Incapable (Love Triumphs Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  “I don’t. I can’t.”

  “Then what did you tell me for?” He felt for the handle of the door and let himself out.

  There was a problem with a recording in Studio A that afternoon and Trent asked if she’d stay behind to help redo the job overnight. It was a godsend. If she worked late she could go home exhausted, take a pill and stumble into bed, stay there the whole weekend and not think about how screwed up she was about Damon and about her new life in general. She needed help, but she’d not made any time to find a behavioural therapist to work this through with. That had to be her priority.

  It was after midnight when she got back to the flat. Fluffy stirred when she switched on the light.

  “Hello fish. Did you have a good day?” She took a carton of milk from the fridge and drank directly from it. “I was horrible to Damon again. I don’t know how to stop him tying me up in knots. I don’t know how to tell him what freaks me out about him, or why he’d even be interested. He must think I’m psychotic.”

  She took another slug of milk. It was probably true. Fluffy made fish lips and fanned her tail. She floated in space, watching Georgia with googly eyes. Georgia had no idea if Fluffy could see and recognise her, but Damon had a way of looking straight into her heart.

  And he can’t have liked what he saw there because he went and hid under his bridge.

  She didn’t take a pill. She slept because she had a new plan. In the morning she went to the medical centre to ask for a referral to a cognitive behavioural therapist. Talking to someone trained, to help her sort through her actions and fears, kept her functioning after Hamish’s injury, and it would help now. And the sooner she started the better.

  She filled the rest of the day with cleaning the flat and in the early evening went for a walk. It took her past an old movie theatre, a street full of restaurants filling with patrons, and a bar advertising counter meals. Their steak sandwich sounded good. She could slip in there, sit quietly, eat and still make it to a movie.

  She wasn’t the only one with that idea. She took the last barstool, tucked in the corner beside a couple too engrossed in each other to notice her. The bar was the right amount of busy and noisy for a single person to hide out in. It took a while to catch the bearded barman’s eye.

  “Hi, I’m Angus, what can I get you?”

  She ordered the steak sandwich and a Coke and watched two men set up on a small stage. Live music. It’d been a long time since she’d listened to a band. Too long. The man with close-cropped hair had to be barman Angus’ younger brother, they were so much alike despite a different rationing of hair. There was a girl too and she looked vaguely familiar. Georgia was trying to place her when her meal arrived. She nibbled on a hot chip and it came to her. Unless she was a twin, she was Damon’s pixie groupie girl and she was with the band. Hell, did that mean Damon was around? She’d have to chew quicker, and though it wasn’t possible for indigestion to hit before you’d eaten, she felt an acid burn in her chest.

  She sipped her Coke. It didn’t matter if he was here, and pixie girl had never looked at her, she could relax and eat without regurgitation threatening.

  She watched pixie girl move about the stage, then make her way to the bar, standing at the section where it flipped up to allow bar staff to move behind it. Pixie signalled Angus and he nodded. He poured a couple of beers and Pixie watched him as if pouring beers was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen. Oh. Maybe she was a twin, maybe Damon wasn’t seeing her, because she looked interested in Angus.

  While Georgia watched, another woman came to the flip-top section of the bar and lifted it. She was as blonde as pixie girl was dark, and painfully thin, and Angus might have split a lip his smile was so big when he saw her. So what was this? A suburban love triangle. Pixie wanted Angus who wanted Blondie. When Angus kissed Blondie and she stole the bar towel tucked in the back of his jeans, Pixie’s expression said it all. Jealousy.

  Damon had said he was single, maybe that was the truth. Or it was a love rectangle. But then, he’d said he liked parasailing as well. She was still stupidly nervous he might be here, though she’d swept the crowd with more than one searching look. What was clear was that Angus was with the band and Pixie was its singer.

  She pushed her empty plate forward and checked her watch. She had time to listen to one song before leaving for the movie. One song became two. They were surprisingly good. In fact, they were tight and Pixie had a powerful voice for a tiny person. It was earthy and throaty like she’d just rolled out of bed, or had two pack a day habit.

  Georgia fossicked in her bag for her wallet, she could still make the movie, and when she next looked up Damon was on the stage. He wore suit pants and a white dress shirt, the neck open and the sleeves rolled up. He’d worn jeans during the week, but this look was nightclub, cigar smoke sexy and he had to know it, because there was a rumble of approval from the female members of the audience.

  Damon had told her about ice-cream and choroideremia, that he’d driven a car and had sex before he was legal, but he’d not bothered to mention he could sing. Of course he could. She should’ve worked that out for herself.

  He launched into Eric Clapton’s Layla, Angus and his brother framing him, Pixie had a tambourine and Georgia forgot all about Brad Pitt on the big screen. Damon was mesmerising, if not for his voice and its diamond rough and whisky smooth, then for the way he moved, hip and shoulder, shake of his head, hand gesture.

  He was inside the music and he moved around the small stage without any hint of his poor vision. She stayed through five more songs, and was five hundred times more confused about Damon Donovan. But sure about one thing. He deserved to be treated for the person he was, not the issue she’d made him into.

  9: Pure

  He had that scratchy throat, coming down with a cold feeling again. Damon asked the coffee shop folk for tea with honey and lemon instead of his usual coffee. He might be too clagged up to work today. His own fault. He’d ended Saturday night’s show with a request for a Cold Chisel song and did his best Jimmy Barnes screaming, and instead of resting his voice, he’d spent hours on the phone to his parents on Sunday.

  Before Taylor tooted, he’d started Monday morning hunkered under a towel over a bowl of hot water and eucalyptus oil, but he still had the urge to cough and clear his throat. Five minutes in the studio and he’d know if he should raincheck.

  Bugger it. He didn’t need five minutes; he knew he wasn’t going to be able to record without sounding croaky. He could’ve phoned in and stayed home. But if he did that he wouldn’t see Georgia and he felt bad about how he’d left it with her. She had some hang-ups, obviously, but that was no reason to bark at her.

  He let Taylor lead him down the hill towards Avocado. “Remember I can’t wait for you,” she said.

  “I’ll be right in a taxi.”

  “And I’m sorry about the thing for Dalia Friday night.”

  He gave her arm a squeeze. “Don’t be.”

  “I should be there.”

  “You have a gig. That’s more important.”

  “Not like it’s going to lead to anything. Bunch of bus drivers getting their groove on at an awards night. Who are we kidding; it’s not a gig, it’s waitressing with a microphone.”

  He let her arm go, and Taylor walked on a few steps before she looped back. “Well it is. I’d rather be with you.”

  “You’d rather dump a paid gig for an unpaid favour?”

  She put the back of her hand against the back of his and he trailed his hand up her arm to hold her again. “Yep. I’m a dumbass. And I’m still not moving in with you.”

  She walked on. If there was a limit to the amount of times he could explain to her why it was a good idea she move in, he hadn’t reached it yet, but he needed her to agree to it before he felt any further affects from his choroideremia, otherwise she’d make the decision for the wrong reasons and he’d never be able to convince her he didn’t want her there as an unpaid carer. And it was cl
ear he was getting closer to the point where he’d need to speak up. This morning he’d not been able to tell the time on his oversize bedside clock.

  “Get Angus to go with you.”

  “Nope. Heather worked for him Saturday. Can’t ask him to mess up her study time again.”

  Taylor grunted. She’d always been prickly about Jamie’s ex, Dalia. Bizarrely cute because Jamie was totally cool with the fact Dalia now preferred a girl called Al to him. It was funny Taylor didn’t suggest he get Jamie to go with him.

  “Dalia should’ve thought about how you’d manage.” Taylor hit Avocado’s buzzer and she pushed the door open when it clicked.

  Dalia should’ve. She was tremendously creative but as badly organised as the artistic director of a theatre company as she had been as a theatre major at uni. She had volunteered vaguely to find a theatre studies student to help him, but he’d rather have someone he knew on hand to lead him around in the dark.

  He had a hazy plan to feel Georgia out about it. It wouldn’t be a date. He’d be relying on her to help him in an unfamiliar sound stage to narrate a piece of theatre where the audience moved through a series of rooms to piece together a murder mystery.

  As the narrator he’d need to follow them, moving in narrow second-tier gantry, back and forth between ten different rooms. There were movement, timing and cueing implications he simply couldn’t manage on his own.

  He’d present it to her as a freelance opportunity and he’d pay her a fee. She need not know the job was a favour and he’d pay it from his own account.

  A blast of Avocado’s air conditioning hit his chest as they came through the door and he coughed.

  “Wow, that doesn’t sound good.”

  “Morning, Lauren. That’s exactly what a voice actor loves to hear. That he doesn’t sound good.” He released Taylor’s arm and she shifted away.

  “You can’t have everything.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Lauren laughed. “You know what I mean, hottie.”

  Taylor was laughing too. Damon palmed his face. “Isn’t that sexual harassment?”

  “Oh pleease,” Lauren said, and he had a mental picture of her rolling her eyes. “Bring it on.”

  He stood where he hoped Georgia would appear and rescue him. He heard the door buzzer, someone coming in from the street, then Georgia’s, “Hi,” and Taylor put her hand to the back of his and he took her arm so she could steer him out of the way.

  A bunch of people came in and Damon heard Trent and Franca greet them and take them to the main studio. When the noise died off, he said, “Georgia?”

  Taylor patted his hand. “I’m outta here.”

  She turned in his arms and he bent a little to let her kiss his cheek. “See you Saturday night.” He was so grateful she’d stopped wearing that perfume. He didn’t need to add sneezing to the coughing.

  “Not if I see you first,” she deadpanned, and the door opened again.

  The blur in front of him would be Georgia. “Hi, busy here this morning,” he said.

  “Do you have a cold?”

  He shook his head. “Maybe. Throat is a bit scratchy. Let’s lay something down and see how it sounds.”

  She led the way to Studio B, not saying a word, opening doors for him. He could smell her fresh scent when he went through each of them, coming close to her in the narrow corridor. Facing her through the glass wall of the iso booth he reconfigured his options.

  What made him think she’d consent to going with him to Dalia’s show? He’d find someone else. But Jamie was busy and Sam was more likely to push him over a railing than stop him falling through one.

  “You probably shouldn’t sing Barnsey.”

  He looked out towards the control room and cleared his throat, but not the mystery of the comment.

  “I was at the bar on Saturday night. You have an amazing singing voice.”

  “You were at Angus’ bar?”

  “Moon Blink. Yes. I went in for a counter meal. I had no idea you’d be there.”

  It took a second to get over the level of whack in that coincidence. But he guessed she’d chosen to live close to Avocado and Moon Blink was in a popular restaurant strip in the area. He thought back to Saturday night and what Georgia might’ve seen. A thirty-minute set followed by a drink with some regulars. Another set and a late dinner break. The Cold Chisel song was in the second set, which means she’d stayed to the end. “You didn’t say hello.”

  “You were busy.”

  Not especially. He’d sat with Taylor, Jamie and Sam a good portion of the time while not on stage. Damn, he was definitely going to have to ask Sam.

  “Have you ever recorded?”

  He waved a hand. “No. I love my music, but it’s playtime. If you saw Taylor with me in reception, she’s the real star.”

  “Yes, she has an amazing sound, very Eartha Kitt.”

  Georgia had a good ear. That was Taylor’s sound. Out of the ordinary, not pop enough to get the kind of attention she deserved. She needed original songs, but none of them had any song writing capability worth a damn.

  “You didn’t tell me you sang.”

  Damon had a good ear too. Georgia was miffed. He cleared his throat. “Didn’t I?”

  “You told me you liked ice-cream and parasailing.”

  “And long walks on the beach. No lie.”

  “But you didn’t mention the music and it’s a big part of you.”

  Hang about, what was this? “You didn’t want to know me, if I remember right. Told me I reminded you of a person you’d rather not be reminded of.”

  There was a long silence and he waited for her to say something like when you’re ready? “Georgia?”

  “I thought maybe we could start again.”

  He ducked his head, but she’d still know he was smiling. “How do you want to do that?”

  “I love listening to live music.”

  Go on.” He stifled a cough, swallowing the irritation in his throat.

  “I wanted to be a sound engineer because Hamish was in a band. We were going to make albums together.”

  There was a weight in her voice. Regret. “Did you?”

  “No. He got hurt and it all fell apart. I finished my training but I took steadier work at radio stations and in production, like this job.”

  “And you like what you do?”

  “Sound rarely lies. Not like people, not like pictures, images that can be altered. Sound is pure, and if you listen to it carefully you can hear when it’s false. If you listen carefully, you can trust sound, but it’s not the same with people.”

  “Jesus, Georgia, who lied to you?”

  “I made a mistake, listened to the wrong people. I’m better with a panel in front of me than a person.”

  They were worse than a blue green colour-blind test. Georgia could see perfectly but didn’t trust her eyes and Damon had very little sight left to trust.

  “You know my voice is all over the register today.” It was one thing to work hard at never being the guy who couldn’t see in the sound studio, it was another to have a voice problem. Voice problems happened, people got colds and flu. This was a first for him, he’d never missed a day of work through illness or a bad throat. So much better that it was happening on this job than one of his regular gigs.

  The door swooshed. She was in the booth with him. “I know. You’re too pitchy.”

  He smiled in her direction. “We need to finish this another day.”

  “We built a contingency into the project plan.”

  “Good thing.” Avocado might be a small studio, but they knew their business.

  She came closer. “I’m sorry, Damon. You’re not Hamish. You’re not the same as him at all. I’m sorry I reacted so…so—”

  “Like a human?”

  “Like a moron.”

  He laughed. What the hell. The worst that could happen is she’d say no. “Are you busy Friday night?”

  “Are you—?” T
rembling hesitancy in the sharp intake of breath before she spoke.

  “I have a professional engagement and I need some help.”

  “Oh.”

  “What about your girlfriend?”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “Taylor.”

  “Oh God. Taylor and me. Geez. No. We’re not together.” Oh shit, that’s what Georgia would’ve seen at Moon Blink. Taylor sitting in his lap. Taylor, touching him like she did because they’d known each other for forever, and they did love each other, but not like Georgia was thinking. She was thinking he’d lied about being single. And Taylor had it big for someone else and she was miserable over it.

  “The crew you saw at the bar, my best mates Angus, Taylor, Jamie and Sam. I knew them all before I started to seriously lose my sight. Except for Sam, we all come from the same town. None of us could wait to get out.”

  “You don’t need to explain it to me.”

  No, but he wanted to. “I told you I wasn’t seeing anyone. You thought I was a dog.”

  “I, er, um.”

  He laughed. “You thought I was a player and I was hitting on you.” He pushed a hand through his hair in disbelief. When he did hit on her, and he intended to, she’d know it. “I really do like parasailing, hang-gliding too. The whole flying, terrific rush of wind and sensation thing, and I am single.”

  “So am I.”

  She said that softly and he desperately wanted to know if she’d put her top teeth to her bottom lips after it came out.

  “Now,” she finished.

  “Friday night I agreed to narrate an experimental theatre performance for a uni friend. It’s an experience where the audience follows the characters of the play from room to room. They’re supposed to solve a murder. I agreed to narrate part of the action that holds the various scenes together.”

  “Sounds complex.”

  “That’s what I thought. I have to do it from a gantry above the stage, looking down on the actors. It’s not something I can do without help. Taylor is working, Angus has the bar to run, Jamie is busy, Heather is studying, and Sam would be a disaster. I wondered how you’d feel about helping me out. There’d be a fee of course.”