Chapter 11: Love Two People at the Same Time

"Happy Birthday to you!... Happy Birthday to you!... Happy Birthday dear Court-eney!... Happy Birthday to you!..."

The small intimate gathering of family and close friends (including The Friends) erupted into cheers and applause as Jennifer and Coco lowered a cake they held between them before the birthday girl.

Courteney smiled gratefully at all of her loved ones, ignoring the sheer number of candles on the cake. In truth, she was rather ambivalent about turning 60. A much younger, less wise version of herself would have perished the thought, before she had learned that true beauty was found within, and beauty that was only skin-deep might only last a little while. Although, she still had to concede, for 60, she looked excellent.

At the same table set out in Courteney's Malibu backyard on this hot day in mid-June, Lisa let out a whoop. "Finally! Someone else is in the Sixty Club with me!" All of the Friends laughed, recalling the major birthday party they had thrown just last summer. Lisa's husband of nearly thirty years (hers was the only marriage amidst the cast that had lasted, from the wrap of Season 1 on) and their son, Julian, had run around like tree shrews trying to get everything ready, exchanging barked orders in rapid French, and only Lisa and Matt LeBlanc (both fluent in French themselves) had known what they were saying.

Courteney studied Lisa now, a close girl friend who had never failed to show her the way. It was her ability to juggle being on the number one TV show in America and being pregnant at the same time that had inspired Courteney to believe that maybe she could do the same. Of course, that had only come to pass after multiple setbacks of agonizing failure, and she had only felt her daughter within her for a few months towards the end of the series' run, but in retrospect, perhaps that had been for the best. Everyone said Season 10 had been a shortened one because Jennifer had wanted to move on, yet the other, unsaid reason had been the finale needed to be filmed before Courteney truly started to show, lest fans become confused about Monica's storyline. Courteney may have been the mother hen of the group, but it was Lisa who had been one of the true leaders, along with her and Schwimmer. But Courteney supposed that kind of authority came from being 10 and a half months older.

The cake was the capper on a very much enjoyable birthday celebration. Coco had entertained her mother and her mother's friends by performing an adapted rendition of the Hairspray hit, 'Hey Mama, Welcome to the Sixties.' The cheeky coup de grace, of course, had come when Coco had brilliantly tweaked one of the lyrics to say, "Oh, honey, it's been years since Springsteen asked you to dance."

"Let's go! Let's make a wish, Cox-N-Hammer!" Jennifer clapped her hands.

Courteney stared around at her loved ones. Her friends. Her family. Everyone who she valued most in the world was here – even her ex-husband had made an appearance.

Well…. almost everyone she loved was here.

Sensing an ache in her chest, Courteney willed her smile to beam that much wider, as she bent and blew out her candles, with much hoopla.

It didn't surprise her at all that Matt was the first to go for the cake. "This is great! We should do this for every milestone birthday!"

"Matt! My 55th was only four months ago!" Jennifer gawked around an amused smile, her hands on her hips.

"Exactly my point! 55th – 60th – 20th…." Matt pointed at Jennifer, Courteney and Coco in turn, bestowing the lattermost with a wink. "Celebrations like these are meant to be honored!"

The allusion to Jennifer's big birthday from last February caused Courteney to suck in a small, sharp breath – unnoticeable to anyone else around her, but to her, it was like the wind had gotten knocked out of her.

Jennifer was 55…. and she had always been six months older than Matty…. Courteney's face scanned the table again for that one face who should be here, even as she knew it was fruitless.

He would have been 55 in August…

"Come on, CC, what did ya wish for?" Schwimmer quibbled around a mouthful of cake.

Courteney smiled, though it didn't reach her eyes. "Can't tell, big brother. If I did, my wish wouldn't come true."

…. Not that it ever had a chance of coming true, of course. Still, Courteney had made the wish, for the one present she wanted more than any other, yet she knew she couldn't have….

"It's a shame your honey had to miss this!" Jennifer playfully bumped Courteney's hip with hers.

"Yeah…" Courteney murmured, her eyes drifting again to Lisa, who was getting into a fork duel with Matt and Julian. She thought back to last summer, for Lisa's 60th. Everyone had been in attendance.

She felt the tears coming, and her irises struggled to hold the moisture back. That birthday party had been the last time she'd seen him…. Three months later, Matty was….

"….. Oh, if only he had lived to see this…" Her voice came out in a breathless, wistful, emotional sigh.

Jennifer leaned back, frowning confusedly. "I was talking about… Johnny…" Courteney's partner had already needed to return to London. To his credit, Johnny had been really upset at the prospect of not only missing the milestone birthday of his lover, but also Coco's milestone birthday from a couple days before, to the point that he'd gotten into an argument with his band mates about it just before he'd left. But Snow Patrol had a new album dropping in a matter of weeks, and Courteney knew her boyfriend's music career was important.

Nerve endings tingled as Courteney felt Jennifer reach for her hand and give it a squeeze. She peered up, restless, into her best girl friend's face.

Courteney swallowed. "We should do something in August." She scanned around at them all. "For Matty. It's his 55th, and he would have wanted…." Overcome, she couldn't finish.

Jennifer pressed a kiss into her co-star's temple. "Then we'll do something in August," she vowed quietly, her voice also thick with emotion.

Courteney was pensive as she changed out of her party dress later that evening, alone in her bedroom. Folding the garment carefully, her eyes lifted and landed on the framed portrait that now sat in a prized spot on her bedside table.

"Hi, honey…." She murmured gently. Her smile turned fond, loving. "It was a wonderful party. Wish you could have been there…." A slight pause, and then she giggled. "Jenny and Floosh went crazy trying to bake my cake! Then Matt tried to eat it all…. I can only imagine what you would have gotten up to. You probably would have teased me, but all in good fun. After all – we are getting old, my love. You've got to admit it: we are getting older!"

"Is that Johnny….? Tell him I say goodnight…" Coco's wafting voice briefly preceded the rest of her as she poked her head in the room, only for her words to trail off as she realized her mother didn't have her phone to her ear. Befuddled, the young undergrad peered around. "Mother, who are you talking to….?"

Flushing at being caught, Courteney's gaze unconsciously darted to the framed portrait. She had only recently been stoic enough to place it in such a prominent position, right next to a snapshot of her partner and her, a couple of weeks ago. She could tell that Johnny had been intrigued by it, but he hadn't asked questions.

Now following her mom's gaze, Coco's own eyes widened, as a knowing smile dawned across her lips. "Oh, I see….. Shall I leave you and your handsome ghost alone for a moment?..."

Courteney arched an eyebrow at her daughter's teasing. "You don't even believe in ghosts."

"I'm the product of two people who starred in one of the best horror franchises in modern history, and you say I don't believe in ghosts? How dare you!" Coco cried, indignant, though her eyes were twinkling. Just the same, she pretended to be offended when her mother began to chortle. "Don't laugh at me! Why is that funny?" Though her feigned anger was starting to break.

"Nothing, precious. It's just…. oh, you just reminded me of Matthew, and how he would have said that." Her memory carried her away, back to a pivotal moment in Monica and Chandler's story: I quit and you learn what I do?

Coco now floated up to the nightstand, studying the picture. "He looks very handsome there," she offered. "You can hardly tell that he was sick or that he aged so poorly…"

"He aged perfectly well!" Courteney snapped, a little too hotly, causing Coco to rear back a bit.

"OK, OK….. Sorry…. I didn't mean anything bad by it. But hey, I'm not the one who was in love with him…."

Courteney dropped her head with a sigh. "Coco, we've been over this…."

"That we have. Which begs the question: when are you going to stop lying to yourself?" Her mom glanced up, startled and caught off-guard by the forceful pushback, even as Coco's stare remained gentle. "Mama: when Aunt Jenny said something about your 'honey' this morning, you immediately thought she was talking about…" She gestured lamely to Matthew Perry's framed portrait on the nightstand – the same picture that graced the cover of his book. "And I'd hazard a lucky guess that your birthday wish might have involved a desire to reverse death itself, just to have him there for your day!"

Courteney flushed a deep shade of red, all but confirming that she had wished for exactly that. "What do you want me to say?" she almost pleaded, weakly.

Coco studied her compassionately. "How about the truth?" At Courteney's almost scared look, she shrugged. "It would go a long way towards closure, anyway. Healing." There was a small lull before the younger woman finally sighed. "Mom: I don't know what was going on between you two during Friends – after all, I wasn't there. But god….. bless it," she caught herself in the nick of time at Courteney's warning look. "There was something!"

Courteney chuffed out an exhausted breath through her nose. "Baby, you're only seeing what you want to see! All that you've seen is stuff that happened between Monica and Chandler – two fictional people!" She felt the need to point out.

Coco considered this, but then finally shook her head. "I don't believe that. And deep down, I don't think you believe it, either. So let me ask you this:" She froze her mother with a probing, but also curious, look. "Do you think it's possible for someone to be in love with two people at the same time?" And she left the woman who had raised her with that thought.

Courteney felt her now-sixty-year-old legs giving out from under her. She let the mattress catch her, and she sat down on the edge of the bed, her mind adrift in thought.

She indulged in roving her gaze over his picture, one more time.

If Coco – a person who had not even been a witness to everything that had passed between her and Matthew – could see something deeper, beneath the surface, then was she, Courteney, simply being willfully blind to facts that were all but staring her in the face?

It was a delicate, and yet intriguing question Coco posed: could someone be in love with two people at the same time?

FLASHBACK: Fall 2003

"Yeah, I'm 39; I've been wanting to have kids… for a while…." Courteney told Oprah Winfrey from where she sat with her Friends family on the Central Perk couch.

"Maybe Little Matty can help!" Matthew quipped from where he sat right at her side, causing everybody to burst into laughter. When the giggles had died down, he grew sincere, saying, "And Courteney, who I just… love… You know, I love Courteney. Just seeing Courteney…. Courteney's life become exactly the way Courteney's…. wanted her life to be…." Smiling with pride, he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, his hand cupping her face. Courteney couldn't help but allow a shy smile as she leaned into him, accepting his touch.

Later, after they had finished taping the interview, the cast had moved back on set to prepare to shoot another scene for what would be the final season. In the hallway outside the Apartment 20 set, Courteney pulled Matthew aside.

"Hey. Can…. Can we talk….?"

"Yeah." His face immediately fell as he seemed to sense what she was about to say. "Oh, God…. I made you uncomfortable, didn't I? It was the crack about Little Matty, wasn't it?" He made a show of glaring down past his navel and at his crotch. "Bad Little Matty!"

"No…." Courteney chuckled. "No, sweetie, you didn't make me mad. I…." She started to wring her hands, biting her lip as she peered up into his face. She had always been… well, not intimidated, but certainly struck by his height. As she was only 5'5", he mostly towered over her at 6 feet even. "I just wanted to know… did you mean it?"

"Mean what?"

"That thing about you and Little Matty when I was talking about babies. Did you mean it?"

His expression collapsed into something soft. "Sweetheart, of course I meant it!" He took a step into her. "I would do anything for you. You know that."

To hear him say it, hear the naked sincerity in his voice, astonished her, even as it also didn't surprise her. She nodded. "I know…." Courteney felt almost moved to tears. Her dearest friend was willing to help give her a child, even though he had only recently started to get well and turn a corner.

"Look: I know you and Arquette have been trying, and I'm pretty sure I can say how he'd feel about it, but if…. if there is a problem getting…. something to stick, I'd be…." Matthew gulped as he watched how Courteney was blinking at him dolefully. "I mean, come on! I did say once a long time ago that if we're 40… and neither of us are married…. what do you say you and I got together and had one?" Courteney pursed her lips in an indulgent smile, shaking her head at his reference to what by now had been established as an iconic early Mondler moment, back in Season 1.

"Except I am married," she reminded him with a gentle, bright smile.

"Trust me: I'm aware." There was something in his tone that she couldn't quite place. A pause, and then he giggled awkwardly. "But, hey, what do I know? For all I know, Arquette's assets could be perfectly fine and he's not the problem!" A beat, and he glanced sharply to her, panicked. "Not that I meant to imply by that that you're the problem – you're perfect and I…. wait, what…?"

His babbling stammered to a stop as, with a giggle, Courteney threw her arms around him. "Thank you…." she murmured, a lump forming in her throat. Easing back, her eyes softened and she dared to brush her lips along his cheek in a grateful kiss. Matthew jerked slightly, but then he smiled, and Courteney all at once felt as though an acid hook was digging into her gut.

"You're welcome. Anything for you, my dear – always…."

END OF FLASHBACK