[fic] being a story of gravy boats and break-ups and hope, maybe
fic: being a story of gravy boats and break-ups and hope, maybe
fandom: F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
characters: lesbian!rachel, monica, transgirl!rose/susan/carol, genderqueer!chandler, phoebe, joey
word count: 6,800
disclaimer: I wanted to see what would happen to this universe if I took these characters and changed a few small things. Turns out the original script can only take you so far. This is a scene-by-scene rewrite of the original pilot. There are quite a few lines pulled directly from the script. I do not own the script, nor the series, nor the characters. Please don't sue.
summary: rachel runs away from her wedding, right into a family
a/n: happyg_rl started rewatching FRIENDS a few months ago and we had a really wonderful conversation about what a TREAT the series could have been if the gang could have had carol/susan dealing with parenting and marriage as a guide to the hapless infants. also any excuse to write away ross. and also why is rachel straight?! boring. so I started contemplating a rewrite and decided to give the whole cast an overhaul. I hope you like it, lovey. I hope it's not terrible, flist. xoxo
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Rachel stared at the gravy boat in her hand and tried not to pay attention to the whispering and pointed looks she was getting on the subway. It was her fault for leaving her wedding still in her ornate dress but it wasn’t like there was much time between “do you take Bernice to be your lawfully wedded wife” and running back down the aisle to the front doors of the church that left much time for a wardrobe change. She didn’t even manage to grab her cell phone. What kind of bride would she be if she had walked down the aisle with her smartphone hidden in her bouquet?
A smart one.
And so now here she was, on the subway, in her wedding gown, on her way to attack an old friend from high school that she hadn’t actually invited to the wedding. Rachel tossed the gravy boat from hand to hand and smiled at the old woman knitting across from her, hopefully that wasn’t going to be an issue.
Monica snapped a photo of her coffee and posted it to Instagram before any of her friends could make disparaging remarks. She really liked taking photos of espresso art. They were all listening to Chandler relate their newest dream.
“And then I look down, and there’s a telephone… there.”
“Instead of?” Joey’s eyes widened.
“That’s right!” Chandler loved relating their dreams and having everyone tell them what they meant. “And then. It started ringing. So I answer it. And it’s my mother.”
Monica choked back a laugh.
“Which is very odd, because she never calls me.”
Monica leaned back against the couch and smiled. Real life may be pretty shitty sometimes, but she had a date tonight she was actually hopeful about and she had great friends.
Rachel examined the map at the top of the subway. Monica was always posting on Instagram from a coffee shop called Central Perk and a few weeks ago, Rachel had looked it up to see if maybe she could come visit her. Wedding plans got in the way, but she still had a rough idea where it was. Especially since it seemed to be just around the corner from the building where Monica’s grandmother’s condo was and the two of them had spent a few summers there, shopping during the day on Rachel’s mother’s credit cards and eating take-out in the evenings while Monica’s grandmother went to bingo.
She was close enough to walk the rest of the way.
Rose drew a deep breath and folded up her umbrella before walking into the coffee shop. She liked to carry an umbrella in the fall in case of rain, despite what the weatherman said. She could see her sister Monica and their friends inside. She knew she should go inside, she deserved their comfort today. Especially today.
She stopped behind the couch, “Hey.”
“This guy says hi and I want to kill myself,” Joey quipped.
“You okay, hon?” Monica turned to the others, “Carol is moving her stuff out today.”
A chorus of well-wishing “ohhs” washed over Rose and she smiled.
“And you really didn’t know she was straight?” Joey asked helpfully.
“She didn’t know - how was I supposed to know?”
Phoebe bobbed her head, “Well at least you still have Susan.”
Monica rubbed her back softly, “Where is she today, anyway?”
“Off getting drunk I suppose. She’s taking this really hard. You know they met first.” They sat in silence for a moment. “I just wish I could turn back time, you know? Back to the wedding.” She thought of Carol in her wedding gown, of her in a tux, Susan standing beside them beaming and so happy. The photos in the apartment would have to be taken down before Susan got back.
Chandler suddenly shouted, “I wish I had a million dollars.” They gestured to the door with a flourish before shrugging and sitting back down. “Thought that would work.”
Monica stood up and walked up to a drenched girl in a wedding gown.
Rachel took a deep breath and stepped into the coffee shop. It was now or never. This was the only place left in New York she could go.
It’s not like she could go back now, could she?
Maybe everything was a little fuzzy and later she’d admit that nothing really felt real in that moment, but she didn’t see Monica anywhere. And that scared her. So she went up to the counter and tried to describe her childhood best friend to the barista, but then realized it had been years since she even saw Monica in person. How could she describe someone she didn’t even know?
And why had she left her phone?
But then there came a slight tap on her shoulder and then she was throwing her arms around a very surprised Monica. Who was thin and beautiful and somehow smiling in greeting.
“Rachel?!”
“Oh-Em-Gee Monica, HI! I saw you check in here a few times before on Instagram and you’re here, you’re here!”
The mousy barista behind her asked, “Can I get you some coffee?”
Rachel turned and smiled at her, but Monica intervened, “Ah - decaf please.” Rachel sidestepped as Monica led her towards the couch and gestured to the group of people sitting around the low coffee table. “Okay everyone this is Rachel, another Lincoln High survivor. Rachel this is everybody.”
“Their name is Chandler,” Monica pointed to a person in skinny jeans and a Hello Kitty t-shirt with scruffy dark hair and a large smile. Rachel nodded and took note of the specific way that Monica had always had of introducing what you needed to know about a person in as few of words as possible. The black woman on the couch with long natural hair tamed back with a head scarf smiled and waved as Monica pointed and said, “This is Phoebe and that’s Joey.” A rough looking Latino man with a leather jacket and tattoos nodded and smiled at her charmingly. “And you remember my sister Rose.”
“Of course!” Rachel shot forward to greet the one person there that felt familiar. Rose was as teeny as ever, her hair cut short to her face in a delicate pixie, dressed in jeans and a simple button-down. As they reached each other, Rose’s umbrella suddenly popped open, colliding with Rachel’s dress and Rose sat down, flustered and obviously not in the mood to try for another handshake. Joey pat her on the back in sympathy as she took a drink of her coffee and Monica pushed Rachel gently to sit down next to her on the couch.
Rachel sat and smiled at everyone, setting the gravy boat on the coffee table and adjusting her legs a bit under her ridiculous dress.
“So are you going to tell us now or are we waiting for four wet bridesmaids?” Monica teased.
Which, okay. Yeah. She needed to explain.
Except how could she explain what she didn’t even fully understand herself? She smiled and looked at everyone, Rose was staring at her with wide eyes. As if under that veil was the answer to all of life’s riddles.
Rose had a way of always looking at Rachel like that. And the familiarity of that trust helped ease her frayed nerves.
“Well it all started about a half hour before the wedding. I was in this room where we were keeping all of the presents and I was looking at this gravy boat. This really gorgeous--” Behind her a barista brought her a cup of coffee, she looked up, “Butter? Thanks.” She turned back to the group, “When I realized that I was more turned on by this gravy boat than by Bernice. And then it hit me - how much Bernice looks like Mrs. Potato Head.” The barista sat a small square of butter wrapped in paper in her hand and as she took a breath, Rose gently took the butter and began unwrapping it, dumping it into the coffee mug still in Rachel’s other hand. “I always knew she looked familiar but… Anyway. I just had to get out of there. I started wondering why am I doing this, who am I doing this for. So anyway, I just didn’t know where to go and I know you and I have drifted apart over the years,” Rachel looked beseechingly at Monica - now perched on the arm of the couch on the other side of Phoebe - and tried to keep her hand steady while Rose stirred the butter into her coffee on the other side of her. “But… you’re the only person I know who still lives in the city.”
“And who wasn’t invited to the wedding.”
“Yeah… I was kinda hoping that wouldn’t be an issue.”
Back at the apartment, while the gang watched a Bollywood film without the subtitles - trying to input their own dialogue in instead, Rachel made a call with Monica’s phone to her mother. They used to do this with Telenovelas, but after Joey became Chandler’s roommate and began translating everything for them it became less fun. Phoebe keeps teasing them that she’ll find an Indian boyfriend and then they’ll have to move on to Thai dramas or something, but then Monica’s eyes glaze over at the idea of someone teaching her how to make a proper curry and she puts that plan on the backburner.
In the kitchen, Rachel pleaded with her mother, “Mama, I just, I can’t marry her. I’m sorry. I just don’t love her. … Well it matters to me.”
Monica watched her friend struggle in the kitchen while her friends cheered as the main couple finally did their ‘drunk piggyback ride’ scene.
As Rose went to the kitchen to get a drink of water, Rachel’s voice got louder.
“Come on mama, listen to me. It’s like all of my life everyone has always told me: You’re a duck, you’re a duck, you’re a duck. Well maybe I don’t want to be a duck. Maybe I want to be a horse! Or a cat! … No I don’t want you to buy me a cat, I’m saying I am a cat… It’s a metaphor mother!”
“You could see where she’d be confused,” Rose stage-whispered at Rachel before ducking her head in her shy way and going back to lean against the couch. They were all turned around and watching Rachel by this point, the drama paused and forgotten.
Nothing like entertainment you don’t have to stream on Netflix.
“Look mama, it’s my life… Well maybe I’ll just stay here with Monica,” Rachel gestured to Monica sitting in the chair on the other side of the room.
Monica straightened, her heart thumping, “Well I guess we’ve established that she’ll be staying here with Monica.” She covered it up with a smile and thanked them for not calling her out. Whether it was a good idea or not, she probably should have been consulted.
And then she looked over at her best friend in a drenched and ruined wedding gown and the rag-tag group of friends ready and willing to take her in and love her and Rose watching her pace the kitchen like she was a lifeline and… okay worse things could have landed on her doorstep today. Like the kittens Phoebe somehow always managed to find and kept trying to foist onto her.
“Well maybe that’s my decision,” Rachel listened to her mother on the other end of the line and Monica would have bet $100 that she knew what was coming next, if she was the betting kind of person. “Well maybe I don’t need your money. Wait! Wait I said maybe!” Rachel looked down at the phone in her hand and then up at the rest of them staring at her from the living room.
She looked like a deer caught in the headlights.
But Monica knew it was everyone else that was ensnared.
The second Rachel set the phone in Monica’s hand and settled herself down on the couch, Chandler and Joey began digging through the cupboards for sandwich fixings. Rose found a paper bag and handed it to Rachel before retreating to the chair in front of the window, morosely looking down at her silent phone.
“Just keep breathing, okay?” Monica said as comfortingly as she could to Rachel, watching the paper bag inflate and deflate. “Think calming thoughts?”
Phoebe leaned over the back of the couch and began singing in an off-tune soprano, “’Cause baby you’re a fiiiiiiiiiirework! Come on show ‘em what you’re… something… Make ‘em go Oh! Oh! Oh! As you something la da deeee dee doooo!”
Monica rolled her eyes playfully at Rachel’s horrified expression.
Rachel dropped the bag and smiled sweetly up at Phoebe, “I’m all better now. Thank you!”
Phoebe turned away and bounced a bit, “I helped” she informed Chandler and Joey.
“Phoebe’s right. This is probably for the best. Think of this as a time of independence! Taking control of your life!”
“And hey,” Joey came over with his sandwich in one hand, hip balanced on the back of the couch. “If you ever need anything, I live right across the hall. And Chandler is away a lot.”
“Joey!” Honestly, Monica wasn’t that surprised at his audacity, but she still felt like she should scold him, “Stop hitting on her, it’s her wedding day.”
“What like it’s a rule?”
Rachel smiled, “Also. Who has two thumbs and is a lesbian?” She raised her hand. In the window, Rose’s hand shot up into the air.
He shrugged, his eyes sparkling, “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
A buzzing sound came from a box near the door. Chandler walked over and pushed a button, “Please don’t do that again, it’s a horrible sound.”
A fuzzy voice came through, sounding confused, “Um…Ah… It’s - it’s Paul!”
Monica lit up like a Christmas tree, looking so much like her old self Rachel nearly started crying again, “Buzz him in!”
Joey turned, his face suspicious and a little mischievous, “Who’s Paul?”
Rose jumped up, “Paul the wine guy Paul?!”
“Wait!” Joey held up his hands, sandwich flopping. “You’re not-a-real-date is with Paul the wine guy?”
“He finally asked you out?” Rose’s hand was on her little sister’s shoulder and her face was nearly as excited as Monica’s.
“Yes!!” Monica finally admitted, beaming, as Rose pulled her into a hug and kissed the top of her head.
From the kitchen, Chandler said snarkily, “Oh this is a ‘dear diary’ moment.” Rachel clapped her hands with excitement. She’d only been there a couple of hours, but she already knew from Chandler’s tone that they were as excited as everyone else.
Monica turned away from her sister and held out her hands to Rachel on the couch, “Rach, wait. I-I can cancel.”
“Please, no!” Rachel was so full of the excitement bubbling through the room she could barely sit still. This is what her wedding should have felt like; this raw happiness and hope that was sweeping everyone else up into it. “No, I’ll be fine.”
Monica turned to her sister, “Rose, are you okay? I mean… do you want me to stay?”
Rose looked down at her hands, “That would be good.”
Monica deflated like a balloon, “Really?”
Rose laughed, “No! Go on! It’s Paul the wine guy!”
Rachel felt so excited she could burst. As Monica went to answer the soft knock on the door, Rachel stood in line with the others in the kitchen, waiting to see Paul the wine guy. She couldn’t believe how excited everyone was for this, something so simple: a first date. She was on the end of the line, but she still felt like she belonged. Like Monica’s happiness was theirs and their happiness for her was buoying Monica up, helping her open that door without fear or reservations.
Monica’s voice was high and happy when she opened the door, “Hi! Come on in. Paul, this is-” she turned and rolled her eyes at them all standing in the kitchen waiting to be introduced, “Everybody? Everybody - this is Paul.”
They all chorused out “hello” and “Paul” and Joey actually smirked out “Paul the wine guy” as if they were old friends. Chandler quirked an eyebrow, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name, Paul was it?”
Rachel had to stifle back something that was either going to be a sob or a laugh, she wasn’t sure. Everyone in her circle back home had known Bernice. When they got engaged her bridesmaids all sat around and talked about gift registration, and Berry’s career goals, and where they were going to buy a house. There was a settled-in feel to her world from before. Here, in Monica’s kitchen, with Chandler’s enthusiasm masked as sarcasm whipping through the air, she felt like she had finally found something that had been missing for a long time.
Monica waved Chandler’s comments off and ushered Paul to the couch, “Just sit. I’ll be two seconds.”
Rose signed to Monica something in sibling code that looked like approval or encouragement while Monica closed the door and Joey rubbed his hands together like a big brother about to start tossing around threats. Next to her, Phoebe looked down at her hand and said, “Ooh I just pulled out two eyelashes. That can’t be good.”
Rachel nearly hugged the strange girl, but resisted.
Rose rescued her, “So Rachel, what are you doing tonight?”
“Well,” Rachel sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and trained her ear to make sure Joey wasn’t distributing out any well-meant threats in the living room. “I was supposed to be going to Aruba on my honeymoon so… Nothing!” When she said ‘nothing’ something leapt up in her throat and she felt like dancing naked on the terrace. Nothing. She had no plans. She was flying free. She had no idea what that meant, but she also knew what it didn’t mean. It meant no more schedules and datebooks full of people that didn’t care and events that bored her to tears.
“Right,” Rose’s tone softened. “You’re not even going to get your honeymoon. … Although Aruba this time of year, talk about your… big lizards…”
Rachel wrinkled her nose up at her old friend and took the strange aside for what it was: Rose.
“Anyway, if you don’t feel like being alone tonight, Chandler and Joey are coming over to help me put together my new furniture.”
“And we are so excited about it,” Chandler said.
Rachel considered for a moment, “Well thanks, but I really think I should be alone tonight.”
Rose’s eyes softened, “Of course. Completely.”
“Hey Pheebs, wanna help?” Joey asked.
She turned away from the sink where she was putting her empty mug, “Oh I wish I could, but I don’t want to.”
Monica came out of her room in a cute but comfortable dress and an armful of clothes she handed off to Rachel, “Call me if you need anything.”
“I won’t need anything, just go have a good time.”
Rose, Chandler, and Joey waited a few minutes after Monica and Paul the wine guy left before making their way to the building next door where Rose and Susan were living. Phoebe ran a bath for Rachel and kissed her on the cheek before leaving, “Don’t call me tonight, I have a date too.”
“Oh. Why didn’t you say anything?”
Phoebe shrugged, “This is just a booty call, no need to get everyone’s panties in a twist.”
When she shut the door, Rachel sat down on the couch and laughed and laughed until she cried, but didn’t feel the least bit sad.
At her apartment, Rose looked around at the bare walls and carpeting and bitterly thought about the unit with hardwood flooring that Carol had insisted they pass on. There were IKEA boxes everywhere and if Susan’s txts were anything to go on, more items would be delivered in the morning so she needed to get everything put together before then otherwise there might not be space.
She crouched on the floor and looked at the instructions for the nightstand while Joey and Chandler put together the bookshelf on the other side of the room. “So it says I need to attach a brackety thing to the side thing with a bunch of little worm guys. I have no brackety thing, I see no worm guys whatsoever, and I can’t feel my legs.”
Joey and Chandler turned to her, “Finished!”
She pretended not to notice when they stuck a spare part into the fichus next to them when she walked out of the kitchen with three beers in her hands. As she handed them off to them, she looked down, “This was Carol’s favorite beer. She always drank it out of a chilled glass with an orange slice, I shoulda known. We gotta drink it all before Susan gets home.”
“Challenge accepted,” Chandler beamed, taking the beer from her hand.
Joey leaned against a door jam, “Rose let me ask you a question, she got the furniture, she got the stereo system, she got the good tv. What did you get?”
Rose smiled and raised her beer, “I got Susan.”
Chandler clapped her on the shoulder, “You won, buddy.”
“Well maybe I got Susan, I haven’t heard from her all day.”
“Didn’t she buy all this crap?” Joey’s personal opinion of IKEA furnishings was never too far beneath the surface of his tough-guy routine.
Rose shrugged, “Yeah I guess.”
Chandler’s eyes narrowed, “Is it weird to be in a break up where it’s not really break up? I mean only one of them really left. It’s a break up without being single.”
“I’ll feel less single when Susan gets home and we can talk about what happens next for us I guess.”
“Worried you can’t make it without Carol?”
Rose sat down on the floor, “I love Susan. But… does she love me enough without Carol here, too? I don’t know. We’ve never been on our own. I’m not sure we’ll make it.”
Joey took a swig of his beer, “You will. If you want it, you will.”
“Or you can begin the inevitable process of auditioning new girlfriends,” Chandler laughed.
Rose shook her head, “I don’t think I want that. I just want…Susan.”
Across town in a dimly lit restaurant that had somewhat decent reviews on Yelp (Monica looked it up while they were in the cab), Paul the wine guy talked about his bad break up. Which, usually isn’t a good sign on a first date - wallowing isn’t good for anyone. But it’s also New York and they’re in their late 20’s, its better he’s got a good break-up story than not having any at all.
She’s mistakenly had a few first dates with guys like that. Sweaty palms and they order for her because in the movies that’s what debonair men do to impress their dates. A few bad break-ups under a man’s belt means he knows how to be in a relationship. Maybe.
Well, it’s a higher likelihood than the man that’s never even tried.
“I guess I should have caught on when she started going to yoga three to four times a day. I mean, how flexible can you get?”
“My sister’s going through the same… well not exactly the same thing but it’s such a mess. How did you get through it?”
“She might try accidentally breaking something valuable of theirs.”
“Like a leg?”
“Or an ipod?”
“You actually broke her ipod?”
Rachel sat down at Monica’s computer and thought about all the things that she should say to Berry, all the apologies and excuses that she could possibly come up with. She pressed the record button and started over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I know you probably think that this has something to do with what I said about you making love to me with your socks on, but it isn’t… it isn’t, it’s about me and I just-” Rachel looked at her face in the Skype window and smiled. “Goodbye Berry.” She clicked send and then walked out of Monica’s room and sat down on the balcony, looking up at the stars and watching the city lights, smiling softly.
So she didn’t know what was going to happen tomorrow. And yeah that was fucking terrifying. But it was somehow less so than knowing each and every step her life was going to play out until it was over.
“Ever since she… walked out on me,” Paul played with his noodles sadly.
“What?” Monica lowered her voice, leaning into him. “Want to spell it out with noodles?”
“No, it’s-it’s more of a fifth date kind of a confession.”
Monica smiled and felt a tingle in her toes, “So there’s going to be a fifth date?”
Paul looked up, charmingly dumbfoundedly shy, “Isn’t there?”
“Yeah… yeah I think so.”
He smiled down at his noodles.
“What were you going to say.”
“Well-” he hesitated a bit. God, he was so damn cute. “Ever since she left me…I haven’t been able to perform … sexually.”
Monica took a sip of her green tea steadily and watched him. The charmingly shy smile, the way he bat his eyelashes at her, the dimple in his left cheek. She caught the server passing them, “Yeah, we’re gonna need a check please.”
Paul’s eyes grew hard and he tried to cover his anger up with a few self-deprecating remarks. Monica pulled out her wallet and counted out her half of the check that was still on its way and then leaned over to kiss him solidly on the mouth. It was a good kiss, just a hint of teeth and tongue, a kiss practiced to show someone exactly what was coming - or what they were going to miss.
“You’re an idiot, Paul the wine guy.”
“Wait. How is that a line?!” Rachel sat at the kitchen table the next morning with Chandler and Joey on either side of her, Monica busy at the stove across the table. She sipped at her cup of coffee. She had tried to wake up before Monica and make the coffee herself, but about two minutes into reading directions online, Monica appeared and walked her through her heavily practiced coffee ritual. The resulting pot wasn’t as good as Monica’s usually was, but Chandler and Joey drank it without noticing the difference. Monica was making waffles because she said a girl needed waffles after a bad date - or a ruined wedding. Joey and Chandler had walked through the door, Rachel’s phone in Joey’s hand from the parcel left on the door from the delivery service her mother used.
She didn’t even mind that he had opened it. (Though, she suspected that he had deleted some of the harsher txts and emails that she was expecting to have to deal with that morning.)
“Of course it’s a line,” Joey crowed, holding out his plate to Monica for another waffle.
Rachel leaned forward, “But why would a guy say something like that?”
“Sympathy vote,” Chandler said. “If a girl can ‘fix’ him, then she’s like a superhero. Or her vagina is.”
Rachel wrinkled her nose, “Gross.”
“Gross vaginas?”
“No gross guys. High-five for vaginas,” she held out her hand to Joey, who slapped it with a grin.
Chandler grabbed Monica’s wrist, “How are you, kid?”
Monica sat down with a thump, putting a plate of waffles in the center of the table, “I really thought he was a nice guy, you know.”
“I’m sorry,” Chandler rubbed her shoulders affectionately. “You’ll get the next one.” They put a final bite of waffle in their mouth and then grabbed the one Joey had just finished buttering off his plate and stood up. “Alright kids I gotta get to work. If I don’t input those numbers… doesn’t make much of a difference.” They leaned against the counter and ate Joey’s waffle with one hand, coffee in the other.
Joey growled and started buttering another waffle.
“So do you guys all have jobs?” Rachel asked, her voice high.
Monica laughed, “Yeah, we all have jobs. See that’s how we… buy stuff.”
“Yeah,” Joey smiled up at her. “I’m an actor.”
“Wow! Would I have seen you in anything?”
“Oh, I doubt it. I mostly do regional theatre stuff.”
“Wait-wait! Unless you managed to catch the Wee Ones production of ‘Pinocchio’,” Monica cut in.
Chandler put on an affected voice, “Look Geopetto! I’m a real live boy!”
Joey smiled and stood up, walking towards the door, “I will not take this abuse.”
Chandler smiled at them and then pranced out the door behind him singing, “I was once a wooden boy a little wooden boy!” in a way that made Rachel feel like this was a performance they had all seen from Chandler more than they ever got to experience Joey’s.
Monica smiled after them as Joey saluted her and closed the door. “So how are you doing today? Did you sleep okay? Did you talk to Berry? I can’t stop smiling.”
“I can see that. You look like you slept with a hanger in your mouth.”
“I know it’s just… remember when you broke up with Tony DeMarco in the eighth grade?”
“Oh yeah!”
“Last night was like that, but without the whole ‘I’m a lesbian’ part.”
“You did that kiss thing that you do, didn’t you? That, ‘here’s what you’re going to lose’ kiss?”
“Hell yeah I did!” They giggled together over the table and Rachel felt…happy for her friend. She thought maybe she should feel disappointed. She thought maybe she would have fallen for that line about impotence and would have said goodbye to Paul in the morning with a derpy smile on her face all day. Monica waved her hands, “Okay. Okay! I am going to go to work and I’m not going to think about Paul. Or I’m just going to go to work.”
Rachel popped off her chair, “Oh! Wish me luck!”
Monica stopped at the door, “What for?”
“I’m gonna go get one of those job things.”
Monica smiled awkwardly and backed out of the apartment. Rachel ran to the shower before she lost her nerve.
Monica jumped every time someone sauntered through her kitchen. Tuesday afternoons weren’t really a crowded time, even at a high demand restaurant like hers, which meant that there wasn’t the usual frantic energy that a Friday night dinner rush held and yes - the staff had the leisure to actually saunter. She liked Tuesday afternoons for that reason, generally. But today - if Paul the wine guy showed up - she’d have much less of a buffer between him and her wavering confidence from last night.
It was just starting on early evening and things were getting a little bit busier when Franny walked in, smiling and a shade or two darker from her vacation to Florida to visit her retired parents. Monica wished for the umpteenth time that her parents would retire to Florida so she could spend her required visits laying on the beach working on her tan instead of sitting in the living room watching golf with her father while her mother lamented over her perpetual singlehood and lack of a career from the kitchen. That would be nice.
“Hey Monica!”
“Hey Franny, welcome back. How was Florida?”
Franny eyed her suspiciously, “You had did that kiss of what you’ll miss thing, didn’t you?”
Monica paused and laughed, “How do you do that?”
She just smiled from her end of the kitchen, “So… who?”
“You know-Paul?”
“Paul the wine guy!? Ohhh yeah, I know Paul.”
Monica brought herself up, “Wait… you know Paul like…?”
“Oh I take credit for Paul. You know before me there was no snap in his turtle for two years.” Franny smiled self-satisfyingly. “So what did he do to piss you off?”
“Oh…” Monica gulped, “He … hit on the waitress.”
“Asshole.”
“Yeah…”
“Of course you don’t tell her,” Joey had a way of holding his oversized pink coffee mug the barista always inflicted on him like it was a bottle of beer or a glass of whiskey, a careful nonchalance that Monica wished he knew how to take into casting calls with him. Maybe if agents could see the easy confidence he had, he wouldn’t have to do so many Pinnochio’s.
“Really?” Monica sunk back into the couch, “I feel… guilty or something.”
“You can’t tell her now,” Rose said from her chair, still looking a little worn around the edges.
“Is it me?! Do I have some kind of beacon that only dogs and men with severe emotional problems can hear?”
Phoebe sat down her markers from the strange craft she was doing from her spot on the floor, “Alright. Give me your feet.”
Monica lifted shrugged her feet out of her shoes and lifted one up to Phoebe’s outstretched hands. She based a great deal of her life on the idea that foot rubs and singing cured any emotional distress. And no one really took offense to the first and kinda just went along with the second.
“I just… I want to be a good friend, you know?”
Joey looked down at his coffee and then chuckled, “I can’t believe she didn’t know it was a line!”
“Oh!” Monica threw him off the couch with one hand. Which technically she shouldn’t be able to do because he was about five times stronger than her, but Joey was nothing if not supportive and if Monica wanted him to fall off the couch, he’d commit to it.
She tried not to smile.
Rachel had never been laughed at so many times in her life. But after the day she’d had she was starting to think that maybe her life would be a bit easier to deal with if someone, somewhere had taken her a bit more seriously and not just humored her.
At the last interview, tears in her eyes, she asked why. The woman across from her was only about three or four years older and smiled at her tears sharply. Like they might taste good.
“Oh sugar. You actually have to have experience. Most of the applicants started at the bottom and proved themselves to get to sit in that chair,” she pointed at Rachel. “I honestly called you in for an interview because your resume was so damn odd, thought it would give me a break between the over-achievers and ass-kissers that I’ve had to deal with for the past few days.”
Rachel sniffed, “So… so what should I do?”
The woman stood up and smoothed down her pencil skirt, “Go home to your mommy and marry a nice guy.”
Rachel shook her head stubbornly.
“Then start at the bottom. Lower than you think you deserve. Lower than you’ve ever gone before. And fight every damn day.”
“And then I’ll get to be you?”
“No, honey. I’m me because my aunt owns this company.” At Rachel’s audible sobbing, the woman looked disturbed, “But you know… maybe.”
“I could do it, you know.”
“I bet ya can. Now. Please leave.”
Rachel stood up, sniffling, “I’m sorry this wasn’t the relaxing interview you were hoping for.”
The woman smiled at her and this time it looked significantly less feral, but no less hungry, “Don’t worry. It was still better than what I have waiting in the hall.”
Rachel tried not to stare at the young woman who stood up over-eagerly in the hallway, she had a portfolio of some kind in her hand and her heels were about three inches taller than they should be. She’ll probably get the job, Rachel thought darkly.
She decided to walk back to the coffee shop and on her way …
“Guess what?!” Rachel ran into the coffee shop, all smiles and enthusiasm.
Rose perked up, the dark circles under her eyes in direct contrast to her sparkling interest, “You got a job?”
Rachel laughed, “Are you kidding? I’m trained for nothing! I was laughed out of twelve interviews today.”
“And yet you’re surprisingly upbeat,” which was either Chandler’s way of saying that they were interested and cared about her story… or really wanted a subject change.
Rachel beamed at them, “Well you would be too if you found Joan & David boots on sale 50% off.”
“Oh how well you know me,” Chandler quipped, before leaning over Monica and snatching a boot out of the box and comparing it to their own feet. The look of utter dismay that crossed their face was priceless, “Why do all the women in my life have to be such shrimps?”
“Sorry babe,” Rose cooed from her chair.
Rachel snatched the boot back from them and hugged it to her chest, “They’re my new, ‘I don’t need a job, I don’t need my mother, I have great boots’ - boots.”
“How’d you pay for them?”
Rachel scowled at Monica, “Credit card!”
“Uh huh and who pays for that?”
“Uh… my mother.”
All six of her beautiful, shiny credit cards were lying on Monica’s kitchen table, looking up at her and begging her not to destroy them. She needed them. She couldn’t betray them this way.
Monica sat a pair of scissors on the table, “Come on, you can’t live off your parents your whole life.”
Rachel could feel Rose and Joey on either side of her, like sentinels protecting her back. The others looked at her from across the table with wide, patient eyes, “I know that. That’s why I was getting married!”
Phoebe grabbed her hand, “Give her a break, it’s hard being on your own for the first time.”
Rachel softened, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I remember when I first came to the city. I was fourteen… my mom had just killed herself and my step-dad was back in prison. And I got here and I didn’t know anybody. And I ended up living with this albino guy who was like, cleaning windshields outside Port Authority. And then he killed himself and THEN I found aroma therapy,” Phoebe said with a smile. “So. Believe me. I know exactly how you feel.”
Everyone stilled and Rachel waited for someone to tell her how to proceed. Phoebe beamed at her and stood up to get more coffee, as Rose lowered herself into the chair she’d just vacated, Rachel could see Joey out of the corner of her eye pull Phoebe into his chest, cradling her with his arms and resting his chin on the top of her head, rocking back and forth slightly.
Rose smiled and shook her head. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “Just…” she gestured at the credit cards.
Monica smiled and held out the scissors, “Alright, are you ready?”
“I don’t think so…”
Rose picked up a card, “Oh come on! Cut, cut, cut!”
The others smiled and began chanting with her. Rachel could even hear Phoebe’s slight soprano making a weird, trilling song out of it from where she was still pressed against Joey.
One at a time Rose held out the cards and Rachel cut them in two while they chanted and cheered for her. When it was over, Phoebe broke from Joey and came around to lean down and hug Rachel from behind, “You did it!”
Monica stood up and made it a group hug, wrapping her short arms around the both of them, “Welcome to the real world. It sucks. You’re gonna love it.”
After everyone else left, Rose stayed over to watch a bad movie with Rachel and Monica. None of them had the heart to make any jokes about it as it was playing, but it was better than being alone. Rachel curled up in a chair and ate ice cream in tiny little bites to heal the wounds left by a half-dozen destroyed credit cards. Rose and Monica curled up on the couch, a pile of arms and legs and pillows that seemed to have no end.
At the end of the movie, Monica clicked the tv off with the remote and stretched lazily, “Well. That’s it.” She turned to Rose, “You gonna crash on the couch?”
“No. No. I gotta go home sometime.”
Behind them the front door opened and a young, beautiful woman with long dark hair and eyes came running through the door in cargo pants and an oversized black sweater, “Rose for fuck’s sake.”
Rose stood up and stared.
“Susan?” Rachel asked.
The girl blinked at her and smiled shyly, “Susan. And…?”
“Rachel!” she bounced a little.
“Oh sure. Of course, from high school right?”
Rose interrupted them, “Where have you been?”
Susan shuffled her feet a little, “I…”
“I’m gonna go to bed!” Monica gestured to Rachel frantically.
“No!” Susan moved forward. “Actually you should stay because…” She smiled gaily. “I’m pregnant!”
fandom: F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
characters: lesbian!rachel, monica, transgirl!rose/susan/carol, genderqueer!chandler, phoebe, joey
word count: 6,800
disclaimer: I wanted to see what would happen to this universe if I took these characters and changed a few small things. Turns out the original script can only take you so far. This is a scene-by-scene rewrite of the original pilot. There are quite a few lines pulled directly from the script. I do not own the script, nor the series, nor the characters. Please don't sue.
summary: rachel runs away from her wedding, right into a family
a/n: happyg_rl started rewatching FRIENDS a few months ago and we had a really wonderful conversation about what a TREAT the series could have been if the gang could have had carol/susan dealing with parenting and marriage as a guide to the hapless infants. also any excuse to write away ross. and also why is rachel straight?! boring. so I started contemplating a rewrite and decided to give the whole cast an overhaul. I hope you like it, lovey. I hope it's not terrible, flist. xoxo
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Rachel stared at the gravy boat in her hand and tried not to pay attention to the whispering and pointed looks she was getting on the subway. It was her fault for leaving her wedding still in her ornate dress but it wasn’t like there was much time between “do you take Bernice to be your lawfully wedded wife” and running back down the aisle to the front doors of the church that left much time for a wardrobe change. She didn’t even manage to grab her cell phone. What kind of bride would she be if she had walked down the aisle with her smartphone hidden in her bouquet?
A smart one.
And so now here she was, on the subway, in her wedding gown, on her way to attack an old friend from high school that she hadn’t actually invited to the wedding. Rachel tossed the gravy boat from hand to hand and smiled at the old woman knitting across from her, hopefully that wasn’t going to be an issue.
Monica snapped a photo of her coffee and posted it to Instagram before any of her friends could make disparaging remarks. She really liked taking photos of espresso art. They were all listening to Chandler relate their newest dream.
“And then I look down, and there’s a telephone… there.”
“Instead of?” Joey’s eyes widened.
“That’s right!” Chandler loved relating their dreams and having everyone tell them what they meant. “And then. It started ringing. So I answer it. And it’s my mother.”
Monica choked back a laugh.
“Which is very odd, because she never calls me.”
Monica leaned back against the couch and smiled. Real life may be pretty shitty sometimes, but she had a date tonight she was actually hopeful about and she had great friends.
Rachel examined the map at the top of the subway. Monica was always posting on Instagram from a coffee shop called Central Perk and a few weeks ago, Rachel had looked it up to see if maybe she could come visit her. Wedding plans got in the way, but she still had a rough idea where it was. Especially since it seemed to be just around the corner from the building where Monica’s grandmother’s condo was and the two of them had spent a few summers there, shopping during the day on Rachel’s mother’s credit cards and eating take-out in the evenings while Monica’s grandmother went to bingo.
She was close enough to walk the rest of the way.
Rose drew a deep breath and folded up her umbrella before walking into the coffee shop. She liked to carry an umbrella in the fall in case of rain, despite what the weatherman said. She could see her sister Monica and their friends inside. She knew she should go inside, she deserved their comfort today. Especially today.
She stopped behind the couch, “Hey.”
“This guy says hi and I want to kill myself,” Joey quipped.
“You okay, hon?” Monica turned to the others, “Carol is moving her stuff out today.”
A chorus of well-wishing “ohhs” washed over Rose and she smiled.
“And you really didn’t know she was straight?” Joey asked helpfully.
“She didn’t know - how was I supposed to know?”
Phoebe bobbed her head, “Well at least you still have Susan.”
Monica rubbed her back softly, “Where is she today, anyway?”
“Off getting drunk I suppose. She’s taking this really hard. You know they met first.” They sat in silence for a moment. “I just wish I could turn back time, you know? Back to the wedding.” She thought of Carol in her wedding gown, of her in a tux, Susan standing beside them beaming and so happy. The photos in the apartment would have to be taken down before Susan got back.
Chandler suddenly shouted, “I wish I had a million dollars.” They gestured to the door with a flourish before shrugging and sitting back down. “Thought that would work.”
Monica stood up and walked up to a drenched girl in a wedding gown.
Rachel took a deep breath and stepped into the coffee shop. It was now or never. This was the only place left in New York she could go.
It’s not like she could go back now, could she?
Maybe everything was a little fuzzy and later she’d admit that nothing really felt real in that moment, but she didn’t see Monica anywhere. And that scared her. So she went up to the counter and tried to describe her childhood best friend to the barista, but then realized it had been years since she even saw Monica in person. How could she describe someone she didn’t even know?
And why had she left her phone?
But then there came a slight tap on her shoulder and then she was throwing her arms around a very surprised Monica. Who was thin and beautiful and somehow smiling in greeting.
“Rachel?!”
“Oh-Em-Gee Monica, HI! I saw you check in here a few times before on Instagram and you’re here, you’re here!”
The mousy barista behind her asked, “Can I get you some coffee?”
Rachel turned and smiled at her, but Monica intervened, “Ah - decaf please.” Rachel sidestepped as Monica led her towards the couch and gestured to the group of people sitting around the low coffee table. “Okay everyone this is Rachel, another Lincoln High survivor. Rachel this is everybody.”
“Their name is Chandler,” Monica pointed to a person in skinny jeans and a Hello Kitty t-shirt with scruffy dark hair and a large smile. Rachel nodded and took note of the specific way that Monica had always had of introducing what you needed to know about a person in as few of words as possible. The black woman on the couch with long natural hair tamed back with a head scarf smiled and waved as Monica pointed and said, “This is Phoebe and that’s Joey.” A rough looking Latino man with a leather jacket and tattoos nodded and smiled at her charmingly. “And you remember my sister Rose.”
“Of course!” Rachel shot forward to greet the one person there that felt familiar. Rose was as teeny as ever, her hair cut short to her face in a delicate pixie, dressed in jeans and a simple button-down. As they reached each other, Rose’s umbrella suddenly popped open, colliding with Rachel’s dress and Rose sat down, flustered and obviously not in the mood to try for another handshake. Joey pat her on the back in sympathy as she took a drink of her coffee and Monica pushed Rachel gently to sit down next to her on the couch.
Rachel sat and smiled at everyone, setting the gravy boat on the coffee table and adjusting her legs a bit under her ridiculous dress.
“So are you going to tell us now or are we waiting for four wet bridesmaids?” Monica teased.
Which, okay. Yeah. She needed to explain.
Except how could she explain what she didn’t even fully understand herself? She smiled and looked at everyone, Rose was staring at her with wide eyes. As if under that veil was the answer to all of life’s riddles.
Rose had a way of always looking at Rachel like that. And the familiarity of that trust helped ease her frayed nerves.
“Well it all started about a half hour before the wedding. I was in this room where we were keeping all of the presents and I was looking at this gravy boat. This really gorgeous--” Behind her a barista brought her a cup of coffee, she looked up, “Butter? Thanks.” She turned back to the group, “When I realized that I was more turned on by this gravy boat than by Bernice. And then it hit me - how much Bernice looks like Mrs. Potato Head.” The barista sat a small square of butter wrapped in paper in her hand and as she took a breath, Rose gently took the butter and began unwrapping it, dumping it into the coffee mug still in Rachel’s other hand. “I always knew she looked familiar but… Anyway. I just had to get out of there. I started wondering why am I doing this, who am I doing this for. So anyway, I just didn’t know where to go and I know you and I have drifted apart over the years,” Rachel looked beseechingly at Monica - now perched on the arm of the couch on the other side of Phoebe - and tried to keep her hand steady while Rose stirred the butter into her coffee on the other side of her. “But… you’re the only person I know who still lives in the city.”
“And who wasn’t invited to the wedding.”
“Yeah… I was kinda hoping that wouldn’t be an issue.”
Back at the apartment, while the gang watched a Bollywood film without the subtitles - trying to input their own dialogue in instead, Rachel made a call with Monica’s phone to her mother. They used to do this with Telenovelas, but after Joey became Chandler’s roommate and began translating everything for them it became less fun. Phoebe keeps teasing them that she’ll find an Indian boyfriend and then they’ll have to move on to Thai dramas or something, but then Monica’s eyes glaze over at the idea of someone teaching her how to make a proper curry and she puts that plan on the backburner.
In the kitchen, Rachel pleaded with her mother, “Mama, I just, I can’t marry her. I’m sorry. I just don’t love her. … Well it matters to me.”
Monica watched her friend struggle in the kitchen while her friends cheered as the main couple finally did their ‘drunk piggyback ride’ scene.
As Rose went to the kitchen to get a drink of water, Rachel’s voice got louder.
“Come on mama, listen to me. It’s like all of my life everyone has always told me: You’re a duck, you’re a duck, you’re a duck. Well maybe I don’t want to be a duck. Maybe I want to be a horse! Or a cat! … No I don’t want you to buy me a cat, I’m saying I am a cat… It’s a metaphor mother!”
“You could see where she’d be confused,” Rose stage-whispered at Rachel before ducking her head in her shy way and going back to lean against the couch. They were all turned around and watching Rachel by this point, the drama paused and forgotten.
Nothing like entertainment you don’t have to stream on Netflix.
“Look mama, it’s my life… Well maybe I’ll just stay here with Monica,” Rachel gestured to Monica sitting in the chair on the other side of the room.
Monica straightened, her heart thumping, “Well I guess we’ve established that she’ll be staying here with Monica.” She covered it up with a smile and thanked them for not calling her out. Whether it was a good idea or not, she probably should have been consulted.
And then she looked over at her best friend in a drenched and ruined wedding gown and the rag-tag group of friends ready and willing to take her in and love her and Rose watching her pace the kitchen like she was a lifeline and… okay worse things could have landed on her doorstep today. Like the kittens Phoebe somehow always managed to find and kept trying to foist onto her.
“Well maybe that’s my decision,” Rachel listened to her mother on the other end of the line and Monica would have bet $100 that she knew what was coming next, if she was the betting kind of person. “Well maybe I don’t need your money. Wait! Wait I said maybe!” Rachel looked down at the phone in her hand and then up at the rest of them staring at her from the living room.
She looked like a deer caught in the headlights.
But Monica knew it was everyone else that was ensnared.
The second Rachel set the phone in Monica’s hand and settled herself down on the couch, Chandler and Joey began digging through the cupboards for sandwich fixings. Rose found a paper bag and handed it to Rachel before retreating to the chair in front of the window, morosely looking down at her silent phone.
“Just keep breathing, okay?” Monica said as comfortingly as she could to Rachel, watching the paper bag inflate and deflate. “Think calming thoughts?”
Phoebe leaned over the back of the couch and began singing in an off-tune soprano, “’Cause baby you’re a fiiiiiiiiiirework! Come on show ‘em what you’re… something… Make ‘em go Oh! Oh! Oh! As you something la da deeee dee doooo!”
Monica rolled her eyes playfully at Rachel’s horrified expression.
Rachel dropped the bag and smiled sweetly up at Phoebe, “I’m all better now. Thank you!”
Phoebe turned away and bounced a bit, “I helped” she informed Chandler and Joey.
“Phoebe’s right. This is probably for the best. Think of this as a time of independence! Taking control of your life!”
“And hey,” Joey came over with his sandwich in one hand, hip balanced on the back of the couch. “If you ever need anything, I live right across the hall. And Chandler is away a lot.”
“Joey!” Honestly, Monica wasn’t that surprised at his audacity, but she still felt like she should scold him, “Stop hitting on her, it’s her wedding day.”
“What like it’s a rule?”
Rachel smiled, “Also. Who has two thumbs and is a lesbian?” She raised her hand. In the window, Rose’s hand shot up into the air.
He shrugged, his eyes sparkling, “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
A buzzing sound came from a box near the door. Chandler walked over and pushed a button, “Please don’t do that again, it’s a horrible sound.”
A fuzzy voice came through, sounding confused, “Um…Ah… It’s - it’s Paul!”
Monica lit up like a Christmas tree, looking so much like her old self Rachel nearly started crying again, “Buzz him in!”
Joey turned, his face suspicious and a little mischievous, “Who’s Paul?”
Rose jumped up, “Paul the wine guy Paul?!”
“Wait!” Joey held up his hands, sandwich flopping. “You’re not-a-real-date is with Paul the wine guy?”
“He finally asked you out?” Rose’s hand was on her little sister’s shoulder and her face was nearly as excited as Monica’s.
“Yes!!” Monica finally admitted, beaming, as Rose pulled her into a hug and kissed the top of her head.
From the kitchen, Chandler said snarkily, “Oh this is a ‘dear diary’ moment.” Rachel clapped her hands with excitement. She’d only been there a couple of hours, but she already knew from Chandler’s tone that they were as excited as everyone else.
Monica turned away from her sister and held out her hands to Rachel on the couch, “Rach, wait. I-I can cancel.”
“Please, no!” Rachel was so full of the excitement bubbling through the room she could barely sit still. This is what her wedding should have felt like; this raw happiness and hope that was sweeping everyone else up into it. “No, I’ll be fine.”
Monica turned to her sister, “Rose, are you okay? I mean… do you want me to stay?”
Rose looked down at her hands, “That would be good.”
Monica deflated like a balloon, “Really?”
Rose laughed, “No! Go on! It’s Paul the wine guy!”
Rachel felt so excited she could burst. As Monica went to answer the soft knock on the door, Rachel stood in line with the others in the kitchen, waiting to see Paul the wine guy. She couldn’t believe how excited everyone was for this, something so simple: a first date. She was on the end of the line, but she still felt like she belonged. Like Monica’s happiness was theirs and their happiness for her was buoying Monica up, helping her open that door without fear or reservations.
Monica’s voice was high and happy when she opened the door, “Hi! Come on in. Paul, this is-” she turned and rolled her eyes at them all standing in the kitchen waiting to be introduced, “Everybody? Everybody - this is Paul.”
They all chorused out “hello” and “Paul” and Joey actually smirked out “Paul the wine guy” as if they were old friends. Chandler quirked an eyebrow, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name, Paul was it?”
Rachel had to stifle back something that was either going to be a sob or a laugh, she wasn’t sure. Everyone in her circle back home had known Bernice. When they got engaged her bridesmaids all sat around and talked about gift registration, and Berry’s career goals, and where they were going to buy a house. There was a settled-in feel to her world from before. Here, in Monica’s kitchen, with Chandler’s enthusiasm masked as sarcasm whipping through the air, she felt like she had finally found something that had been missing for a long time.
Monica waved Chandler’s comments off and ushered Paul to the couch, “Just sit. I’ll be two seconds.”
Rose signed to Monica something in sibling code that looked like approval or encouragement while Monica closed the door and Joey rubbed his hands together like a big brother about to start tossing around threats. Next to her, Phoebe looked down at her hand and said, “Ooh I just pulled out two eyelashes. That can’t be good.”
Rachel nearly hugged the strange girl, but resisted.
Rose rescued her, “So Rachel, what are you doing tonight?”
“Well,” Rachel sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and trained her ear to make sure Joey wasn’t distributing out any well-meant threats in the living room. “I was supposed to be going to Aruba on my honeymoon so… Nothing!” When she said ‘nothing’ something leapt up in her throat and she felt like dancing naked on the terrace. Nothing. She had no plans. She was flying free. She had no idea what that meant, but she also knew what it didn’t mean. It meant no more schedules and datebooks full of people that didn’t care and events that bored her to tears.
“Right,” Rose’s tone softened. “You’re not even going to get your honeymoon. … Although Aruba this time of year, talk about your… big lizards…”
Rachel wrinkled her nose up at her old friend and took the strange aside for what it was: Rose.
“Anyway, if you don’t feel like being alone tonight, Chandler and Joey are coming over to help me put together my new furniture.”
“And we are so excited about it,” Chandler said.
Rachel considered for a moment, “Well thanks, but I really think I should be alone tonight.”
Rose’s eyes softened, “Of course. Completely.”
“Hey Pheebs, wanna help?” Joey asked.
She turned away from the sink where she was putting her empty mug, “Oh I wish I could, but I don’t want to.”
Monica came out of her room in a cute but comfortable dress and an armful of clothes she handed off to Rachel, “Call me if you need anything.”
“I won’t need anything, just go have a good time.”
Rose, Chandler, and Joey waited a few minutes after Monica and Paul the wine guy left before making their way to the building next door where Rose and Susan were living. Phoebe ran a bath for Rachel and kissed her on the cheek before leaving, “Don’t call me tonight, I have a date too.”
“Oh. Why didn’t you say anything?”
Phoebe shrugged, “This is just a booty call, no need to get everyone’s panties in a twist.”
When she shut the door, Rachel sat down on the couch and laughed and laughed until she cried, but didn’t feel the least bit sad.
At her apartment, Rose looked around at the bare walls and carpeting and bitterly thought about the unit with hardwood flooring that Carol had insisted they pass on. There were IKEA boxes everywhere and if Susan’s txts were anything to go on, more items would be delivered in the morning so she needed to get everything put together before then otherwise there might not be space.
She crouched on the floor and looked at the instructions for the nightstand while Joey and Chandler put together the bookshelf on the other side of the room. “So it says I need to attach a brackety thing to the side thing with a bunch of little worm guys. I have no brackety thing, I see no worm guys whatsoever, and I can’t feel my legs.”
Joey and Chandler turned to her, “Finished!”
She pretended not to notice when they stuck a spare part into the fichus next to them when she walked out of the kitchen with three beers in her hands. As she handed them off to them, she looked down, “This was Carol’s favorite beer. She always drank it out of a chilled glass with an orange slice, I shoulda known. We gotta drink it all before Susan gets home.”
“Challenge accepted,” Chandler beamed, taking the beer from her hand.
Joey leaned against a door jam, “Rose let me ask you a question, she got the furniture, she got the stereo system, she got the good tv. What did you get?”
Rose smiled and raised her beer, “I got Susan.”
Chandler clapped her on the shoulder, “You won, buddy.”
“Well maybe I got Susan, I haven’t heard from her all day.”
“Didn’t she buy all this crap?” Joey’s personal opinion of IKEA furnishings was never too far beneath the surface of his tough-guy routine.
Rose shrugged, “Yeah I guess.”
Chandler’s eyes narrowed, “Is it weird to be in a break up where it’s not really break up? I mean only one of them really left. It’s a break up without being single.”
“I’ll feel less single when Susan gets home and we can talk about what happens next for us I guess.”
“Worried you can’t make it without Carol?”
Rose sat down on the floor, “I love Susan. But… does she love me enough without Carol here, too? I don’t know. We’ve never been on our own. I’m not sure we’ll make it.”
Joey took a swig of his beer, “You will. If you want it, you will.”
“Or you can begin the inevitable process of auditioning new girlfriends,” Chandler laughed.
Rose shook her head, “I don’t think I want that. I just want…Susan.”
Across town in a dimly lit restaurant that had somewhat decent reviews on Yelp (Monica looked it up while they were in the cab), Paul the wine guy talked about his bad break up. Which, usually isn’t a good sign on a first date - wallowing isn’t good for anyone. But it’s also New York and they’re in their late 20’s, its better he’s got a good break-up story than not having any at all.
She’s mistakenly had a few first dates with guys like that. Sweaty palms and they order for her because in the movies that’s what debonair men do to impress their dates. A few bad break-ups under a man’s belt means he knows how to be in a relationship. Maybe.
Well, it’s a higher likelihood than the man that’s never even tried.
“I guess I should have caught on when she started going to yoga three to four times a day. I mean, how flexible can you get?”
“My sister’s going through the same… well not exactly the same thing but it’s such a mess. How did you get through it?”
“She might try accidentally breaking something valuable of theirs.”
“Like a leg?”
“Or an ipod?”
“You actually broke her ipod?”
Rachel sat down at Monica’s computer and thought about all the things that she should say to Berry, all the apologies and excuses that she could possibly come up with. She pressed the record button and started over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I know you probably think that this has something to do with what I said about you making love to me with your socks on, but it isn’t… it isn’t, it’s about me and I just-” Rachel looked at her face in the Skype window and smiled. “Goodbye Berry.” She clicked send and then walked out of Monica’s room and sat down on the balcony, looking up at the stars and watching the city lights, smiling softly.
So she didn’t know what was going to happen tomorrow. And yeah that was fucking terrifying. But it was somehow less so than knowing each and every step her life was going to play out until it was over.
“Ever since she… walked out on me,” Paul played with his noodles sadly.
“What?” Monica lowered her voice, leaning into him. “Want to spell it out with noodles?”
“No, it’s-it’s more of a fifth date kind of a confession.”
Monica smiled and felt a tingle in her toes, “So there’s going to be a fifth date?”
Paul looked up, charmingly dumbfoundedly shy, “Isn’t there?”
“Yeah… yeah I think so.”
He smiled down at his noodles.
“What were you going to say.”
“Well-” he hesitated a bit. God, he was so damn cute. “Ever since she left me…I haven’t been able to perform … sexually.”
Monica took a sip of her green tea steadily and watched him. The charmingly shy smile, the way he bat his eyelashes at her, the dimple in his left cheek. She caught the server passing them, “Yeah, we’re gonna need a check please.”
Paul’s eyes grew hard and he tried to cover his anger up with a few self-deprecating remarks. Monica pulled out her wallet and counted out her half of the check that was still on its way and then leaned over to kiss him solidly on the mouth. It was a good kiss, just a hint of teeth and tongue, a kiss practiced to show someone exactly what was coming - or what they were going to miss.
“You’re an idiot, Paul the wine guy.”
“Wait. How is that a line?!” Rachel sat at the kitchen table the next morning with Chandler and Joey on either side of her, Monica busy at the stove across the table. She sipped at her cup of coffee. She had tried to wake up before Monica and make the coffee herself, but about two minutes into reading directions online, Monica appeared and walked her through her heavily practiced coffee ritual. The resulting pot wasn’t as good as Monica’s usually was, but Chandler and Joey drank it without noticing the difference. Monica was making waffles because she said a girl needed waffles after a bad date - or a ruined wedding. Joey and Chandler had walked through the door, Rachel’s phone in Joey’s hand from the parcel left on the door from the delivery service her mother used.
She didn’t even mind that he had opened it. (Though, she suspected that he had deleted some of the harsher txts and emails that she was expecting to have to deal with that morning.)
“Of course it’s a line,” Joey crowed, holding out his plate to Monica for another waffle.
Rachel leaned forward, “But why would a guy say something like that?”
“Sympathy vote,” Chandler said. “If a girl can ‘fix’ him, then she’s like a superhero. Or her vagina is.”
Rachel wrinkled her nose, “Gross.”
“Gross vaginas?”
“No gross guys. High-five for vaginas,” she held out her hand to Joey, who slapped it with a grin.
Chandler grabbed Monica’s wrist, “How are you, kid?”
Monica sat down with a thump, putting a plate of waffles in the center of the table, “I really thought he was a nice guy, you know.”
“I’m sorry,” Chandler rubbed her shoulders affectionately. “You’ll get the next one.” They put a final bite of waffle in their mouth and then grabbed the one Joey had just finished buttering off his plate and stood up. “Alright kids I gotta get to work. If I don’t input those numbers… doesn’t make much of a difference.” They leaned against the counter and ate Joey’s waffle with one hand, coffee in the other.
Joey growled and started buttering another waffle.
“So do you guys all have jobs?” Rachel asked, her voice high.
Monica laughed, “Yeah, we all have jobs. See that’s how we… buy stuff.”
“Yeah,” Joey smiled up at her. “I’m an actor.”
“Wow! Would I have seen you in anything?”
“Oh, I doubt it. I mostly do regional theatre stuff.”
“Wait-wait! Unless you managed to catch the Wee Ones production of ‘Pinocchio’,” Monica cut in.
Chandler put on an affected voice, “Look Geopetto! I’m a real live boy!”
Joey smiled and stood up, walking towards the door, “I will not take this abuse.”
Chandler smiled at them and then pranced out the door behind him singing, “I was once a wooden boy a little wooden boy!” in a way that made Rachel feel like this was a performance they had all seen from Chandler more than they ever got to experience Joey’s.
Monica smiled after them as Joey saluted her and closed the door. “So how are you doing today? Did you sleep okay? Did you talk to Berry? I can’t stop smiling.”
“I can see that. You look like you slept with a hanger in your mouth.”
“I know it’s just… remember when you broke up with Tony DeMarco in the eighth grade?”
“Oh yeah!”
“Last night was like that, but without the whole ‘I’m a lesbian’ part.”
“You did that kiss thing that you do, didn’t you? That, ‘here’s what you’re going to lose’ kiss?”
“Hell yeah I did!” They giggled together over the table and Rachel felt…happy for her friend. She thought maybe she should feel disappointed. She thought maybe she would have fallen for that line about impotence and would have said goodbye to Paul in the morning with a derpy smile on her face all day. Monica waved her hands, “Okay. Okay! I am going to go to work and I’m not going to think about Paul. Or I’m just going to go to work.”
Rachel popped off her chair, “Oh! Wish me luck!”
Monica stopped at the door, “What for?”
“I’m gonna go get one of those job things.”
Monica smiled awkwardly and backed out of the apartment. Rachel ran to the shower before she lost her nerve.
Monica jumped every time someone sauntered through her kitchen. Tuesday afternoons weren’t really a crowded time, even at a high demand restaurant like hers, which meant that there wasn’t the usual frantic energy that a Friday night dinner rush held and yes - the staff had the leisure to actually saunter. She liked Tuesday afternoons for that reason, generally. But today - if Paul the wine guy showed up - she’d have much less of a buffer between him and her wavering confidence from last night.
It was just starting on early evening and things were getting a little bit busier when Franny walked in, smiling and a shade or two darker from her vacation to Florida to visit her retired parents. Monica wished for the umpteenth time that her parents would retire to Florida so she could spend her required visits laying on the beach working on her tan instead of sitting in the living room watching golf with her father while her mother lamented over her perpetual singlehood and lack of a career from the kitchen. That would be nice.
“Hey Monica!”
“Hey Franny, welcome back. How was Florida?”
Franny eyed her suspiciously, “You had did that kiss of what you’ll miss thing, didn’t you?”
Monica paused and laughed, “How do you do that?”
She just smiled from her end of the kitchen, “So… who?”
“You know-Paul?”
“Paul the wine guy!? Ohhh yeah, I know Paul.”
Monica brought herself up, “Wait… you know Paul like…?”
“Oh I take credit for Paul. You know before me there was no snap in his turtle for two years.” Franny smiled self-satisfyingly. “So what did he do to piss you off?”
“Oh…” Monica gulped, “He … hit on the waitress.”
“Asshole.”
“Yeah…”
“Of course you don’t tell her,” Joey had a way of holding his oversized pink coffee mug the barista always inflicted on him like it was a bottle of beer or a glass of whiskey, a careful nonchalance that Monica wished he knew how to take into casting calls with him. Maybe if agents could see the easy confidence he had, he wouldn’t have to do so many Pinnochio’s.
“Really?” Monica sunk back into the couch, “I feel… guilty or something.”
“You can’t tell her now,” Rose said from her chair, still looking a little worn around the edges.
“Is it me?! Do I have some kind of beacon that only dogs and men with severe emotional problems can hear?”
Phoebe sat down her markers from the strange craft she was doing from her spot on the floor, “Alright. Give me your feet.”
Monica lifted shrugged her feet out of her shoes and lifted one up to Phoebe’s outstretched hands. She based a great deal of her life on the idea that foot rubs and singing cured any emotional distress. And no one really took offense to the first and kinda just went along with the second.
“I just… I want to be a good friend, you know?”
Joey looked down at his coffee and then chuckled, “I can’t believe she didn’t know it was a line!”
“Oh!” Monica threw him off the couch with one hand. Which technically she shouldn’t be able to do because he was about five times stronger than her, but Joey was nothing if not supportive and if Monica wanted him to fall off the couch, he’d commit to it.
She tried not to smile.
Rachel had never been laughed at so many times in her life. But after the day she’d had she was starting to think that maybe her life would be a bit easier to deal with if someone, somewhere had taken her a bit more seriously and not just humored her.
At the last interview, tears in her eyes, she asked why. The woman across from her was only about three or four years older and smiled at her tears sharply. Like they might taste good.
“Oh sugar. You actually have to have experience. Most of the applicants started at the bottom and proved themselves to get to sit in that chair,” she pointed at Rachel. “I honestly called you in for an interview because your resume was so damn odd, thought it would give me a break between the over-achievers and ass-kissers that I’ve had to deal with for the past few days.”
Rachel sniffed, “So… so what should I do?”
The woman stood up and smoothed down her pencil skirt, “Go home to your mommy and marry a nice guy.”
Rachel shook her head stubbornly.
“Then start at the bottom. Lower than you think you deserve. Lower than you’ve ever gone before. And fight every damn day.”
“And then I’ll get to be you?”
“No, honey. I’m me because my aunt owns this company.” At Rachel’s audible sobbing, the woman looked disturbed, “But you know… maybe.”
“I could do it, you know.”
“I bet ya can. Now. Please leave.”
Rachel stood up, sniffling, “I’m sorry this wasn’t the relaxing interview you were hoping for.”
The woman smiled at her and this time it looked significantly less feral, but no less hungry, “Don’t worry. It was still better than what I have waiting in the hall.”
Rachel tried not to stare at the young woman who stood up over-eagerly in the hallway, she had a portfolio of some kind in her hand and her heels were about three inches taller than they should be. She’ll probably get the job, Rachel thought darkly.
She decided to walk back to the coffee shop and on her way …
“Guess what?!” Rachel ran into the coffee shop, all smiles and enthusiasm.
Rose perked up, the dark circles under her eyes in direct contrast to her sparkling interest, “You got a job?”
Rachel laughed, “Are you kidding? I’m trained for nothing! I was laughed out of twelve interviews today.”
“And yet you’re surprisingly upbeat,” which was either Chandler’s way of saying that they were interested and cared about her story… or really wanted a subject change.
Rachel beamed at them, “Well you would be too if you found Joan & David boots on sale 50% off.”
“Oh how well you know me,” Chandler quipped, before leaning over Monica and snatching a boot out of the box and comparing it to their own feet. The look of utter dismay that crossed their face was priceless, “Why do all the women in my life have to be such shrimps?”
“Sorry babe,” Rose cooed from her chair.
Rachel snatched the boot back from them and hugged it to her chest, “They’re my new, ‘I don’t need a job, I don’t need my mother, I have great boots’ - boots.”
“How’d you pay for them?”
Rachel scowled at Monica, “Credit card!”
“Uh huh and who pays for that?”
“Uh… my mother.”
All six of her beautiful, shiny credit cards were lying on Monica’s kitchen table, looking up at her and begging her not to destroy them. She needed them. She couldn’t betray them this way.
Monica sat a pair of scissors on the table, “Come on, you can’t live off your parents your whole life.”
Rachel could feel Rose and Joey on either side of her, like sentinels protecting her back. The others looked at her from across the table with wide, patient eyes, “I know that. That’s why I was getting married!”
Phoebe grabbed her hand, “Give her a break, it’s hard being on your own for the first time.”
Rachel softened, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I remember when I first came to the city. I was fourteen… my mom had just killed herself and my step-dad was back in prison. And I got here and I didn’t know anybody. And I ended up living with this albino guy who was like, cleaning windshields outside Port Authority. And then he killed himself and THEN I found aroma therapy,” Phoebe said with a smile. “So. Believe me. I know exactly how you feel.”
Everyone stilled and Rachel waited for someone to tell her how to proceed. Phoebe beamed at her and stood up to get more coffee, as Rose lowered herself into the chair she’d just vacated, Rachel could see Joey out of the corner of her eye pull Phoebe into his chest, cradling her with his arms and resting his chin on the top of her head, rocking back and forth slightly.
Rose smiled and shook her head. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “Just…” she gestured at the credit cards.
Monica smiled and held out the scissors, “Alright, are you ready?”
“I don’t think so…”
Rose picked up a card, “Oh come on! Cut, cut, cut!”
The others smiled and began chanting with her. Rachel could even hear Phoebe’s slight soprano making a weird, trilling song out of it from where she was still pressed against Joey.
One at a time Rose held out the cards and Rachel cut them in two while they chanted and cheered for her. When it was over, Phoebe broke from Joey and came around to lean down and hug Rachel from behind, “You did it!”
Monica stood up and made it a group hug, wrapping her short arms around the both of them, “Welcome to the real world. It sucks. You’re gonna love it.”
After everyone else left, Rose stayed over to watch a bad movie with Rachel and Monica. None of them had the heart to make any jokes about it as it was playing, but it was better than being alone. Rachel curled up in a chair and ate ice cream in tiny little bites to heal the wounds left by a half-dozen destroyed credit cards. Rose and Monica curled up on the couch, a pile of arms and legs and pillows that seemed to have no end.
At the end of the movie, Monica clicked the tv off with the remote and stretched lazily, “Well. That’s it.” She turned to Rose, “You gonna crash on the couch?”
“No. No. I gotta go home sometime.”
Behind them the front door opened and a young, beautiful woman with long dark hair and eyes came running through the door in cargo pants and an oversized black sweater, “Rose for fuck’s sake.”
Rose stood up and stared.
“Susan?” Rachel asked.
The girl blinked at her and smiled shyly, “Susan. And…?”
“Rachel!” she bounced a little.
“Oh sure. Of course, from high school right?”
Rose interrupted them, “Where have you been?”
Susan shuffled her feet a little, “I…”
“I’m gonna go to bed!” Monica gestured to Rachel frantically.
“No!” Susan moved forward. “Actually you should stay because…” She smiled gaily. “I’m pregnant!”