35. Abbot
ABBOT
Abbot sits at his desk as the hour ticks later and later, until the last bell has rung across campus and the last footsteps have made their way down the hall, the door slamming on the stairwell.
Then he waits longer still, editing a paper that doesn’t need to be edited, adjusting slides for a presentation he’s given half a dozen times.
How do you get so much done? Ned asked him once, and it’s like this: alone in his office because the solitude of his house is worse. Working so late into the night that he’s tired enough to fall asleep when he returns home, since he has no other way to fill his time.
He should get a cat. It would at least be something to return to, when he’s moved to Boston. A reason to leave campus if something more than a houseplant depends on him.
And a balm for not having Baxter living with him, and Ned too. The cat, Abbot can say, to explain to himself why of course Ned doesn’t spend more than a few nights with him, if that.
Or maybe he can watch Claire’s and Pat’s baby. They’ll surely need a break. He could hold it and read to it, and they could enjoy an evening out together, or simply a chance to sleep.
Likely, he’ll just continue to work. He’s filled his life with academia for years, and that doesn’t have to change, even if his job and the city he lives in does.
He’ll write more articles and apply for more funding and take the lead on more research groups, letting time pass with the too-bright shine of his computer screen until Ned deigns to see him next.
He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes, pressing hard like it will relieve the strain. He’s not tired yet, and if he goes home he’ll toss and turn in bed. But he’s exhausted in a deeper way than a night’s sleep can fix.
He needs a vacation, perhaps.
Which he’d have to take alone.
Well, he’d have plenty of time to work during it, at least.
He puts his glasses back on, looks up, and blinks. “Ned?”
“Hey.” Ned’s face is flushed, his eyes bright. “Can I come in?”
Ned doesn’t need to ask, but he’s still in the doorway and only at Abbot’s nod does he move forward. What is he doing here? And so late? “Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m good. I think. Not really, I guess. Um. You weren’t at your house or Pat’s, so I figured you’d be here.”
“I was working,” Abbot says.
“I’m sorry to bother you.”
“It’s not a bother.”
“Can I sit?”
Absurdly, Abbot has the desire to walk around his desk and pull the chair out for Ned, just to make sure he feels fully welcomed. Or maybe that’s Abbot’s urge to be close to him, to bridge this terrible distance hanging between them.
Ned’s in his work clothes still, and he keeps a hand over his bag, as if protective of his laptop and whatever else is in there. Paper, it turns out to be when he opens it. He hesitates, then sets it on the chair. Then he picks it up, sits down, and puts his bag and papers on his lap instead.
He’s nervous. Abbot registers it with the same slowness he’s processing the sight of him. It’s late. Far later than Abbot should be in his office, and late for Ned to have driven up here.
But here he is, fidgeting with the strap of his bag and looking around Abbot’s office like he’s interested in the details of this room he’s seen plenty of times.
“What happened?” Abbot asks.
“I’m trying to be less of an absolute jerk,” Ned says.
“What?”
Ned lets out an abrupt laugh. “I need to say a couple things? If that’s okay? And I’ll wuss out if you stop me, so please don’t say anything because I really don’t want to do this.”
Abbot’s stomach turns. He doesn’t want to do this either, he’s sure, because whatever Ned is going to say looks like it’s awful. “Ned—”
“No, no, it’s not bad. I mean, it’s pretty bad, actually. But it’s not bad-bad, you know?”
“No,” Abbot says carefully.
“I love you.” Ned nods, like he’s satisfied with those words, and the tension in Abbot’s chest eases slightly. “Just listen, okay?”
“Alright,” Abbot says.
Ned gives him a look. “That’s talking.”
“Sorry,” Abbot says.
“Okay.” Ned takes a deep breath. “It’s okay. I just—I talked to Steve. I just called him while I was driving up, and he said he can talk his wife into waiting to list the house for a bit, so we can figure our shit out first.”
“What do you mean?” Abbot asks. “Ned, it’s fine. I told you—”
“Yeah, it’s not fine,” Ned says. “I can’t live with my parents and not with you. I’ve known that for a while, and haven’t admitted it to myself, and it’s been killing you, and that’s really shitty of me.”
“Ned—”
“Nope.” Ned holds up a hand to stop him.
“Not a word. I have to do this, okay? I told you that you have to talk to me, but that means I have to say some things too. Abbot, if you want to live together, I need to give you the whole picture and tell you exactly what you’re taking on, which I absolutely don’t want to do, and honestly, I’m not going to blame you if you go running. ”
Running? From Ned? Away from him? Abbot opens his mouth and then quickly shuts it when Ned grabs a sheaf of paper from his bag.
Ned looks more scared than Abbot’s ever seen him.
Peggy falling from the monkey bars and Ned in a dead sprint across the playground.
The car sliding on ice last winter, Ned’s hands white-knuckled on the wheel.
Baxter as he’s declined these last weeks, and Ned’s eyes dark as he looks down at him, clearly trying to will him better.
His dissertation defense, too, and before that, sitting in this very chair in Abbot’s office, defiance and fear in his expression.
Ned clears his throat, then clears it again as he starts to lay the papers out.
Abbot stops him with a hand over them. “You don’t need to do this.” His half of showing up, Claire had said. Abbot can ask for more. Ask for what he needs, and even expect to get it.
Slowly he draws his hand back. Perhaps—perhaps Ned does need to do this. Or Abbot needs Ned to. “But I appreciate it,” he says. It sounds so small in the face of Ned’s clear terror.
Ned manages a tiny smile. Abbot wants to scale the distance between them and wrap Ned tight in his arms to wipe that tremulous look from his face.
“I gotta do my part here, and I haven’t been, and I can’t be okay with that.
Not if I really want this to work between us.
” Ned pauses, then lets out a low laugh.
“Shit, I don’t want to do this, but here it is.
Okay, ready? I’m not. Fuck. This is what I owe on my student loans still, which should frankly be impossible given how much I’ve paid already.
Um, and this is the loan I took out to pay for my lawyer when I was getting divorced, and what I took out to cover child support when Jen mostly had Peggy.
And then the other lawyer when I moved back last year and had to redo the custody arrangement.
And at Adams I make more than I ever did at Callahan, so this is what I pay now in child support, which is yeah, a lot.
” Ned’s voice rises on each item he lists, and his hands work rapidly, spinning the papers to face Abbot so they’re a blur of totals and interest, and on some, a red Past Due notice.
“And I know I’m not paying rent, but I still have this for monthly bills, and this is the health insurance Adams doesn’t cover.
I’ll figure out a new number with Newbury, I guess.
And the car I wasn’t planning to buy, and my phone and all that.
And that’s my credit card bill. Because for a while there I was putting basically my entire life on it. Yeah. Um.”
Abbot slowly gathers the papers as Ned fidgets. They’re organized, each sheaf neatly stapled together. Each page Abbot turns spells out another set of troubles for Ned. Abbot knows, at least generally, what Ned makes at Adams, and this is—it’s a lot.
Ned’s been sitting with these bills? For how long? Before Abbot really knew him, clearly. Back to his college days, and since then, what he owes has only grown.
“I did pay that,” Ned says. He does this, speaking quickly and talking more than he needs to when he’s nervous, words spilling out, each an indication of how uncomfortable he is. “That last bill. I know it looks like I didn’t, but I did.”
“Ned—”
“I guess I thought we’d talk about this someday, but that turned into now all of a sudden.
And I was hoping I’d have everything a little more under control when we talked, and that also I’d be, I don’t know, less freaked out telling you this?
But you’ve got everything figured out, and I’m a bad credit score with a nonexistent retirement account.
So clearly, I’m not in a state for anyone to want to join finances with me.
And—and I didn’t want you to know that. So if you don’t want this—me, I mean—I don’t blame you, but at least now you have an idea of what’s going on and why a house is so far out of reach. ”
“Ned,” Abbot says, but he keeps talking.
“I don’t think in Massachusetts you’re legally on the hook for any of this,” Ned says, talking somehow even faster.
“Or maybe we can sign something to make sure it stays that way? So I can keep working on this? But I could barely buy my car, and I certainly can’t afford to move out of my parents’ if I ever want to pay those balances down.
My dad offered me some money? Which I don’t want to take, but I can, I guess.
And I talked to Steve, because I know you want to, and…
” Ned’s pale, and when he speaks again, it’s a whisper.
“It’s terrifying. Thinking about marriage again.
Being totally dependent on someone else, and having all of our finances and our lives totally entwined.
I won’t pretend I’m ready for it and that I’m not scared out of my mind that you’ll leave me and I’ll be right back where I started. ”
“You think I’d leave you?” Abbot’s voice is loud in the quiet of his office, the question sharper than he meant it to come out, but—but. Ned thinks that? This is what worries him? Along with all the financial concern he’s been carrying?
“No. Yes. I guess that’s what I’m freaked out about, because if I could trust that you won’t, that you’d really support me and everything that comes with me, Peggy and Baxter and all these bills, then—hell yes, Abbot, let’s buy a house, and fill it with kids and travel to Switzerland and just, I don’t know, live and be happy and everything we both want together. ”
“I thought…” Abbot’s fingers are tight on the papers. His mind is buzzing. This is so much to sort through, and he wishes suddenly for a chance to write it all down, to tackle one variable at a time. “I thought you didn’t want to come to visit.”
“Oh. Fuck. No.” Ned leans forward in his chair. “I can’t buy a ticket. Even if I have the space on my card, I can’t look at Peggy and know I’m building up more debt for a vacation.”
“Why didn’t you let me buy it?” Abbot asks.
“Because—” Ned laughs and turns away, staring at Abbot’s bookshelf.
“Because look at you, Abbot. You drive a car I can barely afford to touch, and you own your house—outright, apparently. I’m living paycheck to paycheck, and I thought that’d be over when I got hired at Adams, but this year has been more of the same.
I can’t—we have to order less takeout. Or I do, at least.”
Abbot shakes his head. “I’ll pay for dinner.”
A car. A house. A life together.
“But you shouldn’t have to,” Ned says. “I want to have my life together, and it’s not. You can just waltz into Newbury and you have this amazing career, and I’m barely able to keep up. I—I sometimes feel like crap around you. Like I’m dead weight you’re dragging around.”
“You do?” Abbot asks softly.
“I can’t live up to you. I want to be worth you, and I don’t think I ever will be.”
“Ned, do you think I want that?”
“Don’t you?” Ned asks. “You could have anyone, and look at me.”
“Look at you.” Abbot wants to laugh. Or cry, perhaps. “Ned, I don’t care what you do for work. And even if I did, you’re a wonderful professor.”
“I’m about to look like a fucking muppet in front of students who are smarter than me as soon as classes start next year.”
“You’re going to be a breath of fresh air to them,” Abbot says. “And even if not—why would that matter to me?”
“You’re you, Abbot,” Ned says. “And I’m me.”
“Yes, and I love you.”
“I’m broke and barely on my feet. I can’t really support myself or my kid, let alone start a life with you.”
“But I can. And I want to.”
“And what if someday you don’t?”
“You think I’d be resentful?”
“I don’t know. Yes, I guess, that’s one of my worries. I’ve got more too.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
Finally, the ghost of a smile. Ned shakes his head, staring down at his hands in his lap. “You know me. I can worry about anything, at any time.”
“I do know you,” Abbot says softly.
“So you know I’m not a blank slate, Abbot.
Even before we get to me having Peggy, I’ve got plenty of fears of repeating my divorce, ones I didn’t even know I was carrying until now.
But I quit my job to come to Callahan, and you know how little assistantships pay.
When Jen left, I was fucked. I’m terrified of that happening again.
In my perfect world, I’d go into my next relationship completely on my own two feet, but our lives are a little bit ahead of what I was planning. ”
“Ned, I don’t need you to be completely independent.”
“I know.” Ned twists his hands together, his knuckles white. “I get that. I do. But I’m still scared. And—and I feel sometimes like I don’t know anything about your life, so it’s hard to be sure.”
“I—yes. I can imagine.”
“You can?”
“I don’t exactly relish talking about my life.” Abbot’s eyes fall to the picture of Liesl on his desk. “But I will.”
Ned’s head comes up. “You will? Really?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Well.” Ned waves to the pile of papers on the desk.
How Ned must have fretted on the drive up here, and how he made himself do it all the same. At what point do you decide you’ve done your half and they gotta carry their weight too? Claire had asked, and what, really, does Abbot owe Ned, to meet him halfway?
A lot, he knows. So very, very much.
Ned printed each of these papers. Stapled them together and brought them here. Showed up, when nobody else has. Because Ned is different, and Abbot needs to be different with him.
And if he doesn’t talk to Ned? Then his life will be more of the same. Holding Ned carefully away. Protecting against that hurt, and any closeness both.
Just weeks ago, he sat in this office yearning for a fuller life together, to move closer, and now there’s a chance to live together. And they’re married too, which he didn’t even know to hope for yet.
Is this the cost of that?
Or no, not the cost. The exchange. What can Abbot offer back to this man who’s made Abbot’s dreams come true?
Yes, he has something he can offer. That envelope, how it looked in Ned’s hand.
Abbot draws in a breath that shakes. “Can we go home?”
Ned stands up and holds out his hand. “Please.”