"Do you really think the best reason to get married is because you're sorry?"
"No, the best reason to get married is pregnancy. Sorry is pretty much fourth, behind being ready, and actually wanting to get married,"
-5.15 The One With The Girl Who Hits Joey.
Chandler was yet to learn that there's a fifth reason to want to get married: panic, because your girlfriend met up with her ex and didn't tell you.
Dicing
"I've never moved anybody as much as I love you," she echoes (in a tone so soft that Chandler reckons he should go and kick a hole in the wall, just to even up the gentleness in the universe). That probably isn't true, but it doesn't matter because he's nearly managed to talk her into this idea.
"Okay, so if another eight comes up, we take it as a sign and we do it," Chandler elaborates. Because aside from gambling and boozing and lurkers and Joey's cancelled movie, the other thing that happens in Vegas is weddings. Scruffy, spontaneous weddings probably performed by an Elvis impersonator, and that's exactly what Chandler needs right now. Well, the Elvis impersonator isn't a necessity. And Monica will probably back out if the chapel's scruffy. Though that's beside the point- they can get married here, and marriage is the solution to this Richard fiasco.
"What do you say?"
If they get married, Monica'll have to tell him everything, won't she? Except there won't be anything to tell, because if they're married it might actually count for something when he forbids her to see her ex. Chandler's spent so much of the last year panicking about losing her that he didn't consider who might be waiting to find her. Wanting to find her. He thought he was his own worst enemy when it came to Monica, but it turns out that Richard's his enemy. Wealthy, charming, manly, cigar-smoking, Jag-driving, moustachioed Richard, whose older and a doctor and smooth and kind and who always says the right thing and who'd never screw up like Chandler screws everything up. Richard, who Monica was so head-over-heels for and so cut up about when they split. Richard, who she goes for secret lunches with and who was probably all over her wanting to examine her retinas. Richard, whose probably thinking about her right now, blowing cigar rings and twirling his moustache.
"Okay!" Monica agrees (note to self, Chandler observes, gambling is an effective way to persuade Monica into something).
"Okay, come on! Let's go!" he claps, and the gaggle of people around them join in too (because of course Monica's won them over with her charisma and ferocity, her obsession with winning, her wince-inducingly loud yelps of success, and the fact that she's currently the most stunning-looking woman in the Pacific Time Zone).
She shoots the dice, fast, and they bound across the table. Please an eight, Chandler begs inside his head, eight eight eight, just give me another eight. One more eight to keep her. It's been difficult enough to make her stick around for the last year. He's screwed up a thousand times yet Monica still hasn't dumped him, which probably proves that she's insane (though he knew that already). Getting married's the best way to make her stay for always. And of course he's scared of commitment, but a shotgun Vegas wedding seems a hell of a lot less frightening than an actual wedding. Besides, with Richard sniffing around, losing Monica seems a heck of a lot scarier than marrying Monica. If she rolls an eight, then they get married, and then he'll get to keep seeing her gorgeous face, keep having sex with her, keep talking to her, keep rolling his eyes at her competitiveness and her crazy schemes, keep doing little things that make her smile, keep laughing with her and at her, and keep feeling as vomit-inducingly happy and proud as he does when they're together. All that's worth the fear of commitment. God, anything's worth it to make this beautiful, bossy, sweet, witty, sexy, caring, intense, patient, impatient madwoman stick by his side.
So when the first dice shows a four and the second bounces onto the carpet, when Monica screams at everybody not to move and when Chandler dives onto the floor with her to search for it, when the second dice is cocked between a four and five and when Monica looks at him with her cheekbones and blue eyes and huge toothy grin, and when she tells him that it's his call to make- well, there's only one answer.
"It's a four,"
(And when Monica beams and tell him she thinks so too, Chandler's ninety-five percent thrilled and full of adoration for her, and only five per cent thinking of calling up Richard to tell him, "Guess what, sucker? I won").