Chapter 14: Ground Rules
The bedroom was quiet in the particular way rooms get quiet after they stop being loud.
Andrew sat with his back against the headboard, reached for the glass of water on the nightstand, and took a long drink. Outside the window, a taxi leaned on its horn for three full seconds and then stopped. New York went about its business.
"Okay," he said. "Can we talk now?"
"Mm." Bonnie was sprawled on her stomach at the other end of the bed, chin propped on her hand, looking at him with the expression of someone who found the concept of talking significantly less interesting than the activity they'd just concluded.
"Actual talking. With words."
"I know what talking is."
"Good." He set the glass down. "Because I have some things to say and I need you to actually hear them, not just wait for me to stop."
Bonnie rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. "Is this the part where you kick us out?"
"Nobody's getting kicked out."
She looked at him sideways. "Then what?"
"Rules," Andrew said. "Three of them. While you're here."
She sat up slightly. Her expression shifted into something cautious, the particular wariness of someone who'd learned that conditions usually came with a catch. "Let's hear them."
"No smoking in the apartment." He held up a finger. "I mean it — not by the window, not in the bathroom, not at two in the morning when you think I'm asleep. Outside or not at all."
Bonnie's jaw tightened. She looked like she was about to argue. Then something moved across her face — some calculation he couldn't quite follow — and she let out a breath. "Fine."
He'd expected a fight. The absence of one was almost more unsettling.
"No coming home like you did last night." He held up a second finger. "I don't know exactly what's going on with you and I'm not asking you to explain it, but whatever you're running from, you don't get to bring it back here in that condition. Not with Christie here."
Silence.
"And third." He paused. "This week — however long you're here — you actually spend time with her. Not just in the same apartment. With her. Eat meals with her. Watch TV with her. Be her mom for a week. That's all I'm asking."
Bonnie was quiet for a long moment. She was looking at the wall, not at him, and he couldn't read what was happening behind her eyes.
"You're not her dad," she said finally. Not mean — just flat. Factual.
"I know."
"So why do you care?"
Andrew thought about Christie at the kitchen table that morning, washing her own plate without being asked, making herself as small and unobtrusive as possible. Eight years old and already an expert at not being a burden.
"Because somebody should," he said.
Another silence. Then Bonnie swung her legs off the bed, pulled on her shirt, and stood up. "You're weird," she said, which seemed to be her version of okay. She walked out without looking back.
Andrew stayed where he was for a minute. Then he got up, got dressed, and went to figure out the rest of his day.
Christie was on the couch when he came out, sitting very still in the particular way she had — not relaxed, just contained — staring at the blank television.
Andrew stopped.
"You can turn it on," he said. "The remote's right there."
She looked at the remote. Then at him. The question on her face was completely clear: am I actually allowed to?
"Christie." He crossed to the TV, turned it on, and put the remote on the cushion next to her. "For however long you're here, this is your home too. You don't have to ask."
She looked at the screen. Then back at him. Something shifted in her expression — not quite a smile, but the precursor to one, the face a kid makes right before they let themselves believe something.
"Okay," she said quietly.
He grabbed his jacket and his keys. "I'm going to the store. Don't open the door for anyone." He paused at the door. "Is there anything you want?"
She thought about it with the seriousness of someone who wasn't used to being asked. "Cap'n Crunch," she said finally, very quietly, like she expected to be told no.
"Done," he said, and left.
The grocery run took the better part of an hour and most of what was left in his wallet. He bought systematically — flour, milk, eggs, butter, a box of Cap'n Crunch, apples, a bag of potatoes, and three steaks that were on sale and looked decent enough to do something with. Basics. The kind of shopping that meant you could feed people for several days without spending money you didn't have.
He got home just before noon. Christie had found a Saved by the Bell rerun and was watching it with the focused attention of someone who had been given something and was determined to appreciate it properly.
Andrew unloaded the groceries and made lunch — pancakes, because they were fast and he had everything he needed, and because it's genuinely difficult to make a child unhappy with pancakes. He sliced strawberries, added a drizzle of maple syrup, put the Cap'n Crunch in a bowl on the side for reasons that were more symbolic than nutritional.
The smell of butter and batter brought Bonnie out of the bedroom looking rumpled and squinting like the kitchen light had personally offended her. She sat down at the table without a word and ate two full plates, which Andrew took as a reasonable sign of life.
Lunch was simple. It was fine. It was a meal that three people ate in the same room, which was more than it had been that morning.
Afterward Bonnie went back to bed. Christie returned to the couch. Andrew cleaned up, sat at the kitchen table with his coffee, and gave himself ten minutes to just sit.
By two o'clock the restlessness had won. He put on his jacket and went for a walk.
He hadn't done much exploring since he'd landed in New York — the first weeks had been too consumed with figuring out the basics, the gig, the apartment, the daily arithmetic of making rent. He'd stayed close to home. But the afternoon was clear and he had nowhere specific to be for a few hours, and the city had a way of being easier to think in when you were moving through it rather than sitting in it.
He walked south along Columbus Avenue, then cut east. The neighborhood shifted gradually — bodegas giving way to boutiques, the sidewalks wider, the foot traffic more purposeful. He wasn't looking for anything. He was just walking.
He almost walked past it.
It was tucked between a dry cleaner and a bookstore, the kind of small storefront that had clearly been there long enough to stop needing to announce itself. A hand-lettered sign above the door: Magnolia-style pastries in the window, a chalkboard menu visible through the glass. Not a bakery exactly — more of a café with serious intentions, the kind of place that had marble-topped tables inside and served proper coffee alongside whatever came out of the kitchen.
Andrew stopped on the sidewalk.
Through the window he could see it was doing respectable afternoon business — a few tables of women with shopping bags, a couple sharing something from a plate, a guy in the corner with a book and what looked like a very good slice of something.
He stood there for a minute, not going in. Just looking.
He wasn't hungry. He'd eaten lunch an hour ago. But he found himself cataloging what he could see from the sidewalk — the height of the pastry case, the handwriting on the chalkboard, the way the woman behind the counter moved with the unhurried efficiency of someone who knew exactly where everything was.
He'd need to come back when he had money. Actually sit down. Order something. Pay attention to what they were doing and how they were doing it.
He filed it away — the block, the name above the door, the approximate crowd at two on a weekday afternoon — and kept walking.
The afternoon had given him something to think about. That felt like enough.
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