23. Ned
NED
Baxter jumps into the backseat of the car with all the enthusiasm of a dog who fully believes he’s on his way to the park, not the vet.
“I’m sorry,” Ned says when they pull into the parking lot. He reaches back and touches Baxter’s head, trying to soothe his whine. “I’ll be back for you this evening, alright?”
Baxter huddles against Peggy’s booster seat. Ned has to kneel on the backseat to lift him out of the car, trying to keep salt from staining his pants and too much dog hair from sticking to his jacket.
It’s a lost cause. He’s still picking his coat clean as the receptionist checks Baxter in.
“And we’ll take your payment for today up front,” he says cheerfully.
Ned could just use the credit card information Abbot left on file here. He pulls out his wallet, not without Baxter’s same reluctance. How much? he doesn’t ask, like if he doesn’t know, the total won’t be real. But he has to sign the receipt all the same.
He stares down at the number. Slowly, he looks at Baxter huddled against his legs, then at the guy behind the desk. You’re kidding, he wants to say. No way can a dog cost this much.
Baxter had him up twice last night, unaware of the tension of trying to sleep through a pretend engagement and Abbot’s clear emotional exhaustion—plus whatever it’s called when he stonewalls any mention of his mother.
Grief. Refusal to admit he even knows what the word means.
A wall of misery he won’t let Ned behind, determined to be steadfastly unhappy alone.
But Baxter had been urgent to go out, leaving Ned to carefully lift himself from the mattress and fumble in the dark.
Back inside, Baxter had been just as determined to gulp down his entire bowl of water, and he had treated his dinner and his breakfast the same way, like he’d never been fed a day in his life.
Ned scrawls his signature on the receipt. It’s just another addition to the balance he’s carrying on this card. He’ll pay it off. Eventually.
Just like Baxter will be completely fine, because Ned can’t handle the thought of any alternative.
“Is Claire around?” Ned asks as he passes the receipt back.
“She’s in later today,” the guy says.
Ned would have liked to see her, at least pass Baxter over to a friendly face, but he hands the leash to this stranger, guilt mounting in his throat as Baxter’s big brown eyes plead with him.
“Be good,” Ned says as cheerfully as he can as Baxter’s led into the back, his feet slipping against the floor as he tries to stay with Ned.
The drive to Adams feels as baleful as it has these last few weeks, Boston’s winter icy and gray and the campus unnaturally quiet.
Even with the shitty windy weather, it seems there should be more people around, not as if campus has emptied out in anticipation of the school closing.
Probably everyone is huddled inside, but it feels too abandoned as Ned hurries from his car, the wind biting through his jacket.
He needs a warmer jacket. And a healthy dog. And a higher credit limit and a job with a future and, and, and.
He sighs as he settles behind his office desk.
He needs a lot of things. A break from this situation he and Abbot have put themselves in, to start.
Somewhere quiet they can go and sort through the mess they’ve made, a day or two to just be normal and to feel the steadiness of their relationship coursing under everything they’ve heaped on top of it.
And maybe Ned could gather himself too, if they had a bit of time to themselves. Shake off this thick, oily feeling of picturing his credit card bill next to the bright shine of Abbot’s car, that house they looked at, Abbot’s life.
Engaged. Sure. Nobody in their right mind would tie their life to Ned’s, so it’s a good thing this is all for show.
But they won’t get the time they need, because Charles is flying in today with Liesl, and in no uncertain terms invited Ned out to dinner, Peggy in tow.
Liesl will be the same ball of excitement she was on the phone. And Charles?
Ned needs a lot of things, but mostly to not have to show up to a dinner with Abbot’s family while feeling and probably looking like the absolute mess he is.
He pulls his head up at the tap on his door.
“Newbury?” Steve asks without preamble, leaning on the doorframe and grinning.
“Great. Who else knows?” Ned asks. “Hi, good morning.”
“Nobody, everyone.” Steve shrugs. “Does it matter? You’ve gotten a hell of an out from here.”
“It’s not for sure yet.”
“It’s sure enough, from what I heard.”
Ned nearly laughs. Yeah, because he and Abbot have upended their lives agreeing to tell everyone they’re engaged.
Which would be alright if they hadn’t woken up into an awkward silence this morning, Abbot still quiet after whatever last night was, and Ned exhausted by Peggy being unable to fall asleep and Baxter’s nighttime escapades.
“Weird we won’t be back here, isn’t it?” Steve asks.
Ned looks around his office. The books he arranged just so, the view of the little square of grass next to the parking lot he’d been so happy to see the first day he walked in here.
His first meeting with a student in here, the first time he’d closed the door and had his own space to work in, finally feeling like a real, actual professor.
His baseball team too, he thinks ruefully. How messy has life been that he hasn’t even properly dwelled on that?
“I’ve barely had time to think about it,” he admits, but a pang catches him now all the same.
Too many changes, too quickly, and he’d just gotten settled in here.
No, he isn’t ready to say goodbye to this place, these colleagues, the future here he’d been so certain of.
Especially not for the whirlwind of life apparently waiting for him.
“Manage any space for a thought about the house?” Steve asks.
Ned drops his hand from rubbing at his eyes. “House?”
“Yeah, how I said we should trade spots?” Steve asks.
“Oh.” No, Ned needs to say. He’s not moving, which is on the list of issues he and Abbot have to figure out.
Or they don’t. Maybe they can keep ignoring it, like Ned has been, and like Abbot is so good at too when it comes to his own shit. Agree to just carry on in silence, which is real damn good for a healthy relationship.
“You should really consider it,” Steve says. “It’s not far from Newbury, actually.”
“Great,” Ned says weakly.
“I know I’m biased, but it’d be a good place for you two,” Steve goes on.
“It’s been really well taken care of, new roof a couple of years ago, new furnace, all that stuff.
We did a lot of work when it was clear my grandma wasn’t moving out of it anytime soon.
She’d still be there if it weren’t for the stairs. ”
“So it’s got stairs then.” Ned means it as a joke, but it’s lame as hell.
Steve at least offers a little chuckle. “Stairs, floors, walls, everything you could hope for. Three bedrooms, nice backyard, quiet street.”
“Sounds perfect.” And maybe it would be, if he weren’t broke as a joke. He wants to bury his face in his hands again. Instead, he reaches for the only way to definitely change the subject. “We’re getting married.”
“What?” Steve asks on a laugh. “Really? That’s amazing.”
“Thanks,” Ned says, trying to inject the right tone into his voice.
“When? You set a date?”
“Not yet.” Later, he thinks, that faraway time that once felt so very safe.
“Well, congrats to you both.” Steve comes over to give him a handshake that turns into a hug. “You two are perfect for each other.”
Yeah. Perfect.
Your marriage is messy too sometimes, right? Ned suddenly wants to ask. Or is Ned the common denominator here, in a second relationship with really shitty communication? Two people he’s loved who don’t want to talk?
At least to him.
The thought stays with him as he plods his way through his lecture, his office hours, the time he’s set aside to work on a paper but instead just stares at his computer.
Charles, beats in his mind the moment he can get his focus off of the non-conversations he’s had with Abbot.
Charles has landed by now, Ned’s pretty sure, like he can feel the man’s presence bearing down on him as the day wears on.
It gets worse as he walks back to his car, bent against the wind funneling through the buildings of campus.
Maybe it’ll at least blow the last of the dog hair off of him.
It doesn’t, and Baxter spreads another thorough scatter across his jacket when Ned picks him up.
“We’ll be in touch soon,” the same receptionist says as Baxter leans against his knees.
When? Ned doesn’t ask, because why not drop a few hundred dollars on a dog just to still not have any answers?
“Could I talk with Claire?” he asks instead. She’ll make him feel better, at least. Hopefully talk him out of more internet searches he shouldn’t be doing in the first place.
“She ended up leaving early.”
“Is she alright?”
“Just not feeling well.”
“Huh. The both of you,” Ned says to Baxter.
Maybe Ned can join the club and catch some awful cold and sit out dinner tonight. But he feels fine, minus the jangling nerves in his stomach, as he drives to Peggy’s school.
Peggy has green and purple marker all over her hand, and her pigtails are slipping from their hairbands. When he tries to straighten them, she shakes her head, making the mess worse.
“Remember,” he says. “We’re going to a fancy dinner tonight.”
“Okay,” she says solemnly from her perch in her booster seat.
“All of our best manners.”
“Yes,” she says and nods.
“Napkin in your lap.”
“I’ll have crayons.”
“Sweetheart, I don’t think this type of restaurant will have crayons for you.”
Her little forehead furrows. “Yes they will.”
“Hon—”
“They will.”
Okay. He lets out a breath. She’ll be distracted anyway by the time they sit down. This will be fine. Right?