Chapter Text
It was one minute before 7 in the morning when his alarm started ringing, but Andrew was up since 6:37 as the digital clock Nicky gifted him many Christmases before said. It was a really extravagant thing which glows in the dark and had color lights, but the ringtone was okay and he could see the numbers perfectly from the bed when he woke up in the middle of the night, so at least it was practical. Everyone thought Andrew had thrown it away but it had been hidden in a box in their Columbia house since before they started studying in Palmetto and now it was finally in his night stand.
Profering low and resigned sighs he started to move from the bedroom to the kitchen, which wasn’t too far given the size of his apartment. It wasn’t very big but it was as close to the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice (USC) as he could get when his decision of starting a thesis was definitive. He passed the couch where the cats layed down and heard one of them –presumably Sir– following him to the corner where his bowls stayed empty. Andrew always filled the cats bowls before making his own breakfast, but this was only because Sir could be pretty insistent and had no trace of patience.
“Needy bastard.” he muted, seeing the cat jump on the food right after he put it onto the bowls. Then, looking at King, who was standing next to the door, he asked, “What?”. King answered with an almost dismissive –if a cat was capable of sounding like that– meow and then turned around and went to who knows where. “I’m going to get rid of you, I’ll ask Bee to get you back” he threatened them, but they ignored his words in order to keep eating –Sir– or going wherever they would like around the land which was his house –King.
He wasn’t going to, it had been almost his idea to have the cats, after Bee suggested to him that it would be healthy to have a little company. Maybe a dog , she said, but Andrew was more of a cat person. Two days later she sent him the link to an animal shelter from his city and Andrew, who didn't take the suggestion very seriously at first ended up looking at the pictures of the animals and got immediately caught by two problematic cats that didn’t get along well with the others but somehow had managed to tolerate each other. He had always had a bone for troublemakers.
His phone started ringing when he was making coffee for himself –one cup for breakfast and a thermo with the content of three more to get through the rest of the day– and Andrew let it sound for at least five tones before answering.
"What do you want?"
"Good morning to you too, Andrew." said Aaron and Andrew humed in response. “Ah, any news?” Asked him hesitantly.
Andrew was tempted to hang up but, thanks to Bee, they didn’t do things like that anymore. They also didn’t do small talk so he said, “It’s 7:15 on the morning of a weekday, what do you think?”
"Preparing yourself to deal with the little monsters?" For a moment, before remembering his students, Andrew thought he was talking about the cats. They all could fit in that description in a way, he supposed. However, he still found it ironic how Aaron started calling his students after the nickname themselves were called once.
"Not too little I thought."
"Right." Aaron conceded, but he stood quiet for a moment and Andrew almost asked him if something was going on. "So,” he finally said, “I was going to ask if you like carrots, Kate and I are going to try something new for this Saturday's lunch."
"Whatever, I don't have anything against carrots." Then, he looked at the calendar. "It's Tuesday."
"I know, I wanted to know with time." He waited a couple of seconds before saying "I'll see you on Saturday." though it sounded more like a question.
"Yeah, bye Aaron."
Some years before, carrots would never be on the top of the list of reasons for Aaron to call him asking questions he could have asked by message, but maybe they did things like that now, just family things. He hung up and finished his breakfast quietly, then he drove to the campus.
All days at the university were almost identical but, to be fair, it was practically Andrew’s doing, he was a man of routines.
He spent the weekdays from Monday to Friday investigating for his thesis and teaching the few hours of class that he had as an assistant professor. Then he ate, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays with Leah, one of his coworkers who usually talked too much but never asked him to intervene if he didn’t feel like it and, gratefully, knew almost nothing about sports, on Tuesdays and Fridays –when Leah and him had different schedules– alone at his table in the shared office. After the day at the university was finished he came back home and spent the evening on the couch, reading or just lying there with the cats, not paying attention to the TV. Every Tuesday at 7 p.m. he had an appointment with Bee. Every Friday he sends an update to Nicky, sometimes they even talk by video call. On Saturdays he usually sees Aaron, on occasions Aaron and Katelyn. Sundays were for “making plans for himself” –Bee said time alone was important too–, which usually meant ice cream and something slightly more interesting on TV or meeting with one of his two friends Leah or Renee, when the latter was around the city. Most times they were just more relaxed days in the new relaxed life of Andrew Minyard.
Having plans was easy and far from making him feel restricted they were like a security net. Even if sometimes he felt the lack of some things he left behind, choices were made a while ago and now he could really recognize to himself that he liked this life. He had never been so sure of the future as he was now.
Today, however, everything started by a change of plans. After his first class Leah wrote to him.
[Leah]
Andrew! I pass!
you have to call me Dr. Evans from now on
[Andrew]
Congratulations.
I’m not going to call you that.
[Leah]
:(
then you owe me a drink at least
would you come with me tonight to celebrate?
[Andrew]
Don’t you have class tomorrow at eight?
[Leah]
I’m aware of my schedule Minyard
but is nice to know you care
[Andrew]
I don’t care.
[Leah]
it’ll be just one drink
[Andrew]
Okay.
[Leah]
does that mean you’ll come?
[Andrew]
Whatever.
Secret Garden’s Club?
[Leah]
yes!
see you at seven then
Leah had started her thesis a year before Andrew came to the USC. They had been on the same PhD program since his arrival but didn’t talk very much until his second year, when they spent a week sitting together during a long seminar after which Leah, apparently, decided she liked him enough to ask if he wanted to study together once in a while. Andrew wasn’t especially interested in her at first, but then their occasional study sessions started to become weekly lunch meetings and she progressively found a spot in the short list of people Andrew cared about. Leah had convinced him to try giving classes while finishing his thesis, just like she was doing, and told Andrew he had a very clear and direct way to explain things, which was a pretty nice way to define his attitude in his own opinion.
Mostly, she was nothing like Renee, they had more differences than similarities, but, in some way, he started to feel as comfortable with Leah as he did with her. Both of them understood his long silences and wry remarks, knew how to read between the lines of his comments and never trespassed on the lines of his personal space. Leah was very curious and sometimes could ask too many questions but, in the end, she never pressed him or asked twice when his answers were dry looks or ambiguities.
So Andrew showed her The Secret Garden. It was a club with too many coloring lights and too many fantasy cocktails. He discovered the club one day he was driving the streets without a destiny, right before deciding upon starting his thesis, almost half a year after his decision of quiting Exy. He still lived at the Columbia house with Aaron and Katelyn by then and all he wanted to do was to go as far as the house as he could. Eden’s Twilight wouldn’t do this time, he was looking for something new, where anyone knows him and he could just forget for a minute he was now living with his brother and his brother’s girlfriend while spending all of his days hating everything and having nothing to do.
At seven p.m. on a Tuesday the club was almost empty and with the music at a volume very much lower than it would be in two hours. The TV at one side of the bar was playing the news in lieu of the video clips it usually played at night time. Leah was waiting for him sitted on their usual spot, the table on the corner slightly distant from the rest of the tables, and made a waving gesture when she saw him entering. She was wearing a colorful dress that matched the decoration of the club and didn’t match his black outfit at all.
“Hey, you’re late again.” She said instead of hello . “You own me two drinks now.” And she was smiling but Andrew knew it was equally probable that it was a joke or that she was being deadly serious.
“I’m not” He said, because he was, in fact, two minutes earlier. “You are just very impatient.”
Leah’s house was at a distance of three streets from The Secret Garden , a funny coincidence neither of them were aware of until the first time they met up there, Andrew’s apartament was at a twenty minutes walk distance. In consequence, Leah was always the first to arrive.
“Mmm… Shit you’re right.” She said with a resigned glare to her phone. “Then it’ll be just one, what do you want?”
“You can choose, you’re the one celebrating.”
Leah nodded and smiled at his request.
“Oh, whatever I want? Be careful, you could regret this decision.”
In the end, he didn’t regret anything, Leah was physically incapable of bothering anyone on purpose so she went for the sweetest cocktails on the menu.
They talked about classes and the students Andrew definitely wasn’t fond of, he made fun of the bets some guys in the statistics department, which was unfortunately too close to theirs, did every week. And if some years earlier someone would have told him that he was going to be here, giving classes at the university, living alone but in the same city as Aaron, sharing drinks with a new friend in a place other than Eden’s Twilight and actually not hating anything of this, he would never had believe it.
“Well, is there any news in your life beyond university?” Leah asked after finishing her drink.
Andrew knew it was just another question but he couldn’t ignore the weird feeling of having heard something very similar that morning. Any news? Why did Aaron ask him that? He knew almost everything that happened in Andrew’s life. Besides, it was very unusual of him to call him just before his turn at the hospital.
“Nothing new under the sun.” He finally said and, with a serious tone, he added “I think King is hiding my socks when I’m out, maybe I should put a camera in.” Leah laughed at that.
Between his thoughts and Leah’s response, he almost missed the voice of one of the other clients asking the bartner to raise the volume of the TV for a moment. There were only five people at the club beside Leah and him and the TV was now on one of the sports themed channels.
Since his comeback to Columbia he barely had seen anything about sports, especially Exy. He didn’t have any sports channel, always stopped seeing the news when they started talking about them and actively avoided every conversation around this theme. Obviously he couldn’t prevent himself of hearing something once in a while, he knew Kevin left The Wildcats two years ago to sign with The Jaguars, he knew Neil hadn’t move form his initial team since he started playing pro and recently he had been hearing the guys in the statistic department talking about how The Panthers were losing their spot at the top of the league. He had refused to search anything more about it but now, with the TV at the perfect angle for him to see, couldn't stop himself from looking.
Images of the last Panthers’ match were playing on the screen while the presenter read the news. The image of Neil after three years almost shocked him more than the following words.
Neil Josten, former striker of The Panthers was yesterday announced to be the new addition to The Swallows of South Carolina…
What. The. Fuck.
Yes, he had been doing everything he could to not hear a thing about Exy in years but even he knew the name of the only one first league Exy team in Columbia.