Chapter 5: I Think You're Great

The next day was rained out.

For their last evening in the beach house, Monica had decided to prepare a special meal for everybody, which had required her to drive out to the corner store down the street to gather ingredients. As it meant plunging out into the middle of a downpour, Monica had roped all her friends into coming along with her and helping.

What was harder to admit to herself was that she enlisted the help so she could keep some of her distracted thoughts focused on the bizarre dream she had had about her and Chandler the night before.

It was hard for her to look at her best friend now, knowing what he had done yesterday. Granted, in peeing on her, he had had no other choice. Yet, the way that he had set about taking care of her had been incredibly sweet. What's more, he and Joey had not told any of the others what exactly had happened, as far as Monica could tell or knew.

The group dragged themselves back into the house, out of the rain and across the beach-living room. The sight of nature reclaiming the house itself, almost, was still jarring even after more than a day and a half of staying here.

"You know what this reminds me of?" Chandler floated, without any appropriate segue. "Why couldn't I be your boyfriend?"

Monica swayed to a halt and chuckled, concealing how her cheeks were flushing.

"Are you still on that?" she turned back to him with more of a patient smile than he deserved.

Joey was less indulging. "Would you let it go already?"

"Thank you, Joey," she gestured to him gratefully.

"But you'd go out with me, right?"

Now she let out a laugh. "No….!" She lectured them patiently. "It is the same as with Chandler: we're friends." And friends don't date, she recalled what she had tried to tell Chandler on the beach. Especially best friends.

"Well, let's say we were the last two guys on the face of the planet, and you had a gun to your head: which one would you pick?" Joey insisted.

Monica sighed. He must have heard Chandler's hypothetical about a nuclear apocalypse. "Which one of you has the gun to my head?"

She was supremely satisfied by how that simple question stumped them.

Later that night, Chandler and Monica were alone down in the kitchen, working on dinner.

Well, Monica was working on dinner. Chandler was mostly sitting around watching. He hopped up on the counter. "I know I've asked you this before…"

"A hundred times before!" Monica snapped, her words in rhythm with how she now massacred the tomato she was slicing for their salad. If there was a little bit of sexual frustration bleeding out in her face, she wasn't about to tell him, lest she give him any encouragement.

Lest she give herself any encouragement….

Chandler gave her a look and gently took the carving knife away. "How am I not right for you?"

Monica giggled awkwardly. "I don't know….!" she tried to let him down easy, despite a part of heart howling in protest. "I like guys like Richard! Or Pete… before he went insane. I don't know – just somebody more…. mature…."

"Oh, so I'm not mature enough for you? Monica needs somebody more mature!" Chandler's face scrunched up, his voice thrown and mocking.

Monica lifted an eyebrow before reaching for the knife again so she could resume cutting the tomatoes. There was mercifully a long silence.

"… I did something pretty mature yesterday…" Chandler pointed out.

Monica sighed, setting down the knife again. "Chandler…. peeing on someone, even for healing purposes and without any other choice, isn't mature. It was…." She pursed her lips uncomfortably. "… gross…."

"I wasn't talking about that," Chandler mumbled. She looked at him. "I was talking about after. When I…." His cheeks warmed. "You think Joey or Rache would have been mature enough to handle cleaning up encrusted urine on someone's leg?"

"Rachel?: Probably not," Monica conceded. "Joey?: Definitely not."

"Exactly my point!"

Monica couldn't help but smile. She was careful to set the knife down this time as she turned to face her best friend, touching his arm. "I know I should have said it yesterday, but…. Thank you. I'll admit: you did step up." Softly, and before she lost her nerve, she swayed onto her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.

He looked at her then, in a way that was indiscernible, and drawing back, Monica felt her cheeks turn rouge. Casting about, she seized the salad bowl and slid it over to him.

"Would you mind covering this in vinaigrette? Remember: not too much!"

Chandler happily obliged.

The trauma of what exactly had occurred that first day on the beach only seemed to catch up with Chandler, Monica and Joey after they got home. The three sat around Monica and Rachel's kitchen like shell-shocked war veterans: she the wounded, in some ways even violated, damsel; Chandler and Joey, the bystanders who had been forced to commit questionable acts in the realm of ethics to save one of their own.

Naturally, their jumpy behavior caught the attention of the other three, and the whole story finally came tumbling out.

It was small comfort that Joey had actually got a factoid correct, for once: it turned out Ross had watched the same episode about ammonia on the Discovery Channel. As his brain, processing the story, caught up with him, however, Ross could only gawk at their struggling actor friend in disgust.

"It was me!"

Monica whirled around in shock, gaping at Chandler's cherry-red face, though his jaw was set in a determined line. Refusing to wilt under the horrified looks from Ross, Rachel and Phoebe, Chandler nodded. "That's right! I stepped up! She's my friend and she needed help! If I had to – I'd pee on any one of you!"

Monica oddly felt her heart melt in that moment. Chandler could have just as easily let Joey take the fall – certainly, having any excuse to whip out his willy would have been more in character for Joey, and he probably would have needed little encouragement to risk flashing her, even for the purposes of helping out a friend.

The rest of the group filed out of the apartment in a daze. Rachel went back to her room to lie down. Left alone, Chandler enticed Monica into playing a game of cards – not strip poker this time, like back at the beach house.

"You know, if we were a couple, we could play this game naked," he quipped.

By now, Monica figured that any other girl having hints dropped on her like this would have been annoyed. Hell, she had been a little annoyed with him yesterday evening. Smiling, she took his hand.

"I think you're great," she confessed at last. "I think you're kind and…. funny and smart… And I love you…" She rubbed his arm. "But let's be realistic, sweetie: you're also always gonna be the guy who peed on me." She grinned grimly and rose to circle the table, only to freeze at Chandler's insistent whine:

"Maybe I don't just want to be the guy who… who peed on you! Maybe I don't even want to be…. any of those things!" He looked down.

Monica peered at him, her frown bemused. "You don't want to be kind and funny and smart? Hon, that's what most girls would call an ideal package…"

"…. except for you," Chandler grumbled.

Shocked, Monica knelt down next to him. "Who says I don't want a guy who is all those things?"

Chandler hesitated. She could practically see the gears turning in his head, trying to find the right words to say that wouldn't offend her. At present, he had already danced right up to the line of implying that Monica thought she was too good for even the 'ideal package' of man she had just described. "I'm not…." he muttered out at last. "I mean – I know every girl has a type. Heck, every guy has a type…."

"…. except for Joey," Monica pointed out with a smile.

"Nah, you're right, he'd sleep with anything…." Chandler leaned forward on the table, the card game forgotten. "I have a type too, you know…."

Monica leaned back, eyes wide. "So…. you're saying I'm your type?"

Chandler flushed. "Well…. yeah," he glanced up at how she was staring at him. "You're smart, generous of spirit – bossy, sure, but it's never been for anything other than my own good!..."

Monica folded her arms and smirked. Nice save, she thought.

"… kind…. beautiful…." Monica gazed at him, as if in a trance. The most her brain could acknowledge was that it had felt nice for Chandler to list her beauty last among her list of attributes. Most guys she had dated, or even most guys who had tried to hit on her, never seemed to get past her beauty. And while Monica liked being desirable in that way, in a way she never had been when she was heavier, it felt good to have someone see her as more than that.

"…. Did those kisses mean nothing to you, then?"

Monica shook herself out of her reverie. "What kisses?"

"You know…." Chandler stood, stroking her arm. "From the beginning of the trip…."

Monica stared into his eyes, and swallowed hard. Yes, she confessed, if only in your heart. More than you know….

Chandler's gaze softened and he started to lean forward. Monica turned her face away. "Chandler, no…." she murmured. She couldn't bring herself to say it firmly, so she was thankful when Chandler took the rejection and stood down.

"I…. I keep thinking of the way I kissed you out in front of the coffee shop," he admitted in a hoarse whisper. "And how I could… feel that you didn't pull away then. I feel haunted by that kiss you should never have given me, on the beach, and can only hope it won't become a scar. What can I do? I'll do anything you ask."

Monica turned back to him, gobsmacked. Anything? she wondered. Will you forget those kisses? Will you stop looking at me funny, the way you have been – let us both just go back to our jobs? Let us both just go back to being friends?

She thought all this, of course. Monica just couldn't bring herself to say it.

She could say nothing beyond wrapping him in a hug, rubbing his back.

"It's like I told you and Joey earlier – friends don't date. Shouldn't date. Especially not best friends…." She drew back, pondering him tenderly. "You remember what happened with Kip."

Chandler winced. He did, all too well. "But every friendship, particularly between the opposite sex, must face that test of…. more…. at least once in its lifetime."

Monica shrugged. "And some friends act on it, some don't. And even those who do act on it – like me and Kip – can fail."

"Did we fail?" Chandler stepped into her, searching her eyes. "When we kissed, when we crossed that line, did our friendship fail?"

How was she supposed to answer that? Monica thought back to the dream she had had, the one in which she and Chandler had been married and had a child. She thought of how shaken she still was that a part of her still… still… found that imagined future. Desirable. Like she wanted it….

"Chandler…." she whimpered. "I don't want to lose you…"

It was as firm a stance as she was going to manage for now, the rest of her rationale, though unspoken, clear. Or what she hoped was clear: I don't want to risk losing our friendship.

She left him with a kiss on the cheek. "Goodnight…." she whispered, turning for her bedroom.

She had barely climbed up onto the mattress before she was curling into a ball and crying herself to sleep.