Work Text:
Of all Chandler's friends, Monica Geller is high on the list of who I’d least want to run into since our break up. Joey would be up there, of course, because how awkward would that be? I ended things with him to get with his best friend and then ended things with his best friend. Or his best friend ended things with me—I’m still not sure how to classify the concluding moments of that final first fight, turned angry (make up?) sex, turned him disappearing while I slept and never hearing from him again. It isn’t as though I followed up.
Prior to walking into that café, it was looking to be one of those rare mornings where I could feel free to fantasize about the future direction of my life, without a pestering sense of inadequacy or doubt creeping up on me. Or guilt, as it sometimes was, when I thought about the mistakes of my past. I’d just gotten out of a great audition for a long-running show, the sun was shining, the polluted noise of New York City faded to a backing track of the song playing on repeat in my head, and I was just entering my favorite café, planning a quick stop for a late breakfast. Today, things were going to be good.
So, in reference to the general tone of the universe that morning, it really didn’t make sense that she was there. Their whole group had their favorite café—that coffee house just next to the apartment building, that I’d written off wholesale (it didn’t have that great of coffee to begin with) knowing that the chances of running into one of them sitting on that center orange couch was inevitable. I’d chosen this place all that time ago as my new go-to casual eatery precisely because it wasn’t in the Village, it wasn’t near his workplace; it was way on the other side of town, tucked out of the way of the prying eyes of any of those six coalescent and codependent people.
But there she was, standing in a blue striped sweatshirt, ordering a cup to-go and then turning around to see me.
Aside from the intense embarrassment that would result in seeing Joey again—already a constant balancing act within the New York amateur acting scene—and while I'm sure all Chandler's friends care deeply for him and despise me now, it’s Monica who I've dreaded running into the most. She’s the only one I’m reasonably assured might actually be willing and able to kick my ass.
I know she knows about the cheating. Even if I could trick myself into thinking he never told any of them about it, she would still know. Somehow.
“Oh, wow,” she started, stopping short at the sight of me. “Kathy. Hi.”
“Monica, hi!” I smiled a little too brightly, my voice too loud and cheerful. We lapsed into silence, staring at one another. Finally my mouth got away from my brain. "You must hate me," I said, complete with an awkward half-laugh. God, what a thing to say. But I know that deep down, even though I try to act like a cool and aloof person, I'm actually quite insecure, and my desire for artistic clout and commercial success and public attention is just a desire to be noticed and liked. I think that desire is another thing Chandler and I had in common. One of our commonalities that I realized a little too late.
She’s still looking at me without saying anything, so I keep going. "I-," I don't know why I feel confessional, "I'm sorry. I really didn't mean for things to end that way. I really did lov- um, care about him. A lot."
I saw the briefest flicker of annoyance on her face, but maybe I imagined it because now she only looked thoughtful, her gaze tearing away from mine. Then she said something I absolutely did not expect.
"He's an idiot."
I blink, feeling tension deflate throughout my body and then quickly buoy back up in my confusion. What did that mean? I had expected to get yelled at, given the cold shoulder, or be dealt some cutting remark. Chandler’s friends were protective, ridiculously close-knit, hyper-involved in each other's affairs—bad choice of words—and always had an opinion about everything. Surely the opinions on this matter were going to be in favor of him, against me. But maybe I’d lost some perspective. Maybe I'd built the whole thing up in my head as worse than it was; maybe an outsider could see that it was a relationship that had flared up, then crashed and burned, because of two people’s mutually stupid mistakes. This whole time I had been carrying that relationship around like a sordid secret, regretting it, aching for things I had lost when it abruptly ended, and thinking it would make for a great three-act drama on the stage.
Maybe, in actuality, I was remembering something about my time with Chandler all wrong ... despite the fact that there were so many things I could remember with perfect, longing clarity.
We rolled away from one another, delirious smiles on our faces as we sunk into the mattress. His body was shaking and I stretched in satisfaction knowing I was the one to put him in that state. He ran a hand roughly through his hair, chest still heaving. "God I could use a smoke." The next second he stilled, as if regretting what he'd said, glancing over at me anxiously in what I suspected was an expectation of judgment.
I shrugged. "Then have one."
His eyebrows shot up as he turned to look at me fully. "I, uh, I don't have any."
I smiled and rolled over, reaching underneath the nightstand and pulling at a pack of cigarettes that was taped up under there. "I think-" I grinned, mimicking a cadence of his I’d become familiar with, "I think I saw some hidden under here when you had me hanging upside down half off the bed earlier." I sat up and shook the pack at him playfully.
He grinned. "I'm surprised you could see anything with your eyes rolled back in your head like that."
"Oof." I smirked, pulling a cigarette out and placing it between my lips, watching him watch my mouth carefully. "Someone is full of himself." I held a second cigarette out to him. "Light?"
He hesitated. "I shouldn't ... We shouldn't smoke in here ..."
"Yeah but a nice cigarette after sex ..." I trailed off, miming the action of taking a drag, popping my lips. I watched him lick his own lips and then excitedly turn round, grabbing an orange lighter from the back of the shelf behind the headboard.
"Why were these taped up back there anyway?" I asked as he flicked the sparkwheel and I held out the cigarette for him to light. I could see that the ceramic ashtray on his nightstand was filled with spare change and gum wrappers, but there were also the tell-tale faint stains of past butts ground into the surface, so I'd long ago figured him out as a smoker, although I hadn't seen him smoke yet. It didn't bother me; I indulged as well on occasion, not to the point of it being a problem—back alley breaks with the stagehands during intermission or at the end of a dinner date with a handsy producer. Comparatively, a nice smoke with my boyfriend following a few mind-blowing orgasms would be a much preferable experience.
"The gang doesn't like it when I smoke. There's always a campaign for me to quit and it involves flushing my stash. There's a pack taped to the back of the toilet tank, too." He chuckled and I laughed alongside him.
"They should mind their own business."
"Agreed." He took a long, deep drag and then sighed in ardent pleasure, practically moaning, and I reached up to scratch my nails against his scalp, accentuating the sound. This was nice. It was hot; it was intimate. This was exactly what I wanted.
I had tried to shut it all down at first. I was with Joey and he was Joey’s best friend. A sudden infatuation, a physical attraction, and good conversation … none of that was worth all the drama it would cause. But then something happened when I realized it was his present, that beautiful, delicate early edition of The Velveteen Rabbit . It wasn’t only that no one had ever listened to me talk about my interests so intently as to know what would be the perfect, meaningful gift—certainly not the man who I was currently going out with or any man before him—but the fact that I also knew, from just a look, that he had been the one to do it, in secret, in deference, without need of recognition, and that I understood it oh so clearly . I knew him and he knew me.
It was as though we were being magnetically drawn to one another and nothing was going to stop us from happening. Not even when I’d decided to step aside in order to avoid coming between two best friends. Even then, as I was leaving the apartment building, I felt that any second now I’d hear him calling after me, because I knew him like I knew my own mind. We were the same kind of person. We’d both do the stupid, destructive thing before the sensible, mature one. He'd shut himself up inside a box to makeup for our transgression to his friend, for god's sake. We could both take a step back and look at our own lives from a detached retreat, making the choices that made for the best satirical retelling later on down the road. We lived for the humor and irony and artistry of it all.
We stumbled out of the apartment in the afternoon, practically giggling and tripping over each other, just as Rachel was coming out the door from across the hall.
“Well don’t you two look all loved up.”
“Hey Rach,” he said. “You headed somewhere?”
"Oh yeah, Mon and I are going to see a movie." She glanced at her watch. “And we’re running behind.”
She called back into the apartment for her friend and Monica came running out, closing the door behind her, apologizing as she tugged on her coat, and then finally realizing we were standing there as well. Her face immediately shifted as she looked around the hall, eyes narrowing in scrutiny and then widening when they fell back on Chandler, pointing a finger at him. "You smoked!"
"Wha- I- did not!"
She folded her arms and gave him a world-weary look. "Please, you reek. I thought some smoker had just walked through here, but it's coming off you!" Her gaze briefly flicked to me and a slight expression of something between embarrassment and disbelief passed as she probably realized I was equally responsible for the unpleasant aroma. And then what looked a little bit like judgement, which made me bristle.
"Aren’t you gonna be late for a movie?" Chandler asked, tone clipped, taking my hand in his. I squeezed his hand back in a proud and supportive gesture as I scooched closer. It wasn't any of his friends' business whether or not he smoked, much less for them to judge him (and me) for it, to the point of making him feel he had to hide packs around his apartment like illicit drugs. They were all much too involved in each other’s lives.
Monica shot him another exasperated look and then sighed. “Fine,” she said, moving towards the stairwell with Rachel. “Talk to you later,” she emphasized towards Chandler, but her eyes were fixed on me before she turned around.
It was like being wrapped in a warm embrace of all the things that defined you; all the things you wanted validated about who you were. The same favorite comedians, the same obscure references, the same movie and mini-series posters on our walls, the same musical numbers stuck in our heads, the same sense of humor, laughing at and ironically purchasing the same products from the same late night infomercials. We could talk for hours. He was so much fun to talk with. Everything came easy because we were always on the same page. I always laughed at his jokes, because they were almost always funny. We never fought, we never bickered. We were in-sync, totally and completely.
I’d never been with anyone who lit my brain and body up from inside out the way he did. And I suspected he’d never been with anyone who’d done the same for him. I’d heard Rachel and Phoebe joking about how he used to end things with girls over the slightest perceived imperfection, annoying habits or pedestrian opinions, but honestly, who could blame him? I’d done the same with men in the past. Unless I was committing to something purely casual in order to scratch a physical itch, which had been the case with Joey initially, until Chandler came along and blew wide open all my expectations. It made sense. Didn’t everyone want that perfect person who understood them on every level—who got them? Who you could just share a look with over a coffee mug, eyes meeting at someone else’s comment, a mirthful smirk on both your faces, and you knew you were thinking the same thought? That’s what we had. That was us.
“I want to show you something,” he said, suddenly, running his hand through my hair and down my arm, a light touch, making my skin tingle at all the places his fingers brushed. He reached a hand up behind us to the shelf behind his bed, pulling out a small spiral bound notebook from under two novels stacked on top of it. He clutched it in his hand for a moment and I felt his breath become unsteady beneath my head. I brushed my fingers along his chest and down to his abdomen, encouraging him in whatever it was he was nervous to show me. He shifted upward against the pillows, propping himself on one elbow, and I followed him, my knee falling across his lap. A pen was tucked in the bent spiral wire of the notebook and the pages stuck out at uneven angles, where I could see wrinkles, rips, and stains on the paper.
“I write stuff sometimes,” he said, looking resolutely at the notebook, not meeting my eye. I watched as he took a deep breath and my heart clenched in adoration at his vulnerability. “But you know, funny stuff, like Kaufman or Thurber.”
I grinned at that—leave it up to Chandler to list off a couple of great mid-century American humorists as inspirational role models for “funny stuff”. God, this man was something else. I wrapped one hand in the fabric of his t-shirt and touched the other palm to his cheek, gently turning him to face me. “I bet whatever you write is spectacular.”
He smiled, a faint, self-conscious tug at the corner of his mouth. I wanted to kiss that corner so badly, but waited for him to respond, looking back up and keeping my eyes locked with his.
“I’ve never told anyone about this,” he whispered, with a kind of profound reverence in his voice as he looked back into my eyes.
I tried hard to suppress my smile. “Really? Not even Joey?”
He laughed and shook his head.
“Not Phoebe, not Rachel?” He shook his head again, tangling his hand in my hair, leaning in close for a kiss. “Not Ross? Not Monica?”
He stopped and pulled back ever so slightly, frowning and looking thoughtful. He tilted his head side to side. “Ross knew I was planning to major in English lit my freshman year before I actually declared for computer science. But I don’t think he really thought much about it.” He laughed to himself. “He talked about majoring in sound design before he decided on bio-anthro-whatever.”
He leaned back in for that kiss, and my eyes drifted to his lips, but I heard myself speak. “And Monica?” I wasn't sure why I was pressing the issue. I guess I wanted to prove something—that I now knew him better than anyone else; that what we were was special.
“She found one of my notebooks lying around once, asked if I was writing a short story.” Ah, so one of them did know. “But I vehemently denied it.” Okay, good. At least it was still a part of himself he didn’t want to share with anyone but me. I sighed inwardly and leaned in, pressing my lips to his softly. After a few moments we pulled apart and I heard his voice while my eyes were still half-closed. “But, you know, she’s Monica.”
I sat back, my hands laced behind his neck. “What does that mean?”
“Uh, it means she probably knows I was lying.” I didn’t say anything and he stuttered, continuing. “And that she probably knows that I know … that she knows … We just, uh, don’t need - don’t talk … about it.”
I flexed my hands against his neck and sighed. “How about we just make out now?”
“Okay!”
It happened a few days after that, at one of those strange half-party gatherings at Rachel and Monica’s apartment, that had the air of a casual hangout between a group of friends, but the precision and cuisine of a more planned affair. Chandler was with the other guys manning the grill on the balcony and I was serving myself a plate of vegetables with assorted dips at the kitchen counter when Monica walked up next to me. I smiled at her and after a prolonged silence she looked at me and then back at the array of food she’d carefully set up.
“So I guess … you smoke,” she said. She sounded much less sure of herself than I was used to hearing in her tone, fiddling with the serving tongs. I nodded. She twisted her lips with a defeated look on her face. “Then I guess I can’t really convince you to convince him to stop.”
“Why does it matter?” I asked.
She looked off into the distance for an excruciatingly drawn-out moment and it took me far too long to realize she wasn’t staring into space, but peripherally focused on my boyfriend, as he joked around with Ross and Joey out on the balcony. Then she shrugged, her focus back on the vegetables. “I just know it’s not good for him.”
It was late and we were coming back to his place after a couple drinks following a night at the theater. It was something we did often, and I couldn’t help but reflect on how I’d dated a lot of men in the past who wanted to show off by whisking me away to Broadway shows, with the more keen ones taking me to Off-Off-Broadway back alley experimental productions to prove how eccentric and ironic they could be—but Chandler was the first and only guy who I could see any of those shows with and laugh . It wasn’t a stuffy, pretentious affair. It was sarcastic commentary and sardonic criticisms and playful debates for hours afterwards about the various merits and demerits of nuanced acting and writing choices.
We had been having one such debate on the whole cab ride and walk back to his apartment, breezing in through the door still in the midst of it, Chandler throwing off his jacket onto the foosball table and walking towards the kitchen counter. The light on the answering machine was flashing red and he moved over to press play, a seemingly automatic and unconscious action, because he turned back to me without any intent to listen, waggling his eyebrows and asking if we wanted to finish ‘banging out’ this debate in the bedroom. Then the message started up over the machine and his whole face fell.
It was a sultry, deep—perhaps somewhat masculine and feminine?—voice that resounded tinnily through the speaker.
“Hey, champ. I wanted to let you know that I’m here in the city. Again. We’re doing a show at WOW Café Theater the 5th through 8th. And, uh, well, I’d love to see you. If you have time. I’m staying at the Chelsea, room 204, if you wanna call back.”
All the rosy color and good humor had drained from his face as he listened to the message, his eyes somewhere distant and no longer focused on me.
“Who was that?” I asked as the robotic voice gave options for re-listening, saving, and erasing the message.
“No one.” He immediately turned back to the machine and pressed the number to erase.
“Chandler.” I clicked my tongue, tossing my balled up coat on the foosball table next to his.
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Okay, okay! It was my … dad.”
“Your dad?” I took a step towards him and placed a hand on his chest. He looked down at it and then reached up his own hand, taking mine in his. The moment felt delicate. A thrill ran through me at the thought.
“Yeah, he, uh, we don’t really talk. He tries to get in touch a lot, but I don’t - I kind of just ignore him.”
I smiled. “Sounds kind of cats-in-the-cradle-y.”
He smiled back. “Yeah, it is.”
I wrapped my other hand around the back of his neck, his hot flushed skin against the coolness of my fingers, rubbing my thumb along the inside collar of his shirt. I searched his expression carefully. I got it. I didn’t have the greatest relationship with my parents either. It wasn’t something he and I had talked about in-depth yet, but a certain understanding had been communicated between us from the absence of conversation itself. We didn’t like to talk about those things, because we knew they were painful and best avoided. I knew that without him saying so. I could read everything about him just from the turn of his mouth and the shimmer of his eyes. I was sure of it.
I did have one curiosity though. “A show at WOW Café?”
Chandler sighed. “Yeah, well, you see, he made a ton of money working in finance before up and quitting one day to abandon his family and run a drag show out in Vegas.” A beat. “Sometimes they tour.”
"Sounds like an interesting guy."
"Yes, I do believe interesting is one of the milder terms the boys at boarding school used to describe my cross-dressing father."
I laughed, laying my head against his shoulder. He wrapped his other hand around my waist, pulling me close, then rubbing back and forth along the small of my back. To be honest, I would be somewhat interested to meet his father, who stumbled over his words awkwardly on the machine much like his son, if for no other reason than to witness the kind of dramatic turn about which helped produce the thoughtful, sensitive, intelligent man standing in front of me. But it seemed more important to follow his lead. If he really wanted nothing to do with his father, then I’d respect that. “Let’s not talk about it,” I said. “Let’s do something more … interesting.”
“Okay, but I’m not putting on any fishnets.”
I grinned, shaking my head and pressing my hands against his upper arms, pushing him back towards the bedroom as we both laughed.
It’s not as if I ever imagined myself getting married. In fact, it was something we’d talked about early on into our dating. I remember us sitting in bed together, him nodding his head eagerly as I told him how I thought marriage was an antiquated ritual that locked people into an artificial commitment that caused more breakdowns in relationships just by its constraining aspects than what might have naturally occured if people were just … together.
(“Exactly!” he said, “I mean, you can just decide moment to moment to be with someone. That means more than staying with them just because a piece of paper says you will.” — “God, see, you get it,” I told him, bracing my hands on either of his shoulders and moving to straddle his lap. “You’d be surprised how many guys out there are also all doped up on the idea of marriage.” — He snorted. “Let me introduce you properly to Ross sometime.”)
But now we were at dinner, celebrating in anticipation of the opening night of my new show, and he’d joked about the gaudy 1920s style ring on my middle finger—one that I’d picked up at a thrift store during one of our lazy afternoons wandering in and out of shops in the East Village—wondering aloud when it was going to turn my finger green and cause it to fall off. He’d slipped it off my hand, spinning it around at eye level, giving it a fake appraisal of rare and calamitous properties, finishing off that it was probably anciently cursed, and I laughed indulgently, telling him to quit and put it back on. He smiled that sweet half smile that showed his teeth, taking my hand gently in his, sliding the jewelry slowly back on over my ring finger. My breath caught and I glanced from the ring to him, but he was already back to looking at the menu. He hadn’t done it intentionally.
No, it’s not as if I ever imagined myself getting married. The very thought was more likely to inspire panic in me than romantic feelings. Yet when he slipped that ring back on the wrong finger, I did sense my heart flutter a little with something sensationally sweet and tender. Not because I wanted marriage, but because I realized I’d never quite wanted someone the way I wanted him. The way I wanted to know him. The way I wanted him to know me.
I hadn’t been paying too much close attention to the conversation—apparently some series of well-intentioned miscommunications had happened between Chandler and Rachel with him trying to set her up with a guy at his office. It had ended amicably with them going to a Rangers game last night (I tried to not feel at all a little jealous of how close he was with his female friends) and now they were laughing together about it in the coffee house, Ross and Monica also there, pairing barbs at their two friends’ hopelessness.
“Alright, I gotta go,” Ross announced, standing up and grabbing his jacket and briefcase. “Remind me to never let either of you set me up with anyone.”
Monica laughed while Rachel muttered something under her breath. Once Ross was out the door, Chandler glanced at his watch and then leaned over, planting a kiss on my cheek. “I gotta get back, too.”
“It’s not funny,” Rachel was saying to Monica, her eyes flitting over to Chandler as he stood. “I mean, even this guy is in a happy relationship right now.”
“Hey,” he said, frowning softly. I reached up and rubbed his arm affectionately.
“I mean, I’m really trying,” Rachel continued, her voice dropping down to a not-so-discrete whisper, “The whole drama with Bonnie and Ross and me and-”
Monica put up a hand. “If you mention the break again, I’m gonna smack you.”
Chandler laughed. “Yeah, come on, Rach, it’s like I said. You’ll find a great guy.”
“But you can say that cause you’ve already found a great girl! And I already found a great guy, twice , but he’s your idiot brother!” She turned accusingly to Monica and then rapidly back to facing Chandler. “I mean, how would you feel if something like that happened between you and Kathy?”
Chandler chuckled, grabbing up his coat. “Ha, well, I think first I’d kill myself and then never be happy again. Or, scratch that, reverse it.” He squeezed my shoulders from where he stood behind the couch and I laughed, waving a hand at him and telling him to go already or he was going to be late. “Alright children, see you on the other side,” he said, departing for the door.
I smiled, shaking my head and leaning forward to stir some cream into my coffee that had been going cold, when I noticed Monica watching him retreat, a dour expression on her face. Then she turned to me and the atmosphere of the conversation shifted unexpectedly.
“You know, just because he’s joking when he says something doesn’t mean he isn't serious.”
“What?” I asked, caught off guard by the sudden solemnity in her tone.
“Oh, Mon,” Rachel t’sked, “He’s being a drama queen, you know, for ‘comedic effect’. He’s not gonna off himself if he and Kathy break up; don’t scare her.”
“No, I know he doesn’t mean that specifically, but it means something. He’s more serious than he lets on.” She mumbles the next part, but it doesn’t stop her from saying it. “I just think his girlfriend should know that.”
“Mon,” Rachel said, and I knew that warning tone, because it was the same one going round in my head. The you’re treading in dangerous territory telling someone else’s girlfriend how to treat her boyfriend . How to understand him. How to know him.
“Well maybe I’m not too worried about it because I feel the same way. Chandler and I have something really great. I’m not planning to let that go anytime soon.”
Monica and Rachel exchanged a quick glance, and while Monica’s face was still turned away, Rachel looked back at me with a growing expression of intrigue and excitement. Gossip alert, here we go.
“So you two are really serious? I mean, I can tell he really likes you, I’ve never seen him so into a girl.” She playfully gave Monica a smack on the arm as if to get her attention, “I mean, isn’t this already like the longest relationship he’s ever had?”
Monica finally turned her face back to where I could see it and frowned. “Something like that. I mean, unless you want to collectively tally all his on-and-off with Janice.”
“Oh god, no, let’s not go down that road.” Rachel waved a dismissive hand, sitting forward in her seat. “So how serious is this seriousness?” Her eyes bounced between me and Monica as if asking us both her next question. “Are we talking to the woman that’s finally going to get Chandler Bing to commit?”
Monica snorted. Loudly.
Rachel’s mouth fell open and she looked at her friend, scandalized, as I made a sharp turn to stare at her profile. She glanced between the two of us and then sank into the couch, giving an embarrassed smile. “Oh no, it’s just. Not you. It’s - you know, it’s Chandler.”
“I know it’s Chandler,” I said slowly, measured.
“You don’t think he’ll ever want to commit?” Rachel asked. She tossed an open palm my way. “Even for a girl he really loves?”
“No, of course Chandler wants to commit,” Monica quickly responded, nearly rolling her eyes, drawing yet another confused look from Rachel. “But just cause he gets frozen in the headlights sometimes doesn’t mean he’s not gonna startle and jump away as soon as you try to move in closer.”
“Are you … comparing him to a deer?”
Monica shrugged, and leaned forward to pick up her coffee mug. She was handing out relationship advice apropos Chandler Bing left and right today, and if I didn’t know his dating history already, it’d almost be as if she was one of his exes.
“Well,” I laughed, trying to play it off cool, “I think all of this conversation is a bit much, a bit premature. I’m not thinking about anything like that yet. Commitment, longest relationships, ‘love’. And Chandler isn’t thinking about it either. He’s not that kind of guy.” I reached over to grab my own cup and saw Monica biting her lip. I sat back and brought the drink to my mouth, making sure to catch her eye. “ We’re not those kinds of people.”
Well, I think our second fight is going to be a big one!
Chandler plopped the folded pants down over the back of the chair and tears formed at the rims of my eyelids, unexpected even to me. How did things fall apart so quickly?
“So I guess I was right all along,” Chandler said, stuffing his hands back into the pockets of his overcoat, looking both resolute and resigned, as if he was already recasting and rewriting our entire relationship in light of this event.
I had the decency to look ashamed up until this point, but suddenly hot indignity flared up within me. This was the man who I had thought knew me better than anyone else, knew everything about me, knew my heart, my mind, my wants, my dreams—and I thought I knew the same about him. Then the other night, completely out of nowhere, he’d so cavalierly accused me of something baseless, thrown past mistakes, to which we were both a party, in my face, and then refused to contact me for what felt like the longest continuous hours of my life. I’d been reduced to a besotted woman waiting by her phone for a call from a guy, all my fierce independence drained by the thought of that teasing smirk and blithe spark in his light blue eyes, and I absolutely hated myself for it. No one had ever done this to me. No one had ever made me feel so off-kilter and so complete at the same time. And it was all those feelings that had me make a series of horrifically stupid mistakes that led to us standing here in my apartment, experiencing all those same feelings again.
“No, you were not right!” I shot back, the abashed expression wiped cleanly from my face. “ Nothing was going on between me and Nick and if you’d just trusted me -!”
“Trusted you?! That’s rich! I trusted that maybe you wouldn’t have turned right around and fallen into bed with Mr. Man Nipples in less than 48 hours!”
“You know me, Chandler!” I yelled, stepping away from the door and towards him, watching as he backed away in tandem with my movement. “Where did all this bullshit come from? Are you really that insecure?!”
“Of course I am! You should know that!”
“I thought I knew you!”
“Yeah, well, I thought I knew you, too!”
“If you’d just called-!”
“What, so that you’d have time to hide his pants before I came over?!”
The sound of someone scrambling and tripping came from the doorway to my bedroom and Nick came stumbling out, dress shirt half buttoned, awkwardly moving to grab his pants off the back of the chair. “I’m just gonna - I’m sorry, I’m gonna go,” he mumbled racing towards the door, head down.
“Oh, oh, don’t go Nick!” Chandler yelled, following after him to the door. “Not if you’re not finished SCREWING MY GIRLFRIEND!” He turned around, face flushed, and we stared at each other, now alone in the apartment.
I took a deep breath. “Everything we had, everything we shared—we fit so well, Chandler—and you didn’t call me and you were just willing to toss all that away because of a stupid fabricated assumption?”
Chandler stared at me, the disbelief written all across his face, and I regretted it almost, but I knew he’d been the one to risk us first, and I was only following his lead. “Screw you,” he muttered, eyes not leaving mine.
I gave a small, self-depricating smile and shrug of one shoulder. “Okay, screw me.”
He breathed heavily and I waited. Then he kicked the door shut with a reverberating slam and we moved towards each other quickly, meeting in a tangled mess in the middle, crashing against one another.
He’d told me he loved me at some point and I don’t even remember the context. It was a big deal for him, I could tell. In contrast, I’d told people I’d dated before that I loved them; it was never a big, dramatic declaration for me, separate from any other confession of affection. “I love you” being some unique, sought after, hard won, long awaited three special words was something that happened in fiction, not real life.
It was the first time I recall us not really being on the same page. Still, I’d smiled and said it back.
“Aw, I love you, too, Chandler.”
His eyes searched mine, a curious openness on his face, as if he was looking for something more. I danced a hand through his hair, across his chest, leaned in and gave him a lingering kiss on the lips and then a peck on the cheek. “It’s sweet of you to say.”
I didn’t need more than this. This was, by far, the best relationship I had ever had. The sex was amazing. The conversation was as good as the sex. Our connection was profound.
I was not waiting for some floodgates to open, for me to suddenly meet the ‘right guy’ and want to make moves towards all the typical things I’d been adamantly against my whole life. It wasn’t as though I didn’t want those things simply because I hadn’t yet met ‘the right person’— someone who could show me those things were all real and worthwhile. I just didn’t want them. But I knew I wanted this. This connection, this resonance, this soul-affirming kind of feeling that let me step lightly through the day knowing I could always fall back against someone who understood me and saw the world in the same tongue-in-cheek way I saw it. Never taking anything too seriously, but always taking note of everything, like a playwright observing the stage. Chandler would be my writer and I would be his actress and we would put to page one hell of a good looking story.
It had been so passionate and so exhausting that I fell asleep minutes afterwards, still wrapped in his arms, comforted with the thought that all of this would only be a blip in our story, a final dramatic third act plot point before the climax—good choice of words—and tidy denouement. It was messy, but that made it all the more intimate. I didn’t need stability, solidity, or promises of forever. I just needed to be known, the way an author knows their book or a musician knows their instrument. We’d once more be walking hand in hand down Broadway by the weekend and the narrative would start all over.
When I woke up, he was gone, and I knew him just like I always had. I was not going to see him again.
He’s an idiot. The words echoed in my ears and I realized I was still standing in that coffee shop, Monica still staring back at me.
Okay, so maybe it was all as bad as I had built it up in my head, at least in the end. But before that it had been great. We had something there. We’d only screwed it up by both being idiots. I’d been carrying that singular, all important fact of our relationship around for a long time—that no one had ever known me the way he did. And in my more selfish moments, I didn’t exactly hope he was still pining over me (I wasn’t pining over him), but I did hope maybe it was the same—that no one else would ever know him the way that I had.
I’m actually surprised it took this long for me to run into someone who would drag me back through all the emotions of that past. It had been well over a year since Chandler and I had dated and spectacularly fell apart. I looked different and Monica did, too. Her hair was longer. I wondered what Chandler looked like now. I wondered what he was doing.
Only a moment had passed since she last said something and she spoke again now with her characteristic confidence. There was no bitterness or ridicule or malice behind her tone, just an assuredness that I could only react to with a sharp torque of envy.
"But if you really 'cared' about him at all, you'd know him better than that. You’d know why he's an idiot and you wouldn't have hurt him in that way."
It was only then that some heavily guarded floodgates finally released and I realized, truthfully, all the things I did not know about Chandler. I knew what he liked, I knew what he hated, I knew in an instant how he would respond to any given comment, opinion, or shared experience. But I did not know why .
I didn’t know why he clearly wanted to be a writer but refused to acknowledge it. I didn’t know why he hated his job but would never consider quitting. I didn’t know why he wouldn’t speak with his dad and barely spoke to his mother. I didn’t know why Joey was his best friend, or why Ross and him had stayed buddies for so many years after college, or why he lived across the hall from Monica.
I didn’t know why he treated those five people as if they were his family or why when he told me he loved me, he looked at me as if he wanted a whole world to finally open up to him in my response.
I did not know him at all.
“I’m sorry.”
It was all I could say.
Monica smiled at me. It was an overall kind smile, with just a little bit of pity. Then the universe evidently decided that this day’s pummeling should keep at a steady pace, because she said something else completely out of left field that I did not know how to process.
“Thank you.”
I must have looked shocked, opening my mouth to speak but nothing coming out for a solid few seconds. Finally I stuttered, “Thank me? For-for what?”
“Well …” she trailed off, looking past me, her face melting into one of pure affection. “I just know everything he’s been through, is a part of who he is now. Including the awful things that make him act like even more of an idiot all the time. An idiot, but a sweet one. So … thank you.”
I truly cannot think of anything else to say to her in response and I don’t even know if I am supposed to. I think this is a conversation that isn’t really between me and her, but between her and Chandler .... which I’m starting to think is how it’s always been.
She smiles at me once more and walks past me, out the door, off to some place and some life that I know nothing about, but that I know includes him. I’m not going to see her ever again, just the same way I’m not going to see Chandler. No one else will ever know him the way that she does—and I realize now that no one else ever had.