“Hi,” he says as politely as he can manage.
Ned gets a stiff nod and a glance from behind black-rimmed glasses. Well, that’s two of them who aren’t interested in a chat. Typical.
“Hey for your tea, can I get a name for the cup?” Pat asks, brandishing a marker.
“Professor Abbot.”
“Professor Abbot,” Pat says, his tongue between his teeth as he writes, the name a bold purple flourish that Pat underlines twice. “Professor—oh!”
“Pat,” Ned mutters. He shakes his head, though it only turns Pat’s surprise into a huge delighted smile.
“That Professor Abbot?” Pat laughs and draws a loopy, lopsided star on the cup.
Doctor, Abbot had also allowed himself to be called when Ned took his class. That had been four years ago and Ned still remembers the weight of that thick syllabus with Doctor Charles Henry Abbot, PhD printed across the top.
“Ned’s a big fan.” Pat grins. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
Ned ducks over his coffee. An entire semester of statistics with Abbot, and Ned doesn’t exactly want to get caught in a conversation. No, he quickly learned to steer well clear of Abbot and the austerity of those glasses, the perfect, precise part in his dark hair, and the exacting tailoring of his shirts.
Back before he’d known any better, he’d thought Abbot attractive, when Ned had newly joined the sociology department as a first-year doctoral student, and he’d spotted Abbot at the lectern that first class on regression analysis. He’d been happily married to Jen still, but hey, he could look—and slim, tall, and dark haired, Abbot had been something to look at. Like he walked out of a Brooks Brothers catalogue, Ned had thought, excited to get to work with a professor roughly his same age who openly dated men. What a treat it had seemed to have a colleague with a boyfriend.
Now, Ned hunches over his coffee and tries not to grimace.
“Good, uh, to see you,” Ned says, fitting a lid onto his cup. He’ll bring it upstairs to his and Pat’s apartment. He needs to take Baxter for a walk anyway. Whatever intrigue Ned once felt about Abbot, he’s long since decided he just looks stuffy, overdressed, and too straitlaced in those perfectly creased slacks and dress shirt, buttoned neatly at the cuffs.
“Anything else for you today?” Pat asks Abbot.
“Hot chocolate.”
Ned pauses, his hand looped under the strap of his backpack.
“With whipped cream,” Abbot adds.
All those years ago, Pat had taken to calling Abbot Chuckie H., after enough nights of Ned poking at his keyboard or pacing the café, a hand in his hair and a crinkled, creased problem set in his hand. Now, Pat grins at him, his purple marker hovering over the side of a new cup.
“Please,” Abbot says. “And sprinkles.”
“Sprinkles?” Pat’s mouth spreads into a wider smile. “Rainbow ones?”
“If you have them.”
“Sure do,” Pat says. “Hot chocolate with whipped cream and sprinkles? That’s Ned’s favorite drink.”
“It’s not,” Ned says.
“He always asks for extra sprinkles.” Pat winks at him. Smile, Pat’s taken to telling Ned, you’ve forgotten how.
Ned’s headache beats behind his eyes. “I don’t.” He tugs his bag higher on his shoulder. Pat’s ridiculous on a good day, and Ned hasn’t been having many of those lately. “Have a nice evening, Professor. Bye, Pat.”
“You’re not coming to the meeting?” Abbot asks.
Abbot’s got that clip to his words, an accent to how he speaks, though Ned’s always privately thought the guy’s voice is all the more stilted when aimed at him. And your chosen control variable? Abbot used to ask, standing at the front of the lecture hall, his eyes fixed on Ned’s. It’s been years since those classes and still whenever Ned sees him, he wants to tug at his collar.
Ned shrugs his bag higher, knowing it’s wrinkling his shirt. He’s done at the office until tomorrow, and if Abbot wants to wear a tie and keep it tightly knotted at this point in the day, that fits with his whole overly prim and proper schtick he seems to never let rest.
“I don’t have a meeting,” Ned says. He has Baxter to take for a long walk, an evening preparing for tomorrow’s classes, and hours to spend fretting over Chris’s email. Come see me. Ned’s stomach drops again. A good semester, he’d told himself just the other day as he packed his car and settled Baxter into the back seat next to Peggy’s empty car seat, his throat thick at the fact of driving away.
“Hmm.”
Just that. Just a low noise in Abbot’s throat, and then he’s collecting a giant cup topped with whipped cream and a frightening number of sprinkles. It should look ridiculous, the creases in Abbot’s slacks and that tower of cream threatening to slip down over his hand. It does look ridiculous, but still Abbot manages to aim a glance rife with dislike at Ned as he turns and leaves.
Ned fumbles for his phone. He clearly should’ve actually read his email because meeting tonight tops another message. Apparently, Abbot reads his email on the regular. Of course Abbot read his, he’s probably fundamentally incapable of failing any type of professional obligation.
Even while holding a hot chocolate covered in whipped cream and garish, flashy sprinkles.
Which Ned so very much wants to know the story behind, but he apparently has a meeting to get to. And he still has a dog to walk.
As he makes his way up the narrow, dark staircase to his and Pat’s apartment above the bar, their door rattles in its frame. Ned eases open the lock and eighty pounds of black and white fur barrels into him, wiggling and panting, a tail thumping against his knees.
“Easy there,” Ned says, a furry, fluffy head shoved into his hand to be petted as he drops his backpack. He steps back from the paws that land at his waist, carefully balancing his coffee. Baxter drops down and circles, tongue hanging from his mouth. “Where’s your leash? Go get your leash.”
Baxter scrambles to the coat rack and Ned’s sure the scratch of nails on the old wood boards can be heard downstairs in the café. Probably Baxter’s galumph back again too, his leash skittering along behind him, clutched in his teeth.
“You’re a genius,” Ned tells him, clipping the leash onto his collar. He gets his chin licked and he scruffs up the long fur behind Baxter’s ears. “Chris wouldn’t make you meet again about your dissertation, now would he? Yes, you’re a good boy.”
Baxter hurries down the staircase, and Ned opens the door onto the street for him, warm late afternoon air rushing in. This time last week, he was bringing Peggy down to her favorite park, Baxter trailing along and sniffing at the base of the slide. The park’s probably crowded right now as evening edges into Boston, everyone spilling out of work and the neighborhood kids celebrating their first day back at school. He rubs at his eyes. He should be there with Peggy tonight, reminding her again and again about waiting her turn for the swings instead of just bum-rushing them like Baxter when he sees a squirrel.
Knots of freshmen clog the paths of campus, and when they part there’re still crowds of tourists on their way to get a happy-hour drink and enjoy a late summer evening out on the town. Baxter dodges this way and that, sniffing bike racks and parked cars and a hapless baby in a stroller before Ned can quickly pull him back.