for anyone involved.

  Her sisters, however, didn’t see it that way. The nagging began the day after their trip to SLO, and by early the next week, it still hadn’t abated.

  “For God’s sake, just text him,” Sofia said at the office on Monday. “You don’t have to offer him your body. Just ask how things are going. Get the ball rolling.

  “His balls are his own business,” Bianca said. Then: “Okay, that sounded wrong.”

  “You’re not proposing marriage,” Sofia protested. “Just ask him out for coffee or something.”

  “If he wanted to go for coffee, he’d have asked by now.”

  And that was the heart of it. She worried that he hadn’t called because he simply didn’t want to. Because he wasn’t interested. Because he’d gotten to know her a little and had decided she was too staid, too dull—all of the same things she’d criticized in Peter.

  “He really did a number on you in high school, didn’t he?” Sofia propped one fist on her hip.

  In retrospect, he hadn’t done anything to her in high school. None of it had been his fault. He hadn’t been responsible for her feelings. Bianca had done a number on herself.

  The TJ of her fantasies had been a construct, not a real person. She’d made him out of imagination and longing, loneliness and need. That TJ—the one who didn’t exist—was the one who’d hurt her. The real TJ hadn’t done a thing.

  The more she thought about it, the more she realized the chasm between the real TJ and the fantasy might be the reason she was so afraid to call him. What if the real man didn’t match up to the one in her mind? What if she did get to know him better and he turned out to fall short of her expectations?

  Worse, what if she fell short of his?

  At work, Bianca felt Sofia scrutinizing her, and at home, Benny and Martina did the same thing. They were plotting something, she was sure. She just didn’t know what it was.

  After TJ found out about Owen’s diagnosis, he spent the weekend researching Wilson’s disease—what it was, and what it would mean for Owen. Then, the next week, he divided his time between working and dealing with Owen’s treatment. There was an appointment with Dr. DeVries, more tests, an appointment with a nutritionist, and a meeting with another specialist—this one a hepatologist whose focus was Wilson’s disease.

  The hepatologist was based at Stanford—three hours away—so that meant a lot of driving. TJ had to push back some of the jobs he’d scheduled to make it all work.

  At the end of each day, he was exhausted. He’d picked up his cell phone to call or text Bianca about a dozen times, but he was so raw over everything that was happening with Owen—and from having to see Penny more than he was used to—that taking an emotional risk with a woman was just too much to contemplate.

  He’d call her when things slowed down.

  Once a treatment plan for Owen was in place and a schedule of appointments was set, things did slow down. But by then, he’d waited too long to call Bianca. Now, any conversation with her would have to start with excuses for why it hadn’t happened sooner.

  He’d be starting out on the defensive, and that was never a good place to be.

  If only Bianca had an electrical problem, he mused. That would make things a hell of a lot easier.

  “Did you check the breaker box?” Bianca asked Benny the following Wednesday. They stood in the dark kitchen with only the moonlight shining through the window to illuminate the room.

  “Of course I did. I’m not an idiot.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Am I sure I’m not an idiot?”

  “I meant, are you sure about the breaker box? Maybe you just thought—”

  “I’m sure I checked the breaker box. God. I know how to check a breaker box.”

  The power to the entire house had gone out just a few minutes before. That, in itself, wasn’t surprising. Cambria was covered in trees—pines and oaks, mostly—and, unlike much of California, it still had above-ground power lines. It was a common occurrence for a tree to fall and take out the nearby wires, plunging some of the town’s residents into darkness until the utility could send workers to set things right.

  But a quick look out the windows showed that the neighbors on all sides still had lights burning brightly through their windows. That meant the problem was with the house, not the neighborhood. That shouldn’t be happening, Bianca thought. The house had been completely rewired just a few years before when her parents had renovated the place.

  “I’ll go check it myself.” Bianca headed for the front door so she could inspect the breaker box, in case Benny had somehow missed a problem.

  “I’ll do it,” Sofia said. “You call PG&E to see if there’s an outage.”

  “But there’s not,” Bianca protested. “Everybody’s got power but us.” Still, she figured it didn’t hurt to check. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and called the utility. As she’d suspected, no outage had been reported.

  “If only we knew an electrician.” Martina put her index finger to her lips and raised her gaze to the ceiling in thought.

>   “No,” Bianca said. “Not TJ. Call someone else.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Benny said. “Do you know how hard it is to get an electrician after hours in Cambria? Or during regular hours, for that matter? Do you want to spend weeks burning oil lamps like Ma and Pa Ingalls? Call TJ. He’s a friend. He has to help.”

  “He’s not exactly a friend,” Bianca said. In truth, she didn’t know what he was. She’d gone to his house for dinner once. Then they’d been on a date. They’d kissed. He was her patient’s father. And he was her high school crush. Did all of that equate to friend? Or more than a friend? Or less? He’d told Penny that they were nothing, so maybe that was how he saw it. He hadn’t called in almost two weeks. Thinking of all of it made her head hurt.

  “I don’t want him to feel obligated,” Bianca protested.

  “Pssht,” Benny said. “It’s his job. We’re going to pay him.”

  And that represented another level of awkwardness. The idea of paying a man she had feelings for—and who might have feelings for her—raised all sorts of issues. Yet she couldn’t not offer to pay him. A mess—that’s what it was. A mess they could avoid if they just called someone else.

  “No. Not TJ,” Bianca said again.

  “Fine.” Martina threw her hands up in surrender. “Call someone else, then.”

  So Bianca tried. She used the cellular data on her phone to Google local electricians, then she began calling them one by one. All of the calls went to voice mail, and she left messages about her house having been plunged into darkness.

  They waited an hour for one of them to call back, but no one did.

  “Okay, what now?” Sofia asked. They were all sitting in the living room with an array of scented candles lit on the coffee table. The scents of Northern Pine, Warm Vanilla, and Gentle Lavender competed in a way that made Bianca’s temples throb.