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“That’s a shit, man.”
He sipped. “I brought it on myself. I broke us. And the ex-husband might be all right, worked out his stuff. She’s staying with him. Not impossible they’d get back together.”
“Shit.”
“I get lucky with the cancer. I get to keep a voice. I get the dog.” He looked down to where Mel was lying at his feet. “I don’t get the girl. I was never going to get the girl anyway. That wasn’t how it was going to go. You convinced me to try again, you and Heather, Jamie and Taylor.” He dropped his chin to his chest and spoke to his legs. “I should’ve listened to Sam. He called it. Said I’d wrecked it.”
“We all should’ve listened to Sam.”
He nodded. Turns out Sam could write songs. Songs that didn’t suck and suited Taylor. Almost an entire album of them.
“What would you give up to have Georgia back?”
He held his cup out for a refill. “Not coffee.” Angus took the cup, poured and put it back in the saucer. “What would you give up to keep Heather?”
“No question, the bar.”
“You’d be giving up a huge part of yourself. Would she want that?”
Angus bumped around behind the counter in an annoyed fashion.
Damon pressed. “Would she want you to be less than you could be?”
A bottle got slung in a bin with a dull clink. “Quit with the hard questions. I thought you were brain dead?”
“I could sleep for a week, but I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. Heather would want you to be the best, the happiest you can be because she loves you. If that’s without the Blink, fine. Taylor kept her secret because she thought it would make Jamie act against his best interest. She didn’t want him to have to choose something he didn’t plan on because he was cornered.”
Squeak of a towel in a glass. “How does this relate to you?”
He sighed. He’d had a lot of time to think, but living in his head for months hadn’t produced any answers. “Fucked if I know. I screwed it all up.”
Angus laughed.
“All I do know is I’m grateful every day for the fact you and I can sit and talk like this and I’m not speaking through a tube in my throat.”
“There’s that.”
“That’s major.”
“Singing again would be major.”
“I don’t have the range. I don’t have my character voices. They’re gone. I’m Vox after a hard night on the grog 24/7. Fortunately the entertainment world still wants me as a grumpy cat. I might have to learn to like the creepy things after all. And if that show doesn’t last more than a season, that’s what Avocado is for.” An alternate source of income, plus an outrageously vague new hope Taylor might record Sam’s songs.
“The speech therapist said you were fit for duty.”
“Spoken word, yes. But I don’t think I can sing. It’s pushing my luck.” Like he’d pushed it with everything; his sight, his career, Georgia.
Angus poured something salty in a bowl, nuts or pretzels. “Since when did you play safe with luck?”
He laughed. “Maybe since now.” The edge of the bowl slid against the back of his hand. He put his fingers inside it.
“Should I be worried about that? I’m dead bored with being pissed at you.”
He crunched a nut. “I get that.”
Angus moved the bowl away. Performance art—pissed with nuts. “No you don’t. You don’t get it at all. You think being blind comes with a flip side of guilt. You need a little more consideration and because you get it, you feel like you’re indebted. Pucker up, man, it’s the same for the rest of us. Our disabilities just aren’t so obvious.”
A wet cloth slapped the bar top. Angus was on a roll.
