Sometime Around Midnight

Chapter 1: Couple Number One

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Turns out I can't not write, so…I'm starting another series! This starts during TOA the beach/TOW the jellyfish….I started this months ago and went nowhere with it, but now have somewhere to go, so…yay :) The first three chapters are setting the rest of the story up, so…yea, this is only a third of the set up. Make no assumptions yet.

The title is from the song by The Airborne Toxic Event. Great song. Beautiful and super heart-breaking. Go listen to it :)

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Rachel sighed heavily as she collapsed onto the bed, emotionally drained and knowing the night wasn't even close to over. She stared at the ceiling, expecting Ross to be following her up there at any moment. At the knock on her door, she sprang up in bed, glad she had been right. "Come in!"

"Hey, Rachel," Bonnie, not Ross, walked through the door, holding a bottle of after-sun lotion. Rachel tried to hide her disappointment, forcing a smile. "Sorry to bother you, but could you help me? My head got burned being outside all day….."

"Yea, no, no problem," Rachel nodded, suddenly feeling rather guilty that she had just kissed this woman's boyfriend moments earlier, even if she didn't like her. The sole reason she didn't like her was because she was dating Ross; Bonnie had never really done anything wrong to Rachel. Rachel tried to tell herself that, at least, as she moved to the edge of the bed, Bonnie sitting beside her and handing her the bottle. Making a face at putting the lotion on Bonnie's bare scalp, Rachel rubbed it in quickly, wanting nothing more than for Bonnie to leave at that exact moment. "All done," she tried to fake cheerfulness as she finished up.

"Oh, thanks a million, Rachel," Bonnie thanked her as she stood up.

"You're welcome a million," Rachel replied, though not as sincerely, hoping the fakeness didn't show through.

"I can see why Phoebe always talked you guys up so much," Bonnie smiled. "You're all so great."

"Oh, we're not all so great," Rachel attempted to brush off her comment, still feeling slightly guilty.

"Yea, you really are," Bonnie again smiled. "Well, I'm gonna head off to bed. Thanks again, Rach," Bonnie added before walking out the door.

The second the door closed, Rachel dropped her fake smile, sighing as she sat back down on the bed. Ross wasn't coming. Did she even want him to come up there after her? Of course she wanted him to come after her. Although she was still having a hard time forgiving him for cheating on her, she still loved him very much, and seeing him with someone else was completely killing her. It was like seeing him with Julie all over again.

Could she forgive him enough to even be with him again, though? Rachel sighed, getting up and going over to a small desk in the corner of the room. Opening one of the drawers, she pulled out a pen and a pad of paper. She was going to make a list. That was one way to solve this problem: a list. Not that a list had done much good for Ross in the beginning of their relationship, but she needed to logically look at her feelings right now to make this decision.

As she started to make her list, writing down reasons she could picture herself with Ross again versus reasons she couldn't, she smiled; Monica would be very proud.

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Ross walked up the stairs with a heavy sigh, having just watched Bonnie leave in a cab. When she came back to their bedroom after Rachel put lotion on her sunburned scalp, Ross had been waiting for her, and said they needed to talk. It had been a long talk, but by the end of it, Bonnie hadn't even wanted to stick around while Ross figured things out with Rachel. She wished him luck, said it had been fun, and then called a cab and headed back to the city.

When Ross reached the top of the stairs, he looked towards Rachel's door, knowing that's where he was heading. Really, that's probably where he should have headed first, not to Bonnie's room. Rachel was probably asleep by now; she had come upstairs hours ago. Why didn't he go talk to her first instead of Bonnie? That would have made too much sense.

Seeing the light still on under the door as he got closer to her room, Ross smiled. Lightly tapping on the door first, he then opened it, finding Rachel sitting on her bed, leaning up against the headboard, a pad of paper in her lap that she was flipping through.

"Hey," Rachel smiled as he walked in.

"Hey," Ross replied.

"I was just about to give up on you," Rachel forced a laugh.

"Yea, sorry about that," Ross sat on the edge of the bed, and Rachel moved forward so that she was closer to him. "I just had to talk to Bonnie first."

"Oh?" Rachel asked, trying to hide the nervousness in her voice.

"She just called a cab and left," Ross added, off her tone.

"Oh," Rachel tried to fake sympathy, but Ross laughed at that.

"So," he shrugged, reaching out for her hand as they stared each other in the eye for a moment in compete silence.

"I made a list," Rachel finally said, pulling away from him.

"What?"

"I made a list," Rachel repeated, grabbing the pad of paper. "I just, while I was waiting for you, I did a lot of thinking, about us, and before I can even think about getting back together with you, I just need to know if we're on the same page about all of this…."

"All of what?" Ross asked, sounding rather uneasy as he grabbed the pad of paper from her, skimming it as he flipped through it, the happy look on his face dissolving completely as he flipped through page after page. "So, is this a list of everything I ever did wrong in our relationship, or…?"

"Well, and everything you did right," Rachel corrected him. "That's what the right-hand column is," she attempted to point it out.

"Whoa-whoa-whoa," Ross stood up as he got to the last page. "You want me to take full responsibility for everything that went wrong in our relationship?" Rachel didn't speak, just raised her eyebrows, as if that should have been understood since that's what she wrote down. "Y'know what, Rach, no," he shook his head fiercely, throwing the pad of paper down on the bed. "It took two people to break up our relationship," he motioned back and forth between them.

"Yea, you and that girl from the copy place," Rachel shot back, just as angrily.

"You know what, Rach," Ross spat out. "This," he again motioned between them, "is not going to happen. If you can't be a grown up and take at least part of the blame for us breaking up-"

"You cheated on me!" Rachel cut him off. "Seems like I was neither of the two parties involved in that act!"

"We were on a break!" Ross yelled, and Rachel stood up, stomping towards her door and holding it open.

"Oh my god, Ross, I can't believe I even thought about getting back together with you!"

"Yea, right back at you," Ross yelled back, walking out the open door and across the hall to his own room, slamming that door shut behind him.

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Reviews are super motivating, especially in the beginning, just so ya know…. ;)