Okay, here's the next chapter! Please review again, that was awesome. If this is awful, I can blame it on the fact that I was praying to the porcelain gods this morning. You know, it always seems like a good idea to go out to a party, and yet I always end up lying on the bathroom floor moaning, "Kill me, kill me now." Anyway, while I go get some more aspirin and maybe try to eat something. Review please and make me feel better!

Disclaimer: Not mine. They're never mine.

It didn't take long for Monica to start crying. It came spilling out. Pete was having an affair with his secretary.

"God!" Monica complained. "How clichéd. He's sleeping with his secretary. Geez, Pete, a little more creative." He had apparently told Monica that she could have whatever she wanted, but he didn't want to be married to her anymore. He was going to leave her.

"For her?" Chandler asked. "The secretary?"

"Yes! Her! The secretary! Jennie. Her name is Jennie, Chandler. My husband has left me for a girl named Jennie." Monica buried her head in her hands and her body heaved with sobs.

"What about Natalie?" Chandler asked gently rubbing a hand over Monica's back. Natalie. Monica's four-year-old daughter. It had taken her so long to get pregnant with Natalie, and Monica adored her.

"He said that I could have primary custody and that he would take her on weekends," Monica said sighing heavily. "He has her now. He took her to one of her friend's birthday parties."

"It's going to be okay," Chandler told her. "It's going to get better." Oh, who was he kidding? It was going to hurt like hell, he wanted to tell her. He has left you for someone else, that hurts more than anything else. He wanted someone else, someone that was not you. It felt as if the world should stop turning, and time should stop and allow to them to like their wounds and move on, but it didn't. It kept moving, and Pete was moving on, and Kathy was moving on, and Chandler was finally moving on, and Monica would eventually too.

Lucy. He had forgotten that he was supposed to call her. But Monica was more important right then. Monica who had her head buried and was crying so hard and so much that Chandler was sure that she would dehydrate. He wanted to ask her if she needed a glass or water to replenish the supply of tears.

"How? How is it going to get better?" Monica asked looking up at him with red eyes. "I can't imagine it not feeling like it does now. Like I had done something wrong. Because I wasn't good enough for him."

"You were. You were good enough."

"Obviously I wasn't," Monica argued. "Because he slept with her. He slept with Jennie." She said the name with such venom. "I couldn't have been enough. What more did he want me to do? I quit my job for him! I stayed home with Natalie so that she wouldn't be raised by a nanny like he had requested. What more did he want?"

"I don't know," Chandler answered. "I don't think that there was anything else you could do."

"Why did Kathy leave you?" Chandler was taken aback. No one had asked that question. He knew they all had to be dying of curiosity, but not a single one of his other friends has asked him that hard question. Why Kathy left. Why did she pack up his son and her life and leave him? "Is that too personal? Should I have not asked that?"

"No, no, it's fine," Chandler assured her. "It's just....To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure."

"You don't know?" Monica asked in an incredulous voice. "What did she say? Did she tell you anything? Or did she just pack up and leave one day?"

"She said...she said that it wasn't the same anymore. She said that she had to leave."

"I'm sorry," Monica said as she wrapped her arms around him. "I'm so sorry. I should have done more for you when you moved back. I'm such a horrible friend." Here she was, her husband just left her for a younger woman and she was apologizing for not being there for him when his wife had left him.

"No, you're not," Chandler told her as he returned the hug. "You're a great friend. You had your own problems to worry about."

"Have you seen Henry yet?"

"Not yet."

"Do you miss him?" Monica bit her lip. She was asking all the tough questions. The questions that no one had been brave enough to ask him. No one else, that was, but her.

"Every single minute," Chandler answered. He had always felt like he could talk to Monica, more so than even Joey. She just understood him. She had gone with him to pick out Kathy's engagement ring, she had been the first one that he had called when Kathy got pregnant, and likewise, he was the first she had called when she found out she was pregnant. It was a joke amongst their friends that Monica had called him before she even called Pete. Which was true, and which had bothered Pete to no end.

"He was a C!" Monica had laughingly explained. "C comes before P. That's all there is to it." She had told Pete not to read into it. Chandler had always gotten the impression that Pete wasn't too fond of him. He loved Joey and Ross, always getting them Knicks tickets and football tickets, but he really didn't like Chandler.

"Don't be silly," Monica had argued. "Of course he likes you." He didn't though, and Chandler knew this. Just as Kathy wasn't overly fond of Monica. She had never been rude, but she had always been more reserved around Monica than Chandler's other friends.

Of course, he had never told her that he had been in love with Monica since he could remember, but he assumed that she could see that anyway. Not that he would have ever acted on it. It was better to have Monica as a friend than not have her in his life at all. Besides, she was too far out of his league.

"Chandler," Monica whispered. "Tell me it gets better. Tell me it doesn't hurt like this always." He brushed her hair behind her ear.

"It gets better. It won't always hurt so much. I promise." Then he just held her. He held her until her crying had subsided. She looked up at him with her eyes filled with tears, and suddenly he was overcome with the desire to kiss her.

No, he told himself. That would be wrong. She was hurting, and she was vulnerable, and besides, he had Lucy now. Lucy. Blonde, cute, young Lucy. And Monica's husband had just left her. It wasn't the time to kiss her. It just wouldn't be appropriate. It wouldn't be right.

But he never listened when common sense told him not to do something, and so he leaned down and he kissed her anyway.

Okay, I hoped that you liked it, please review and let me know. The good stuff is just beginning. What about little old Lucy? And how will Monica react to being kissed to? Uh-oh spaghetti-o! Yeah, I really need to go lay down.