Page 69 of The New Place

“You said that.”

“Yeah, but—that makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Does it? We could just live together.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. Why not now?”

Now. Ned grips the wheel, floundering for a response.

Abbot just keeps talking. “If we find something we like, why wait so long? Sandy and Beverly aside, we don’t have to wait a couple of years. Certainly not five.”

“I…” Ned finds his mouth is just open, no word following that one. Would he move in with Abbot? Sure, but as soon as this summer? Panic sits high in his throat. No, he can’t. Of course he can’t. Surely Abbot gets that, doesn’t he?

“I have Peggy,” he says slowly.

“Of course you do.”

He makes it sound obvious, but is it? Peggy adores Abbot. But she’s six, and generously a mess, more realistically a slow-moving tornado of broken crayons and uncapped markers and random rocks and leaves she stuffs into her pockets and then dumps on the rug at home.

The light’s green, he realizes. And that sound he dimly hears is the car behind them honking again.

Shit. He goes, the car lurching when he steps on the gas too hard, and he’s taken the wrong damn left. The sharpest one is where he needed to go, not the gentler left he ends up on, and he quickly scans the streets that will take him back to his parents’ house, each a wrong way or a dead end or a do not enter.

He glances over. Abbot’s looking at him like he’s a particularly interesting stats problem he can run through his computer and have the analysis spit out.

Though if he did, it’d come out as a giant negative number, the columns of debt Ned owes perfectly highlighted. Ned absolutely never needs Abbot to see that. It was the entire point of staying with his parents: Save money and be ready when their relationship takes the next step. Come to Abbot as an actual, equal adult, having climbed out of the mess his life has been.

He’ll do this right with Abbot. Not mess up what they have together, Ned has promised himself. Promised. And Abbot is too important to screw up their relationship. Ned doesn’t need the mortification of what he’s done to his own finances out there between them for Abbot to be able to tally up in that head of his.

Oh, he’s going to be sick. “I, um,” he starts. This conversation isn’t great. This morning was and last night was too, the thrill of being together on a weeknight, of waking up to his normal morning and having Abbot there with him. But now something has gone off the rails. Desperate, he flounders for the smile on Abbot’s face he likes so much. “Look, it’s not Peggy. I mean, it is. That’s a lot. For her, for you, all of that.”

“I’m fine with it,” Abbot says quickly.

Ned shifts his hands on the wheel. Maybe he’ll conveniently be pulled over right now and slapped with a ticket. Though paying that wouldn’t cause anything but more trouble, and that’s really the point entirely.

“I know it’s only been a year and a half, nearly, that we’ve been together,” Abbot says. “But Ned, I love Peggy, and I would love to have her home be ours.”

“Oh.”

The turn Ned needed to take passes by his window. Abbot’s never said that before, that he loves Peggy. He likes her. Is patient with her, even when she’s at her loudest and messiest, demanding Ned’s attention or Abbot’s.

But loves? That’s a big word. That’s a lot.

Abbot shifts in his seat. “If you want that,” he says softly.

Ned’s stomach feels thick. His throat, too. Quickly, he throws on his blinker and veers onto a side street before he can accidentally drive them to the airport or hell, off toward Rhode Island.

“It’s not about what I want.”

Ned’s face is burning. Surely Abbot can figure out Ned’s situation with all of those smarts of his. Does he really have to hear Ned say he can’t afford to even look at places? Yes, apparently, and this is absolutely mortifying to put into words. Struggling with money in grad school was one thing, but Ned’s a professor now. He should be beyond worrying about finances, and that he isn’t, sitting in his crappy car next to Abbot in his nice suit, makes him want to yank open his door and ditch out onto the side of the icy road.

I’m a walking, talking pile of debt now facing unemployment, is what he should say, but he sidesteps it with a grin and a soft touch to Abbot’s leg. “You should probably find somewhere you like, and maybe later we can talk about this, okay?”

“When is later?”

“Assuming Newbury works out.” If it doesn’t…well, maybe Peggy will find a gemstone. A giant, honking pile of cash, and pull that from her pocket along with a toad. Or who knows, he could have some long-lost uncle about to kick the bucket, unknown to him and his parents, and he’s left his considerable wealth to Ned. It could happen. It won’t, but it could.