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There was a small thread of nervous anticipation coiled in her belly that she tried to ignore as she waited in the train station. After all, what did she have to be nervous about? Pleased, yes, maybe even excited, but nervous?
The platform was decidedly cold in the January weather. She stamped, and pressed her hands deeper into the folds of her coat. This had seemed like such a good idea earlier. Of course, it would have helped if she'd known exactly which train he was coming in on.
It had to be this one. Abbey tried to peer in the windows as it groaned to a stop, although from her vantage point it was all but impossible.
Finally the train came to a halt, and a solitary door creaked open. She waved madly. "Jed!"
"Abbey!" He dropped both his suitcases and beamed at her in surprise.
She ran towards him and then pulled up awkwardly a few feet away, second-guessing her first instinct to hug him. He didn't seem to notice her confusion, grinning at her in bemused delight.
"What are you doing out here, Abbey?"
"You told me you were getting back today," she reminded him.
"I didn't tell you what time I was coming in! How long have you been out here? You must be frozen." He grabbed for her hand to feel the temperature, and she suddenly felt very self-conscious.
"Oh, like it was any warmer on the train?" she demanded, disentangling her hand. She looked away, and her eyes fell on the small station café. "We should both get coffee or something."
"Yeah," he agreed, sounding oddly breathless. He reached down for his suitcases, and Abbey saw him wince.
"What's wrong?" she demanded, concerned.
He shook his head. "Oh, I-" He looked embarrassed. "I was climbing over this pile of logs? And I... kind of slipped and... bruised up all my back." He pulled a face at his own klutzyness.
"And you think you're okay with carrying heavy luggage? Jackass." She grabbed one of the suitcases, and he shook his head at her.
"Are you ever gonna stop managing me?" he wondered.
"Are you ever going to learn to manage yourself?"
Instead of quipping back, he just gave her a soft smile that made her stomach melt. "I missed you."
"I missed you too." She quickly looked down at the ground, suddenly inexplicably shy.
There was a silence that lingered on for a beat too long.
"Let's go get that coffee," Jed said abruptly.
"Yeah," she agreed quickly.
Ron knocked rapidly on the front door, itchy with excitement at the prospect of seeing Abbey again. It was opened by her mother.
"Hey there, Mrs. Barrington," he smiled. "Is Abbey home?"
"Hello there, Ron," she said warmly. "I thought you didn't get back until Tuesday?"
"I convinced my mom to let me come back a few days early," he explained. "I wanted to surprise Abbey - is she here?"
"I'm afraid not," her mother said regretfully. "I think she's at the station right now."
"The train station? I hope she hasn't decided to leave the country," he joked.
"She's gone to meet a friend who's coming in from New Hampshire."
"Oh, yeah, she said," Ron remembered. "Okay. I'll see if I can meet her there. Thanks, Mrs. Barrington."
"No problem, Ron," she smiled kindly.
As he got back into his car, Ron tried to ignore the groundless feeling of anxiety that had been dogging him for few days now. If he was entirely truthful, it was more than just his desire to see Abbey that had prompted him to come back early.
It had been... strained, trying to keep their relationship going by phone. The longer they'd been in different states, the more the silences stretched out as they'd struggled to think of words to fill the gap. He was deathly afraid they were beginning to drift apart.
He adored Abbey, but somehow he'd always been... a little bit afraid. Not of her, but of how they sometimes seemed like they weren't quite on the same page, they were talking at cross-purposes.
He quashed the thought. They were dating, they didn't have to be able to read each other's minds or anything. They liked each other a whole lot, they wanted to be together... wasn't that enough?
Wasn't that enough?
They were in love, right? Okay, they'd never actually come out and said as much, because Abbey didn't believe in saying that sort of thing lightly, and he respected that. But still, they were in love.
Abbey would laugh, if she knew how paranoid he got sometimes about the two of them. Or maybe she wouldn't.
Sometimes he felt like he didn't really understand her at all, and that was the problem. There were so many things they didn't... they didn't connect on. Like medical school... it was cool and all, that she knew so early exactly what she wanted to do with his life and how to get there, but sometimes he wished she'd want to... to be young, a bit more. To just party and have fun and not be thinking about the future all the time.
Abbey was a dreamer, and he lived in the here and now. But opposites attracted, right? And love conquered all. So it didn't matter that she made jokes he didn't get sometimes, or she couldn't always understand where he was coming from with his priorities, or they could be sitting talking sometimes and he would realise he had absolutely no idea what she was thinking about.
All these crazy doubts would be all right if he could just see her. They really would. Ron parked the car, and jogged quickly into the station.
With a stab of disappointment he saw that the platform was empty, but then he caught a flash of familiar long dark hair through the window of the station café. She'd stopped for a coffee or something with her friend.
He smiled to himself, thinking he could just step in, slip an arm round her and sit down beside her, like he'd never been away. Like he'd never spent any time wondering if their relationship was truly strong enough to last if they found so little to talk about.
Ron hesitated in the doorway, taken aback when he saw her talking animatedly with a young man who was gesturing emphatically with half a sandwich. A guy friend? She hadn't mentioned this was a guy friend.
He shook himself out of it, calling himself an idiot. Abbey made friends with everybody. So what if she was talking to a guy? She already had a boyfriend, and that was him. Abbey wasn't the type to step out on anybody. He went inside.
A wave of warm laughter greeted him, as Abbey leaned across the table towards the guy. "C'mon, seriously, how do you manage to trip over your own pants in the middle of a church service?"
"Oh, you say that now, you're laughing now." The boy mock-glared at her. "If you'd been there-"
"I would be laughing even harder?"
"It really wasn't particularly amusing."
"I find that very hard to believe," Abbey said dryly.
"I'll have you know that I fell on my ass with gravitas and dignity," he said sternly.
"Not to mention your panther-like poise."
"That too."
They were both grinning at each other like crazy, and Ron felt his heart twist. He'd never been able to make Abbey laugh like that. She smiled at his dopey jokes, but he'd never managed to reduce her to a fit of helpless giggles. And she was gazing at that guy like he was-
He strode over to the table.
"Abbey?" He glared across at the guy. "Who the hell are you?"
They both shot to their feet.
"Ron-" Abbey began, obviously caught off guard. Later, he might acknowledge to himself that her startled reaction might be as much surprise as a guilty conscience, but right now he was feeling hurt and lost and angry.
"What's going on here?" he demanded.
The guy smiled at him. He might have been able to contain his bubbling frustration, but the guy smiled at him. "Uh, hi. I'm Jed Bartlet, I-"
"What are you doing back here early, Ron?" Abbey asked, and in his frame of mind it was easy to believe she sounded defensive.
"Why?" he scowled. "Am I interrupting something?"
Abbey had never had the world's most restrained temper. Her face darkened. "Listen, Ron-"
"No. No, wait a minute," he said sharply. "I go away for Christmas, I come back and find you making time with some guy-"
"This is my friend Jed," Abbey shrugged, looking irritated.
"Your friend Jed? Since when did you get a friend Jed? I don't know anything about a Jed."
At that the boy glanced across at her, as if mildly puzzled by that news. The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach grew stronger. If this was nothing, if this was innocent, then why had she been hiding this from him?
"Well, he's my friend," Abbey said, putting the emphasis on the last word. "We go to the same church."
"Yeah, and he's such a good friend you never mentioned his name to me, but all of a sudden you're meeting him at the station and stopping for drinks?" He stared at her. "What am I supposed to think, Abbey? Tell me, seriously, what am I supposed to think?"
If she'd been calm in her rebuttal, it might have cooled his suspicious temper, but Abigail Barrington was nothing if not a spitfire when under attack.
"Oh, please. There is nothing going on here," she growled. "Which, if you would actually get your head out of your-"
"Hey, hey, hey." This 'Jed' guy held up his arms in a calming gesture that made Ron want to hit him. "Listen, just- This is all a big misunderstanding. I can understand it might look a little... Okay. I think we should all just take a moment, and-"
His 'understanding' was the last straw, and as he stepped forward placatingly, Ron shoved him back. "Am I talking to you?"
He struck the table behind him, and hissed in an expression of pain that was, in Ron's opinion, way out of proportion to the strength of the push. Even so, he was immediately struck by remorse. This guy was like a head shorter than him, and Ron wasn't a violent guy. Instinct had him actually moving to check if the guy was okay when Abbey pushed her way between them, eyes cold.
"I think you'd better leave, Ron," she said darkly. Tellingly, her tone had dropped from yelling to coolly even, and he knew he'd really blown it. He glanced for a moment at Jed, leaning against the table and wincing, and then looked back down to Abbey. "Just go," she said, before he could open his mouth.
He took a step back and hesitated. He almost tried to apologise, but then he didn't, and he turned and pushed his way out of the café. He broke into a run as he crossed the platform, and when he got back in his car he thumped a fist into the passenger seat, hard.
He drove away before the burning at the back of his eyes could turn into the frustrated tears it was threatening to.