6. Ned
NED
Ned pulls Abbot into the shadow of Pat’s front door and kisses him. “I,” Ned says and kisses him again. “Fucking.” He kisses his chin. “Missed…” his cheek, his mouth. “You.”
“I can’t believe you’re here.” Abbot kisses him back, slowly and thoroughly, forcing Ned to match him in a more measured pace.
Leisurely, even, as Ned tips his head and answers the pull of Abbot’s lips.
Why the hell were they thinking they could go a month without each other?
Fuck not having the money to buy a plane ticket over the holidays.
Ned can barely manage the handful of days that stretch between their weekends, and he’s hungry for Abbot now in a way that feels unquenchable, the slip of his tongue just stoking the fervor.
“Where are you parked?” Abbot whispers when they part.
“Somewhere, I don’t know.” Ned dives back in, kissing his bottom lip, his upper one. It’s so damn convenient that it’s colder than hell out here, because they’re at least alone on the street as Ned licks into his warm mouth.
Abbot laughs a little and that’s even better. “You don’t?”
Ned smiles against his lips. “Down the block, maybe. Fuck. I missed you.”
“Let’s go. Now.” Yes, Abbot is the sensible one, which is good because Ned’s brain is riding on the taste of Abbot’s mouth, the tease of what he can feel of his body in his thick coat.
Though one thought does register as Abbot pulls at his hand. “Baxter,” Ned says, but can Pat just keep him for the night?
No, because there’s no food for Baxter at Pat’s anymore, and Ned no longer has a key to upstairs, dammit. He’d borrowed Pat’s to stash Baxter up there, and he groans softly, dropping his head to Abbot’s shoulder. “It’ll be two seconds,” he says.
Abbot scratches his fingers through the hair on the back of Ned’s head.
Ned shivers. “Or,” he whispers, turning his face and finding Abbot’s neck with his mouth. “Or I just take you up there and fuck you in my old bed.”
Abbot’s grip tightens on the nape of his neck.
“Yeah?” Ned murmurs, sucking a kiss beneath Abbot’s jaw. “Remember that? Back when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other?”
“I’m not sure we’re exactly proving anything otherwise,” Abbot says, and he squeezes again, deliciously tight, and then he releases Ned.
Ned pushes inside the bar once again, hoping he can chalk up the flush he feels on his face to the cold of the night. He smacks a hand on the bar to get Pat’s attention “Your keys.”
“Hey, you’re back,” Pat says with none of the urgency this moment absolutely calls for.
“I gotta grab Baxter. Where are your keys?”
“Maybe my coat?” Pat asks, like Ned would know. “Listen. About Claire.”
“And where’s your coat?”
“In the back,” Pat says, but instead of doing anything at all to grab it, or pointing Ned to it, or helping even a little, he drops his voice and says, “You have to help me out.”
“You gotta get me your keys, or you’re about to adopt a dog.”
“Claire’s a vet.”
“That’s really great. I need your fucking keys.”
“Can I introduce her to Baxter?”
Ned pauses long enough to let out a laugh. “Are you using my dog to get her upstairs?”
“No. Yes. Just a little bit.”
“Listen, you can do whatever the hell you want, as long as I’m on my way to Abbot’s within thirty seconds.”
“It’s not creepy, is it?” Pat asks. “I was telling her about Bax, and she said not five minutes ago that she’d love to go somewhere quieter than here, just to get some air. That’s something, right?”
“So you take her up, show her Baxter, and I’ll get him tomorrow. Feed him a burger, whatever.” Ned backs toward the door. “Okay, have fun, bye.”
“No, no, no.” Pat hurries from behind the bar. “You have to go with me or it’s weird.”
“It’s already weird.”
“But it’s less weird if it’s not just me.”
“That’s exactly what’s making it weird.”
“Come up, okay? For a minute? So she won’t think I’m some sort of murderer?”
“We could both be murderers.”
“Not Abbot.”
“Fair.” Ned ducks a look out the window. “But c’mon, man. I wanted to be back at Abbot’s an hour ago.”
“Five minutes. Please. Please, please, please. Just this once. Just—just pretend you need her to look at Baxter, okay?”
“Can’t you just invite her up like a normal person?”
“Can’t you just ask out your boyfriend instead of hatching the most convoluted plan to pretend to date and—”
“It was your idea!”
“It was Abbot’s!”
“You started it!”
“So you owe me!”
“Fine!” Ned spins and spots Claire across the room in a knot of women. He steels himself before he walks over. He really has to interrupt this conversation to drag her upstairs on a stupid false pretense, just so Pat can probably biff having her alone for a handful of minutes?
“I am so sorry to interrupt,” Ned says, pasting on a smile and trying to dial up the charm. “Hi, I’m Ned. I hope you guys are having a great time. Claire, can I borrow you for just a sec?”
“Oh, for sure,” she says, and that was easy at least, to separate her from her crowd. “What’s up? Are we being too loud? Or is Pat finally kicking us out?”
“No, no, you’re great. Everyone loves a bachelorette.”
Claire grins up at him. “You are absolutely lying.”
“Yes, definitely,” Ned agrees. This is the dumbest thing he’s had to do for Pat, and that’s saying a lot. “Listen, Pat said you’re a vet? My dog’s upstairs, and I know you’re in the middle of your evening, but could you possibly take a quick look at him?”
Claire sets her drink down. “Is he okay?”
“He’s totally fine,” Ned says, then quickly amends, “Mostly, I mean. No, he just has a—we went running today? And I think he must have gotten a little cut? So it’s just, you know, a ‘should I worry or not’ type of look at him.”
“Is it still bleeding?”
No, because the tiny nick Baxter got from a hedge is real enough, but is it a problem?
Of course it isn’t. The real issue is that Baxter found half a blueberry muffin in that bush four months ago, and now every time they go past it, he has to check just in case it magically produces more unexpected baked goods.
“I think it’s okay. Well, it’s not; it should definitely be looked at, but…
” Ah, fuck, he’s no better than Pat is. “Sorry,” Ned quickly starts, but he’s drowned out by a cheer from the group of women, one of whom has produced a nearly life-sized picture of what must be the groom-to-be.
Another is holding what Ned’s pretty sure are cartoon penises likely about to be pinned on.
“I think that was supposed to be for the hotel room, not in public,” Claire says.
“We’re not murderers,” Ned offers. “If you do want to come up for a couple minutes.”
“Honestly, even if you are, I have three more days of this, so it might be a favor,” Claire says. “Yes. Your dog. Absolutely. Let’s go.”
“You’re welcome,” Ned says softly to Pat as Claire follows them outside.
“I’m panicking,” he whispers.
“I know.” He claps Pat’s shoulder. “She probably knows too, though, so clearly it isn’t a deal breaker.”
Abbot eyes them from Pat’s door. “Very interesting set of apartment keys.”
Ned leans into him, using the excuse of pressing a kiss to his temple to whisper, “We’re providing a favor, apparently.”
“How delightful.”
“Five minutes.”
“Four minutes and fifty eight seconds, considering what time you already used.”
Ned noses against Abbot’s cheekbone. “I’ll make it up to you.” And enjoy the hell out of doing so, that’s for sure.
The stairs creak as they climb them, and Baxter whines behind the door at the top.
It was such a familiar sound for so long when Ned lived here, like the snick of the lock at the apartment door when Pat turns his key, and how Baxter’s nails click on the wood floor as he scrambles in his delight to say hello.
“The man himself,” Ned says. “Hey, Bax, sit.”
But Baxter squirms straight past Ned to Abbot, hurling himself against his shins, his entire body wriggling as he lets loose a series of yelping cries.
“Hello,” Abbot says, as politely as if he’s meeting another professional.
“Someone missed you,” Ned says.
“I don’t have anything for you. I’m sorry,” Abbot says, patting Baxter’s heaving side. “I didn’t know you’d be visiting tonight.”
“Bax, say hi to Claire,” Ned says, but it’s no use because Baxter is back with his very favorite person in the entire world, turning nearly upside down in his attempts to mash his body against Abbot’s legs.
Well, Ned can’t blame him. He felt the same way spotting Abbot in the conference room, but it’s a lot less excusable for Ned to lick him all over in public.
“Yeah, that’s Baxter,” Pat says. “Um, welcome.” He’s nearly as bright red as his hair.
You owe me, Ned mouths at him, then steps toward the kitchen. He is so damn nice, when he could be doing said licking instead of pulling out drinks to prolong Pat’s attempts with this woman. “Beers?” he asks. “Pat, do you have anything for Abbot?”
“There’s real wine in the cupboard,” Pat says, and Ned frowns at him. “What, you’re surprised? Not my fault you moved to Boston and spend all your time with that Steve character. Abbot’s my friend now.”
“You can’t have him,” Ned says.
“Well, I don’t, because he had to go abscond to Switzerland for a month, and I really was all by my lonesome.”
“Switzerland,” Claire says. She takes the beer Ned hands her and points the neck of the bottle at Abbot. “That’s your accent, isn’t it?”
Ned waits for Abbot to break out in hives, or maybe hurl himself out a window because a new person is talking to him, but apparently Claire is worth an entire whole word, because he says, “Yes.”
She raises her beer toward him. “Proschtli.”
Abbot’s focus narrows like he’s just found something particularly interesting on a spreadsheet. “Have you spent time there?”
She warrants a question, too? Ned tucks his hand around Abbot’s waist, eyeing Claire with new respect.
“A semester at Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zürich,” she says.
“What did you study?”
“Biology.”
“Honggerberg?”
“Yes, I spent most of my time on that campus.”
“When?” he asks and she tells him.
“Just the one semester?”