Chapter 4: Home again
Rachel took a last critical look in the mirror. She couldn't remember the last time she had been standing in front of a mirror trying to look beautiful. Her fingers were shaking when she put her lipstick back into her make up box and her hands were a bit damp. Nervously she wiped them on her pants.
Today she would go home again.
Joey had called a few hours ago and told her he would pick her up at five and since then she had tried her best to look stunning. To her immense relief, the five weeks in the clinic had slowly wiped out almost all the traces her addiction had left. She had even put on weight, so her old clothes did fit again and her face didn't look as haggard as before.
Even the scar on her left cheek was almost completely covered with make up. Shuddering she how it came to be there. She had been stumbling into the kitchen in the dark, looking for a new bottle. She had found one in her hiding place under the sink. It was back when Joey had still tried to get her to quit by throwing all the bottles away. After finding the bottle he had probably straightened up too quickly because the next thing she could remember was falling down, letting the bottle drop and landing face first on the shards. A few cuts on her arm and one on her face were the result of that.
Problem was, she couldn't get up again. She still didn't know how long she had been lying there until Joey had found her in a puddle of her own blood mixed with whiskey. In retrospect she could understand why he had freaked out, why he had yelled at her and shaken her as if he could've gotten some sense into her that way. Back then, she had wished he had let her bleed to death.
She wished there was a pill to wipe out memories like that. There were too many of them. Her shrink always told her that the memories would start to fade with time, that she would learn to live with the guilt and embarrassment she felt while remembering. But he also said that she needed those memories to remind her of what would happen if she gave in to her sickness again. Because one thing everyone around here hadn't tired of repeating like a mantra. She wasn't cured; she just had no symptoms any more.
The door to her room flew open and barging in came her children, throwing themselves into her arms.
"Mommy! You're coming home today, I'm so glad," Ally chattered excitedly while Tyler, her little boy, just nestled himself into her arms.
She still couldn't believe she had missed almost two years of their lives. Monica had been the one to tell her what Tyler's first sentence was, which foods he liked and what kind of cookies. She had told her which games her children liked to play and how Ally wanted her hair done.
But the amazing thing was, they still loved her, they still called her 'mommy'. One of the first things she had sworn to herself after she had started to think clearly again was that she would never miss anything in her children's lives again.
"You look beautiful, mom," Ally said seriously, tentatively touching her hair.
"Thank you, sweetie," she smiled, "Not as good as you though. Did Aunt Monica braid your hair?"
"Yeah, she did. I'm sure she can show you how she does it. Now that you're healthy again, it would be cool if you could do my hair."
"I'd be happy to, sweetie."
Tyler was still clinging to her without saying a word. "What's with you, baby?" she asked him.
The little black-haired boy answered in a halting whisper. "Will you go away again?"
"No," she answered seriously, tears burning in her throat, "Mommy's not going away again."
Then she stood up, still carrying Tyler who refused to let go of her. She came face to face with a smiling Joey, who had watched the whole scene.
"Wow…" Joey said, genuinely surprised, "You look…" he lifted his hand and touched her face, caressing her cheek gently with his thumb, "You look… "
She could see the emotions flickering in his eyes, she felt them in the way he touched her, in the way he struggled with words.
"You look like my wife," he finally said with a shy smile, and she couldn't think of one single compliment she had ever gotten that had made her happier.
………
Rachel slowly went down the stairs, looking around herself as if she was in an unfamiliar environment. Sure, this villa had been their home for four years now, but she felt like she hadn't really seen it in months.
She remembered the day Joey had shown her the house for the first time. Joey had little Ally on his arm and she had been eight months pregnant. He had helped her up the stairs and showed her where their bedroom would be, where their little son would be sleeping and they showed Ally her new room. She could still remember the happiness she felt while looking around the empty, light flooded rooms.
"It's beautiful," she had told Joey, thanking him with a kiss for finding the perfect home for them to raise their kids in.
When she had come home today, it felt a lot like that day. It felt like rediscovering what she had paid so little attention to for such a long time. Her home.
They had dinner together, their first as a family for God knows how long. Tyler had been quiet and subdued the whole time, which Ally made up for by chattering so much she barely found time to eat.
When the kids' bedtime came, they went without protest, although Tyler claimed he couldn't fall asleep without mommy. She caved and let him fall asleep in her arms, his hands possessively buried in her hair. Now she was on the way to spend the rest of her first night at home with her husband. And there was the nervousness again, the damp hands. She took a deep breath before she rounded the corner to the living room.
Joey was busy putting away some of the kids' toys, apparently too busy to notice her. That gave her the time to just look at him for a while.
He was in incredible shape.
Ross had told her once that during his marriage to Carol he had done a lot of 'Karat-ay', to release the tension of not doing anything else physical. Joey had been working out… a lot.
And although the reason for that was quite sad, it had made him look better than he ever had. He was lean but muscular, the sleeves of his black t-shirt stretched tightly around his biceps. The shirt also gave a hint of a broad chest and a flat stomach, not to mention the way his black jeans clung to his sexy behind. Even after eight years, just looking at him made her knees go weak.
The first time she had looked at him like this was a few months after Monica and Chandler's engagement. She had been promoted and reluctantly opted to hire a very experienced woman in her late forties as an assistant instead of some really cute, adorable guy named Tag. That day she had been sitting on the couch, huddled together, wondering if she should've just thrown professionalism into the wind and hired the sexy one anyway.
Then he came out of the bathroom, the sexy one, unaware of her presence, towel haphazardly wrapped around his waist, drops of water running down his naked chest, toweling his hair dry… making her forget about the young guy in an instant, making it impossible for her to just look at him as a friend. She had been on fire in an instant.
(flashback)
When he noticed her staring at him, he fully turned to her with a cocky grin, surely thinking that could be just one of their games. That it would be fun baiting her.
"See something you like?"
"Hmm… yeah…," she drawled in what she hoped was her sexy voice. She refrained from walking over to him, making the first move. For someone with his experience, Joey was curiously easily scared if a woman was too demanding, too aggressive. She used that against him once back when he wouldn't stop teasing her about the erotic book he had found under her mattress, back when they were nothing but friends.
He might have still believed they were when he walked over to her in his towel, sitting down next to her and wriggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Anything in particular?"
"Hmm, let's see," she purred, running her fingers up his naked arms up to his biceps. "Those are really nice arms you have there and I bet your biceps are..." she made a show out of gasping impressed when she felt the muscles of his upper arms, "Is this steel I'm feeling there?"
Joey grinned proudly. She used the opportunity to scoot a lot closer to him and then she put both her hands on his shoulders.
"Broad shoulders… very impressive."
With that she started to knead his shoulders slowly, while unflinchingly looking into his eyes. His expression changed rapidly from cockiness to confusion.
"Your chest… muscular, just the right amount of hair… very manly."
The way she ran her hands down his chest, wantonly, seductively, probably left no doubt about her intentions. But instead of looking scared, Joey looked intrigued. Curious.
She ran her hands up his chest to his shoulders again and then to the sides of his face, tracing the features of his face with her thumbs.
"I like you eyes, your nose…" then she leaned in, feeling him leaning closer to her too. "…your lips," she whispered against his mouth before she closed the remaining space, brushing her lips lightly against his. When she pulled back just a fraction of an inch, he followed her, kissing her fully on the lips. She smiled inwardly at that, she was the perfect seductress. No man had ever managed to resist her charms.
What took her by surprise, though, was the way her body reacted to his kisses, his touches. It felt like her control over this had been lost the second he started to kiss her. When she felt his hand slowly wandering up her thigh, his other hand in her hair, pulling her closer to him, deepening the kiss, she knew that she didn't want him to stop. Not now, not ever.
It seemed like it had been an unbelievable waste of time to discover only now what he could make her feel.
She tried to lie down on the couch, bringing him with her, but he suddenly tensed up, resisting her intention. Opening her eyes, she looked at him confused. He was panting as heavily as she was and he had trouble getting out what he had wanted to say.
"Rach, what… what are we doing?"
Her mouth curved into a wide grin. "What does it look like?"
"It looks like something that could get us into a whole lot of trouble," he said, more seriously than she cared for.
It looked like, with him, the perfect seductress had found her match. He had his rules, his loyalties. He wouldn't abandon that for anyone, obviously not even for her.
"From where I'm sitting, it looks like something that would be amazing."
A shy smile stole onto his lips. "I'm sure it would be," he replied, and it gave her hope that maybe he would be willing to try, even if it went against his principles. "But… there's Ross." Or not.
"Look, Joe, it's simple. I like you. And I guess it's obvious that I want you. Not Ross, you. You just figure out what you want."
He looked at her as if he didn't need to think about that. His fingers skimmed over her face, her lips; they teasingly brushed over her breasts while he held her gaze, looking conflicted and sorry.
To escape the uneasiness she started feeling at putting him in this situation, she got up quickly and went to her room, turning around again at her door.
"Think about it, Joey. Talk with Ross, whatever you think you should do. And when you're sure, I'm still gonna be here wanting you."
(end flashback)
He had done that, he had talked to Ross, which had gone surprisingly well. Only later she had found out that Ross had never been even remotely okay with that, he had just thought Joey and her wouldn't have a chance.
But back then, he had given Joey the advice to go for it and one day Joey had asked her out on a date. When they came back to their apartment, after he had given her a short kiss, he had asked her if she still wanted him. She hadn't answered. She had shown him.
That had been almost eight years ago, but standing here, looking at him she realized that she had never stopped wanting him. Even in those really bad times, when her desire had to fight its way through the haze of her drunken stupor, it had always been there.
Even in the weeks after the miscarriage, when she had blown him off every time he so much as touched her, it had been there. She still had said no, because having sex suddenly felt like deceiving him. He thought they were trying for another child. She thought she should tell him first that having sex would never lead to a baby ever again. With every time she neglected to say that, she sank deeper into her self-imposed hell, because with every day that went by, it got more and more impossible to justify her not saying anything for so long.
Months later, when she had been so drunk she forgot the actual reason why she had started drinking, she sometimes watched him working out, or just… being there and a few times she clumsily tried to throw herself at him. The first time, he had pretended not noticing how drunk she was and had gone along with it. Which ended in a disaster. It had been the last time he ever slept with her. Or held her. Or kissed her.
"Hey, earth to Rachel," Joey said smiling, waving his hand in front of her eyes.
"Hey," she smiled back, trying to shake off the painful memories.
"What's wrong?"
"Just… memories."
"Good ones?"
"Some of them. It's like every good one has a bad one attached to it."
"I guess then it's time to make a few new good ones."
She smiled.
"So, is Tyler finally asleep?" Joe asked, breaking the silence.
"Yeah, he didn't want to let me go, so I stayed until he fell asleep."
"He was awfully quiet today, don't you think?"
"I probably don't know that much about him, but… I think he has to get used to having a real family now. I mean he never really knew…" she stopped mid-sentence, trying to fight down the urge to cry.
Joey shook his head sadly at seeing her struggle and then he took her into his arms, letting her rest her head against his chest. "Rach, feeling guilty is not gonna help any of us," he murmured into her hair soothingly, softly stroking her back, "…least of all you. We can't get those years back, you can't change the past. But you can change the future, okay?"
She nodded mutely.
"You have no idea how much I want today to be the beginning of that changed future."
After taking a deep breath, she pulled back a bit to be able to look at him fully and said, "I promise it will be."
"Okay, so why don't we drink to that?" Joey asked, which made her look at him quizzically.
He wordlessly took her hand and led her out to the terrace, where he had put a few candles on the table, two wineglasses and a bottle. He motioned for her to sit and poured her a glass of a toxic looking green fluid.
"Melon juice," she smiled, "I thought you hated that stuff."
"It kinda grew on me," he said while filling his own glass, "Plus, it's healthy. No sugar, no fat and a lot of vitamins."
"To health," she playfully toasted into his direction.
"To the future," he toasted back.
When she put the glass back on the table, she felt the uneasiness again, the nervousness from before. "This feels a bit like a first date," she mused aloud, averting her eyes, "like we don't really know each other."
"Maybe we should get to know each other again?"
"Maybe. So… Joey… you're an actor, right?"
"Yeah. A few years in a soap opera, then I landed a part as regular cast member in a somewhat successful drama series, had a few roles in movies. I'm doing okay."
"Anything you still want to do?"
"I'm thinking about producing my own TV show. Maybe star in it. I thought about this a lot in the past months, I even had a few meetings with people who would support such a project, but…"
"But what?"
"Well, I had a few problems in my personal life lately, so it wasn't my first priority, but now it seems like that's gonna get better, so… I would really like pursue that. I mean, it would finally give me control over my work, over the when and where. And it's something I can still do when no one wants me as an actor any more, when I'm losing my looks."
"Yeah, like that's ever gonna happen."
"Hey, I'm pushing forty, it's gonna happen."
"I bet you'll be one of those guys who can be seventy and still have women finding them sexy."
"You're definitely good for my ego."
"Yeah, I get that a lot," she said with a smile.
"So what about you?"
"Me… oh I'm thirty eight, mother of two, unemployed, alcoholic…"
"You're not drinking right now."
"I quit over a month ago."
"What made you do that?"
Rachel took a long sip from her melon juice, trying to put into words what had helped her to make up her mind.
"That night… before you took me to the clinic…" Joe nodded his understanding and so she went on. "I woke up when you opened the window. And I knew you did because I was… disgusting."
"Rach…" Joey started but she cut him off with a gesture, conveying that she wasn't finished.
"Then you came and cleaned up around me and put the comforter over me…" Her voice broke at the last word and closed her eyes for a moment, swallowing her tears. It was impossible to describe what she had felt in that moment. How undeserving of his commitment and care she had deemed herself, how worthless. "And then you stood there looking at me. I had my eyes closed so you'd think I was asleep, but I felt your eyes on me and I was too scared just to imagine what you were seeing. I knew then, that my time was up. I knew I was this close to loosing the most important people in my life. And I would've done anything to prevent that."
Joey looked at her with wide eyes and swallowed hard. "Rach, I… I wasn't thinking about leaving, really. Not that night, not ever. People kept telling me I should, I sometimes thought it would be better for the kids, but I… I never wanted to leave."
Rachel pressed her hand over her mouth, desperately trying to stifle the sobs burning in her throat. "I believe you," she whispered in a tear-saturated voice after a while, "…and you will never know how grateful I am for that. I will always…"
She stopped talking when Joey suddenly jumped up and put his chair in front of her. Then he sat down again, took her hands in his and leaned a bit forward, his gaze holding hers unrelentingly.
"You've gotta understand something here, Rach. You don't owe me for staying with you. Don't you ever think you owe me. You gave me so much in those years we were together, more than I will ever be able to fully comprehend. This was me trying to give something back."
Through her tears, she managed a trembling smile. "I think you would've been fine without me."
"Rach, you made me the man I am today. Without you, I would be still chasing after girls and laughably small acting roles. I would be a pathetic little man in his late thirties who has nothing to show for himself than a long list of one-night stands and a shitty acting career. I am nothing without you."
"But it must have been so horrible for you, thinking it was because I was in love with someone else, that I wasn't happy with you."
Joey hung his head and was quiet for a while until he started to speak again with a scratchy voice. "It was horrible, but it was my fault."
She shook her head decidedly. "How can you say that? It wasn't, it was my fault. I should've told you what happened. Everyone thought it was about Ross, even my father did."
Joey jumped up and began pacing up and down in front of her. "It doesn't matter what everyone thought, it doesn't matter what your father thought. We were together for five years, you never gave me any reason to doubt your feelings, just jumping to this conclusion without even talking to you about it was inexcusably immature. And the other thing, ever since you've told me I've been kicking myself for being so unbelievably stupid. I mean, we were trying for a baby, I had to take you to the hospital with heavy bleeding, and afterwards you didn't want to have sex? How much of an idiot was I not to be able to put one and one together? This was so obvious."
"But no one figured that out," she said quietly.
"I don't care! I'm your husband, I should have."
Only reluctantly she admitted that to herself that he was right. She had asked herself more than once during those years why he never questioned why she had been in the hospital, or why he never asked why she had started drinking.
"Maybe… maybe you were stupid," she conceded. "But I managed to be stupid for two years."
"Well, me too. I had two years to figure out what was wrong with you and I never got any closer to the truth. I am so happy you got us out of this vicious circle."
"So I'm the hero now?"
"Of course you are, you quit drinking. Even if you asked for help, still, the decision was yours alone. You did it."
"That was what I meant before. I wouldn't have made that decision if it hadn't been for you. That night… I understood that there was no single night in the last two years when you haven't come to my room at least once, making sure I was okay. I would've died a few times already if you hadn't watched out for me."
Joey chuckled and shook his head amusedly. "How long do you think will it take for us to decide who is the bigger hero of us, or the bigger idiot?"
Rachel smiled back, tears gone. "Do you think we should meet somewhere in the middle? With both of us being a little bit of both?"
He sat down again and took her hands. "I think I can live with that."
"Me too," she admitted and she found herself being happy about that. Living with the feeling of having to be forever grateful for him not running out on her was probably no stable foundation for a healthy marriage.
He moved closer and they hugged a bit awkwardly, due to their sitting position. Rachel felt tiredness tugging at her concentration and she couldn't suppress a yawn.
"You tired?" Joey asked while letting her out of his arms.
"A little. They made us go to bed early in the clinic, get up early, too. They said that sleeping in for too long and staying up all night isn't helping when you're trying to quit drinking. And I'm still feeling a bit weak."
"Okay, then you should go to bed."
Rachel did her best to squash the twinge of disappointment at this obvious dismissal of any possibility that something might happen tonight. On the other hand, she was really tired. They stood up and took the glasses and the bottle inside. She helped him putting the glasses in the washer and when everything was taken care of, she decided that she should really go now.
"Well, then, goodnight, Joey," she said and turned around to leave.
"Hey Rach, wait," he called after her and she turned back around, surprised.
He stepped close to her and lifted his hand to gently caress her face. "I had a really good time tonight," he said in a voice barely above a whisper.
"Me too," she whispered back.
When she realized that he was moving in to kiss her, she closed her eyes with breathless anticipation. The kiss was only a fleeting caress of lips against lips, but it held enough promise for her knees to go weak and her heart to start bumping wildly against her ribs.
"Good night, Rachel," he whispered and let her out of his arms.
TBC
Please review, you opinions mean a lot to me.