When Robin arrives on Sunday, Andi is in the front yard on a lawn chair, knotting a friendship bracelet safety-pinned to the knee of her jeans in robin's-egg blue and two shades of pink.
"Whatever, I'm not judgy," shrugs Andi. "...But I spend so much time around Bella that I kinda have a Shoulder Bella like cartoon characters have a Shoulder Angel and my Shoulder Bella wants to make sure you don't do it in a way that gets anybody else in trouble."
"Shoulder Bella is satisfied." Andi pats where a three-inch Shoulder Bella's head might be, gently, and says, "Is the living room a good guitar habitat? Bella's having an Introverted Day. Or at least an Introverted Morning, sometimes she perks up around lunch."
She grabs a chair, sits down, and plays.
It turns out that Robin is a really good singer. Not bad at writing music, either. And her lyrics are adorable - it's a song about sweet things, and you can almost taste the chocolate.
"Apparently," shrugs Andi. "She signs up for all kinds of things. If Bella says she has ceramics friends she's probably been doing it for a while, I don't really keep close track, it could just as easily have been origami or some nature hike group or an exciting new religion."
"He can, actually, cook fish, otherwise his house would just be this giant pile of fish with some beams and plaster in it, he goes fishing a lot. But you can't have fish all the time." She takes the butter out of the microwave, observes it to be mostly melted, calls it good, and starts mixing it with the sugar. She measures salt.
Andi listens happily, clapping at each song, singing along in places when she can learn the chorus well enough to do so - she has an untrained, serviceable voice - and then she goes and gets the muffins out. She wipes the counter clean, then upends the muffin tin onto it; twelve muffins bounce out, and she sets them upright and plates two and offers one to Robin.