Page 146 of The New Place

“How? When? I live up here. What the actual fuck am I going to do about that?”

“I don’t know. Are you going to keep seeing each other?”

“I’m going to be seeing her for eighteen years!” Pat shouts.

“Well, eighteen from October.”

“I’m not sure you’re helping.”

“Pat, this is awesome. You’re going to have a little baby. I’m going to be an uncle.”

“With a woman I barely know, who lives two hours away. Which famously, as you’ve told me repeatedly, is actually so fucking far and you’ve barely survived that distance!”

“It’s not so bad.”

“That is a lie.”

“Yeah,” Ned agrees. “But you two will figure it out.”

“We will?” Pat asks, his eyes wide.

“Kids don’t come with an instruction book, so everyone is just winging it,” Ned says. Goggles, Charles had smiled about just the other night, which was weird and charming and Ned still can’t quite make sense of it. “You two will do great.”

“I should move,” Pat says. “I should move, right?”

“What about the cafe?”

“I don’t know about the cafe.”

“You’re going to need money. Kids aren’t cheap. Do you want to be without work?”

“No,” Pat says. “But I should live with her, right?”

“Do you want to? Cause a pregnancy and a new roommate all at once, and if you two start arguing about stupid shit now, it’s all downhill from there.”

“Okay, so no moving in together.”

“I don’t know. Just don’t rush into it.”

“I won’t. I’m not. I did maybe ask her to get married.”

“Pat.”

“She said no.”

“Good.”

“Is it?” Pat asks. “Shouldn’t we—fucking hell, Ned! You just went and got married, so maybe I should get married too, right?”

“Are you alright?” Abbot asks, coming down the last few stairs, his hair wet.

“Claire’s pregnant,” Ned tells him because Pat is busy gaping like a fish.

“Congratulations.”

“Due in October,” Ned says.

“Wonderful.” Abbot goes into the dining room. Ned hears a clink and Abbot reappears with three glasses and a bottle of whiskey, untouched since the last time Ned saw it.