22. Abbot
ABBOT
Abbot leans into Ned, closing his eyes and letting himself sink into his arms.
When they finally shift, Ned finds his mouth, and Abbot kisses him back, holding him close and reveling in the feel of him, the way he fits so very right.
Ned pulls back after a long moment, his eyes wet.
Abbot touches his thumb to a tear track on his cheek. “Are you alright?”
Ned laughs and kisses Abbot’s palm. “No. Yes. Where did you even get that?”
“Well, it is a very rare fossil, so I’m not entirely sure I should answer.”
“Abbot.”
“The miniature titanosaur Patagotitan mayorum.”
Ned squeezes him. “It is not. It’s a plastic purple brontosaurus.”
“Apatosaurus.”
“Brachiosaurus, maybe.” Ned laughs again. “We know way too much about dinosaurs.”
“I can get her something nicer.”
“It’s perfect.” Ned cups his face and Abbot leans into his palm. “Abbot, I love you.”
Abbot lays his palm over Ned’s hand. How very much to try to put into words, this overwhelming feeling inside of him. To even want to. “I love you too. And your daughter.”
“Great, now I’m going to cry again,” Ned says and laughs and kisses him once more.
Abbot’s not done with their kiss, or finished holding Ned close and letting his touch say what words feel so inadequate to convey, when the TV turns on and the door to the garage opens.
Ned pulls away, pressing their foreheads together as he calls to Peggy, “No TV before dinner.”
“I’m going to have more cake for dinner,” she yells back without switching off the TV, and Dan and Cheryl come into the house, Baxter sniffing their shoes.
“I was going to make salmon,” Abbot says as he and Ned disentangle. “I brought some down. It’s in the refrigerator.”
Cheryl hangs her coat on the overfull hooks. “That sounds wonderful.”
“This is for me!” Peggy skids into the kitchen on her socks, thrusting her new necklace at Cheryl before she catches Ned’s eyes and runs back to the TV. “I have to watch this!”
“That’s very pretty,” Cheryl calls after her.
“You can watch it after we eat. You know the rules,” Ned says.
Abbot should get the salmon out. The potatoes too, and turn the oven on, since he’s learned it takes a good while to heat up. But that would mean stepping away from Ned and he doesn’t want to, not yet. Not ever, if he has his way about things.
“It is a good episode,” Dan says, peering toward the TV.
“Dad, it’s a kids’ show with animated sloths.”
“Funny animated sloths,” Dan says. “Do we need avocado with dinner? I can cut it up. I think I’ve got it down now.”
“I don’t see why not,” Abbot says.
“You’re just encouraging him,” Ned admonishes. His cheeks are a little flushed and Abbot wonders if his are too.
“You two look happy,” Cheryl says. “Did you hear about Newbury?”
Abbot is very happy, overflowing with it nearly.
It courses beneath the strain of today, the confusion of Liesl’s call and Chris’s assumptions.
He’s happy with Ned, and Ned is happy with him.
That uncomplicated truth sings between them, now with a new shine on it.
Engaged, he thinks again, wondering at the word.
“Not yet,” Ned says.
“I’m sure they loved your talk today,” Cheryl says.
Ned lets out a short laugh. “We can hope.”
“Newbury University,” Dan says. “I still can’t believe it, Henry. And Ned, you too. I’m already picking out which hat I want to get from their bookstore.”
“We’ll see,” Ned says. “But listen, we do have some news.” His arm tightens around Abbot’s waist.
Abbot expects Ned to hesitate, to show the uncertainty this entire situation has been wreathed in cropping up now, too, but Ned just smiles and Abbot finds he’s smiling too.
They’re giddy. Why were they worried at all?
He can’t remember now, leaning against Ned and riding the high of Peggy’s tight, quick hug.
“We’re engaged,” Ned says.
Dan slowly turns from the TV to look at them. Cheryl’s mouth falls open, her eyes wide.
They’re excited, right? Surely they must be, as a beat of silence fills the kitchen and then another, longer one. Abbot’s excited. He’s thrilled with the promise of this new family, and perhaps this is not the way this is all meant to happen, but happening it is.
“Finally,” Cheryl whispers and then Abbot does have to let go of Ned because he’s being hugged so hard it surprises him. She draws back to grab Ned, pulling him down to kiss his cheek.
Abbot doesn’t get a chance for a breath because Dan is pumping his hand in both of his, and then that’s forgone for Dan’s arms around him, Abbot’s back slapped again and again.
“We’re so happy,” Dan says over and over again. “So happy for you two. Just so happy.”
“My baby boy,” Cheryl says, kissing and kissing Ned’s face.
“Mom,” he says and then she’s traded Ned for Abbot again. He finds himself kissed too, Dan’s hand on his shoulder even as he hugs Ned with his other arm.
“You’re getting married,” she says. “You two are getting married. We just knew it.”
“You did?” Ned asks.
“We were waiting for this to happen,” Dan says. He hugs his wife and then he’s hugging Abbot again. “Welcome to the family, Henry. We couldn’t be happier.”
“I can’t wait to tell everyone,” Cheryl says. “We need to call your aunts, and I just have to tell Pat’s parents—do they know? Does he?”
“Pat knows,” Ned says and he catches Abbot’s eye. “He—”
“Yes,” Abbot says before Ned can say anything. Knows the truth is layered behind Ned’s words, and that fact jolts through Abbot. Yet Dan and Cheryl are beaming at him, and he can still feel Peggy’s skinny arms around his neck. Liesl’s delight too, screaming through the phone.
“So who proposed?” Dan asks. “Tell us everything.”
Cheryl clasps her hands together. “I want to hear too.”
Abbot doesn’t have an answer to the look Ned darts his way. They should have discussed this. Of course people will want a story to all this excitement, one that will appease the thrill their families have for the news.
“Well,” Ned says. “We um…”
Abbot flounders too. A proposal? He’s never thought concretely about it.
Has Ned? No, he’s as upended as Abbot is, and if he’s nursed secret fantasies of proposing, he clearly doesn’t have any scenarios ready at hand.
It was practical, Abbot imagines saying.
It was the only thing to do. Which he and Ned know, but they’ll be asked for this story again and again and surely they need an answer.
And they won’t ever have a real proposal, not with how things have gone. But can’t they invent something, at least? A fiction to go with their fiction, so Dan and Cheryl and everyone but them can live in a world where events happened as they should have?
“Earlier today,” Abbot says, a good-enough place to start. But what? They looked at a house when they can’t even agree about living together, and between a call about Baxter’s bloodwork and Ned’s job talk, they realized they’d been backed into announcing an engagement?
It should have been so much better than that. Ned deserves better, certainly.
“Having Liesl in town to celebrate with us, it seemed like the right time,” he says slowly, which is its own knot to untangle because he was to take her to Portland this weekend, and Ned was intending to stay here with Peggy, and here they’ve gone and gotten engaged, a proposal that didn’t happen pretending to be crowded between meetings and phone calls on a workday.
Though perhaps that’s just it. Meeting at a university, their lives lived together in the rhythm of semesters and school breaks, of midterms and finals and fresh syllabuses and new class rosters.
Comparing conversations with their advisees, reading each other’s journal articles, emailing Ned a paper he’ll find interesting and seeing one in return in his inbox.
“We were getting some work done,” Abbot says, the image growing clearer in his mind as he talks. “And I plotted a Kruskal-Wallis test on the predicted outcomes of happiness if he were to say yes.”
“I love that,” Dan says. “Kruskal—what was it? It’s perfect.”
“It’s a distribution-free nonparametric statistical test, which can be used if the criteria for an ANOVA aren’t met.”
Ned nudges him.
Quickly he adds, “A joke, if you will.”
“Of course it is,” Dan says.
“Don’t worry. I had to ask that too,” Ned says, picking up the thread.
“Do you have it?” Cheryl asks. “Is it something you can print out? We ought to keep it.”
No, Abbot doesn’t have it, because it exists only in this story. But he could. It’d be easy enough to create, as if he really had planned this all along.
And perhaps he might have. Already he’s thinking of ideas, possibilities coming to him like he’s uncorked the potential of a proposal and they’re spilling forth.
The Jumbotron at Fenway, horrifically public for Abbot, but probably perfect for Ned.
Getting Pat to write on a takeout cup from the cafe and going for a walk with Ned, eager for him to notice.
Somehow bringing Peggy in on the plan, and even Liesl, all of them anxious and excited together.
Or something for just the two of them, a quiet dinner and then getting down on one knee beside Ned at the table, telling him he’ll do everything he can to make his life the happiest possible.
Abbot leans against him, pressing his forehead to his temple for a moment, needing to gather himself.
“We can keep the whatever-whatever test,” Ned says, “But nobody’s ever asking me to explain it, okay? That’s why I’ve got this guy.”
Abbot gets a squeeze around his waist and he nods. He’ll explain statistics to Ned for the rest of their lives, if Ned will let him.
“And are you two exchanging anything?” Cheryl asks. “Rings?”
Ned looks at his hand. Abbot feels the bareness of his own.
“No,” Ned says.
“Yes,” Abbot says.
They look at each other.
“Not right now,” Ned says and Abbot nods. Yes, later. They’ll talk about it at some point. Along with the host of other things they should discuss, like exactly how far this charade will carry them, and what they’ll do when everyone starts asking for a wedding date.
Choose one, he thinks, his excitement a torrent.