Chapter 3: Susan and Emily Part I

(4,18: TOW Rachel's New Dress)

[Author's Note: To the relief of some, maybe, this is not about any relationship between Susan and Emily – in fact, here is an Emily you can justifiably dislike. Rather, it is about what would develop if something had happened between them in London, with a lot of angst. As before, the opening dialogue is from the script]

Waiting with Carol for Susan and Emily to get through Immigration, Ross reminded himself for the hundredth time that his idea that anything could have happened between them was the product of the mistrustful mindset that his breakup with Carol had created, plus an over-active imagination which could conjure up circumstances in which something could have happened only too easily.

The two appeared and ran towards them smiling. Emily said, 'Hey! I missed you,' as she and Ross hugged. He replied happily, and was further relieved to see that she and Susan exchanged only the briefest of pecks on the cheek. He gave Carol a thumbs up sign and muttered to her, 'No tongue.'

She glanced at him in amusement. 'See how silly you were.'

Ross happily spent the rest of the day with Emily. He noticed that she did not have much more to say about Susan, but instead was eager to know everything that he had been doing. Never averse to talking about himself, he relished the opportunity. Later, her passion in bed surprised and delighted him. Here, he felt, was a much better replacement for Rachel than Bonnie would have been.

It was at about four the following afternoon that Carol phoned him at the museum. 'How soon can you get here?' she said abruptly. 'There's something very important that we need to discuss.' Her voice sounded very strange, angry and sad at the same time.

'What's the matter?' he said in alarm. 'Is it Ben?'

'It affects Ben,' said Carol, 'but he's okay. Look, I don't want to talk now. Just come as soon as you can.'

'I'm there,' he said, and went to say to Donald Ledbetter that he would like to leave early, because something serious had come up in the family. Always accommodating, Ledbetter told him to go ahead.

When he got to Carol and Susan's apartment, he saw as soon as Carol opened the door that something was seriously wrong. She had clearly been crying. She threw her arms around him and said, 'Thanks for coming so quickly, Ross.' Looking past her, he saw Susan hunched up in a chair, her head hanging. When she looked up, it was clear that she had been crying too. He felt considerable alarm: were they breaking up? He wouldn't want that, for Carol's sake.

'Oh my God!' he said. 'What's wrong?'

'Tell him what you told me,' said Carol to Susan in a voice of iron.

'Oh God, Ross, I'm sorry,' Susan burst out. A dreadful suspicion began to form in his mind. 'It was only once,' she went on, 'and, and …' She broke down.

Ross froze. 'Emily,' he breathed.

'Your precious Emily seduced Susan,' said Carol with great bitterness.

'She, she wouldn't do that,' Ross stammered.

'She did!' Carol shouted. 'Mad though I am at Susan, I believe she is telling the truth! Tell him how it happened; he has a right to know.'

Between sobs, Susan told a simple tale of too much drink, the exchange of a friendly kiss that became more than friendly, and yielding to an overpowering temptation.

'She came on to me!' she insisted. 'I'm, I'm sorry, Ross, but that's the truth. She can be very … enticing, and … Oh God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!' She broke down again.

Ross felt numb. Intellectually he believed Susan, though his heart rebelled at the thought.

'Where's Ben?' he suddenly asked, worried about the effect that this might have on him.

'With the Geller grandparents,' said Carol. 'He knows nothing. But I told Judy.'

'That was … fast,' said Ross frowning. 'Don't you think we should establish the full facts first?'

'Look, Ross,' said Carol fiercely. 'I know you don't like Susan, but I have no reason to believe she's lying. It was clear to me that something was wrong, but I have had to force it out of her. She's torn up with guilt, as you can see.'

'She could be all that,' said Ross slowly, 'and still be trying to shift the blame.'

Susan wailed desperately , 'I'm not!' and began crying even harder. Carol almost moved towards her, her face full of pain and sympathy, then held herself back and looked at Ross again.

'You're welcome to get Emily's point of view,' she said. 'In fact, I wish you would. I'm willing to listen if you think there is another side to it. But I reserve the right to decide what happens between me and Susan.'

'Of course,' said Ross dully. He got up and moved to the door, suddenly feeling old and tired. 'I'll be in touch.'

As it happened, Emily was visiting her rugby-playing friends that evening, so Ross had plenty of time to think about how to handle the situation. He could not face going to Central Perk, so sat alone in his apartment. Presently he opened a beer. By the time Emily got in, he was on his fourth.

'Hello darling!' she said in a very cheerful voice. 'Going on a bender? I've had a few drinks myself.'

All Ross's plans for subtly interrogating her disappeared as a haze of rage at her duplicity came over his mind.

'Did they make you feel horny?' he said in a choked voice.

'What do you mean?' she said in surprise.

'Well, drink seems to have done so on other occasions,' he burst out, jumping to his feet and pointing at her, 'like in London, for instance!'

Emily went white, but the expression on her face did not look like guilt or remorse; it looked like anger.

'The stupid bitch told you?' she said.

'She told Carol,' said Ross. 'Carol rang me to go over there. Susan says – ' He stopped, unable to say it.

'Yes, what does Susan say?' Emily snapped. 'That I started it? I'll just bet she did. Well, let me tell you, she was very ready to accept a pass. Oh God, why couldn't she have kept her mouth shut? It was only once, right at the end, and it didn't mean anything. You and Carol need never have known.'

Ross was completely taken aback by her attitude. 'Emily,' he gasped, 'she felt guilty. She and Carol are partners, they went through a marriage ceremony. It's like you seduced someone's husband. And leaving aside Carol and Susan, how could you do this to me?'

'I wasn't doing it to you,' she replied firmly. 'Ross, you have no claim of that kind on me. I agree, in retrospect it might have been better not to have done it, but I was feeling really randy, being away from you for so long. And it's not as if I went to bed with another man.'

Ross could hardly contain his rage. 'As far as I'm concerned, there's no difference,' he yelled. 'Don't you feel any guilt, any remorse for what you've done? You've broken up a loving couple, just for a bit of sex!' Something occurred to him. 'I don't suppose this was your first time with a woman, either.'

'Well, so what?' she flashed. 'You were happy enough to go with Bonnie, who sounds far more adventurous sexually than I have ever been. But I don't consider what I did before you, or do when I'm back in London, is your business, to be honest, though I do think you have the right to expect me not to sleep with other men, and that I promise you I haven't done since we started our affair.'

Ross felt almost incapable of coherent speech. How could she be so casual about it? Clearly, she had an attitude to sexual behaviour that he would never understand, let alone share, and no arguments on his part were likely to change it. For a while, he simply stared at her fiercely, as if willing her to show some contrition, but she simply looked directly back at him, her face rather flushed, evidently in no mood to back down or apologise.

'This is getting nowhere,' he said finally. 'Well, I don't know what you expected, but this is the end, Emily. I can't go on dating someone who would do something like this and not even feel sorry for it.'

'I'm sorry that it's upset you, if that's what you want to hear,' she said, finally showing some regret. 'But … you're going to throw away what we have, just over this?'

'You seem to think it's trivial,' he stormed in renewed rage. 'If you'd seen how devastated they both looked …'

'I don't see why you should care,' she retorted. 'Susan seduced Carol, and she deserted you.'

'Carol is the mother of my son!' Ross cried. 'I will always be linked to her by that, and I love her for it, yes, and she and Susan are doing a great job bringing him up. But clearly you can't be expected to understand such feelings.'

'All right, you've said enough,' she snapped. 'I'll pack and leave.' She marched into the bedroom. Ross slumped back into a chair, knowing he had done the right thing but still feeling great pain. In a while she came out again.

'I think I've cleared everything,' she said in a neutral voice. 'Don't bother to send anything on if you find it, just dump it.' She drew a breath, and her voice seemed to shake just a little. 'If … if you change your mind, you know how to get hold of me, but don't wait too long. I'm … sorry that it had to end this way.'

'So am I,' he growled, 'except that it's only ended as far as you're concerned. You've left a mess behind you, Emily.'

Her face changed a little. 'I never thought that Carol would make such a fuss, if it did come out,' she said. 'Tell her I'm sorry. Goodbye, Ross.'

He got up and saw her to the door, but he refused to kiss her, though she looked at him expectantly, simply said, 'Goodbye,' rather gruffly. Her face changed again. He saw her lips tremble slightly, but then she sighed, shook her head, and walked off down the corridor. Turning back into his apartment and seeing the litter of beer bottles on the table, he decided that he could not bear to be alone. He did not think it would be a good idea to go over to Carol's again. Central Perk, or Monica's apartment, looked like the only options.

When Ross entered Central Perk, to find the others sitting over a late coffee, he looked so dreadful that all the others jumped to their feet.

'Jeez, man, what is it?' said Joey, and Monica cried, 'Ross, what on earth has happened? Is it Emily?'

He looked at her dully. 'Yes, it's Emily,' he said. He walked to the couch and sat down. Monica followed and held his hand, Phoebe sat on the other side of him, Rachel sat opposite, and the two men stood behind him.

'Do you know,' he said, forcing the words out, 'what that bitch has done?'

They looked at him wordlessly, mouths open at the violence of his wording.

'Right at the end of Susan's time over there, she seduced Susan when they were drunk,' he ground out. 'Susan felt guilty, and must have shown it, and Carol got it out of her; Carol got me over there to let me hear what Susan had to say; and just now Emily came back to my apartment, and she, she,' – his voice began to shake – 'she didn't even trouble to deny it! Didn't care about what it would do to them – just had some sex because she was feeling "randy" away from me!'

Having virtually shouted the last words, he broke down and began to sob. Monica immediately folded him into her arms, while Phoebe hugged him from behind, Rachel, very touched, went over and knelt by him, taking his hand and patting it, and Chandler and Joey patted him on the shoulders.

'Oh God, how could I have been so mistaken in her!' he moaned. 'She couldn't see that she'd done anything wrong. As long as it wasn't with another man, anything went when she was away from me. Susan's not the first woman she's been with, to judge from something she said. So maybe I was right to suspect something, but I never thought of anything like this; I thought of Susan going after her. Oh God, I feel awful.'

Monica sniffed. 'Have you been drinking?'

'A few beers before Emily got back from seeing her friends,' he said. 'Nothing since. She's gone, of course. Packed up and gone. Said to ring her if I changed my mind.' He gave a harsh laugh. 'Fat chance of that.'

'Come back to the apartment,' said Monica gently. 'This is too public for something like this.'

Ross nodded and got to his feet. Surrounded by his friends, he went slowly back to Monica and Rachel's apartment.

Rachel's mind was in turmoil. In one way, she was aching to comfort Ross, to take him in her arms and make it all better. She had never seen him so depressed and unhappy, except when they were breaking up the first time. In another way, she was warning herself that getting involved with Ross again might be exactly the wrong thing to do. It would be on the rebound, when he would be very unstable emotionally, and anyway she was seeing Joshua, whom she liked a good deal.

When they got into the apartment, Monica made coffee for Ross and they all sat around, wanting to help him but not clear what to do.

'You know, it's just as well this came out now, in a way,' he said. 'I was getting quite serious with her. But that only makes it worse.'

'It's a tough break, all right,' said Phoebe. 'But, Ross, you mustn't let it make you feel justified in your mistrustfulness towards women. Mostly, we can be trusted, if we are in a relationship. As you know now, you should have trusted Rachel.'

Ross put his head in his hands. 'Don't remind me.'

'Pheebs, you really shouldn't have brought that up now,' said Chandler. 'The man's in enough pain as it is.'

'Are you going to ring Carol?' said Monica as she brought the coffee over.

'I thought she … might not want any more today,' said Ross.

'You should do it,' said Monica firmly. 'It will show her that at least Susan was telling the truth. That might ease her mind a little.'

Ross thought for a moment, staring at the table, then nodded. 'You're right. I'll go out on the balcony.'

When he rang, Carol picked up after three rings.

'It's me,' he said. 'I rang to say, Susan's version is right. Emily … didn't even bother to contradict it.'

'Oh,' said Carol softly. 'So …'

'I told her to move out,' said Ross. 'She's gone.'

'So's Susan,' said Carol, almost whispering. 'She said she felt so guilty, she couldn't face me. Ross …' – she gulped – 'I know it's a lot to ask, but could you come over? I can't bear to be on my own.'

'Sure I'll come,' he said. 'Is Ben still away?'

'Yes,' she said. 'That was the idea, for him to stay with your parents overnight.'

'I'm on my way,' he said, then, on an impulse, 'love you.'

When he had gone, after explaining briefly, Rachel looked at Monica. 'Do you think he'll go back to Carol?'

Monica looked considering. 'It's a possibility – but somehow I don't think it would work. She's not fallen out of love with Susan, after all. She's simply mad at her – like you were at Ross after the breakup.'

'I wish you people would stop bringing up the past!' Rachel cried, suddenly feeling real pain. Abruptly she said, 'I'm going to my bedroom. I need to do some thinking. Good night.'