First Crush

by Linda Seed

  By the time he’d paid the check and they were walking out of the restaurant, his hand resting lightly on the small of her back, he felt good for the first time since he’d realized Owen was sick.

  He felt light and happy. Since the divorce, he’d almost forgotten what it was like to feel light and happy.

  About halfway through the main course, Bianca forgot that TJ was the boy who’d thwarted her tender hopes in high school. He stopped being the symbol of her awkward, painful adolescence and started being a real person.

  That would have allowed her to relax, finally, and have a good time—if not for the fact that the real person he had become was someone she was desperately attracted to.

  She knew she shouldn’t compare him to Peter, but when had she ever had this much fun with Peter? When had Peter made her feel so interested, so intrigued?

  He paid the bill and walked her out to his truck, then opened the passenger door for her. He was standing so close to her that she could smell the clean scent of soap and warm skin.

  A swift breeze had kicked in off the ocean, and it ruffled her hair and gave her a chill as she stood next to him.

  “You cold?” His deep voice made something stir at the base of her spine.

  “A little.” She wanted so much to walk into his arms and let him warm her with his body, but she knew she should get into the truck instead. She hesitated, waiting to see what would happen.

  He knew she wanted him to kiss her. Why else was she standing there looking at him that way instead of getting into the truck?

  And what the hell was he waiting for?

  Tentatively, he reached out and touched her face with the palm of his hand. She leaned into it, and her eyes slipped closed.

  It was all the permission he needed. He touched his lips to hers gently, and she let out a soft sigh. The sigh was almost enough to break a man’s self-control. But he tried to be a better man than most, so he pulled back a little, waiting.

  “Bianca?” He stroked his thumb against the softness of her lower lip.

  If he’d had any doubts that she wanted this, they fled as she put her arms around him and kissed him deeply, taking control, taking initiative in a way that was hot as hell.

  It only lasted a moment, but it left him stunned, dazzled.

  For a long minute after she’d pulled away from him and had gotten into his truck, he stood there reliving the kiss with the breeze chilling his skin, the ocean waves roaring in his ears.

  Then he got into the truck, started the engine, and tried to pretend that he hadn’t just had his knees knocked out from under him by a woman.

  Of course Bianca’s sisters grilled her about the date when she got home, and she considered trying to put them off. But, really, what was the point? She would deny that anything special had happened, and they would accuse her—correctly—of lying, and she would eventually break down and spill the whole thing.

  It just seemed more efficient to eliminate a few steps.

  “Yes, he kissed me, and yes, it was incredible,” she announced from the doorway before she’d even taken off her coat. “Any questions?”

  Sofia, Benny, Martina, and Patrick all froze amid their various activities and stared at her. Benny had been watching something on TV, and she reached for the remote and turned it off, so the only sound in the room was the echo of Bianca’s pronouncement.

  “Hell, yes, I’ve got questions.” Benny rubbed her hands together in glee. “I thought I was going to have to pry it out of you. Sit your ass down and let’s get started.”

  Ten minutes later, Bianca had filled them in on the details. By now, she’d shed her coat and put away her purse, and she was sitting on the sofa with a glass of wine, her shoes kicked off under the coffee table.

  “It was nice. Really nice. Just sitting and talking to him, and eating a good meal. And he didn’t take twenty minutes with the menu! Let me tell you, that alone …”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Sofia made a rolling move along motion with her hand. “Let’s get to the kiss.”

  “Ah … should I leave for this part?” Patrick was just coming into the living room from the kitchen with a mug of tea.

  “No, you’re fine,” Bianca told him. “You’re about to be family. You might as well practice dealing with our issues.”

  “Still. I think I have some … socks to fold.” He vanished down the hallway toward Sofia’s room before anyone could object.

  “Wimp!” Benny called after him.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever dated a man who actually folded socks,” Martina mused.

  “Let’s get back to the point,” Sofia said. “The kiss.”

  Bianca sighed and looked at the wineglass in her hands. “I’d pretty much convinced myself that the real TJ could never match up to the Troy fantasy. You know? I thought that when and if we actually kissed, it wouldn’t be anything like what I imagined.”

  “And?” Benny leaned forward in her seat.

  “And … my bones melted. That’s what it felt like—like my bones actually melted. Like everything in my body went all hot and liquid, and there were cartoon birds flying around tweeting the theme from Dr. Zhivago. This is bad. This is really bad.”

  “Yeah. That’s freaking tragic,” Benny quipped dryly. “You should join a support group.”

  “You don’t get it!” Bianca said. “Part of me thought that if I just got to know him … or, yes, maybe if I kissed him … the spell would be broken. I’d see that he’s just a regular guy with—I don’t know—with bad breath or annoying habits, or that he was a really bad kisser. But he’s not a bad kisser, Benny. He’s not!”

  “So, he’s a better kisser than Peter?” Martina asked.

  It was tempting to say that Peter’s kisses and TJ’s were only related insofar as they both could be classified as the same basic act. That Peter’s kisses were fine—they were competent—but that comparing them to TJ’s would be like comparing steamed broccoli to warm chocolate ganache.

  But Bianca didn’t want to bad-mouth Peter. He hadn’t done anything wrong, and he didn’t deserve it. Instead, she fumbled the question.

  “Peter’s not … He’s just … This isn’t …”

  “Yes, TJ’s a better kisser than Peter,” Sofia cut in. “I’m not sure Peter has ever rendered her incoherent.”

  Bianca didn’t argue the point. Instead, she tried to get them all to focus on the real issue. “Can we please discuss the fact that the birds and the theme song are going to turn my brain to jelly and make me do stupid things I’ll regret for the rest of my life? Can we just address that for a moment?”

  Sofia cocked her head to the side, considering the question. “I seem to recall that when I was afraid to commit to Patrick, you were one of the people telling me to get my head out of my butt and take a chance on him.”

  “I never told you to get your head out of your butt,” Bianca said.

  “Yeah, that was me,” Benny added.

  “In any case,” Sofia went on, “it was good advice. What if he’s worth it? What if it turns out to be real? Do you really want to turn your back on that just because it compromises your all-important need to control things?”

  Bianca blinked a few times. “I don’t have an all-important need to control things.”

  Martina let out a rude scoffing noise.

  Benny coughed loudly into her hand, and the cough sounded suspiciously like the word bullshit.

  “Do I?” Bianca asked doubtfully.

  “It’s something to think about,” Sofia said.

  16

  TJ knew he had to get his mind off the kiss and focus on his son. The biopsy was scheduled for the day after tomorrow, and Owen had to be scared. TJ needed to show up for his son; he needed to be a good, attentive father. It would be hard to do that if he was busy wondering how Bianca looked naked.

  “It’s going to be a piece of cake,” TJ said to Owen as he drove him home from school the afternoon after the date. “They won’t even need to put you under. An
d you won’t have to stay at the hospital overnight—it’s just like a doctor’s appointment.”

  “I know, Dad. You told me. Three times.” Owen was looking out the window and not at TJ.

  “Okay, well … I just want you to know it’s going to be okay. You don’t have to be worried.” TJ glanced at Owen as he drove through town toward Pine Knolls. Owen was slumped in his seat, a sullen look on his face. Teenagers were supposed to be sullen, weren’t they? TJ told himself not to make too much of it.

  Still, not all teenagers were about to have a piece of their liver extracted.

  “You know it’s not going to hurt that much, right?” TJ tried.

  “Yeah.”

  “You just seem kinda …”

  “I’m not worried that it’s gonna hurt, Dad.” Owen looked at him as though TJ were being unbearably dense—which, maybe he was. “I’m worried about what the test is gonna say. I’m not an idiot. I know that a biopsy means they think I have cancer.”

  Was that what he thought? Even the word cancer in relation to his son was like a gut punch.

  “Owen, where did you get that? Nobody’s saying it’s cancer.”

  “But they’re not saying it isn’t, are they? They don’t know what it is. And they’re doing a biopsy, so you do the math.”

  In that moment, TJ realized that he’d been handling this all wrong. He’d thought the smart move was to tell Owen only what he needed to know, when he needed to know it. But Owen wasn’t a kindergartner anymore. He wasn’t a toddler.

  He had Google, and he knew how to use it.

  When they got home, Owen lugged his backpack into the house and TJ let Gary out to pee on the trunk of an oak tree in the front yard. When that was done, TJ decided to make another attempt to talk to his son about his condition—this time without bungling it.

  Owen was already in his room with the door closed.

  “Owen?” TJ knocked softly on the bedroom door.

  No answer.

  “Owen?” He knocked louder.

  When he still didn’t get a response, TJ opened the door and peeked inside. Owen was lying on his belly on the bed, a pair of noise-canceling earphones on his head. TJ went to the bed and sat down on the edge next to his son. Owen looked up at him and took off the earphones.

  “What?” he said.

  “I’m sorry I let you think it was cancer,” TJ said. “For the record, nobody—not Dr. Russo, and not Dr. DeVries—has said the word cancer to me, even once.”

  Owen shrugged. But there was fear in his face that he was trying to hide under a mask of irritated indifference.

  TJ had tried saying little in an effort to shield Owen. That hadn’t worked. It was time to tell him what he knew, and what he didn’t.

  “Look. We know something’s wrong with your liver, but we don’t know what it is. Liver cancer in kids your age is super rare. It’s much more likely to be something else. The biopsy is going to help them figure it out, that’s all.”

  “Something else, like what?” Owen had dropped his defensive tone and was looking at TJ with earnestness and fear.

  “Well … there are a few hereditary diseases they’re looking at. With what’s going on with your grandmother, it seems likely that something might have gotten passed down to you.”

  “But Mom’s worried that Grandma’s going to die. That’s what she said.”

  TJ’s heart hurt as he looked at his son. The one thing he was supposed to do as a parent—the only thing—was to protect his boy. But he couldn’t protect him from this, and that made TJ feel like a profound failure. It made him feel helpless.

  “Whatever your grandmother has, it wasn’t caught until she was pretty sick. With you, we’re hoping that we’re catching it early, so it can be treated.”

  Please, God, let it be treatable.

  “So, if they’d caught it early, Grandma would be okay?” Owen looked hopeful for the first time, and it was tempting to lie to him. But TJ knew he couldn’t do that.

  “I don’t know. They’re still not even sure what’s causing her illness, so … I don’t know.”

  Owen rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling. “I’m scared.”

  TJ reached out and brushed a lock of hair from Owen’s forehead. “Me too. But we’re going to do whatever has to be done, okay? Whatever we have to do to diagnose this and treat it, that’s what we’re going to do.”

  “Okay.” He looked at TJ. “Dad?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I want Mom.”

  “Do you want to call her?”

  “I just really want to see her.”

  TJ nodded. “She’s coming for the biopsy.” He ruffled Owen’s hair with his hand. “She’ll be there holding your hand.”

  Owen grimaced. “I don’t need her to hold my hand, Dad. I’m not a little kid. I just wouldn’t mind seeing her, that’s all.”

  TJ knew his divorce had been the right thing. He knew it had been inevitable. And he knew that both he and Penny were likely better off as a result. But none of that lifted the weight of guilt he felt for putting Owen into a broken home.

  It hadn’t been Owen’s fault that his parents had married too early, or that they’d been unable to keep their shit together for the long haul. But now he was the one feeling the worst consequences of it.

  Of course the kid needed his mom.

  Right now, TJ needed his own mom pretty badly.

  TJ had a break in his schedule the next day, after a homeowner with outdated wiring forgot about their appointment, leaving TJ standing on the guy’s doorstep to find that no one was home.

  The place just happened to be two blocks from TJ’s parents’ house, so he made a detour over there on his way to his next job.

  He’d brought Gary to work with him, because the dog had been growing more and more attached to TJ and had taken to whimpering pitifully whenever TJ left the house.

  At his parents’ house, he helped Gary out of the truck and the two of them went up the front walkway and onto the porch. TJ could hear his mother inside, talking to someone on the phone.

  “Well, no, Loretta. I hosted last year, so it’s somebody else’s turn. Why can’t Jean do it?”

  TJ went in the front door without knocking, Gary following timidly behind.

  When Lily saw him, she smiled in a way that transformed her. And that made TJ feel like an ass for not coming by more often.

  “Oh, hi, sweetie,” she said. Then, into the phone: “Loretta? I’ve got to call you back. Troy’s here.”

  “I really wish you wouldn’t call me Troy,” he said when she’d disconnected the call.

  “Well, it’s your name, son.”

  “One I haven’t used in more than ten years.”

  “I don’t know why not. It’s a perfectly good name.” Lily, who didn’t have a dog herself but who’d fallen in love with Gary the moment they’d met, went to her kitchen cupboard, found a box of Milk-Bones she kept just for him, and offered him two biscuits.

  Gary took the biscuits gingerly into his mouth, went to the living room rug, deposited the biscuits on top of the floral-patterned wool, and lay down to eat them.

  “What, he gets a snack and not me?” TJ teased.

  “You can get your own snack,” Lily said. “And Troy’s a fine name. Why, I can’t help it if I was in love with Troy Donahue. You should have seen him back in his prime. That wavy blond hair. And those eyes!”

  “Yeah, yeah.” But TJ couldn’t help smiling at the story. The thought of his mother as a young woman, fresh and full of girlish dreams about a handsome movie star, made him wish he could have known her then. She’d been a beauty, he knew from the photo albums she brought out from time to time, and she still had the fine, almost regal features that had surely enraptured his father when they’d met.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Oh, he’s with his club.” She waved a hand airily. “You know how he is. They’re getting ready for the wildflower show this weekend.”

  TJ’s father h
ad been a member of a local naturalist group for the past several years—ever since retirement had left him with not enough to do. TJ imagined him in his sun hat and hiking boots, happily snipping specimens.

  Lily waited until TJ was settled at the kitchen table with a bottle of Coke from the refrigerator and a couple of cookies from the jar on the counter. Then, with a line of worry set deep between her eyebrows, she asked about her grandson.

  “So … how is he?”

  TJ shrugged, his eyes on the table so he wouldn’t have to look at his mother. “I don’t know. The biopsy’s tomorrow. That’ll tell us more, I guess.”

  “Is he scared? He must be scared.”

  “He is, but he’s trying to keep it together. We both are.”

  “I can come to the surgery center to be with the two of you, if you think he’d like that. I can hold his hand, or—”

  “Thanks, Mom. But Penny’s going to be there, so it’s going to be a crowd already. Plus, I don’t want to freak Owen out any more than he already is. If everybody shows up, he’s going to think he’s dying.”

  He’d delivered the line casually enough, but that last word felt thick in his throat. He blinked a few times to clear the heat that was building up in his eyes, then did his best to change the tone.

  “Anyway, you’d probably try to counsel me and Penny if all of us were in the same room, so …”

  “Would that be so wrong?”

  TJ was at peace with his divorce. His mother, though, saw it differently. To her, the breakup was baffling, unfathomable. She saw the split as a foolish and impulsive move that could, and would, be corrected when everyone came to their senses.

  “It would be pointless, that’s all. And, anyway, I don’t want you pressuring Penny. She’s got a lot going on right now, with her mother.”

  “How is Beverly?” Lily asked. Before the divorce, Lily had gotten along well with Penny’s mother. TJ thought it was too bad they hadn’t been able to maintain their friendship after the split, but it made sense, given the fact that the women were on opposite teams: Team Penny vs. Team TJ.