Chapter 21: The Geller Stubborn Streak
The next morning. Breakfast.
"You look rough," Bonnie said, with entirely too much satisfaction in her voice. "Bad night?"
Andrew took a slow breath and let it go. Getting into it with her in front of Christie wasn't worth it. He picked up his sandwich and took a bite instead of answering.
Last night had gotten away from him fast. Phoebe had a strong personality on a normal day, and Monica — well, Monica was Monica. Put the two of them in the same room with something to compete over, and Andrew had essentially ceased to exist as a person. He'd become a subject of dispute, passed back and forth while the two of them went at it with the focused energy of people who had completely forgotten why they'd started.
Monica got pulled away eventually — her chef's hat back on, her boss needing something — which technically made Phoebe the last one standing, though it didn't feel like a win for anyone. Andrew had quietly paid the bill while they were mid-argument and the rest of Phoebe's evening plans had quietly collapsed.
He wasn't bitter about it. He was just done. There was a version of that dynamic that was charming and a version that was exhausting, and last night had landed firmly in the second category.
Monica was driven and intense and needed to be the one in charge of every room she walked into. Most people found that hard to be around for extended periods. Andrew understood it, but understanding something and wanting to be at the center of it were different things.
Phoebe was a different kind of complicated. Who plans a date as a move in an argument with a friend? The logic was so particular to her that he couldn't even be annoyed at it. It was just very, very Phoebe.
"Eat your breakfast," Andrew said, to no one in particular.
Christie was doing a poor job of hiding her smile. Bonnie wasn't hiding hers at all — she laughed openly, shoulders shaking, the kind of laugh that came from somewhere genuine.
It was good to see, actually. She'd been worn down lately, moving through the days with a flatness that came with what she was pushing through. Withdrawal wasn't a straight line and it wasn't a short one. The fact that her habit hadn't been severe, that she'd stayed away from the worst of it, gave her better odds — but better odds still meant rough days. Seeing her laugh like that was something.
Andrew looked down at his plate and caught Christie's smile out of the corner of his eye — small, private, like she was keeping it to herself — and felt something in his chest loosen without meaning to. Kids had a way of doing that.
Then something nudged his foot under the table.
He reached down and pressed a firm hand over Bonnie's foot before it could go further, gave her a look that communicated several things clearly, and finished the rest of his sandwich in four bites. "Done. Good breakfast."
He stood, collected his plate, and started toward the kitchen. He knew that look on Bonnie's face. He was not engaging with whatever she'd decided she wanted. His lower back was still recovering from earlier in the week, and he had actual plans for the morning.
Gym first. Then the public library — he'd been meaning to get into the sports medicine and conditioning section, find something useful on building core strength the right way. Something sustainable.
He grabbed his bag with his gym clothes and toiletries and headed for the door before the situation could develop.
Bonnie made a sound behind him. He didn't turn around.
The gym at seven-thirty was already busier than he'd expected.
He'd barely made it through the door when someone flagged him down.
"Andrew! Hey, you're here!"
Ross was across the room, waving, sweating through what appeared to be a pink linen shirt — the kind with a slight sheen — paired with fitted capri pants. He looked like he'd dressed for a beach resort and taken a wrong turn.
Andrew stepped slightly to the side as Ross's hand came in for the shoulder-pat. "Morning, Ross. You've been here a while."
"Since six-fifteen," Ross said, lowering his voice slightly. "Carol likes to come early."
He said it with the particular tone of a man who'd rearranged his morning around someone else's preference and was choosing to frame it as a personal commitment to fitness.
"Andrew." Carol's voice came from the row of treadmills. She was in a yellow tank top and matching leggings, a white towel over one shoulder, moving at an easy pace. She smiled when she caught his eye. "Morning."
"Morning," Andrew said, and found somewhere appropriate to look.
He stowed his bag in a locker, ran through a quick warm-up, and got on a treadmill. Ross migrated over immediately and fell into a jog beside him, the way people do when they've been waiting for someone to talk to.
"So I heard Phoebe took you to Monica's restaurant last night," Ross said, grinning.
"She did."
"And?"
"And Monica came out of the kitchen, and at that point I became irrelevant to the proceedings." Andrew kept his pace steady. "They were playing a game I wasn't a part of. I paid the check and left when they were mid-round."
Ross laughed — a real one, unguarded. "Monica's been like that since she was a kid, I'm telling you. One time at Thanksgiving she—" He was off, into a story, animated and relieved to have someone to talk at.
Andrew listened and ran and kept the rhythm going. There was something a little sad under Ross's cheerfulness that he recognized and didn't comment on. This was the stretch where things between Ross and Carol were quietly coming apart — not dramatically, not loudly, just slowly and inevitably. Ross knew something was wrong. He didn't know the shape of it yet.
There wasn't anything useful Andrew could say about that, so he said nothing.
He did, however, notice the two guys who'd drifted over from the free weights and set up on either side of them, and the looks being exchanged in the mirror.
"Ross," Andrew said.
"—and she wouldn't let it go for three years, I'm serious, three years she brought it up at every—"
"Ross."
"What?"
Andrew glanced pointedly at the pink shirt. "You might want to call Chandler. Tell him where you are."
Ross blinked. Then he got it. "Oh come on. No. The shirt is fashionable. This is a perfectly normal color for a man to wear."
"I didn't say it wasn't."
"You implied it."
"I implied you might want company," Andrew said neutrally. "Chandler would appreciate the workout."
"This is a very popular look right now," Ross said, with the certainty of a man who had done research. "It's in GQ. I can show you the page."
"I believe you."
"You don't sound like you believe me."
"Ross." Andrew stepped off the treadmill. "I believe you. The shirt is fine. I'm going to go do weights."
He could hear Ross behind him, still making his case to no one in particular as he walked away.
The Geller sibling thing was something else. Monica needed to win every argument. Ross needed to be right — those were different drives, but they came from the same place. It was wired into both of them so deep they probably couldn't see it from the inside.
He'd watched Ross on the show go to genuinely absurd lengths to defend a position. We were on a break had basically become the man's epitaph.
Some hills people just chose to die on. The pink shirt, apparently, was one of Ross's.
Andrew found an open bench, loaded the bar at a reasonable weight, and got to work.
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