Hey everyone! Thanks for the nice reviews, and sorry for the delay...the big delay. :) Hopefully, this will make up for it. This slightly more up-beat chapter. (angst fans, fear not, more is to come. and romance fans, also fear not. heck, Mondler fans fear not, okay?)

I hope that everyone had a great holiday season!

If the end of the chapter seems a little mean, keep in mind that Chandler is a kid, a teenager! He's bold, sarcastic, and sometimes doesn't think ahead before he opens his mouth. This does not make him a bad person, he's just lost and confused. (And, okay, it was a mean thing to say, but just read on, okay? ;))

Please review!

Whirring music, boom boxes blasting tunes of all different sorts…writhing bodies in the darkness of the extended basement, each dancing to a melody only they could hear…strobe lights flashing, illuminating faces of the adults- no, children- who were lost and tired, lonely and confused…they needed a home, needed a place to find their spirits.

So what did they do?

They partied.

Cheesy Madonna music blasted from the corner where Monica was sitting, self-conscious and alone. Once again, Rachel had lied to her. She abandoned her, left her in the corner with only the dusty and neglected toys that the young Tribbianis hadn't used since the early eighties.

'C'mon, Mon. Rachel didn't abandon you. You're at a freakin' party, for God's sake. She left and decided to go talk to some people…maybe if you weren't such chicken shit, you'd do the same.'

She glanced briefly at her watch. Eight 'o' clock. Great, Rachel probably wouldn't want to leave until at least midnight. That meant four more hours of this hell…this glancing up at the ceiling and around the room, trying to decipher what these people felt in the music that they were so intent on swaying to.

They were hardly talking, and this was something she was amazed at. In her history of parties (which was not a long list), the guests typically talked to one another, laughed, ate marshmallows and chocolate that the mother would prepare for them-the mother that was sleeping in the adjoining room.

This was all new to her, the drinking, the dancing, the pounding rhythm of the feet…the drugs. She was like an innocent bird plucked from the nest and tossed haphazardly into a mob of strangers.

It was all very new. 'This is a college party, Mon. College.'

As the music died down and girls with hair twice the size of their heads led their men to their respective corners, Monica realized that she needed to stand up and socialize before she started looking like a total loser.

Slowly, as she would have preferred not to have been noticed, Monica made her way up the creaky stairs. She knew for a fact that Joey Tribbiani's parents weren't home. After all, what parent in their right mind would allow their child to throw a party like this?

From her perch, she could view the goings-on of the party from afar-the way she liked it. By a stack of old records, she saw Rachel talking to some guy that looked vaguely familiar. Wait- she peeked her head out the basement door and glanced at the wall, a shrine to the Tribbiani children. Yup. It was him, Joey Tribbiani. It was no wonder the face looked so familiar to her.

'God, Rach wasn't kidding when she said he was hot.' Monica only hoped that he wasn't like most guys with looks: a complete jerk.

As she turned her head to the left, she caught glimpse of Amy, Rachel's bony, gum-chomping friend. Just the sight of her stick-skinny legs wrapped around the muscular man's torso made Monica want to scream.

It was amazing how much she wanted everything she didn't have.

Shutting the basement door, Monica headed out into the kitchen to fill up her drink again. A Diet Coke sloshed around the inside of her cup; Monica wasn't a big drinker. But, there was a first time for everything, so she grabbed a can of beer. Again, she was amazed at how many kids could fit inside the small home. There had to be at least a hundred people there, and she couldn't talk to any of them. All she wanted was someone that she could talk to. A guy, a girl, anyone!

'All right. This is getting ridiculous. I've got to talk to someone! The next person I see, I'm going to have a nice conversation with.'

She turned around and it was then that she saw the very last person on earth that she ever expected to see.

----

"Chandler!" Ross complained to his sullen friend. "Come on! Get up off of that couch and have some fun."

"I am having fun," he bitterly spat. "I'm at a party where I know absolutely no one but my roommate who is making out with his girlfriend and Gandalf. And who knows where the hell he is, anyway."

"Dude…I wasn't making out with her the whole time."

"Yeah," chimed Julie. "Just 99 percent of the time!" Gleefully, as she had inhaled five cans of beer, she grabbed Ross's face and threw him down on the couch. In between breaths, Ross glanced over at Chandler, throwing him apologetic looks.

Chandler was surprised at this. Normally, Julie and Ross weren't like wild carnivores. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the night. Whatever it was, Chandler was thrilled that they picked the perfect time to express their "love" publicly.

He ambled over to the bar in the kitchen, deciding that he needed another drink.

It was then that he saw her.

"Monica?" His jaw practically hit the ground at the sight of Ross's little sister, Ross's timid little sister, downing a can of Bud Lite.

She almost spit the beer back into the can, but composed herself and swallowed. "Hey, Chandler."

"Wha-wha-why are you here?" He managed to stutter out.

She leaned against the wall, trying to look as skinny as possible. "Well, you know. It is a party."

He laughed, not knowing that Ross's little sister had so much sarcasm bubbling under her surface. "Who are you with?"

"Rachel. She's friends with this girl Amy, whose boyfriend is friends with this guy that lives here. Joey. Why are you here?" He wasn't the only one who could ask questions.

"Well, I'm in Joey's philosophy class. And I'm friends with Gandalf, Amy's boyfriend."

This time, she did spit out her drink. "Philosophy?" She continued to laugh, much to his surprise.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Nothing. It just doesn't seem like you're a very philosophical guy."

"Yeah. I'm not gonna lie to you. It's a real drag. But hey…that's life."

"Yeah," she nodded in agreement. "I hear you."

Chandler was amazed at how easy conversation was with Monica. How had he never noticed before? He eyed her up and down. Not to mention, it looked like she had lost a ton of weight. She still wasn't skinny, but she did look good.

"Hey, do you want to come outside on the balcony with me? I mean, Ross is over in the corner and you're really the first person I've gotten to talk to tonight-"

"Ross is here?" Monica whispered shrilly. "Here? At this party?"

"Yeah. He sort of dragged me to it."

"Oh my God. He can't see me here. He'll tell my mom and I told her that I was sleeping over at Rachel's tonight!" Monica set her beer down and looked around frantically.

"Hey, relax." Chandler softly touched her arm. "He won't tell them. I mean, he is here, too. It's part of the unwritten code of parties: you both probably know you shouldn't be here, yet neither one should breathe a word of it. Besides, Ross is…busy at the moment."

"Wow. Okay. Let's not go into detail." She smiled, happy that she was capable of carrying on a conversation with a guy she had thought about for so long. He was her unreachable goal, the ultimate inciting incident that made her push, strive, kill to lose the weight. And so far, it was working. The forty pounds she had shed had made a difference. Imagine what the next forty- or sixty!- would bring.

"Hey, let's go outside," Chandler suggested, not necessarily wanting to suggest anything romantic. He merely wanted to get out of the noisy rooms chock full of lost souls. He preferred to wander alone.

"Okay." She followed him through a series of hallways and bedrooms. As they stepped out onto the balcony, Monica turned to Chandler. "Wow. You must have been here before to find this place!"

His face flushed, not believing what he was about to admit next. "Well, actually, no. It's just…every time I come to a new place…you know, someone's house, a restaurant, anything…well, I like to find an exit. Some way to get out if things aren't going right or just some sort of escape." He turned away from her and looked up at the moon. "You probably think I'm insane or something, but it's important to me that there's always some exit. I guess my whole life I've been escaping…it's something I've always done and probably will do forever."

"Wow." She was flabbergasted. They were both more alike than she thought.

"Yeah. I don't know why I said it." Chandler focused now on his hands, dry and cut, calloused and swollen from years of effort that never paid off.

"No, that's not it at all." Monica moved in closer to him. "I don't think you're weird at all. I mean, everyone has their own way of escaping. That's all life really is, in my opinion. An escape. You either spend your whole life looking for something that you can never quite find, or you choose the escape route and spend your life getting away from everything that your life is."

"I think I know exactly what you mean." Chandler turned to face her again. As the moon shone down upon her face, it illuminated her eyes. He was stunned: never before had he noticed how blue they were. "You…you have really pretty eyes."

Without even looking in the mirror, Monica knew that the rush of red that crept up from her shoulders must be reaching her cheekbones by now. "Thanks. You do, too."

"Thanks. You know, you're really easy to talk to."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Like, I went on this date with this girl the other night. Oh my God. Seriously, I think she did all the talking. I never got a word in. It was all about her and her makeup, clothes, jewelry, her dieting! God, it was insane!"

Monica laughed out loud. "I feel for you. I take it you're not going to see her again?"

"Not unless I'm the last man on earth and the future of the plant relied on us repopulating it. And maybe not even then."

"Wow. Someone is a little hard to please!"

"No, I'm actually not. I'd go out with any girl that was nice and fun to talk to. Seriously, looks aren't even that big of a deal. I mean, it would be nice if she wasn't a complete co-" He knew he was going to regret the next words before he even said them. It was one of those moments where he floated above his body and just glared down at himself, cursing silently at the asshole he was. He was hardly conscious that he was talking to her. In reality, it felt to Chandler like he was talking about girls to one of the guys. Not that Monica was a guy or anything, but she was just as easy to talk to as one.

"-ward." He finished on a meager note.

Immediately, he saw the hurt flash in her eyes. He felt like dropping to his knees, asking for forgiveness. He didn't mean to hurt her feelings, and he was sure that she knew his real words. But it would only hurt more if he brought it up. "I don't like cowardly girls," he managed to sum up.

"Oh. I see." Monica began to study the outline of the trees against the backdrop of the tall and slender houses.

"Yeah." It was then that he decided to be honest with her. "Monica, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I believe that beauty is only skin deep, honest!"

To his surprise, she turned back at him with tears running down her face. "Chandler, that's not the point. I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at myself. I'm mad that I'm a cow- yes, a cow- while other girls are walking stick figures. I want to be one of them. I want to live their lives just for one day to see what it would be like. I want to be beautiful and I want to be wanted. I want to want myself and accept myself in a way that I've never wanted anything before. But sometimes, and I know that you understand this, our dreams don't come true. Nightmares do, but dreams don't. They are fictional and only wait in a place that doesn't exist for people that shouldn't. So I make do. I'm the fat girl. But I deal. And I know that we all have secrets and lies and shit that we don't tell anyone. But here I am, spilling my heart out to some guy that's standing here-dumbfounded- and I don't even care. Because no one listens to me, anyway. You'll probably forget this conversation and that we even met! I thought that you could listen to me, but I was wrong. I should have known…you're the same as the rest of them."

He stood there, dumbfounded, as she had described. Of all the reactions he could have predicted, this was not one of them. He had no idea that she was so hurt, in such pain over her weight. Even as he looked at her, a so-called "overweight" girl with pounds to spare, he knew that she was beautiful. "Come here."

She wiped her tears away, angered that she had shown emotion. "What?"

"Come here." He clambered down the stairs and found himself on the grass. He laid down and motioned for her to follow him.

"What are you doing?" She was more confused now than angry, so she followed in tow.

"Laying on the grass."

"Yeah, I can see that. But besides that, what are you doing?"

He sighed. "Laying on the grass."

"Is that all?"

"Yup. He picked out a strand of grass out of the ground and put it between his teeth. "I think they need to cut it, don't you?"

"What?"

"Well, it's kind of long and tickling my chin. But then again, I don't know if they intended for us to lay down on it like this."

She was still confused. "But why are we laying down here? It's the middle of March."

"So? It's not cold."

"But we're in the grass."

"Yeah, I know." He shook his head. "You mean you never laid down in the grass before?"

"I don't know…I might have when I was like five."

"That's the whole point. Don't you remember when life was so simple?"

She rolled over on her side, facing him. "Things were never simple for me."

He turned to face her, glad that they had moved past his slip-up. He didn't believe she was fat anymore. She was only lost, and so was he. Perhaps he had made a new friend.

"I hear you. Sometimes I think that we all tend to drift back into a series of nostalgic memories. We make them better in comparison to now, but in reality, they were always difficult."

She smiled, forgiving him for talking about people her weight as cows. After all, she believed she was a cow. But two months from now, she wouldn't be. Give me two months or so, and I'll lose the weight, she thought. Give me two months and I'll be beautiful.

And she thought it was as simple as that.

Hopefully, you enjoyed that! It was slightly happier, wasn't it? lol. Now all you have to do is review and think of what might happen. When you review, you'll find out! :) I really hope that I don't get a long list of flames that tell me how mean I made Chandler, and if distracting her really changed her mind. Of course she'll be scarred. I mean, this guy has insulted her (albeit, accidentally the second time!) twice now. And she still does like him. But, you know, life is hard when you're a teenager. I'm sure that everyone knows someone (or is themself)a person to which looks matter in a relationship. And I believe that they do matter to a certain extent, but Chandler was just expressing his frustrated views on why he had such bad luck in love.

lol, Okay. I'm leaving now. But before you do, please leave me a little review!

Thanks! (oh, and happy new year!)

Mel

BTW, look for lots of updates soon, including one on To be With You, a Mondler fic that not many people are reading (or at least reviewing!) Just thought I'd say that (hint, hint!) lol