XV
She dialled the number tentatively, and waited for him to pick up. "Hi, Ron."
"Abbey!" The warmth in his voice should have been a delight, but in only made her feel more tense and nervous.
"Listen, I'm sorry I ran out on you last night-"
"Hey, that's okay. You weren't feeling good, I understand. I just wish you'd let me walk you home; it's not safe out there, Abbey."
"I know," she admitted. "Yeah, I was... I was totally weird last night, and I apologise."
He chuckled softly. "Hey, I'm used to you being weird. It's one of your best points."
"Yeah..." She hesitated, but then she remembered Jed's advice to her the previous night. She had to stop running away from her relationship with Ron. "Listen, do you want to come over for lunch or something?"
"Sure, I'd love to!" His pleasure at the invitation only made her feel guilty for how she'd been skirting around him lately. "I mean, if your parents don't mind-?"
"I already asked them, Ron," she smiled. He was such a sweet guy at heart; how had she lost sight of that lately? All this stuff with dreams and daydreams - that was crazy talk. Ron was her boyfriend, and she was more than lucky to have him.
"Great. Then I'll see you at-"
"Twelve'll be fine."
"Great," he repeated eagerly.
"I'll see you soon, then."
"Okay. Bye."
"Bye, Ron."
She was smiling as she put the phone down.
She just wasn't sure why the smile felt so false.
Something wasn't right. He'd been trying to ignore it for so long it made his brain ache, but... something wasn't right.
He'd put it down at first to the way he'd been a jealous idiot and thrown them right off track three months ago, but that excuse was getting more and more faded every time he recycled it. And the fact was that their little stage play in the train station hadn't been the cause of this, only a symptom. If he was honest with himself, Ron had known things were off between them before that.
It felt increasingly like they were talking at each other in different languages. He never quite knew what to say to her anymore, and he'd been increasingly worried that he just didn't know how to make her happy. And out of that had been born a scarier thought.
Maybe whatever it was that would make her happy wasn't something he knew how to give.
Ron sometimes caught himself yearning for a simpler girl to be with; one who just wanted to have fun, horse around, wanted to do the things that he wanted to do - and that made him feel painfully guilty. Yes, Abbey was complex; she could go from joking to serious in an instant, and her anger could be aroused over the strangest things - like by reading a book about some grand injustice that had happened a thousand miles away and centuries ago. She was so passionate about everything, every tiny little thing, and she blazed so brightly... but he kept feeling like he was getting his fingers burned.
Once, Ron had considered himself the luckiest man alive to have got himself such an amazing girl... but now he wondered if it wasn't just as much a curse as a blessing. Oh, he wouldn't trade away a single second of the time he'd spent with her, but... He felt like he couldn't be the guy she needed, he couldn't follow her to all the places she wanted to go or be there in all the complicated, demanding ways she would need him to.
And that wasn't ever going to be fair on either of them.
There was a distance at the Barrington dinner table, and it wasn't the physical one imposed by her father's stern glare. The more he tried to talk, the more he realised that they didn't really have anything to say.
He pushed Mrs. Barrington's excellent food around the plate, not really able to find much taste for it.
"How's college?" she asked him, and he wondered if she was wincing internally at the lameness, the way he had been with all his own conversational gambits. It was like they were strangers at a cocktail party, looking for small talk to fill the awkward gaps.
"Oh, it's going pretty well. Most of it's pretty boring, but, you know, it's okay."
"My friend Jed's transferring over to do economics, did I tell you?"
"Yes, I think you did." Ah, the infamous Jed. On some completely irrational level, Ron was glad that Abbey's guy friend had transferred over to a similar course to he was doing; it made him feel way less of a jerk for having accused his girlfriend of cheating on him with a trainee priest.
After weeks and weeks of awkwardness, he was now beginning to realise that a brief flirtation with another guy might have been an easy problem to fix. You could win your girl back from the arms of the guy muscling in on you; how did you win her back from the fact that the two of you just didn't fit right?
"Oh. He's trying to cram first year now, though, so you'll graduate before him."
"Yeah."
More silence. He wondered if Abbey's parents had noticed it; it seemed screamingly obvious to him.
"We won the football last night, did you know?"
"Oh, no, I didn't." Of course she hadn't, because she didn't care about football, just another slice of his world that wasn't important in her one. "Did you play?"
"For a little. Didn't do anything particularly impressive. But you know, I didn't fall flat on my face either, so... it's all good."
She smiled. "Yeah."
But it wasn't.
It wasn't good at all.
"Well," Daniel said pointedly, as he followed his wife into the kitchen after the meal.
"Indeed."
"That was cozy, wasn't it? Just like all those Thanksgiving dinners with your parents."
"Complete with authentic awkward silences," Mary agreed.
He sighed, and leaned against the counter-top. "So what did they fight about?"
She gave him a look. "I don't think they did."
"Ah."
"Yes."
"I think she's unhappy," he said regretfully. It pained him to see his daughter in any kind of distress, but what could he do? He wasn't sure she'd even admitted to herself that anything was upsetting her. Abbey had his stubborn streak, that was her trouble. Things were clearly less than rosy with Ron, but she wasn't prepared to admit defeat and believe so.
"I think so too," Mary agreed heavily.
"She hasn't talked to you?" He'd been rather pinning his hopes on that mysterious female bond that existed between his wife and daughter. Matthew had always been much easier for him to fathom out...
"If she had, then I would know so," his wife pointed out.
He nodded sadly. "Alas, our little girl is at a time in her life when she doesn't think she needs parents."
"She needs a friend," Mary observed.
"Yes." He was silent for a long while as she busied herself collecting together dishes. Then he said, abruptly "You know what I haven't had in a long time?"
Mary paused, dishtowel in hand, and smiled slightly at him. "Am I going to be disturbed by the answer to this?"
He ignored that. "I haven't had a good game of chess, that's what I haven't had."
Her smile began to widen. "Is that so?" she said dryly.
"It's tragic, really." Daniel pushed back his glasses and rubbed his chin mock-contemplatively. "I really ought to get more practise in."
"Perhaps you should invite somebody over to play a game or two?" she suggested faux-brightly. He pretended to consider.
"Why, you might be onto something there. Tell me, is there anybody you can think of who might be interested in taking me on at chess?"
"Hmm..." She made such an exaggerated expression of deep thought that he had to laugh, and step forward to lightly kiss her cheek.
"I'll talk to him next time we're in church," he promised. Mary smiled warmly up at him.
"You're a good father, Daniel."
"Hmph." He pretended to shrug. "Well, I really don't see how my quest for a better class of chess partner figures into that at all..."
She smirked, and silenced him with another gentle kiss.