VII
"Morning, Ben."
"Hey, Abbey." Ben gave the diminutive girl a smile. He'd taken pretty quickly to Jed's church friend; just as well, since she'd been hanging round the bookstore a lot, lately.
"Jed here yet?" she asked, perching on the edge of the counter.
"On time?" Ben laughed incredulously. His fellow store assistant might have many virtues, but punctuality wasn't one of them. He straightened books on the shelf. "So how's things with you and Ron?"
"Oh, he's away at the moment," she said, pulling a face.
"Scared him off, did you?"
"Shut up," she smiled. "No, he's taking a long break for Christmas; he won't be back 'til January. But he calls nearly every day. He's a great boyfriend."
"He sounds like it," Ben agreed. But privately, he also thought it sounded like Abbey told herself that rather a lot; as if she wanted to believe it, but she knew there was something that wasn't quite right.
From the way she and Jed lit up in each other's presence, he rather suspected he knew what. He could see there was a spark there, when they talked about nothing for hours and argued about everything under the sun... but Jed was going to be a priest, so who knew where that was going? Probably somewhere awkward. Still, it wasn't his place to wade into the middle of it.
Jed charged through the doors in his usual disarray. "What time d'you call this?" Ben and Abbey asked in unison, and they shared a grin.
Jed, for once, didn't grin back, just shook his head and rubbed his forehead tiredly. "Yeah, I'm sorry, I was up most of the night with my assignment, and then I stopped on the way to pick up my mail."
"Hey, that's okay, man," Ben shrugged. He exchanged a concerned look with Abbey. Jed didn't look good. If it had been anybody else, he'd have written it off as nothing more than a hangover, but he knew Jed didn't drink. He was really running himself ragged with his college work; even though he was predictably late to every single morning shift, Ben didn't think he was getting nearly enough sleep.
"Are you all right, Jed?" Abbey asked gently. He mustered a smile for her that still shone brightly through his battered demeanour.
"Yeah, I just..." He sighed and sat down. "I don't know." He pulled a couple of crumpled letters out of his pocket and turned them over reflectively.
"Anything interesting?" Abbey inquired.
"Letter from home." He placed it on the counter in front of him and frowned down at it.
"Aren't you going to open it?" she chided gently.
"Not if I had a choice," he said, but he reached out and tiredly slitted it open with a finger. Ben noticed the way his face tightened as he read it. At the end, he slammed it down on the desk and tilted his head back, rubbing his neck as if he had an ache there.
"Bad news?" Abbey asked concernedly.
"Yeah." He smiled without humour. "My dad wants me to come home for Christmas."
"You don't want to go?"
"Not much, no." He slipped down off the tabletop and shook his head at himself. "I'm surprised he even remembered I'm out here. He probably wants to ask me when I'm going to give up on theology and get a real degree."
Ben was startled by the depth of the bitterness, and how much of it seemed to be self-directed. Jed was angry at himself for something, although it was hard to guess what. He'd gradually come to realise that his coworker kept a lot more of himself under the surface than the amiably klutzy trivia freak he showed the outside world. Something was wrong, and had been wrong for a while, but Jed wasn't prepared to share it with anyone.
Abbey could see it too. "Are you sure you're okay?" she asked quietly. She lightly touched his hand, and Jed's head shot up to lock gazes with her.
"I'm fine," he said with a slight smile. The physical contact had lasted only an instant, but Ben fancied he could see the crackle of electricity linger in the air between them.
Oh, no, there was no way this was ending well.
"Hey, darling."
"Hey, Ron." Abbey smiled into the phone. "How's life up there with the Ehrlichs?"
She could picture him rolling his eyes. "It's okay. Mom's trying to drag me off Christmas shopping for the boys already."
"You can never start too early," she chided. She hadn't even thought about a present for Ron... God, what could she buy him? Her mind was a complete blank. "So... what do you want Santa to bring you this Christmas?" she asked playfully, making a joke of it.
"You," he said simply.
The sincerity in his voice threw her for a moment, and she quickly deflected it with a quip. "Honey, there ain't no way you're unwrapping me for Christmas."
He laughed. "No, okay," he agreed reluctantly. "But I miss you. I've been thinking about you this whole time."
"Yeah." Abbey felt horribly aware that maybe she hadn't been thinking of Ron quite so much as he'd been thinking of her. It was just that she'd been so busy, and she was always with her parents or her school friends or with Jed, and...
Wasn't Ron supposed to be the main thing on her mind, though? So why couldn't she even think of what to buy him for a Christmas present?
"So what've you been doing down there?" he asked curiously. "Did you miss me? Are you lonely? Did our team win the football?"
Abbey laughed and shook her head over the stream of questions. "Okay, in order? Stuff, of course, maybe a little bit, and like I'd actually know that?"
Ron picked out the middle question immediately. "You're lonely?" he asked worriedly. "You want me to come back? Because I could try and get my parents to-"
"No, Ron!" she objected, rolling her eyes. "I'm fine! It's just, you know... you're out there, one of my friends is going off to New Hampshire... I feel like I'm gonna be the only one left here come Christmas-time."
"Well, okay." He still sounded a little bothered. "If you're sure you don't need me to-"
"I will be fine. Really. Besides," she smiled, "it means I've got your calls to look forward to." Ron had been calling her every day, sometimes twice a day. It made her feel very warm and fuzzy every time he called, although sometimes she found it a little hard to find anything to fill their conversations with.
"I'm not annoying your parents, am I?" he worried.
"Trust me, it takes more than being an attentive boyfriend to annoy my parents," she said dryly.
"Okay. Well... I gotta go. Mom's gonna want the phone in a minute. I'll call you tomorrow?"
"Sure. Bye."
"I'm counting off the days to January," he assured her.
"Me too."
"I miss you. Bye." He blew a kiss into the phone, and put it down. Abbey regarded her own receiver for a moment, and sighed.
Ron was so hung up on her - sometimes she felt like she was leading him on. Which was stupid, because she was his girlfriend. A serious girlfriend. And that was what she wanted to be.
It was probably just because they were both still young. As much as she liked to tell her parents she was an adult now, she was really still only just growing out of being a kid. Of course it wasn't like things with Ron were going to click instantly and just be perfect, just like that. They had to grow together; they had to work at being the girlfriend and boyfriend they wanted to be.
And she did want that. After all, she liked Ron; Ron was great. She liked Ron plenty.
It was just that there was a little voice in the back of her head that kept asking if she really liked him enough.
A flurry of horn-blasts greeted him at the train station. Jed wasn't sure whether to smile or scowl as he saw his younger brother waving furiously.
"When did you get your licence?" he demanded as he heaved his case into the back of the car.
"Last month," Johnny grinned. Jed was careful to buckle his seatbelt, and grip hold of the sides of the seat tightly.
"So how's the exciting life of a theology major?" his brother asked as they drove.
Jed shrugged. "It's okay." Jonathan Bartlet was not somebody he could easily share his confused excuse for a crisis of faith with. The only person he thought he could have talked to was Mrs. Landingham, and she didn't work at the school anymore. He wrote to her quite a lot, but when it came to trying to explain what was so wrong... he just couldn't make it come out right on the written page. Hell, he couldn't even make it come out right in his own head.
"Managed to get laid yet?" Johnny asked with a smirk.
Jed gave him a scathing look. "I'm going to be a priest," he reminded him.
"Ah, it's only 'cause none of the girls want to know you," he jibed.
"Shut up," Jed groaned, rubbing his forehead. Surprisingly, Johnny did, and after a few moments he looked over at his older brother.
"Did you talk to dad at all?"
"No. I wasn't even gonna come back until he asked me to." He shrugged. "I honestly don't know why he did."
Jonathan hesitated. "He got a call from the college," he revealed.
"He got what?" Jed grabbed him by the arm.
"Jed! Driving a car here!" He yanked his hand away.
"He got a call from the college?"
"Yeah." Jonathan slipped down into a lower gear as he gave his brother a searching look. "Are you in some kind of trouble?"
"No." Jed shook his head. "No, I just... I don't know." He buried his face in his hands and sighed. They'd called his father. Probably to find out if there was some family circumstance he wasn't telling them about, some reason why his grades were slipping, why those perfect test scores were eluding him.
They'd called his father. Oh, hell.
"Come on, Jed, you never get in school trouble," Jonathan said worriedly. "What's going on?"
He hesitated, and then finally admitted it out loud. "I think I might be dropping out."
Johnny slammed the brakes on. The car screeched to a stop, and his little brother stared at him. "You? Dropping out? Of college?"
"Of theology. Or- Jesus, I don't know." He slammed the belt release and got out of the car, walking out into the New Hampshire weather. He sat on the grass by the side of the road, arms wrapped around his knees, and looked up at the stars. After a moment, the lights on the car went out, and Jonathan came out to join him.
"You don't wanna be a priest anymore, huh?" he asked after a moment.
Jed shrugged aggressively, and lowered his head. His eyes burned, but he wasn't going to cry in front of his little brother. He wasn't going to cry, period. If his father had never made him, nothing else was ever going to.
Jonathan let out a brief huff of air, and was silent for a moment. Jed continued to look at the ground.
"We should be getting back," Johnny said finally.
"Yeah," Jed agreed, voice muffled against his arms.
"You want me to-?"
Jed looked up at him. "What can you do?" he said resignedly.
Johnny could only shrug apologetically. He might be a man grown now, broad across the shoulders and big enough to be a football player, but he was still Jed's little brother, and there'd never been any standing between Jed and his father.
After a moment they both got up, and walked back to the car.