by Linda Seed
“I told them.” To his own ears, he already sounded defeated, and he knew that whatever was happening to Owen, this was likely only the beginning. He couldn’t afford to be defeated. Screw defeat.
“All right. I’ll call them and see what I can do.”
He was so grateful for that—for her willingness to intervene—that he sagged in relief. “Thank you. I appreciate it, Bianca.” He wondered if he should be calling her Dr. Russo—if it was somehow disrespectful to use her first name in this context—but he went with it. The more she felt connected to the situation, and to Owen in particular, the better this was going to go.
The problem with referring kids to specialists on the Central Coast was that there weren’t very many to choose from. Bianca could refer Owen to a different pediatric gastroenterologist, but it would mean he and TJ would have to go all the way to Santa Barbara—a drive of more than two hours.
That would be fine for a single consultation, but if Owen had a serious condition—and Bianca was certain that he did—then it was going to be more than one visit, and probably more than several.
She called the office of the specialist who’d put them off, but she didn’t get anywhere. The availability was what it was, she was told. Could Bianca add more hours to the day? Could she, perhaps, suggest which sick kid they should bump in order to get Owen Davenport in earlier?
She hung up discouraged.
Bianca did have a resource, and one that was close by. Though she might be attempting to cross a bridge that had been burned to ashes.
With only slight hesitation, she called Peter.
“Owen has an appointment with a gastroenterologist tomorrow at ten,” she told TJ on the phone later that morning.
“He does? That’s … Thank you. But why did they tell me there wasn’t anything available if they had a spot open at ten? Did somebody cancel? Because—”
“It’s not the same doctor.”
“Oh. Okay. But it’s a pediatric gastroenterologist?”
“Not pediatric. But he’s excellent, and he’s local. Owen will be in good hands.”
“That’s great. That’s just … great. Thanks, Bianca.”
She squirmed a little and wondered whether to tell him. Then she decided that there was no benefit in not telling him.
“There’s just one thing.”
“Oh?”
“Peter … Dr. DeVries … is …”
“He’s what?” TJ asked.
“He’s my ex.” When TJ didn’t say anything immediately, Bianca pressed on. “We dated. For a while. And then we broke up. Recently. Really recently. Not that it should affect anything. He’s an excellent doctor. And it’s not like he’s going to know that there’s … anything between us.”
“I wasn’t aware that there was anything between us,” TJ said.
At first, Bianca felt like she’d been slapped. Here it was again, the same rejection she’d experienced in high school. The same hot shame, the same—
“Of course,” he went on, “if you want there to be something between us, we could make that happen.”
She blushed. She was actually blushing. When was she going to outgrow this childish crush on TJ Davenport?
Probably never.
“I’ll text you Peter’s information. Let me know how the appointment goes,” she said, then hung up.
TJ spent the rest of that day thinking about the next day’s appointment—and about Bianca. He’d flirted with her during a phone conversation about his sick kid. What kind of father did that?
The kind who needs to think about something other than what might happen to his son.
That was the truth of it. TJ needed to take care of business for Owen, and he was doing that. But he also needed an escape from his worries. Flirting with Bianca had seemed like a harmless way to achieve that.
He was working for a general contractor today. A new house was going up in the Marine Terrace neighborhood, and TJ and a small team of guys he’d hired were handling the wiring.
Tomorrow was supposed to be a full day of work on the project, but now TJ had to beg off for an hour or two to take Owen to his appointment. One of the nice things about marriage, he reflected, was being able to trade off with your spouse on stuff like this.
Now there was no spouse, so it was all up to TJ. He’d promised Penny he would be on top of this, and he would be. Both she and Owen were counting on him.
He just hoped he wouldn’t get any shit for taking the time off. He’d happily tell the general contractor to shove his house project up his ass if it came to that, but TJ’s guys needed their paychecks as much as he did.
Well, if he could get ahead of schedule today, that would help his case for tomorrow.
He skipped lunch and dug in, focusing on the job now so he could focus on his son tomorrow.
“You okay?” Jason, a guy on his crew, peered at TJ when he came back from his lunch break and saw that TJ had never left. “Did something happen with the inspection?”
“Nah.” TJ had just come out of the crawlspace under the house, and he straightened up and dusted himself off. “Just trying to get a jump on things, that’s all.”
That night, TJ told himself that he was Googling Peter DeVries to find out whether the guy was a good doctor. And that was mostly true. But as hard as he tried, it was difficult to separate the man’s professional information—education, credentials, Yelp reviews—from the fact that he was Bianca’s ex.
Looking at DeVries’s picture, TJ wasn’t especially impressed. If someone had created an image labeled Average White Male, it would probably look something like this. Medium brown hair, cut conservatively. Medium complexion. Medium build. It was impossible to know the guy’s height based on a head shot, but TJ would have bet it was medium.
The Yelp reviews, though—they were outstanding. People with one horrific gastrointestinal ailment after another thanked him for either saving their lives or improving their quality of life to such an extent that it was practically the same thing.
Moving beyond Yelp, TJ discovered that DeVries had published papers on irritable bowel syndrome, esophageal ulcers—and hepatitis. The guy knew something about the liver, so that was good.
Reading through all of it, the first thing TJ felt was relief. The man was obviously good at his job, and he was going to be on Owen’s case in the morning. The second thing he felt was reassurance. Surely, whatever Owen had, this guy would know what to do about it.
The third thing he felt was intimidation.
This was the kind of guy Bianca dated? Of course it was. She was a doctor—it made sense she would date other doctors. TJ was a good electrician, but he was just an electrician. He hadn’t gone to college. He hadn’t earned an advanced degree—or any degree at all. He played with wiring and made the lights go on. An honorable trade, sure, but how could he hope to impress a woman like Bianca?
Because he did want to impress her. The more he knew about her, the more he was certain of that. The we’ll see had been a challenge, and he was never one to shy away from a challenge.
I Googled DeVries, he told her via text message that night after dinner, when Owen was at the kitchen table hunched over his math book. Looks like he knows his stuff. Thanks for setting us up with him.
A few minutes later, the reply came in: You’re welcome. Call me after the appointment.
I will.
TJ put down his phone and tried to go back to his business—in this case, watching a basketball game on TV. But he kept thinking of Bianca, and thinking of her made it hard to concentrate on the game.
He got his phone from the side table and typed in another message: “We’ll see” doesn’t mean no. Have you decided whether you’re going to go out with me?
When he didn’t get an answer right away, he figured he was probably screwed.
“Why are you staring at that phone?”
Bianca and Martina were at the Cookie Crock, their cart parked in the cereal aisle. Martina was perusing the muesli and
granola while Bianca, distracted, frowned at the screen on her iPhone.
“Bianca?”
“Hmm?” Bianca didn’t look up.
“I’ve decided we should all go gluten free and vegan,” Martina said. “I’m going to buy a box of tree bark, and we’re all going to have to eat it.”
“That’s good,” Bianca murmured, still looking at the phone.
“Give me that.” Martina snatched the phone out of Bianca’s hand, and Bianca blinked as though she were awakening from a particularly deep nap.
“What? What are you … Give me that.” Bianca reached for the phone, but Martina held it out of her reach.
Martina looked at the screen, and her eyes widened. “Ooh.”
“May I have my phone?” Bianca held her hand out expectantly.
Martina handed it back. “So, why haven’t you answered him?”
“Because I don’t know the answer. Let’s just … buy cereal.”
“How can you not know the answer?” Martina wanted to know. “Either you’re still interested in him or you’re not.”
“It’s not that simple.”
An elderly woman maneuvered her cart down the aisle, and Martina pushed her own cart aside to make room.
“Dear, can I just get to the shredded wheat?” The woman pointed to the cereal in question with a wrinkled hand.
“Oh. Of course,” Martina said as she and Bianca moved fifteen feet down the aisle and continued their conversation.
“Yes, it is that simple,” Martina said once they were settled in their new location. “You had a nice time at his place for dinner, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“But what?”
“But I don’t think that was a date.”
“So what? He wants to have a date. He said so right here.” She reached out and tapped the screen of Bianca’s phone with her fingernail.
“I know. But I don’t think it’s a good idea. I’m on the rebound,” Bianca said.
“Well, God forbid you should have a good time with a hot guy to help you get over Peter.” Martina began ticking points off on her fingers: “TJ is wildly attractive. He’s a good father. He’s got his own company, and people will always need electricians, so he’s got a stable career. And he grew up, Bianca. He’s not the teenager who broke your heart anymore.”
The shredded wheat woman, who’d been trying to look like she wasn’t listening in, turned to them, the box of cereal in her hand. “You don’t want to let go of a reliable electrician on the Central Coast. Trust me. You should marry him.”
While Bianca was distracted by that, Martina grabbed the phone out of her hand again. She typed in a text and pressed send.
“Oh, my God. What did you say? Martina, I swear …”
“I said what you should have said days ago.” Martina had an annoying smirk on her face, and her loose bun was listing to one side on the top of her head.
Bianca looked at the text her sister had sent: Name the time and place.
“Oh, God,” Bianca said.
“You’re welcome,” Martina told her. “Now pick out some cereal so we can get out of here.”
The time he named was the next night. The place was The Sandpiper, a restaurant on Moonstone Beach.
Bianca thought about explaining that Martina had sent the text agreeing to the date, not her. But the truth was that she wanted to go. She knew it wasn’t wise, but she wanted it.
What would it hurt to be unwise, just this once?
TJ’s son was sick, and Bianca could imagine that he needed the chance to think about something else for a while. Something happy. She liked the idea that she could be that happy thing.
This is stupid. You’re being stupid.
He hadn’t meant to hurt her in high school—she could see that—but regardless of his intention, she’d been crushed into dust by his disregard. She didn’t want to be crushed into dust again. And he could do it, if he wanted to. She told herself she was beyond it, that she was grown now and no longer subject to that kind of soul-destroying angst. But the feelings were still there—the flutter in her belly, the warm, syrupy feeling that ran through her when she saw him.
He still had power over her.
Going out with him was risky, and she wasn’t sure she wanted that kind of risk, especially so soon after her breakup with Peter. Logic said you needed to take a break from men after ending a long-term relationship. Logic said you needed to take a step back and reassess in order to move forward in a smart, sensible way.
There was nothing logical about throwing yourself at your teenage crush.
Except that I’m not going to throw myself at him. It’s just dinner.
What she wanted and what she knew was smart were warring inside her. Usually when that happened, the smart won. Among her sisters, Bianca was the one who could be counted on to do what was sensible and reasonable.
Right now, sensible and reasonable sucked.
15
Bianca had thought she might cancel right up until the moment TJ rang the doorbell to pick her up. She could have canceled even then, she supposed, by pleading a sudden stomach virus.
Because her stomach did do funny things when she saw him.
He was wearing nice slacks and a sport jacket over a dress shirt that was open at the throat. He was freshly shaved, his hair combed and possibly newly cut. She’d never seen him dressed up before, and it might have short-circuited her brain. There was a humming in her head that made it hard to think.
“TJ. Hi. You look … nice.” Nice, because it would have been unwise to say what she really thought—that he looked so good she wanted to strip him naked right there in the doorway.
“You too.” She could tell he meant it; the mischievous half-smile on his face suggested that he might be having thoughts that weren’t suitable for polite conversation.
Bianca silently sent her thanks to Benny, who’d helped her choose an outfit: black skinny jeans, a loose, silky top with a deep neckline, chunky silver necklace, high-heeled boots.
The jeans were hers, but everything else was Sofia’s. Most of what Bianca owned leaned toward practical instead of sexy. In retrospect, it was an apt metaphor for her relationship with Peter. It had been all practicality and no excitement.
If this thing with TJ went anywhere, she was pretty sure lack of excitement would not be an issue.
The restaurant was only half-full, which wasn’t surprising for an evening in February in the middle of the week. Cambria got tourists year round, but there was a distinct lull during the first few months of the year, when the cold wind blowing in off the ocean made walking on the Moonstone Beach boardwalk an exercise in endurance.
The inside of the restaurant was warm and dim, with subtle lighting and candles in chunky glass jars on the tabletops.
The hostess seated them at a table by the window, but the sun had already set, and where there would have been a stunning view of the ocean, they could now see only their own reflections in the darkened glass.
Once their wine had been served—Chardonnay for her, merlot for him—Bianca asked about Owen’s appointment that morning with Dr. DeVries. TJ was so worried that it made his head hurt, and he didn’t want to feel that way right now. He wanted to get his mind off it. Still, he knew he had to tell her so they could move past it and he could get to the escape part, if only for one evening.
“He said something about alpha … Shit, I can’t remember. I wrote it down, but I don’t have my notes with me.”
“Alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency,” she finished for him. “After viral hepatitis, it’s the first place I’d look, too.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “He wants to do a biopsy.”
She looked at him with such compassion that it made his chest ache. “I know that’s frightening, but it’s a safe procedure. It’s outpatient, and the risks—”
“Yeah. I’m not worried about the biopsy itself so much as what it might show, you know?”
“I know. But if he does
have AAT, that doesn’t mean—”
“Bianca?” He rubbed his forehead with his fingers, trying to ease the tension just behind his eyes. “I’d really like to not talk about it anymore right now, if that’s okay. The reason I asked you out—besides the fact that I like you—was that I really need to think about something else for a while.”
“Oh. Of course.”
“Owen’s spending the night at a friend’s house, so he’s having a good time, and I … I just need to have a good time, too.”
She smiled, and the smile made her look like that girl he’d sort of known in high school. Why hadn’t he noticed then how great her smile was?
“Let’s order.” He picked up his menu. “I’m starving.”
They didn’t talk any further about Owen’s illness. They did talk about Owen, though—about what he liked to do, and who his friends were, and how he was doing in school. They talked about Bianca’s sisters, and how they’d all started living together in the log cabin after their parents had died and left the house to them. They talked about their jobs: how Bianca had decided to go into medicine, and how TJ had thwarted his parents’ desire for him to go to law school by skipping college entirely and becoming a tradesman.
They didn’t talk about Penny, and they didn’t talk about Peter, except in the context of Owen’s health. They’d made a silent agreement that the subject of exes could wait for another day.
Bianca ate seafood pasta, and TJ had a steak, medium rare. The food was good, and the restaurant was full of the low murmur of the other diners, and before either of them realized it, they’d been talking and eating and drinking wine for more than two hours.
There was so much more he wanted to know. He wanted to know how her parents had died, but he didn’t want to think about death. He wanted to know how she managed the demands and the stresses of her job, but he didn’t want to think about children with serious illnesses. So instead, they talked about the books he liked and the movies she enjoyed; his plans for his business and her interest in traveling to Italy to meet the relatives she’d never known.
