Fate Has A Way
Disclaimer: Yeah, so, here's something new: I don't own them… I don't make any money off of them either… Okay, so you probably already knew that, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this here.
Author's Note: In response to Vic's review- I do not model (I live in Virginia, so I don't think I could, even if I wanted to, which I don't, but that's beyond the point *kicks her stupid state*). When I said Model UN conference, I was referring to the Model United Nations. I'm in the club at my school, and we went to a conference over the weekend. We debate important world issues in the perspectives/policies of the countries in the United Nations. It may sound really dorky, but it's actually pretty fun. I think that's it… Anyway, read my story…
~*******~
Chapter Three: Meet The Parents
This takes place about a month and a half after Monica and Chandler first say "I love you" or, in other words, about 1.5 months after the last chapter:
The door to Monica's apartment opened suddenly, as Phoebe walked in and slammed the door behind her.
"Phoebes, what's wrong?" Monica said, and she hurried to Phoebe's side. Phoebe's eyes were red; it was obvious that she had been crying.
"You guys were right," Phoebe started to cry again. "You two were right. Kip is a two-timing, good-for-nothing, insensitive jerk."
"Oh honey," Monica hugged Phoebe, and Rachel joined them. "What did he do?"
"You know all of those business trips that he's been taking?" They nod. "Not exactly business trips."
Monica goes over to the freezer and looks inside for a second. "So, mint chocolate chip, vanilla, or rocky road?" When Phoebe didn't answer, "Mint chocolate chip it is, then." She took out the carton and tossed it in Phoebe's direction. Phoebe caught it, and Rachel got three spoons. As they sat down at the table, the Joey and Chandler came into the kitchen. Joey was whistling and looked ecstatic.
"Guess what girls, I…" He trailed off as he saw Phoebe in tears, and the three of them eating mint chocolate chip ice cream. And Joey's face went from ecstatic to concerned almost instantly. Chandler's did too.
"What happened?" Chandler went immediately to Monica's side, as if he could protect her from whatever was wrong.
"Kip was cheating on Phoebe." Rachel didn't feel as if any other explanations were necessary. She was right.
"Where is he?" Joey started to get really angry. "I'm gonna hunt him down and kick his ass!! Are you with me Chandler?"
"Absolutely!" The two of them stormed out and slammed the door behind themselves, just nearly missing Ross, Ben, and Amanda in their fit of rage as they went across the hall to Joey and Kip's apartment.
"Why are Uncle Joey and Uncle Chandler mad, Daddy?" Ben asked Ross.
"Well, that may be a question that we ask Aunt Monica, Aunt Rachel, and Aunt Phoebe." Ross was just as confused as Ben and Amanda were.
"Monica," Amanda started, as she hurried to Monica's side. Her father's outrage had scared the little girl, who didn't understand why he was mad, and Monica let her climb onto her lap. Amanda had become quite attached to her dad's girlfriend. "Why was my daddy so mad?"
"Honey, don't be scared. Kip did something mean to Aunt Phoebe, and your dad and Uncle Joey are going to, well, they're going to teach him a lesson."
Amanda seemed considerably calmed down in Monica's arms, and Ben seemed to find that explanation satisfying for him as well. Ross, on the other hand, was more than distressed to find out what Kip had done to Phoebe. However, he managed to keep his temper down for the kids' sake, and he just began muttering and pacing.
"Look at how silly Uncle Ross is being, Peanut." Monica used Amanda's pet name; she was very fond of the little girl.
"Your daddy's silly Ben." Amanda giggled.
Phoebe turned to look at Ross, who was now pacing furiously and muttering so fast that they could barely make out a word that he was saying. And in spite of herself, Phoebe found herself laughing. She was so lucky to have friends that cared that much about her. She was laughing so hard that Monica, Rachel, Ben, and Amanda started laughing too. Ross was too busy pacing to notice that they were laughing at him. 'Well,' Phoebe thought, 'Now I know where they get Red Ross from.'
*******
Kip hadn't been in apartment 19 when Chandler and Joey went to look for him there. They searched all over the city for Kip, but they couldn't seem to find him anywhere, not even in his office (A/N: I don't remember what Kip actually did or what they said that he did, so I'll just leave it at that). Finally, they went back to Joey and Kip's apartment, utterly exhausted, to see if Kip had come home. To their surprise, they found Kip's room entirely empty, and no one was home. They ran across the hall in case any of the gang had heard anything.
They let themselves into the apartment, and they found Monica, Rachel, and Phoebe playing Twister, with Ross spinning the spinner. Ben and Amanda were watching the three girls make fools of themselves, with looks of extreme amusement on their faces. The container of ice cream was sitting, forgotten and melted, on the kitchen table. The three spoons were still inside the container somewhere.
"Did you guys hear any unusual noises while we were gone?" Chandler asked.
"No," Rachel said. "But you couldn't hear anything for a while because there was construction in the streets."
"Did you find him?" Monica asked.
"Well, here's a funny story," Chandler began to answer. "Kip wasn't anywhere that we looked. And when we went to double-check at Joey's apartment, Kip's room was empty. So either the invisible wizard came and put a spell on Kip and his stuff or he got moving men to come on short notice and he moved out."
"The invisible wizard doesn't work on Sundays, so he must have moved out." Only Phoebe could come up with reasoning like that.
"Are you gonna be able to make the rent on your own, Joey?" Ross asked. Since Joey was a struggling actor and didn't work that much, he usually had a hard enough time just trying to pay his half of the rent each month as it was.
"Hell yeah!!!" Joey said excitedly. "I was gonna to tell you when I got here but I forgot. I'm gonna be on Days of Our Lives!!!" Monica, Phoebe, Rachel, and Ross all congratulate him (Chandler already knew).
"Uncle Joey," Ben began. "What's Days of Our Lives?"
"It's a soap opera." Rachel knew all about soap operas since she watched them a lot. The TV in her office at Ralph Lauren (A/N: I don't think I mentioned where Rachel worked yet, but let's just assume that she's working the same job that she's working in seasons 7-8, I think… just without Tag. Hey, it's my story and it's completely unlike the show, so I'm gonna change what I want to change, thank you very much…).
"It's a soap what?" Amanda was confused. She didn't really like to take baths that much. She only liked them when there was no cleaning involved. She couldn't seem to understand why her uncle Joey would want to work in a place with soap.
"It's an overly-dramatic drama that some grown-ups like to watch," Monica tried to explain without going into too much detail.
"Oh, okay." Ben and Amanda seemed satisfied with that answer, and the rest of the gang breathed sighs of relief.
*******
About one week after Phoebe found out that Kip had been cheating on her and Kip had moved away, Jack and Judy Geller decided to pay a visit to their son and grandson. They surprised Ross, who was sitting on the sofa with Chandler, Ben, and Amanda doing a puzzle. It was one of those puzzles with twelve squares and the people changed what they were doing in each square based on which month of the year the square was supposed to represent (A/N: I had one just like it when I was two and I loved it. Don't tell me two year olds can't do 300 piece puzzles; it just takes them a lot longer, hehehe…). Ross' girlfriend Emily was visiting from England, but she didn't want to do the puzzle with the four of them.
Jack and Judy Geller were not completely fond of their son's current girlfriend, since she was fairly demanding of him, always insisting that everything be HER way and was not very involved with Ben. But they loved Ross and he loved her, so they assumed that there must be something to Emily that they just didn't see and they weren't about to say anything against her. They sat on the chairs by the coffee table where Chandler, Ross, Ben, and Amanda were doing their puzzle and they helped by trying to put a few pieces together. Emily just sat off to the side, reading a magazine.
Amanda was just about to put in the last piece of the puzzle when Monica opened the door and came inside. "I got your message Chandler," she began. "I know I'm a little late but we had the busiest day at the office. We had to admit five kids. I think two of them will be okay, but I'm really worried about the other three." Monica was breathless. Chandler took her in his arms and kissed her, whispering into her ear, trying to assure her that things would be alright.
"Monica's a doctor." Amanda explained to Jack and Judy, who had not met Monica yet. "Come sit on the couch with me and Daddy." She said to Monica. They went over to the couch, and Monica sat right next to Chandler, her head resting on his chest. Amanda crawled up in between the two of them, and it was clear to Jack and Judy that she loved Monica as much as she loved her dad.
The Gellers motioned to Ross to remember his manners and introduce them to Monica.
"Mom, Dad," he said. "This is Chandler's girlfriend Monica. Mon, these are my parents, Jack and Judy Geller."
"Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Geller." Monica shook their hands.
"Nice to meet you too, Monica." Judy couldn't help but to recognize something about this girl. She seemed so familiar. She couldn't put her finger on it, but…
"I'm gonna get going Ross," Emily said. "I promised my uncle that I would have dinner with him tonight."
"Oh, Emily, are you sure that you have to go?" Ross was disappointed that she couldn't stay longer.
"I'll be back later tonight, as soon as I can get away from my uncle's." He kissed her before she walked out the door.
"Dad, I'm hungry." Ben was getting restless.
"Okay, then let's decide what we're gonna do for dinner." Ross did not want his son to throw a temper tantrum when his parents were around. "Mon, do you have any leftovers from last night?"
"Yeah, but only because Joey was on a date." She laughed. "He really is a human garbage disposal."
"That's why we love him," Chandler could tell that Monica was becoming less and less stressed about her day at work, and he loved to joke around with her.
Ross, Chandler, Ben, Amanda, Monica, Jack, and Judy went across the street to Monica's apartment, and she got everything ready for dinner. She was out of juice for Ben and Amanda, so she was going across the hall to borrow some from Joey, forgetting that he had locked his door because he was expecting to be out all night on yet another date. When she reached the locked door, she cursed silently and went back to her apartment to get the spare set of keys that she kept just in case. It took her a few minutes, but she did manage to find the extra keys and get the juice from Joey's refrigerator.
While she was doing this, Amanda and Ben had made a project out of showing Jack and Judy around the apartment, including the art room, which now also had a sofa with a pull-out bed because Chandler and Amanda were frequently overnight guests. It even had an old dresser that had been taken out of storage when they took out the sofa bed, and they used it to keep some of Amanda's things. Chandler himself had left some things in Monica's bedroom, and Monica had some of her things at Chandler's apartment. Jack and Judy were particularly fascinated with Monica's artwork.
*******
After dinner, Ross & Ben and Jack & Judy went their separate ways, but Chandler and Amanda planned on spending the night at Monica's.
Monica and Chandler put Amanda to bed on the early side because she was tired and they didn't want her to get too cranky or upset. Chandler made another feeble attempt to tell Amanda a bedtime story without reading from a book, which turned out no better than the last one. "You are the king of fractured fairly tales," Monica joked. Chandler kissed her to silence her, not that she objected in the least. Once Amanda was asleep, Monica and Chandler were so exhausted from everything that had happened that day that they crawled into bed themselves.
"Are Ross' parents always this draining when they visit?" Monica asked as she lay in Chandler's arms that night.
"I'm afraid so," Chandler said. "They weren't nearly as bad tonight as they usually are."
"Wow, am I glad that I'm not their kid." Monica didn't realize the irony in her statement. "No wonder Ross turned out the way he did; I would have gone crazy."
"Mrs. Geller treats him like he's a prince," Chandler said. "If they had ever had another child, she probably would have really nagged the poor kid to death and made them feel less important."
"Well then, it's a good thing that they stopped at one." She laughed, again not understanding the irony in her statements.
Chandler wanted to just lie in bed, holding her in his arms forever, but he had a question that he really wanted to ask her. He wasn't sure how she would respond, so he approached the matter carefully. "Mon," he started.
"Yes Chandler?"
"Do you ever wonder about your birth family? I mean what they were like or if you had any real brothers or sisters? Because I've always read about people who were adopted and wanted to find out about their real family history."
"There's something I haven't really thought about seriously since I was a teenager." Monica wasn't completely sure of how to explain her feelings on this issue. She took a deep breath; she was going to have to try to answer his question. It wasn't as if she was trying to keep this from him. On the contrary, she loved opening up to Chandler. But this, this was different. With most of her closest friends, this was an issue that just wasn't discussed, probably because they didn't want to make her feel uncomfortable. But she wanted to be able to talk about this to Chandler. He was more than just her boyfriend; he was her best friend, too. "Well, I guess there's a small part of me that's always going to wonder about my birth parents. You know, who they were, if they had any other children, how my life would have been different, that kind of stuff. But there's another part of me- the larger part- that knows that they didn't want me or else they wouldn't have left me at the front doors of the social services when I was seven months old. And I love my real parents so much. They have always been so wonderful to me. They taught me what it meant to be loved. They were the first people that really made me feel like I was a person, not just another thing that they had to keep for a few months to a year until another family could do the same thing. And I wouldn't want to have been raised by anyone other than them." She paused for a second, deep in thought. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel as if my life is complete as it is. I'll always wonder about my birth parents, but given the circumstances, that's only natural. I have no real desire to go out and find them because I don't think I could relate to them. I just wouldn't have anything to say to them; if I met them, I would probably stand there, staring at them. Or maybe, if someone from social services called and said 'I have your birth mother's other child over here and they want to meet you' or something else like that, then I would agree to meet them and talk to them, but I don't think that I'd go looking for them." She stopped and looked at Chandler. "You must think I'm absolutely crazy."
"No Mon," he said. "I love you. I could never think you're crazy." When he held her in his arms, she felt safe, as if no one in the world would dare harm her. And she new that this was where she belonged. That this was how her life was meant to be.
*******
At the same time, Jack and Judy were arriving back at their house. Both of them had really liked Chandler's new girlfriend, which was ironic for more reasons than one. "Ross needs a girlfriend like her," Judy commented. Jack nodded in agreement. When they walked into the house, the phone rang almost immediately.
"Just let it ring, Judy."
But the phone rang again.
"Just a coincidence." Jack didn't want Judy to become involved in a long phone conversation tonight.
But the phone kept ringing. They were both getting worried. Who could possibly be calling them? And what was so important that they couldn't just leave a message?
~*******~
And that's gonna do it for now… I don't know when I'll get the chance to write the next chapter of this, so I would advise you to review, review, review. I'm also gonna try to write the next chapter of my other series (word to the wise: don't ever do two long series at once…). But it seems as though people aren't as interested in that one, so this one gets preference… (or this one is just coming to me faster, I have more inspiration for this one). Anyways, I want to know what you think. Do you have any suggestions for what should happen next? What do you think of the way Judy sees Monica differently? Who do you think is calling? And what are they calling about? I'm not sure how cliffhanger-y the ending was, but I tried…
Once again, please review. ~Auds
Disclaimer: Yeah, so, here's something new: I don't own them… I don't make any money off of them either… Okay, so you probably already knew that, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this here.
Author's Note: In response to Vic's review- I do not model (I live in Virginia, so I don't think I could, even if I wanted to, which I don't, but that's beyond the point *kicks her stupid state*). When I said Model UN conference, I was referring to the Model United Nations. I'm in the club at my school, and we went to a conference over the weekend. We debate important world issues in the perspectives/policies of the countries in the United Nations. It may sound really dorky, but it's actually pretty fun. I think that's it… Anyway, read my story…
~*******~
Chapter Three: Meet The Parents
This takes place about a month and a half after Monica and Chandler first say "I love you" or, in other words, about 1.5 months after the last chapter:
The door to Monica's apartment opened suddenly, as Phoebe walked in and slammed the door behind her.
"Phoebes, what's wrong?" Monica said, and she hurried to Phoebe's side. Phoebe's eyes were red; it was obvious that she had been crying.
"You guys were right," Phoebe started to cry again. "You two were right. Kip is a two-timing, good-for-nothing, insensitive jerk."
"Oh honey," Monica hugged Phoebe, and Rachel joined them. "What did he do?"
"You know all of those business trips that he's been taking?" They nod. "Not exactly business trips."
Monica goes over to the freezer and looks inside for a second. "So, mint chocolate chip, vanilla, or rocky road?" When Phoebe didn't answer, "Mint chocolate chip it is, then." She took out the carton and tossed it in Phoebe's direction. Phoebe caught it, and Rachel got three spoons. As they sat down at the table, the Joey and Chandler came into the kitchen. Joey was whistling and looked ecstatic.
"Guess what girls, I…" He trailed off as he saw Phoebe in tears, and the three of them eating mint chocolate chip ice cream. And Joey's face went from ecstatic to concerned almost instantly. Chandler's did too.
"What happened?" Chandler went immediately to Monica's side, as if he could protect her from whatever was wrong.
"Kip was cheating on Phoebe." Rachel didn't feel as if any other explanations were necessary. She was right.
"Where is he?" Joey started to get really angry. "I'm gonna hunt him down and kick his ass!! Are you with me Chandler?"
"Absolutely!" The two of them stormed out and slammed the door behind themselves, just nearly missing Ross, Ben, and Amanda in their fit of rage as they went across the hall to Joey and Kip's apartment.
"Why are Uncle Joey and Uncle Chandler mad, Daddy?" Ben asked Ross.
"Well, that may be a question that we ask Aunt Monica, Aunt Rachel, and Aunt Phoebe." Ross was just as confused as Ben and Amanda were.
"Monica," Amanda started, as she hurried to Monica's side. Her father's outrage had scared the little girl, who didn't understand why he was mad, and Monica let her climb onto her lap. Amanda had become quite attached to her dad's girlfriend. "Why was my daddy so mad?"
"Honey, don't be scared. Kip did something mean to Aunt Phoebe, and your dad and Uncle Joey are going to, well, they're going to teach him a lesson."
Amanda seemed considerably calmed down in Monica's arms, and Ben seemed to find that explanation satisfying for him as well. Ross, on the other hand, was more than distressed to find out what Kip had done to Phoebe. However, he managed to keep his temper down for the kids' sake, and he just began muttering and pacing.
"Look at how silly Uncle Ross is being, Peanut." Monica used Amanda's pet name; she was very fond of the little girl.
"Your daddy's silly Ben." Amanda giggled.
Phoebe turned to look at Ross, who was now pacing furiously and muttering so fast that they could barely make out a word that he was saying. And in spite of herself, Phoebe found herself laughing. She was so lucky to have friends that cared that much about her. She was laughing so hard that Monica, Rachel, Ben, and Amanda started laughing too. Ross was too busy pacing to notice that they were laughing at him. 'Well,' Phoebe thought, 'Now I know where they get Red Ross from.'
*******
Kip hadn't been in apartment 19 when Chandler and Joey went to look for him there. They searched all over the city for Kip, but they couldn't seem to find him anywhere, not even in his office (A/N: I don't remember what Kip actually did or what they said that he did, so I'll just leave it at that). Finally, they went back to Joey and Kip's apartment, utterly exhausted, to see if Kip had come home. To their surprise, they found Kip's room entirely empty, and no one was home. They ran across the hall in case any of the gang had heard anything.
They let themselves into the apartment, and they found Monica, Rachel, and Phoebe playing Twister, with Ross spinning the spinner. Ben and Amanda were watching the three girls make fools of themselves, with looks of extreme amusement on their faces. The container of ice cream was sitting, forgotten and melted, on the kitchen table. The three spoons were still inside the container somewhere.
"Did you guys hear any unusual noises while we were gone?" Chandler asked.
"No," Rachel said. "But you couldn't hear anything for a while because there was construction in the streets."
"Did you find him?" Monica asked.
"Well, here's a funny story," Chandler began to answer. "Kip wasn't anywhere that we looked. And when we went to double-check at Joey's apartment, Kip's room was empty. So either the invisible wizard came and put a spell on Kip and his stuff or he got moving men to come on short notice and he moved out."
"The invisible wizard doesn't work on Sundays, so he must have moved out." Only Phoebe could come up with reasoning like that.
"Are you gonna be able to make the rent on your own, Joey?" Ross asked. Since Joey was a struggling actor and didn't work that much, he usually had a hard enough time just trying to pay his half of the rent each month as it was.
"Hell yeah!!!" Joey said excitedly. "I was gonna to tell you when I got here but I forgot. I'm gonna be on Days of Our Lives!!!" Monica, Phoebe, Rachel, and Ross all congratulate him (Chandler already knew).
"Uncle Joey," Ben began. "What's Days of Our Lives?"
"It's a soap opera." Rachel knew all about soap operas since she watched them a lot. The TV in her office at Ralph Lauren (A/N: I don't think I mentioned where Rachel worked yet, but let's just assume that she's working the same job that she's working in seasons 7-8, I think… just without Tag. Hey, it's my story and it's completely unlike the show, so I'm gonna change what I want to change, thank you very much…).
"It's a soap what?" Amanda was confused. She didn't really like to take baths that much. She only liked them when there was no cleaning involved. She couldn't seem to understand why her uncle Joey would want to work in a place with soap.
"It's an overly-dramatic drama that some grown-ups like to watch," Monica tried to explain without going into too much detail.
"Oh, okay." Ben and Amanda seemed satisfied with that answer, and the rest of the gang breathed sighs of relief.
*******
About one week after Phoebe found out that Kip had been cheating on her and Kip had moved away, Jack and Judy Geller decided to pay a visit to their son and grandson. They surprised Ross, who was sitting on the sofa with Chandler, Ben, and Amanda doing a puzzle. It was one of those puzzles with twelve squares and the people changed what they were doing in each square based on which month of the year the square was supposed to represent (A/N: I had one just like it when I was two and I loved it. Don't tell me two year olds can't do 300 piece puzzles; it just takes them a lot longer, hehehe…). Ross' girlfriend Emily was visiting from England, but she didn't want to do the puzzle with the four of them.
Jack and Judy Geller were not completely fond of their son's current girlfriend, since she was fairly demanding of him, always insisting that everything be HER way and was not very involved with Ben. But they loved Ross and he loved her, so they assumed that there must be something to Emily that they just didn't see and they weren't about to say anything against her. They sat on the chairs by the coffee table where Chandler, Ross, Ben, and Amanda were doing their puzzle and they helped by trying to put a few pieces together. Emily just sat off to the side, reading a magazine.
Amanda was just about to put in the last piece of the puzzle when Monica opened the door and came inside. "I got your message Chandler," she began. "I know I'm a little late but we had the busiest day at the office. We had to admit five kids. I think two of them will be okay, but I'm really worried about the other three." Monica was breathless. Chandler took her in his arms and kissed her, whispering into her ear, trying to assure her that things would be alright.
"Monica's a doctor." Amanda explained to Jack and Judy, who had not met Monica yet. "Come sit on the couch with me and Daddy." She said to Monica. They went over to the couch, and Monica sat right next to Chandler, her head resting on his chest. Amanda crawled up in between the two of them, and it was clear to Jack and Judy that she loved Monica as much as she loved her dad.
The Gellers motioned to Ross to remember his manners and introduce them to Monica.
"Mom, Dad," he said. "This is Chandler's girlfriend Monica. Mon, these are my parents, Jack and Judy Geller."
"Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Geller." Monica shook their hands.
"Nice to meet you too, Monica." Judy couldn't help but to recognize something about this girl. She seemed so familiar. She couldn't put her finger on it, but…
"I'm gonna get going Ross," Emily said. "I promised my uncle that I would have dinner with him tonight."
"Oh, Emily, are you sure that you have to go?" Ross was disappointed that she couldn't stay longer.
"I'll be back later tonight, as soon as I can get away from my uncle's." He kissed her before she walked out the door.
"Dad, I'm hungry." Ben was getting restless.
"Okay, then let's decide what we're gonna do for dinner." Ross did not want his son to throw a temper tantrum when his parents were around. "Mon, do you have any leftovers from last night?"
"Yeah, but only because Joey was on a date." She laughed. "He really is a human garbage disposal."
"That's why we love him," Chandler could tell that Monica was becoming less and less stressed about her day at work, and he loved to joke around with her.
Ross, Chandler, Ben, Amanda, Monica, Jack, and Judy went across the street to Monica's apartment, and she got everything ready for dinner. She was out of juice for Ben and Amanda, so she was going across the hall to borrow some from Joey, forgetting that he had locked his door because he was expecting to be out all night on yet another date. When she reached the locked door, she cursed silently and went back to her apartment to get the spare set of keys that she kept just in case. It took her a few minutes, but she did manage to find the extra keys and get the juice from Joey's refrigerator.
While she was doing this, Amanda and Ben had made a project out of showing Jack and Judy around the apartment, including the art room, which now also had a sofa with a pull-out bed because Chandler and Amanda were frequently overnight guests. It even had an old dresser that had been taken out of storage when they took out the sofa bed, and they used it to keep some of Amanda's things. Chandler himself had left some things in Monica's bedroom, and Monica had some of her things at Chandler's apartment. Jack and Judy were particularly fascinated with Monica's artwork.
*******
After dinner, Ross & Ben and Jack & Judy went their separate ways, but Chandler and Amanda planned on spending the night at Monica's.
Monica and Chandler put Amanda to bed on the early side because she was tired and they didn't want her to get too cranky or upset. Chandler made another feeble attempt to tell Amanda a bedtime story without reading from a book, which turned out no better than the last one. "You are the king of fractured fairly tales," Monica joked. Chandler kissed her to silence her, not that she objected in the least. Once Amanda was asleep, Monica and Chandler were so exhausted from everything that had happened that day that they crawled into bed themselves.
"Are Ross' parents always this draining when they visit?" Monica asked as she lay in Chandler's arms that night.
"I'm afraid so," Chandler said. "They weren't nearly as bad tonight as they usually are."
"Wow, am I glad that I'm not their kid." Monica didn't realize the irony in her statement. "No wonder Ross turned out the way he did; I would have gone crazy."
"Mrs. Geller treats him like he's a prince," Chandler said. "If they had ever had another child, she probably would have really nagged the poor kid to death and made them feel less important."
"Well then, it's a good thing that they stopped at one." She laughed, again not understanding the irony in her statements.
Chandler wanted to just lie in bed, holding her in his arms forever, but he had a question that he really wanted to ask her. He wasn't sure how she would respond, so he approached the matter carefully. "Mon," he started.
"Yes Chandler?"
"Do you ever wonder about your birth family? I mean what they were like or if you had any real brothers or sisters? Because I've always read about people who were adopted and wanted to find out about their real family history."
"There's something I haven't really thought about seriously since I was a teenager." Monica wasn't completely sure of how to explain her feelings on this issue. She took a deep breath; she was going to have to try to answer his question. It wasn't as if she was trying to keep this from him. On the contrary, she loved opening up to Chandler. But this, this was different. With most of her closest friends, this was an issue that just wasn't discussed, probably because they didn't want to make her feel uncomfortable. But she wanted to be able to talk about this to Chandler. He was more than just her boyfriend; he was her best friend, too. "Well, I guess there's a small part of me that's always going to wonder about my birth parents. You know, who they were, if they had any other children, how my life would have been different, that kind of stuff. But there's another part of me- the larger part- that knows that they didn't want me or else they wouldn't have left me at the front doors of the social services when I was seven months old. And I love my real parents so much. They have always been so wonderful to me. They taught me what it meant to be loved. They were the first people that really made me feel like I was a person, not just another thing that they had to keep for a few months to a year until another family could do the same thing. And I wouldn't want to have been raised by anyone other than them." She paused for a second, deep in thought. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel as if my life is complete as it is. I'll always wonder about my birth parents, but given the circumstances, that's only natural. I have no real desire to go out and find them because I don't think I could relate to them. I just wouldn't have anything to say to them; if I met them, I would probably stand there, staring at them. Or maybe, if someone from social services called and said 'I have your birth mother's other child over here and they want to meet you' or something else like that, then I would agree to meet them and talk to them, but I don't think that I'd go looking for them." She stopped and looked at Chandler. "You must think I'm absolutely crazy."
"No Mon," he said. "I love you. I could never think you're crazy." When he held her in his arms, she felt safe, as if no one in the world would dare harm her. And she new that this was where she belonged. That this was how her life was meant to be.
*******
At the same time, Jack and Judy were arriving back at their house. Both of them had really liked Chandler's new girlfriend, which was ironic for more reasons than one. "Ross needs a girlfriend like her," Judy commented. Jack nodded in agreement. When they walked into the house, the phone rang almost immediately.
"Just let it ring, Judy."
But the phone rang again.
"Just a coincidence." Jack didn't want Judy to become involved in a long phone conversation tonight.
But the phone kept ringing. They were both getting worried. Who could possibly be calling them? And what was so important that they couldn't just leave a message?
~*******~
And that's gonna do it for now… I don't know when I'll get the chance to write the next chapter of this, so I would advise you to review, review, review. I'm also gonna try to write the next chapter of my other series (word to the wise: don't ever do two long series at once…). But it seems as though people aren't as interested in that one, so this one gets preference… (or this one is just coming to me faster, I have more inspiration for this one). Anyways, I want to know what you think. Do you have any suggestions for what should happen next? What do you think of the way Judy sees Monica differently? Who do you think is calling? And what are they calling about? I'm not sure how cliffhanger-y the ending was, but I tried…
Once again, please review. ~Auds