Adultery, Part10


INTRODUCTION: Part 10 of I don't know how many... waaaaaaay more than I'd originally planned and actually want to write, at least...
DISCLAIMER: The "Friends" characters don't belong to me. And sometimes I doubt the people who actually DO own them would even realize I had borrowed their characters if they read it, I mean they're pretty off-character judging by some reviews... :)!


The following week wasn't easy for any of the three. Chandler hardly spoke to Monica, and avoided her as much as he could. The first days they still slept in the same bed together, but Chandler found he couldn't sleep when she was there. It just drove him crazy to know what she had done, and to wonder if she had done it in their bed. He ended up spending the nights on the couch, which made Monica feel even worse about herself. Knowing that he couldn't even stand to sleep in the same room as her was terrible, and she started feeling more and more sorry for herself. She sometimes completely forgot about what Chandler must be feeling, she was so involved in her own pain.

Joey crawled into a shell during that week. He didn't dare to speak to Chandler, didn't want to speak to Monica and didn't know how to act around all the people who didn't know about the affair.

Max didn't really notice too much that something was wrong, his parents didn't act much different around him. Lukas noticed the difference though, even though he had no clue what was really going on. He knew his grandparents had gotten divorced when his Dad had been nine, the same age Lukas was now, and that scared him. He didn't want his parents to get divorced. They tried to act as normal around him, but he noticed that his father was very hurt and upset over something and his mother looked so guilty. He wondered what she had done.

*

On Saturday the week after Chandler found out, he called Phoebe, Rachel and Ross up and asked them to come over for dinner. He informed Monica that they would be having dinner guests after he'd made the phone calls, and she knew that he hadn't said anything to her earlier because he wanted to get back at her and right now he did so by causing her a lot of trouble. He knew very well that it took quite a while for her to prepare dinner when they were having guests, especially if it was this short notice.

Once their three friends were there, Monica realized what might be up. Joey hadn't been invited, Chandler was making a clear statement. The other three looked a little confused, but nobody said anything until they were seated for dinner.

"So how come Joey's not here?" Ross asked.

"Yeah, where is he?" Rachel asked.

"Joey?" Chandler said. "Oh he won't be around."

"Why not?" Phoebe asked.

"Well why don't you tell them Monica?" Chandler said to his wife, and looked at her from his seat across the table.

Monica couldn't get a word out. She couldn't believe he would do this. Why did he want to humiliate her like this?

"Chandler do you have to do this?" she said with a sad sigh.

"U-hu" Chandler said. "Now come on Monica, they want to know."

Monica looked from one of them to the other, unknowing of what to say to them. What would they think of her once it was all out? What would they think of Joey? Wasn't it bad enough that she had lost Chandler and Joey, did she have to loose everyone else as well? She was afraid of telling them.

"Monica, what?" Rachel asked. "Why are you looking at us like that?"

"Oh it's her new martyr thing" Chandler explained. "She's been doing it a lot lately. Now come on Monica, tell them."

Monica took a deep breath and decided to get it all over with.

"I.. I'm the reason Joey's not here tonight" she said.

"Oh yeah? How come?" Ross asked.

"Because last week I told Chandler something…"

"Are you having another baby?" Rachel asked, sounding excited.

"And what would that have to do with JOEY?" Ross asked Rachel, who shrugged her shoulders.

"You never know, it could have a LOT to do with Joey" Chandler said.

"What's he talking about?" Phoebe asked Monica.

"Well…" Monica said. "You see, what I told Chandler was… that Joey and I…"

"Hate each other?" Rachel filled in, obviously thinking it was some sort of exciting drama.

"Couldn't be further from the truth" Chandler said with a glare on Monica.

"Guys, no more beating around the bush. Just tell us, okay?" Ross said.

"Joey and I…" Monica began again, but then she felt like she lost all courage when she saw the look on Chandler's face. It was cold as stone. She took a deep breath again, then said it. "Joey and I had an affair."

"Right… ?" Rachel said, obviously not understanding what she was talking about.

"I was seeing him on the side. Four years ago" Monica added, to make the situation clear.

Phoebe threw the napkin she had been wiping her mouth with on the plate, rose and left the room, looking very upset. Rachel's hand had reached up to her mouth and Ross just looked shocked. Then Rachel rose as well and went over to Chandler, hugging him.

*

An hour later there was a knock on Joey's door. He sighed and rose from the recliner and went to open. He hoped it was either Chandler or Monica. He wanted Chandler to forgive him, to somehow be able to bury the hatchet. And he wasn't over Monica, and he knew that just getting to see her would make it easier for him right now. But it was neither Monica nor Chandler. It was Phoebe, who entered without asking and looked mad.

"Phoebs? What's up?"

"I don't believe you!" she replied, turning around and throwing her jacket and purse on the floor. "I just can't believe this!"

"Can't believe what?"

"That you could do something like that! And with HER!"

Joey knew what she was talking about. He wondered how she had found out. Phoebe started pacing back and forth.

"Damn it Joey, I've made such a fool out of myself!"

"When?" Joey asked, confused.

"Well duh!" Phoebe said. "I told you I had a crush on you! I actually thought you might have one for me too! And all this time when I've had those feelings you've been doing it with my best friend! With my best friend who is MARRIED!"

"Phoebe I didn't do it to hurt you!" Joey defended himself. "And come on, I didn't even know you had these feelings until when Monica and I were already broken up!"

"I just, I can't believe it Joey! I don't understand! God, I'm just the biggest idiot ever, aren't I? For not seeing it."

"Phoebs, you are not an idiot."

"Well how come you never told me?" Phoebe asked, and stopped pacing. "You just let me make a huge fool out of myself, you didn't even let me know!"

"Well what the hell was I supposed to do?" Joey asked, starting to get annoyed. "Tell you but not Chandler?"

"Why her?" Phoebe asked, knowing that she was close to tears. "I was getting a divorce, I would be single soon. And I loved you. But you didn't want me. You chose her. Why, Joey?"

"Come on Phoebs, it was OVER between Monica and I when you came to me!"

"I just can't believe it!" Phoebe continued, not listening to him. "Why was Monica so special? What's so wonderful about her? What quality does she have that is so amazing that you would sleep with her even though she was married to your best friend? She doesn't love you Joey, she never did!"

"Do you need to throw that in my face?" Joey angrily asked. "Look, you could never understand!"

"Damn right about that! I mean, Monica was one of my closest friends, but now…"

"But now what?" Joey asked. "She's not anymore? She cheats on her husband and you're no longer her friend?"

"I can't believe she would do that to me! And to Chandler! And to Lukas! And honestly I can't believe she would do it to you!"

"Hold your horses just one second" Joey said. "She didn't do anything to YOU. Come on Phoebs, she didn't have the slightest idea you had feelings for me."

"Well knowing it wouldn't have stopped her!"

"How can you say that about your best friend?"

"Because knowing how damn much Chandler loves her didn't stop her! Why would it make any difference if she knew I felt for you?"

"Phoebs…" Joey said with a sigh. "Do you have any idea how guilty she felt? She cried after the first times we were together!"

"The fact that she ever stopped crying says it all. As well as the fact that you did it more than once. If she cared she would have ended the affair. I feel like I don't know her at all."

"Well I do. And I love her" Joey said.

"How good" Phoebe said and bit her lower lip to stop the tears from falling. "Then you and her can go reunite and then move somewhere and the rest of us can forget you ever existed!"

"She's not gonna go anywhere with me" Joey said. "You know, weather anybody realizes it or not, I've gotten my punishment!"

"Oh and what might that punishment be?" Phoebe said with her voice full of sarcasm. "That Max wasn't yours?"

"No! I've hurt my best friend like hell, I've lost him forever! I've fallen in love with a woman I can never have, someone who doesn't want me for real, who might have once but certainly not now! And I just can't get her out of my head Phoebs, I'm crazy about her! It's been four years, I'm still crazy about her! And I know for sure that she doesn't feel it back! The first and possibly only time I fall in love for real! And my feelings for her have brought down the thunder, to put it mildly! Now if everyone knows I can pretty much kiss my friendship with Ross goodbye! And Rachel, she's gonna end up disliking me just because everyone else does! Plus I've managed to hurt you pretty bad in the process. And just thinking about how much this is gonna hurt Lukas and Max, and how it's gonna affect their lives and their look on love and marriage drives me insane! Do you think it's in any way easy to live with all of this guilt, Phoebe?"

"You only get what you deserve. For treating us all so bad."

"I only did this to one person. The only person I betrayed was Chandler. But now everyone's gonna punish me for it!"

"Well you can't feel sorry for yourself" Phoebe said. "This is all your own fault, from start to finish. No matter how big part Monica has in all of this, you've still had your free will all along. I don't know you either. I thought that my five closest friends were people I knew better than I knew myself, and that they knew me that well. And to find out that two of them are such false people who have given a third of them emotional scars that will last for a lifetime or five, that's probably the worst realisation I've done in all my lives! Goodbye, Joey!"

She walked past him and closed the door. Joey sunk down in a recliner with a heavy sigh.

"Tree down…" he said sarcastically. "Two to go."

*

Monica found Chandler in the bedroom once everyone had left, sitting on the bedside.

"Well am I punished enough now?" she asked. "Being humiliated in front of my friends, loosing their trust for all time, being yelled at by Rachel… Or does it have to be more?"

"Right now I feel like I could just send you away to a death row in Texas and forget about you" Chandler replied.

"Is my death of that little importance to you?" Monica asked. "That you think it's the only thing that cancels out what I've done?"

"Pretty much…" Chandler said. Then he sighed. "Not at all."

"We can't keep going on like this" Monica said. "I can't handle it. I can't. I still have emotions too, you know."

"They're all dead inside of you" Chandler said. "You have no idea what emotion is anymore. And did you ever? All you think about is YOU, you go around feeling sorry for yourself and playing the role of the big martyr. Maybe someday someone will rip YOUR heart out and throw it in the trash, like you've done with me."

"Having sex with someone else means you're no longer allowed to feel emotions?" Monica asked. "I love you so damn much, you think all I think about is ME? Chandler I'm breaking apart inside from seeing how this is affecting you."

"How very noble of you" Chandler said in sarcasm. "Well in that case the matter is settled. Let's put this all behind us and live like nothing happened. I mean, sure, you cheated on me, humiliated me, broke all my trust, lied to me, deceived me and completely ruined everything important to me. But you feel a little sad about it, so then it's all okay."

"I wasn't trying to…" Monica said, then paused. She had been about to say that she hadn't been trying to get him back, but that was a lie. "Look, I just couldn't lie to you anymore! I told you the truth because I think you deserved it!"

"You've said that before. And honestly Ms. Geller, you don't want to know what I think YOU deserve…"

"You're probably right about that" Monica agreed with a nod, shivering at the fact that he had called her Geller and not Bing. "Look, I want to make it up to you but I CAN'T!"

"Well it wouldn't matter anyway, because what I want is someone who loves me. Not someone who… well, whatever you feel for me."

"I love you."

"No you stopped loving me because you slept with the horn dog."

"Do you really think it works like that?" Monica asked, annoyed. She walked into the bedroom and got closer to him. "That one second I love you just as much as the day I married you, then the next Joey's lips are on mine and I no longer love you at all? Well think again! It doesn't work like that, I love you so!"

"Wrong" Chandler said. "You're right about one thing. That love doesn't end just because you sleep with someone else. But for you to even be ABLE to sleep with someone else the love has to be gone. You can't feel what I felt for you and then just hop in to bed with your spouse's best friend! Certainly not that many times!"

"It was just physical!" Monica defended herself.

"Monica I ain't Doc Holliday and you ain't Big Nose Kate! I personally find it a bit unsatisfying when my wife gives her body to other men!"

"How dare you call me a prostitute?" Monica asked. "You think I PAID him? Or that he paid ME? I never even got as much as a FLOWER from him, or a piece of chocolate!"

"You just missed the entire point of what I was saying!" Chandler hissed, annoyed. He rose to his feet. "What I was saying was that when I married you I clearly heard you promise in front of the priest that you would forsake all others and give yourself only to me! I don't know about you, but to me that is a HOLY promise! I'm not a very religious man Monica, but I do believe in the sanctity of marriage! Don't think you can weasel yourself out of this by saying that it was just your body!"

"If I wanted to weasel myself out of anything I would never have told you in the first place!"

"No, you mean that if you'd wanted to CONTINUE weaselling yourself out of it. You know, you could have come clean with me right away. After the first time you slept with him you could have told me. I would have been devastated, but I've fallen in love with you enough to let one time be no time, but two times twice to many! And you know what else? If you had confessed to me when the affair had just ended, I would have been able to work through this with you! At least I think so! We would have a marriage today!"

"I haven't signed any divorce papers, don't we still?" Monica asked.

"Call this whatever the hell you want, but to me it ain't no marriage" Chandler replied. "Not after all that you've done. Having found out that two people I trusted so much did this to me and then kept it from me for so many years, and were planning on keeping it from me always, that makes it impossible. It's too hard!"

"Well then why drag it out?" Monica asked, starting to cry. "Are you just out to pain me here? If you don't even want to give it your best shot then why haven't you filed for divorce yet?"

"Because Monica it's not that easy for me!" Chandler said, frustrated. "Because you were right! You can't stop loving someone just in a second! I've loved you so much for over a decade, the feelings I have for you are such a large part of my life and of who I am! I want to forget any feeling I've ever felt for you, but I can't! I hate it! But I can't! I still love you, I still feel so great when I'm around you, the sight of you still warms my heart! But it is OVER Monica! What I love, it's just a MEMORY! Something that I once thought was real! SOMEONE I once thought was real! I don't love YOU, I love who I THOUGHT you were!"

"I AM who you thought I was!" Monica objected.

"No you're not. No more than I am the first man who ever walked on the moon. The person you are is a slut. That kind of bitch that you see in soap operas and TV movies. Hell, my life right now IS a TV movie! And you're the manipulative slut that everybody hates."

Monica turned on her heel and ran out, tears falling down her cheeks. Chandler sat back down again, knowing that everything he had said was true except for one thing. He did still love her for who she was. He couldn't change that or deny that she had good sides. He just wanted nothing more to do with them right now.


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