The Ones We Didn't See

Bonus Nights, Secret Hallways, and Fate

A/N: 7x1 - Tow Monica's Thunder. I have had the most requests for this one! I'm sorry it took so long but I wanted to keep my one shots in order of the story line! It gets a little steamy... but I think this part of the story deserves that in order to do it justice! This explores what brought on the suggestion of the bonus night and includes everything that led up to the moment in the hallway before they were so unfortunately interrupted.

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She looked around at the hundreds of candles that filled the apartment. Their glow was the only thing illuminating the room. It was like a scene out of a movie, except better, because it was for her very best friends. In just a few minutes Chandler would be here and Monica would be waiting for him. They would have their happily ever after just like they deserved. She was thrilled for them, but she couldn't help but feel a little bit jealous. Everything had worked out so effortlessly for Monica and Chandler. Their story was beautifully ordinary - they grew up, fell in love, and now they were getting married. Tonight, she longed for a story that was ordinary.

She wanted the forever love.. the ring.. the fairy tale. Perhaps her life, in a way, did have a fairy tale quality. She escaped the entrapment of a life that would be chosen for her, and instead built a life from nothing where she could lean on her friends and pave her own path. She was proud of herself. Just a few years ago she was serving coffee to strangers, and now she was working for upper level execs at Ralph Lauren. Someday she would be in that executive position - she just knew it.

But her love life had been anything but a fairytale. It seemed like she had encountered disappointment after disappointment. They either screamed too much, or cried too much, or couldn't keep their hands off their sister. Where were the normal great men? Were there even any left?

Yes. Ross.

No matter what she did, her mind always found it's way back to him.

She could write an entire novel and still barely have room to scratch the surface of the story between them. She always thought fate brought people together but in this case, it seemed that fate was keeping them apart. Every time something went right, something else would go terribly wrong, pulling them further away from each other.

But they had an unexplainable insatiable desire that would bring them back to each other time and time again. It didn't matter how much time had passed, or how much pain had been inflicted. They were innately connected, and her heart would always remind her of the very best parts of him and dim the parts that made them incompatible. Whether it was just a look from across the room, a box of memories, or a drunken wedding - she would find herself right back in that place she didn't want to be. After the twenty-eighth time of being clobbered and divorce papers to prove it, she finally told herself that they weren't going to happen.

But that's the thing. Ross wasn't a bad person. Actually, he was the best man she knew, with the biggest heart and desire to love deeply. Maybe that was the problem - he loved too deeply and that was what got him in trouble. She didn't really even fault him anymore for what he did. She wished it had worked out - it was just never the right time for them... they were never in the right place.

Their love was maddening, which was a good thing, most of the time. Everything about them was extreme. They felt everything so deeply that it was deafening. They were a landslide of emotion and angst and pain that combined in the best way with a gut-wrenching over-the-moon type of love. She thought back on the times when she felt so much in her heart for him that she thought it might burst. When their souls were so deeply connected to each other that just sitting next to him was never enough. Or when he left the room, she missed him so much that she had to watch him walk away. There was something about him that always made her smile. Something that made the butterflies flutter uncontrollably in her stomach when she saw him... that gave her goosebumps with just one graze of his finger on her arm. She couldn't shake the unavoidable urge of needing to be in his presence.