Monica, Phoebe and Quinn walked in Central Perk around lunch, saying hi to Chandler and Ross who sat by the windows.
"Hi ladies," Rachel approached them as they made their way to the couch. "Uh, can I get you anything?" Then in a lower voice, she asked, "Did you bring the mail?"
"Lots of responses," Monica told her.
"Really?" Rachel seemed surprised. "Sure we have scones left," she said louder so that her boss wouldn't get suspicious. "Okay, read them to me," she asked the girls who were distributing the envelopes between the three of them so it would go faster.
Rachel was getting tired of waitressing. She didn't like it and she wasn't good at it either plus the pay was too little for everything she had to put through. So a few nights ago, she sent dozens of letters with her CV to basically any place that was hiring, hoping she would get a request to interview.
"'Dear Ms Green, thank you for your inquiry, however..' Oh," Phoebe didn't finish reading the sentence and tossed the letter to the side.
"We have apple cinnamon..." Rachel continued to play pretend.
"Okay," Monica said, reading the one she had in her hands. "'Dear Ms Green...' Yep, yep, yep. No."
"Wow!" Phoebe suddenly exclaimed.
"What?" Rachel asked, full of hope.
"Your Visa bill is huge," the blonde said.
"Give me that!" Rachel snatched the paper from her hands and walked away.
The girls continued reading the letters while Rachel went back to work. When the waitress came over with Quinn's tea and two empty mugs for Monica and Phoebe's coffee, the friends tried to encouragingly smile at her but it looked more fake than anything.
The sound of Chandler and Ross laughing after Joey walked in distracted the girls from their task, all turning to look at what was happening.
"Shut up!" Joey yelled at them.
"We're not saying anything," Chandler defended.
"What?" Monica asked, not wanting to be left out of the loop.
"Uh, Joey cried last night," Ross answered.
"Thank you," Joey sarcastically said as Rachel poured him a cup of coffee.
Chandler and Ross chuckled a bit more before the former explained to the girls sat on the couch. "We were playing poker, alright?"
"There was chocolate on the three, it looked like an eight, alright?" Joey interrupted to defend himself.
"Oh, you should've seen him," Ross laughed before imitating his friend. "Read 'em and weep!"
"And then he did," Chandler finished.
"Well now, how come you guys have never played poker with us?" Rachel asked them.
"Yeah, what is that, like some kind of guy thing?" Phoebe added. "Like some kind of sexist guy thing? Like it's poker, so only guys can play."
"No, women are welcome to play," Ross said.
"Oh, okay! So then what is it? Some kind of, you know, like, some kind of, you know... Alright what is it?" The blonde abandoned.
"There just don't happen to be any women in our game," Chandler answered.
"Yeah, we just don't happen to know any women that know how to play poker," Joey added.
"Oh please," Quinn scoffed.
"That is such a lame excuse," Monica said. "I mean, it's a typical guy response."
"Excuse me, do any of you know how to play?" Ross countered.
"No," the four girls answered in unison.
"But you never asked us," Quinn pointed out, arms crossed over her chest.
"And you could teach us," Rachel suggested.
"No," it was the boys' turn to answer in sync.
That evening, when everybody had come back from work, the group of seven gathered at Monica and Rachel's apartment to play poker.
"Okay, so now we draw cards," Chandler explained very slowly.
"So, I wouldn't need any, right? 'Cause I have a straight," Monica, who was sitting next to him, asked him as she showed him her cards.
"Oh! Good for you!" "Congratulations!" Phoebe and Rachel told her.
Quinn was too busy placing her cards in order of colour and number to care, her tongue poking out of her mouth as she focused on her task.
Joey, who sat to her right, couldn't help himself from observing her, thinking she looked so cute when she was concentrating on something.
The actor leant towards the redhead to mumble close to her ear. "Hey, you can ask me if you need any help, okay darling?"
Quinn turned her head to face her friend, barely an inch separated their noses. "Thanks sweetie," she smiled, patting his cheek with her free hand. "But I'm sure I'll be just fine."
"Okay Pheebs, how many do you want?" Chandler asked the blonde.
Phoebe looked at her cards. "Okay, I just need two, the uh ten of spades and the six of clubs."
"No, Pheebs, you can't do–"
Ross was interrupted by Rachel. "Oh wait, I have the ten of spades! Here, you want it?" She handed the card to her friend.
The boys tried to stop the girls from trading their cards, completely ignoring the rules of poker, while Quinn watched everything with a smile hidden behind her stack of cards.
"No, see, you can't do that," Ross tried to tell Rachel.
"Oh no, no, no, no, that's okay," she cut him off. "I don't need them, I'm going for fours."
Ross looked at her, trying to keep his cool.
Monica placed on the table a plate of snacks fresh out of the oven. "Alright, here we go. We got salmon roulettes and assorted crudités."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Monica, what are you doing? This is a poker game, you can't serve food with more than one syllable," Joey explained. "It's gotta be like chips, or dip, or pretz..." He realised his mistake with the last one.
Quinn patted his arm. "So close Joe," she teased him.
"Okay, so at this point, the dealer–" Chandler tried to continue the crash course but Monica, ever the patient one, interrupted him.
"Alright, you know, we got it. Let's play for real, alright? High stakes, big bucks," she rubbed her hands in excitement.
"Alright, now you sure?" Ross asked. "Phoebe just threw away two jacks because they didn't look happy."
"But I'm ready," the blonde said, "so just deal."
"Okay, alright. Last minute lesson, last minute lesson," Chandler quipped in. "Joey, three..." he showed him the three of diamonds and then the eight of clubs, "eight!"
Joey glared at him, very unamused.
"Eight, three. Alright, very good," Chandler said and the game began.
three hours later
"Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!" Monica yelled as she lost yet again.
"I see. So then, um, you were lying," Phoebe accused Joey.
"About what?" He asked as he piled up his wins.
"About how good your cards were," Phoebe continued.
Joey chuckled. "I was bluffing," he explained.
"Ah-ha! And what is bluffing? Is it not another word for lying?"
"Okay, sorry to break up this party but I've got resumes to fax before lunch tomorrow," Rachel announced as she got up to leave the table.
"Whoa!" The boys said.
"Rach, Rach, we gotta settle," Chandler told her.
"Settle what?"
"The Jamestown colony of Virginia," Chandler joked. "You see, King George is giving us the land, so..."
"The game, Rachel. The game." Ross answered. "You owe us money for the game."
"Oh, right."
"You know what, you guys, it's their first time," Joey intervened. "Why don't we just forget about the money?"
"Hell no! We'll pay," Monica argued.
Quinn glared at the brunette. She would've been happy with not having to pay the money she lost.
"Okay Monica, I had another answer all ready," Phoebe told her.
"And you know what?" Monica ignored her. "We want a rematch."
"Well that's fine with me, could use the money," Ross said.
"So basically, you get your ya-yas by taking money from all of your friends," Rachel pointed out.
"Yeah," Ross confirmed, unashamed.
"Yeah and I get my ya-yas from Ikea," Chandler added. "You have to put them together yourself but they cost a little less."
Ross got up from his chair, facing Rachel. "Look, Rach, this is poker. I play to win, alright? In order for me to win, other people have to lose, so if you're gonna play poker with me don't expect me to be a nice guy, okay? 'Cause once those cards are dealt..." And he clapped his hands.
"Yeah?" Joey asked him to continue.
"I'm not a nice guy," Ross said.
"Urgh, I don't know which one is the most annoyingly competitive, Ross or Monica?" Quinn mumbled to no one in particular as she crossed her arms over the table and rested her head on them. Rachel, Joey, Phoebe and Chandler laughed at her comment while the Geller siblings glared at her, offended but knowing she was right.
__________
The morning after, Quinn walked over to her neighbours' apartment after making a quick phone call to Colin to tell him she had to move tonight's movie night to another day because she had to "kick the boys' butts at poker".
"Hey guys," she told the girls as she closed the door behind her. "Hey Rach, any news?" She asked the dark blonde, motioning to the letters on the table.
"Not so far, no," Rachel sighed in defeat. She was becoming less and less hopeful about getting an interview. But her mood quickly changed when she read the letter she had been opening. "Oh! I got an interview!" She exclaimed.
"You're kidding, where?" Monica leaned over the back of the couch to try to read the letter.
Rachel brought a hand to her chest. "Saks Fifth Avenue."
"Oh my God, Rachel!" Quinn said as she and Monica rubbed their friend's back.
"It's like the mother ship is calling you home," Phoebe remarked.
"Well, what's the job?" Monica eagerly asked.
"Assistant buyer. Oh!" Rachel needed to fan herself. "I would be shopping... for a living!" She said in between sobs.
A knock at the door interrupted the moment. Monica got up to answer it.
"Okay, look, that is Aunt Iris," she told her friends. "This woman has been playing poker since she was five, you gotta listen to every word she says."
"Hi, is Tony Randall dead?" An older woman asked.
"I don't think so," the brunette replied, confused.
"Well, he may be now because I think I hit him with my car."
"Oh my God! Really?" The girls gasped in shock.
"No! That's bluffing, lesson number one," Aunt Iris said as she made her way to the table. "Let me tell you something, everything you hear at a poker game is pure crap." She removed her coat and turned to Phoebe. "Nice earrings."
The blonde went to thank her but then realised she was bluffing.
__________
The gang had gathered at Ross' apartment for poker night, they were waiting after Rachel who had her job interview at Saks Fifth Avenue and Quinn who was running late for some reason.
Rachel got there first and excitedly told her friends about how well the interview went while they still waited for Quinn to show up.
Ten minutes later, a knock at the door resounded through the apartment and the redhead was there.
"Hi, sorry," she apologized for her tardiness when Ross let her in. She was still trying to tame her disheveled curls but gave up after a while, instead using the hair tie she kept on her wrist to wrap her hair in a bun, forgetting about the bruises on her neck.
"Quinn, what's that on your neck?" Rachel asked, pointing with her finger.
Quinn turned beet red when she realised her hickeys were now on display for everyone to see. "I went to Colin's apartment after work and, well, we lost track of time," she explained shyly as she removed her coat.
"Woo-hoo, go Colin!" Phoebe teased her, making the redhead blush even harder.
"Honey, I'm glad your sex life is alive and healthy," Monica told her as she held her arm, "but we can talk about that later. Let's play poker," she turned around and slammed her hands on the table.
Quinn sat in the last unoccupied chair, next to Joey, as the cards were dealt.
"Alright, now listen you guys," Joey told the girls. "We talked about it and if you don't wanna play we'd completely understand."
"Oh yes, yes, we could play some other game like, I don't know, Pictionary?" Chandler suggested and the three boys ducked down, making fun of the time Monica got so competitive she threw a plate.
"Very funny, very funny," the brunette said. "But I think we'd like to give poker another try. Shall we, ladies?"
"Yes, I think we should," Phoebe and Rachel answered in sync.
"Yeah, just so we can beat the boys, after that I'm done," Quinn confessed. "I find poker much boring."
"That's because you haven't tried the fun version yet," Joey told her.
"And what's the fun version?" She quirked up an eyebrow with her question.
"Strip poker, obviously."
That earned him a smack behind the head.
"What was that for?" Joey asked as he rubbed the spot on his head where Quinn smacked him.
"You've already seen enough with the shower incident, Tribbiani," the redhead warned him, not sparing him a glance since she was occupied with rearranging the cards she received.
After more than a few games of poker, it was finally time to settle.
"So, Pheebs owes 7.50, Monica you owe $10, Quinn, surprisingly you owe nothing and, Rachel you owe fifteen big ones," Ross tallied up.
"What do you mean, surprisingly?" Quinn glared at the man. "You didn't think I'd win?"
"Oh sweetheart, you didn't win," Chandler told her. "If you did, you'd have our money."
"But, you didn't lose," Joey countered, bringing her in a side hug. "And hey, thanks for teaching us Cross Eyed Mary. You guys, we gotta play that at our regular game," he said to the boys who agreed with him.
"Alright, here's my 7.50," Phoebe walked in, going through her wallet, "but I think you should know that this money is cursed."
"What?" Joey asked.
"Oh, I cursed it," the blonde confirmed as she put the money on the table. "So now bad things will happen to he who spends it."
"That's alright, I'll take it," Chandler said. "Bad things happen to me anyway. This way I can break them up with a movie."
"So that just leaves the big Green poker machine who owes fifteen," Ross taunted Rachel.
The girl chuckled. "Oh, it's so typical. Ooh, I'm a man. Ooh, I have a penis. Ooh, I have to win money to exert my power over women." She imitated as she handed Ross her money.
"You know what?" Monica came back to the table. "This is not over. We will play you again, and we will win and you will lose and you will beg and we will laugh and we will take every last dime you have and you will hate yourselves forever."
"Hmmm, you kinda stepped on my point there, Mon," Rachel told her roommate.
"As fun as this sounds, you can count me out," Quinn said as she helped tidy up. "I didn't lose against the boys and that's all that matters to me. You girls go win your money back, I'm gonna spend tomorrow night watching movies with my boyfriend like God intended."
__________
As she had said to her friends the night before, Quinn was cuddled up with Colin on her couch, Taxi Driver playing on her television, when Joey barged in and went straight for her phone.
"Hey," she said, turning her head to see who it was, "aren't you supposed to be playing poker?"
Joey answered as he dialled a number. "Yeah but I want pizza and Rachel won't let me use the phone because she's waiting for a call from that place she interviewed at."
Quinn nodded in response and turned her head back to the movie as Joey put in his order.
"Thanks Quinn," he went to give her a kiss on her head after he ended the phone call.
"Did you get me something too?" The redhead asked him, looking up at her friend who stood behind her.
"Yeah, I'll bring you your cheese sticks and cheesy garlic bread when the order arrives," Joey told her.
"Oh if I wasn't dating Colin I'd kiss you right there and then," Quinn said, he had guessed exactly what she was craving.
Joey chuckled, trying to act like kissing his best friend wasn't the thing he wanted most in the world right now. "A kiss on the cheek will do, darling."
It was Quinn's turn to giggle, grabbing her friend's face to lower it so she could kiss his cheek.
"Oh, we're gonna play Pictionary after, you two can join us then," Joey offered as he made his way towards the exit.
"Ooh, I'm really good at Pictionary," Colin revealed. "I'm in."
"This will be interesting," Joey said in anticipation, excited to see how Monica will react to the new competition. "Wish me luck!"
"I would but I want the girls to win," Quinn teased him before he closed her door.
__________
"Airplane. Airplane," the gang tried to guess, all gathered in Monica and Rachel's living room for Pictionary.
Monica aggressively pointed at the second part of her drawing, hoping someone would catch on.
"Airport '75! Airport '77! Airport '79!" Chandler shouted.
The beep of the timer dinged.
"Yup, time's up!" Rachel said.
"Bye Bye Birdie!" Monica yelled, showing her drawings.
"That's a bird?" Phoebe asked.
"That's a hand?" Quinn followed.
Monica glared at the two of them.
"That's a bird," Phoebe said in an affirming tone.
"Oh yeah, that's clearly a hand," Quinn confirmed. "I'm not wearing my glasses, that's why."
"Okay, it's my turn," Colin got up from his seat on the floor next to Quinn's legs. He picked a paper and grabbed the pen Monica handed him.
"Go," Chandler said, starting the timer.
Colin drew something that looked like a bean, which Ross said as a guess, but the former kept hitting the bean with the pen as he looked at the gang, waiting for them to find the right movie title.
It took a moment but Joey almost went flying around when he got the answer. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being!" He shouted.
"Yes!" Colin exclaimed.
"That you get?" Monica asked. "That you get?" She picked up her glass and everybody ducked, Joey pulling Quinn down with him since she was busy picking a slice of cheesy garlic bread from the box.