Chapter 6

The doctor had left instructions that I wasn’t to go to school the next day. They were superfluous — I hurt so badly that there was no way I was going anywhere. Trish was more than a bit sore, too, and decided to stay home as well. She told our parents that she’d fetch and carry for me since I was hurting too badly to get out of bed except when absolutely necessary.

Rather than having to keep poking her head in to see if I needed anything, Trish just camped out next to my bed. She dragged her beanbag chair in and plopped it next to the head of my bed then just sat there with me. I dozed off and on all day. Every time I awoke she was there. Usually she was reading, but once she was just looking at me, smiling slightly.

When I needed to go to the bathroom she was right there to help me up and to offer an arm to lean on as I shuffled down the hall. For lunch she made soup for us and fed me when I found I wasn’t very coordinated with my left hand.

I had never felt so loved or cared for in either timeline, including some 25 years spread between two marriages.

By early afternoon I was feeling somewhat better, though I was tired and I felt very grimy. The doctor had said I couldn’t get my arm or rib wrap wet so a shower was out. While I was working out the best way to handle taking a shallow bath Trish, with a twinkle in her eye, said, “I know! I’ll give you a sponge bath!”

Her idea had a lot of merit. I really wasn’t much good with my left hand at the best of times and it still hurt, a lot, to bend over. On the other hand, the mere suggestion had caused junior to come to attention and I was sure I’d be terribly embarrassed.

“Trish,” I said, “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. I’m afraid that I’d be too embarrassed and I don’t want to start getting shy around you now.”

“Jeff,” she replied, “it’s not like it will be the first time I’ve seen you. I’m pretty sure you’ve seen me too, right?”

My cheeks heated and I tried to look contrite but I nodded. I hadn’t been trying to look but I also wasn’t working that hard not to so I’d caught glimpses of her changing or when her towel slipped once after her shower. After that she started taking a robe into the bathroom when she went to shower.

“Okay, then, what’s the problem? I know it gets hard. I’ve seen it happen in your swim trunks, remember? I’m sure it will get hard if I’m giving you a bath. Just don’t let it bother you. I’m not fooling around. I’m just trying to help you out while you’re so sore.”

She was right, and we both knew it. It didn’t happen, though. We’d forgotten my brother. Just as I was deciding that I was going to take her up on her offer, he came barging in the front door.

It was easy to forget Dave. For the first time in this life we didn’t share a bedroom. I spent a lot of the time between school and dinner over at Jodi’s. After dinner he mostly watched television while Trish and I went to her room and did homework then read or talked. On weekends Trish and I usually found something to do together while he practiced for a lifetime as a couch potato.

I finally summoned the resolve to bathe myself. Afterwards, almost wished I hadn’t. It left me completely drained. When Trish helped me back to bed, I was seriously leaning on her. She couldn’t fail to notice how wasted I was and she extracted my promise to not get out of bed for the rest of the day except to go to the bathroom. I was weak enough that it was an easy promise to give, and to keep.

Trish fed me dinner in bed, cutting up my chicken. My father had several great chicken recipes and he’d made one of my favorites, Chicken Piccata, that night. Trish fed me each bite. When I wanted a drink she even held the glass for me, though by then I was fairly sure I could take a drink with my left hand without spilling it all over me.

After she’d taken my dishes away and came back to sit I said, “Thanks for taking such good care of me. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

“It wasn’t a problem,” she replied. “You needed the help and I was able to give it. You’d have done the same for me if our places were switched, wouldn’t you.”

“You know I would,” I answered. “And I’d have probably offered you a bath as well. I really should have taken you up on that. I still can’t believe how tired I was after doing it for myself.”

“I suppose that’s one difference between us,” she said, making sure to catch my eye, “I wouldn’t have argued with you when you suggested it. Jeff, I know, and I’m sure you know, that we’ve got something special going between us. I’m not afraid of you seeing me naked, but it wouldn’t be a good idea to advertise that.”

“If I could control my reaction I wouldn’t be too concerned about you seeing me, either,” I replied.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, “If you didn’t get hard I’d think that I wasn’t pretty to you anymore.”

“I’ll try to not let it bother me, then. As far as I’m concerned you’re way beyond pretty. Jodi is pretty. You’re the most beautiful girl I know.”

“I thought you told me I was tied,” she said.

“You were tied for being the prettiest, but I haven’t seen Sandy in more than a year, while you’ve only grown prettier. I don’t think you’ve ever had any competition for being the most beautiful. I’m the luckiest boy in the school since I get to go home with your every night.”

She flashed a big smile and said, “Boy, you sure can lay it on thick! I’ve seen some of the other girls at school, you know, and I’m definitely not in their league.”

“The absolute truth is that even if we were just talking about exterior beauty you’d still be in their league, but I wasn’t just thinking of that. When I said you’re beautiful I meant that you’re both very, very pretty and a beautiful person in here.” In emphasis, I tapped her chest over her heart. “The whole package,” I continued, “doesn’t have any competition for being the most beautiful girl I know.”

With that her eyes misted up and she said, in a small, choked voice, “Thank you, Jeff — that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. I hope you’ll believe me when I say that I’m just as lucky to come home with you. I know that you’re not tall, dark and handsome, but you’re the nicest, most caring and most thoughtful boy I’ve ever met. I’ll happily accept short, blond and cute if it comes with the rest of that package.”

That day led to a change in our relationship. It would be hard to define exactly what changed but even our parents remarked that we no longer seemed like just friends. When we touched we weren’t just friendly and supportive, we were loving and affectionate as well. The single most noticeable change was that if we were reading something other than school work one of us would probably have their head in the other’s lap. Nothing that we did was overtly sexual but the sexual undertones were unmistakable and growing stronger.

Trish went back to school the next day but I wasn’t quite up to it. She made a sandwich for me before she left so I’d have some lunch. I got around better but decided to wait until she got home before taking a bath, since I was afraid it would still wipe me out pretty good. She came straight home on the bus with Dave rather than going over to Jodi’s, which allowed me to get my bath before dinner that night.

School the following day was interesting. A lot of people were very solicitous toward me, both in class and at lunch. It took a while but I finally realized that part of that was because Trish was with me. It seemed she’d become something of a school legend. Manuel Diaz had been one of the biggest bullies at the school, ever since he’d first arrived as a seventh grader. The fact that she had landed him in the hospital, with very serious injuries, had a lot of kids trying to figure out what to make of her.

Of course it hadn’t been just Trish. From what I’d heard Felicia, who at 5’3” was almost as tall as Trish but on the Rubenesque side, had been trying to use Diaz as a trampoline when the teachers arrived. That had to hurt with those broken ribs. Jodi had landed a solid kick to Mark Johnson before he’d managed to get away, then helped the other two grind Diaz’s face into the wall.

I was very appreciative of their efforts on my behalf, telling them, “I’d bow but it just hurts too damned much. Still, this I can do.” I took Felicia’s hand in my left and gave it a lingering kiss, then repeated it with Jodi’s.

“Thank you, both of you,” I said. “Any guy would consider himself lucky to have friends like you.”

Trish got a big grin on her face and Jenny, who didn’t have gym with the others and so hadn’t been there, said, “Hey, what about me? I know I wasn’t there but I would have helped if I had been.”

I took her hand, kissed it, and said, “I know you would have and I thank you for the thought. If it’s all the same to you, though, I’ll accept your friendship without you having to prove it that way. I’d rather not get beaten up again just to give you the chance to demonstrate you’d help if you got the chance!”

Trish’s attitude while we were going between classes for the rest of the week was just a little scary. I was leaning on her pretty heavily in order to have the strength to get through the day so she kept her right arm hooked through my left for support. She was in ‘protector mode,’ and was constantly looking around and generally acting a little standoffish to people who might try to approach us. Everyone gave us plenty of space.

It was three weeks before I was completely unbandaged and could use my right hand again. At school we got the okay for Trish to write up my homework assignments. At home I eventually got to where I could feed myself, but I wasn’t there by Thanksgiving. So, I was fed Thanksgiving dinner, bite by bite. It could have, and probably should have been strange, but somehow it wasn’t. Trish was efficient and unobtrusive, sitting to my right so my left hand was free to do what little it was capable of. By then I was past being embarrassed by my condition and Trish treated it like it was normal.

I never did get my sponge bath, though.

Jodi’s grades at the end of the first semester earned me a massive hug from Mrs. Nelson. I was glad that my ribs were completely healed by then, or I’d have been in serious pain. Jenny was smiling from ear to ear when she got her report card, though she seemed a bit subdued the next day for some reason.

Two of the our teachers wondered if our working together on the homework meant that the girls didn’t understand the material as well as if they’d done it all by themselves. Our study method — we studied the material together, going over the assignments to help show what they needed to think about, but letting them do the actual homework after we split up — was intended to ensure they understood the material. Once they knew that each of us was doing our own homework, the two doubters were sold.

I did have one school headache shortly into the new semester ... in Algebra of all places! I always showed my work, of course, but the teacher didn’t understand what I was doing to simplify polynomials. He fully expected to see a prime factorization of the coefficients in order to simplify them. I, of course, had returned to Euclid. Not for the ‘run of the mill’ problems, but for the really hairy coefficients were just plain ugly doing the whole ‘prime’ thing. I explained how it worked and everything, but he just didn’t buy it. From then on, at least in his class, it was prime factorization for reducing polynomials or other greatest common divisor issues.

In mid-March one of the events that caused me so many problems my first time through came about. April and Bob moved in with us. They weren’t making it on their own and she wanted to go back to school so it was decided that Dave and I would be sharing a room again.

In my previous timeline there had been immediate and intense friction between April and me. I hadn’t wanted to give up my room — it was the first time I’d ever had a space to call my own — and I hadn’t dealt well with her bossiness.

Things were somewhat different this time around. I wasn’t worried about sharing a room, to start with. It just didn’t bother me that much and I expected it to be resolved within a few months anyway. April and I didn’t get along but I was determined to be civil with her even if it meant I lived the rest of my life with scars on my tongue from biting it so hard and so often.

In the end we didn’t kill each other, but only because Trish interceded. She dressed me down pretty good a couple of times for letting April get to me. She chewed her big sister out a lot, though. She tried to be polite about it but she was insistent. I’d done exactly what I said I would do, I was nice to her and I tried to be nice to April even when she was being a jerk. Trish also went out of her way to talk about how much I was helping her and her friends during our family meals.

In mid-April my father got promoted to Shift Supervisor. The catch was the shift that he was to supervise was swing: 2:00 in the afternoon to 11:00 at night. Helen applied for and was granted a transfer to swing shift so they could still commute and work together.

In some ways this wasn’t good as it put April nominally in charge of the household when we got home from school. In practice April’s complaints — I shouldn’t lay with my head in Trish’s lap when reading, we shouldn’t be in Trish’s room together with the door closed, etc. — backfired on her.