A/N: I am very excited to bring you guys the second chapter of Rachel and Ross's story! All the support that I am receiving for all three stories within this series is absolutely surreal, and I honestly don't know how to thank you. As I said, I am alternating perspectives between the couples because it seemed to be a good idea, and will also apply to the other two books. Please also keep a look out for a book that I am writing that is a crossover between Cougar Town and Friends and one that is solely about Cougar Town. Anyways, let's continue on with the next chapter.

Chapter 2 – Ross

"Do you want me to bring you the boxes through to the dining room?" I asked Rachel, balancing a stack of pizza boxes and boxes of sides on my arm.

"Yes," Rachel shouted.

I walked through to the dining room, and piled the boxes on the counter. Lara and Emma were already sitting at the table, both on their phones.

"Can I get the plates and cutlery?" I asked Rachel, as she was on the other side of the kitchen.

Rachel nodded, and so I went over to the cupboards and the attempted to walk back to the table whilst balancing a stack of plates with all the cutlery on top of it without falling and smashing everywhere. I managed to do it, and sat down.

"How was both of you guys' day?" I ask Emma and Lara.

Emma took a slice of pizza from the second bigger box and took a bite. She started talking, "It was pretty good. I'm going to have so much more work and so much less free time now that I am a junior, though."

I look at Rachel before I talk to make sure that she is watching what I am saying. "It will all be worth it, even if it means that you won't be able to go to every party you want or see all your friends whenever you want."

"I know that, Dad," Emma says, rolling her eyes. "I'm sixteen, in case you forgot."

I ignore her, and turn to Lara. "What about you?" she asked.

"Different," Lara said, shrugging. "I feel like it's too early to tell with the workload. What was really cool, though, is that I saw Erica in Photography."

"How was she?" I asked, feeling a wave of protectiveness of my niece was over me.

"She seemed shy," Lara said, "but good."

"I'll have to call Mon later," I thought, and then realised that I had said it out loud because everyone had turned to look at me.

I saw Rachel look as if she wanted to ask Lara something as well, and so I motioned to her to go ahead as I had finished all I wanted to say.

"What's your most favourite lesson right now?" Rachel asked.

Lara stopped to think before answering. "Probably Photography, but I am excited for tomorrow because we got to take a look at the insanely cool studio today that they have for the performing arts subjects, and since I'm a Drama student, we'll be using it," she said.

"That's so awesome," Rachel says. "I'm so happy for both of you guys, because it seems like you're both happy and that's all I could ever ask for."

I nodded in agreement with Rachel. Even though neither Lara nor Emma seemed very interested in the particularly academic subjects, I wasn't surprised because they are Rachel Green's daughters. Ben, on the other hand, was majoring in Economics almost entirely because he loves Maths. I had three very different kids, and it was one of the most interesting and at times frustrating things all at once.

No one talked until all the pizza boxes and side boxes were empty, and then Emma and I both took the boxes out to recycling.

On our way out, Emma asked, "How was your day, Dad?"

"Not awful," I said, "but it's never fun trying to motivate 18-20 year olds to care about Palaeontology when they want to be everywhere but in the lecture hall."

"I feel terrible saying this especially since you are a basically a teacher but that is my mood usually in my own classes," Emma admitted.

"Don't worry," I say laughing, whilst holding the recycling bin lid open for Emma. "I wouldn't expect any less."

Emma laughs with me as we walk back into the house and straight to the kitchen. Rachel is standing against the counter, slicing up lemon tart and transferring them to plates. I walk up behind her, and grab the first two plates I see to bring them to the table.

Lara is on her phone, the charging lead snaking off of the table all the way to the plug socket that was plugged into the wall. She looks up when she sees me and starts pointing the camera at me. "What are you doing?" I ask.

She passes me the phone, and I see a video of myself with a Snapchat filter that makes me look unflattering old. "Is this something that you find funny?" I ask, trying my best to look as serious as possible, with Lara grinning right back at me.

"Mom," Lara calls to Rachel, who is now coming over to the table with the last two plates of the tart. "Persuade Dad that this is even the slightest bit funny!"

Rachel looks at me, and then takes Emma's phone from her. She watches the video, and I watch her to try and gauge her reaction. Rachel glances my way for a couple of seconds, and then turns completely away from me. I hear a muffled squeak, and start walking straight up to her.

"Rach," I start to say to her as she tries to hide her head in the hooded sweatshirt she started wearing after work ended. "You found that funny, didn't you?"

She didn't reply, but I heard another very faint squeak coming directly from where she was hiding. I get so impatient with her that I decide to pull down the hood of her sweater.

"Great bed hair," I say, looking at Lara and then pointing at the phone in her hand. "Almost too good to not take a photo of."

I snap a quick photo before Rachel sits up properly and scowls at me. She starts to retort at me, bit realises that I don't have the phone anymore and turns to Lara to start having a go at her. We all hear a snort in the background and I realise that Emma has just been sitting here watching us the whole time.

"What's the point of this anymore?" I ask, actually bewildered as to what the purpose of the last few events are.

"Dunno," Lara said. "It's fun for me because I now have some quality photos of both of you."

"Don't post them on Instagram," I warn Lara.

"Not fair, Dad," she replies, "You follow my account anyway, which is where it would be going."

I shrug. "I guess that's okay, because the only people that would see are family like Monica and friends of yours that won't care that it's me. I just would never want any of my students to see them."

"I'm sure that no one from your school will be able to see it," Lara says. "I don't even know any of them, to be honest, to be able to share the video with. Also, because Dad has given me permission to be able to post it, does that mean the same for Mom?"

I glance back over at Rachel, and she realises that we are waiting on an answer from her. "I guess," Rachel says. "It's not the best look I've ever sported, but I guess that doesn't matter when it comes to family."

Emma piped up from where she had been sitting. "Once you let her do this, she'll hold you to it every time and always get her way," she said.

"It won't always be like that," I say. "We can still impose boundaries."

"Really?" Emma looked, at me cynically. "When I was her age, you let me do basically every single thing I ever wanted to do. You still do."

I shook my head. It was Rachel's influence, because if it was just me who had all the parenting responsibilities, the girls' would be able to get away with a lot less than they already do. Since parenting had to be a diplomatic agreement, I had to let her pass some of her rules otherwise she would have definitely have kicked me out by now.

I hear the flash of a phone, and see the flash in my peripheral vision for a couple of seconds. "Oi!" I shouted, dashing out into the hallway in pursuit of Lara. I got to the foot of the stairs, just as she was thundering her way up. There was no way that I would be able to catch her. "Lara Amelia Geller-Green! Get the hell back down here!" I shouted, in vain.

She turns round from the top of the stairs, and flashes me the middle finger and starts cackling wildly. I give up, and lean on the bannister at the foot of the stairs to regain my breath. The door to the kitchen swings open, and Emma walks passed me on her way upstairs.

"Told you so," she quipped, and I rolled my eyes.

The kitchen door swung open again and Rachel walked out.

"I need to sort out the dishwasher," she says, "but I wanted to suggest that now might be a good time to catch up with Mon and Chandler."

"Oh yeah," I nod, remembering that I had planned to call Mon to see how the twins had found high school and generally how her day had been.

"I'll go do that now," I say to Rachel, as she hands me over my phone. I had left it on the dining table in the midst of all the excitement of the drama going on, and had forgotten that it was there.

I walked into the sitting room, and sat on the couch. There was a cushion right beside me, which I picked up, fluffed up and put behind me as back support. I also spotted a throw that was sitting in a heap a few metres away from me, so I pulled that over me as well. So comfortable, I said to myself happily as I checked the time.

It was 20:30 according to the time stamp in the top middle section of my phone screen, and so I concluded that there was a high chance that I wouldn't be disturbing Chandler or Monica's bedtime routine with their kids. I contemplated calling their home phone, but decided that it was probably easier just to call Mon herself.

She picked up on the second ring. "Hi, Ross," she said, sounding pretty tired.

"Hey," I said. "How are things over there going?"

"Not bad," Monica said, and I heard Chandler talk in the background. "Excuse me," Monica said, before I heard her say that it was me on the phone. "I'm back," she said, sounding a little flustered. "Sorry, that was just Chandler wanting to know who it was."

"It's fine," I said, hoping that my voice reflected the fact that I wasn't bothered by it at all. "Really."

Monica chuckled a little in relief. "Back to what I was saying about my day," she started saying, "the twins seem to have had a good first day at high school. Emma actually mentioned that she had seen Lara today, and worked together in Photography."

"Yeah," I said, smiling even though Monica couldn't see me because it was nice that the cousins were making an effort to get along. "She mentioned it to Rach and I earlier."

I could hear Monica sigh happily, which I assumed was for the same reason I smiled. "How has work been now you're the manager of the whole restaurant?" I asked, feeling a wave of pride wash over me from the recollection of when Monica first told me that she had been promoted by the manager at Javu's to take over the original manager's job when he retired.

"Today was just one of those chill meeting days," Monica replied. "So nothing too busy or involved." She paused for a quick moment, and added, "And I got out early enough to be able to cook dinner from scratch for the family."

"That's always a plus," I said, "especially because we all know how much everyone loves your cooking."

"I know," Monica said, sounding smug. I couldn't fight the urge to laugh because it made me remember all the times where she had made me laugh so hard whilst saying it. "Are you laughing?" she asked.

I tried to compose myself enough to answer. "Yes," I spluttered before breaking down into another fit of laughter.

"I miss you," Mon said.

"I miss you too," I said back, feeling a little wave of sadness rush over me. "Hopefully we'll be able to sort out a day trip or something together."

"Yeah," Monica agreed. "How's Rachel doing?" she asked.

"Rachel's doing well," I said. "She's really getting completely stuck into the designing element at Ralph Lauren, and you can tell that she absolutely adores every aspect of the whole job."

"Would we have expected any less of her?" Monica said, chuckling.

"No," I agreed. "How's Chan?"

"Chandler's good," Mon replied. "He loves being able to get money from his sense of humour, as he puts it."

I laugh. "I mean, he would barely have to put in any effort and it would still be gold," I said, realising how easy his job sounded and feeling a little envious as teaching was nowhere near as easy.

"Exactly," Mon said. "It's why both of us still love our jobs, I feel. I know that if I didn't still love cook and be in charge of everyone, then I would have left Javu's a long time ago, and I don't know what I would do for a job then."

"I'm so happy for you both," I say to Monica, really genuinely meaning it. "I'd better go and check on the wife and Lara and Emma, but send my love to Chandler, Jack and Erica and I hope that we see each other in person soon because it's been far too long."

"I agree," Monica said, sounding genuine. "See you soon, then."

"Bye," I say, and then tap the button on the keypad of my phone to hang up.

I kick off the throw after pocketing my phone, and walk out of the sitting room into the corridor. It's empty and the light is off, so I walk further up the corridor past the kitchen right up to the bedroom. The light is on underneath the closed door, so I know that Rachel is there as I had suspected. I knocked on the door.

"If you're Ross, come right in," she said, and I twisted the doorknob until the door clicked open. Rachel was laying on her side of the bed, with her reading glasses on and an open book balanced on her lap.

"Hello, sexy," she said, looking up. Her glasses fell so far down her nose that I couldn't help but laugh at the fact that they completely ruined the effect that she was going for, but nevertheless it was still adorable. "What are you laughing at?" she asked.

"Do you realise that your glasses completely ruined the effect that I think you were going for, but if anything it's made you look 10x cuter?" I say.

She looks a little frustrated at first, but her expression changes when she realises that there was a compliment within what I said. "You are the most amazing and most adorable husband ever," she says, smiling and my heart bursts because I am so happy for her.

"I love you," I say, as I take off my blazer and throw it into the laundry basket. "I hope you'll always know that."

Rachel grins. "I hope that you will always feel that way about me too," she says, "because no one will put up with your Palaeontology obsession and Grammar Nazi habits the same way as I will."

I nod my head in acknowledgement. "Fair statement," I say. "In the same way, I doubt there would be anyone as appreciative of your addiction with fashion and habits of chronic melodramatic reactions to everything and the fact that you are always so disorganised."

Rachel reels for a moment from what I have said, but then seems to realise that it was only me trying to get even with the comments that she had made about me. I continue to change, and then go into the en-suite bathroom, and then get into bed with Rachel. I pick up the book that is on my bedside table, and start reading, finally glad that the day is over.

A/N: Here's the conclusion to the second chapter of this story! Again, many apologies for the late update because I really have had a lot going on and little motivation to update. Anyway, please continue to read, review and make suggestions for future chapters. Whilst you're at it, I would really appreciate it if you would check out my other two books in this trilogy, and the other two books that I am writing which are a Friends and Cougar Town crossover novel and a novel that centres around Cougar Town only. Regardless, I am always so grateful and happy with all the appreciation and support of all that I have written so far because it honestly makes such a difference to my day, even though it sounds cringey. Thank you and enjoy!