Chapter 87: Intertwined Nightmares
1:30 AM. Andrew's apartment.
Chandler woke up in the armchair with the specific disorientation of someone who had fallen asleep somewhere unfamiliar and needed a moment to reconstruct where they were and why.
The living room. Andrew's place. Right.
He sat up, rubbed his face, and looked at the television, which was off. The apartment was quiet. He was, very much, not going to be able to go back to sleep.
He got up, found the kitchen, poured a glass of juice from the carton in the refrigerator, and came back to the couch.
The thing about Janice was sitting in his chest in the specific way things sat when you hadn't dealt with them properly and they knew it.
He'd spent three weeks finding reasons not to be home. Business trips that weren't business trips. An overnight at the office that had involved a cot in the break room and a very long conversation with himself about what he was doing. He'd let three calls go to voicemail today and felt bad about all three of them, and the feeling bad hadn't been enough to make him call back.
Andrew had said: call her back tomorrow. Stop disappearing.
Chandler turned the juice glass in his hands.
The honest version of the situation, which he was capable of accessing at 1:30 AM in someone else's quiet apartment in a way he wasn't always capable of in daylight, was this: Janice was good. She was warm and funny and genuinely interested in him, which was not something he'd had in abundance. The laugh was an adjustment, but you adjusted. The volume was a lot, but you got used to it.
The real problem was that she wanted to be chosen. Fully, clearly, without the escape hatch he kept building into everything. And every time she made that clear — which she did, warmly, without pressure, just by being exactly who she was — he found the nearest exit.
He'd been doing this his whole life. His therapist, in the two sessions he'd attended before deciding he was fine, had called it anticipatory abandonment. Chandler had called it a scheduling conflict and not gone back.
He sat on the couch and drank his juice and thought about being nine years old at his parents' divorce announcement dinner, which had been a Thanksgiving, which was why Thanksgiving remained complicated.
He thought about the look on Monica's face when he'd said congratulations and she'd said it back very quietly and he hadn't heard it.
He thought about Janice's three voicemails, which he hadn't listened to, and which were probably warm and a little worried and not angry, because Janice was almost never angry.
He picked up the phone and listened to the voicemails.
Warm. A little worried. Not angry.
He didn't call back — it was 1:45 AM, that would be worse than not calling — but he listened to all three, which felt like something.
He turned on the television at low volume and watched whatever was on, which was an infomercial about a blender that could allegedly change his life, and fell asleep somewhere around three.
Andrew came out of his bedroom at seven to find Chandler on the couch with the dark circles and general appearance of a man who had slept for about three hours after a long night of thinking.
The juice carton on the coffee table was empty.
"Did you sleep at all?" Andrew said.
"Some." Chandler yawned with his whole body. "I had a lot going on in my head."
Andrew went to the kitchen and started on breakfast — scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, the straightforward kind that didn't require decisions. He made enough for two, poured juice from a new carton, and they ate at the kitchen table with the easy quiet of people who had said the important things the night before and didn't need to repeat them.
"I listened to her voicemails," Chandler said, halfway through his eggs.
"Good," Andrew said.
"I didn't call back. It was two in the morning."
"Also good."
"I'm going to call her today." He said it with the specific quality of someone making a commitment out loud in order to hold themselves to it. "And I made an appointment. With someone. A professional someone."
Andrew looked up.
"Ross gave me a name months ago," Chandler said. "I finally called." He looked at his eggs. "Tuesday at four."
"Good," Andrew said again. He meant it more this time.
Chandler pointed his fork at him. "If you tell anyone about this I'll deny it."
"I won't tell anyone."
"I'm serious. Joey would make it into a thing."
"Joey makes everything into a thing," Andrew agreed. "I won't tell him."
They finished breakfast. Andrew put the dessert he'd promised Joey into a bag, and they headed out — across the hall to the Geller-and-various building, up to Monica's floor.
Chandler opened his apartment door carefully, with the specific energy of someone hoping a particular situation had resolved itself overnight.
No Janice visible. He exhaled.
"Joey?" He set the dessert bag on the counter. The apartment was empty. He checked his watch — seven-twenty. "He must be across the hall."
He went to Monica's door and pushed it open.
"Hey, Joey, Andrew brought the des—"
"OH MY GOD."
Chandler stopped.
Janice was on Monica's couch, coffee in hand, mid-conversation with Monica and Phoebe, with the specific settled quality of someone who had been there for a while and was comfortable.
She looked up when Chandler came in and her face did the thing it did — the warmth arriving immediately, genuine, without any of the wariness that three weeks of intermittent disappearing probably should have generated.
"Chandler! You're home!" She stood up and crossed the room, and Chandler, to his credit, didn't retreat. He received the hug with the expression of a man working through something in real time.
"Hey, Janice," he said. His voice came out steadier than he'd expected.
Monica was watching from the couch with the careful expression she wore when she was observing something she had opinions about and had decided not to voice them yet.
Phoebe was watching with the open, interested attention she brought to most human interactions.
Andrew came in behind Chandler, set the dessert bag on Monica's counter, and found the armchair.
"Chandler." Monica stood up. "My birthday's next week. I'm having people over — I need a headcount. Are you coming?"
She said it to the room but the weight of it landed on Chandler, and everyone knew it.
Chandler looked at Janice.
Janice looked at him with the warmth she always had, not pressing, just present.
"Two of us," Chandler said. "Janice and me."
Janice's face did something that was pure and uncomplicated and Andrew found himself genuinely glad for both of them.
"Great." Monica wrote something on her notepad with the focused efficiency of a woman who had been waiting for information and was now processing it. "I'll plan for two."
Chandler sat down next to Janice on the couch. She handed him her coffee without being asked, which was either habit or prescience, and he took it without comment, which meant it was probably both.
Joey, who had been in the kitchen eating something, emerged with a plate and froze when he saw Janice.
"Oh, hey Janice," he said, with the heroic neutrality of a man doing his level best.
"Joey!" Janice's laugh arrived at full volume.
Joey blinked. Processed. Adjusted.
"Good to see you," he said, and sat at the farthest available seat, which happened to be next to Andrew.
Andrew looked at him.
Joey looked at Andrew.
Neither of them said anything.
The morning settled into its usual rhythm — conversation moving between people, Monica doing something in the kitchen, Phoebe telling a story about a massage client that went somewhere unexpected, Ross's absence noted and unremarked upon because Ross was in the phase of his life where his appearances and absences were roughly equal and nobody was keeping score.
Andrew drank his coffee and watched Chandler gradually relax into the couch cushions beside Janice, the stiffness leaving his shoulders in increments, and thought about what Andrew had said the night before about scared not being the same as broken.
[Observation (Proficient): 77/100]
The panel moved. Andrew filed it.
Thursday was tomorrow.
He was ready.
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