Past & Present

Chapter 1: Everyone Finds Out – Again.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own "Friends" or any of the characters. However, Joey's rolled up towel is mine, mine, mine!

THE PREMISE: Rachel must choose between her past and her future. Will tragedy be the result?

AUTHOR'S NOTE: At last, here's Chapter 2! I had a minor accident and some family stuff, so it took longer than usual to update. I am really nervous about this chapter – I've been working on it for a week! So if you find something to like about it, please review and tell me!

Chapter three will be up within a few days at the latest, it's almost done now. It will begin to introduce the coming conflict.

A question for my readers – you can respond via review or email me. Do you want this story to go all out for romance? Like on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being ultra romantic, what would you prefer? Please let me know. I tend to go very romantic, and just want to know how my readers feel about that.

Thanks!

~*~*~*~*~*~

"I can't believe you didn't tell me Rachel likes Joey!" Chandler gestured frantically as he and Monica rushed back to their room after breakfast to get their bags before checking out.

"What was I supposed to do? Pass you a note in study hall? Besides, it was a secret. I didn't think she would act on it." Monica's face was strained with discomfort. "Would you mind if I unbuttoned my pants?"

"Normally, I would be totally turned on by that," Chandler's tone took on a familiar note of sarcasm. "But since the reason behind is that you ate thirteen pancakes, I'm going to have go with "no".

"It was fourteen. And Mike still won." Monica clenched her teeth. "Damn him!"

Their hotel room was in sight. "Are you going to talk to her?" Chandler asked hesitantly.

"I don't know. What if Joey is in there? What if they – you know –"

"Honey, we're talking about Joey here. When has he ever not "you knowed"?

"Yeah, but I can't believe Rachel would. I mean, they've been friends for so long. She wouldn't mess that up - there's got to be another explanation for where he was last night." Monica was digging in her pants pocket. "I can't find my key!"

"That's because your pants are so tight you can't get your hand all the way in your pocket."

Monica pulled her card key out with a triumphant smile and unlocked the door. She and Chandler stepped into their room.

"Ok, you get the bags, I'm going to talk to Rachel." Monica grimaced and walked over to the door that joined the two rooms. Closing her eyes, she tried to prepare herself for whatever lay on the other side of the door as she tapped softly on it.

"Rach? Can I come in?"

There was no answer.

Chandler was hanging up the phone. "They're sending up a luggage cart. She's not answering you?"

Monica shook her head. "Should I go in?"

"Do we really want to see this?"

"No, but I want to know exactly what happened before Ross finds out about any of this." Monica's concern for her brother was written across her face.

"Ok. Go on in. You take Rachel, I'll take Joey."

"Deal." She answered with a nervous smile.

Monica took a deep breath and flung the door open. She and Chandler charged inside.

The room was empty except for dishes and trays on the floor. The bathroom door was open, revealing an unoccupied room.

"What is going on here?" Monica looked at Chandler in amazement.

"I'm not sure, but my guess is there was food involved." He gestured to the dishes on the floor like a game show host showing off a prize.

"Ugh, look at this mess. She must have gone on an eating binge or something." Sighing, Monica began putting the dishes back on the trays.

"You do realize there's paid staff to take care of that?"

"I know!" She paused, a wine glass in each hand. "Why would she have needed two glasses, unless –"

"Unless she wasn't alone last night," he interrupted.

"But how can we know for sure it was Joey? Maybe she hooked up with some other guy," Monica continued, collecting silverware from the floor. "There were two sets of dishes. Big deal. That doesn't tell us anything."

"No," Chandler said as he examined a slip of paper he'd found on the bedside table, "but the fact that he signed for the room service tells us a lot." He passed the receipt to Monica, who looked at it in astonishment.

"Oh my God!" she threw the receipt back at Chandler.

"I don't want it either!" He let it flutter down to the carpet.

"Ok. Ok – We've got to maintain! We've got to keep calm!" Monica was beginning to pace the floor. "So he was here. They probably just had dinner. He was upset about Charlie and needed to talk. Rachel would never take advantage of him at a time like this." She paused to glare at Chandler, her hands on her hips. "Can you say something?"

"The bed is made," Chandler observed.

"This is Rachel and Joey," Monica answered. "I'm not sure either of them know how to make a bed."

"So that means –"

"It hasn't been slept in." Monica finished his sentence. She examined the bed closer. "But look how rumpled it is. And the pillows are flat. Looks like it was slept on."

"Or something was done on it," he mused.

The implications of his words hit both of them as they took a synchronized step away from the bed.

"Ew!" Monica shook her frizzy head in disgust. "Ew, ew, ew!"

A hand towel in the bathroom beside the sink caught Chandler's attention. Something about the way it was rolled up and placed behind the faucet just so – he had seen a towel rolled up just like that every morning during the years he lived with Joey.

"I don't guess Rachel has a habit of rolling up her hand towel and putting it behind the faucet?"

"What, after she slaps on some Old Spice?" Monica was scornful.

"Oh, God." Fear claimed Chandler's face and voice. "Oh, no –" He pointed at the bathroom sink, mouth open and eyes popping.

"What? What is it?" Monica's curiosity quickly reached a fever pitch. "Chandler!"

"That towel! The way it's just – sitting there, all rolled up –" he shuddered.

Monica saw the towel and gasped, clutching Chandler's arm in a claw-like grip. "That's the way Joey does towels! It drives me crazy!"

"Not the time for a lesson in towel etiquette, Mon!"

"What are we going to do?" she cried.

"One of us has to go in. One of us –" he swallowed hard – "has to smell the towel."

Monica let go of his arm and squared her shoulders. "All right." She tossed her head. "Mike may have beaten me at pancakes, but I can take the towel."

Chandler gave her a shove towards the bathroom. Monica walked haltingly until she was standing in front of the sink. She turned back to look at Chandler with her most pleading expression.

"Just do it! Smell the towel!"

She reached a hand out slowly, grasping the towel. Drawing a deep breath and closing her eyes, she raised the towel to her face and inhaled before dropped it as if it were on fire.

"Oh God! It's got Joey's after-shave on it!" She ran out of the bathroom. "He showered here! You know what this means?"

"It means he needed to get clean because he was very, very dirty!"

Monica doubled over, clutching her stomach.

"Want to stick around and do some more investigation, Angela Lansbury? Or do you want to get the hell out of here?"

"Get me out of this – this den of filth!"

They barely avoided knocking each other down on the way back to their own room. "Forget the cart, just grab the bags and leave!" Monica screeched.

~*~*~

"Can you just check one more time?" Phoebe's voice was insistent.

"Ma'am, for the last time – there's no Joey Tribbiani listed as a guest. Your friend must have stayed somewhere else last night."

"Ok, well, then can you check for a Ken Adams?"

The desk clerk rolled her eyes impatiently as her long nails tapped out Phoebe's request on the keyboard.

"I'm sorry ma'am. No "Ken Adams" either."

Phoebe frowned. "How about – Dr. Drake Ramoray?"

"Honey, I don't think he would register under his character's name." Mike thanked the clerk as she passed his credit card back to him.

"Huh, well, you don't know Joey." Phoebe turned away from the front desk impatiently. "Where is he? I'm so worried about him!"

Mike wrapped a comforting arm around her waist. "I'm sure he's ok." He shrugged. "Maybe he met a girl."

"That's what I'm worried about," Phoebe mumbled under her breath. Her psychic intuition was trying to tell her something, but she hadn't discerned the message clearly just yet.

"Look, there's Monica and Chandler," Mike pointed out. "Maybe they found him."

Phoebe rushed to meet her friends as they walked into the lobby. "Hey, you guys - Monica, did you find Joey?"

Monica and Chandler exchanged a pained glance.

"I'm going to check out." Chandler hastily retreated, leaving Monica and Phoebe alone.

"Sweetie," Monica reached out and took Phoebe by the arm, leading her to a quiet corner of the lobby, "We think Joey slept with Rachel last night."

Phoebe gasped and backed away. "No!" Alarm colored her face. "How could they! Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure." Monica sighed. "You know she said she wanted to fool around with him. Maybe he wanted that too." She twirled a lock of her kinky hair nervously around her finger. "For all we know, he's still in love with her."

"Well, that explains why he didn't get his own room last night, " Phoebe concluded as she sat down on a nearby bench. "I just can't believe this – Joey and Rachel!"

"I know." Monica slumped down beside her.

"Joey and Rachel – what?" a voice asked.

They turned to see Ross standing behind them.

~*~*~

Rachel gave the rack of the postcard display one final spin, studying the selection of island scenes pictured on each one in larger than life color. She had four in her hand already, but she would rather stand there in the hotel gift shop and pick through postcards forever than face the questioning glances of her friends during the shuttle ride to the airport and the long flight home.

"We can't stay in here forever, you know."

Rachel looked up at Joey. "It was so nice of the shuttle driver to take our bags so that we could come in here and shop."

"Rach –" his voice trailed off.

"They're all going to freak out on us." She tossed the postcards down onto the base of the display rack. "We've broken the big law of friends hooking up with each other."

"Isn't that the same law that Chandler and Monica broke in London?"

"Yeah, but somehow that's different." She pushed her hair out of her face. "Are you sure you don't want to stay another night? We could order more key lime pie." She tried a smile and failed.

"We've got to face them sooner or later. The longer we wait, the more awkward it's going to get."

"I know, I know. You're right." She held out her hand to him. "We can face it together. We won't make a big deal out of this, and maybe they won't either."

He took her hand in his as they walked through the doors of the gift shop and into the short corridor that led to the lobby.

"Come on, I need to check out, and then we'll just get on the shuttle and act like nothing is different."

Joey stopped and turned to face her. "But everything is different! I don't want to hide this – I don't want to pretend that I'm not happy with you – " he squeezed her hand for emphasis– "when you make me so, so happy."

"We're not hiding anything," She looked into his eyes and saw turmoil reflected back at her. "You're the one who said no big formal announcements, remember?"

"Just because I'm not sending out cards to announce this doesn't mean I want to hide it. I don't like secrets and lies. You should know that by now."

"I know – it's just – this is big, ok? This is going to change everything, for all six of us, for Emma – nothing is going to be the same from the minute the two of us walk into that lobby together." She glanced at the door leading to the lobby apprehensively. "I just need time to decide how much to say and when to say it. I'm not going to lie about us or keep this a secret."

He touched her face gently. "All right – however you want to do this, that's how we'll do it. You tell them as much as you want, and I'll go along with whatever you say. Ok?" He seemed resigned to the idea.

She sighed with relief. "Thank you." A flirtatious smile replaced the frown on her face. "If you want one more kiss before we get on the shuttle, you better get it now. This is your last chance."

Without hesitation he put his arms around her. His lips met hers, softly at first, then with increasing urgency. She returned his kiss with fevered longing, shivering with pleasure as his hand slipped under the back of her shirt. She pressed her body closer to his, every inch of her aching for closer contact.

With a tortured moan, she pulled herself away from him. He leaned against the wall, his head back and his eyes closed as they both tried to calm their breathing.

"You're good to go?" She fanned herself with her hand.

"Yeah, I'm good," he cleared his throat. "You wanna go back to the room for a few minutes?"

"Joey!" She poked his ribs. "You're the one who said we had to face everyone!"

"Yeah, but that was before you did whatever it was that you just did to me." He shifted from one foot to the other. "I kinda want to do some more of that."

"You were right the first time. We have to go face everyone." She took his hand again. "We'll do some more of that when we get home."

"Keep it up, and you'll convince me to break rule three."

"That's the plan," she answered as they entered the lobby.

"There they are!" Monica's voice was coming from somewhere. Quickly, Rachel slipped her hand out of Joey's. He moved his hand behind his back reflexively. She glanced at him, seeing the pain of rejection in his eyes that his acting skills couldn't hide.

Five seconds into the public phase of our relationship and I've already hurt him. The thought was not a pleasant one. She braced herself. Monica and Phoebe were quickly approaching from one side as Chandler approached from the other. From across the room, Ross' eyes met hers, blazing with the same cold anger she'd seen so many times before. It was obvious that he already knew, but how?

As Rachel forced a smile onto her face, she was feeling anything but brave. She and Joey were about to change nine years of history and six lives in a single instant.

A/N: Coming soon, Chapter 3: Secrets. Please review, and answer my question above. Thanks!