'Be ready at seven. I'll pick you up. J.'
She'd found that note with the few sparse words on the kitchen counter in the morning and ever since that moment she found herself in a state between cautious expectation excitement and the less and less successful attempt at not getting her hopes up.
After standing in front of the mirror for hours, trying to decide what to wear, she finally settled for a very simple black dress that didn't draw too much attention to her body. Because although Joey had said they wanted to celebrate them becoming parents, she didn't want this evening to be about the pregnancy or the baby. She wanted it to be about them.
………
He had picked her up at seven, with a lovely bouquet of lilies in his hand and an open smile that promised a relaxed and angst free evening. It wasn't too far fetched to think that he didn't like the occasional tension between them any more than she did.
On the way to the restaurant they had a light conversation about something Chandler had said the other day and about some of Phoebe's antics from the day before. It started a delightfully funny reminiscing about all the hilarious things that had happened since the six of them had become friends and before she knew it, they sat at their table in the restaurant, laughing and talking, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Well, then," Joey said raising his glass of water, "To the seventh member of the group."
She raised her own glass and clinked it to his, a little stunned at the realization that Joey still counted them as being six, which meant somewhere deep down, he still included Ross. She managed to mask her surprise with a smile, but it didn't take Joey long to pick up on the subtle shift in the mood. He surprised her even more with what he said next. And though he struggled with words and obviously fought to bring across what he felt, it sounded like he had given that matter a lot of thought.
"I've never thought that he… Ross… doesn't belong with everyone anymore. I mean… yes, I'm mad at him and I can't see myself forgiving him, but … it always feels like as angry as I am at him, I can't just… leave him behind and move on. I have to deal with my anger at him someday, because… it's like, we're bound together somehow. Like we're not just a bunch of friends. We're…. we're family."
Rachel nodded and, on an impulse, reached across the table and took his hand, squeezing it reassuringly. She felt too choked up to say anything, but she hoped he could see how much it meant to her that he felt that way. Not for Ross's sake, but for Joey's.
Joey put his other hand over hers and they sat like this for a while, just looking at each other, getting lost in each other's eyes. They were interrupted by a waiter who came breathlessly to their table.
"Sorry about the wait, but it is mega-jammed in here! We have a couple specials tonight…"
He began rattling off a list of specials that Rachel had a hard time focusing on because she was becoming distracted by Joey's thumb drawing circles on the back of her hand. A sudden silence indicated that the waiter was done and Joey abruptly let go off her hand and ordered, thankfully for both of them because eating was about the farthest thing from her mind right now. Rachel drew her hand back belatedly, hiding it in her lap and wondering if the spot he had touched would eventually stop tingling.
"I always wondered why the others never found out about us," Joey said into the ensuing silence, looking at her warmly. "We weren't trying that hard to keep it a secret."
It was an innocent enough question, but to her, it had so much more meaning. That he talked about Ross voluntarily, that he touched her, caressed her without flinching away, that he brought up the past – it was like he had set his mind to finally closing the gap between them.
And she surely wasn't going to stop him.
"Remember the one time when we were in the coffee house talking, and then suddenly Phoebe was there?" she asked and Joey nodded, his eyes sparkling with amusement.
It had been three days after their first night. They'd spent every minute of their free time in bed together, talking, eating take-out and of course, having lots of sex. That day they thought they would be able to make it out of bed for long enough to brush up on their social life and go to the coffee house to have some quality time with their friends.
But when they'd walked into Central Perk no one was there. Since they already had made the effort, they'd decided to stay for a while and wait for the others. It was then that Joey had brought up the fact that they hadn't even been on a real date yet, and they'd talked about doing that. She'd asked him what he had in mind and while he was telling her, he had put his hand on her thigh, gently caressing her leg with his thumb.
It wasn't a conscious effort to seduce or arouse, it was a careless gesture of intimacy and affection. She'd barely noticed it. Especially since he was painting an enthralling picture of a candlelight dinner, a bottle of champagne, dancing and a carriage ride through the park. He left the specifics of what would come after that to her imagination and, sure enough, her imagination filled in the blanks pretty nicely.
Then she had become gradually aware of someone saying their names. Repeatedly. Turning their heads at the same time, they'd noticed Phoebe, who looked slightly pissed. They'd tried to hide their embarrassment by greeting her overly excited until they'd noticed that Phoebe kept staring at Rachel's lap. Turned out Joey's hand had wandered up a bit during their conversation and had vanished under her skirt. The way he'd drawn his hand away hastily had probably done nothing against the impression that there was something unusual going on. But Phoebe had just grinned knowingly and changed the topic.
"He, yeah. Why didn't she pick up on that?" Joey wondered aloud.
"I actually asked her that a while ago. She said that the possibility of us being together never crossed her mind. She was thinking you were trying to feel me up or something … 'Joey-like', you know."
Joey nodded, digesting the thought. "I guess the possibility of me doing something 'Joey-like' really seemed to have kept them from ever finding out."
His faraway, dreamy expression indicated that he was thinking of a special occasion.
"What are you thinking?" she asked which made him turn his gaze to her again.
"Movie night, remember?"
Of course Rachel remembered.
(Flashback day 37)
They were in bed together – like most of the time back then – satiated and a bit exhausted. Rachel lay on her stomach and was on the verge of falling asleep, and Joey lay on his side and drew lazypatterns on her back with his fingers, enjoying the feeling of her soft skin beneath his fingertips.
"Thirty seven," she murmured sleepily, "you just drew a thirty seven."
"Today we've been together for thirty seven days," he explained in a husky whisper and it sounded meaningful somehow.
"Anything special about that number?"
"No, just the longest relationship I've ever been in. It's… it's a first."
His voice was still thick with emotions and she turned to look at him. His expression was serious, almost dark in its intensity. He looked as if he was about to say something important, something she didn't quite know she was ready to hear, yet.
"What about Angela Delvechio?" she tried to remind him of his own past. "I thought you had been going out for three years?"
"Well, not only with one another, so I guess that doesn't count," he replied with a non-committal shrug and though he still looked serious, she could tell that the moment had come – and gone.
"So I'm special, huh?" she joked tiredly.
Joey's answer came with a wide smile. "I think I've already told you that a few times."
"I don't mind you saying it more than once," she whispered and closed her eyes, while Joey inched closer to her.
"I could show you…" he breathed against her skin before placing feather light kisses on her shoulder. It was one of those moments when she actually regretted being tired. She was constantly tired lately and she had decided she would go to bed early tonight. Although going to bed had never been the problem – actually going to sleep had been. Like now.
"Sounds great, but I'm really tired, Joe."
"I know, baby," he said with a sigh and pulled her into his arms so she could comfortably nestle her head against his chest. "I'll let you sleep."
"Joey," Rachel yawned a few minutes later, "do you ever get the feeling that you're forgetting something important? Something you will be kicking yourself for once you remember it again?"
"No, baby, because I write all the really important stuff on my hand if I really need to remember something."
At that moment, both of them looked at the inside of his right hand.
'Movie at M – bring p+b' was standing there in barely readable, smudged letters.
"Oh shit," they exclaimed in unison, jumping out of bed and trying to sort out their clothes that lay in one heap on the floor.
"When were we supposed to be there?"
Joey looked at his hand, straining his eyes to decipher the rest of his note. "I know I wrote it down, but I guess now we have to look somewhere on your body to find it again."
Rachel stopped what she was doing and stood up, grinning at him. "Wanna look?"
When he looked up from his hand to her, she realized he hadn't really meant it seriously, which made his expression all the more priceless.
"Well, couldn't hurt to try, could it?" he grinned back and stepped closer to her, beginning to examine every square inch of her body closely, placing and odd kiss here and there, making her forget what he was looking for in the first place.
"I found nothing," he stated after a while, gazing at her lovingly, "but boy, am I glad I looked."
"I think she said nine," Rachel informed him after kissing him.
Joey looked at the clock, groaning. "Man, we're about ten minutes too late already and we have neither p nor b."
"Huh?"
"Popcorn and beer."
"Okay Joe, here's the plan. We can't show up too late together at Mon's anyway, that would be far too obvious. So I'm getting the popcorn, you're getting the beer and we come back separately, excusing ourselves with having had to work late."
"What if they called you at work and know you left early?"
"Why would they? They didn't even call here."
"They probably did. Didn't you hear the phone ring half an hour ago?"
"No, I was… uhm… sort of… concentrating on something else. But maybe they left a message."
Turned out they had. Chandler had called, telling them they didn't need to bring anything but themselves.
"Good to know. Are we still going over there separately?"
"Who cares, sooner or later we're going to tell them anyway, so why bother?"
Joey suddenly looked oddly excited. "We're going to tell them?"
She couldn't figure out why this seemed to be such a revelation to him, but just in case, she explained.
"Yes, Joey, remember, we talked about that before. If we think the time is right, we'll tell them, if they find out themselves, we're not going to deny it, right? That was the deal."
Joey nodded along but then asked, "I mean, tonight?"
She sighed, finally understanding his outburst and feeling bad about having to wet-blanked his enthusiasm.
"No, not tonight," she said softly. "I don't think it would be the right time."
Joey nodded confirming but kept his eyes on the floor, making her feel even worse. And if she was honest, lately she didn't feel much like having to hide their relationship either.
"Although if we did tell them," she mused aloud, "I could sit on your lap the whole evening through whatever awful movie Chandler has picked."
"I'd like that a lot," Joey beamed at her.
"You know… I think we should do that anyway, maybe they won't even notice."
After kissing for a few more minutes, they went over to Monica's where the others were already engrossed in the movie and didn't pay much attention to their excuses or the fact that Rachel sat on Joey's lap, that she snuggled up to him very closely and that he had his arms around her the whole evening.
(End flashback)
Rachel smiled fondly at that memory.
"Yeah, that was a great night. I had been so sure I would fall asleep halfway through the movie but... well, it was a great movie.I think it was during that movie that I realized I was falling in love with you."
A wistful smile played around Joey's lips. "I knew that before, but when that song came up… you know 'Come what may'… when you took my hand and held onto it for the rest of the movie, I knew I wanted to tell you, and I had a feeling that there might be a chance you felt the same way. I really had to fight the urge to just kiss you right there."
She met his gaze and the way he looked at her had her feeling as if nothing had happened, nothing had changed… as if he still felt that way. But soon enough he averted his eyes and busied himself with his food again. "But I guess that really would've given it away."
Rachel looked back at her plate too, feeling a twinge of disappointment.
"The moment I really thought that the truth was out was that day I had forgotten to lock the door and Chandler walked in," she said after a while in a desperate attempt at keeping the conversation going.
Joey laughed out loud at that memory and the tension was broken. "Yeah… I mean it seems funny now, but back then I really thought I was gonna die of embarrassment."
(Flashback to day 28)
That day Rachel had come home from work fuming with anger. She had slammed the door shut behind her, not bothering to lock it like in the four weeks before. On the way to her room she noticed Joey sitting on the Barcalounger and muttered an unenthusiastic "Hi" in his general direction.
Her purse landed on her bed and she just stood there for a while, trying to calm down enough to be able to have a decent conversation with her boyfriend. Who unfortunately stood right in her door, looking at her smiling. "Hi beautiful."
The cheerfulness in his voice, the way he smiled at her happily, unnerved her all of a sudden. She needed time to cool off, to think about what happened at work today and she needed to do that alone.
"Joey, don't take this the wrong way but I need to shower, I need to change and I need to be alone for a while."
His smile faltered and he took a step back. "Okay Rach. I… I'm gonna be in my room if you need… to talk or something."
He turned around on his heel and headed for his room, not looking back. She heaved a sigh of relief and made her way to the bathroom. After she had taken a shower, cleaned her face and brushed her hair, she felt slightly better. And she began to feel guilty for the way she had treated Joey. On the other hand she dreaded having to apologize for her behavior.
In a similar situation, it would have taken her hours to convince Ross that she wasn't trying to hurt his feelings and that she still wanted to spend time with him and so on. The thought alone exhausted her to such a degree that she contemplated not doing it at all. Back in her room, she sorted a bit through the papers she had brought from work and felt the anger at what happened rising again, so she stuffed them back into her purse and sat down on her bed, staring at the wall.
The feeling of misery and loneliness soon outweighed her reluctance to apologize. She determined that the one thing she really needed right now was crawling into a pair of welcoming, strong arms where she could feel safe and protected, where nothing else mattered but being with him. She knocked at his door, suddenly unsure if he would want her to just come barging in. When he shouted "It's open," she opened the door and stepped in.
Joey looked up from the script he was reading and smiled at her, not a trace of anger or reproach on his face.
"Look Joe, I'm sorry," Rachel began without even taking a step into his direction.
He motioned for her to sit on his bed and looked at her seriously.
"Rach, you've got nothing to be sorry for. You wanted to be left alone. I can understand that."
"So you're not mad at me?"
"Of course I'm not. Us being together doesn't mean we have to spend every free minute with one another. We're both used to having time for ourselves, that doesn't need to change."
"But you don't seem to need to be alone."
"I'm here a lot more than you are, I have my time alone. You never have. From now on, I'll leave you alone when you come home and we… talk whenever you feel up to it. Deal?"
"I don't want you to leave me alone, Joe," she said, wrapping her arms around him. "Ever. I always look forward to coming home to you, to kissing you hello, to talking about my day. I don't know what is up with me today. I haven't had such a shitty day in a very long time."
"Wanna tell me what happened?"
She told him about everything that went wrong that day. How she had barely made it out of bed because she had been feeling a little dizzy in the morning lately. How she didn't get a cab until it was almost too late, how she spilled coffee on her white blouse, and how all her suggestions fell flat in the meeting she had that day.
"Wow, your day really sucked. Anything I can do to make you feel better?"
"Hmm, I guess I can think of a thing or two," she smiled at him.
When he started kissing her, when he started to touch her in that special way of his that always made her go weak, she whispered into his ear, "I have a feeling my day has just gotten a lot better."
It hadn't taken them long to arrive at the point where Joey blindly groped around on his nightstand for a condom. Only this time, his hand came back empty.
"Shit," he cursed under his breath, "I can't believe I'm out of condoms."
Although she was as frustrated as he was, she still managed to remember that she'd seen a box in the bathroom. "Wait, Joe, I know where we still have some, I'll go get them."
She was almost out the door when he stopped her. "Don't go naked, people can see you through the windows."
As she grabbed the nearest piece of clothing she could find – one of his shirts that went almost down to her knees – she grinned at him. "Maybe they'll like what they'll see."
"They definitely will, but I don't want them to look at…"
He swallowed hard and stopped mid sentence. Curiosity at what exactly he had intended to say made her step into his direction again.
"Look at what?"
"Weren't you going to get something?" he tried to divert her attention.
This was interesting. If had meant to say something dirty, he just would've said it. But if he wasso reluctant, it had to be good. "Look at what, Joey?"
He bit his lip and looked down at his hands. Rachel sat down onto the bed again, brought her hand to his chin and lifted his head up again to make him look at her.
"Look at what?"
The expression on his face, the look in his eyes startled her with its intensity.
"Look at what's mine," he finally admitted in a husky growl that made her shiver.
Somewhere in the back of her mind the independent and emancipated woman she was shrieked in horror at what he'd just said. But her heart… her heart took it as what it was, a completely honest declaration of what he felt for her.
"So I'm yours, hmm?" she whispered while leaning in to kiss him.
"Does that make you mad?" he whispered back, closing his eyes.
"No, it doesn't. It's… nice. So, are you mine too?"
"Do you want me to be?"
"I do, Joey. I do."
With that she closed the space between their lips and they kissed again, hungrily and passionately, until the problem from before came up again.
"All right, I was going to get something," she panted and then headed for the bathroom, still wearing Joey's shirt.
She was just about to go back to him, when the apartment door opened and Chandler suddenly stood in the kitchen, looking at her weirdly.
"Hi Rach, I was looking for Joey."
"Uhm…" she stammered, totally embarrassed by the way she was – or better wasn't – dressed and tried to hide the box of condoms behind her back.
"He… is in his room. I… I think he's kinda busy, though."
"Joey, wanna play some foosball, buddy?" Chandler had shouted into the direction of Joey's room while Rachel checked if Joey's shirt covered at least all the important parts of her body.
About twenty seconds later Joey emerged from his room, shirtless and just closing the last button of his pants. His face was beet red and there was no mistaking where the bulge in his jeans was coming from.
"Uhm… Chan… I'm kinda… in the middle of something," he said, looking nervously back and forth between her and Chandler.
There seemed to be no way Chandler wouldn't figure out what was going on. Half naked Joey plus half naked Rachel equals …
"Oh… oh, I'm so sorry buddy. I didn't know you had a girl over, it seems it bit early in the evening for that but… whatever… go back in there and… have fun and… Rachel, you might want to wear something more appropriate when Joey's date comes out of that room or she might get jealous. So… uhm… see you guys later."
And with that seemingly unstoppable stream of words he was out the door, leaving the two of them baffled.
(End flashback)
Joey couldn't even manage to take a sip of his wine because he was still snickering. "He always thinks he is so smart, and he totally couldn't put one and one together."
"I wonder what he would've thought, if I really had been naked."
"In that case, he would've just stopped thinking altogether."
"Funny thing is, me getting condoms was kinda pointless already back then."
"Imagine if you hadn't gone to get them, he might have walked in on us doing it."
"You think that this would've made him think that something was going on between us?"
They both started laughing so hard they drew a bit of attention to them from the other tables.
Rachel calmed down first. "They never really considered us a possibility, did they? All of them."
"Yeah, they didn't. And if you really think about it, we were only a few weeks ahead of them in thinking it might be possible."
Her cheerful mood vanished again at the thought that ran through her head at that.
"And I was the one who made it impossible again," she sighed, the constantly pervasive self-reproach palpable in her tone of voice.
Joey looked up at her sharply, almost angry. "Stop it, Rachel. Just… don't."
………
He had kissed her forehead when they stood outside the apartment and had thanked her for the evening. Little as it was, it made her happy somehow. If she just tried hard enough, she could interpret it as a step in the right direction. A step to being together again. Because, despite the occasional awkwardness, they had had fun. Especially the fact that they had remembered parts of their mutual history together seemed like the bond between them wasn't completely severed.
Joey had vanished into his room after they had said good night and she went to the bathroom after a while to take a shower and go to bed afterwards.
When she stood in the bathtub and let the warm water trickle over her belly, she grinned at the thought that in a few weeks, her feet probably wouldn't even get wet anymore when she took a shower. She held the shower head close to her belly, amusing herself with the baby's reaction to the splashing of water against its cozy home. The baby seemed to love water. Every time Rachel took a shower or a bath, the baby was awake and moved about in a way that seemed playful.
Still smiling, she climbed carefully out of the tub, trying to avoid to slip and fall. When she looked around for her towel, she noticed someone standing in the half opened door, staring at her with wide eyes. Joey.
For a split second she wondered why she wasn't frantically trying to find something to cover herself, why she didn't say anything, but it felt right somehow that he saw her like that. She couldn't remember one moment in the last months when she had felt calmer and more at peace.
She turned to him fully and noticed a change in the way he looked. It wasn't shocked surprise, it wasn't the way she had looked at him a few months ago when the same thing had happened to her. It was curiosity, a bit of awe, and a lot of desire.
It fueled the hope that had started to wake in her during their date even more. Maybe… maybe that was all he needed. Realizing that he still wanted her.
She ran her hand lightly over her belly and smiled at him. "It's a bit different to look at, isn't it?" she asked softly.
A shiver ran through her body and she wasn't sure if it was from standing stark naked and wet in front of an open door, or because of the excitement slowly stirring in her loins.
He swallowed a few time and then he croaked, "Yeah… and not just…," he gestured helplessly into the direction of her midsection, "I mean… your breasts…"
It was all she could do not to start grinning at that. When she had first noticed the at times slightly painful swelling of her breasts, her first thought actually had been that Joey would especially like that change.
"Yeah, amazing, isn't it? None of my old bras fits anymore," she smiled.
He swallowed again and she knew he was burning. She could see it from the way he took short, almost panting breaths, she could see the way his pupils were dilated and his cheeks were flushed. She knew it because she was burning, too. He lifted his gaze to her and took a very small, very tentative step towards her, a question in his eyes. Her heart started to flutter and she began to worry her knees might not support her for long if what she wanted – what she needed to happen really would. With excruciating slowness he lifted his hand and moved it towards her breasts, as if he wanted to feel that they were real. She couldn't suppress a gasp at the jolt that went through her as she felt the first touch of his warm fingers against her wet and now cold skin.
He jerked his hand back in an instant and she cursed herself for not being able to have at least a little self-control.
"You should towel yourself dry," he said while turning around, his voice still raw but with a grim determination in it. "You're getting cold."
When the door shut behind him, it took all her remaining strength not to cry.
TBC