A.N. Okay no way were you guys expecting this so soon! Haha, I shocked even myself when I finished this- two updates in one week! This chapter is a little bit sad, and you guys might not like what happens, but there's much more to come, so try to stay with me! It's sort of more broken up little pieces than the other parts have been, just trying something new. Please read and review! Thanks!
-Maddy
And it's one more day up in the canyon
And it's one more night in Hollywood…
"Are you sure you have everything, sweetie?" Judy asked Ross, reluctant to end the embrace and have her son leave.
"Positive, mom," Ross insisted. "We should really get going if we don't wanna hit traffic."
"Oh, all right. Bye sweetie," Judy said, turning her attention to Monica. "Make sure he doesn't drive too fast."
"I will. Bye mom," she said, giving her mother a hug, surprised at how much she was going to miss her.
"Where are Chandler and Evelyn?" Judy asked. It had been a week since Evelyn's impromptu visit, and much to Monica and Rachel's dismay, she had decided to spend the rest of the vacation at the Gellers and drive back to school with them. It hadn't been the best week, with Evelyn jealous and controlling, Monica avoiding both of them at all costs, and Chandler trying to make everything as normal as possible.
"Last minute packing," Ross explained.
"We're here, sorry about that," Chandler apologized, running down the stairs with Evelyn at his heels.
"No problem, everybody ready? We still have to pick up Rach," Ross said.
As Chandler and Evelyn were thanking Mrs. Geller and saying goodbye, Ross and Monica went outside to load up the trunk. A blue car pulled up alongside the curb and Will jumped out and headed towards them.
"Mon!" called Will. "I'm glad I caught you."
"Hey… what are you doing here?" she asked, confused.
"I need to talk to you. Can I, for a minute?"
Monica looked at Ross, who shrugged. "Okay, but I really have to go in a second."
Chandler walked out of the house, Evelyn at his heels, in time to see Monica and Will go into his car and close the doors.
"Where is she going?" he asked Ross as casually as he could.
"Nowhere. He needed to talk," Ross said, rolling his eyes. For a down to earth girl, his sister certainly found her share of teen drama.
"Who is that?" Evelyn asked curiously. "I didn't know Monica had a boyfriend."
"She doesn't," Ross and Chandler said at the same time.
"Oh," Evelyn replied, unable to hide her disappointment.
"He's a friend from high school," Ross said. "Who is going to make us hit traffic."
"Want me to go get her?" Chandler asked eagerly, hopping off the front steps and starting towards the car.
"No, dude, give them a minute," Ross said.
"I'm sorry to come over without calling but I really wanted to say goodbye," Will said.
"Sort of cutting it down to the wire," she said, checking her watch.
"I know. I'm sorry. I wish I could have spent more time with you this break, but… I guess you were busy," he said bitterly, gazing at Chandler through the window.
"Not really," she said. "You could have come over, or called."
"Why did you lie to me?" he asked suddenly.
"What are you talking about?"
"At Rachel's party, when you said you didn't want to be together. You said it wasn't because of him," Will reminded her.
"It wasn't," she said.
"I saw you guys kissing," he said quietly. She closed her eyes briefly.
"Will, that was nothing, okay? It was a stupid, New Years Eve at midnight, spontaneous thing. He has a girlfriend. Not that I need to explain myself to you."
"I deserve the truth. I deserve that much, Monica."
"I'm telling you the truth. I thought maybe there was something there, but… I was wrong," she said, staring out in front of her.
"He's the dumbest guy in the world, then," he said after a moment.
She smiled a little. "You're very sweet."
He leaned towards her and her heart rate quickened, not sure what to do.
"You're amazing," he said quietly. He closed the few inches between them and kissed her hesitantly, and, when she didn't stop him, pulled her closer and deepened the kiss.
Ross and Chandler were compacting all of their belongings in the trunk to make room for Rachel's, which would no doubt exceed all of their bags put together.
"You can't leave that backpack in the back seat, it's gonna be crammed enough as it is," Chandler argued.
"It won't be that crowded," Ross rolled his eyes.
"Easy for you to say, you'll be up front. All Rachel has to do is claim motion sickness and bat her eyelashes and I'll be wedged back here with a hiking pack on my lap."
"You guys?" Evelyn asked innocently. "If Monica doesn't have a boyfriend, how come she's making out with that guy right now?"
Chandler hit his head on the top of the open trunk in his haste to follow her gaze, and felt the most intense pang of jealousy he had ever experienced when he saw that Evelyn was right. Ross sighed, frustrated with Monica for making them wait, and leaned on the horn.
The car horn broke them apart. "I really have to go, my brother's gonna kill me," Monica said, flustered.
"Okay. Call me when you get back, okay? We have some things to talk about," Will said, with a smile so genuine it made her smile, too.
"Okay," she agreed. He kissed her one more time, and she let him, indulging in a practice that was so familiar, so comfortable for both of them.
"Bye," she said, slamming the door and racing back up the lawn towards her brother's car. She turned and waved briefly, and Will drove away.
"Sorry, Ross, that took too long, I know," she said, climbing in the backseat and buckling her seatbelt.
"Fine," he grumbled. "I didn't know you were back with him."
Monica froze. They had seen that? One look at Chandler answered her question. He sat in the front seat gripping the armrests so hard his knuckles were turning white, staring stonily in front of him. Ross parked in Rachel's driveway and popped the trunk so that she could put her stuff in.
"We're not," she said quickly.
"Oh, that's great, Mon, way to hook up with guys in front of our house that you're not even dating. That's a great way to-"
"Hook up with who?" Rachel screeched, shoving Monica closer to Evelyn and forgetting to complain about the backseat.
"Will," Ross supplied as they drove away.
"Shut up, Ross," Monica snapped, refusing to answer Rachel's questions or look at Evelyn's satisfied smirk. All she could do was focus on Chandler's silence and his unhappy distant glare.
The trip back to school was excruciating, to say the least. Ross was right, they did hit traffic, and Chandler barely said four words the entire time. The tension between Monica and Evelyn was palpable in the backseat, and they pulled into the NYU parking lot the exact same way they had left it nearly three weeks earlier; tense, anxious, and cranky.
The boys and Evelyn dropped Rachel and Monica off outside their dorm, and Chandler hopped out to help them get their stuff out of the trunk. Rachel thanked him, said goodbye, and got a head start up the stairs with her excess luggage weighing her down as Chandler and Monica tried to free her single blue duffle bag from the pile of suitcases.
"Chandler, listen-" she began quietly.
"You don't have to say anything," he cut her off, yanking the bag straps as hard as he could.
"I don't know why it happened," she tried again. "It was just the moment…"
"That seems to happen to you a lot," he said coldly, freeing her bag and handing it to her. She stared at him.
"Please don't do this."
"Don't do what? I'm just helping you with your stuff."
"Fine. Whatever," she turned to leave. He closed the trunk and started back to the front seat, but she grabbed his hand and lowered her voice to a whisper.
"Just remember, you're the one with the girlfriend, okay? You're the one who made everything perfectly clear to me when we walked through my front door that night."
"You know I had no choice. You know I was just waiting for the right time to deal with what happened between us," he hissed.
"Yeah, well there is no right time, is there?" she asked.
"I guess there's not," he said, grabbing his hand away and slamming the car door behind him.
Monica hung up the phone after calling Will that night, as promised, in disbelief of what had just happened. She had just agreed to give things with Will another try, long distance this time. And a part of her was happy, it really was: Will was kind, and he adored her, and he had made her really happy, once. But another part of her knew that one of the reasons she had decided to go for it with Will was because she was angry at Chandler.
She brushed her teeth and crawled into bed, Rachel already sleeping soundly across the room. She hated being mad at Chandler, and she hated having him be mad at her even more. Even though she knew she hadn't done anything wrong; that if one of them should be apologizing, it was him, first for the way he handled the situation and then for the way he acted that afternoon, she couldn't sleep until she talked to him.
She crept outside, stretching the phone cord under the door so she wouldn't wake up Rachel, and dialed the number to Ross and Chandler's room, praying he would pick up. He did, on the second ring.
"Hello?"
"Hi, it's me," she said. He paused.
"Yeah?"
"Can I please talk to you?" she asked. He heard her voice waver slightly, and if there was one thing he couldn't do, it was be a jerk to her while she was crying. He sighed.
"Of course. I'll meet you outside in five," he said.
Chandler sat on the steps of his building, rubbing his hands together to keep them warm. He knew that he had acted like a total asshole before, but he couldn't help himself; seeing her in that car, kissing that guy, it had done something to him. She wasn't supposed to be kissing Will.
He saw her half walking, half jogging over to him. He stood up and watched as she approached; her hair was pulled back haphazardly, with strands flying everywhere in her hurry. She wrapped her big ski jacket around her closer, and he had to smile at the pink terrycloth pajama pants she hadn't bothered to change out of. He stopped smiling as she came to a stop in front of him.
"Hi," she said.
"Hey."
"I hate fighting with you," she said. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold January air, making her natural beauty even more striking. He couldn't believe how long it took for him to realize how gorgeous she was.
"I don't like it either," he admitted.
"I want you to know, that I don't blame you, for anything. You did what you thought you had to do."
"I'm sorry for what I said earlier. You didn't deserve that."
"You were upset," she said, shrugging her shoulders.
"Still," he said, shoving his hands deeper in his pockets.
"Let's forget about it. Let's just put everything behind us, and go back to being friends. Please?" she pleaded. He looked at her, wishing he had the ability to do just that.
"I feel… I feel like that's going to be hard, Mon," he said softly.
"You have Evelyn," she reminded him. "That's what you want."
"Yeah. I guess it is."
"And… I think… I think Will and I are giving it another try. I just talked to him," she said quickly, in a rush. He nodded slowly.
"Well, if that's what you want," he said, "then that's what I want for you."
She looked up at him, and unfallen tears shined in the cold winter moonlight. "I can't have what I want," she said quietly. "So I'm trying to want what I can have."
He reached out and touched her cold cheek, rubbing his thumb along her cheekbone.
"Me too, Mon," he said, pulling her into an embrace. "Me too."
Okay, that's it for now. Leave a review if you want me to keep writing! Oh, and about Phoebe and Joey- I changed my mind. They probably won't be in this. I don't want to just shove them in randomly just to include them, and I don't think they fit very well into this story- I couldn't do them justice. Sorry to everyone who wanted to see them in here, and I hope you'll still keep reading J