16. Ned
NED
Ned’s car looks drab as they walk back to it. He hadn’t noticed that when they’d arrived in a hurry. They should have taken Abbot’s to the Realtor’s, but Ned knows these streets better.
At least his car is nicer than what he used to drive, but he suddenly feels like it screams car payment to these high-end offices. When his old car had finally died last spring, he’d bought this one pre-owned, that word that stands in so tactfully for used.
There’s dog hair in it too, and Ned picks a piece off of Abbot’s thigh when it drifts down to settle there, like it’s aiming straight for his pristine suit pants.
“That was fun,” Ned says. Three million?
he wants to ask, but his voice would be high and shrill, he’s sure.
“Let’s go back to the idea of just taking Steve’s grandma’s house.
” Well, Abbot can go back to that idea. The best Ned could trade him is a stained cape and more dog hair.
“Did he show you a listing?”
“He was joking.” I was too, he waits for Abbot to say, but it doesn’t come, so Ned just keeps talking. “And I actually have no idea where it is. I don’t think he mentioned specifically.”
“It could be worth looking at.”
“Sure,” Ned agrees and then can’t come up with anything else to say that isn’t half shouting Three million dollars?
In the quiet, both of their phones buzz. Abbot pulls his out and Ned turns the car on, dialing the heat up high.
“She sent the form,” Abbot says.
Ned leans over, glancing at it on the small screen. Name is already filled out for both of them. Budget, reads the next line.
Ned puts the car in drive, checking over his shoulder so he doesn’t have to look if Abbot types into the little box. “Yeah,” he says as normally as he can. “Do you want to fill that out, or I can? I have some time later.”
“It’s not long. We can do it now,” Abbot says.
“Great.” Ned nods and flicks on his signal. He doesn’t need to. The road is empty. Budget? he steels himself for Abbot to ask.
It’s pretend. They can fill in whatever they want. Three million or thirty. Hell, they’ll just buy a city block while they’re at it. Purchase an entire neighborhood.
“Single-family home,” Abbot says slowly, a question in his voice, and he’s apparently gone and skipped the money question entirely.
“As opposed to what?” Ned asks and tries not to sound relieved.
“A condo?”
“Oh. Yeah, no condo fees, thanks.”
“It’s not my preference either.”
Good, so they can agree on that, at least. Ned takes a turn and flips down the visor to block the low winter sun.
“And the yard for Baxter,” Abbot says.
And our fictional kids Sandy signed us up for, Ned could joke.
He doesn’t. They should talk about the kid thing at some point, but what is there to say?
Yeah, Ned would have another kid, someday, but kids are expensive and he needs to figure out this job thing now, for the kid he currently has.
“Sounds great,” he says. “And whatever for bedrooms.”
“Is more than two alright?”
“Sure. I mean, we don’t need the space right now, so just fill it out with what you want.”
“She wants to know what we both want.”
“An in-home bowling alley, in that case.”
“Ned.”
“What?” Ned glances over with a grin.
Abbot doesn’t match his smile.
“Sorry. I’m sorry, I was joking. I only meant it’s probably easier to write something down that works well enough, instead of having to actually make a decision together about all of this.”
“It’ll be more believable if there’s some reality to it.”
“Right, that’s what I’m saying though. You really are looking for a place. So put in what you want, and then at least you’re getting something out of this and seeing relevant properties.”
“But isn’t it worth talking about? What we’d look for together?”
“Someday, sure,” Ned says.
“Why not now?”
Ned lets out a soft laugh. “Because.”
Abbot lowers his phone. “What does that mean?”
“It means let’s make good use of your time, while we’ve got a Realtor to talk to.”
“But if we’re both going to take the time to look at places, we could get an idea of what’s available for what price, that we’d both like,” Abbot says as if it makes sense.
It probably does, to him, but Ned’s mind catches on the word price like nails on a chalkboard.
He slows for a yellow light, no matter the car behind him laying on its horn.
“The market’s probably going to change,” Ned says.
Crash, hopefully, but in a way that his finances don’t suffer with a failing economy, which is definitely not possible, but hey, he can hope.
“Not that much.”
“Think about the building Pat bought for his café. That’s worth a ton now. Or your house.” Three million, Ned’s brain keeps repeating. Abbot’s house can’t be worth that much, can it?
“Pat’s owned that building for a while, hasn’t he? And I bought my house five years ago.”
“Exactly.”
Abbot looks at him, blinking behind his glasses. “Exactly what?”
“Five years and the market changes. Could you afford the same place now?” Ned asks before he realizes he doesn’t really want to know the answer. “And that’s up in Portland. Boston’s real estate is another beast entirely.”
“You’d wait five years to move in together?”
The question is stark in the quiet of the car and belatedly, Ned realizes he hasn’t turned on the radio. “Yes?”
Oh, the look on Abbot’s face—that was not the right response.
“No. We could—sooner than that, absolutely. A couple years?”
“A couple?”
At least, he wants to say to Abbot’s clear surprise.
But also: no. A few would have been a better answer, because it’s Abbot.
He’ll take a couple literally, and two years isn’t enough.
Especially if Ned’s facing a gap in employment.
And even if he manages to land at Newbury, how much will he have paid off two years from now? Three?
Hopefully he’ll owe less by then, and he’ll have a better handle on his credit card bill, but purchasing a house in just a handful of years? That’s so soon. Too soon.
“Not five,” Abbot says softly.
“Okay.” Ned tries to gather himself. To meet Abbot where he is, which is apparently a hell of lot farther than Ned thought. “I mean, yeah, we can talk about that, but I figured you’d get your own place and I would too, and we’d go from there. Didn’t we say that last night?”
“You said that.”
“Yeah, but—that makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Does it? We could just live together.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. Why not now?”
Now. Ned grips the wheel, floundering for a response.
Abbot just keeps talking. “If we find something we like, why wait so long? Sandy and Beverly aside, we don’t have to wait a couple of years. Certainly not five.”
“I…” Ned finds his mouth is just open, no word following that one. Would he move in with Abbot? Sure, but as soon as this summer? Panic sits high in his throat. No, he can’t. Of course he can’t. Surely Abbot gets that, doesn’t he?
“I have Peggy,” he says slowly.
“Of course you do.”
He makes it sound obvious, but is it? Peggy adores Abbot. But she’s six, and generously a mess, more realistically a slow-moving tornado of broken crayons and uncapped markers and random rocks and leaves she stuffs into her pockets and then dumps on the rug at home.
The light’s green, he realizes. And that sound he dimly hears is the car behind them honking again.
Shit. He goes, the car lurching when he steps on the gas too hard, and he’s taken the wrong damn left.
The sharpest one is where he needed to go, not the gentler left he ends up on, and he quickly scans the streets that will take him back to his parents’ house, each a wrong way or a dead end or a do not enter.
He glances over. Abbot’s looking at him like he’s a particularly interesting stats problem he can run through his computer and have the analysis spit out.
Though if he did, it’d come out as a giant negative number, the columns of debt Ned owes perfectly highlighted.
Ned absolutely never needs Abbot to see that.
It was the entire point of staying with his parents: Save money and be ready when their relationship takes the next step.
Come to Abbot as an actual, equal adult, having climbed out of the mess his life has been.
He’ll do this right with Abbot. Not mess up what they have together, Ned has promised himself.
Promised. And Abbot is too important to screw up their relationship.
Ned doesn’t need the mortification of what he’s done to his own finances out there between them for Abbot to be able to tally up in that head of his.
Oh, he’s going to be sick. “I, um,” he starts.
This conversation isn’t great. This morning was and last night was too, the thrill of being together on a weeknight, of waking up to his normal morning and having Abbot there with him.
But now something has gone off the rails.
Desperate, he flounders for the smile on Abbot’s face he likes so much.
“Look, it’s not Peggy. I mean, it is. That’s a lot. For her, for you, all of that.”
“I’m fine with it,” Abbot says quickly.
Ned shifts his hands on the wheel. Maybe he’ll conveniently be pulled over right now and slapped with a ticket. Though paying that wouldn’t cause anything but more trouble, and that’s really the point entirely.
“I know it’s only been a year and a half, nearly, that we’ve been together,” Abbot says. “But Ned, I love Peggy, and I would love to have her home be ours.”
“Oh.”
The turn Ned needed to take passes by his window. Abbot’s never said that before, that he loves Peggy. He likes her. Is patient with her, even when she’s at her loudest and messiest, demanding Ned’s attention or Abbot’s.
But loves? That’s a big word. That’s a lot.
Abbot shifts in his seat. “If you want that,” he says softly.
Ned’s stomach feels thick. His throat, too. Quickly, he throws on his blinker and veers onto a side street before he can accidentally drive them to the airport or hell, off toward Rhode Island.
“It’s not about what I want.”