A/N Thank you for your continued support! I'm afraid the levels of angst are ramping up here...
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, I am writing for fun and no profit will be made.
Monica walked steadily into Apartment 20 summoning all of the resolve she could muster. This was it. This had to be it. She could not continue to ignore the ache in her chest, the flutters in her stomach, the wild imaginings that tortured her mind. She and Chandler had been dancing around each other for months now, pushing their ever more obvious feelings for one another away. And now she had accepted a marriage proposal from somebody else? Things were spinning out of control, pushing her onto a dangerous trajectory where so many people stood to get hurt. She had to sort this out, once and for all.
"Mon?" Chandler was sitting at the table nursing a bottle of beer "Shouldn't you be out celebrating with Pete?" he asked her gingerly.
She shook her head, "Pete's in Boston" she muttered.
"Is Kathy here?" she checked, giving the room a cursory scan.
"No, she will actually be working away a lot for the next few weeks. She has an acting job in one of those living museums in Salem." Chandler eyed her expectantly, fully anticipating some sort of quip about witches from his quick-witted friend, and felt unsettled when the obvious joke failed to materialise.
Instead she was gazing intensely into his blue eyes. She took a deep breath. "If you ask me not to marry him then I won't." she blurted out.
Her words ricocheted through his being like an electric shock.
"What?" he finally managed to croak.
Monica's voice was steadier now. "If you tell me now that you don't want me to marry Pete, I won't marry him"
Chandler was glad that he was sitting down because had he have been standing he knew that his knees would have buckled. He struggled to keep his breath steady.
"Mon, only you can make that decision" he spoke quietly and carefully "It has nothing to do with me".
"No" Monica refuted with surety "It has everything to do with you".
She felt a surge of courage now after shedding the burden of keeping her emotions concealed for so long. She sat down at the table next to him and cupped his hands in hers.
"Ever since we kissed, I have not been able to get you out of my mind" she admitted, "And I know you feel it too". She swallowed hard at the lump that was forming in her throat and studied his face expectantly.
Chandlers eyes closed and he removed his right hand from her grip, to rub his temple contemplatively. His left hand squeezed her fingers gently.
"Monica..." he began, shaking his head slowly.
"Don't try to deny it Chandler" she told him firmly, "I know you have feelings for me too, I've seen the way you look at me" she spoke bravely, despite the knot of anxiety that constricted her chest.
His clear blue gaze met hers with more tenderness than she had ever seen in another person's eyes: It took her breath away. "I'm not going to deny that I have feelings for you Monica" he told her sincerely "I'm not going to pretend that I don't think about you. Or that I have never imagined what it would like to be with you" his thumb stroked her hand gently. "But I'm engaged. And so are you."
"Well maybe Pete's not the right person for me. And maybe Kathy isn't the right person for you. We wouldn't be drawn this way to each other if they were" her eyes were pleading with him to accept what she was saying, to recognize what she now clearly saw was the undeniable truth.
"I can't speak for you and Pete" Chandler said sadly, "But I think that Kathy is the right person for me".
What the fuck was he doing? Monica was his dream woman, he could admit that to himself now. And here she was standing before him telling him that she wanted him too. But he had thought about this long and hard enough to conclude that a dream is all they could ever be.
"Come on Mon, this is crazy. We're both in serious relationships. The most serious relationships either of us have ever managed before. We can't just throw that away for a fantasy. We have had one kiss!"
"It's not just one kiss, we've known each other, we've cared about each other for ten years!" she protested.
"But we have no idea how we would be together, whether we would work as a couple. We've always been such close friends and I think that kiss... it just confused things."
Tears pricked at Monica's disbelieving eyes. She pulled her hands away from his and stood up, beginning to pace the floor anxiously. "Then explain why we can't stay away from one another? Explain to me why I can't stop thinking about you..." she stuttered.
Chandler stood to approach her and placed a gentle hand on her arm to still her.
"Mon, I can't explain those things" he told her "Because I think about you all the time too. I have imagined being with you, holding you, having a future with you... all of those things... and it's amazing. "
Her eyes gazed back into his, full of an intense longing he had never dared to believe she could feel for him, and it took all of the strength he had to continue with his rationale. "But then I imagine you having to leave Pete. I imagine you having to abandon your restaurant. I imagine you having to tell Ross and your parents that you gave up the amazing life you have and the incredible future you have in front of you to be with... me" He looked down shamefully "I imagine myself disappointing you and letting you down and not being able to give you the things you could have had. The things you should have." he paused for a moment, pain furrowing his brow "And I imagine you eventually resenting me for ruining your life".
"That would never happen." she shook her head vehemently.
"It would, Mon" he said sadly "And I would lose you forever. I can't risk that."
"Chandler, I know this is scary. Do you not think I'm terrified? Standing here and saying these things to you?" She raised a hand to his cheek, stroking him with delicate fingertips "But the alternative scares me more. The idea of you living half a life with Kathy, and me living half a life with Pete. Wondering forever what we might have had. How incredible we might have been".
Her wide blue eyes bore into his, open and without guile.
God, he wanted to take that leap of faith. He longed to take her into his arms, to kiss her delicate lips and her porcelain skin and tell her confidently that he would spend the rest of his life making her the happiest woman in the world. It felt like the universe was taunting him with some kind of cruel joke: offering him a glimpse of all of his hopes and dreams, dangling them tantalizingly before his eyes, in the full knowledge that his incontrovertible inadequacies and crippling insecurities could only ever prevent him from grasping them.
He was beginning to feel unsteady on his feet. He took a step away from her and leaned against the counter. "No Mon, the thing that scares me most is not having you in my life at all. You know only too well that I have screwed up every relationship I have ever been in: I couldn't live with myself if I screwed up things with you. You're my best friend"
He saw the raw anguish in her eyes and had to look away. "Being friends isn't nothing, you know? Your friendship means so much to me. " he ventured without artifice.
She let out a mirthless laugh "Well I think after this conversation, that ship has well and truly sailed" she told him, hot tears beginning to spill from her eyes.
"Please don't say that Mon" he begged.
She wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand.
"You know what? If you had said to me, just once, that you didn't want me because you are in love with your fiancee? Sure, I would have been sad, but I would have walked out of here and found a way to accept it. Because what I want, more than anything else, is for you to be happy Chandler. But nothing you have said makes be believe that this is going to make you happy. "
"I do love Kathy" Chandler argued, entirely unconvincingly.
Monica let out a morose chuckle of doubt "Well do it then" she told him "Marry her. Live your half life, always wondering what might have been if we hadn't been too scared to try. But please don't ask me to watch. I can't keep being around you, pretending that things are normal and OK between us." her face crumpled and she bit her lip to stifle a sob.
"And just so you know, I'm still going to tell Pete I can't marry him" she nodded decisively "So all those things you said before will most likely come true anyway". She gave a melancholy shrug.
"Oh Mon, please don't do anything rash." Chandler implored her "Pete adores you, he would do anything for you. Don't throw that away for nothing."
"Nothing?" she looked momentarily angry but the fire in her eyes quickly melted into sorrow, "You're not nothing Chandler. Not to me." she told him with sincerity.
"And I can't marry someone I don't love completely. I can't marry someone out of fear." she gave him a pointed look.
"Well you've always been stronger than me Mon" he sighed regretfully lowering his gaze.
Monica nodded sadly, "Looks like you're right." there was bitterness in her voice but no malice, yet the abject disappointment on her face made him feel utterly worthless. He wanted, at that moment, to vanish from the face of the Earth.
"I'm so sorry Mon" he choked back tears as he felt himself become submerged in sadness, desperation and mostly, in self-loathing.
"Me too" she replied simply as she turned and left the room.
Chandler glanced at his alarm clock for what felt like the millionth time that night. 5.40am. To say his sleep had been fitful was an understatement; in fact, he was unsure if he had drifted off at all.
The conversation with Monica had replayed on repeat in his head and his heart was pained by a persistent dull ache. As hour after fretful hour had passed, he felt increasingly less confident in his decision to commit to a future with Kathy instead of eagerly grasping the opportunity to explore the idea of a relationship with Monica.
The look of utter devastation on her face as she had ran from the apartment was haunting him and the knowledge that she was most likely lying in her bed, hurt and upset, just a few strides away from him was torturous. He had risen from his bed more than once with the intention of racing across the hallway and sweeping her into his arms.
But everything he had said to her earlier was true.
He had worked so hard to build a solid future with Kathy, and his feelings for her really did run deep. His friendship with Monica was one of the most important and treasured relationships in his life. These were not things he was prepared to gamble with.
But what if Monica was right? What if these feelings of attraction towards her never subsided? What if they were never able to bring their friendship back to a purely platonic level? What if he was left wondering forever what might have been if he had been impulsive enough, brave enough to take a chance? What if she cut him from her life anyway?
Chandler let out a groan. He could not be in this apartment any more. He needed air. He needed to walk. He needed not to have Monica's physical proximity at the forefront of his mind. He pulled on some clothes and readied himself to head outside with no real plan beyond aimlessly wandering the streets.
It was 8.00am. Monica had slept barely a wink, if at all. Her pillow was damp with tears and streaked with mascara. She had spent the night thrashing restlessly around her bed and the only reason she had managed to stay in her room for so long was because she had half expected Chandler to appear at her doorway at some point through the night , telling her that he had reconsidered their conversation. Saying that of course he wanted her too. She had imagined that he would take her in his arms and kiss away her tears and they would find a way to navigate through this mess together.
But he had not materialized.
So now, alongside the sick feelings of trepidation she was experiencing about her impending conversation with Pete, she also felt completely humiliated by Chandler's rejection of her and was dreading seeing him too. But neither the anxiety nor the humiliation remotely compared to the very real physical pain in her chest that she knew was caused by her heart being broken into pieces.
As Monica emerged groggily from her bedroom, Rachel was standing in the kitchen buttering a piece of toast "Hey!" she exclaimed "I assumed you would be at Pete's!"
"He had to go to Boston" Monica mumbled in reply.
"Are you OK?" Rachel examined her friend's appearance with worry. Monica's eyes were red and swollen from crying and her skin deathly pale from a lack of sleep.
"You look terrible! Are you sick?" Rachel exclaimed, reaching over to test Monica's forehead for sign of fever.
"Maybe" Monica replied "I didn't sleep"
"Oh sweetie" Rachel consoled, "Do you need anything? I'm meeting my Mom in an hour and spending the day with her but I can pick you up some medicine before I go? "
"I'll be fine" Monica told her "I'm just going to take a shower. Hopefully that will help."
She swiftly disappeared into the bathroom before Rachel could question her further.
It was just before lunchtime when Monica answered a telephone call from Pete.
"Hey honey. I'm all sorted here, I'm flying back in about an hour so shouldn't be too late" he told her, "What do you want to do tonight? I can get Sally to make us reservations. Wherever you want. I'm going to make it up to you, I promise."
"Can you please just come over here?" Monica asked him quietly "I need to speak to you".
The line fell silent for a moment. "Sure. Is everything OK?" Pete sounded confused.
"Yeah. I just need to speak to you." Monica repeated.
"OK." He paused again "I'll come straight over. I missed you".
"Safe flight" Monica managed to hoarsely mutter, before hanging up the receiver and allowing a fresh stream of tears to fall from her eyes.