I, of course, didn’t mention Madeline to Lance or Preston. For the past few years, Preston has been encouraging me to date, to “get back in the game,” as he puts it. A year and a half earlier, he and his wife, Kelly, set me up on a date with a professor in the Modern Languages Department, a woman my age who had recently divorced. I went along, more than anything else because I’d run out of plausible excuses to avoid it. The woman was pleasant enough, and our conversation about campus gossip and national politics demonstrated we had plenty in common. But that was as far as I wanted it to go. The idea of going any further, of letting my guard down and opening myself up to another person in a real way, still felt like a bridge too far. I never asked for a second date, and I’d heard the woman recently married a software engineer who works for a corporation in Lexington. “She’s over the moon,” Kelly said.

I reach the welcome warmth of my house. I feed Grendel and leave him to his messy chomping while I shower and get ready for a day of teaching, starting with a creative-writing class at nine. The hot water helps clear the cobwebs. The shaving makes me feel like a human being.

Preston didn’t let the subject of my “friend” go last night. He kept asking who she was and what my intentions were toward her. I finally lied and said she was my neighbor up the street. I told him we were just getting to know each other, but nothing physical had occurred yet.

Preston slapped me on the knee and looked at Lance. “Can you believe the way the boy’s life has picked up? New book. New ladylove. Tenure. What more could he want?”

“He smells like a rose, doesn’t he?” Lance said in his arch way. “He wrote a book and got rich. It’s better than having him moping around the cemetery late at night like a grave robber.”

And we drank more, toasting my good fortune.

I felt like a fraud, accepting their praise. And I felt afraid, knowing Madeline was out there.

I dress quickly because I’m running late. My phone chimes. A text from Preston.

Got time to swing by before class? Need to tell you something.

What could he want?

Sure.

I have classes all day, and now a meeting with Preston in the morning. I tell myself to try to squeeze in a trip to the bank. Or at least a call to see if I can get my hands on any money. If Madeline wants proof that I’m not rich, all she needs to see is me rushing off to work the day after the book came out. That’s life for most writers: squeezing a book release in between the day job.