First Crush

by Linda Seed

  “Well, this is it,” TJ said as they both got out of his truck. “This is where I grew up.” He pointed to an oak tree in the front yard. “See that tree? I used to have a tire swing hanging from that branch. My dad cut it down after I fell out of it and got a concussion.” He grinned at the memory. “Shall we?” He extended his arm to her, and she took it.

  Bianca knew the house—she’d ridden past it on her bike more than once during the height of the crush years—but she’d never been inside. Now, her desire to see the place where TJ had come to manhood outweighed her nerves about what today might mean.

  The front porch had that distinctive creak that older homes had when you walked on the wooden floorboards, and something about it made Bianca think of grandparents and summer afternoons and homemade cookies.

  She was beginning to feel better about the whole thing—until TJ led her inside and his mother came to greet them.

  Of course, Bianca had met Lily Davenport. You couldn’t live in a small town for any length of time without meeting virtually everyone. But they hadn’t said more than polite greetings to one another, and they certainly hadn’t gotten to know each other. And never before had Bianca been presented to her as her son’s date.

  TJ hugged his mother, then Lily extended her hand stiffly for Bianca to shake.

  “Bianca,” she said. “How lovely.” The way her lips were pressed together, causing fine lines to fan out from the edges of her mouth, said she thought it was anything but lovely.

  “Mrs. Davenport.” Bianca shook the offered hand. “You have a lovely home.”

  “Mmm. Not as lovely as yours, though, is it? I recall your house being featured in the design magazines some years back after your parents had it done up. All of that fancy design is a little too hoity-toity for me, but to each his own.”

  So, that was how it was going to be. Lily had landed the first blow before Bianca had even gotten past the foyer.

  “Mom,” TJ said. “Bianca’s house isn’t hoity-toity.”

  “I suppose you’ve gotten a good look at it,” Lily remarked. “Including Bianca’s bedroom, I imagine.”

  With that, Lily turned and headed into the kitchen, leaving Bianca and TJ to follow her.

  “I’m sorry,” TJ told Bianca, resting his hand at the small of her back. “I don’t know what this is about.”

  “It’s about the fact that you got a divorce,” Bianca guessed, hissing the words under her breath so Lily wouldn’t hear. “And the fact that I’m not Penny.”

  “Ah, man.”

  “Are you coming, or do you expect me to serve you lunch in the foyer?” Lily called to them in a frosty tone.

  27

  Lunch was crab salad with crusty bread and mixed greens with balsamic vinaigrette. They sat at the dining room table, TJ and Bianca on one side and Lily and Paula on the other.

  It seemed to Bianca that two sisters could hardly have been more different from each other. Where Lily was tall and thin, Paula was shorter and a bit plump. Where Lily’s hair had gone gray and was pulled back into a tidy bun, Paula’s was dyed a vibrant red. And while Lily’s manner was frosty, Paula’s was warm and friendly.

  Bianca was grateful that at least someone seemed glad to see her.

  “Oh, I’m sure you don’t remember me, Bianca, but I saw you in your high school play back when Troy was a senior. Arsenic and Old Lace. My nephew couldn’t act, but I came out from Arizona to see him anyway.” She smiled at TJ fondly.

  “He was Mortimer Brewster,” Bianca recalled. TJ must have gotten the lead based on attractiveness and charisma, because Paula was right—his lack of talent had been glaringly apparent. Bianca had played a bit part: she’d been cast as one of the police officers, usually a male role, to address a critical shortage of boys who had auditioned for the production.

  Bianca had only participated in the play to get close to TJ, though she wasn’t about to admit that now.

  TJ looked at Bianca in surprise. “You were in that play?”

  So, it was true, then. She really had been invisible to him.

  “Yes,” she answered tightly. “I was. It was a small part, but I was there. Every day. For months of rehearsals.”

  Lily and Paula silently watched the exchange, until Paula said brightly, “Well. Would anyone like dessert?”

  Bianca was mad—anyone could see that. What TJ didn’t know was why.

  He knew it had something to do with the school play, but what? He really didn’t remember her being in it, so surely he hadn’t been rude to her or otherwise acted like a fool at the time.

  Had he?

  Or maybe it didn’t have anything to do with that. Maybe she was upset because of his mother’s cool attitude toward her. TJ liked that scenario best, because it meant whatever was bothering Bianca wasn’t his fault.

  They made it through the rest of the meal with polite but stilted conversation. Apple cobbler and coffee, then Bianca offered to help Lily clear the table, but Lily refused, saying, “I think I’m capable of cleaning up after a meal without help, thank you.”

  TJ got Bianca settled on the living room sofa talking to Paula—who seemed to like Bianca and therefore was unlikely to make trouble—then went into the kitchen to talk to his mother.

  He entered the room carrying a used plate in each hand, giving him a handy excuse for being there. When she saw him, her eyes widened in mock surprise.

  “Why, Troy, this is a date to put down on my calendar. The day my son helped clear the table without being asked.”

  “What do you mean? I help.” But now that he thought about it, he didn’t. He usually sat watching some kind of game with his father while his mother did all the work. Today, his father was at a Rotary Club lunch, so that wasn’t an option. “Well,” he amended, “maybe I don’t help. But I should.”

  She looked at him suspiciously but smiled in acknowledgment of this unexpected event. “All right, then. Put this leftover crab salad in Tupperware, would you?”

  TJ started rooting around in a cabinet for a container and its corresponding lid. While he did that, he took the opportunity to say what he’d really come into the room to say.

  “Mom … you’re not being very nice to Bianca.”

  “Oh?” Lily stacked plates into the dishwasher without looking at him.

  “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You’ve been giving her a hard time ever since she got here.”

  “Well, I suppose it was partly the inconvenience of having an uninvited guest.” She hit the word uninvited with an extra bit of snark.

  “Since when are you put out when I bring a friend over? You’ve always loved having an extra person at the table.” Lily usually liked to feed as many people as possible as often as possible. All throughout his teen years, she’d been offended when he hadn’t invited his friends. Now it was too much work to set an extra place at the table?

  “Mom,” he said. “Just stop it, and be nice to her.”

  Lily was holding a dishcloth in her hands, and she wrung it and hung it neatly on a rack next to the sink, not looking at him. When she finally faced him, her expression was rigid and stern.

  “I just don’t understand you, that’s all. You told me you wanted to work things out with Penny. How do you expect to do that if you’re dating other women?”

  TJ stared at his mother. “I said that a year ago. Before the divorce.”

  “Yes, well. I don’t see why you have to give up just because you signed a piece of paper. People get remarried. People reconcile.”

  He sighed, suddenly exhausted. He rubbed his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut. “Penny and I are not going to reconcile.”

  “Well, you’re certainly not if you keep running around with this Bianca person.” Lily hissed out the words in a tight whisper so the women in the other room wouldn’t hear.

  “We’re not ‘running around.’ We’re dating. Getting to know each other. It’s what people do.”

  “And for you to be gett
ing serious about someone so soon … what about Owen? What about stability for your son? Oh, Troy …”

  “We’re not getting serious.” It didn’t feel right saying the words—it didn’t feel true—but it seemed to TJ like the easiest way to calm his mother and derail her ire. If he played down what was happening between him and Bianca, maybe Lily would stop feeling like she had to chase Bianca away. Because that was obviously what she was trying to do. And TJ was afraid if she kept it up, it might work.

  “Really.” Lily crossed her arms over her chest, clearly not believing him.

  “Really. We’re just having fun. I haven’t had fun in a long time. I’m overdue.”

  Lily’s expression softened, and she let her arms fall from their defensive position. “I suppose.”

  And then he said the thing he was going to end up regretting more than anything he’d ever said besides, maybe, I do.

  “This thing with Bianca is nothing.” He shrugged. “We’re just playing around.”

  And that was when he looked up and saw Bianca standing in the doorway, staring at him.

  Bianca had come into the kitchen to refill Paula’s glass of iced tea. She had heard TJ and Lily murmuring to each other, but she hadn’t known what they were saying.

  That last thing, though, had been as clear as an alpine lake: TJ telling his mother that their relationship was nothing—that they were just “playing around.”

  It was the second time he’d said something like that, and Bianca didn’t need to hear it a third.

  “Paula would like a refill of iced tea.” She handed TJ the glass. “Could you do it, please? I have an emergency. A patient. I have to go. Lily, thank you for a lovely lunch.”

  Years of keeping her voice neutral while discussing children’s health problems allowed her to hold onto her composure.

  “At least let me drive you,” TJ said. “You don’t have your car.”

  “Oh. That’s all right. I can walk home from here and get my own car. I’ll be fine.”

  But that was stupid, she realized. Lily’s house was a couple of miles from hers, with steep hills; it wouldn’t be an easy walk, and Bianca was claiming she had an emergency to attend to. There was no credible way she could refuse to let TJ drive her home to get her car.

  “It’s no problem,” he told her. “Mom, I’ll be back in a minute.” He kissed his mother on the cheek. “Okay,” he said to Bianca. “Let’s go.”

  Bianca didn’t want to be that woman who ranted and screamed at a man who’d said something to offend her. If this wasn’t going to work out—if he really thought she was nothing—then yelling at him wasn’t going to change his mind.

  The only thing to do was stay calm and stick with the emergency story.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as he began to drive her toward home.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? Because it doesn’t seem like it. Look. That thing you overheard—”

  “Forget it. It’s fine,” she said. “I’m worried about a patient, that’s all.”

  He seemed to accept that, because who wouldn’t? Her job was rife with stress and worry and potential catastrophe, and doctor-patient confidentiality prevented her from talking about it—which made it the perfect excuse.

  Implying that she had a dying patient made her feel like shit, though, even more than she already did.

  When they got to her house, she couldn’t wait to get out of the car and flee inside.

  “Okay. I’m just going to … get my car and go to the hospital. To meet my patient. Thank you for the ride.” She reached for the door handle.

  “Is there anything else I can do?” he asked.

  “No. Thank you. You’ve done enough. With the ride, I mean.” She got out of the car and hurried up the walk without another word to him.

  TJ was pretty sure Bianca didn’t have an emergency with a patient—he was pretty sure she’d fled because she was pissed about what she’d heard him say.

  But he could hardly accuse her of lying, could he? What if she did have a patient? What if there really was a dying kid, and he made her waste precious time while he accused her of making it up?

  No, he had to let her go and save the discussion for later. If she would even agree to talk to him later.

  He felt terrible about the whole thing, but instead of focusing those terrible feelings where they belonged—on his own stupidity—he directed his anger at his mother.

  Surely, she deserved at least some of the blame.

  “What the hell, Mom?” He’d barely closed the door before he started in.

  “Troy, I don’t like your tone of voice.” She was sitting on the sofa with Paula, each of them with a tall glass of iced tea, and both of the women were looking at him in alarm.

  “Well, I don’t like the way you treated Bianca. And I’ve told you before, stop calling me Troy. I go by TJ. If you had any respect for my wishes, you’d have gotten that by now.”

  “Well.” Paula patted her hands to her thighs jauntily. “I have … a phone call to make. Upstairs. I’ll just go.”

  She started to stand up, but TJ stopped her. “Stay. Please. You saw everything; I need a neutral third party here.”

  “Well.” She sat back down.

  “A neutral third party for what?” Lily made a show of looking baffled. “I simply don’t understand what you’re so upset about, Troy. TJ.”

  TJ rubbed his eyes with his fingers and prayed for patience. “I’m upset, Mom, because you were rude to Bianca. And then she left angry.”

  “She didn’t seem angry to me,” Lily said, wide-eyed.

  “Yeah, well, she was. And I’m not surprised. You made her feel about as welcome as a bad case of malaria.”

  “Really. Well, if she was angry,” Lily said, “then I imagine it might be because she heard you say you were just ‘playing around’ with her. That was the phrase you used, wasn’t it? ‘Playing around’?”

  “Oh, dear.” Paula’s eyebrows drew together. “You didn’t say that, did you?”

  TJ didn’t like the way this was going. He’d been set to put the blame squarely on his mother, but Paula and his mom seemed to have other ideas.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “I didn’t—”

  “You said it wasn’t serious. That it was nothing. If that’s the case, I don’t know why you’re so upset,” Lily shot back.

  “Oh, TJ,” Paula moaned. “After all those years of marriage, I would think you’d know more about women.”

  “I know about women.” Though he was beginning to think that what he didn’t know could fill a multi-volume encyclopedia.

  “You’d better go and apologize to her,” Paula said.

  “I don’t see why,” Lily remarked. “He was only telling the truth about how he feels. Hardly something he should have to apologize for.”

  “Unless it wasn’t the truth,” Paula said. “Is it the truth, TJ?”

  “Ah, hell … I don’t know.” He knew he liked her. A lot. He knew that sleeping with her had been the most positive thing that had happened to him in months—maybe years. He knew that he wanted to see more of her. And he knew that the idea of her being upset with him made him feel like shit.

  Did that mean he was serious about her? What did serious even mean?

  “If you’re not serious about her,” Paula said, “you should get that way before she dumps you and finds someone else. I mean it. That girl is a catch.”

  Lily made a rude sound with her mouth. “I hardly think she’s as special as all that. And if he wants Penny back—”

  “Penny has moved on,” Paula said. “And so should he.”

  28

  Bianca didn’t have an emergency—other than the fact that her own stupidity had reached critical levels. How could she have let TJ Davenport hurt her again? How could she have repeated the most traumatic event of her entire four years at Coast Union High School?

  Still, she was prepared to stick with the emergency pretense as she went inside, grabbe
d her keys, and went to her car. If any of her sisters had been home, she’d have told them what she’d told TJ—she had a patient she needed to attend to. She didn’t want to answer their questions right now, not until she’d had time to think things over. And they would have questions if they saw she’d come home early.

  None of them were home, though, so that made things simple. She grabbed the keys, went to the car, got in, and drove away before TJ had even left the premises. Good. The way she’d rushed off, he’d likely believe the lie she’d told him.

  She drove in the direction of the hospital in San Luis Obispo—partly to support the lie, and partly because she didn’t know where else to go. All she knew was that she needed to be away from TJ and away from her sisters until she had a better handle on her emotions.

  “God, I’m stupid. I’m such an idiot. I’m so freaking stupid!” Bianca smacked her hand against the steering wheel as she drove down the coast on Highway 1. She’d let him get to her. She’d slept with him, and then she’d let herself be swayed by some ridiculous fantasy of love and romance and sexual fulfillment.

  It was the hormones—that’s what it was. Stupid damned hormones that flooded her senses with mooney-eyed lust. They’d made her weak. They’d made her feel things she shouldn’t feel and want things she couldn’t have.

  She should have followed her head and not her heart. She should have listened to her brain, and not her … other body parts.

  Bianca didn’t know where she was going, but while she internally stewed and ranted, she seemed to be driving south on autopilot.

  Well, she’d said she was going to the hospital, so that was where she’d go. She didn’t like to lie, so she wouldn’t be a liar. She did have a patient at Sierra Vista, after all—it was nothing critical, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t stop in and see how her young charge was doing.

  Once she had a destination, she felt a little better. If she could just go into doctor mode, she would be able to shove her feelings down enough to cope with the fresh, raw wound that was tearing at her. She’d always felt more comfortable as Dr. Russo than she had just being herself. That was probably worth examining, but not now. Now, she just needed the armor of her white coat.