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Without either of them noticing how, or exactly when it started, Andy develops a habit of coming up to Elias Clarke on her days off.
And she never really asked if it was okay; she just started showing up around noon with Miranda’s steak—or seared salmon, or forty dollar salad, or whatever was for lunch that day. (Because of course she’s still got an in with the assistants—how else is she going to know when Miranda has a spare second to talk to her during the day? Plus, saving the second assistant one more trip out of the office keeps the new girl from a nervous breakdown that no one wants. Andy's happy to do it.)
She may or may not eat with her, it just depends on if Andy’s body assumes it’s lunch time or dinner time or breakfast time based on the sleep schedule of the past week and what Miranda decided to demand of New York's restaurant scene on any given day.
But she likes to take off her shoes—and yes, she does makes an effort to look as fashionable as possible when she shows up to Runway because old habits die hard—and sit on the window sill behind Miranda's desk to read, because it’s got a really nice view and really great light pretty much all day.
She climbs into the nook (not the empty one, mind, but the one just to the left of Miranda's chair as you walk into her office—the only one with a personal touch, with a minimalist clock and a well-read book lying open on its spine), stretches out her legs, and reads. Most of the time it’s research, or her own interview transcripts, or the next article she’s due to turn in, but sometimes it’s actually a book. Better yet, it’s an essay for Runway that Miranda handed to her before she sat down to a phone call with Demarchelier. That she's even allowed to stay in the room while Miranda talks on the phone probably (aside from the whole, you know, seriously-and-sincerely-dating Miranda Priestly thing) gave Emily the biggest aneurysm of all.
Those are the best moments for Andy, because she knows then Miranda actually trusts her intelligence. She’s seen her suggestions in the Book—and subsequently in print—more than once. They're proof that she wants Andy's input on the third most important thing in her life. The first two would be the twins (duh); Andy thinks she ranks as number four.
(Miranda finds it amusing that Andrea doesn’t automatically assume she’s number one, which of course she is, but she’ll let her keep thinking that she isn’t for a while. She needs time to find a nice ring, anyway, and surprising Andrea is her favorite hobby.)
Andy knows Miranda is plenty busy. She hasn't forgotten just because they stopped working together and started dating—in that order, thank you very much, Page Six. It’s sort of impossible to forget. Sometimes Miranda is in and out of her own glass doors on a series of errands like a flurry of small-but-individually-distinct hurricanes. But when Miranda is there sipping scalding hot coffee and reviewing Polaroids for a reshoot, and she’s on her perch reading in Miranda's office, it’s these moments, this kind of quiet time that they can spend together that Andy really, really cherishes. She can work from anywhere with an internet connection. It still sort of surprises her that Miranda lets it happen, but Andy thinks it’s because she basically shuts up and sits still.
(It’s really because Miranda adores the way Andy bites her lips when she’s thinking, and that little furrow between her brows while she edits, and the whole concept of someone who’d come all the way here just to be near her, just for the sake of doing so, when it’d be so much easier to work from her desk at the Mirror or at home—and God, but does she look lovely in the light. It truly warms Miranda's heart that she can turn around and see her girlfriend sometimes, just like that.)
So, Andy comes in and walks around barefoot on the carpet and no one at Runway thinks twice about it anymore. Her bookworm presence becomes as much a fixture in Miranda’s office as the orchid on her desk or the framed Testino prints hanging on the wall. More often than not, the majority of Andy’s time is spent alone on the windowsill, though Miranda makes sure there’s always a minimum of a few minutes overlap. Nigel comes in to chat with her sometimes, if Miranda has swept down to marketing or the Closet or to the boardroom to argue the quarterly budget for the next issue’s spread, and they catch up about the latest developments in their lives.
But Miranda’s absolute favorite part of it all is striding back into her office, fuming about yet another useless mistake by some lesser, incompetent, utter imbecile, flinging her purse and coat at an assistant and being brought up short by Andrea: by this girl who arrests her attention so, with sunlight on her bangs and her nose in a book, who walks into the empty office of Runway’s editrix-in-chief and waits.
Andy’s favorite is glancing up at that moment and seeing that look on Miranda’s face, the one still tinged with a little shock (even after all this time) that dissolves into a small little smile that makes her eyes sparkle a really, really clear blue that Andy knows is reserved especially for her. And in turn breaking out into her doofiest, goofiest love-sick grin that’s reserved especially for Miranda right back, right before Miranda saunters across her office and bends down to give her a very quick, but very soft, kiss.
Then Miranda turns immediately to her desk, snaps out an impatient, “Emily,” and the second assistant (whose name is Vivian, of course) comes scurrying in, shivering like a terrorized chihuahua. Andy drops her head back to what’s in her lap with that smile still on her face and gets back to her reading.