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“That’s tough. You looked after him.”
“As best I could.” She looked up and Damon was gone.
He came out the door of the iso booth and stood looking at her. “Is that why you didn’t want to know me? You thought I was going to be like your husband? You thought I was going to need looking after?”
He was offended. “That’s a leap, isn’t it?” He was right.
“Is it? I’m disabled like he is.”
“You’re not. He’s. It’s.” It hadn’t gone this way when she’d talked it through with Fluffy. She’d thought this was what Damon wanted from her, something real, something that told him about her. But she’d told him about her prejudice.
“Jesus, Georgia. We’re not one size fits all, us disabled guys. J
ust because things were difficult with your husband.” He stopped abruptly and turned back to the door. “Never mind.” He felt for the wall, found the handle and let himself in. He went to the lectern and put his earphone in place. “I’m ready when you are.”
But he wasn’t. He muffed it. His annoyance bleeding through his tone and in the way he clipped his words. He called a stop before she did and stalked around the booth. She should probably go to him, but what was she supposed to say since she’d caused him to lose his cool? Eventually she said, “Can I get you anything?”
He came across to the window and leaned his forehead against it. He had his eyes closed so even if he could make her out through the glass he wasn’t trying to. She stepped around the control desk and up to the glass. She stood directly in front of him. She ran her hand over his image, across his hair and down his shoulder and arm.
Damon was the man she’d thought Hamish would be, talented, fearless, ambitious and undefeated. She pressed her hand to his spread on the glass, aligning their fingers, not able to meet the spread of his palm, the end of his fingers, wishing she was brave enough to do this without the thick silicon between them.
He straightened up and moved away. “Let’s get this done.”
When he started up again, he had it together. But he called the pace. And suddenly she was aware she’d never really been in control. He knew his voice. He knew when he’d given a noisy read and when he needed to redo a sentence. He could’ve engineered himself. Requesting her made even less sense.
When he was satisfied with his last read, he simply pulled his earpiece out and packed his gear away. He came out into the control room and looked in her general direction. “I’ll see you Monday. Have a good weekend.”
His voice was flat. She might’ve been a cardboard box to him. She couldn’t let him go without apologising. “Damon.”
“Let’s just get this job finished, okay?”
“It was my fault.”
He rested a hand against the wall. “One goldfish is all you get out of me, Georgia.”
“I mean it was my fault he was hurt.”
“How was it your fault?”
“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.
