VI

The summer approached all too fast, with examinations and papers and late study sessions stealing time on all sides. Jed's switching of classes had taken its toll, and even a brain as quick as his at picking up new ideas still didn't cancel out the sheer weight of work to be caught up on. He rarely saw Abbey, and when he did, both of them were up to their eyeballs in stacks of books and notes.

Finally, one particularly hectic Saturday, Abbey threw down her pen in disgust, and shut his book with a thump. "Hey!" he objected indignantly.

"Hey yourself," she shrugged, unrepentant.

"I was reading that!"

"Yeah? Go on, tell me one sentence you read in the past fifteen minutes?"

His brow furrowed, but both his brain and his eyes were blurred, and he found to his chagrin he honestly couldn't recall a single thing.

"So much for study time, huh?" Abbey mumbled. She crawled across his lap to sit with him, and he set aside his books to embrace her.

"I'm sorry, Abbey," he sighed, resting his forehead against hers. "There's just... so much work to do!"

"I know." She stood up, taking his arm. "Come on." She pulled him towards the door.

"Where are we going?" he frowned.

"Who cares? Let's just get out of here."

"Okay." All the common sense arguments about why he should stay and finish his assignments seemed to melt away, and he was powerless to resist following her.

They ended up walking the streets of South Bend in the early dusk, eating ice-cream. The muscles in Jed's neck that seemed to have become a constant ball of tension gradually unknotted themselves.

"This is really a waste of time," Jed noted, but lightly. The sense of urgency that usually surrounded his studies had bled away in the peace of the evening. He'd needed this break more than he realised.

"I know. Isn't it great?" Abbey grinned at him.

He grinned back. "You have ice-cream on your nose." He reached out to smudge it away with an affectionate thumb.

She responded by nudging his arm so that his own ice-cream went everywhere. "So do you."

She kissed him, and licked ice-cream from her lips. He pulled away from her, laughing and wiping his face. "You're a crazy, crazy woman," he said, shaking his head. "I can't take you anywhere."

They walked on, hand in hand, falling into a silence that was not the strained emptiness of awkwardness, but the comfortable quiet of not needing to put things in words. The air was warm, to Jed's biased senses at least, but with just enough of a breeze to not make it sticky and uncomfortable.

"Do you really have to be gone all summer?" she asked sorrowfully, after a few minutes.

"My rent pays up at the end of the semester," he admitted reluctantly. "I can't just stay at your house, it's not fair on your parents, and anyway your brother'll be there. And besides, my father wouldn't understand." That was a given. "He'd think we were living in sin."

"I'm sure a little bit more sin wouldn't hurt," Abbey said dryly, startling him into a snort of laughter.

"Ha, so that's your game, is it? Not so fast, lady, I'm a good Catholic boy, and you'll have to make an honest man of me if you want to have your wicked way with me."

She snickered and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Well, I'll look forward to it," she purred close to his ear, and Jed squirmed, receiving a visit from one of those blushes he'd hoped he was finally growing out of.

It was only as they walked on it occurred to him that they'd both practically taken it as read that they would one day be married. It was something that neither of them had explicitly touched upon in their talks of the short-term future, and yet it was such a cornerstone of all his hopes and dreams that he could no longer imagine things any other way.

He would have married her that very evening, given the choice, but he was gripped by uncertainty and indecision. Were they old enough? He still felt very young at times, and Abbey was even younger. Would her parents think they were old enough? What could he begin to offer her, when he was still a college student struggling to achieve independence from under the shadow of his father?

Abbey smiled, and nudged him. "I was gonna offer you a penny for your thoughts, but from that look on your face I doubt I'd get change from a dollar."

Acutely aware of the subject matter he'd been so intently focusing on, he blushed for the second time in one short stretch of minutes. "Dirty thoughts?" she teased, smirking.

"No, actually. Pristine and devout, and guaranteed to be fully approved by the Catholic church."

"Aw. That's not nearly as much fun." She pouted, and he tugged her closer to him.

"You're a wicked woman, Abigail Barrington."

"That's why you love me," she smirked playfully.

"That, and many other reasons."

They stopped, and kissed for a good long time, unmindful of any passing strangers who might roll their eyes and mutter about the debauched youth of today. Jed didn't care what anybody thought about him and Abbey, his father included. He knew how he felt about her, and that was all that mattered.

Jessie chewed the end of her pen in anxious frustration. "I'm telling you now, I can't wait until this is all over. Roll on summertime."

"Mmm." Abbey was, as usual of late, distant and distracted.

"Hey! Miss Abigail! Attention, please."

"What? Oh, sorry, Jessie." She shook her head. "Miles away. I was looking at med schools."

"Still?" Jessie said disbelievingly. She tugged one of the brochures closer to examine it. "Didn't you already get all your- hey, wait." She frowned. "Isn't this in England?"

"Yeah, I wrote to a few," Abbey agreed. "I wanted to see what the schools are like out there."

"England? Come on, Abbey, you've already been accepted every place you applied! While the rest of us are stuck here chewing our nails. Now you want to compound the torture by getting acceptances in whole other continents?"

"I was thinking about doing maybe a few years of my training over there," she admitted.

"Why- Oh, let me guess. To be with Jed." She said the name in appropriately lovestruck twelve-year-old tones, and rolled her eyes.

"Shut up." Abbey coloured slightly, and nudged her sharply in the side.

"Seriously, Abs, you're gonna pack up and move a thousand- ten thousand- okay, I have absolutely no idea how far away England is from here, but you know, you're gonna move that far away from home chasing after some boy?"

"Yup," said Abbey, with every evidence of certainty. Jessie shook her head.

"Sister, you have got it bad."

"I know," she agreed, grinning cheerfully. Jessie shook her head again... and then sighed.

"Damn, I gotta get me a Josiah Bartlet."

"Well, Jess, I love ya, but you're not having mine."

"Hmph." She folded her arms. "Don't see what you see in him anyway. Okay, he is kind of cute, and he's nice, and he does sweet stuff..." She slumped. "Oh, God, I really need a boyfriend."

"He's pretty something, all right," Abbey agreed dreamily. "He's... Honest to God, Jess, I never realised I could be in love like this."

Jessie gave her a searching look. "Really? You're really that in love with him?"

Abbey gave her a dry look. "Jess, have I been talking to the wall for the last two months?"

"No, I know, it's just..." Abbey had never been the kind to make such declarations lightly. "You really think he's-" she curled her lip slightly in reflexive cynicism- "The One?"

"Jess, a year ago, I'm not sure I even believed there was such a thing as 'The One'. Now I know, and he's it. I've never been more sure of anything in my life. I don't care where I have to go or what I have to do to do it... I'm not letting this guy go."

Jessie had been friends with Abbey since junior high, and there was one thing she'd quickly learned - when Abigail Barrington got that light in her eye, you'd better believe she was going to do exactly what she said she was, just you try and stand in her way.

Jed smiled at the familiar, precise handwriting, and unfolded the letter with care.

Jed,

I'm sure it will greatly offend your delusions of grandeur to tell you this, but you're really not half as surprising as you think you are. I had a suspicion for some time that you and the priesthood would come to a parting of the ways, but you always were stubborn about these things.

If your father disapproves of you, then you're probably doing something right. I'm sure I don't need to tell you to treat the girl decently, but I hope you've made it clear exactly what she's in for. You were never an easy person to know when you were a teenager, and I doubt you've changed much with age. I hope for her and your sake your Abigail has enough of an ego, a temper, and a dose of common sense to deal with you.

Economics, now, is it? Well, I'm sure you'll do just fine at it - you never had any problems in the classroom at whatever you turned your hand to - but don't think you're going to spend the rest of your days in some dusty little academic department with a chalkboard. The world has grander plans for you, so get ready for them.

Look after yourself, do the right thing instead of the easy thing, and don't stop thinking.

And eat more vegetables. I've seen what you think is an acceptable diet, you'll die of malnutrition.

Dolores Landingham

Jed chuckled softly to himself, and his roommate Jason paused on the way through to the kitchen.

"Letter from home?"

"No- Well, yeah, kind of," he reversed himself. He smiled. "From my big sister, pushing me around like always."

He folded up the letter, and tucked it away in the folder where he kept all his papers of great importance.