This had to be bad, he’d stuttered. She stayed where she was, on the edge of the seat. She was a cliché so many times over: the brainless cheerleader, the clueless virgin, the babe in the woods, the deliberate martyr, the wronged wife, the new girl. “There really is a performance tonight?”
He dragged a hand through his hair, still wearing an expression that told her he felt guilty. “Yeah. But I’m doing it as a favour for an old friend. There is no money. I was going to pay you myself, but I can’t do that because it’s a poor excuse.”
She sat back and re-clipped her seatbelt. “For what?” She could still get out but it was worth hearing what he had to say.
“For asking you out. If I wasn’t such a dick, I’d have asked you to dinner or a movie or out dancing.”
“You wanted to ask me out?” Her mouse squeak voice was lost in the maze of how preposterous that was.
Damon rubbed his jaw. “Yeah. Is that so awful?”
“No, it’s. Um. I.”
He closed his eyes on a grunt and turned his head away.
“If I’d been sure this was a date I’d have dressed up.”
He turned back. “You’re not mad?” His voice was stretched thin too.
“I am mad. Lunatic, especially for singers, but you don’t know that yet so I need to take advantage of you before it becomes clear.” She was babbling and she didn’t care. “You said that’s what women do, well count me in. I’m lining up to take advantage of you tonight.”
His smile broke slowly. She got the sideways pull of his lips, then they flattened out and tipped up, spruiking that dimple, lifting his cheeks and crinkling the skin at the corners of his eyes. “Just tonight?”
“Are you flirting with me?”
“I’ve been trying to flirt with you since I met you.”
Under oath she’d say his eyes twinkled. But her head was shot full of wonder so she was an unreliable witness.
“How much advantage are you thinking of taking?”
Her breath shot out as an embarrassing groan.
He laughed. “And here I was worried you were shy.”
Georgia put her hands over her face. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
He laughed. He had to know what she’d just done because she’d sounded exactly like a little kid hiding behind her hands.
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m not all that sure how this is supposed to go either.”
She looked across at him in horror. “That can’t be right.” One of them had to be in charge and it certainly wasn’t her.
He nodded. “You’re not a hook-up, Georgia. And that’s my recent history, and when I say that I’m talking more the history part than the recent part. It’s been a dry spell. I’ve been travelling so much and it’s not easy.” He shrugged.
“I’m not a hook-up?”
“Well, unless that’s all you want to be. I, ah. Shit. Is that all you want?”
A hook-up is what she should be. She wasn’t fit to consider anything more. And Damon was so wrong for her in ways she couldn’t begin to tell him. But she wasn’t ready to go from, “Can you run that line again, please”, to having Damon touch her more intimately than his hand to her arm. She might imagine more, but she was
nowhere near as brave as her fantasy scenarios.
“I don’t want to be a hook-up. I don’t know what I want.” She was so pathetic he should stop the taxi and chuck her out.
“How about we start with friends?”
“Friends with Damon Donovan.”