Rachel felt restless. Everyone save for herself and Phoebe were in London having a wonderful time, there to watch Ross get married to the English girl who'd just turned up one day, less than three months ago. Three months ago Ross had been bumbling through a series of short lived relationships, seemingly with a desire to get back with her. When Emily arrived, all that was changed, and somehow things that seemed to make things so right for him made her feel unsettled.
She had taken off for the day, trawling around the boutiques, but there was no place she could be in body or in mind where she could be comfortable. No, no no, she thought to herself. She didn't love Ross. She wasn't feeling jealous or any sense of loss that he was getting married to someone else. No, not her. She was feeling a bit surprised, yes, because it was surprising. The whole thing was so quick and so unexpected – half of the time Emily hadn't even been in New York. If you added up the number of hours he must have spent with her, the total would have been pitifully small. Then suddenly Ross made the decision to marry her, to spend the rest of his life with her.
And Rachel had lost Joshua, so naturally she was feeling bad about things. It was Joshua she was in to, not Ross and losing him made her feel bad. So that she could put herself in touch with the true source of her feelings, she tried to think about Joshua instead, once so important, with his blue eyes – but were they brown? She bit her lip in consternation at her failure of memory. It didn't matter what colour they were or that she couldn't remember. That just meant that she was just getting better at getting over people.
She'd learned a thing or two in the last year about how to manage herself and her feelings. She didn't need to learn the same lessons twice, not her. She'd recovered from Joshua and that was another proof the way she was feeling had nothing to do with Ross, because if she was over Joshua, it stood to reason that she had to be over Ross. That was an idea she left alone before further probing shattered it.
She was feeling bad about it because she was in New York with Phoebe and everyone else was in London, sharing a big day in Ross's life. Friends should be together sharing the good times, and it was a moment of silliness for her when she'd decided not to go. The others were going to be talking about the whole London thing forever. Do you remember? She wouldn't. A key moment in her friend's – yes her friend – life and she was going to be missing it, for no reason that seemed sensible to her at this very minute.
She had walked miles, along streets and through department malls and it was the stupidest thing that brought her up short. A blow up doll of Barney the Dinosaur. Ross had pointed out to her absurd detail about how inaccurate it was when she had been foolish enough to ask him how come he was so sure that a dinosaur couldn't have had purple skin.
She loved Ross.
Rachel and Ross were supposed to be together and although he might achieve happiness of a sort with Emily the bad tempered (why had everyone forgotten that?) she knew she would never find a substitute. It was only Ross. It could only ever be Ross. She had been denying it for too long, holding out for everything. They had not been on a break, but she should have swallowed her pride and not held out for his acknowledgment of the true facts. You can't have everything you want – that was the way a child thought, thinking that if you wanted it enough, everything would be perfect in every detail. Of course no-one could have everything they wanted. Once they were together again, he wouldn't stray – that was the important thing, wasn't it?
She owed it to herself and to Ross to tell him the truth. They had such a history and that meant that he had to feel the same way, deep down. Her feelings could not be without an answer from his. She couldn't do anything about it once he was married. Even if he realised his true feelings afterwards, he would never do the wrong thing, and neither would she.
Did he have feelings for Emily? It was hard to tell in the midst of his infatuation with Emily whether what he felt for her was genuine or not. She was sure that Ross thought he was in love with Emily. He wasn't playing a game of using her to make Rachel feel jealous. He would never use another person in that way. If he had proposed to Emily, he must have meant it in that moment, however rash his decision to ask had been.
Rachel felt an ache of jealousy. She and Ross had been together for a year, he had loved her since the ninth grade, but he had never been close to proposing, yet after a few weeks, he was willing to propose to Emily. And then rush forward into the marriage after mere weeks of engagement. She had had the right word before – infatuation. He was infatuated, and Emily probably was too, since the whole thing had been just as quick for her. Rachel didn't want to dwell on Emily's feelings Ross. She was in a uncomfortable place between wishing that she didn't care (but how could she not, Ross was wonderful) and wishing that she did (which was an uncomfortable feeling.) Best to block her out altogether.
She set her steps for home, already deciding what to take to London.