Chapter 10: A Very Monica Scheme
Monica waited until she heard the apartment door click shut behind Phoebe, then stood very still for exactly three seconds, listening to the footsteps fade down the hall.
Then she moved.
She had approximately two hours and there was an extraordinary amount to do. She pulled the candles out from the cabinet above the fridge — the nice ones she'd been saving, the tall tapers — and set them on the kitchen table in the arrangement she'd mentally mapped out while Phoebe was standing right there trying to figure out what was happening.
The good tablecloth. The actual nice plates, not the everyday ones. She had a filet marinating in the refrigerator and a pasta dish in the oven and she'd made garlic bread from scratch, which she was very quietly proud of.
She stood back and looked at the table.
It was good. It was really good.
Monica Geller smiled in the empty apartment.
"Okay," she said to no one. "I'm not not going to win this."
Meanwhile, down on the street, Phoebe walked with the movie ticket in her hand, turning it over once, twice, reading the film title without really seeing it. She'd taken it without argument. She'd even said you're the best too on her way out the door, which was the kind of thing she said when she needed a moment to think before she said the thing she actually wanted to say.
She dropped the ticket in the first trash can she passed.
Two thoughts were moving through her head simultaneously, which for Phoebe was practically organized.
The first: Monica was currently lighting candles for Andrew. In their apartment. That she'd cleared out everyone else to have to herself.
The second: I gave him my number first.
Phoebe picked up her pace.
Andrew stepped out of his apartment at ten past five, brownies wrapped in foil under one arm, and nearly walked straight into Phoebe, who was apparently moving at a full determined stride down the second-floor hallway toward the stairs.
"Phoebe?"
She pulled up short. Something flickered across her face — a very brief recalibration — and then the smile arrived, warm and perfectly natural.
"Andrew! Hey!" She fell into step beside him. "Where are you headed?"
"Monica's. Dinner tonight, remember?" He held up the foil packet. "I made brownies."
"You made brownies." Phoebe looked at the packet and then at him with an expression he couldn't quite read. "That's so thoughtful."
"What time did Monica say?"
Phoebe paused. Just for a beat. "Six, right?"
"That's what she told me." He frowned slightly. "What time did she tell you?"
Another pause. "Oh, you know Monica. She might have said six to you, and then said something different to me. She gets very precise about these things." She smiled again and waved a hand. "Details. The point is, dinner."
Andrew nodded, not entirely convinced, but willing to let it go. They fell into step down the stairs.
At the bottom, Phoebe steered left instead of right.
"The bar's this way," she said, before he could ask. "Chandler and Ross are probably there. Monica said everyone was meeting first, then going up together." She looked at him sideways. "She wanted it to be a whole thing. You know how she is."
He didn't, really. But he went along with it.
The bar was doing its Thursday afternoon business — not full, not empty, that particular quiet hour before the dinner crowd arrived. Chandler and Ross were in the corner booth, which was their booth apparently, the one positioned so you could see the door and the bar at the same time.
Ross had a beer that was half gone. Chandler had a beer that was barely touched and was instead doing something complicated with a cocktail napkin, folding and unfolding it in a way that suggested he'd been here a while and was running low on other activities.
"Hey, Pheebs." Chandler looked up, and then looked past her. "And Andrew. Hey."
"Were you guys also—" Phoebe started.
"She said she had someone coming over," Ross said, with the slightly bewildered look of a man who had been gently but efficiently managed. "Very last minute. I'd literally just gotten there. I hadn't even taken my coat off."
"Me too," Chandler said. "She handed me my jacket and did that thing where she physically guides you toward the door while making it feel like it was your idea."
Phoebe sat down. "Monica has a date."
Ross looked up.
"With a guy named Alan. Someone she met at the restaurant." Phoebe had gathered this the same way Phoebe gathered most things — by paying attention to the specific way Monica had said just a little dinner and combined it with the good tablecloth she'd spotted on Monica's bed that morning, clearly being saved for something. "She invited Andrew separately, told him it was a group dinner, and got rid of the rest of us."
The table was quiet for a second.
Chandler turned slowly toward Andrew.
Andrew looked back at him.
"So she didn't tell you it was a date," Chandler said, not as a question.
"She said everyone was coming," Andrew said.
Chandler nodded slowly, with the expression of a man who has been handed a gift he didn't expect and is trying to figure out what it obligates him to do. "And here we all are." He gestured at the table. "All of us except Monica and her date, Alan, who are presumably upstairs right now having a very romantic dinner for two, which is about to become—"
"A dinner for five," Phoebe said brightly. "If we go up together."
"Six," Chandler corrected. "Andrew makes six."
"Right. Six." She looked around the table. "So. Are we going?"
Ross stared into his beer. On principle, he didn't want to wreck his sister's date. Monica was — well, she was Monica, and she had a specific kind of bad luck with men that he'd watched up close for years, and he generally thought she deserved a break.
On the other hand, he'd been walking into the apartment at six o'clock as she'd literally told him and had still gotten the guided-toward-the-door treatment, and that was slightly hard to feel neutral about.
Also — and this was the part he was trying not to think about too hard — he'd been sleeping on the couch at home for a week and a half.
Carol was going through something he couldn't name and wouldn't explain and he'd stopped asking because every time he asked the silence that followed lasted longer than the time before. He didn't know what was happening. He just knew that something was wrong and she wouldn't tell him what, and that had left him in this bar on a Thursday afternoon with a half-drunk beer and nothing to do until she was asleep.
He didn't particularly want to be alone right now.
"I'm in," he said.
"Obviously I'm in," Chandler said.
Phoebe looked at Andrew.
"I made brownies," Andrew said, which seemed to settle it.
Chandler pushed the door of the bar open and stepped out onto the street, immediately pulling his jacket against the evening chill. He turned to the group. "Alright, how do we want to play this? Do we knock, or do we just—"
"We knock," Phoebe said firmly. "Monica gets a warning. We're not trying to traumatize anyone."
"Right, right, a warning knock." Chandler thought about this. "Do we do a normal knock, or a very cheerful knock that says don't worry we're not here to judge you but also clearly communicates—"
"Chandler."
"Normal knock."
Andrew walked slightly behind the group, foil-wrapped brownies still under his arm, putting the afternoon back together in his head. Monica had — okay. Monica had set up a whole thing, told him it was a group dinner, presumably told Phoebe there was a movie she needed to see, maneuvered everyone else out of the building, and then lit candles for a man named Alan.
He thought about that for a moment.
Then, unexpectedly, he almost laughed.
Good for her, he thought. Genuinely, fair play.
He was going to feel slightly bad about what was about to happen to her plan. But also — he had brownies. That had to count for something.
[Reader Support Milestones]
500 Power Stones → +1 Chapter
10 Reviews → +1 Chapter
Enjoyed the read? Leave a review.
20+advanced chapters on P1treon Soulforger