Page 117 of The New Place

“I want that too, but you won’t even begin to talk to me. That’s not an engagement right there, Abbot. It’s barely a relationship.”

“But I love you.”

“Yeah, and I love you too, but what the hell are we doing?” Ned asks, his voice rising. “Is this what you want from us? Because it’s not what I want.”

“Ned—” Abbot’s chest is cold. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I want you to tell me about yourself. About anything. Your life, your exes, your family. Beverly, who’s going to be my new damn boss. Do you want a list?”

“I—” It would help, Abbot thinks in a far-off, shrill sort of way. But that’s just it: each of those topics blend into one another, those people and places and years he’s tried so hard to leave behind him.

Can’t Ned understand that?

“Please,” he manages.

“What, did you kill someone?” Ned lets out a humorless laugh. “Are you a murderer? Is that what’s going on?”

“No, of course not, I—Ned, I can’t.”

“Then you want me to just go on wondering about you? You’re ready to move in together, and I know basically nothing about you?”

“You do. You know me.”

“I guess I just don’t know where I see this going,” Ned says softly, his voice so very terribly quiet. “We’ve had an amazing time together. We love each other. But then there’s all this stuff we just can’t talk about, so where do we go from here?”

Why is he talking in the past tense? Ned knows he said that, doesn’t he? He has to. It’s his words.

Panic flies high and blind before Abbot’s eyes.

“What do you want to do?” he whispers.

“I don’t know. I have no fucking idea. We just told everyone we know that we’re getting married. My daughter, Abbot. I can’t go back on that with Peggy, but this kind of stuff makes me wonder what our relationship really looks like, you know?”

“We’re okay,” Abbot gets out. They are, aren’t they? They have to be.

“At some point, maybe not today or tomorrow, or this year or the next, but eventually, this is going to really bother me. More than it does now, even. So what is it about me that you won’t talk to me?”

“It’s not you. I just don’t want to discuss that part of my life.”

“But what are we doing that we can’t talk? What am I doing wrong?”

“Nothing, Ned. I—I didn’t particularly like myself back then. I’d rather not revisit it.”

“It’s more than that,” Ned says. “So will you just tell me what’s so wrong with me that you absolutely refuse to share anything about yourself?”

The words circle like shattered glass, each one of them piercing. Ned thinks it’s something awry with him? For how long? How has Abbot missed it so terribly thoroughly?

“Wrong with you?” Abbot feels the cold press of the wall behind him, the weight of this conversation, and through it, a piece that doesn’t fit.

“Jen couldn’t talk to me, and now it’s the same thing all over again, so what the fucking fuck is wrong with me?”

“Ned—”

“Is this just how my life is? Everyone I care about takes a look at me and⁠—”

“No, Ned,” Abbot says, louder. “That’s not—I—don’t want you to know.”

“Exactly!”