17. Abbot #2
But what is a bad sign in a partner, really? That Ned is divorced? That Abbot spent far too long with Louis, and before him, there was a revolving door of men Abbot was interested in who never had the time for him, Reto among them?
“Is he a jerk?” she asks.
“Pat?” Abbot asks and he doesn’t need to because there’s only one topic at hand here, but the idea of applying that word to Pat is just too odd. “No, not at all.”
“You like him?”
“I do.”
“What’s the worst thing about him?”
The worst thing about Pat? Nothing, he’s sure, but Claire is looking at him like she’s going to wring an answer out of him, so he searches for a moment, trying to land on a time he was irritated with Pat.
It’s not easy, and when he does come up with a complaint, it doesn’t seem very fair. “Really nothing.”
“There must be something.”
“There isn’t.”
“Everyone has a thing,” she presses.
Abbot sighs. “He can be a bit…loud.”
“Loud,” she repeats.
“When he and Ned—well, when they watch baseball. Or when Pat is playing with Peggy. He’s…energetic.”
“Energetic,” she says like she has to think it over. “Okay. I can live with that.”
“Just a fair warning, as baseball season approaches,” Abbot says hurriedly.
“Am I going to have to get into the Sox?”
“We can come up with something else to do, while he and Ned are busy with the games,” he ventures.
She answers with a smile. “I could get behind that. And thank you. Really. Sorry to put you on the spot, but it takes a while to get to know someone, and early on it’s all just fun and exciting, you know?”
Yes. Abbot knows. Because thinking of Pat has lifted him back to last autumn with Ned, when they spent more time in bed than out of it, when they saw each other all day, every day, except when Ned was in Boston.
That would leave Abbot with strangely empty time to fill, but then Ned was back so quickly that they could fall into each other once again.
Abbot had known it was the heady, impossible joy of a new relationship, a joy that would eventually shatter with a disagreement or the distance between them when Ned moved, or it would simply lose its luster, but that hadn’t at all marred how fun those months had been.
And they have mellowed. They get a lot more work done now, but also their relationship has shifted from desperate toward comfortable.
Stable, in its own way, a steady, constant presence in Abbot’s life this past year, part of his mind on his days in Portland and at Callahan, and the rest focused on Ned.
He’s been happy, perhaps even happier than last fall.
More content, certainly, though the distance has been a stone in his shoe, one that grows as the months tick by.
“Yes,” he says. “I certainly understand that.”
“And it’s one thing to have fun and another entirely to build something together.”
Abbot looks down at Baxter. Yes, he understands that too. More than ever before.
“Have you ever been with someone and it’s great, but there’s no future?” she asks. “My ex, it started just like this with Pat, and I’m too old to fall for another man-child.”
“I don’t think he’s that, at the very least,” Abbot says. No, not Pat. Abbot knows a long list of men who fall into that description, but Pat’s different than that, and Ned is too.
Right?
“What about a purported professional, capable adult who comes across as put-together but when you look under the hood, you realize he’s living in a perpetual state of dragged-out adolescence with absolutely no movement toward a functional life?”
Abbot clears his throat. That is a colorful description, certainly.
Louis, he can’t help but think. A professional with an upward career by all appearances, but he’d balked at any…
commitment. That had been the word, hadn’t it?
Not the one they’d used, their conversations mostly French, but the translation sits there in his mind.
He hasn’t thought of Louis in so long, let alone their final months together. When? he had asked him over and over, ready to thread their lives together more closely, while Louis had delayed the conversation, prevaricating more the more Abbot pressed.
It was him, Abbot had realized. He wasn’t who Louis wanted to tie himself to. A fine option for now, but forever?
That isn’t how Ned feels, is it? He’s spoken of their future together.
Though on a much, much different timeline than Abbot has hoped for.
“I’m not trying to pry, although I am,” Claire says and it occurs to Abbot he should have already responded to her, not lost himself in his own thoughts.
“You’re welcome to be as annoyed as you like about my questions, especially if it puts you in an awkward spot.
But like I said, I don’t have anyone else to ask, so I either have to trust this thing with Pat or get the hell out. So thank you.”
“Please don’t share with me if you’re thinking of ending things,” Abbot says, “Because I’d feel obligated to tell Pat, and he really likes you.”
She smiles at that. “No, I don’t think I am. Which is terrifying, actually.”
“Pat’s a really good person.”
“You can be a good person and not a good partner. Hell, you can have a great relationship that isn’t going anywhere. They’re separate things, at the end of the day.”
Abbot leans down to fix Baxter’s inside-out ear. She has a point. A good one.
“I’m just really, really ready to settle down with someone. And to stop wasting my time on guys who aren’t right.”
“How did you know?” he asks. “About your ex? I’m sorry if that’s rude to ask. I—”
“Not nearly as rude as grilling you about your boyfriend’s friend,” Claire laughs. “We’d been together for a while. I turned thirty and was thinking about settling down, getting married, what I wanted life to look like by forty. He was thinking we had all the time in the world, so why rush?”
“What’s a while?”
“A couple years,” Claire says.
Abbot nods, relieved. That’s longer than he and Ned have been together, so that measuring stick is certainly in their favor.
Everything is, really. There’s no problem between them. There hasn’t been for the past year, and there won’t be. Adams closing is introducing some stress into their lives, and without that change, everything would have continued on normally.
For how long? he can’t help but wonder.