Page 170 of The New Place

Abbot, maybe, it’ll be, taking the keys from Steve.

Weird as hell if he does. And it’d be better if Ned had liked the house less. If it was too far from his folks, or too huge, or too small, or in such disrepair he couldn’t imagine dealing with a roof, a septic system, or a foundation.

And maybe it is. It’s not like they saw an inspection report. Maybe the entire place is rotting, and that’d just be so very convenient.

“We can be flexible on price,” Steve says.

Free? Ned wants to ask. Cause that’d be close enough to what he needs. That, or Steve paying him to live there. He can dream, can’t he?

“If that makes a difference at all,” Steve continues. “I talked to Jess, and she said she’d be open to a lower price, if it got sold soon.”

“She really doesn’t want to hang onto it, huh?”

“Isn’t marriage fun?” Steve asks.

Fun. Yeah. Ned stabs at the button to start the coffee brewing.

“Though I’m sure you two are just fine with this stuff,” Steve says.

Ned nearly laughs. Had he and Jen been disagreeing so quickly after they got married? He can’t remember, not really, but even if they had, he wouldn’t have known to worry about it. He’d thought she was it for him, and had lived blissfully with that certainty up until she left him. “We’re figuring it out,” Ned says.

“Well, no matter what, you’re better than the lovely Louis,” Steve says.

Ned pulls his head up. “You knew him?”

“Knew him?” Steve laughs. “C’mon.”

But Ned just stares. Steve and Abbot did their doctorates together, and then Steve had gotten this job at Adams and Abbot had gone to Callahan and—and met Louis there?

No, Abbot had gone back to Geneva at some point in there. And Louis never lived in Portland. Did he? He didn’t work at Callahan, certainly, so Abbot didn’t meet him through teaching there. A conference? Ned wonders now, or some other academic context?

“He’s never said,” Ned says slowly.

Steve laughs again. “Well, I guess that’s Henry for you. Didn’t you wonder how Henry got tenure so young?”

“He’s pretty smart,” Ned offers and it sounds so weak.

“Okay, there’s an understatement,” Steve says. “I can’t even tell you what I had to suffer through being in the same courses as that man.”

“Well, I did have to take his class.”

“Fair. But imagine the entirety of our cohort, facing down a couple years of coursework, right? Then our qualifying exams, and the entire process of our dissertation, we figured we’d be together for a while, right? When I say I did my doctorate with Henry, what I really mean is that we started together and then he just casually left us all in the dust. Took extra courses like it was easy as anything, asked to take his exams early, and he must have sat down and written his dissertation in one shot, it seemed like, because all of a sudden he was done.”

What does this have to do with Louis? Ned doesn’t ask. He already, horribly, knows.

“Louis started a couple years before us, and Henry graduated with him,” Steve says. “Henry hit fast-forward while the rest of us were struggling to stay on track with our own timelines, and then off they went.”

Off to Europe, Ned can fill in with what little information he has. While Abbot tried to deal with the reality of his mom, and Louis was probably shitty as hell to him.

And Abbot carried on the momentum of his career that saw him finish his doctorate lightning-quick, and it’s landed him at Newbury, as if it was always meant to be.

The coffee pot beeps. Steve pours himself a cup, then holds the carafe out to Ned.

Numbly, Ned takes it. Abbot spent years catching up to Louis. That’s the kind of guy he’s used to being with. The one from that fancy Swiss university he went to, and then Louis, and however many others he isn’t talking about. And here Ned is, struggling to keep up to him.

“Anyway, you’re way better,” Steve says.

Ned splatters coffee onto his hand as he pours a cup.