Chapter 1: I Wish
Darkness awaited Rachel Green when she awoke.
The gloom caused fear to grip her all the worse as she was awakening in the mirror of a bad dream. Or what she thought was a bad dream. For a fraction of a second, the heartbroken fashion assistant couldn't remember where she was or how she had gotten there.
She was lying prone, horizontal, and when she lifted her body partway and glanced about, as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she realized that she had been asleep on the couch in the main living area of her and Monica's apartment.
Something was brushing against her skin, scratchy and itchy, and she craned her neck to look down the length of her body: at some point during the night, someone had draped a blanket over her. Rachel twisted under the fabric adorning her body, already plenty tangled in it so that she felt more like a caterpillar trapped in a cocoon. Trapped, much as she felt trapped in the aftermath of Ross's poor choices.
Growling with frustration, Rachel finally batted and slapped the blanket off of herself, wriggling out of it, so that the offending thing slipped off the cushions and fluttered into a pool on the floor. She wasn't sure which of her friends had shown such a kindness, but on the chance that it had been Ross…. she wanted to get that damn blanket off of her.
Rachel swallowed hard as the memories of this night – by now surely the previous night as it appeared to be the wee hours of the morning – washed over her. A frog caught in her throat, and she had to work extra hard to keep the sob at bay.
Ross. The man she had loved – in some ways, still loved, in spite of everything, though she was too prideful at the moment to admit that to herself, if she ever would. The man who had betrayed her trust, and after giving every indication that she was his true love, the one he wanted, the woman he had wanted for years and carried a torch for going back to their earliest high school days.
Despite his awkwardness, Ross could be charming and sweet when he wanted to be. While it was true that Rachel hadn't completely noticed him in high school, would have been caught dead out anywhere with him in high school, running out on her wedding to Barry and the past three years on her own had given Rachel a new humbling perspective. It wasn't that her standards in men had lowered, exactly, in her finally agreeing to explore her deeper feelings for Ross, but rather that her outlook on love had broadened. One didn't have to pursue a partner just because they were gorgeous to look at – physical attraction was only part of the equation, and for that matter, beauty was only skin-deep. And besides, it wasn't as though Ross wasn't handsome – he was, in his own way.
Furthermore, Ross had taught her things. He, along with his sister to an equal extent, had taught Rachel to become less shallow. In fleeing her wedding, Rachel had understood on some level that a person with more humility was who she wanted to be – she just hadn't known how to become that person, that day standing lost and alone in Monica's kitchen with the mobile phone to her ear, mixing up her metaphors to her father about how she didn't want to be a shoe. In his own geeky way, Ross had been the one to steer her down the path to get there – to being a well-rounded, humble person. To bolster her own self-worth and view it on her terms, rather than through the lens of others or along superficial planes like how much money you have or who your parents are.
Ross had taught Rachel about what it meant to place value in a relationship that, again, went beyond skin-deep. He had shown her that any relationship worth pursing required hard work, but also an emotional understanding and resonance with another person. He had been trying to put in that hard work, showing up at her office with that ridiculous picnic basket and insisting that they had to celebrate their anniversary right then, on that day, because well, the date meant something, to both of them. She'd felt bad about her work getting in the way, and had tried to tell him so.
Which is what made how Ross had decided to deal with her, while not an outright rejection, rather…. deferment, so enraging and perplexing: he had slept with some whore whom Joey and Chandler had been panting after like puppy dogs, down at the Kinko's copy place. He had betrayed Rachel, and in a moment of weakness. With one single act, he had negated everything Rachel had learned from him about what it took to be in a loving, mature relationship and keep it together.
Rachel felt the tears slipping down her cheeks, the moisture quickly working its way up into a torrent, and she buried her face into her palms to hide the sob that now burst free. It had broken her heart to see Ross in such an anguished and bereft state himself, down on his knees, hugging her around her middle as if afraid she would vanish into thin air after rendering her judgment: for the crime of infidelity, she had damned him to a life without her. It hadn't been personal – well, not to a complete degree. It hadn't even been easy – to the contrary, setting aside Ross and what they had would no doubt go down as one of the most consequential, wrenching decisions of Rachel's life, right up there with her running out on Barry.
A sliver of her hadn't wanted to do it. But in sleeping with Chloe, Ross had left her no choice: she simply couldn't be with someone, couldn't trust someone, who cheated. Even if it had been a profound lapse of judgment (a point on which even Rachel could tell that Ross was sincere), the damage was done. Trust wasn't built in a day; it wasn't supposed to be. Yet one day, one night of misjudgment, was all that it took, was more than enough, to make years of emotional intimacy, painstakingly crafted, come crashing down. How could you ever trust another person, a partner, in the same way again after that person so utterly broke your trust?
The Mark thing was, and had been, nothing. Rachel knew that, and it vexed her that while she had clearly trusted Ross not to stray, Ross had evidently not trusted her enough to not do the same. Rachel had assumed in all that she had learned from Ross that what he was teaching her was that trust ran as a two-way street. But now she understood that trust only mattered to Ross so long as it flowed towards him, but not necessarily in the other direction.
This lay at the crux of the matter, to Rachel's mind. She believed Ross when he said he had made a colossal mistake, even if she couldn't forgive him. She was uncertain if she ever would forgive him because, in matters of trust, Ross had expected from her things that he hadn't had the character to expect from himself. A man possessing a momentary flaw in judgment, she perhaps could forgive, one day, far in the future. A man possessing an intrinsic flaw in character, she could not, much less be with.
By now, Rachel's sobs had been reduced to sniffles, and she lifted her head from her splayed palms. The darkness still enveloped the apartment, almost as if it was crushing down on her as much as Ross's absence clearly was. Already, she missed him, even though she told herself it was for her own good, sanity and self-preservation that she had banished him from this apartment: not an easy or straightforward thing to do when the sister of the banished was her roommate.
The thought of Monica thus falling into her head, Rachel finally stood on unsteady legs and padded over to her best girlfriend's room. Pushing back the door so it was slightly ajar, a sliver of light from the moon illuminated how the bed was clearly occupied. Rachel closed the door quietly. She would need Monica in the coming days and weeks, as much as she pragmatically reminded herself that she would have to tread lightly: the last thing she wanted was to have Monica caught in the middle and forced to choose between loyalty to her brother and loyalty to her best friend. Yet Rachel knew she would need the beautiful chef's sound advice and mother-henning ways anyhow: Monica had been down this road before, with Kip.
Rachel had never met Kip – he had faded from the friend group long before she and even Joey had shown up. Chandler, Pheebs and the others who had been there hardly ever spoke of it, but from the little they did, Rachel understood that the death of Monica and Kip's romance had been a bad one, resulting in a tectonic shift that had irrevocably altered the dynamic of everyone in the group.
For what it was worth (if it was worth anything), Rachel desperately did not want Ross to go the way of Kip. To leave forever. His familial tie to Monica was a bizarre blessing in that way, as their sibling closeness allowed some assurance that he would not leave their tight-knit band entirely. Yet Rachel knew that the death of her and Ross's relationship was going to make things awkward, just as it had apparently had for Monica and Kip, and that pushing out of the group the most dispensable person between her and Ross was not going to be the fix.
Rachel stared at the door to her roommate's bedroom. Poor Monica. She could look to the beautiful chef for inspiration on what to do after and hopefully, eventually, following heartbreak, but that didn't mean it would be an easy road. Monica seemed to just be returning to her normal self, following her split with Richard, but thus far, she had yet to meet or go out with anyone new.
Rachel now found herself wheeling through everyone in their friend group…. and was disheartened by her analysis: that every single one of them had been struggling lately.
As things stood now:
By her own hand, Ross was now a shell of the man he had been, heartbroken and perhaps on the way to suicidal, unless she pulled herself together to show him some grace, if not compassion.
Monica was just beginning to get over a man whom she had been convinced was the love of her life, and was still on the search to find a serious person whom she could spend her life with and one day raise a family.
Chandler was…. well, Chandler, flailing from unserious relationship to unserious relationship and hating it. Joey was…. well, Joey, flailing from unserious relationship to unserious relationship and loving it.
And Phoebe…. while Phoebe seemed to be the most put-together out of all of them, at least at the present moment, things hadn't been a picnic for the quirky masseuse either. True, she may have the steadiest job amongst them, but that had only come after a childhood growing up on the streets. Being ignored and even outright neglected by a twin sister who didn't understand her. A stepfather in prison. A mother dead by suicide. A father who had abandoned the family when Phoebe was a child. And while she might be a good enough actress to hide it, Rachel could tell that Phoebe was still hurt by her scientist beau, David, leaving her to take up research in Minsk.
It was all a fine kettle of fish. Worse – it was a mess. As aforementioned, their love lives were DOA. Most or nearly all of them were broke, or otherwise broken. Their jobs were a joke, in that Joey technically didn't have one; Chandler did have one but it clearly made him unhappy, all the worse since no one knew what he did because he himself couldn't explain it to them. While he might have been happy in his work, Ross was currently in a museum position that held very little if any opportunity for advancement – about this, he had ranted to Rachel more than once. For Monica, it was professionally the exact same story, compounded by her insatiable desire to marry and start a family while being no closer towards achieving either goal. Same for Rachel too – Bloomingdale's wasn't the best at recognizing her for her talents, and at the rare time they did, it never seemed to come fast enough for her. Phoebe seemed to have the least woes professionally out of all of them, but she was in a luxury industry that likely couldn't afford lucrative or consistent pay – only the rich elite splurged on massages, and even this wasn't all the time. Rachel had grown up in a family that had all the wealth in the world, and yet her father had demonstrated to her, her mother and her sisters an obvious stinginess about spending money insofar as where and when money should go towards feminine indulgences. The flexible hours Phoebe enjoyed compared to the rest of them couldn't mean much, if such flexibility suggested a shortage in clientele.
It was like they were all, in one way or another, stuck in second gear. At any given time for one of them, it was invariably not their day, their week, their month, or even their year.
True, they had each other, sure. But having each other could only carry them so far.
This was too much. Rachel found herself rounding the large, bay window and ducking through the small, latched opening out onto the balcony and into the cool air of this springtime night. She fought to ignore how even being out here introduced a flood of memories, like the night she and Ross had shared a glass of wine out here, and she had first felt that… spark between them. True, back then it would be some time yet before they actually got together, but even so….
To a certain extent, Rachel envied that spoiled rich girl she had once been, the one who had burst into Central Perk in a bridal gown. Growing up not wanting for anything – material anyhow – might have made life shallow and meaningless, but at least it had been simple. Like a fairytale….
She wished she had that fairytale life now – not with Barry, no, never. But still…. would it spoil some, grand eternal plan if she were happy? If her friends were happy? If she and Monica and Phoebe, Ross and everyone else….. could have everything they ever wanted?
Because glancing around at herself, Rachel could clearly see how she was rich in friends and laughter, but poor in everything else: no work fulfillment. No money. And now, no boyfriend. If only the Rachel from three years ago knew then what she knew now:
I thought I'd found a place
Where I could make things better
But all I did was change where I would fail
Oh, what do I do if I don't belong
Where life can never be a fairy tale?
Where life can never be a fairytale?
A strange whoozing sound suddenly made her glance up, towards the stars.
From the timbre alone, it didn't sound like an airplane, coasting overhead. Scanning the skies, Rachel just then caught a glimpse of it: a shooting star, falling to earth. Her mother had used to read to her and Amy and Jill stories of what would happen if they wished upon a star. Closing her eyes, Rachel felt the tears leak out behind her lashes and down her cheeks, as she willed that someone – God, the Wishing Star, Ross, anyone – to hear her silent, anguished cry:
And so I make this wish
Where life is so confusing
And pain can cut you sharper than a knife
I wish that we all would live someplace where
Songs of the flowers ring in the air
And ogres and dragons are all that is scary
Give us all a fairy-tale life
I wish… we had a fairytale…. life….
If ever she understood anything, especially now, Rachel understood that wishes don't come true. Nevertheless, in making it, even a hopeless one…. she felt better.
Turning, she sadly trudged towards the side window, ducking under the shutter to re-enter the apartment before turning and closing the latch.