Slight of Hand
By: Caity
Disclaimer: Still don't own them... if I did, I would be considerably more rich than I am, and I would not have to work for measley pay at the pizza place.
A/N: Alright, I've gotten around to finishing the first chapter of newness! Hehe as you know if you read my A/Ns in "Something Like Love", I've been anticipating writing this fic for a few months now. I drew ideas from the films "The Good Girl", "Derailed", and "Friends With Money" (dude, I know they're all Jennifer Aniston movies... so sue me), as well as other fics and what not. This fic will eventually have rated R chapters, but I will specify when. I want this fic to be a bit intense, so we'll see what happens.
Oh, and as a note... updates will probably not be as close together as most would prefer, LOL. Im not saying like months apart or anything near that, but like, expect one probably once a week, maybe a week and a half. This is proving to be a bit hard to write and I'm really determined to only post stuff I deem worthy... and I'm my toughest critic. lol
Alright, to set this one up... well, it actually sets itself up, mostly. Pretty self-explanatory. Rachel married Barry and its six years later. Ross had married Carol but divorced her when she realized she was a lesbian, and he married Emily four years after. They've been together for two years at this point. And the rest should pretty much set itself up, ask questions if you've got 'em. :-) And dude, you guys super impressed me with how many reviews you gave my last fic. See if you can do it again ;-)
Who the hell decided that birthdays were supposed to be happy?
"Blow the candles out!", squealed a pretty, excited woman, around her late twenties. Her curled hair bounced up and down as she acted much younger than her age called for. The birthday girl hide a look of disgust at her friend, instead letting a sardonic smile to partially mask her thoughts. She couldn't even remember the last time she smiled from true, honest enjoyment, rather than a desperate attempt to quiet herself.
"Take a breath, Kiki, I'm going."
With the feeble reassurance, she leaned over the large, elaborately-decorated cake, closed her eyes, and blew.
"They're all out!", another woman shouted happily. The guests all politely clapped, handing in their own smiles while shadily covering up a few whispers to their spouses and friends. She pretended not to notice.
"Happy birthday, babe," she heard her husband offer her from behind, and she wished, just for once, that he'd actually make an effort to sound sentimental. But, as she was taught, she turned around with a smile and thanked him. After a quick, impersonal peck on the lips, and some complementary "aww"s from the party guests, the maid began slicing the cake. Everyone became engaged in conversation, barely noticing that the star of the night was simply staring at the cake.
She was thirty years old.
Three fucking decades, she'd been living now. A lot of people (most of them still in their twenties or already well into their fourties) would dispell this age as still being quite young. But try living thirty years and still not having an inkling about why the hell someone decided to drop you down on this planet. She felt old as dirt, as she counted all of the thirty candles her friends had insisted on planting on the top of her cake. Most of the dessert was already comsumed or in the process of being consumed. Of the "Happy Birthday" greeting that had been drawn in red gel icing on the top, only one word remained intact.
"Happy".
She sighed a bit. Had the cake somehow heard her silent wish, peeping out from somewhere deep in her mind, barely whispered as a thought?
And what was "happy", even?
-----
He stood, completely silent.
She looked at him, her eyes sympathetic but the rest of her demeanor hinting that she wanted some sort of reply. What she wanted to hear, he didn't know. What was someone supposed to say in this situation? Surely, he'd know by now.
Especially when he knew it was all too true.
"Emily," he began, his voice already shaking at the words. He didn't say anything else, merely trailing off with a silent plea. He couldn't go through the pain of this twice; why was she putting him through this? No one's perfect, that's what counselling was for. If she couldn't even agree to that, he sure as hell couldn't wrap his mind around how she could possibly think what she was asking of him was justifiable.
"You know I'm right," she stated, her voice only slightly showing any sign of sadness. They both knew their relationship had been building up- or rather, crumbling down- to this point for a while now. He was just more reluctant to admit it.
"Probably, but a seperation? Can't we just . . . work on things?", he lamely asked, already knowing the answer. He was barely surprised or offended when her reply came in the form of an eye roll and an exasperated sigh.
"No, you knew this was where we were headed. We rushed into it too fast."
"You weren't complaining then," he mumbled.
After a tense moment of silence, it became apparent that she'd had enough of this conversation, and she exited with barely a word. He sat back, too disappointed with the shell of a life he'd led himself to become to even react right away. He was numb.
Two failed marriages before he was even thirty-two. Who woulda thought? The one man in Manhattan who wanted, more than anybody, to just finally settle down with the person he was meant to spend the rest of his life with was the one who chose the wrong turn at every fork in the road. Every chance he got turned to shit; every relationship he touched decayed to nothing. He was beginning to feel a finality set in.
Maybe he simply wasn't meant to be with someone. Maybe, this entire time, his entire life since before he could remember . . . he'd been setting himself up for inevitable failure. Someone, much more powerful than himself, must have decided to keep this man hanging, eternally waiting for the one thing he would never find.
Maybe it was the beginning of the end, and all that was left was to accept it.
Defeat, once and for all.
-----
She knew something was off right away.
She didn't hear the usual skip in his step that accompanied him as he strode into their home from work. Anything that had to do with making money or set up the possibility of certificates and awards to be presented usually make him euphoric. In the early stages of their marriage, just the sight of their luxurious penthouse situated exclusively on Park Avenue would cause him to break out in a grin, exposing every one of those pearly whites.
But today, rather than the customary "I'm back" that he would weakly offer her, she heard silence. His footsteps echoed on the marble in the foyer, and she could tell that he'd dismissed their maid with a wave of his hand. No matter how many times she tried to ask him to treat her like a human being, he still just considered her "the help".
It would be easier to brush it off. She was in the large jacuzzi in the master bathroom, soaking in the warm water and waiting to drift into some dreamless sleep. The candles were lit, the aroma gentle, the air soothing. But she all of a sudden felt anxious as she tracked the sound of his footsteps from the marble floor, onto the carpeted floor of the front room, to the rug in the hallway, up the few steps to the raised level, and finally onto the hardwood of their bedroom.
After a few silent seconds that she presumed was him taking off his tie, he barged into the bathroom. She fought the urge to yell at him, to cover herself up despite the abundant bubbles, but she didn't. He was looking at her, seeming a bit desperate, but not for her. For something bigger.
"What?", she asked, her tone hinting at annoyance, one eyebrow raised.
"Its gone," he stated simply. "Its all gone."
"What's gone?", she asked carefully, pulling herself up to a sitting position but making sure her body was still out of his view. Eight years of marriage meant nothing to her- she'd lost that comfort with him long ago. That left with the honeymoon stage. But she was beginning to get worried, now.
"Everything," he answered vaguely, sitting on the toilet with the lid down. "Remember that lawsuit we were going through at the practice?"
Ah, work. She nodded, despite the fact that she mentally zoned out anytime conversation turned to talk of his orthadontist clinic. Which meant that she didn't pay attention about ninety percent of the time.
"We lost. Any money we have at the clinic, we now owe. And we have to sell it."
"What?"
He looked at her, and for the first time, she saw fear in his eyes. Perhaps, deep down, even a tear forming.
"We're broke."
-----
He took a look around himself, and saw nothing.
Blank walls, blank floors. Blank mind . . .
How the hell do you start all over when you're thirty-one years old? He couldn't even remember how he'd started fresh when he was twenty-six, at the beginning of the first end. He'd never imagined he'd be doing this again.
Well, he never imagined a lot of things that happened.
He'd insisted she keep the apartment, and, consequently, most of their things. He took only what was his, maybe out of a dimly lit hope that she would come to her senses. A seperation wasn't final. There was room to move around, right? They'd see what they have apart, and she would see that it was better together. Even if it wasn't.
It was so bizarre, finding himself back in Greenwich Village after he thought he'd said goodbye forever. It may have only been two years ago, but it might as well have been a lifetime. It sure felt like it. And, truth be told, his memory painted a brighter picture of the place. His memory decieved him a lot, these days. Not that it could be blamed for it all.
When he was in his mid-twenties and in the same position, he could see the silver lining. He still had a lifetime ahead of him to make new decisions, re-route the course of his life, and once again be happy. But now he felt that his time was fleeting, if not already run out. Thirty-one may not be old, but hell . . . he wasn't the same guy. That optimism left him ages ago, leaving behind the tough skin of a man twice broken. There was no bright side anymore.
Chances are, he'd lost any chance for a bright side the first time he said "I do".
-----
The moving people had left, leaving the air feeling dead and stale.
She stared in contempt at her new surroundings. No longer were the walls immaculately white stucco and polished stone; they were a beige-ish plaster. The floors were a grainy, plain carpet in some places, an unpolished rustic wood in others. No stairs led upstairs, no long hallways showed off how many doors were present to God knows which rooms. Just a front room, a kitchen, two bedrooms, a bathroom . . .
This place would surely be her new hell.
They truly had lost it all. Their penthouse was sold, most of the more luxe items from inside packaged up and carried away. The essentials remained with them, and a few luxuries they'd gotten away with. Their pride, however, didn't make the cut. They were now honorary citizens of the Village, which was surely slumming it.
She perched her white Chanel sunglasses atop her head, clicked the heels of her red Prada pumps together, adjusted the Louis Vutton bag on her shoulder . . . and felt more out of place than Paris Hilton dropped in middle America. She'd barely spoken to him since the move, and she didn't expect him to reach out to her. That's not what they did, not ever. Emotional support was never part of the deal.
The boxes needed unpacking, the furnature needed adjusting. But she just sat on the gold, cushy couch, staring idly at the screen of the 52 inch television- the largest one they'd been able to salvage. Some random entertainment program flickered actively, a perfect contrast to the two still souls that occupied the front room.
"I'm gonna go get a beer," he grunted, to which she made merely a noise of recognition in reply.
He left, and she sighed to herself. Thirty years and a month old, and her prime was a thing of the past.
And the definition of "happy" was still a far-away dream.