~* Thanks for reviewing, please keep doing it! Here is the second part. The song is by Deana Carter. *~
Disclaimer: Not my characters, although Kathryn is mine, and not my song.
"Monica," they were all sitting at dinner a year later. Monica was doing much better, mostly for Kate's sake. (An: I changed the spelling to Katy. Sorry, I like this way better, its easier to type). She lifted her head and saw that it was Chandler who was speaking to her.
"Yes?"
"I was thinking that you and Katy and me could all go to the beach in a few weeks," he said.
"That's a nice idea," she said. She returned her focus to her meal.
"Mon?" This time it was Rachel.
"Hmm?"
"Are you okay?"
"Fine," she answered. "If you'll excuse me, I'm done." She got up from the table. Kate came running in after a day out with Jack and Judy.
"Mommy!" Monica's face lit up when she saw her daughter and picked her up.
"How was you day sweetheart?"
"Good," she answered. "We made a picture, look." Kate held up a drawing for her mother to see.
"That's beautiful baby," she told her and carried her out of the room. Chandler excused himself and walked up to her.
"Monica? Can we talk?" He asked. She nodded and placed Kate down and told her to go find Lila, her nanny. Kate nodded and ran off.
"What?" She asked turning around. He led her onto the patio and closed the French doors behind him.
"Mon, we understand that you're grieving, but it's been a year and you aren't seeming to snap out of this funk," he told her.
"Oh what would you know? Did your husband die?"
"I think that we would have much bigger issues to address if my husband died," Chandler said.
"You know what I meant," Monica said. She wiped the tears that were now steadily falling down her face.
"Monica," he said softly. "We just want to help you." She nodded.
"I know, but Chandler. I feel like I'm this horrible person and if I laugh or smile or am happy for one minute, that I'm even more of a terrible person."
"Monica you aren't a terrible person. Pete would want you to move on and be happy. And what about Kate? Do you want her to grow up with a mother who never laughs? Don't you think that she'll have to go through major therapy if that happens?" Monica laughed slightly. "Look I got you to smile. Come here." He pulled her tightly to him.
"Chandler? I just can't get this one question out of my head," she whispered.
"What's that honey?" He asked moving the hair out of her face.
"Where do I go from here?" He didn't know the answer, so he just rocked her back and forth in his arms.
Look at me
I'm in a place
I never thought that I'd be
I don't have the strength to fight anymore
or a reason not to leave
Chandler stopped by the house early in the morning a few weeks later. Monica came running out and waved to him.
"Park your car in the garage and we'll load up the jeep," she called out to him. He nodded and pulled his jalopy of a car next to one of her Jaguars. When he walked back into the driveway he saw that there was a jeep parked and Monica's staff was loading it up. He went inside and saw Kate standing in the front hall her bear in her hands.
"Chandler!" She spotted him and jumped into his arms.
"Hey sweetie, are you ready for a week of fun in the sun?" He asked. She nodded.
"Mommy's sad though," she told him.
"Why honey?"
"She hasn't been back to the beach house since Daddy went away," Kate told him. She stuck her little thumb into her mouth and Chandler nodded. He hadn't thought about the memories that Monica would have of her beach house. He didn't even know the extent of it. That had been the first place that Monica and Pete had made love and where he had proposed and where she had told him that she was pregnant. The walls seeped with memories of her and Pete and their life together. It would certainly be odd being there without him and with Chandler instead. They had grown closer now that he was back, but both understood that she wasn't ready for a relationship. He found her in the office looking at pictures of her and Pete.
"I can take Kate up there by myself," he told her. "We'll be back in a week." Monica shook her head.
"No you were right, I need to move on," she assured him and turned around and wiped the tears that had made a salty path down her cheek and followed him out.
"Mommy? Are we ready to go?" Kate was bouncing up and down with excitement.
"Yep, sweet girl, lets go," she said swinging the three year old onto her hip. "Lets go." Chandler nodded and got into the driver's seat and Monica strapped Kate in and climbed into the passenger's side and they drove off. He occasionally glanced over at her to see how she was doing. Her sunglasses hid her eyes, and so he couldn't tell that she was doing her best to keep her watering eyes from spilling over. They pulled up to the private beach house and she got out and walked to the front door and punched in the code and opened the door. Chandler carried Kate in with him and found her looking into the master bedroom finally letting the tears fall.
"This can be your bedroom," she told him. She turned and found Kate's hand and led her to her room. Chandler walked into the bedroom and looked around. He figured this had always been Monica and Pete's because he saw the pictures on the walls of the two of them and that's when he noticed that there was a coffee cup on the one side of the bed, he knew that Monica liked a certain side of the bed, so he assumed it was Pete's. Then something caught the corner of his eye and he walked over. It was the blinking of the answering machine. He pressed the button to hear the message.
"Hey Petey, its Gretchen. I was just calling to tell you that I wouldn't be able to make our weekend specials this week. Something's come up. You can spend the weekend with that pretty little wife of yours. Anyway, call me later." He stood in shock listening to it again. He didn't know what to do. Should he tell Monica? Or not? Did she really need to know? Wouldn't it just hurt her? But she had felt so guilty for almost kissing Chandler the night he died, wouldn't this make her feel less guilty? He was so lost in his own deep thoughts, that he didn't notice Monica standing behind him.
"Whatcha doing?" She asked.
"Oh nothing," he lied. "I just saw the light blinking on the answering machine."
"Oh, who called?"
"It was an old message of yours actually," he found that lying to her at this point was considerably easier. "Want to hit the beach?" She nodded and turned and went to get Kate ready. He closed his door and sunk to the bed with his head in his hands. He had to tell someone, he had to ask someone's advice. He picked up the phone and called Rachel.
"Hello?" She asked.
"Rachel?"
"Hey Chandler! Are you at the beach?"
"Yeah, listen, I need to talk to you about something."
"What's up?"
"There was this message..."
so tell me why I keep holding on
to something I just cannot see
what makes you stay
when your world falls apart
He couldn't look her in the eye for the rest of the night.
"Rachel and the rest of them are going to come up this week too," he told her. "They ended up being able to get time off after all."
"Oh, okay," she said smiling and looked down at her plate and cut up her meat.
"Mommy? Is Daddy an angel now?" Kate asked. Chandler wanted to tell her no, men who cheat on their wives don't become angels. Was he planning to spend the night over Gretchen's house that night? Was he really going to stop at the office? Or was he lying? Like he did every weekend to Monica? What had Rachel said?
"He's never around, I wonder how Monica can stay married to the guy...." The words bounced around in Chandler's head. He's never around. Never around. Never. Around.
"Chandler?" He found Monica staring at him.
"Yeah?"
"What's the matter?"
"Just deep in thought is all," he assured her and she smiled at him once more before resuming the conversation that she had been having with Kate. He finally had to leave the table and excused himself and practically sprinted to his bedroom to look for more clues. He really didn't need to; the answering machine message would have been enough to condemn Pete, but he couldn't help himself from looking around. He remembered when Rachel told him about the beach house and how it might be a good idea for Monica to go there.
"She never went there," Rachel had said. "It was like Pete's secret hideaway. Monica used to tell us when they would fight he would go up there to clear his head." Clear his head, Chandler thought. That wasn't all that he had been doing. He shook his head and bent down to look under the bed. There was victory, he saw an envelope. He pulled it out and saw that it was two plane tickets to Mexico.
"Monica?" He called out standing up.
"Yes?" She opened his door and he quickly hid the envelope behind his back.
"Were you and Pete planning a trip to Mexico?" She shook her head. The tickets, he realized, weren't for her. They were for that Gretchen and Pete. She left the room and he continued his search. At the end he had turned up a bottle of perfume, that he knew Monica would never had worn, a business card with the name Gretchen Langdon, a picture of Pete and this woman on the beach. Lucky for Pete that Monica had never come up here, because she was a smart woman and she would have pieced it together quickly. He hadn't been very good at destroying all the evidence. Outside of his door he heard a knock on the door and Monica answered it.
"Hey!" It was their friends who had dropped everything and rushed up there when Chandler told them of what he had found. They each gave her a hug and she looked at them with a confused expression.
"What's going on?"
"Oh nothing," Joey said quickly. "We just thought to ourselves, what would be more fun then hanging out at a gorgeous beach house with our millionaire friend?" Monica gave him a skeptical glance but dismissed it as usual Joey chatter.
"I'm going to go give Katy her bath," she said picking her daughter up and disappearing down a hallway.
"So Chandler, we want to hear this message," Phoebe said standing and following Chandler into his bedroom and he closed the door and pressed play on the answering machine. The woman's voice floated through the air.
"I swear if he wasn't dead, I'd kick his ass!" Joey said. "How dare he do that to Monica? I thought he was a nice guy."
"So did I," Phoebe said quietly. "And usually I am I pretty good judge of character." They sat in silence before a knock from Monica awakened them from their thoughts.
"I think that she should know," Ross said quietly. "It'll hurt her, but what if she finds out on her own? He obviously didn't cover his tracks very well."
"I agree," Rachel said. And Joey and Phoebe nodded their opinions and Chandler sighed.
"Okay," he said opening the door to Monica.
"What are you guys doing? What took you so long to open the door?"
"Mon," Chandler said. "We need to talk." He took her hand and led her into the room and sat her in the chair.
"We're so sorry Monica, we didn't know whether or not you should know, but in the end its better if you do know," Rachel said. "Go ahead and play it Chandler." Monica sat in stunned silence while the truth was revealed. She looked around at all her friends. Then down at her wedding band that she hadn't taken off and she sighed.
"I have to go get some air," she said and opened the doors leading to the balcony and quickly shut them behind her. She ran towards the corner where the moonlight didn't hit and sunk into the shadows. She found the beach chair and curled into a ball and cried.
what makes you try one more time
when it's not in your heart
at the end of your rope
when you can't find any hope
That's where Chandler found her an hour later. He brushed the hair out of her face and kissed the place that her tears had fallen.
"Chandler?"
"Yes sweetie?"
"I just....you were right to tell me....I should...don't....Kate....Pete, he was never....I don't hate....I'm so....what do I do?" She looked up at him with a confused expression and Chandler hated Pete at that moment. More then he had when Monica had said I do, more then he had when he heard that they were going to have a baby together. How dare he do this to her?
"Shush, Mon, its okay," he was an inch away from her. He remembered the last time that they had been this close, and the officers told her that Pete was dead. She moved closer to his lips. They closed their eyes and leaned in.
"I shouldn't," she finally said breaking the moment. "I'm not ready. Even though, I mean, I don't feel so morally against it anymore, but..."
"I understand," he told her and began to pull away.
"Oh screw Pete," she said. "Everyone else certainly was." He laughed and pulled her into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he pulled her to her feet and kissed her while the moonlight bounced off the ocean and the sound of the breaking waves set the romantic mood to a night that had started off anything but romantic.
"Chandler?"
"Yes?"
"Does this make me a bad person?"
"Absolutely not," he assured her kissing her again.
you still look at him and say
I just can't walk away
tell me what makes you stay
I'm not afraid of living alone
I was alone before he came
Rachel sat on the deck and saw Monica laughing. Truly laughing, for the first time in a very long time. Chandler, Kate, and her were all down by the water's edge playing in the sand. They were making a sandcastle. Chandler put the goopy sand all over his hands and chased Kate who squealed with delight and dove behind her mother.
"I'm going to get you!" Rachel heard.
"No, Mommy! Make the sand monster go away!" Monica's laughter was heard and then Chandler chased her into the water.
"Chandler!" Kate's little voice admonished. "You made Mommy get all wet."
"Oh I did? Oh I'm sorry," he said before dunking Monica.
"That's it Bing! Now you're going to get it!" She jumped on him and pushed him under water.
"Hey!" He sputtered when he came up. Rachel heard Joey behind her.
"If I didn't know better," Rachel said. "I would say that they were falling in love."
"Again," Joey said.
"What do you mean again? Joe, to do something again, you had to do it once already," Rachel said tapping her finger against her coffee cup.
"Exactly," he told her. "They dated."
"No they didn't! I was her best friend and roommate! I would have known if they had been dating," Rachel said defiantly.
"Well, you didn't. I was the only one who knew. Go find old photo albums from right after we got back from London. Monica has them stashed somewhere. Full of Chandler and her hanging all over each other at all the touristy attractions of New York."
"No," Rachel said and then she thought about it. What about when Monica had that boyfriend that no one met. Could it have been Chandler? She looked at Joey once more before realization set in.
"Wow," was all she said. Then she looked back down at the couple in the water who were laughing and talking. "Wow."
and I've been in love
many times before
but this times not the same
I've always been the first to say goodbye
now its the last thing I can do
"I still don't know about this," Monica said once more. Her and Chandler laid in her bedroom talking and his finger traced circles on her bare stomach. "I mean, I'm still in the grieving process!"
"A widow who just found out that her husband had been cheating on her."
"Maybe...I mean....could she have been a colleague?"
"Up at his beach house for a weekend special?" Chandler snorted. "Doubt it."
"I feel so guilty, why do I feel so guilty?"
"Because you're a good person," he told her.
"Will everyone think that I'm a bad person if I date you only a year after my husband dies?"
"No, and who cares anyway? The only people that matter are our friends."
"We should tell them," she added. "They'll want to know."
"Should I go back to my room?" He asked.
"No," she said firmly. "Please stay."
what makes you stay
when your world falls apart
what makes you try one more time
when its not in your heart
at the end of your rope
when you can't find any hope
"Monica and I have something to tell you," Chandler told his friends.
"Is it that you're seeing each other for the second time?" Phoebe asked grinning. "Cause we know that."
"How do you know?" Monica asked her expression mirrored by Chandler's look of befuddlement (AN: My new favorite word! So much fun to say!)
"Well, Joey told us about your torrid affair," Rachel said. "And we've seen Chandler sneaking into your room at night."
"Well," Monica said. "Then we have no announcement." They all laughed and started eating the food that Monica had prepared. At the beach house they never took their cook or maids along. Up there they fended for themselves, which Monica and Kate didn't like because they were not used to doing things for themselves. The others however, were not used to someone waiting on them hand and foot, so they didn't mind.
"Is Chandler going to become my new daddy?" Kate spoke up that night as Monica was tucking her in.
"Well, in order for him to be your daddy I'd have to marry him," Monica said.
"Are you going to?" Kate asked.
"I don't know," Monica told her.
"Why not? Do you love him?"
"Well, yes," Monica told her.
"Then marry him."
"It's not that easy honey," Monica said.
"Why not?"
"Because it's just not."
"That's because you grown-ups make it hard," Kate yawned and reached her tiny arms around her mother's neck.
"Goodnight baby," Monica told her.
"Night Momma," Kate's voice droned off as she slipped into sleep. Monica flipped out the lights and realized that their week at the beach would be up the next day. She wondered if her and Chandler could remain together once they were home. It seemed when you went away that life was so simple and easy, and it would be different when they got back to their everyday routines. They wouldn't have the privacy that they had up here. Chandler lived in the city, and he worked everyday. Monica didn't.
"Who are we kidding?" She said out loud. But at the same time she couldn't imagine not having Chandler by her side. It was like not having a nose or two ears. She felt incomplete. She realized with a start that she loved him. She loved all his little idiosyncrasies, and he loved hers, if that was even possible. Pete had been a nice guy, and he had given her Kate, and security for the rest of her life, but he never gave her the feeling that she had had with Chandler. Like nothing could go wrong when she was in his arms. She had been wrong of course. They had broken up. It had gone wrong, but at the same time, their affair had happened so fast that she hadn't really had time to comprehend what was happening when it had been happening. She found him in the living room reading a book.
"Katy asleep?" He asked taking off his glasses. She nodded. "What's the matter?" And everything that she had been feeling and thinking came pouring out. He listened to her and nodded and held her hand.
"What do you think?" She asked.
"I think that I love you. And these five years without you have been wasted. I think that we can make it work because I love you and you love me and that's all that matters. I think that Pete didn't realize how lucky he was. I think that I want to marry you and adopt Kate, and live happily ever after. That's what I think." She smiled at him.
"If we could bottle the energy that it took for you to say that that fast, we could make a fortune," she teased.
"What do you think? How do you feel about us? All that crap about you grieving aside ," he told her.
"I think that I can't convince myself that this is wrong," she told him.
"Then," he said kissing her on the cheek. "Don't try to."
you still look at him and say
I just can't walk away
tell me what makes you stay
when it goes this deep
feels this strong
I can't convince myself
that this love is wrong
oh no
"Monica and I are getting married," Chandler announced a year later.
"That's great!" Rachel said.
"Congratulations," Ross said.
"I'm the flower girl," Kate announced.
"I call best man," Joey said.
"You can't just call best man," Ross said angrily.
"Sure I can, and I did. And you know what? While I'm at it, if they have another kid? I call godfather!"
"Joey you can't do that!" Ross argued. Monica smiled at Chandler who slipped his hand into hers and brought hers to his mouth and gave it a kiss.
"Should we tell them the other part of our announcement?" He asked.
"Sure why not?"
"Monica and I have something else to tell you," he said clearing his throat.
"I'm pregnant!"
"I'm going to be a big sister?" Kate said.
"Yes you are," Chandler told her picking her up.
"Please make it a sister Mommy," the four-year-old pleaded. That brought laughs from everyone else.
"You're doing great!" Chandler told Monica holding her hand. "Just one more push."
"Push it yourself," Monica said.
"Okay Mrs. Bing, one more time," the doctor said. They heard the crying of a baby. "It's a beautiful healthy baby boy."
"A boy Mon!" Chandler told her. She smiled weakly. The doctor handed him to Chandler who took him over to Monica and laid him gently in her arms.
"He's so beautiful," Monica breathed.
"What should we name him?" Chandler asked kissing his wife's head. "And you do know that Katy is going to be mad at us for having a boy?"
"I think that we should name him Matthew Joseph Bing," Monica said.
"That's a beautiful name," Chandler told her. "So we're going to have Kate and Ross mad at us?" Monica nodded and laughed.
"They can deal with it or they can take it up with me," she told him.
"Well, I think that I would rather deal with it then cross you," Chandler told her. "Although, Kate's so much like you that I don't know who would win in that match."
"Hey, I've got a good two or three feet on her," Monica said gazing into the face of her baby. Chandler laughed.
"You do have a point," he told her. They sat there in silence for a long time before Monica spoke up.
"I think I've finally done it," she said.
"What?" Chandler asked.
"I think I finally forgive Pete," Monica said. "For what he did. It seems ridiculous to hold on to it. He's dead, and he hurt me, but he led me back to you."
At the end of your rope
when you can't find any hope
you still look at him and say
I just can't walk away
tell me what makes you stay
Tell me what makes you stay
~* I think that that will be the end, unless I get an overwhelming request to keep going. I hoped that you liked it. Please review and tell me what you thought!*~
