“Enough.” Ned tugs at his leash again when Baxter squirms his way into the crowd waiting to cross at the light. Ignoring him, Baxter manages to wind between pairs of legs. And of course, he zeroes in on a pair of shiny dress shoes that don’t look like they belong to anyone interested in being examined by an excitable dog.
Ned looks up and—no. No, not at all. Because it’s Abbot who Baxter has managed to find.
“Sorry,” Ned says. The Chuckster, Charlie Horrible, C. H. Asshole, Pat had called Abbot as Ned received his midterm grades that semester in Abbot’s course. “Baxter, no, leave it.”
Abbot blinks at him from behind those black-rimmed glasses, his hands still full of his tea and that hot chocolate topped with its tower of whipped cream. That must be distain coloring his expression. That or pure disgust that Baxter’s still sniffing so enthusiastically over his shoelaces.
Ned grabs for Baxter’s collar and pulls him back. “Heel, you hear?”
“Ned,” Abbot says in greeting.
Mr. Coppola, Abbot’d called him once, that one and only time Ned had thought it would be a good idea to go to his office hours. Edward, it had been next and even now Ned wants to cringe. Ned shifts his weight, eyeing the red light across the street.
This isn’t as bad as that afternoon stuck in Abbot’s office, Ned’s midterm on the desk between them and a pen in Abbot’s hand. Ned had spent that hour finding anywhere in the room to look besides Abbot bent over and writing until red ink had spilled across the margins in tidy, neat rows of corrections and hardly any of Ned’s original work was visible through the shine of it.
“How was your summer?” Ned makes himself ask as the orange hand gives way to the white walk figure.
Anyone else in the department would make small talk on the way to the building that houses the sociology department, but this is Abbot—Professor Abbot—and he just crosses the street and says, “Fine.”
“Mine was good,” Ned says half a block later when Abbot still hasn’t asked in return. Of course he doesn’t ask—as far as Ned knows, the guy’s head is filled to the brim with statistical analyses and there’s no variable in there controlling for professional courtesy.
Ned glances at the hot chocolate again. All right, statistical analyses and rainbow sprinkles. Apparently.
Ned slows his pace as Baxter stops to sniff at a bench, letting Abbot get ahead of him, rolling his eyes at that straight, stiff back.
“Be good,” Ned tells Baxter, leaving him a bowl of water and looping his leash around a tree near the sociology building. And don’t get stolen by a homesick freshman, he should probably add. It wouldn’t be the first time Ned’s returned to find Baxter sprawled on his back, paws in the air as a huddle of students take turns scratching his belly.
With that tongue flopped out and tail wagging, Baxter’s inherent lack of dignity is an odd sort of look against the university’s white-trimmed brick buildings and the manicured grass of the quad. Ned had thought it beautiful when he’d first seen the campus, all of New England’s grandeur and Portland’s picturesque streets. He turns away from the sight and heads inside, halfheartedly shoving his shirt back into his pants in some semblance of professionalism. Lately, that same view of campus just makes him tired.
Ned plucks at his collar and tries to smooth out his slacks as he joins the professors filling the conference room. He’s always hated Chris’s insistence that Ned’s possibly on equal footing with them, as if Ned teaching a handful of classes is at all equivalent to being tenure-track faculty. He smiles and nods back greetings, his back itching as he lingers near the door, but Chris waves him in as soon as he spots him.
“Ned,” Chris calls out, smiling under his cap of white hair, his round cheeks as rosy as ever. He hugs Ned over the bulge of his stomach and then steps back, holding Ned by the shoulders. “You’ll really teach that course?”
“Yeah,” Ned says. No, he’d so much rather answer. “And I got your email about my dissertation. Do you have a minute to talk?”
“I’ll give you two minutes after this.” Chris nudges out a chair and pushes Ned toward it. “Come, sit, we’ll get started.”
Half of the faculty are on their phones and the rest are chatting with each other. Ned sits slowly, still trying to straighten his shirt. Maybe this won’t take long and he can get out of here. Or maybe what he needs to hear will be quick, and he can slip out and leave the real faculty to their evening here. Which would be all the better, so he doesn’t have to sit here with his committee members knowing his dissertation is still unfinished.
Come see me. His stomach clenches.
“Real quick,” Ned says, leaning across the table to catch Chris’s eye. “’Cause that last draft I sent you, you had said it was good, and I’m really hoping to be finished this semester, so—”
“It is good.” Chris’s smile only makes his cheeks redder as he turns on the projector. “That’s just it, Ned. We’re going to make it great.”
“Great.” It doesn’t need to be great. It needs to be finished. He tries for a smile of his own. “I’m trying to graduate this semester, and I’ve got some job applications—”
“Exactly.” Chris spreads his arms out, expansive in his cheer. “We’re going to get you hired by the best, Ned. Just the topic we’re discussing tonight.”
“We’re discussing my dissertation?” No, please.
“We’re talking about competition in academia.”
“Right. What?”
Ned’s phone buzzes against his thigh and he grabs for it, bumping his elbow against the chair next to him.
“Excuse me,” Abbot says. Ned looks up. Abbot had his hand resting on the back of that chair and Ned’s elbow is precipitously close to him.
There are other places the guy could choose to sit. Maybe this is what Abbot does for fun: stockpiles all the ways in which he can ruin Ned’s life, just as soon as Ned’s resolved to get himself back on track. A good semester, Ned had promised himself, and look at him, hours into it and stuck in this damn meeting already.
“Sorry,” Ned mutters and shifts his chair farther from Abbot’s.
“Sit, everyone. Henry, hi, hey, you two stay afterward, all right?” Chris points between Ned and Abbot, still smiling.
Ned’s stomach plummets. “Us?”
“Just for a quick second,” Chris says.
“Me and him?” Ned glances at Abbot. No, he wants to say. “Yeah, sure.”
Life Outside of Academia glows on the laptop Chris opens, and then up on the screen when he plugs in the projector. Abbot sets his tea in front of himself, the garish, bright purple of Pat’s writing marring the side, though that hot chocolate isn’t anywhere to be seen. Ned moves his chair to the side, trying to give him more room. Maybe he chugged it in his office. Maybe he runs on a steady diet of whipped cream, sprinkles, and sugar that fuels his haughty disdain whenever he sees Ned. The thought might make Ned smile, if his heart wasn’t going too fast, Chris’s Come see me banging through his mind.
Chris gives him a wink. “Ned, this talk will be just the ticket you’re looking for.”