I wake up the next morning to an empty mess of blankets next to me, no Joey.
Well, this is what I expected, it honestly had to be the gods shedding an ounce of pity on me for me to ever get a guy like Joey to sleep with me. I mean he's rich, famous and handsome for God's sake!
So, I lazily get out of bed and head to the bathroom, accepting this fate. I get dressed like I would any Saturday morning and head over to Monica's and Rachel's to see if they have any breakfast for me.
I open to door to their apartment freeze when I find Joey casually chatting with the girls at the kitchen table. Well, he's casually sitting and chatting and Monica and Rachel have pulled their chairs as close to him as possible and are sitting with their chins on their hands like two school girls madly in love. Joey is the only one to notice me and pauses to look up.
"Hey Chandler, I met your neighbors!" he greets me and Monica and Rachel finally look over at me.
Rachel gets up in a hurry as if she's about to shove me out the door. She even looks pissed, I get nervous as she speeds over to me.
"Chandler," she says in an angry whisper. "When were you going to tell us you had Drake Ramoray in your apartment!"
"Who?"
She gives me the biggest look of disbelief.
"That's me," Joey jumps in, clearly having heard every word Rachel has tried to keep undertone, even though she's maybe four feet away from him.
"That's my character," Joey clarifies for me.
"Oh, oh ok, we met last night, sorry it happened really suddenly," I try to defend my unknowingly horrible actions.
"I just can't believe Drake has to preform surgery on Claire again!" Monica jumps back to Joey as if nothing interrupted them.
"I know!" Rachel scurries back to her chair as if she would miss Joey's answer if she wasn't two inches from his face.
He smiles and continues talking about the show.
When he finally gets off the topic, he says: "Hey you know there's a great new club opening tonight if you girls want to come?" he suddenly offers.
"Are you kidding?!" Rachel chokes.
"Of course we want to, yes!" Monica bellows.
"Great," Joey smiles a delicious smile at them that I wish was pointed at me. "You can come whenever, doors open at ten," he says as he grabs a random piece of paper from his back pocket. Monica gets the hint and grabs a pen.
"Thanks, Monica," he says and Monica shares a look with Rachel, ecstatic that he already has her name down. He writes down the address and then gets up from the table.
"Okay I can't wait, we'll see you tonight!" Monica nearly shouts and hugs him. He hugs her back and of course Rachel follows suit and hangs onto Joey too long with her hug.
"Okay, I'll see you girls tonight," he chuckles and pulls away from Rachel's never ending embrace.
Then, he does something that makes me rethink everything. He turns and winks at them before walking towards the door. In this moment, I realize Joey might be bi. The thought never occurred to me since he was at a gay bar, but now I realize that means nothing. Oh my god, I can't compete with every single person living in the city. Who am I kidding; I was never even in the competition.
Joey gets to the door, but stops before passing me. I'm expecting some manly pat on the shoulder or a plain "see ya" maybe to impress the girls or hint to me it was just a one-night stand that means nothing.
Instead he gently rest his hand on my arm and says: "You're invited too Chandler." He gently slides his hand off me and walks out.
Wow, does he still like me? Does he not think I'm gross, even in the daylight? Does he really want to see me again or did he just invite me to be nice?
I look at Monica and Rachel and realize I can't even compete with them, my own friends. They are both beautiful and they're so hung up on Joey they honestly would probably share him. Of course Joey would prefer two attractive women over me. I have to stop this.
"Hey Mon, Rach..." I start.
"Ok Chandler, I know I was a bit pissed, but thank you for finding him and bringing him here," Rachel suddenly expresses.
"Yeah, really Chandler, how did this even happen?" Monica questions.
"We met at a gay bar and he was somehow interested in me because I had no idea who he was," I quickly explain.
"I still can't believe you don't watch DROOL," Rachel remarks.
"I don't watch what... oh," I realize the acronym in this moment.
"Listen guys, I have a favor to ask," I say. "Can you please not sleep with Joey, or date him, or... anything?"
They both look surprised at me.
"Who said we were going to-" Monica starts, but I give her a look.
"Whyyyyyy?" Rachel takes no time to whine.
"Because I never get guys like that and he might actually be into me!"
"But when would we ever get a chance like this again?" Monica reasons.
"But if it wasn't for me, you never even would have met the guy. And now you're going to an exclusive club tonight with him, isn't that enough?" I try.
"No, I want to make out with Joey Tribbiani!" Rachel complains again.
"Please, I would never ask this and you two get guys all the time. My love life has sucked and look if he's not interested in me, you can have at it, but just let me try... please?" I sincerely ask them now and they both start to crack. Their faces fall and they begrudgingly agree.
"Fine," they both grunt.
"Really, you'll both back off?"
"Yes."
"Thank you, thank you!" I hug them. "Alright, I gotta go shopping for tonight," I say and run out.
We get to the club and the bouncer asks for our names.
"We're with Joey Tribbiani!" Rachel exclaims to him.
His cold expression doesn't change.
"Names?"
"Uh Chandler, Rachel, Monica?" I tell him, thinking our names won't do any good.
"Ok wait here," he says and whispers something to another security guy who suddenly flees into the club.
I look to the girls who just shrug.
We wait until, you'll never guess who, the hot guy with glasses who bought my drink shows up.
"Hey it's you!" I say.
"Yeah, it's Andrew. Chandler right?" he says.
"Yeah."
"You guys can follow me."
We start following him into the club.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
He looks at me like I'm so silly.
"The V.I.P. section," he states and the girls start shrieking with excitement behind us. I look at him weird, still not getting his connection to all of this. He catches on to my confusion.
"I'm Joey's assistant," he tells me.
"Oh! That makes a lot of sense," I laugh.
"Yeah, come on, this way," he says and leads us to back of the club, to a secluded area.
We find Joey in a booth already with a bunch of people. My assumptions of him being bi are pretty much confirmed as he sitting in between two half naked women and looks to be flirting heavily with one. Rachel and Monica don't seem to mind though. They wave him down and call out his name. He looks up and I guess he's actually more interested in Rachel and Monica than the half naked girls next to him because he asks them to let him out of the booth and he comes over to greet us. He kisses Rachel and Monica on the cheeks and says hi to me by patting my shoulder.
"We have to get some more drinks!" he exclaims and motions to Andrew, whose name I now know, and he goes to fetch some drinks. I guess this is exactly how it happened when I ran into Andrew at the bar last night.
Joey lets us into his booth and the other people disperse around the booth. We start drinking and again Monica and Rachel can't get off talking about the show. Eventually Joey gets off the topic and then he asks them if they want to dance. They happily agree and they get up. I stay put of course.
They start dancing and then another guy comes and starts dancing with Monica. I see Joey whisper in Rachel's ear and see them walk off together. I sit there, feeling down that they are probably going to hook up or something, like Rachel actually has the willpower to turn down a famous actor from one of her favorite tv shows.
I decide to head to the bar, I don't want to just sit here and I definitely don't want to see them come back walking loopy or with smirks smeared across their faces.
About an hour later Andrew shows up at the bar again.
"Hey there you are. What are you doing here?"
"I don't know, just thought I'd check out the rest of the place," I lie.
"Hey would you help me carry drinks again?" he asks.
"How do you manage without me?" I joke with him.
"A lot of balancing," he jests back.
I laugh at that one and then help carry drinks back to the V.I.P. area.
Joey and Rachel are back, I don't know how long they were gone since I left. They are all standing talking and laughing with a bunch of people. I set the drinks down on the tables with Andrew and then I just sit down on at a random table no one is sitting at.
Joey suddenly starts to approach me.
What is he coming over for?
He comes around to my side and then leans down by my ear, which instantly makes me bundle up with nerves.
"Hey, come to the bathroom with me," he says in my ear.
My teeth clench together, I don't know if I'm scared or turned on. The truth is I'm crazy about doing anything sexual with him in the bathroom assuming he most likely just hooked up with one or both of my friends. If that's not what he's attempting then, I don't know what he would want... to talk? Maybe he's mad I bailed out for an hour, but who knows if he was with Rachel somewhere most of the time I was gone? Also, who cares if I left his precious V.I.P. section, he has no reason to be mad.
We get to the bathroom and he immediately turns to me and pushes me backwards. Not terribly hard, I only stumble backwards a few steps, but I'm still shocked by this. He's actually mad at me, what the fuck?
"What the hell are you doing!" he yells at me.
I stand in disbelief and confusion.
"I'm not doing anything!" I yell back angrily.
"You told Monica and Rachel not to do anything with me? Why would you do that?" he demands.
I take a moment to take this in.
"They didn't do anything with you?" I ask gently now.
"No! They both refused and said that couldn't because of you!"
I'm shocked and secretly happy my friends are so loyal. But within another instant I get annoyed at Joey's frustration with me.
"Alright calm down, they are just two women I'm sure you can have any woman in here!" I fight back.
"What do you have against me? I didn't even have to invite any of you here!"
"Hey we don't owe you anything! If this is how you're going to act I'm glad I could stop them, I wouldn't want my friends doing anything with such an asshole actor!"
"I'm not being an asshole, you're being the asshole for thinking you can tell me who I can do things with and who I can't!"
"Oh give me a break, it wasn't about that you idiot, I know you're going to do whatever you want. And you know what else, you're being a huge hypocrite! What happened to "Oh, I hate people being all over me" yeah right, yeah you "wanted me" because I had no idea who you were or that you're on some dumb tv show or that your character's stupid name is Drake something or that-"
Joey suddenly crashes into my lips with his, stopping me from finishing my rant. His body weight pushes me back against the wall and I give in. I know I shouldn't make out with him, not after he just shoved me and yelled at me and acted like a total ass. But his lips are so perfect and his kisses feel so desperate. I'm too turned on not to kiss him viciously back. I start putting my hands all over him and pictures from last night start reeling in my head.
I feel Joey's hands find my belt and start to fumble with it, trying to get it undone. I stop him and break away from his mouth.
He waits, looking at me, with his lips still pouted. Wow, I bet this exactly how he looked at Rachel and Monica when they stopped him. I really should appreciate them more for being loyal, even I'm finding it crazy difficult to say no to this, but I have to. I'm not about to just fuck in some club bathroom. No, this is gonna start to get real or Rachel and Monica have permission to do whatever they want with him.
He's still waiting while I'm trying to think of a smooth way to turn him down.
"You're gonna have to do better than a bathroom," I say, pretty proud of my brainstorming.
"Really?" he grins at me and I see for the first time his cockiness and the reality of how often everyone says yes to him. He's looking at me like I'll cave in two seconds, like no one has the willpower to say no to him even though I know he just got turned down twice not even an hour ago.
I take my belt and re-buckle it securely, showing him it's a clear no.
"I get it," I say, starting to feel cocky myself. "I'm your third no tonight, this is probably killing you."
He narrows his eyes at me.
"It's not killing me… I don't care."
"Yes you do," I state.
I think he sees the truth in my eyes. He takes a step back.
"No, you're wrong, I couldn't care less."
"You love it," I say, getting into it without realizing it.
"Love what?" he scoffs.
"Love that I'm saying no, that my friends said no. And that I won't fuck you in a bathroom."
He presses his lips together and shakes his head.
"Fine, so what do you want to go back to your apartment, my apartment?" he tries.
I shake my head no and he waits for me to answer.
He's actually waiting for my answer. I've never had power over men and now this famous, insanely attractive guy is hanging onto my every move.
I make him wait a few seconds more.
"I want a date."
