28. Ned
NED
Pat’s apartment looks the same as always, the recycling nearly overflowing, a couple dishes sitting on the kitchen counter, and his shoes tossed carelessly by the door.
Ned perches on the arm of the couch and Abbot sinks into the same spot he always chose, back when he’d come over to watch baseball or bring work to ostensibly do, and he and Ned would invariably end up in bed.
Those were good days. That entire fall semester had been, when everything had been the potency of new love and the novelty of having as much sex as he wanted.
Before Ned had moved and real life had rushed back in to interrupt their bubble where expenses and living arrangements and job security couldn’t touch them.
“My parents are kicking me out?” Ned asks the quiet room.
“I think they’re just renting out the house,” Abbot says.
“Sure.” Same thing, it feels like. And Abbot…“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Great. They both are. Happy fucking wedding day.
Ned sets his elbows on his knees and pushes his face into his hands. Renting. Swapping. Whatever, they’re trading houses with strangers from Italy, a plan that sounds like it hinges on Ned being gone.
He lives there. He has to live there. That feels like an important detail everyone is brazenly overlooking.
Like how everyone thought it’d be a good time to bring up Abbot’s mom. “Hey—” Ned starts.
“I can’t. Not today.” Abbot’s voice is deeply strained, a fissure waiting to break open. “Please. And Ned, the house—”
“Don’t tell me it’ll be fine.”
Abbot nods. I wasn’t going to, he at least doesn’t say, because they both know he was. An assurance it would work out, another offer of help, and Ned might scream.
Abbot looks like he wants to, too. How fun. They can both have breakdowns while everyone giddily celebrates downstairs.
“We’re good?” Ned asks and then states, “We’re good. We are.”
“Yes, we are.” Abbot squeezes his hand.
Ned squeezes back. They are, and they always have been. And they’ll continue to be.
Just…married.
How fucking weird.
He feels better up here, though. And better since last night, still.
Ned looks at their hands laced together, and touches Abbot’s bare third finger. “Pat got rings.”
“He did?”
“He’s way too excited about this. I’m sure they’re the wrong size.” Though Ned’s probably isn’t. Pat likely sent Ned’s mom up to his room to check his ring size. Did she see the watches in his desk drawer? Was he supposed to wear his? Will Charles notice he didn’t?
Ned opens his mouth to ask, then closes it. They have to talk about the money thing.
Not now, though. It can wait a couple days. And then Ned will…he’ll…
He’ll do something he’ll figure out later, because right now he’s getting married and panicking both, and that’s enough to keep him plenty busy.
“I’m sure the rings will be fine,” Abbot says.
“You don’t have to wear it,” Ned says.
“Are you going to?”
Ned looks down at his hands. Will he? Peggy asked about it in the car, so she’s clearly expecting it. It’s probably easier to leave it on after the ceremony. Fewer questions from her, and the last thing he needs is anyone picking apart this front.
Though it’s not a front. It’s a real, legal marriage, and the rings are a symbol of that. “Guess so.”
“I will too, then.”
“Great,” Ned says, and that’s that. They’re wearing rings, simple as that. They’re getting married.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Ned says automatically. Is he? No, not really. He’s reeling and very carefully not thinking that his parents’ house won’t be available to him for as long as he was counting on.
The only thing left in his head is a tremor of nerves. He’s been nervous all day, he realizes. Of course he is. He’s fucking getting married.
But getting married to Abbot.
When Ned slips off the arm of the couch to sit beside him, Abbot leans close. “I’m okay, I think,” Ned says. “You?”
“Fine.”
“But really?”
Abbot’s silent for a beat too long and Ned’s stomach pitches. But then, softly, he says, “This is not perhaps how I thought this day would go.”
“Yeah, I think I’m kind of freaking out.”
“Do you want to not do this?”
“No, I do want to.”
“Ned—”
“I absolutely do. Because…” Because this isn’t how he envisioned his wedding day—his second wedding day—but to be here with this man?
He does feel better now, sitting together.
He takes Abbot’s hand in his, resting them both on his thigh.
Everything has always felt better with Abbot beside him.
“Because we’re good together, you and I.
We’ll figure life out, and isn’t that what marriage is?
Just a blind leap that we’ll be in this together? ”
“I think we have some proof it’s not simply blind.”
“A confidence interval?”
“Do you even remember what that means?”
“Sort of.” Ned has to smile. “Remember that first night you came up here?” Not later, when he and Pat had introduced Abbot to Sundays spent watching football, and Ned had rediscovered the simple pleasure of sitting on the couch doing nothing in particular with someone he loved.
He’d leaned against Abbot then, like he’s doing now, reveling in having someone to simply be near, a different sort of intimacy than the press of bodies and bare skin.
“The first night I came here? Yes, I remember. You were trying to get me to drink beer.”
“I was trying to get you into bed. I just had no idea how to go about it.” Ned has to smile at the memory. “I was so far gone on you.”
“I was surprised when you invited me up.”
“Oh, I was too. Just feeling through the dark the entire time, trust me.” He absolutely had been, unable to even admit to himself how badly he’d wanted Abbot. Drunk with it, he can’t help but think now, remembering his bumbling attempts to simply manage a conversation.
“I still can’t believe I willingly drank beer,” Abbot says. “If that will tell you how, as you said, far gone I was too.”
Ned laughs. “Yeah, I see that now. We were trying so damn hard.”
Abbot squeezes his hand. “We did alright, in the end.”
“We did.” Ned puts his head on Abbot’s shoulder. “I’m sorry we’re in this mess. This whole me-needing-a-job that led us here.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not. It will be, I’m sure, but this isn’t exactly how I thought things would go either.”
Abbot’s silent for a long moment. Ned rubs his thumb over Abbot’s and concentrates on the warmth of his shoulder beneath his cheek, the scent of his shirt.
“What did you think would happen?” Abbot asks softly.
“I don’t know,” Ned says. “I didn’t think it involved leaving our families unattended downstairs. I fear for what my dad’s doing to your poor father.”
“Avocados?”
“Oh, please no.”
“He’ll survive.”
“Hopefully,” Ned says.
Abbot shifts and puts his arm around Ned. “We will too.”
Ned snuggles close, breathing him in. “I love the hell out of you, you know.”
“I do.”
“Yeah?”
“And conveniently, I happen to feel the same way.”
“Convenient.” Ned lets Abbot hold him, his hand tracing idle patterns on Abbot’s thigh.
He’s terrified, to be getting married again. Calmer too, than he ever thought he might be.
They sit for a long time, listening to the silence. Ned moves only when the stairs creak with a rapid patter of footsteps. He’s not surprised when it’s Peggy shoving the door open, Liesl a step behind her.
“We’re ready,” Liesl says, breathless.
“You can come down,” Peggy says. “Baxter won’t wear his bowtie.”
“We put it on twice, but he doesn’t like it,” Liesl says.
“He tried to eat it,” Peggy says.
“I told him not to,” Liesl says. “You have to come down now.”
Ned needs another minute. An hour. To sit here with Abbot and just be.
Though they’re signing up for a lifetime of that, aren’t they? So he stands and takes Abbot’s hand. “Ready?”
Abbot’s eyes are dark behind his glasses. He looks calm. Maybe Ned is too, after sitting here together. He feels better, certainly, and Abbot looks it too.
Today is happening, his life barreling forward toward this moment, and he’s learned to simply accept it and hold on for the ride.
Abbot tugs his hand and Ned steps in, reading the invitation in his tipped chin.
“Come on,” Liesl says, impatient as Ned kisses Abbot, cups his face in his palm, and stands there for a long beat, taking another moment to simply be near him.
He has to let go of Abbot’s hand as they walk down the stairs, which feels unfair.
He wants to keep that tight grip, grounding him against the swirl of strangeness this moment holds, like too much of his life is crammed into this handful of minutes.
He grabs it again on the sidewalk, lacing their fingers together and shivering without his coat.
The girls must be freezing too, but they don’t seem to notice, peering through the window for some signal, and only then pulling open the door.
The bells on the handle jingle cheerfully like they have every time Ned has come in here.
The balloons are scattered about, not just the white ones the girls were playing with, but also maroon, and bearing Callahan’s seal.
Probably picked up at the university’s bookstore and they’re odd and out of place and entirely fitting.
The tables that were already pushed aside have chairs stacked on them, except for a handful of seats arranged to face the far wall, where a few strands of twinkling lights have been strung.
Pat stands before them, his hands folded.
He nods so seriously when he sees Ned and Abbot that he must have practiced.
Everyone glances back toward them from their seats.
Ned tightens his grip on Abbot’s hand. This is a lot.
And this is really happening, too. Mom and Dad are on one side of the extremely short aisle they are apparently supposed to walk down, and Chris and Susan are with Charles on the other.
Beverly and Sandy too, and they’re all smiling. Dad wipes at his eyes.
Peggy runs up the side of the room, skirting the aisle, and climbs into Dad’s lap.
“Pegs,” Pat half whispers, bending to her. “Remember your job?”
“Yes,” she says.
Pat tips his head toward Ned. “Wanna go do it?”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now.”