Incapable (Love Triumphs Book 3) (11 page)

“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.”

“It’s a professional engagement?”

He nodded. Better to be upfront. Then he coughed. It was the cough that galvanised her.

“You really can’t record today. Should we try tomorrow or would you like another day to rest?”

He cleared his throat. To be safe he should give it another day. “What about Wednesday?”

“That should be fine.”

“What about Friday night?” He needed to hear her voice to know what she was thinking, because she was right, if he listened carefully, the sound of it would tell him what he needed to know.

“You really think I can help you?”

She was hesitant, considering, but not shut down about it. “It’ll be dark where we are, looking into bright lights. A bad combination for me. Can you trust your eyes enough to be mine for ninety minutes?”

“I…”

She was breathing like she’d rather run than answer. And that gave him what he needed. He cleared his throat. “It’s okay. It’s not important. I’ll work something out. You say Wednesday morning same time will be fine?”

She touched his forearm. Light, quick, but meant to detain him. “I’d be happy to help.”

It just about derailed him. He shook his head. He’d heard no in her breath, in her inability to complete a sentence. But she’d said yes. Sound might be pure but it was complicated. This was pushing her comfort zone.

Hugging her would be inappropriate. He had to tighten his shoulders to stop from reaching for her as if she was Taylor. He didn’t have that right. Didn’t mean he didn’t want to have her freesia freshness close to him.

He smiled. “That’s great. I’ll pick you up.” He laughed. “I mean in a taxi. I really haven’t driven since I was fifteen.” But he felt that way. Fifteen again and fearless, devious, not quite telling the truth to anyone who might worry about him so he’d get his own way.

He spent the rest of Monday alternately clearing his throat, swigging cough medicine and keeping his mouth shut. He thought about making an appointment with Lina. He hunkered down with a couple of audio books and a script for a cartoon about a gang of street cats, a modern day
Top Cat
. He’d play the gang leader, a raggedy Maine Coon called Harley. He needed to decide whether to do it or not. He didn’t dislike cats that much.

On Tuesday morning, Eminem’s
I Need a Doctor
ringtone style woke him. Lina personally, not her office, it came in on the theme song from
House
. He almost let it go through to message bank. Both of them already knew what her tests were going to say.

“You know the loss of my night vision inspired the name of my mate’s bar.”

“Damon. Why haven’t you made an appointment?” Speakerphone. Classical music turned down low, an enclosed ambience. Lina was in her car.

“Moon Blink.”

“It’s an old term for night blindness. We have to do this. Have you told your parents?”

“And worry them. No. What are they going to do about it? We all knew this was coming.”

“It’s not coming. It’s here. All you’ve got is silvery light and dark, vague shadows. You’re going to wake up one morning and see nothing.”

“I’m ready for it.”

“You’ve learned to use a long cane? You’ve told your family and friends? What about registering for a guide dog? Oh seriously, this woman is doing her makeup in traffic.” There was a short sharp toot. “Move it, lady.”

He sighed. “I don’t know why we’re bothering with more testing.”

“Because I’m a doctor and that’s what we do, and because you think this is not happening. You’re compensating. You’ve got enough random peripheral vision left for your very clever brain to fill in the blanks, but that can’t go on.”

“Did you know that some baseball pitches are so fast, it’s impossible to keep your eye on the ball. The brain predicts where it’s going.”

“Yes, Damon, I know that.”

“Did you know there are experiments where blind people are taught to experience sound through vibrational touch.”

“That we are learning ways to extend the range of human senses. Yes, Damon, but I’m talking about you, right now, not future you who learns to see again using your toenails and a piece of magic tech.”

“I’m managing fine as it is. Maybe I’ll stay like this a while.”

There was a blast of horn. “You’re right, I don’t know that. You haven’t had the typical choroideremia symptoms, so let’s do the tests.”

“Was that some kind of reverse ophthalmology?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what it was. I have a cancellation this afternoon. You’re coming in.”

“Shame, I’m busy.”

“Damon. Don’t make me regret clearing time for you.”

“You said it was a cancellation.”

“Who do you think cancelled?”

Four hours later they continued the conversation they’d been having for most of his life face to face. Lina was behind her desk after putting him through a range of tests. “Hopefully within the decade they’ll have isolated a cure for this.”

“That’s your version of making me feel better, right?”

“When we finally got your diagnosis correct, all those years ago, I hoped there might be a treatment to halt the progress of the dystrophy. A cure seemed too much to hope for, but with stem cell research moving ahead, it’s only a matter of time before they isolate the faulty gene.”

He slow blinked. Lina was a white blur. “There should be courses you can take to help understand doctor speak.”

“You don’t want to hear what I really have to say.”

“Nope.” He did Jack Nicholson, the line about not handling the truth from
A Few Good Men.

“Tough luck, tough guy. You’ve got random patches of vision up close like a jigsaw and you’re very good at filling in the blanks. In other words you’re a superb cheat. Otherwise it’s shapes and shadows aided by good lighting. You might retain a sense of light and dark, but in all likelihood you’ll see nothing at all.”

“Got it.”

“Soon, Damon.”

“Right.”

“It’s natural to find that depressing.”

“Right.”

“Damon.”

He stood up. He was out of here. The tests were a waste of time, waste of money. They told neither of them anything they didn’t already know. “What do you want from me?”

“I want to see you making plans to manage this.”

“Shit, Doctor Pentecost. You want to see me acting more like a blind guy.”

“That’s not what I said. Sit down. Don’t insult me by playing that line.”

Sitting didn’t suit him. He moved around the desk to the window behind Lina. So long as he had the sense of light and dark, he didn’t feel blind. He’d talked himself into believing this would be as bad as it got, that’d he’d continue to be an exception to the usual rule, but knowing his luck had run out made him tight in the chest. Lina was worried about him being depressed. She should be more concerned he was going to hit someone and end up jailed for assault.

“Damon, don’t be a twit. Things could be much worse.”

“Yeah, yeah. I should be grateful.” Yul Brunner from
The King and I
, “Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”

“You know you only do this voices thing with me when you’re upset and trying to deflect, or you want me to forgive you for something.”

He turned from the window and Lina was standing behind him. She’d stood behind him on the progress of his disease since he’d first had vision trouble as a snotty kid. She was irritatingly correct about everything. “Yes, doctor. Carry on, doctor. Can I have a hug, doctor?”

She grunted. “You can be very irritating.”

But she was so easy to rile up. “Yeah, all right. I’ll be good.”

“I want to see you again as soon as anything changes.”

He nodded. She reiterated what she’d just told him about cheating, depression and getting his act together, in case he didn’t get the message the first time, and he was back out on the street hailing a taxi and trying to be grateful for the fact he had income enough in the bank and secured work in the pipeline not to have to catch a bus or genuinely miss owning a car.

The cartoon cat was devious and grumpy, the character matched his mood. He phoned Les and made him the happiest agent on the voice actor block by agreeing to voice Harley in
Street Tails
. Then he went back to bed with a book.

By Wednesday morning he was less sour lemon and more zesty lime, not a cough or a throat clear to be heard and his mood restored to normal enough. Knowing he was going to see Georgia helped. Last thing he wanted to project to her was sad sack, victim.

Seems she’d had enough of that in her life.

10: The Force

It wasn’t a date. It wasn’t. It was a professional engagement. A gig. It was helping out a work mate. That’s what this was with Damon, collegial. Collegial with fish giving. No, God, that can’t be right. It was not knowing what the heck to wear to this non-date with a new colleague who happened to be a famous voice actor and freaking out the fish with her anxiety.

Fluffy hid under her bridge and Georgia stalked around the tiny flat in her underwear. Her best underwear. Not the old M&S stuff, new stuff that matched. Not that it mattered. Not that anyone was going to see her underwear. Not that Damon even could see her underwear if he wanted to—not that he’d want to. Argh! It’s just that she was going out so she might as well wear the good stuff.

Oh God. It was a date.

She had a date with Damon Donovan who sang like a street smart fallen angel; one who chugged bourbon, smoked the finest from Havana and rode in on custom-made chrome, wearing denim that wrapped those long legs of his in licks of awesome.

She sat in her one chair, sharing her unease with distressed leather. It wasn’t a date. Not even close to the fairytale. There was no way after the fractured relationship they’d had that Damon liked her enough to want to see her outside of work, so this was work. As far as he was concerned she was an industry professional, and because she’d worked in theatres, uniquely qualified to help with an experiment in live performance.

And God!
He’d said he’d pay her so this most definitely wasn’t a date, no matter what her deluded, male-attention starved, soft spot for a singer brain wanted it to be. So it didn’t matter a decibel what she wore, something practical, dark and fitted so it didn’t catch on staging would do.

Decision made, but stomach still unsettled, she opted for dark blue denim and a black shirt with black ballet flats. An outfit she’d wear to Avocado on any weekday. She pinned her hair up so it wouldn’t get in the way. Her one concession to going out, apart from the underwear, was a sparkly star-shaped hair stick she shoved in her messy bun. Damon wouldn’t know it was there, but it was a touch of whimsy that made her feel like this was a night out instead of another day at work.

She was ready, to the touch of pale lipstick, an hour before she needed to be. She sucked at this. She was sweating though it wasn’t especially warm. She took her shirt off and sat in her jeans and bra. It was amazing how much a person could change. Not that she’d ever been the life of the party, but before Hamish’s injury, she’d been at all the right parties, known what clothes to wear, how to flirt up a storm, play for laughs and have a good time.

Hamish’s injury, Jeffrey’s violence, took her confidence and mashed it into something small and weak that flickered instead of flamed. Hamish did the rest all by himself. He’d just about snuffed her out, made her tentative and fearful with his extreme moods and neediness, when she’d once been outgoing and socially adept.

The idea of helping Damon was jabbing too many sore spots. The one in her head said getting involved with anyone, straight after leaving Hamish, was a stupendously bad idea.

The one in her body made of muscle tension told her she was freaked out about doing or saying something that showed how socially retarded she’d become, and the one in her gut simply longed to be clear of all that baggage, to be easy with people, to laugh freely again and to have a new friend in Damon.

She went to the fridge and took out the milk, poured herself a glass and drank it. Cold and smooth, it did nothing to sooth the sore spot in her heart. The one that loving Hamish had perpetually bruised, and that being with Damon made tender and throbbing all over again.