Chapter 23: The Time Traveler Who Keeps His Nose Clean
"Andrew, you want to grab lunch?" Carol asked.
He hesitated. Susan was standing slightly to the side, watching with the careful neutrality of someone taking notes. He looked between them and made a decision.
"Sure. Give me a minute — I need to make a quick call."
He wasn't being polite. He wanted to know if this was that Susan, and if it was, he wanted a read on where things stood. The panic from earlier had leveled off into something more practical. If they'd only just met today, the bar wasn't closing tomorrow. There was still runway. But he needed to stay close enough to the situation to know when the runway was ending.
Carol was one thing. Susan was the variable that actually mattered here. She was the one who would eventually determine the timeline of everything else. Getting along with her — or at least reaching some kind of workable détente — was worth the price of a lunch.
He went to the front desk and borrowed the phone.
It rang twice before Christie picked up.
"Hello?" Her voice was careful, the way it always was when she didn't know who was on the other end.
"It's me," Andrew said, keeping his voice easy. "Tell your mom I won't be back for lunch today."
"Okay." A pause. The line was quiet enough that he could hear her breathing.
He didn't hang up. He wasn't entirely sure why.
After a long moment, Christie said, very quietly: "Be careful."
Then the line clicked to a dial tone.
Andrew stood there for a second with the receiver still in his hand. He was smiling before he realized it — the kind that happens before you decide to.
She'd been closed off when she first came to stay with him. Not unfriendly exactly, just sealed. Watching everything from behind glass. Kids who'd been through hard things got that way, and you couldn't push it — you just had to be consistent and patient and let them decide when to open the door. Apparently she'd decided.
He set the receiver down and headed back.
"Good news?" Carol asked, reading his face.
"No, nothing like that." He waved it off. It wasn't a story for people he'd known for two hours. "So — what are we eating?"
"Pizza," Susan said, before Carol could answer. "There's a place two blocks from here. I know the menu."
Carol looked at Andrew. Andrew nodded agreeably. "I'll follow Susan's lead."
Susan's expression flickered. She glanced at him sideways, trying to figure out the angle. He didn't have one. He just genuinely didn't care where they ate.
Carol was already heading for the door, happy to be moving.
The pizza place was the kind that took itself seriously without being obnoxious about it — open kitchen, a chef doing proper hand-tossing behind the counter, the smell of fresh dough and good olive oil hitting you when you walked in. The prices were what they were. Andrew ordered the Margherita, which was the cheapest thing on the menu and also, he suspected, the truest test of whether they actually knew what they were doing.
The answer, when it arrived, was yes. He pulled a stretch of cheese, took a bite, and let his brain do the thing it now did automatically.
"Mozzarella's fresh," he said, mostly to himself. "Sauce is made from whole tomatoes, not paste—"
"Mixed with garlic and dried oregano," Susan said, from across the table. She'd caught him muttering. "You actually know what you're eating."
"I pay attention to it. I've been cooking seriously for a while. Thinking about doing a food truck eventually."
Her expression shifted slightly — not warm, but interested in spite of herself.
"Ross mentioned Andrew's cooking," Carol said, tearing off another slice. "He said the braised beef was unreal."
"It's a good recipe," Andrew said. "If either of you want a home-cooked meal sometime, I'll cook. Open invitation."
Susan said nothing. She looked back down at her pizza. But something in her posture settled slightly — the defensive edge dialing back a few degrees. Andrew noted it and moved on.
Carol kept the conversation going after that, bouncing between topics the way she naturally did — something she'd read, a show she'd been watching, an observation about a stranger on the street that morning. Susan came out of her shell gradually, the way people do when they forget they were planning to stay closed. By the end of the meal all three of them were talking like they'd been eating lunch together for months.
Andrew paid for his own. Carol covered Susan's before Susan could object.
Afterward they walked along the block for a while, letting lunch settle. Carol was the first to peel off — she had to get back, she said. Ross would be home.
"I'll see you both at the gym," she said, and headed for the subway.
Susan watched her go. Then she turned and gave Andrew a look that was about to become a goodbye nod.
"Hold on," Andrew said.
She stopped. Her expression shifted into something more guarded. He could see her working through possibilities and not loving any of them. "What?"
"I know you like Carol," he said.
The wariness on her face turned into something sharper. If he'd told her he liked her, she would have handled that easily. This was a different category of uncomfortable.
"What do you want?" Her voice had gone flat.
"Nothing," Andrew said. "I just want you to know you don't need to treat me like a problem. Carol and I are friends. That's it, that's all it's ever going to be. And yeah — Ross is my friend too. But that doesn't mean I'm going to run to him with anything."
He meant it. He'd thought about it during lunch and arrived somewhere clear. Ross and Carol's marriage was already moving toward an ending — that was just true, regardless of Susan. Trying to hold it together would be like trying to un-ring a bell. And blowing it up faster wouldn't help anyone, least of all Ross.
The best thing Andrew could do was stay out of the machinery, be decent to everyone involved, and let them find their own way through it.
Whether Ross eventually made peace with how things turned out would be Ross's own work to do.
Susan studied him for a long moment. She had good instincts — he could tell that much. She was deciding whether to believe him.
"I'm not looking for anything from you," Andrew added. "I just figured it was simpler to say it directly than to let you spend the next six months trying to figure out if I'm a threat."
Another pause.
"Fine," she said finally. Not warm, but real. She turned and walked up the block.
Andrew watched her go, then turned in the other direction toward home.
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