Page 23 of The New Place

Abbot might be good at avoiding subjects, but he’s a shitty liar, and the silence he tries to cover with a quick sip of his wine says everything. Ned laughs, squeezing his waist.

“Spill,” Pat says.

“I’ve never heard about this,” Ned says. “We need details.”

“It was nothing,” Abbot says quickly.

“It was clearly someone,” Pat says. “What, did you leave your glass slipper behind and skip out on the big ball happening at your own university to go see this guy? I’m guessing yes, so tell us everything about Prince Charming.”

“Is there some devastatingly handsome man out there in Switzerland, pining away for you?” Ned asks.

“Can we look him up?” Pat asks. “What’s his name?”

“Only if you also share your poor choices from that age,” Abbot says.

“Ned will, given half a chance,” Pat says.

Ned slips his hand up to Abbot’s neck, playing with the collar of his shirt. “I need less than that. Julie?”

“Aw, c’mon,” Pat says.

“Meghan?” Ned asks.

Pat tips his beer toward him. “What about you and that Michael?”

“Ouch,” Ned says. “Claire, your turn.”

“Oh, please, you all have nothing on me,” she says. “I’m currently sleeping on the couch of my sister and her husband-to-be, because I threw everything into my car and drove to Boston from Philadelphia to get out of my last relationship.”

“Cheers.” Ned tips his bottle against hers. “Been there.”

“Don’t be too impressed,” Claire says. “That was too long ago for not having found a spot to live yet. The most I can boast is that the couch is in my sister’s office, not her living room.”

“I don’t judge. I’m glad this guy had an entire bedroom I could take over when I did the same thing,” Ned says.

“You lived up here?” Claire asks.

“I was getting my doctorate at Callahan,” Ned says.

“Oh, that’s right. You said that. So is that how you two met?” She points her beer from Ned to Abbot and back again.

“Now that’s a story,” Pat says.

“It was actually very normal and straightforward,” Ned says.

“Absolutely no shenanigans,” Pat says solemnly.

“Boring, even,” Ned says.

“Ned was Abbot’s student,” Pat just has to go and say.

Ned smacks his arm. “C’mon.”

“You were,” Pat says, rubbing the spot.

At least Claire’s not in academia, and isn’t one of Ned’s new colleagues at Adams. All the getting-to-know-you of this first year and making chit-chat with them had eventually led to the topic of Abbot, and to the fact that he’s a Callahan professor. Anyone can put two and two together and look at Ned’s graduation date and Abbot’s career and come to the very obvious conclusion that Ned dated a professor while he was a PhD candidate.

He’s younger than me, Ned always feels half ready to defend himself with, and it was my last semester, and I just had to finish my dissertation, and I took his course ages before we got together, and It was a joke, actually, at first, and all of it was a huge mistake.