Speechless (5 page)

When Travis walked home that evening, he took the long route, deliberately avoiding Drew’s house. He went straight home, fed Elwood, and collapsed on the couch. Stunned.

An hour and a half later, as Travis still stared blankly at nothing, there was a knock on his door. He opened it to find Drew, of course, hunched up inside his coat and looking a little lost. Drew’s face didn’t brighten any when he saw the expression on Travis’s. He didn’t enter the apartment until Travis motioned him inside.

After several minutes of standing and staring, Travis broke first. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Drew. I should’ve…. I needed a little time to think, I guess.”

Drew frowned at him, waiting for an explanation.

Travis sighed deeply. “They’re closing the shop. If I want to keep working I have to move to Nebraska.”

Drew went very pale as he blinked rapidly. Then he clenched his jaw, pointed savagely at Travis, and then down at the floor. Travis understood the message: Stay.

“I can’t, Drew. There aren’t any other machinist jobs in town—most of the other shops closed up long ago, and the few that are left, they’ve got people with more years of experience than me pounding on their doors. And there’s nothing else I can do, nothing I can make a living off of. You have no idea how many shitty jobs I got fired from before I started working with lathes.”

Drew glared and then yanked his wallet out of his pocket. He pulled out his credit cards and a wad of cash, and waved them between himself and Travis.

“God, Drew, I know you’re willing to share.” He’d learned over the last several months that, while Drew wasn’t exactly Bill Gates, he had plenty: his savings, his continuing book royalties, and the insurance money from the accident—which hadn’t been his fault. “I know you’re willing and I really appreciate it. I do. But I can’t…. I don’t want to be your kept boy! My father always said I’d never make anything of myself, I’d always be a fucking failure, and I guess he was right, but at least I can pay my own bills, for Christ’s sake.”

Drew shook his head. He opened his mouth but could only emit a roar of pure frustration. He threw up his hands and turned away.

Travis took a few calming breaths and tried not to fucking cry. He walked around Drew so they were facing one another again. “Come with me. Come to Omaha. Okay, maybe not too exciting, but we can find a place together, and—”

But Drew roared again and bashed himself in the head, hard. He pointed at himself and then at the floor, his eyes glossy with unshed tears. Travis understood. It had taken tremendous will and effort for Drew to pull together a life for himself here, to live independently and manage things like home repairs and dinner reservations despite his disability. He’d be starting from scratch in Nebraska, and that was too much to ask. He was a strong man, but that strength had limits.

Drew bashed his head again, and Travis caught his hand and pulled Drew in close. Drew was very stiff against him for a moment, but then he sagged, and they held each other, each of them shaking, trying desperately not to break down.

A
LLIED
gave him only two weeks to relocate. He booked a flight to Omaha and packed up his few belongings in a couple of suitcases. Drew and Travis didn’t see much of each other over those two weeks. It was too painful, like poking at a sore. When they did spend time together, the silence was horrible, and the usual playfulness in their lovemaking was replaced with a raw desperation.

The day of his flight, Travis showed up at Drew’s door with a yowling Elwood in a carrier. Drew stood in his doorway, silent as always, face blank.

“Will you take El?” Travis asked. “Traveling is gonna be too hard on him, and he likes you better than he likes me anyway.”

Drew nodded once, stiffly.

Travis put the carrier down just inside the door. He placed a paper bag beside the carrier. “His dishes are in here, and his brush, and that Petromalt shit. All his toys… that fuzzy octopus thing you bought him, that’s his favorite. I didn’t bring his litter box ’cause it was pretty gross anyway. Want me to run by the store and pick up a new one?”

Head shake.

“Okay. But remember, he’ll only use the box if you get Jonny Cat litter. Anything else and he’ll piss all over the carpet or take a dump in the middle of your bed.”

Eye roll.

“So, um, I guess I’m gonna go. If you’re ever in Omaha… my new address is on a piece of paper in Elwood’s bag. I’d like to know—” His voice broke, and he had to stop and collect himself. “I’m gonna miss you so much,” he whispered hoarsely.

Drew dropped his head. When he looked up again, his eyes were shiny. He sniffed loudly, pointed at Travis, then at his garage, and briefly held his arms out like he was flying.

“No, thanks. I’m gonna catch a cab. I just…. Christ. I don’t want to make a scene at the airport, okay?”

A nod. They closed into a tight embrace, and Travis wished he’d never have to let go. But the moment passed too quickly, and when they pulled slightly apart, Drew flipped Travis’s eye patch up and kissed the lid. Travis gave him a wavering smile and brushed his fingertips against Drew’s soft lips.

And then he went home to phone a cab.

I
N
SOME
ways, it was like he hadn’t moved at all. He still had the same fairly crappy but decent-paying job. He still squirreled away his money for a rainy day, because he knew sooner or later this shop would close too, and Allied would move operations to Mexico or Bangladesh or somewhere. He still trudged home on foot to a shitty, boring apartment. He even found a convenience store that was on the way home and stocked his old brand of frozen burritos.

But here, there was no cat waiting for him at home, angrily meowing for his supper. Pets weren’t allowed in this building—although apparently cockroaches were the exception.

And of course, none of the houses he passed had a beautiful, unspeaking man sitting on the front steps, strumming his guitar.

By the middle of July—and after much telephonic goading from Sara—Travis decided to change his habits a little. He hadn’t had any more luck connecting with the people he worked with in Omaha than he’d had in Portland or Bakersfield, but there was a whole city out there, right?

He tried a couple of clubs downtown, but he’d never been much of a clubbing kind of guy and didn’t really feel as though he fit in anywhere. One place was full of kids in their early twenties bouncing to techno music; another contained a lot of leather and even some mullets, neither of which floated his boat; and one was a country-western place where men kept groping his ass but wouldn’t meet his eye.

Okay, forget the whole lover thing, he decided. He could do fine with porn and his right hand. But what he really ached for was someone to talk to.

One endless Sunday afternoon, he ended up at the movie theater, a giant tub of popcorn in hand and lots of things blowing up on the screen in front of him. He tried not to remember how Drew had dragged him to see arty movies—the kind with subtitles or weird plots you couldn’t quite understand—and how they’d held hands and even groped each other a little, like teenagers on a date. Drew would have hated this flick. Unlike the guy three seats over, a handsome guy with broad shoulders and corn-silk hair, laughing uproariously at every chase scene and clapping at all the explosions.

It was too early for dinner when the movie let out, so Travis took a seat outside a nearby café. He drank iced coffee and buried his nose in one of Drew’s books, this one about a spy whose loyalties are tested by an evil new boss. Travis was working his way through all of Drew’s books, even though he knew that was pathetic.

“Good book?”

Travis looked up to see the guy from the movie theater grinning down at him, iced tea in hand. “Um, yeah,” Travis said.

“Mind if I join you?” The man waved around to indicate that all the other tables were full.

“No, go ahead, man.”

“Thanks.” The metal chair scraped loudly on the concrete when the man pulled it out. He sat down and poured sugar into his tea. “Did you like the movie?” he asked as he stirred.

“It was okay. Killed ninety minutes anyway.”

“Yeah. I’m more of a sci-fi guy myself. Old school, like
Star Wars
. I guess I’m kind of a geek.”

Travis gave him a faint smile and turned his attention back to his book.

“My name’s Chip, by the way. Actually, it’s Clyde, Clyde Stothert III, but nobody calls me that but my parents.” He had a wide, slightly lopsided grin, pale eyes, and a sunburned face. He even had freckles. He looked like he’d just stepped off the farm, only better dressed.

“Travis.”

“Hey, Travis.” Chip slurped at his iced tea for a moment. “So what’s there exciting to do in Omaha? Besides movies and cold drinks?”

“Dunno. I just moved here a few months ago.”

Chip didn’t look disappointed. “Yeah? I live in Kansas City, but I’m here on business until next Thursday. Training workshop for this new budgeting software we’re installing. I’m in IT for a community college.” There was that crooked smile again. “Told you I’m a geek.”

Travis found himself smiling back. “I’m just a machinist.”

“Cool.”

Chip pulled out a smartphone and started tapping away at it, and Travis went back to his reading. But ten minutes or so later, Travis looked up when Chip stuffed his phone in a pocket. “How about dinner?” Chip asked.

They ended up at a nearby steak place. It was fancier than Travis’s normal fare, but he hadn’t had a really good meal out since he left Portland. Which he was not going to think about right now, not when a really good-looking guy was sitting across the table from him and making his interest known with lingering looks and sexy smiles.

Chip talked a lot. He wasn’t rude about it or anything—Travis could have wedged in his own words if he’d wanted to—but Travis didn’t make the effort, and Chip seemed pretty comfortable with dominating the conversation. He talked about the Kansas City Chiefs, because he was a diehard fan; and about where all the best places for barbecue were in KC; and about his job at the college, where the instructors were clueless, and the students were idiots. He talked about a conference he’d attended in New York a few months previously, his first trip east of the Mississippi. He talked about his grandparents’ farm (
Bingo
, thought Travis) and his three brothers and two sisters and his nieces and nephews. He talked about how his old Chevy was in the process of dying and how he couldn’t decide what to replace it with. He talked through salad and steak and chocolate cake, through two beers and two cups of coffee.

“So,” he said, after Travis had insisted on splitting the check down the middle, even though Chip had ordered the twenty-two-ounce T-bone, and Travis had just had the twelve-ounce top sirloin. “What’s up next for you tonight?”

“I, um, I gotta work in the morning.”

“And I have to stay awake for that workshop. But it’s still pretty early.” Chip glanced at his watch as if to confirm. He had fine blond hair on his muscular forearms. He tilted his head to the side and lifted one corner of his mouth. “I have an idea. How about a swim?”

Sara’s family had a backyard swimming pool, and Travis had spent a great many of his adolescent hours in it. He hadn’t been near a pool since. “I don’t have a suit,” he said.

“I bought two of them the other day when I found out my hotel had a good pool. You can borrow the one I haven’t worn yet.” He leaned over the table, looking down at Travis’s lap, and then sat back with a grin. “We’re about the same size.”

So Travis ended up in a room at the Embassy Suites, changing into a pair of swim trunks in the bathroom like a shy maiden. At least Chip wasn’t the sort to go for teeny tiny Speedos. These were the baggy, knee-length style Travis would have bought himself, although he’d have chosen a solid color rather than a Hawaiian print. The pair Chip was wearing had a print too, although in a different color and pattern. The orange hibiscus flowers—or whatever they were supposed to be—did nothing to detract from Chip’s trim waist and broad, heavily muscled chest.

Chip noticed Travis noticing and grinned wolfishly.

“Um,” Travis said when they reached the pool. He pulled slightly at the string to his eye patch. “I’m gonna take this off.”

“Sure. You can just leave it with our towels,” replied Chip, seemingly unconcerned. But Travis was still relieved when, once the patch was off, Chip barely seemed to notice. It didn’t look that bad, Travis told himself. Just one lid closed, like he was giving the world a permanent wink.

Travis’s swimming skills were pretty rusty, but he managed to get in quite a few laps anyway. And when he and Chip engaged in a good-natured race—cheered on by a pair of little kids in water wings—Travis won by at least a body length. Afterward they treaded water for a while before heading to the shallow end and sitting on a step. Chip talked some more, this time about his days on the junior varsity football team and how he was saving up for the down payment on a house because he was sick of paying rent. He even had a house in mind, a little bungalow that needed some work.

Travis only half listened, smiling and nodding in the right places. He knew what was going to come next. He and Chip would head back to Chip’s room and peel off their wet trunks, and—Chip was the kind of guy who almost certainly had rubbers and lube in his suitcase—they’d fuck. Possibly athletically, maybe even loudly. They’d definitely get good and sweaty. And then Travis would get dressed, and they might exchange lies about meeting up again next time Chip was in town, and Travis would head home smelling like chlorine and semen.

It wasn’t a terrible scenario to imagine. Chip was really hot and seemed like a genuinely nice guy. There was nothing wrong with no-strings sex between two consenting adults. Strings were awkward. They got in the way, tangled you up. Travis was obviously a bona fide no-strings kind of man.

Obviously.

Chip suggested they switch to the hot tub, but Travis shook his head. “I really do have to get up early. Sleepiness and power tools don’t mix well.”