"So... can I ask you something?" Ned keeps pace with Charlie, hands in his pockets, searching for some cheerier topic of conversation. He isn't sure he should really broach this, but he's going to regardless. "How long have you and Meyer..." he trails off, making a quick and vague gesture in the air with his hand. He doesn't really know the correct words to finish that sentence, and leaving it ambiguous is, he suspects, an easier way to avoid potentially offending Charlie.

With Meyer, it had seemed not only as if he didn't want Ned speaking about his relationship with Charlie to others, but as if he didn't want to discuss it with Ned to any degree whatsoever. Will the same be true of Charlie?