An Indecently Fast Proposal
When he realised it was Emily on the phone, Ross couldn't help becoming hopeful – of something. He didn't dare think what she could suddenly say, after their divorce, that could make him feel happy again. The months since their marriage broke up had been a confusing time of anger and hurt, where not only his marriage, but everything else had gone wrong. Twice divorced! No home! Anger management problem!
Emily should have trusted him. Instead, when he'd asked her whether she trusted him, telling her that their whole marriage rode on the answer to the question, she had just said no. Just like that. Why couldn't she trust him? He was a trustworthy guy. What had he ever done to her? Okay, appearances were against him. He writhed under the memory of having said the wrong name, and the business with the plane – but she should have believed him when he had had said that those things didn't mean she couldn't trust him, because he was telling the truth. He would not tell someone he loved her and wanted to be with her unless he meant it.
As well as being hurt, he was, well, angry. Her lack of faith in him was an insult and he felt a great need to make clear to her the injustice of this, and hopefully, make her feel really really small. He'd spent a lot of time rehearsing scathing speeches, to the utter boredom, and sometimes outright annoyance of Joey and Chandler, who were no longer making any secret of wanting him out of their apartment. He took up too much space with his loud voice, his demands for commentary and his pacing of the room. Chandler was making the most pathetic excuses to escape the apartment, spending all of him time around the girls. Joey wasn't much better. He had not even wanted to get involved in his breathing and vocal technique.
'I want to make it really cutting. I want to make her feel really bad for what she's done to me,' Ross explained to Joey, only earlier that day, 'You should want her to feel bad, so you've got to help me on this.' Joey was the one who'd expressed his feelings so strongly about Emily's demands.
'Yeah,' Joey said, putting down the script he was trying to learn, 'I do want her to feel bad, but even more, I want you to rehearse somewhere else. I'm trying to get my lines and I can't concentrate with you yelling.'
'I am not yelling!' Ross yelled, 'I'm just making my point, forcefully.' His satisfaction in getting the last word here was blunted by the way Joey received it – with a roll of the eyes and a rapid departure, script in hand. Fine, fine, Ross had thought, stalking about the apartment. He could do it on his own. He didn't need any help, of any kind, from anyone. He had a tertiary education, didn't he? And Joey would only make a joke of it anyway.
Even so, at being abandoned, he would have liked to have kicked something, but his awareness that nothing within kicking reach belonged to him kept him under control. He would manage on his own. He'd refine his speech and he'd use it, and Emily would be shocked into silence, just as soon as she broke her silence called him for some unforeseen reason, because he was not the one who was going to call her.
Then the phone had rung and she was there, on the other end of the line. He dropped his script on the floor, and in the crazy way that paper has, it floated a long way sideways. Without it, he couldn't remember a single word he'd rehearsed.
'Hello Ross,' she said. She sounded just the same as ever. How could she sound so cool so soon? And what on earth did she want? Now that she had called him, he couldn't imagine a reason why she would call, and he couldn't imagine why he had ever thought that he would get to use one of his speeches on her, if he could remember any part of them. Damn, he should have written them down.
'Hello Emily,' he said, suddenly nervous. Now that he'd forgotten what he had planned to say, he had no idea where to begin. 'W-what can I do for you.' In response to a kick from his ego, which was wondering where his spine had gone, he added, 'If it's about the wedding expenses, my father has paid every cent he's going to pay.'
'No. No it's not about the wedding. Not that one.' She stopped speaking and the silence allowed him to absorb the magnitude of the words Not that one.
'What do you mean, "not that one"?'
'I – I thought you ought to know. I don't expect you'll care in the slightest, but you should hear it from me and not someone else. Assuming that any of my family and friends would ever talk to you again.' She paused. 'I'm getting married again.' She was getting married? He sat down in shock. They had only just got divorced. Only a few months ago, they had had their wedding, the day they had expected would be the happiest of their long lives together. By rights they should still be newlyweds – now she was planning to do that with someone else? Already?
'What! You can't be serious!' he exclaimed. 'You can't get married.'
'Why not?' Emily said, 'We're divorced now.'
'H-how can you just get married again? One minute you marry me, then you go and marry someone else. It's a marriage, not a – a pair of shoes. You're supposed to take it seriously!'
'Don't you dare talk to me about being serious. I'm not the one who couldn't keep away from my ex,' Emily retorted, 'I didn't turn the whole wedding into a bad joke!' She hung up.
'Don't you dare hang up on me, don't you dare!' Ross yelled, trying to call her back. But she didn't pick up and he banged the telephone receiver in frustration. There was an ominous crack.