Monica and Rachel are childhood friends, but at 18 years' old each one embarks on a different path,8 years later they meet again and from there they resume their friendship and friends appear from one side and the other and love stories emerge or are renewed. Of course there are always some difficulties along the route, will they overcome them?
I hope you catches the story, and you tell me your opinions, through them I know if I'm on the right track.
Remember English is not my native language, I hope the translation is correct, I check it, but sometimes I miss some incorrect, sorry.
I repeat, I am not the owner of the characters, I only rely on them for the sheer pleasure of practice writing stories without any economic interest, and these two characters inspire me.
CHAPTER 1
Monica was sitting at a table in Bryant Park, having a drink while resting on that beautiful late summer afternoon, she came from buying tablecloths for the restaurant on W 36th and walked to Bryant Park, the place was so peaceful and still It was early to go back to work, and she didn't really want to go today, which was unusual for her since she loved her cooking.
Anyway, she gave in to her need for relaxation, she bought herself a sandwich and a soft drink at one of the truck and sat in the shade of a tree.
She was engrossed in reading a cookbook when someone next to her shouted her name.
Monica looked up and saw with surprise that ¡it was Rachel! her old childhood friend whom she had not seen for years, practically since each of them had entered the University and that had been almost 8 years ago and many things has happened in her life and surely in Rachel's.
Monica jumped out of her chair and went to greet Rachel with a big hug.
"Rachel!!! What a joy to see you, so long."
"I doubted if it was you when I saw you sitting, but you looked up a little and there was no doubt, those eyes had to be my friend's" Rachel said excitedly.
"Mon, how are you, I haven't heard from you in years, what are you doing here, I've never seen you before."
"I actually live on the Upper West Side on 76th, behind the Museum of Natural Sciences, and the restaurant is also in that area." "And you're still on Long Island?
"No, I'm living in the Village with a friend, I work across the street at the Bloomingdale's offices, I'm in the shopping area," Rachel answered.
"Friend, how happy to know that you are working on what you always wanted," Mon said with a huge smile, that beautiful smile that Rachel always remembered from her best friend from her childhood and adolescence.
"Mon, I have to go back to the office since I have a meeting in 15 minutes, but we have to meet…."
"There is so much, so much, to talk about."
"Sure Rachel, I would love to, what do you think if we meet on Sunday for brunch, on Sundays the restaurant is closed and I have all day?"
"Yes, perfect, on Sunday around 1 pm, you think, at Sarabeth's, the one on 59th between 6th and 5th in front of the Park, they have a very complete brunch."
"Yes, of course Rachel, that's perfect, anyway, give me your phone number and I'll give you mine so we can stay in touch."
The friends exchanged phones and Rachel walked away towards her office building.
Monica was thoughtful, she realized how much she missed her friend, from the age of 6 to 18 they had been inseparable, and Rachel had never left her side when she gained so much weight, and always supported her while the other classmates moved away or they made fun of her.
Rachel was also thinking, and during the work meeting at several points she disconnected from what they were talking about, to think about Monica. Wow, years had passed without knowing anything about her life, the first months at university she knew something about her through her mother, who met Judy and told her something about her daughter, but since Judy and Jack had divorced and they had both moved away, Sandra lost all contact with Judy and never heard from Monica again.
Rachel was also thinking, and during the work meeting at several points she disconnected from what they were talking about, to think about Monica. Wow, years had passed without knowing anything about her life, the first months at university she knew something about her through her mother, who met Judy and told her something about her daughter, but since Judy and Jack had divorced and they had both moved away, Sandra lost all contact with Judy and never heard from Monica again.
Rachel felt that she should have done something to continue meeting each other, even once a month, but her studies and friendships dragged her elsewhere.
That afternoon, when Rachel returned to her apartment she was very happy, she quickly told Phoebe, her roommate, that she had met Monica, her friend from childhood and youth, that they would get together on Sunday for brunch and take advantage to tell each other what had happened to their lives during the last 8 years ... a time that Rachel felt was as long as a century.
The day of the meeting arrived, both were punctual, evidently they were eager to see each other and talk.
"Mon, where are you living? Rachel asked.
"I don't know if you remember, my father had bought for my grandmother an apartment on the Upper West Side, an apartment not very big but well located, I think we once went together"
"Yes, I think we went a couple of times when your grandmother treated us to delicious chocolate cookies," Rachel commented
Well, shortly after starting university, my grandmother decided to move to Miami, and my dad took the opportunity to put the apartment in my name, and bought another one very close by for Ross, who was engaged and was thinking of getting married."
"Evidently Dad was already preparing the ground for his divorce to find us located outside the house so that Mom would not manipulate us and take us as her allies"
"Yes, exactly," Rachel tells her, "since your parents' divorce, my mother lost contact with Judy and we didn't hear anything more about you."
"I know that dad at that time was already dating Stefani, one of the lawyers at his company, she was 35 years old, dad asked mom for a divorce, a terrible drama arose that was finally resolved when dad gave mom more money that was due to her, they sold the house and mom moved to the Upper
East Side" Monica continued telling
"A year after the divorce, Dad married Stefani, and they have two children, my little sblings, Erika, almost 6 years old, and Jack, 4."
Monica had a big smile when talking about her little brothers.
"And Ross," Rachel asked.
"Ross is fine now, at the beginning of the divorce he took Mom's side, you know she was his great favorite, he even got angry with me because I maintained my relationship with Stefani and Dad, but then he calmed down, he realized that his mother's supposed suffering passed when she received the money and Ross ended up accepting the situation."
"Ross married Carol, I don't know if you remember that romance, you still came home, well a year after getting married they both discovered two things at the same time, that Carol was a lesbian and that they were going to have a child. Obviously they divorced and Ben, my nephew who is nowalmost 4 years old and a sweetheart."
"Luckily Carol and Ross get along well, Carol married Susan, her partner, last year, and between the three of them they take care of Ben."
"And Ross didn't remarry?" Rachel asked.
"No, at the beginning of the year he was dating an English girl, Emily, he was very in love but she lived in London and he couldn't leave Ben, the relationship continued for a while at a distance but it didn't work out, that was his last great romance" Mon said with a smile.
"Well, I already talked a lot, now it's your turn, what was your life like all these years?" Monica asked.
"Last year at university I met Barry, a dentist whose father was a friend of Dad's started dating, soon we got engaged and decided to get married a few months later. Everything went pretty fast. But there was something about me that bothered me"
"Mon I was 23 years old at that time and I wasgoing to get married without having done anything I dreamed of, I was going to be a lady from Long Island, like my mom or your mom, and I didn't know if that was what I wanted."
"On the day of the wedding I was already, dressed, make up, so I went to the gift room, took a beautiful sauce boat, and at that moment I realized that I loved that sauce boat more than Barry, so I ran away, I hid in the bathroom and went out the window," Rachel said, smiling
"Rachel, God, how brave, how I envy you!! And what did you do, where did you go, what did your parents and Barry say?"
"I didn't really know where to go, if I went to one of my friends' house or my house they were going to make me come back, dad would be crazy, mom crying, my friends telling me if I had lost my mind, leaving Barry, who loved me so much, yes, just him that later I found out that he had been cheating
on me for a long time with my best friend" Rachel continued.
"Then I decided to go to Phoebe's house, she is a masseuse and for a long time I had been going to a salon where she began to treat me, she was so different from my friends, so free, so fun, without social corsets, we talked a lot, we made friends and she suggested giving me massages at her house. It would cost me less and she would get the money directly. I agreed and from there we became best friends."
"That afternoon, with a wedding dress and everything, and in the rain, I came to Manhattan and went straight to Phoebe's apartment in the Village. She welcomed me immediately, she supported me in my decision, she gave me the strength to move forward, not to let myself be intimidated by my father or my mother and since she had an empty room she proposed that I could be herroommate, from that moment on I live with her in apartment 20, almost 3 years ago"
"First I worked as a waitress in the cafeteria downstairs from the building where I live, and then I got a job at Bloomingdale's."
"And are you in a relationship?" Monica asked.
"No, I had a few dates, but nothing major, I'm really enjoying my life as an independent woman!!!
"That afternoon, with a wedding dress and everything, and in the rain, I came to Manhattan and went straight to Phoebe's apartment in the Village. She welcomed me immediately, she supported me in my decision, she gave me the strength to move forward, not to let myself be intimidated by my father or my mother and since she had an empty room she proposed that I could be herroommate, from that moment on I live with her in apartment 20, almost 3 years ago"
Monica smiled... "I think the Gellers have terrible luck with relationships... to which is added that I am a stupid coward..."
"During my third year of college I started working in the kitchen of a restaurant in Mid Town, there was a customer who started flirting with me and asked me out, I wasn't attracted to him, and he seemed overbearing with his insistence, one day he left me a check for $20,000 as a tip…"
Oh! Rachel exclaimed.
"The owner of the restaurant told me that he was Peter Becker, the owner of and international computer systems company, who was a millionaire. Everyone in the restaurant was excited that he had achieved such a conquest. I, on the other hand, considered him misplaced. Consider that check as a lack of respect, I was not for sale, so I went to his office to return it."
"He explained to me why he do that and asked me for a single date, I accepted and he invited me to eat pizza, which seemed like a common outing to me, he wasn't trying to impress me, it's just that we went to the
airport and on his private plane we ate pizza in Rome…"
"Mon is like a Meg Ryan movie," Rachel exclaimed with her eyes wide open.
"Yes, I was 21 years old and from then on everything was very impressive, I was not attracted to him the way I thought I would feel when I met the man of my life, but Pete complimented me a lot, took care of me, and made me feel safe when he told me that he loved me… that he wanted to have a serious and lasting relationship, which was what I had always dreamed of" and she continued telling
"A few months later he asked me to get married, he gave me an impressive ring, and I said yes, although my heart didn't jump like I thought it would the day a man asked me."
"He proposed to me that we get married when I finished my degree, that I study and he would be in charge of the entire organization and also…. he gave me a restaurant…. he didn't want me to continue working where I had been doing, he wanted me to develop in my own restaurant."
Wow!!! Rachel exclaimed again, who seemed hypnotized by the story.
"Everyone around me, my parents, my brother, Stefani, my friends Laura and Brenda, who are neighbors in the building, were fascinated with Pete and they didn't understand why I wasn't fascinated with him like they were."
"Partly it was because Pete put his company before everything, including me, he traveled all the time so we didn't see each other for a whole week, and that scared me, I didn't want my marriage to be like that, always alone at home while he is traveling, I even suggested having a baby as soon as we got married, so I wouldn't be so alone, but he wanted us to wait two or three years."
"Anyway, I got carried away, I didn't have your courage, your bravery, I was afraid that this was my only chance, and if I lost it I wouldn't find another, it seemed to me that it was like defying the destiny that had given me that man, apparently perfect, on my way." …. "I felt obligated to move on" … "so immediately after finishing my degree at 22 years old we got married"
"Like you, at some point I thought about running away, but I stayed ..."
"The marriage was sadly what I had imagined, living alone in a beautiful penthouse, with service staff and with a card extension that allowed me to buy everything I wanted, but that did not compensate for the many days I was alone while he traveled around the country, the world, the only thing that consoled me was that I had the restaurant."
"Six months after we were married, Pete went on a trip in his plane with his secretary, the pilot and a friend, the plane apparently had an engine failure, crashed and all four of them died…. So I have been a widow for just over three years…"
"Mon, what an incredible story, you must have suffered a lot… god, it's horrible, I'm sorry."
"Look Rachel, I cared about him, I felt affection for him, I was grateful to him, but I wasn't in love, obviously he was my husband and it hurt me that he died in such a horrible way, but, even if I seems like a cold and evil witch to you, I was never a grieving widow…"
"The only thing I learned from all that is that if you are not deeply in love, nothing and no one has to make you feel obligated to anything."
"Mon, so you inherited a fortune…. "You are a millionaire…" Rachel exclaimed.
"No, I only had the restaurant left, we had signed a pre-marital agreement, if we divorced or he died before two years of marriage and we had no children, I would not inherit anything, everything would be left to his parents and siblings, I just kept the restaurant because he had bought it in my name"
"His family asked me to leave the penthouse a week after the funeral, the next day I called his brother, left him the key, all the clothes that Pete bought me, and the wedding ring, I only told him that I hoped that this ring would bring him the same luck as it did his brother, and I left taking only the clothes with which I had moved into that apartment."
"Mon and where did you go," Rachel asked.
"I went back to my apartment on 76th st."
"And you haven't dated anyone since then…" Rachel asked.
"No, I don't like anyone, I don't even worry about finding someone, I also work a lot to run the restaurant, I only have free on Sundays because we close"
"and you don't go out with your friends…. " Rachel asked.
"I have two friends, good people, loyal, but their jobs and their lives don't leave us time to go out, Laura is a stewardess, she spends her time traveling, maybe she's in NY on a Thursday and Friday and I'm working those days, and Brenda is medical, and he is married to Tom and they have a twoyear-old baby, as you can imagine she is not in a position to hang out with girls…"
"Well, then you're going to come to my house, meet my friends and be part of our group, you can't be so alone anymore," Rachel said.
Rachel called Monica the next week to invite her to her house on Sunday, so she could meet her friends and they could all spend the afternoon together. -
Rachel had already told Phoebe and her neighbors and friends, Joey and Chandler, who lived in the apartment across the hall, about her emotional meeting with Monica, and the invitation she extended to her to meet all them next Sunday, since she would like to be incorporated into the group.
Joey immediately asked, "How is your friend?" with a dangerous smile.
"Look at both of you," Rachel said with a serious face and a stern voice. "Monica is very beautiful, but she is also a very good person, like everyone else, she has had difficulties and is somewhat alone, so I DON'T WANT TO," she said emphatically and pointing an accusing finger at them. "neither of you should mess with her, in any way, you will only be friends like you are with us, you will leave her alone, or else whoever messes with her will stop being our friend forever"
"Ok," Joey said with pain on his face.
"Don't say anything to me," said Chandler, "you know I'm not very good when it comes to conquering beautiful women..., and when I think I have, they miserably deceive me."
"Please Chandler, forget about Katy, she was a shitty person," Phoebe intervened, very upset.
"I know, and I'm totally over it, but that doesn't change the reality that I'm not good at conquering," Chandler said.
"Chandler, you are handsome, nice, funny, well maybe too funny, but you are kind, intelligent, hardworking, there is no reason why you can't conquer a woman, the problem is in your stupid little mosquito brain."
"Thank you Rachel for your appreciation of my brain."
On Sunday Monica arrived at the Department 20 and knock on the door.
Rachel ran out to open the door, they greeted each other, they hugged each other.
"Welcome Mon, welcome to this house that from now on is also your home."
Monica gave her a huge smile and thanked.
"Come in and I'll introduce you to my friends," Rachel said.
Monica approached the group a little shyly.
"This is my friend Phoebe, I already told you about her," both women smiled and said Hello.
"This is Joey, he's an actor" Monica also gave him a shy smile that Joey responded with a desire to jump on her, she was too hot…. but he couldn't do anything... "Damn," he thought.
"And this is Chandler, he works in the systems area of a multinational company, although none of us really understand what his job is."
Chandler stood up and extended his hand to her with the best of his smiles.
This time Monica's smile was wider and more determined, "this boy is very handsome" she thought.
Chandler began to sweat, and a little color rose in his face, as he always did when he met a woman he really liked. The problem was that it was prohibited, "well, but it is prohibited only by Rachel's decision, not by the government or religion," he thought, "anyway, his three friends were all the
family he had, that he loved and that he counted on, so if he didn't want to get into irreparable trouble, he better stay away."
The afternoon passed quickly, Monica felt great with Rachel and her friends, everyone was friendly and had welcomed her kindly.
They asked her what she did, and she explained that she was a Chef, who works from Monday to Thursday in the morning shift, and on Friday and Saturday she works both shifts, she only has Sunday free because the restaurant closed.
"What time do you finish working when you have morning shift?" Rachel asked.
"Monday to Thursday I finish at 4pm."
"Fantastic," said Rachel, "we usually go to the movies on Wednesdays, because you're not coming with us this Wednesday it's time to choose the boys so it will be action, and then we're going to eat pizza.
Monica accepted immediately.
Every day after work we usually meet at the cafe down here, Central Perk, unless, of course, we have a date," Monica saw that Chandler made an "unlikely" gesture, but Phoebe didn't see it andshe continued "Come after work as many times as you want, you will always find one of us as we arrive."
"Thank you," said Monica… "I will surely do it again, although I am further away than you. In half an hour I can be here…"
"Perfect," Phoebe said with a smile, she liked the girl, she was nice and as Rachel had anticipated, she had a good aura.