Page 8 of The New Place

Ned’s voice. And Ned’s hands. Nobody else touches Abbot with such warm familiarity. And it’s Ned’s black plastic digital watch on his wrist, the neat trim of his fingernails, the rough red of his knuckles from the cold air outside.

Abbot blinks. Ned’s hands are still there, squeezing his shoulders lightly. Surely Abbot is imagining this. Has conjured it from a month of longing, and now the discomfort of the conversation happening around him.

“Hi.” Ned leans over Abbot, smiling at him upside down.

Ned’s here? Impossible. And yet his hair hangs down over his forehead, his hands lay on Abbot’s shoulders, and there’s the very fact of him standing behind Abbot’s chair. He’s here, in this room, and Abbot is absolutely frozen. What is he supposed to do? Hug him? Kiss him, like he very much wants to? Jump up and shove the chair out from in between them and burrow as close as he possibly can? Here, in this room full of his coworkers?

Ned fixes the problem with a grin at Lee and a playful push at her chair. “Shove over.”

“Hi to you too,” she grumbles through a smile, slipping from her seat to the empty chair on her other side.

Ned helps her slide her laptop down the table and takes her place, easily inviting himself to join the meeting, here in a department he no longer works for.

Abbot doesn’t care. Ned is next to him. Why, he doesn’t know, but beneath the table their fingers tangle together in a hard squeeze, and Ned’s knee rests against Abbot’s, and oh, how Abbot has missed him.

“So what is this? Steve, you’re here too, apparently,” Ned says as he strokes his thumb over Abbot’s. “Is this Adams University night at Callahan? I don’t have my laptop with me, so you gonna carry this talk for us?”

“What are you possibly doing here?” Steve asks.

“I had a question about some statistics,” Ned says.

A laugh ripples around the room. Abbot fights to keep his face from heating at the looks angled his way, and battles too the surge of pleasure that rises on Ned’s words. Ned came to see him. Two days earlier than their plan to reunite this weekend, and for as many years as Abbot has tried to keep everyone in this room at a careful, safe distance, he finds he doesn’t much mind if they’re all fully aware of how thrilled he is to see Ned.

“Steve, did you come up for help too?” Ned asks. “We could have carpooled.”

This gets another laugh, even as Steve sighs and shakes his head. “C’mon, man, I’m trying to make a good impression.”

“Oh, well, in that case. Folks, this is Steve Potts, the star pitcher of our departmental baseball team down at Adams,” Ned says. “He also taught an entire lecture dressed in an inflatable unicorn costume on Halloween.”

Steve tips his head back. “Why?” he asks the ceiling.

“Exactly,” Ned agrees. “Why are you here?”

Instead of continuing their back and forth, Steve casts a look at Chris.

“Henry will tell Ned anyway,” Chris says, and Steve gives a short, sharp nod. “Folks, Dr. Potts is here to meet you all because we’re interviewing him for a position in the department.”

Abbot looks at Ned, who is also clearly surprised. Steve is leaving Adams? For Callahan?

Aliyah taps her nails against the table. “Chris, we aren’t hiring.”

Chris just smiles. “Dr. Potts’s wife is taking a position in our biochemistry department.”

“STEM,” Lee mutters as a grumble of understanding goes around the room.

Their department has no opening. Steve is here because his wife is negotiating a spousal hire, hinging her acceptance of her position on the university making room for him as well.

Steve smiles apologetically. “So yes, I’m here trying to wedge my way into your department. Ned, this was really not how I intended anyone at Adams to find out.”

“You can’t leave,” Ned says. “What about our baseball team?”

“Yes, important considerations first,” Steve says.

“We have big games this spring.”

“Folks, if you want to know how Ned is doing down at Adams, please understand that this departmental baseball team is literally everything to him.”

“Don’t give Chris ideas,” Lee mutters.