Chapter 9: Afternoon, Interrupted
"Eat slower," Andrew said, setting a glass of ginger ale on the coffee table in front of Bonnie. "It's not going anywhere."
Bonnie ignored this advice and kept going. She ate the way people eat when they haven't had a real meal in a while and aren't interested in pretending otherwise — focused, unselfconscious, working through the bowl of pot roast with complete dedication. Christie, beside her, was doing the same thing in miniature, both cheeks packed, moving through her portion with the steady, efficient purpose of a small animal who has learned not to take meals for granted.
Andrew sat back in the armchair with his own bowl and ate and thought.
How did I end up here?
He ran it back. Two days ago he'd been sitting on the steps outside this building eating a street cart hot dog and feeling sorry for himself. Since then: Phoebe had given him her number, he'd gotten his bar gig back, he'd spent a night hugging the bathroom floor, he'd gone grocery shopping, and somewhere in the middle of all that he'd acquired a mother and daughter who were currently eating pot roast on his couch.
The how wasn't complicated. It was guilt at having disturbed them initially, a passing moment of something that might have been loneliness, and the specific soft spot he'd always had for kids in difficult situations. None of it was calculated. It had just happened the way things happen when you stop overthinking and just respond to what's in front of you.
He looked at Christie. She had sauce on her chin and hadn't noticed. She was eating with the single-minded focus of an eight-year-old who wasn't going to be distracted by anything as trivial as table manners, and it struck Andrew again — the same thing that had struck him when she'd stood in his hallway yesterday with that backpack and those too-serious eyes — that there was a kid somewhere under all the armor. A real one.
She caught him looking and immediately straightened up and wiped her chin with her sleeve.
Andrew looked back at his food.
She's eight years old and she already knows how to put her face back on, he thought. That's not a skill kids are supposed to have.
Kids who learned to be watchful and self-sufficient that young usually learned it because someone made them. He didn't know Bonnie's full story and wasn't going to pry into it. But he could read the shape of it well enough.
He was pulled out of his thoughts by Bonnie setting her bowl down on the coffee table with a satisfied finality.
"That was really good," she said. She didn't say it the way people say things to be polite. She said it like a fact.
"There's more in the pot if you want it."
Bonnie picked up the ginger ale and sipped it slowly, elbows on her knees, studying him with those narrowed, assessing eyes. The frantic energy from yesterday was completely gone. In its place was something quieter and harder to read — the look of someone running a calculation they weren't ready to show the work on.
"You cook like this all the time?" she asked.
"I'm relearning," Andrew said. Which was true in more ways than he could explain.
Bonnie nodded slowly, like that answer confirmed something. She didn't push it.
By the time the dishes were in the sink and Christie had drifted back to the couch and the tail end of a Garfield rerun, Andrew had started thinking about Monica's dinner.
He had about two hours.
He looked at what was left on the stove. The pot roast had turned out well — the second pass, with better seasoning and a splash of beer for depth, was noticeably better than the first attempt. He had enough left over to bring something. But showing up to someone's apartment for the first time with a container of your own leftovers felt slightly off. Too casual. Not enough effort.
He thought about it.
Bonnie was running water in the bathroom. Christie had fully surrendered to Garfield again, lying on her stomach on the carpet now, chin in her hands, feet in the air.
Andrew opened the fridge. He had eggs, butter, a partial bar of baker's chocolate he'd found at the back of Evan's pantry still in its wrapper, sugar, flour. Classic pantry staples for a man who never cooked but impulse-bought groceries when drunk.
Brownies, he thought. Bring brownies.
Phoebe was a vegetarian. Brownies were safe. Monica, based on approximately forty minutes of conversation, was clearly someone who cared about food — bringing something homemade rather than a bottle of wine from the corner store felt like the right register. And if he was going to be honest about it, he wanted to practice.
He pulled out a mixing bowl and got started.
[Cooking (Beginner): 38/100]
The feedback from the skill panel was becoming more useful as he went — not just a number ticking up, but a kind of internal sense of what he was doing right and wrong. The first batch of pot roast this afternoon had been good. The second batch had been better, and he'd understood why it was better: the sear, the patience, the way the flavors built when you didn't rush them. The panel wasn't teaching him so much as it was making visible the learning that was already happening.
He creamed the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, folded in the chocolate and flour. He found a square baking pan in the cabinet — still in its packaging, another one of Evan's acquisitions — greased it, poured the batter in, and slid it into the oven.
[Cooking (Beginner): 44/100]
He set a timer, washed the bowl, and leaned against the counter.
Through the wall, he could hear — faintly, barely — movement from the hallway. Not the heavy boot-fall of this morning's visitors. Just the ordinary sounds of the building settling into its afternoon.
Andrew let out a slow breath.
Christie was asleep.
She'd gone down sideways on the couch without ceremony, feet tucked under her, cheek on the armrest, completely out. The TV was still going softly. Garfield had given way to an afternoon news broadcast that nobody was watching.
Bonnie came out of the bedroom, freshly washed, and stood in the doorway looking at her daughter. Something moved across her face — quick, unguarded — and then it was gone.
"Let her sleep," Andrew said quietly. "The brownies need another fifteen minutes and then I have to head out. You can stay as long as you need."
Bonnie looked at him.
"You're going somewhere?"
"Dinner. Some people from the bar." He paused. "You and Christie are fine here. There's more pot roast in the pot, help yourselves. Lock up when you leave — I'll leave my spare key on the counter."
He said it the way you say things when you want them to sound practical and not like what they actually are, which was an open door.
Bonnie was quiet for a moment.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked. Not hostile. Genuinely asking.
Andrew thought about it.
"Because you and your daughter needed a meal," he said. "And I had food. That's it."
Bonnie looked at him for another beat. Then she looked at Christie sleeping on the couch, one small hand curled under her chin.
"Okay," she said softly.
The oven timer went off.
Andrew turned back to the kitchen.
[Cooking (Beginner): 51/100]
The brownies came out clean around the edges, slightly fudgy in the center, smelling exactly the way a first-floor apartment in Greenwich Village ought to smell on a fall afternoon. Andrew cut them into squares, wrapped them in foil, and wrote Monica + Phoebe — brownies, made today on a piece of paper and set it on top so there was no ambiguity about what he was bringing and why.
He changed his shirt, grabbed his keys, and paused at the door.
Christie was still asleep. Bonnie had settled into the armchair with the ginger ale, watching the news with her arms folded, not quite relaxed but not quite braced either.
Andrew left the spare key on the counter.
"Don't let anyone in," he said.
"I know how doors work," Bonnie replied.
He left.
On the stairs, headed up to the fourth floor, Andrew turned the afternoon over in his head. Monica, Phoebe, dinner, a building full of people he was starting to recognize.
According to what he half-remembered, Joey Tribbiani had met the group at a bar — the same bar that would eventually be gutted and turned into Central Perk — and had been around since at least this year. Which meant tonight might not just be Monica and Phoebe.
It's fine, Andrew thought. Just be a person. Don't be weird about knowing things.
He shifted the foil-wrapped brownies under his arm and knocked on the door of apartment 20.
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