"Knit, good woman! Knit! Knit!"
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"I don't know whether he was just testing me or just acting out, but my monkey is out of control." Out of context, Ross would be in some psychiatric ward. "He keeps erasing the messages on my machine. Supposedly by accident."
"Oh. Yeah, I've done that." Rachel nodded her head.
"And then, like, three days in a row, he got to the newspaper before I did and peed all over the crossword." We all made faces of disgust. "Hi, guys." We glanced back to see Joey and Chandler.
"Pheebs, guess who we saw today." Joey joined me at the small table.
"Fun! Okay. Liam Neeson." Phoebe started to guess. "Morley Safer?" Joey kept shaking his head at her. "The woman who cuts my hair?" She called out excitedly.
"This could be a really long game." Monica interrupted her from continuing.
"Your sister Ursula." Chandler answered.
"Oh. Really?" Phoebe leaned back against the couch and glanced down at the coffee table.
"She works over at that place..." Chandler trailed off, looking at Joey for help.
"Riff's. Yeah, I know." Phoebe finished for them.
"You do?" Chandler asked her. "She said you guys haven't talked in like years."
"Yeah." Phoebe nodded her head. "So, um, is she fat?"
"Not from where I was standing." Joey crossed his legs and smirked a little. Monica rubbed my back gently while I debated between throwing a cup of iced water or coffee at him.
"Where were you standing?" Phoebe looked up at my brother.
"You guys just don't get along, Pheebs?" Rachel inquired.
"Mostly just dumb sister stuff. Like everyone always thought of her as the pretty one, you know?" She sighed. "And she was the first one to start walking even though I did it later that same day. But to my parents, then it was like, 'Right. What else is new?'"
"I'm sorry, Pheebs. I've got to go. I've got Lamaze class." Ross quickly stood up.
"And I've got earth science, but I'll catch you in gym?" Chandler pointed at him.
"So is this just going to be with you and Carol?" Rachel glanced back at Ross.
"No. Susan's going to be there, too." Ross slumped over gloomily. "We've got dads, we've got lesbians—the whole parenting team."
"Well, isn't that going to be weird?" Rachel scrunched up her nose.
"It might have been at first, but by now, I'm comfortable with the whole situation." He put a coat on, but it wasn't his.
"That's my jacket, Ross." Monica let him know.
"I know." Ross took off the coat quickly and grabbed his black jacket before leaving. In the night, we met up at Monica's place for dinner of Chinese food.
"It's not just that she's cute, okay? It's just that...she's really, really cute." Chandler described.
"But it doesn't matter. You don't dip your pen in the company ink." Ross replied with an analogy.
"Ross, your little creature's got the remote again." Monica alerted him.
"Marcel. Marcel, give Rossy the remote." Ross tried to get the monkey's attention. However, the monkey turned on the TV. "Marcel...Marcel, you give Rossy the remote right now." The rest of us just watched Marcel change the audio to Spanish.
"Great." Monica smiled back at us sarcastically.
"Relax. I'll fix it." Ross reassured her.
"Oh, cool. 'Urkel' in Spanish is...'Urkel'." Rachel chuckled a little.
"How did he do this?" Once Ross finally got the remote, he tried to change it back to English.
"Let me ask you something. Is leaving your Christmas lights up part of your plan to keep us merry all year long?" Chandler pointed to the window.
"No. Someone was supposed to take them down around New Year's, but someone forgot." Monica replied. It wasn't hard to figure out who was supposed to do it.
"Well, someone was supposed to write down 'Rach, take down the light' and stick it onto the refrig...erator." Rachel stopped talking when she saw the note. "How long has that been there?"
"Come on. If we stand here for any longer, I'm going to inhale the orange chicken." I giggled before the three of us headed over to the living room.
"Pheebs, would it be okay if I asked out your sister?" We noticed that Joey was finally here.
"If he wants to have kids some day, he better think twice about this 'date'." Rachel muttered.
"Guys, it's fine. I'm fine. It's not like we're exclusive or even dating." I shrugged my shoulders.
"Yet." Monica and Rachel whispered at the same time before high–fiving each other.
"Why? Why would you want to do that? Why?" Phoebe blurted out.
"So that if we went out on a date, she'd be there." Joey replied slightly sarcastically.
"I mean, I'm not my sister's, you know, whatever. And, uh...I mean..." Phoebe played with the napkin in her hands. "It's true we were one egg once, but, uh...we've...we've grown apart, so, uh...I don't know. Why not?" She smiled at him.
"Cool. Thanks." Joey pat her on the shoulder before going back to talking with Chandler.
"Are you okay, Pheebs?" I asked her, reaching over to pat her knee comfortingly.
"Yeah, I'm fine." She replied.
"Want to watch Laverne Y Shirley?" Ross asked since Monica's TV was stuck on Spanish mode. The Spanish version of the theme song played while we danced around.
Rachel, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, and I were in Monica and Rachel's place a week later. Phoebe was trying to find something to watch. Rachel and Chandler helped Monica knit while I made some tea for all of us.
"You still haven't told that girl she doesn't have a job?" Monica asked him.
"Well, you still haven't taken down the Christmas lights." Chandler fired back weakly.
"Congratulations, I think you tow have found the world's thinnest argument." I smiled at them.
"I'm just trying to find the right moment." Chandler tried to defend himself.
"That shouldn't be so hard now that the two of you are dating." Rachel rolled the ball of yarn around in her hands. "Sweetheart, you're fired. But how about a quickie before I go to work?"
"Hey." Joey walked into the apartment with a bag from Bloomingdales'.
"Hey." The four of us responded. Then, someone knocked on the door.
"Once you're inside, you don't have to knock anymore." Chandler glanced back at him.
"I'll get it." Monica and her knitting team stood up and stumbled towards the door. Of course, it was Mr. Heckles telling us to quiet down for the thousandth time. Joey went over to Phoebe and asked her to try on a sweater...that he bought for Ursula.
"Are you seeing her again today?" Rachel asked him.
"Yep. Ice Capades." He nodded his head and smiled.
"This is serious. I've never known you to pay money for any kind of capade." Chandler replied.
"I don't know. I like her, you know?" Joey stood up and walked over to us. "She's different. There's, uh...something about her..."
"That you like. We get it." Phoebe blurted out. "You like her. Great." I would be lying if I said I wasn't thinking the same thing.
"Phoebe, I asked you, and you said it was okay." Joey leaned against the back of the couch.
"Maybe now it's not okay." Phoebe shrugged her shoulders.
"Okay. Well, maybe now I'm not okay with it being not okay." Joey threw back.
"Okay." Phoebe crossed her arms over her chest.
"Knit, good woman! Knit! Knit!" Chandler whispered to Monica loudly. I quickly turned to finish up with the tea and make some mac and cheese for me. Later, we headed over to Central Perk and joined Ross.
"I'm going to be a father." He held on to a pillow.
"This is just occurring to you?" Monica rubbed his shoulder.
"I always knew I was having a baby. I just never realized the baby was having me." He blankly stared at the wall in front of him.
"You're going to be great." Rachel reached over and massaged his shoulders.
"How can you say that?" Ross shrugged her hands off. "I can't even get Marcel to stop eating the bath mat. How am I going to raise a kid?"
"Some scientists are now saying that monkeys and babies are different." Chandler said. I smacked his chest.
"Where are you going?" Phoebe asked when Joey stood up and headed towards the door.
"Out." Joey replied.
"With?" She looked up at him.
"Yes." Joey nodded his head, not giving us a clear answer. But none of us needed one.
"Can I just ask you one question? Have you two, you know...like, you know?" She trailed off. "I mean, you know? Yet?"
"Not that it's any of your business, but no, we haven't. Okay?" Joey grabbed his coat off the hook by the door. "You meant sex, right?" I threw my head back against the couch. Late that night, we were sitting around eating popcorn in the living room.
"I ended up telling her everything." He admitted, referring to his ex–girlfriend being fired and him trying to hide it.
"Pretty well. Except for the stapler thing." He held up his bandaged hand. "Little tip. If you're ever in a similar situation, don't ever leave your hand on the desk." He advised us.
"Okay, I think I get how to do this." Monica had been reading the manual and trying to fix her TV for twenty minutes. She pressed a button, but it didn't work.
"Alright, so can we turn this off and make them go away? I can't watch this." Phoebe flailed her arms around. We were all getting a little frustrated with the Spanish.
"Okay, alright, they're gone, Pheebs." Monica turned off the TV. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah. It's just, you know, it's this whole stupid Ursula thing." She was sitting on the ground in front of me, so I squeezed her shoulders comfortingly.
"Can I ask, Pheebs? So he's going out with her. Is it really so terrible?" Rachel asked and furrowed her brows.
"Um, yeah." Phoebe nodded her head. "Look, I'm not saying she's, like, evil or anything. She just, you know...she's always breaking my stuff." Phoebe explained. "When I was eight and wouldn't let her have my Judy Jetson thermos, she threw it under the bus. And then there's Randy Brown, who was like...have you ever had a boyfriend who was, like, your best friend?" She asked us.
"No." Monica, Rachel, and I said at the same time while shaking our heads.
"That's what he was for me, and she, you know, kind of stole him away and then broke his heart, and then...he wouldn't even talk to me anymore...'cause he didn't want to be around anything that looked like either one of us." She explained. "I mean, I know Joey isn't my boyfriend or my thermos...or anything, but..."
"Hey, you're not going to lose him." Chandler nudged her arm a little.
"You've just got to talk to Joey. Tell him how you feel about him going out with your twin. Say what you just said to us to him." I encouraged her.
"Not before you—" She pointed back at me, but I covered her mouth. I took my hand off. "He's falling in love with her." And that kind of broke my heart.
"Please. They've been going out for a week. They haven't even slept together yet. I mean, that's not serious." Rachel scoffed a little.
"Okay. Okay." Phoebe nodded her head and looked down at her lap. We kind of looked at her, and she finally got the message. "Oh! Okay." She stood up and headed over to his apartment.