Speechless Read Online Free PDF

you?”
    Drew mimed rocking a baby in his arms.
    “I’m sorry. That really sucks. Do you have a picture of her too?”
    There was a single photo of a very young woman standing in front of what looked like a pub. She had a glass of wine in her hand, and her head was thrown back with laughter. “She was pretty,” Travis said. “I don’t think my mother has ever been happy like that in her whole life.” His mother was a crier and a screamer, the type of person who saw the worst in everyone and whose glass was always half-empty. Well, except for her tumbler of Southern Comfort, which she kept diligently filled.
    Several pages of the album contained photos of places Travis didn’t recognize. A beach where a teenaged Drew squinted into the sun and looked adorably awkward in swim trunks. A place with colorful stucco buildings and palm trees. A cobblestone street that was obviously older than any city in the United States. Travis wasn’t widely traveled, and he wondered where these places were and why Drew had visited them. He hoped they could find a way for Drew to tell the tales someday.
    But now Drew was turning the page again, and there he was, sitting at a desk with a big computer monitor in front of him, grinning and holding up a thick stack of papers. He was shirtless, and his hair was a mess, which led Travis to wonder who had snapped the picture. “Was that one of your books?” he asked.
    Drew nodded and held up a finger.
    “Oh. Your first book. That must have been really exciting. I can’t imagine creating something like that.”
    Drew looked slightly wistful—which hadn’t been Travis’s intent—then shook his head slightly, and his face cleared. He pointed at Travis and then made an odd motion with both hands, as if he were slowly pushing something forward. He had to repeat it a few times before Travis understood.
    “Well, yeah, I make stuff on a lathe. But not books. Just… pieces of things. Machine parts and tools and stuff. Nothing interesting. Nothing anyone’s ever gonna care about. I read that book you gave me, the one you wrote. Which is kind of a thing, because I’m usually not much of a reader.” He paused, wondering if he’d given too much of himself away, but Drew just waited. Well, Drew had been to Travis’s apartment and surely noticed that it was not overflowing with reading material. “I really liked your book! It was exciting and that cop with the bad rep was cool and that thing with the identity theft, I totally didn’t see that coming. You know, even if you never write anything again, you’ve already done way more than most people.”
    Drew nodded slowly, as if he’d never thought of it that way before. Then he sighed and flipped quickly through a bunch of pages of him signing books in various places. He stopped when he came to a photo of himself holding another of his books in one hand, his other arm thrown around the shoulder of a young man with black hair and a slightly stubbly chin. The man wasn’t exactly handsome, but he had an interesting face, and he was staring at Drew with adoration in his eyes.
    Drew pointed at the man, his finger almost stabbing into the photo.
    “You dated him?” Travis asked carefully, and received a single nod in return. “Was it… serious?”
    Drew nodded again. Then he bashed his palm against his forehead, pointed at the ex again, and swept his hand in a go-away motion toward the door.
    “He split after the accident?”
    With his jaw clenched tightly, Drew nodded. He pointed at his own mouth, which was as silent as always, and shook his head.
    “Oh. He couldn’t handle you… having trouble talking. That… Christ, Drew. He was an asshole and he didn’t deserve you. I have better conversations with you than with guys who can talk a mile a minute.”
    The anger and hurt in Drew’s eyes faded, and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly. That was really nice to see, Travis thought. But he had to ask another question. “How long