Monica stepped into her building after walking two blocks when her taxi had broken down. She took a key ring from her pocket, and looked for the right key. She found it and opened her mailbox. Apartment 20. She sighed heavily and put the key in the key hole turning it to the right and pulling out a hefty stack mail.
As she walked up stairs, she would mutter 'bills' 'junk' 'personal' 'chandler' as she sorted through it. She had reached her apartment and looked at the numbers, apartment 20. Once more she sighed heavily with a frown and fished her keys out of her pocket, once more putting another key into the keyhole, and turning it to the right.
She opened the door and saw what she had expected and feared, boxes, piled one on top of the other, with things written on them. Then Chandler appeared from behind the castle of boxes.
She sighed and contorted her mouth into a crooked frown "Joining the Olympics?" she said bitterly "You seem to be running a lot lately."
Chandler threw her an icy glare, yes he had run out from the wedding, yes he was moving, but she ended things. She was the one who said it was over and through him in the guest room, she was unwilling to listen to his reasons for not going through with there overly lavish wedding, she was at blame too.
"What's wrong with you? You usually have some smart ass comment for me." She asked, still bitter.
"Why should I talk when I-" he stopped abruptly. He saw Monica give him a look that said 'go on...' He then smirked and answered her unasked question, "I'm sorry, you usually stop me mid sentence, I'd figured I'd help you out."
"Oh ha, ha. Cute." She said, rolling her eyes and going to the refrigerator.
She stopped immediately when she saw one of his cute little notes before the wedding. She read the note, letter for letter.
"I left you sleeping. Too cute to wake up. Had to get something From Work. Love you."
She nearly felt like crying, remembering what he had to get 'from work'. Instead he had done something out of the ordinary, but usual for him. He got her something that always made her smile, a single white rose. He would get her one usually after a small fight. It made her sad to think there would be no white rose after this one.
Instead of crying over it, she grabbed it angrily from the refrigerator and threw it away, making sure to crumple it up. She swung open the door, and grabbed a can of Pepsi, she saw something in the back of the refrigerator.
She grabbed one of his beers, and sat at the kitchen table.
"Yeah that's OK." Chandler replied to her action sarcastically "I don't drink those"
She grunted, downed half the beer, and looked at him. It seemed has if she was challenging him.
Chandler then accepted the challenge. He walked over, and spread a menacing look upon his face. He quickly took the half full beer from Monica, and drank the rest. After he accomplished that, he through the beer can on the floor, and grabbed the rest of the cans, throwing them in an unsealed box labeled 'shirts.'
Monica growled, and noticed that his back was turned. She picked the beer can off the floor and through it at him. Instead of hitting him, the beer can flew less than an inch from his face, and hit one of her little porcelain decorations. The little girl selling puppies fell to the ground and shattered.
Chandler turned around quickly to watch her face drop. It did as he expected. He chuckled and turned around.
"My grandmother gave me that before she died, it's worth.... Over $900," she swallowed as she remembered how she looked at that piece of porcelain and fell in love with it at age 5. Then she remembered her grandmother giving it to her a year before she died. The speech of how, 'I'm not going to live forever' and how she cared for Monica. "Or it was...." she trailed off and walked into the bedroom.
Chandler noticed her voice was trembling and felt instantly bad. Bad wasn't the word, regretful, extremely terrible, sad, a pathetic excuse for a human being.
He still loved her, still after 3 years of being with her, it felt bad to see her walk out that door. Now he had to walk out. Out of their life together. Out of their friendship. Out of apartment 20.
It felt like his life was over. He hated himself. the thoughts that mostly ran through his head where accusing himself of ruining his own life. "You ran out. You hurt her. You lost it all. Your a terrible person..." etc. etc. He heard them so many times.
Sometimes he just wanted to go back in time and change so many things. How he proposed, How they go together, When they got together, when he proposed, But most of all, he would have gone through with the wedding.
He found so much flawed with how they would be joined together. He remembered seeing the black and white pictures of his parents wedding. It was almost exactly like their wedding. He had that feeling that if he went through with it, everything would fall through.
They would go through a bitter divorce. Fighting over everything, the house, the car, kids, and things without any meaning. Their children would grow up to be just like him; fearing love. He didn't want that. So he ran. Ran like a scared child through dark woods. What he didn't realize at the time, is that his running would cause him lose everything he had worked for. Everything gained in the past years, lost.
He wasn't just running, he was losing.
With that final thought a head ache began to come on. He went into the bathroom and sifted through the medicine cabinet. The bottle of aspirin was nearly gone, down to 4 pills. He poured them out onto his hand, and picked two out. He placed the first one in his mouth and bit down on it.
The taste was bitter and disgusting. He didn't mind, the head ache was almost immediately gone, but that feeling in the pit of his stomach got worse with each passing second.
After taking a look at his unshaven face in the mirror, he slowly walked into the living room. He took a good look around. How Monica could still stand living here stumped him. The apartment sent him closer and closer to the edge each minutes he was there.
His head began to get heavy, the world around him began to spin, he had to leave. Run once again.
But when he was about to leave, he kicked something. The beer can. He bent down and picked it up. He stared at it for a few moments and through it in one of the boxes. He took one good look at the shattered porcelain. Then walked out.

Well, I'm going to be a bitch and get publicity for my webpage. ;) The rest of the series will be at My site. >=) Please go and join the mailing list, give me feed back, please please please. Comments and Criticism welcome!