Chapter 37: The Guy Who Threw Out the Rulebook
Chandler had disappeared shortly after his cryptic warning — something about heading home to get acquainted with his new roommate situation, delivered over his shoulder as he collected his jacket and made for the door with the energy of a man who had somewhere more interesting to be.
Andrew stayed.
He told himself it was curiosity. He found a stool at the bar, ordered a club soda, and pulled out the boxing book he'd borrowed from the library earlier in the week. It was the third one he'd worked through in the past several days, and he was building a reasonable theoretical foundation — footwork, guard positions, the biomechanics of a proper jab versus a cross, how weight transfer worked through a combination.
The problem was that reading about boxing and actually doing boxing were two completely separate activities, and his skill panel seemed to share this opinion. He'd activated the skill two days ago, done what felt like a legitimate amount of reading and studying, and the experience counter had not moved a single point. It was still sitting at zero with the particular stubbornness of something that knew it was being attempted incorrectly.
The panel wasn't a shortcut. He'd established that early on. It worked with him, tracked genuine development, filled in gaps once he had a real framework — but it couldn't be fooled by half-efforts or theoretical knowledge that hadn't been tested in practice. To make progress in boxing, he was going to need to actually hit something, with someone who could tell him whether he was hitting it correctly.
He made a note to look into the boxing coaching options at the gym and turned a page.
He was also, if he was being straight with himself, avoiding his apartment.
Christie was there.
She'd shown up that afternoon with her backpack and her carefully composed expression and about four sentences that summed up the adoptive family situation with brutal efficiency:
they'd wanted the government subsidy more than a child, they'd had a kid already, and the moment the social worker left they'd made Christie's position in the household very clear. Small attic room. No seat at the table. The particular taxonomy of being tolerated rather than wanted.
So she'd left and come here, and Andrew had let her in, and now she was on his couch and he was at a bar reading boxing theory instead of going home to have a conversation he wasn't ready to have.
He'd noticed something in the way she'd told the story — too clean, too level, no anger in it. Christie had Bonnie's blood and Bonnie's instincts, and Bonnie's instinct in a bad situation was to come out swinging, not to deliver a calm factual summary. The composure meant she'd planned this, or someone had.
He thought about what Bonnie had said in the visiting room. I'm her mother. I understand her better than you do.
Yeah. She'd seen this coming. She'd pointed Christie at him from a jail cell and trusted her daughter to find the door.
Andrew closed the book.
The question of what to do about Christie was not a small question. It had layers that unfolded the more he looked at it.
The adoption center would have paperwork, and the family that had taken her in might not care enough to report her missing — plenty of kids slipped through that gap and ended up on the street, which was its own category of outcome he wasn't willing to let happen. That part he could probably manage.
The harder question was what it meant for his life going forward. He was twenty-one, single, living alone, with an income that was becoming stable but was built on plans that still had moving parts.
Taking in a ten-year-old in any permanent sense meant a decade of thinking about another person before he thought about himself. School, stability, bringing people home — everything filtered through the question of what was appropriate with a kid in the apartment.
He was, by his own honest assessment, a selfish person. Not cruel, but self-directed. He'd built his whole adult life, in this iteration and the previous one, around minimizing obligation and maximizing freedom of movement.
And then there was the Eric situation.
He'd been so close. The perfect roommate, professionally surrounded by models, with a sister in the industry, practically delivered to his door by the narrative logic of the universe.
And now Christie was on his couch.
"Damn it," Andrew said, to no one.
He closed the book entirely, set it on the bar, and stared at the middle distance for a while.
The door opened and Gunther came in looking like a man who'd been making arrangements all day. He set a set of keys on the bar counter with the finality of someone putting down something they'd been carrying for a long time.
"The last bartender already cleared out," he said. "When you leave, lock up. Boss says whatever's behind the bar is on the house tonight." He looked around the room once — the lighting, the pool table, the stools — with an expression Andrew couldn't entirely read. Then he was gone, back into whatever needed doing before tomorrow.
Andrew looked at the bottles behind the bar.
He reached over, found one he recognized, opened it, and took a long pull directly from the neck. The warmth moved through him immediately — not unpleasant, just present, taking the edge off the Christie problem and the Eric problem and the boxing problem and the general weight of having a lot of things in motion at once.
He poured himself a proper glass after that and drank it slowly, watching the bar's lights do their thing in the glass.
Around midnight, Phoebe appeared from wherever she'd been, waved at him from across the room with the warm carelessness of someone who'd had a very good evening, and left with the cheekbones guy.
Andrew checked the clock.
"Good thing coming tonight." He raised his glass slightly toward the door Chandler had left through hours ago. "Sure, Chandler. Thanks for that."
His head was pleasantly foggy — not drunk, just slightly removed from the sharp edges of everything. He rested his chin on his hand and watched the light move through the glass and thought about nothing in particular for a while.
The door creaked open.
He didn't look up. "Bar closes tomorrow," he said, to the glass. "Everything's free tonight if you want it."
A pause.
Then someone was at his back, close, and a voice came low near his ear: "In that case — are you free?"
Andrew looked up.
One of the four women from the corner table. Up close, the answer to most questions.
He was already thinking about Christie on the couch.
He stayed anyway.
An hour and a half later.
The bar door swung open.
"Is anyone still—" Ross stopped. Took in the scene. His hand stayed on the door. His face went through several phases in rapid succession.
"Oh," he said. "Oh God."
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