Hi everyone! Yeah, you guessed it...a new fic. lol. And this should be a...long one. ;) Good news, though, Love at First Sight is almost done, and the same goes for Let Me Let Go and When We Get there. Okay? lol. So it isn't that bad that I'm starting a new one. Beautiful still has a ways to go, though, so...lol

The lyrics I will always use in this fic as well as the title of the story come from the song Hard Candy by Counting Crows. It's a great song, and I suggest you listen to it, lol.

A few things about this fic: Monica and Chandler are teenagers (that's right, it's a teenage fic!) and they don't know each other at all until I introduce them. Ross and Chandler never went to high school together, either, but they will meet. Everything should be explained in the next few chapters.

I wrote this chapter in first person, something new to me. I doubt the whole fic will be in this narrative, but the chapters where Chandler is looking back upon his days there will most likely be. :)

This is more of an introduction to the whole fic, and I have high hopes for this one. Believe it or not, this idea came to me in a dream last night (corny, I know, lol) but I'd been sort of thinking about it before. So, technically, it's still my idea. ;)

Disclaimer: For the entire fic, I don't own anyone except the characters I choose to create. :)

Please let me know if I should continue. :)

On certain Sundays in November
When the weather bothers me
I open drawers of other summers
Where my shadows used to be

Sometimes I don't know where I'd be without her, and those summers we spent together. I remember exactly how reluctant I'd been to go to the shore that first year; my mother had to practically bribe me in order to join her and Steven, her lover at the time.

I remember it perfectly now, no details are spared, though some other memories in my mind blur to make room for the etched engravings I have carved of the two of us. I hardly care, though, for so long as I have the memories, I have the feelings of what once was.

The first time I ever laid eyes on her, I think my heart skipped a beat or two. She was standing by the ocean, a look of fear gracing her delicately shaped face. She pulled her straw hat tightly around her face as the wind threatened to carry it away. Her toes were poised at the opening of the ocean, and somehow I knew that she wasn't going to dive in.

I used to tell her, when we would lay on the sand by the water, almost letting the waves kiss our skin, that she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen.

She would then blush, an array of reds and pinks would crawl from the bottom of her neck and reach that soft spot right underneath her eyes. "Stop," she would say, giggling and reaching out to stroke my hair. I knew she hated being complimented in such an honest way, but when I was around her, I was someone else.

I was good. I was kind. I was honorable. I was almost a man.

The first summer, when I was sixteen, she had just turned fifteen. Two summers after that, we were years older, it seemed. Not only was I eighteen and she was seventeen, but it felt as if we were a middle aged couple, that was how comfortable it was. During those three years, I learned so much about myself, about her, and about life in general. I learned what it meant to be in love, I learned what it meant to hurt, and I learned what it meant to want to die.

If I close my eyes now, I can lay down and try to picture her. Her dark hair fans around her face, as white as china. Even with the sun beating down on her skin, she always managed to keep her complexion pale. The ocean terrified her. Each time the water would creep closer to her, she would recede and head back to the home.

It took all the strength she had to simply lay by the water with me. I recall one of the last times I saw her, we were laying on the dry warm sand, barely letting the waves tickle the bottom of our skin.

"Chandler," she whispered, holding onto my arm tightly. "I'm not scared anymore."

Her words frightened me more than anything I'd ever heard, and growing up with a mother that wrote erotica and a proudly gay father, I'd heard more than I ever wished. "You're...you're not?" I managed to reply, my heart beating faster.

"No, I'm not." She sighed, letting go of my arm and standing up.

"Monica!" I cried out after her, watching her wade into the water until it stroked her knees, gently lapping up against her. She looked ghostly pale and weak in the moonlight, and I wanted nothing more than just to hold her for one last time. But she wasn't the type of girl that wanted someone to comfort her; she would much rather wish to be the nurturer than the one being nurtured. "Why are you doing this?" My voice rang out to the sea, and I was sure that the echo would travel for miles, leaving residents in China or somewhere equally as far perplexed as to why I was so amazed she was crossing the ocean of her greatest fear.

Walking back towards me, a faint smile growing in the incandescent glow of the moon, she whispered. "I just wanted to feel the ocean." She turned around, back facing me, and watched the waves roll in from miles away. "I didn't want to leave without knowing what it was like."

Her words carrying a deeper meaning than I would ever know, I reached for her hand and there we stood: Two children, holding onto one another at the beginning of the vast dark sea. We were older than we ever should have been.

I frown, placing the letters back in the dusty drawer, waiting for Heather to return from work. The New York skyline smirks at me from my bedroom window. Though I pay the rent each month for the surrounding walls, this place has never felt like home. A cold November frost thickly coats the city streets, and all I can think about is the ocean. Those summers live on, every day, in my mind.

I close my eyes and breathe in deeply. I can almost smell the salt from thesea in the air. And now I see her again, standing by the ocean, never daring to go in.

-

So...was it good or bad or just somewhere in between? Please let me know, and then I'll decide if I should continue this one or not. I really think it has some potential, and can be better than it looks right now. I promise. lol. And if you did end up liking it and think you know where I'm going with it...ha, you probably don't .But hey, that's okay. :) And who knows, I may just be saying this to throw you off.

Or I may not. ;)

Please review and let me know what you think. Sorry if the first-person narrative threw anyone off, too. I've never done it before, but it seemed to fit this well.

Mel