Page 14 of The New Place

“No.”

The word is crisp in the cold night air, a puff of white breath forming at Abbot’s mouth and hanging there before dissipating as the syllable does.

“No?” Steve asks.

“It’s Newbury,” Ned says. “Nobody turns down Newbury.” Nobody up and gets offered a position at Newbury, except Abbot just did.

Of course he did. It’s Abbot. Another grant? Ned had asked just a couple weeks ago when Abbot had been awarded even more funding, coming off having a paper accepted for publication over the summer in Sociology Review of America. He’ll be invited onto his next panel soon enough, or he’ll be the keynote at yet another conference, or he’ll write the foreword of a book that will absolutely end up a seminal sociology text. Of course Newbury wants him.

“I’d rather be at Adams,” Abbot says. “With you, Ned.”

“With me?” Ned tries to catch up to whatever spot Abbot’s brain has jumped ahead to. He’d want Steve’s job, if Steve really leaves? At Adams, of all places? There are universities, and then there are universities. Ned hadn’t known the difference when he’d applied to college, mostly caring how much each application fee was and what he could get in financial aid. Now, after all this time in academia, he grasps the full picture. Newbury was always out of his league, as a student and now as a professor.

But not for Abbot. Not even a little.

“Hon,” Ned says.

“I’m not interested in Newbury.”

“Everyone is interested in Newbury,” Steve says. “And Henry, if you want to be in Boston, I’d take it.”

Ned squeezes Abbot’s hand. “You’re not going to Adams when you could be at Newbury.”

“I’d really prefer to be at Adams,” Abbot says in an I’ve already decided this tone.

Once, that had made Ned’s jaw clench. How fucking presumptuous, he’d thought of this man for all the years before he really knew him. Now, he hears the discomfort behind the words, the sharpness that shortens Abbot’s tone when his mind is a million miles away.

Ned sets his hand on the back of Abbot’s neck and draws him close to kiss his temple. This is what he wanted on the drive up here tonight. The scent of his skin, his hair, the waft of laundry detergent from his clothes. To be close to him and enjoy their time together, not deal with a sudden maze of new jobs and Abbot standing stiff and unhappy in the cold dark. “Let’s go get a drink,” Ned says. “I gotta get Baxter anyway.”

“I should be heading back,” Steve says, pulling out his phone to check the time.

“Nope,” Ned says. “I saved you from Chris. That means you’re getting a beer with us.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“I will bench you.”

“You really love our baseball team too much.”

“You don’t get to duck out without an actual reason,” Ned says. “C’mon. Why are you really leaving Adams?”

Steve sighs. Quickly, he checks his phone again, then unlocks it and taps out a quick text. “One drink.”

Ned pulls his out and hunts for Jess’s number. We’ll get him back to you soon, he writes.

He’s sworn to secrecy, she responds immediately.

Oh, so there is a secret. Ned’s hunch was right. He steers Steve down the path toward Pat’s. “One beer. And my treat, even.” He can absolutely pry the truth out of Steve over the course of a beer, and get Abbot back to himself too.

And then Ned is going to take Abbot back to his house and finally put their month apart behind them.

5

ABBOT

Abbot tucks himself into his coat as they walk, letting Ned hold his hand and wishing he could rewind to the moment Ned found him in the conference room.

He should have stood up. Grabbed his things, steered Ned toward the door, and left with him then and there. He could have hauled him close on the sidewalk and kissed him and kissed him, the rest of the world fading around them. And then they could’ve hurried from the building together, away from Chris and from…