Read Me Again for Free Online

know as little as I did, a shortcut for saying “I don’t know” can come in very handy.
    “Well,” Teddy said, his smile returning, “probably best not to rush things. You just take it easy and keep on getting better.”
    His smile was beginning to annoy me – it was seeming less sympathetic and more, I don’t know, triumphant . But I was probably just getting cranky. I should have been happy to hear about how well he was doing, but it had been a taxing day, what with me gaining and losing a girlfriend in a matter of minutes.
    That reminded me...
    VICTORIA WAS HERE , I wrote.
    “Really?” Teddy’s smile dimmed a little. “Wow – that must have been kinda strange, after all these years.”
    IT’S OVER , I wrote, then thought of the exact words she had used. SHE MOVED ON .
    Teddy grimaced in sympathy as he read. Come to think of it, he had probably assumed Victoria would have given up on me – hell, everybody else had – and had been waiting to see how badly I’d take the news.
    “Wow,” he said again. “That’s, uh... that’s rough, bro.”
    I shrugged again. Versatile thing, this shrugging.
    For the second time today I wrote LOTS OF THINGS HAVE CHANGED .
    Teddy’s smile was returning to its original wattage. “Ain’t that the truth,” he said. “Things have changed completely .” The big gold ring came off his finger and was back in play.
    I decided to change the subject. Time for some small talk – talk that didn’t focus on yet another aspect of my life that sucked.
    HOW LONG ARE YOU IN TOWN?
    “Just for the day,” Teddy said. “I’ve got to take the train back home tomorrow. Listen, I’m real sorry it took me ’til now to get down here. Things have just been crazy at work, you know?”
    IT’S OK. DOCTORS ARE KEEPING ME BUSY.
    “I’ll bet they are,” Teddy said. “Well, you just keep taking it one step at a time, bro. Slow and steady wins the race, right?”
    Well, I had the slow part down. The steady, not so much. And I wasn’t yet taking any steps at a time. My physical therapy sessions were focused mostly on restoring my ability to flex and move my limbs, but I was far from being able to support my own weight yet.
    “Slow and steady,” he repeated, apparently running out of things to say.
    I couldn’t even talk, and I felt the same.
    “You just stay focused on what’s important, bro,” said Teddy. “I mean, you can’t be thinking about coming back to work any time soon. You’ve got bigger fish to fry, what with the fascia and all.”
    I wrote YOU MEAN APHASIA?
    “Yeah, whatever it’s called. That thing with the talking. So you’ll probably have your hands full for a while.”
    I nodded. Currently my hands were full of a pencil and paper, but I knew what he meant.
    Teddy continued to speak. One downside of my current form of communication was that it left a lot of silence, which I’ve found people feel compelled to fill.
    “Probably just as well. I know I told you I’m doing great and all, but there’ve been some cutbacks at the firm. So I probably wouldn’t get my heart set on coming back there anytime soon.” Teddy had now taken to repeatedly slipping the ring first on his left pinky, then on his right.
    “But me and Brandon, we’ll be sure to put in a good word for you with the other firms up there. You know, if you get the whole math thing together and all.”
    I had a feeling that the whole math thing wasn’t coming back to me. Ever.
    It was strange how I could sense that, but it was like I was walking down a long narrow hallway, lined on both sides with a seeming endless series of doors. Some of them were wide open – those were the memories I hadn’t lost. Some doors were slightly ajar – things that had escaped my mind, but easy enough to retrieve by opening the door and walking in. Then there were some closed doors. The parts of my mind that lurked behind them were much harder to access. In some cases I felt I was making some headway. But some of