Chapter 105: Apology
Ned came in first, looked at Andrew, gave a professional nod, and then turned back to the door.
Paolo was still outside on the sidewalk, visible through the window, doing the specific thing people did when they were trying to locate one more reason not to go inside. Ned stepped back out, said something brief and not particularly gentle, and came back in with Paolo following in the way of someone who had run out of alternatives.
Andrew stayed on the couch.
Paolo stopped in front of him. Found Monica in his peripheral vision and very deliberately didn't look at her, which was its own communication.
He looked at Andrew.
"Mr. Sanchez," he said. The accent gave it a particular weight. "I apologize. Going to my uncle — the investigation — it was the wrong approach. I should have spoken to you directly. Or spoken to Monica." He paused. "I was not thinking clearly."
It was, Andrew thought, a genuinely decent apology. Not performed. Not minimizing. Paolo had shown up and said the actual thing, which was what Andrew had wanted.
"I accept that," Andrew said.
Ned, standing beside his nephew, also looked at Andrew directly. "And I apologize for my part in it. I acted on incomplete information and I should have known better."
Andrew looked at Ned. The man had a career's worth of professional judgment and had let family feeling override it. That was human. It was also something he'd owned without dressing it up.
"Accepted," Andrew said.
The room was quiet.
Paolo finally looked at Monica.
Monica looked back at him with the expression of someone who had many things to say and had made a clear decision about where and when those things were going to be said. Not here. Not now. Not in front of an audience.
"I'll call you," Monica said to Paolo. Quiet, even, final for the moment.
Paolo nodded. He understood what that meant — that the conversation existed and would happen, on Monica's timeline, in Monica's terms.
Ned put his hand briefly on Paolo's shoulder and guided him toward the door.
At the threshold, Ned looked back at Andrew once more. The look of a man completing something he was glad to have behind him.
"Mr. Sanchez," he said.
"Officer Ned," Andrew said.
They left.
The room held its collective breath for approximately one second.
Then Gunther appeared from behind the counter with the expression of someone who had been watching this unfold and had questions.
"Andrew. What was that."
"A misunderstanding, resolved," Andrew said. "We're good."
Gunther looked at the door, looked at the room, and went back to the counter with the specific Gunther manner of someone filing something under Andrew's business, not mine.
"So," Chandler said. "The nephew."
"Was Remy," Andrew said.
A beat.
"Jennifer's Remy," Chandler said, putting it together. "The boyfriend from the train. Who was picking her up in New Jersey."
"Yes."
"And he thought you were—"
"We'd run into each other several times by coincidence. He drew his own conclusions."
"To be fair," Ross said, with the tone of someone offering an observation rather than an accusation, "you do have a pattern of running into women multiple times by coincidence and then—"
"Ross."
"I'm just saying the data point isn't unreasonable from an outside perspective."
"The data point is wrong," Andrew said.
"The data point has been wrong before and then turned out to be right," Joey offered helpfully.
"Jennifer is not—" Andrew stopped. "I have not pursued Jennifer. I have not flirted with Jennifer. We have had three chance encounters on public transit and one brief conversation at a party. That is the complete inventory."
The room received this.
"Sure," Chandler said, in the tone that meant he had filed it differently.
"Monica," Andrew said, looking for an ally.
Monica was looking at him with the specific Monica expression of someone who had her own things to think about right now and was not fully available for Andrew's character defense. "What do you want me to say?"
"That you believe me."
"I believe you didn't intend to pursue her," Monica said carefully.
"That's not—"
"Andrew." She patted his arm once, the way you patted someone when you were fond of them and also not going to give them what they were asking for. "It's fine."
"If I ever do pursue her," Andrew said, to the room, "you can all say whatever you want about it. Until then—"
"Green," Monica said.
"What?"
"You said if it ever happened, we could make you dye your hair green." She looked at him with a completely straight face. "That was the deal."
"I didn't—when did I—"
"Just now," Chandler said. "You basically agreed to it."
"I didn't agree to anything."
"It's a deal," Joey said, with the gravity of a man ratifying a contract. "We all heard it."
Andrew looked at the room. Ross was nodding. Phoebe was smiling the Phoebe smile that meant she found something delightful. Carol, from the armchair, appeared to be genuinely enjoying herself.
"Fine," Andrew said. "It's a deal. It's not going to happen, so it doesn't matter."
"Green," Monica said again, and picked up her coffee.
The afternoon broke up gradually — Carol and Susan first, Carol moving with the careful deliberateness of the later pregnancy stages, Susan attentive beside her. Ross held the door, which was Ross being Ross. Monica watched them go with an expression that was complex and earned.
Phoebe left for a client. Joey left because there was a restaurant he'd been thinking about since eleven. Ross went back to the university.
Andrew and Chandler sat in the emptied-out couch area with the comfortable ease of two people who didn't need to fill the silence.
"Monica's going to call Paolo," Chandler said, after a while.
"Yes," Andrew said.
"And that's going to be — whatever that's going to be."
"Yes."
Chandler turned his coffee cup in his hands. "She deserves better than someone who goes to a cop instead of talking to her."
"She does," Andrew said.
Chandler nodded slowly, in the way of someone who had said what he had to say and was setting it down.
Andrew looked at the window.
July settled into its shape.
The food truck was effectively retired — Andrew had known it was coming and the knowing made it clean rather than complicated. He'd needed it during the period when he'd needed it. That period was over. The dessert supply arrangement with Gunther had become the primary income stream, which was better in almost every dimension: lower hours, higher margin, no parking negotiations, no weather dependency.
He made deliveries in the morning — Central Perk, and now two other spots that Gunther had connected him to through the specific network of Manhattan coffee shop owners who knew each other — and was done by ten. The panel's Cooking (Expert) skill made speed a genuine asset. Simple techniques, excellent execution, consistently. The desserts sold because they were actually good, which was the only sustainable version of the business.
The rest of the day had a rhythm he'd built deliberately.
Gym until noon — he was deep into the catch-up phase of his training, making up for the months of reduced work during SAT prep, and his body was responding well. Lunch, a nap, the library. The library had become his primary study environment — quieter than the apartment, more focused than the coffee shop, and the Columbia branch on 114th Street had resources that kept making him aware of how much he didn't know yet.
Evenings were variable. Cooking when he felt like it. Central Perk sometimes. McLaren's occasionally.
Phoebe had established a standing twice-weekly appointment — Tuesday and Friday, late morning. His body, under the current training load, needed it, and the work she did was genuinely effective. He'd stopped thinking of it as a favor and started thinking of it as maintenance.
His SAT practice scores had moved. He'd run through four past exams in the second week of July and had come in above 1530 on three of them. The fourth had been an off day — timing issues, a math section that had two questions he hadn't encountered before — and he'd landed at 1510.
The August sitting was six weeks out. He was where he needed to be.
He thought about Columbia's campus on 116th Street, which he walked past on the way to the library sometimes. The gates, the steps, the specific institutional permanence of a place that had been doing what it did for two hundred years.
He was ready for it.
Christie came back from summer camp at the end of July with a tan, three new friends whose names she mentioned once and then didn't repeat, and a slightly different quality to her posture — something more settled. She went directly into the fall semester with almost no transition, which was very Christie — she found a routine and moved into it without requiring adjustment time.
Her goal, she'd told Andrew once, matter-of-factly, was Columbia. He'd suggested she look at the pre-law track. She'd said she'd already been looking at it. He wasn't sure why he'd expected anything different.
Lily he saw once in the second week of July, briefly, near the Columbia gates. She'd lost most of the uncertainty she'd carried at the beginning of the year and had the quality of someone who had found a direction and was moving toward it with genuine purpose. Columbia was her target too. She'd said it without drama, the way people said things they'd already committed to.
"August exam?" he'd asked.
"November," she'd said. "I want one more full cycle of prep."
Smart, he'd thought. She was thinking about it correctly.
Lola he hadn't seen since before Monica's birthday party.
The Ned situation had made him think about her — she worked at Ned's office, which meant she'd probably known something was happening, which meant there was a conversation somewhere in the future about what she'd known and when. He wasn't in a hurry to have it. When it was time, it would be time.
He thought about Ned himself, occasionally. The man had a nephew who'd used him, a wife who was apparently dealing with something of her own — he'd thought more than once about the woman who'd followed Lana out of Central Perk that morning. He'd made a decision not to involve himself and he stood by that decision.
Some situations you walked through and some situations you walked past.
That one he'd walked past.
Summer in New York had its own specific quality — the heat coming off the pavement, the way the city changed texture in July, the particular rhythm of a place that was simultaneously emptied out and more itself. People who could leave had left. What remained was the city in its working clothes.
Andrew walked through it most evenings, thinking about the fall, about Columbia, about the shape of the next chapter.
His scores were ready. His application materials were largely drafted. He'd asked Ross for a recommendation letter, which Ross had agreed to immediately and with genuine enthusiasm, which was the Ross that existed when he wasn't performing Ross.
He was ready.
[SAT Preparation (Mastered): 89/100] [Guitar (Beginner): 37/100] [Observation (Proficient): 87/100]
August was coming.
[Chapter Rewards]
500 Power Stones unlock 1 chapter
10 Reviews unlock 1 chapter
Hope you enjoyed the chapter.
20+chapters ahead on P1treon Soulforger