Chapter 19: An Invitation from Phoebe
Apartment.
Three knocks at the door — firm, evenly spaced.
The three of them were eating lunch when it happened, and all three stopped at the same moment.
"I'll get it." Andrew pushed back his chair and stood. It wasn't gallantry exactly, more practicality. If whoever was on the other side of that door was trouble, better that Bonnie and Christie stayed out of sight.
He crossed to the door and checked the peephole. The tension in his shoulders dropped. He unlocked the door and opened it.
"Phoebe. How'd you know where I live?"
Phoebe opened her mouth, held up one finger like she was about to explain, then apparently decided that was more effort than the situation required. "I asked around. Anyway — good news. That thing with your neighbor? You don't need to worry about it anymore. It's handled."
Andrew hadn't planned to push her on the first part. The second part was the part that mattered. He felt something loosen in his chest — Bonnie's situation had been sitting at the back of his mind all morning. "You want to come in? Have some lunch?"
"Sure!" Phoebe said brightly, and stepped inside before he'd finished moving out of the way.
Bonnie was already up from the table, carrying her plate toward the kitchen. The two women passed each other in the narrow entryway. Phoebe looked at her — a long, unhurried look, the kind that took stock without being obvious about it — and said nothing. Walked straight to the dining table and sat down.
Phoebe had been around. She had good instincts about people, the kind you develop from years of reading rooms and navigating situations before they became problems. One look at Bonnie and she'd filed her away in a category and moved on.
Christie had already finished eating. She carried her plate to the kitchen at a near-jog, then disappeared into her bedroom without a word.
"Did you make this?" Phoebe asked, already eating, looking genuinely interested.
"Yeah." Andrew sat back down. "Cooking's something I've actually been getting into lately. Long-term, I've been thinking about maybe doing a food truck. Or a small place, if the math ever worked out."
Phoebe stopped mid-bite. "Wait — what about music? You're not going to keep going with that?"
Andrew gave a small, honest shrug. "Phoebe, you've seen what I do. I play a coffee shop on weeknights. Pushing harder on that isn't going to change what it is. And once you start treating something you love like a job, you stop loving it." He paused. "I don't want that to happen with music."
Phoebe chewed slowly, considering this. She nodded — not at the first part, but at the second. It tracked with how she thought about things. She'd never charged for her sidewalk performances, and she wasn't sure she ever would. Some things were worth keeping separate from money.
"So," she said, setting down her fork. "Are you free tonight? We should get dinner. Somewhere actually good."
"Sure," Andrew said. "And I'm buying — you went out of your way for Bonnie's situation. It's the least I can do."
Phoebe's face lit up. "Deal. Meet me at the coffee house at five-thirty?"
"Five-thirty," he confirmed.
The previous subject was already gone from her expression, replaced by something lighter. She was like that — whatever was behind her was behind her.
They talked for a while after that. Music, mostly. She had opinions about everything: the acoustics on different subway platforms, which parks had the best afternoon foot traffic for performing, a bassist she'd jammed with in Tompkins Square who she was about eighty percent sure was actually a wizard. Andrew listened more than he talked. He didn't have many good stories from before, and the ones he did have weren't things he could share.
"See you tonight." Phoebe stood when she was done, gave him a look at the door that was somewhere between friendly and something else, and headed out with the easy, unhurried energy of someone who was always on her way somewhere good.
"See you tonight," he said, and closed the door.
He went through the apartment on autopilot after that — cleared the table, started a load of laundry, swept the kitchen floor. Ordinary, grounding work. When he finally came out to the living room to catch his breath, Bonnie was on the couch with a nail file, working on her toenails like she'd been installed there.
Andrew stared at her for a moment.
"Bonnie. Do some chores. You're not a guest."
Bonnie made a sound that might have been agreement and kept filing.
The argument that followed was brief and physical and settled the matter in the way that certain arguments between them got settled. An hour later Andrew was in the shower telling himself he needed to think more carefully about the living situation, and Bonnie was leaning against the headboard looking entirely unbothered.
"Works every time," she said.
Andrew didn't answer that.
He got dressed. "I won't be back for dinner. Can you two manage?"
"The thing with the woman from earlier?" Bonnie asked, without any particular emphasis.
"It's not like that. We're friends."
Bonnie smiled at the ceiling. "You sure about that?"
Andrew paused.
It was a fair question, actually. He was open about a lot of things — he'd been through enough in his life, before and after, to not be precious about most of it. But he also knew the difference between something that was clean and something that got complicated. And Phoebe's history with relationships was, charitably, eventful. She wasn't careless — she just moved through people the way she moved through everything else, with warmth and velocity and very little looking back.
He didn't want to become part of that pattern. He also didn't want to lose the friendship, which was real and worth keeping.
"Friends," he said again, with more certainty this time.
Bonnie picked up her nail file again. "Don't care either way."
Andrew grabbed his guitar from beside the door and headed out.
He walked to Central Park, found a decent spot near one of the main paths where foot traffic was steady, and set up. He wasn't expecting much — maybe enough for groceries, maybe nothing. But the practice was the point as much as the money. He ran through scales, worked on a chord progression he'd been developing, played a few things straight through.
He wasn't chasing a music career. He'd been clear-eyed about that for a while now. But skill built on skill, and there was no reason to let it go dormant. He'd been thinking lately about adding other instruments — harmonica was practical, portable, the kind of thing you could carry anywhere. Ocarina, maybe, if he ever found the patience for it.
The longer-term picture, the one he let himself think about when the immediate list wasn't pressing in too hard, looked something like this: a vehicle, an open road, enough instruments to fill the back seat, enough money to not need to be anywhere in particular. A few years out, maybe. Possibly more.
He played until the light started changing, counted what he'd made, and headed back toward the coffee house.
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