Chapter 29: Sounds Like We Need a Time Machine
"Of course," Andrew said. "Go ahead."
The waitress stepped away and a minute later three women settled into the chairs across from him, dropping shopping bags and unwinding scarves, the way people do when they've finally found a place to sit after being on their feet too long.
He wasn't paying much attention until he heard the name.
"Rachel, you're actually getting engaged to Barry — are you excited? Tell me you're excited."
"I'm so excited." The woman named Rachel pressed her hands flat on the table like she was steadying herself against the feeling. "I'm going to be a dentist's wife. I am going to be a dentist's wife." She said it like she was trying to make it feel real.
Andrew looked up.
He recognized her immediately — not from anywhere specific, just from the particular quality of her face, the kind of face that reads as familiar even when you've never been in the same room with it. She was exactly as advertised: dark hair, good bone structure, animated and bright in a way that filled whatever space she was in.
Rachel Green. Pre-pilot. Currently very much intending to marry Barry Farber, DDS.
The woman next to her — Mindy, one of the others had called her — was offering congratulations with genuine warmth. Andrew filed the name away, certain he knew it from somewhere, unable to immediately place it.
He looked back at his cheesecake.
He knew enough about Rachel's history to have complicated feelings about the idea of pursuing anything there, even if the circumstances had been different. He knew too much, full stop — about most of these people, their patterns, their histories, the specific textures of their romantic lives. That knowledge was useful professionally and socially. In a personal context it mostly just made things strange.
He finished the cheesecake, drank the last of his tea, stacked his plates neatly, and left a good tip. The three women across from him had moved on to discussing venues and ring styles and weren't paying him any attention.
He picked up his jacket and left.
First encounter with Rachel Green: unremarkable, one-sided, conducted entirely over dessert. Noted.
Monica's apartment. 2:20 in the afternoon.
He knocked twice and heard scrambling from inside before the door opened — Phoebe, slightly breathless, smiling wide.
"Andrew!" She pulled him into a hug before he'd fully processed that she was going to.
He hugged back, slightly confused, and looked over her shoulder into the apartment.
The living room had been rearranged. There was a long table against one wall covered in snacks — the serious kind, not just chips, actually arranged. Board games were stacked on the coffee table and spread across the floor. The Terminator was on the TV, currently paused. Someone had hung a small banner.
Ross was standing near the couch looking pleased with himself. Chandler was in the armchair with a drink, affecting indifference and mostly succeeding. Monica was in the middle of the room radiating the particular energy of someone who had been planning something for several days and was now extremely invested in whether it went well.
"Is this—" Andrew looked around. "Am I late? Was there a specific time?"
"No, no, you're not late, there was no specific time," Monica said quickly, with the tone of someone managing a situation. "I just — I should have explained it better. I didn't explain it better. That's on me."
"It's fine—"
"It's completely fine," Chandler said from the armchair, "but can we go back to the Terminator? Because whatever I accidentally put on before had a lot of feelings in it and I'd like to not have them."
The room went quiet in the specific way rooms go quiet when someone says something that lands slightly wrong.
Andrew looked at the paused TV screen. Looked at Chandler. "Sounds like what we really need," he said, "is a time machine."
A beat.
Then everyone laughed — the slightly too-loud laugh of a group that needed to release pressure and was grateful for the opening. The awkwardness broke apart and dispersed and that was the end of it.
Chandler pointed at Andrew. "See, he gets it."
Monica put the Terminator back on, and they settled into the afternoon.
It fell into a natural rhythm quickly, the way things do when a group of people have already figured out their basic compatibility and just need to spend time together to confirm it. Chandler kept up a running commentary on the movie that was funnier than it had any right to be. Phoebe asked questions about the plot that were somehow both completely literal and deeply philosophical.
Ross had opinions about the plausibility of time travel that nobody asked for and everyone engaged with anyway.
Andrew sat on the couch and let it happen around him and felt, somewhere underneath the surface, genuinely comfortable.
At five o'clock he checked his watch and started to get up.
"Gym," he said. "I've got a class at six-thirty. I should eat first."
"Eat here," Monica said, already standing. "I'll cook now, you eat, then go straight. It's faster than going home."
Andrew considered the geometry of it. "Only if I help."
"Deal."
They left the others to the TV and went into the kitchen. Monica worked with the focused economy of someone who'd spent years in professional kitchens — everything efficient, nothing wasted, the mise en place instinctive rather than deliberate. Andrew fell into step beside her, handling prep, asking questions when something she did was worth understanding.
The questions were mostly the right ones. He could see her recalibrate slightly — the way a skilled person does when they realize the person they're working with actually knows what they're doing.
They talked about heat and timing and the specific logic of building flavor in layers, and somewhere in the middle of it Andrew felt something shift in the accumulated weight of what he knew about cooking — not a dramatic change, more like a lock finding its combination.
He'd been close for a while. Working next to someone operating at Monica's level, even for forty minutes, had been enough to close the gap.
He filed it away and focused on dinner.
When the food was in the oven and there was nothing left to actively manage, Monica shooed him toward the balcony. "Get some air. Ten minutes."
He pushed the window open and stepped out.
The balcony faced the building across the way — close enough to see into the opposite apartments if the lights were on, the way New York buildings always were, everyone's lives framed in lit rectangles. He breathed in the evening air, let his mind sort through what it needed to sort through, and looked out across the gap between the buildings.
Movement in the window directly across caught his eye.
He looked.
"Oh," he said, very quietly, to himself.
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