Chapter 2: Rachel and Joshua

(4,20, TOW All the Wedding Dresses)

'Okay, you guys, just relax,' said Rachel cheerfully as she went to open the door. Flinging it open, she lightheartedly cried, 'I do!' Only, to her consternation, it was not Chandler who was standing there, but Joshua, on whose face a look of complete panic was rapidly appearing as he saw Phoebe and Monica behind her, also in wedding dresses.

'Oh my God!' she cried. 'I was expecting Chandler!', just as he was saying, 'I gotta go.' He had turned and taken two steps; then he looked back, curiosity overlaying the panic. 'You thought I was Chandler? Why?'

'Yes,' she cried, suddenly panicky at the thought that he would be frightened off for ever. Keep talking, she thought desperately. 'He had this big date, and he's so commitment-phobic, so it was just to goose him, y'know?'

Joshua did not move any further, although he still looked ready to take off at any moment. She hurried on, 'Joshua, we just put these on to cheer ourselves up. I know it looks weird, but it really doesn't mean anything, I promise.' Conscious that she was beginning to babble but unable to stop, she went on, 'Forget everything I said this morning, I was being so dumb, please please don't go away now that you're here, please!'

Joshua said hesitantly, 'Well, I …'

'Look, I'll change out of this and come out with you,' she said, 'or you can come in for a beer or something and we'll all take them off. Just,' she came near to breaking down, 'just don't run out on me.' She sniffed, and decided she might as well say it. 'I really like you.'

Joshua gave a deep sigh and seemed to relax somewhat. 'It's nice to hear that, and I really like you too, Rachel. But I certainly would be a lot easier if you were wearing anything else.'

'Come in,' she begged, stepping forward and taking his hands. 'Just give me a minute and I'll get out of this, I swear.'

Still looking very wary, Joshua allowed himself to be led in. Only Phoebe was now present.

'Monica went to change,' she explained.

'You sit there, Joshua,' said Rachel, pushing him onto the couch, and hastened to the bedroom, a feeling of mild elation growing in her at the thought that she had, at least temporarily, managed to retrieve the situation. Deciding not to wear anything very sexy, because he might take it the wrong way – she had already shown more neediness than she had ever done before in a relationship – she put on a simple summer dress. When she came out, Phoebe was explaining how she came to be acting as surrogate mother for her brother's babies, and Joshua was listening with apparent sympathy. Monica appeared just after Rachel and gave Joshua a brilliant smile.

'Sorry about that,' she said. 'My brother's getting married, as you may have heard, and you know how we women are about weddings. Can I get you a beer?'

Unseen by Joshua, Rachel blew her a kiss for trying to help out. He proved ready to accept a beer, and before long he was chatting easily with them and the whole incident seemed forgotten. Then Phoebe dropped a casual reference to the chick and the duck, and he suddenly looked very uneasy. Seeing this, Rachel jumped up at once.

'Let's go eat somewhere, Joshua,' she said.

He smiled at her. 'Good idea.'

Throughout the evening, Rachel did everything she could to put him at his ease and convey the impression that she was as fond of him as she was beginning to feel herself to be, but not desperate. Finally, the meal came to an end.

Joshua looked at her with a slightly sheepish expression. 'Would you … like to come back to my place? I can promise my parents won't walk in this time. They've gone to the Hamptons for a month.'

Rachel felt her heart leap. 'Joshua, I'd love to come back to your place,' she breathed.

Much later, she lay in Joshua's bed, looking towards the ceiling, as he slept beside her. For a first night together, it had gone pretty well, she thought. She was still not sure whether this was it. But it was definitely the best thing that had happened to her recently, and it was doing a good job of dulling the pain that she felt over Ross's coming wedding to Emily.

In the following days, Rachel saw quite a lot of Joshua and learned a lot about him, which only seemed to stimulate a desire to learn more still. When she was invited to Ross's wedding, she readily accepted, but went through the flight to London and the days leading up to the wedding in a semi-daze, in which she spent most of the time either thinking of Joshua, talking to him on the telephone, or talking about him, until Monica had to tell her bluntly to shut up, because she was driving everyone, including Ross, crazy.

Who can say whether it was Rachel's constantly talking about a new lover that led Ross to say her name in error at the ceremony? At any rate, no one was more shocked to hear it than Rachel herself, and she immediately followed the bride and groom, eager to assure Emily that she had not been seeing Ross on the sly and no longer had any interest in him. But she discovered that, although Emily had gone through with the ceremony, she had now locked herself in her room. Frustrated in her desire to reassure her, Rachel rounded on Ross and in tones of increasing anger berated him for being such a fool.

'I've moved on, Ross, and you've got to get me out of your head,' she stormed, 'or you'll never be happy again!'

'Rachel, they can hear you all over the hotel,' said Monica reprovingly, as she came in with Chandler.

'I don't care!' cried Rachel furiously. 'I've got a right to shout! How, how do you think I feel, looking like the cause that, that Ross's marriage broke up before it even started? I hope everyone can hear me, and most of all Emily!' She was beginning to get tearful.

A moment later a key was heard turning in the lock of Emily's door. It opened, and a rather white-faced, tear-stained Emily peered out. Totally ignoring Ross and all the others, she said rather hesitantly, 'Rachel – do you really mean that?'

'Yes!' cried Emily urgently. 'Please believe it, Emily. I have no interest in Ross.' With sudden realisation, she cried,  'I only want Joshua!' She began to cry. 'Oh God, I shouldn't have come! But I've known Ross all my life, I was his close friend before I was his lover, as I have been afterwards, and he wanted me here.'

To the amazement of all present, Emily stepped forward to give her a comforting hug. 'You couldn't possibly have foreseen this, Rachel,' she said quietly. 'I don't blame you at all. I believe you.' She looked at Ross accusingly.

 'What can I say?' he said abjectly, spreading his hands. 'I can't explain it, except that … once it was my dream to marry Rachel. Maybe, just for a moment, the dream took over.' He went down on one knee. 'Give me a chance to prove that it was just a dumb mistake arising from a moment's inattention, that it's you I love, Emily. I do dumb things sometimes, any of my friends will tell you.'

She stared at him for a long moment, and saw sincerity in his eyes. 'Okay, Ross,' she said, with just a hint of a smile. 'I'll give you another chance.'

'Oh, thank God!' cried Rachel, bursting into renewed tears. Monica and Joey joined Emily in trying to soothe her, and Ross started forward also, but Chandler swiftly pulled him back.

'Leave her, man!' he hissed. 'You mustn't give Emily any reason to think you still have feelings for Rachel.'

Luckily, Emily did not notice this, as she was preoccupied with helping to calm down Rachel, whose patent and fervently expressed wish not to have anything to do with Ross had dispelled Emily's lingering distrust of her, and given her confidence that it was completely over on Rachel's side, whatever Ross might feel still. For now she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. After repairing her makeup with the help of Rachel and Monica, she went out to the reception on Ross's arm. Although it was not the easiest of occasions, it passed off well enough. But Rachel left it fairly quickly and returned to her hotel room, where she told Joshua the whole story in the course of a long and sometimes tearful phone call, declaring all the while that it was him she loved, to his increasing delight

When she returned with the others to New York, Joshua was at Kennedy Airport to meet her, and from then on their romance prospered. By the time Ross and Emily had returned from their honeymoon, she was already sure that she wanted to marry Joshua, but, having thoroughly learned her lesson, she did not drop even the remotest hint, even after his divorce had been finalised. It took a lot of patience, and she would often talk with Monica, whose romance with Chandler was now common knowledge, of the problems of dealing with commitment-shy males.

Emily too displayed some sympathy. She and Rachel had become reasonably friendly, for, to Rachel's gratification, Emily now seemed to trust her. One afternoon they were sitting in Central Perk, waiting for the others to arrive, and Emily asked how it was going with Joshua.

'Oh, things are great,' Rachel said. 'Mind, there's nothing that could be called progress towards my goal, but I am very happy to be where I am at the moment. I've learned the hard way to count my blessings. And you?'

Emily pulled a slight face. 'Rachel, can I ask your advice about handling Ross?' she said. 'But not if it'll hurt you to talk about it.'

'Isn't it more likely to hurt you?' said Rachel. 'I mean, I never cared to hear Ross talk about his time with Carol too much. But if you think you can stand it, go ahead, shoot.'

'To be honest, there's no one else I can really ask,' said Emily. 'Monica doesn't know him in the ways that you do, and it involves Carol and Susan – well, Susan, actually. You know we hit it off when she came to London to shoot a commercial, and I really enjoy her company. Carol's completely fine about it, but Ross … it's as if he thinks Susan's going to, you know, seduce me or something.'

Rachel groaned and rolled her eyes. 'That again! When she was over in London and going here and there with you, he was totally obsessing about it. We all agreed, his experience with Carol has left him really mistrustful. It was this thing he had about me and a guy at the place I worked then called Mark, that was largely the cause of our break-up. But I thought, when you came back from London, he realised it was all his paranoia.'

'Well, he's back with it now,' said Emily rather bitterly. 'It's because I see her fairly regularly, I suppose. Much as I like you people, I don't want to confine myself to your company, which is what he seems to expect and to want. So, do you think there's anything I can do?'

Rachel thought for a minute. 'You're going to have to lie about something,' she said finally, 'if you want to keep seeing her. So why not keep saying stuff like, you have to suppress your feelings about her lesbianism, or you cannot see what Carol sees in her, something that suggests you find her good to talk with and do things with, but unattractive personally? I think he'd fall for that. Of course, you'd better square it with Susan. She might even play along – I think she would get a kick out of putting one over on Ross. And you'd better warn the others; I can help out there.'

'Rachel, what great ideas!' said Emily enthusiastically. 'Thanks ever so much. I'll certainly try that, and if you could drop a word to the others …'

'Glad to,' said Rachel, pleased that Emily had not only sought her advice but was willing to take it seriously.

The apparent success of this advice made Emily even more friendly towards Rachel, and she began to treat her as her confidante, somewhat to Monica's chagrin. She seemed to feel that this should be her role, as Ross's sister. In a while, Rachel began to feel that she would gladly have handed over the role to Monica, since it had to be faced. Ross's marriage was having problems, not all of his making, although anything he did always seemed to make matters worse, and Emily was constantly turning to her for advice. But this was for a time overshadowed by the decision of Monica and Chandler to live together, which meant that Rachel would have to move out.

Rachel was willing enough, but soon discovered that finding somewhere to live was going to be a real problem. Joey offered her the place that Chandler would be vacating, but she could not face living in that apartment again, and especially sharing with Joey. She loved the guy, but he was even more untidy than she was and she suspected that he would be constantly trying to catch glimpses of her body. When she asked if Phoebe could take her in, at least temporarily, Phoebe went into a whole rigmarole about a room-mate whom everybody suspected to be fictitious; Rachel got the underlying message, that Phoebe wanted to keep her space. She dared not asked Joshua, as Emily suggested, fearing that this would give him the wrong signals, and did not even mention it. So she began poring over the ads in the newspapers.

One day Joshua entered Central Perk to find her doing this. He bent to kiss her and asked what she was looking at.

'Apartments for rent,' she said. 'Chandler wants to move in with Monica, so I have to move out, and I don't want to go in with Joey. But there's nothing that looks even halfway bearable.' She glared at the column of advertisements.

'Oh!' said Joshua. Then, after a pause, he said rather tentatively, 'Um, Rachel?'

She looked up. 'Yes, honey?'

'You, um, you wouldn't consider, um,' he was beginning to blush, 'would you be interested in moving in with me?'

Rachel threw the paper aside and embraced him ecstatically. 'Oh Joshua,' she cried, 'I'd be so interested you wouldn't believe.'

Behind the counter Gunther groaned, loud enough for one of the waitresses to hear. She grinned at him. 'Your heart-throb getting further and further out of  reach?' she said a little maliciously. Gunther simply nodded, too despondent to come back at her. Ross had been bad enough, but this looked truly serious.

And so it proved. Joshua soon realised that he could not imagine life without Rachel. Still somewhat insecure, he constantly worried that she might go off some day, so he did the best thing he could think of to keep her. Three months after she moved in, he proposed, more in hope than in expectation. To his delight she accepted immediately and without the slightest reservation; he perceived that she had been wanting to marry him for some time, but was excited rather than put off by this realisation. Indeed, she was eager to go down to City Hall and get married the following day, but he persuaded her that she would like a proper wedding. Her father and mother, who had met Joshua separately, both approved of him, and managed to keep their mutual antagonism sufficiently under control to allow Rachel's wedding day to be one of almost unmixed happiness. The only problem was that, as everyone could now see, Ross's marriage was breaking down. In fact, Ross and Emily separated soon after Rachel's wedding, and despite all the efforts of herself and Monica they proved irreconcilable. Emily returned to Britain and a divorce followed.

Rachel was sad for them both, but by this time she was preoccupied with starting a family. Her first son was born a year after the wedding, and with Joshua's agreement was named Leonard for her father, and Ross for a middle name. By this time, to her pleasure, for she sincerely wanted Ross to be happy, he had established a new relationship, or rather had re-established an old one. At a palaeontologists' conference he had met Julie again, and it quickly became clear to him that she would be happy to resume their relationship, for she had never really got over him.

Once he felt that the relationship with Julie was an established thing, Ross was keen for Rachel and Joshua to meet her and for them to see each other regularly. Rachel did not object to this, but at first she felt a little uneasy in Julie's presence. Now that she was more mature, she felt that she had not behaved well towards her. But Julie seemed to bear her no malice, and they quickly became good friends. Finally, when they were chatting in Central Perk one day, Rachel decided to get it out.

'You know, Julie,' she said, 'I feel very guilty about how I behaved towards you when you were with Ross first.'

'Oh, but that's understandable,' said Julie, 'though I did not realise quite what was going on at the time. I did cotton on, though, when you tried to keep me talking so that Ross and I wouldn't make love.' She giggled. 'Didn't work, did it?'

Rachel grinned ruefully. 'No.'

'Besides,' said Julie, 'if you feel you did wrong, you paid a heavy price for it later. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing to feel guilty about, and here we are, both happy now. So things have worked out for the best, don't you think?'

'I guess so,' said Rachel. 'But, Julie, can I just say, don't ask me for advice about how to handle Ross. I tried that with Emily, but it didn't work.'

Julie grinned. 'Don't you worry,' she said. 'I have a tactic up my sleeve that neither of you could have used. I'll just ask him what he thinks of the latest find, or the latest theory, or something like that, and it will divert him instantly.'

She began laughing infectiously, and Rachel joined in. Maybe this time it would work out for Ross, she thought. Maybe, all along, what he needed was a fellow dinosaur geek.