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It soon becomes clear to her that the group is a kind of solar system - and Monica is the centre of that solar system.
Rachel hasn’t ever known any kind of solar system outside of her parents’ circle of friends, but even she, thrown off-course in New York City, doesn’t need to be a genius to see that. Monica draws the others into the warmth of her apartment, lets them sit on her couch and monopolise her kitchen and complain about everything from the score at the Rangers game to their broken homes. It’s welcoming - and it’s the strongest sense of home that Rachel has felt in a long time.
“Welcome to the real world,” Monica says as they stare at the broken credit cards on the kitchen table, the remnants of her old life, and when she puts her arm around her Rachel thinks she might get to have some of that warmth too. “It sucks. You’re going to love it.”
//
Some of her old friends drop by to see her as she’s working a shift at Central Perk. It’s an odd experience, to say the least.
They ask all these questions, questions she isn’t even sure she can answer. The truth is, Rachel doesn’t fit into their world anymore - their world feels a million miles away from the safety of Monica’s apartment and the worn brown couch in the corner of Central Perk, the one place she’s never had to hide.
“I want more,” she finds herself saying, and the spark of confidence in her chest burns stronger with every word. “I want more for myself.”
Her friends look at her like she’s crazy, like they can’t even imagine the concept. They’re spinning in different solar systems now, and maybe that’s fine.
Maybe it’s meant to be this way.
//
It’s seven AM on her day off, and the oven is choking out smoke that slips through her fingers when she tries to stop it. Really, Rachel thinks, she’s lucky there isn’t a proper fire - she should have studied that recipe more carefully.
Monica storms out of her room amidst all the chaos, staring in horror at the carnage that now covers her kitchen. Rachel steps back, waits for the shouting to start as she hangs her head like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar, gaze trained on the floor because she cries too much over too little these days and she doesn’t want Monica to see her crying -
“Rachel?” Monica, ever the perceptive type, takes a step towards her, and her tone is suddenly soft and gentle, like the disaster behind her is suddenly non-existent “What’s wrong, honey?”
“Nothing,” Rachel tries to say, but the wobble in her voice gives her away. Monica clearly doesn’t believe her. “I was just trying to make you something nice for breakfast - you know, prove I wasn’t useless.”
She looks up then; Monica’s eyes are wide, shocked. “Why would you even think that?”
“How could I not think that?” Rachel says, as if this should be obvious - especially to Monica, who knows her better than she knows herself half the time. “It’s true, isn’t it? You guys think it too.”
“No!” She’s horrified now. “Rach, we’re just kidding around when we say things like that, we don’t really mean them. We thought you knew that!”
“I do know that,” Rachel argues, and then sighs. “But I mean those things.”
Monica stares at her for another long, drawn out moment before she moves, crossing the two steps between them and pulling her into a tight hug. Rachel relaxes into her embrace, the familiar feeling of safety, and comfort, and home.
“Never change, honey,” Monica says when she pulls away. “We love you just the way you are.”
Rachel still isn’t sure she really believes her, but Monica keeps a hold on her hand for most of that morning as they clean up, and, at least for a while, it’s like she can pretend that she does.
//
Rachel’s birthday is in May and another year turns over quietly, no fuss.
She goes to dinner with her father after her shift at Central Perk, even if a small voice in the back of her head tells her it might be best not to. Maybe she’s always been naively hopeful like that, that one day there’ll be nothing but proud smiles as she walks to the table. For now, though, there are side-eye glances and all of these towering expectations that Rachel isn’t tall enough to meet, no matter how high she reaches.
When she gets back to the apartment, there’s balloons and streamers and a cake waiting for her, and five smiling faces welcoming her home.
“Happy birthday, honey,” Monica says, and presses a kiss to her cheek as she blows out the candle.
It isn’t until later that Rachel realises that she hadn’t even felt the need to make a wish.
//
Monica is the centre of their solar system, that’s always been true - and she’s also Rachel’s safe space.
Rachel is sure she must have realised this a long time ago, but she’s not exactly sure what this means outside of her own head, her own heart, so she crosses the hall to go and seek advice.
“I’m not a mind reader, Rachel,” Chandler says as they sit at the kitchen counter and Rachel dodges around the issue for nearly five minutes. “Gonna need you to be a little more specific here.”
She takes a deep breath. This is what she’s here for - advice from Chandler - and she’s never going to get it if she isn’t honest.
“I think I love someone.”
“And you came to me about this? Me?” Chandler raises an eyebrow. “Rach, what possible advice could I ever give you about love? Why couldn’t you just ask Monica about this?”
“That’s the thing. I can’t go to Monica about this one.”
“Why not?” Chandler studies her for a moment, and then he gets the hint, those perceptive blue eyes of his widening in understanding. “Ah.”
“Yeah. So you see why I came to you.” She sighs, reaching for her coffee. “I don’t know what you’re supposed to do when you think you love your best friend.”
(If she’s not mistaken - and she knows that she’s not - those blue eyes flicker over her shoulder in the direction of Joey’s room before looking back at her.)
“Well, if you’re me, you use your usual defence mechanism of repressing your feelings -”
She fixes him with a glare. “I’m serious, Chandler.”
“You think I’m not being serious?” He chuckles, but then sobers up a moment later. “But I’m not the best example of what to do, Rachel. Maybe you really should be talking to Mon about this.”
She imagines it, sitting down at the kitchen table and stumbling over her words, and panic rises in her chest, so fast it nearly knocks the breath from her. Rachel shakes her head.
“I can’t tell her I might have feelings for her.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want things to be weird! What if she gets uncomfortable and I have to move out? I can’t afford my own place and I wouldn’t want to become a permanent fixture on your couch -”
“Rach, Monica wouldn’t do that, especially not to you.”
“Not intentionally! But it’ll still change everything. She won’t - she won’t look at me the same way.” Her gaze drops to her coffee, her own blurred reflection looking back at her with uncertainty in her eyes. “I don’t want to lose her, you know?”
“Trust me. I know.” Chandler chuckles again, but the sound is laced with bitterness this time. His expression, however, is soft when she finds it in her to look at him again. “But I think you just have to take that leap.”
“Yeah.” She raises an eyebrow. “So why haven’t you taken that leap?”
“Hey, I’m a coward. I’m not hiding that fact. You’ve always been the brave one.”
Rachel shakes her head. “I'm not so sure this time.”
//
“We can tell each other anything, right?” She asks later, somewhat out of the blue, as they sit on the couch and Monica pours her another glass of wine.
“Of course.” Monica clinks their glasses together in a toast - a toast to life, or to laughter, it could be either. “Why? What’s on your mind, honey?”
Rachel pauses, thinks of the conversation she had with Chandler earlier. If she was perhaps as brave as he claimed she was, she would take the liquid courage to tell Monica how she feels. She would put her glass down, reach for her roommate’s hand, confess her love in the most romantic way she knows - and in this dream world, Monica would tell her that she loves her too, and if everything had to change, it would change for the better.
But Chandler’s wrong on this one. She’s not that brave. She’s not brave at all.
“Nothing,” she says finally. “I just wanted to be sure.”
//
Monica has a date.
It’s a guy she met at work, according to Phoebe, who has managed to wheedle details out of their friend about this new mystery man, a customer that has been stopping by because he enjoys something more than cheap diner food and renditions of YMCA.
“It’ll never last,” Phoebe declares, that sixth sense of hers always seeming to know what Rachel needs to hear in that moment, but nothing she does that evening distracts her from the little voice chattering away at the back of her mind, the one that sounds an awful lot like her father when it tells her all those things about her being a failure.
Without Monica here - Monica, with her soft smile, her warm embraces - there’s nothing to drown it out. The idea of her one day never coming back, going home with someone else, makes Rachel’s stomach churn and her head buzz, a migraine behind her eyes.
In the end, when the voice gets so loud that not even the Bloomingdale's catalogue can capture her attention, she reaches for the phone and calls Ross. As much as she appreciates Chandler’s advice, she needs someone to give her the hard facts.
He’s there in less than ten minutes.
“What’s this about Monica?” He asks, concerned, as he sits on the couch with a mug of coffee. “You sounded pretty upset on the phone.”
Rachel perches on the arm of the chair nearby. “Monica’s on a date.”
Ross frowns. “Then, why -”
“Monica’s on a date and I’m in love with her.”
There’s silence between them, heavy in the air, before:
“Oh.” Ross is looking down at his coffee, as if he’s going to stare into it and find the answer he needs. “I see.”
I see. Not exactly the answer she’s looking for.
“Are you surprised?” She asks, sounding a lot calmer than she feels, like her heart isn’t trying to leap out of her rib cage right now.
“Honestly?” His gaze flickers back up to her now. “Now that I think about it, not really. It was always just you and Monica, even when we were kids.”
That reassures her somewhat. She falls back into the armchair with a sigh.
“I don’t know what to do, Ross. This whole thing is a mess. What do you think I should do?”
“I couldn’t tell my own wife was a lesbian, Rachel,” Ross says, giving her a dry smile. “Maybe I’m not the best person to ask.”
“You’re exactly the best person to ask. Am I being a fool? Could it…” Hope - stupid, stupid hope - “…could it ever work out between us?”
Ross pauses, deliberates. “I can’t tell you that, Rachel. I’m not going to give you false hope.”
“I appreciate that.” And she does - she has enough false hope stored in her chest to last a lifetime.
“But I can tell you that we’ll always be there, no matter what happens. All of us.”
He smiles, then, and she could almost believe it.
Hell, by the time Monica comes in from her (unsuccessful) date, she does believe it.
//
It’s a Tuesday morning and Monica is stood at the kitchen counter making breakfast, an old sweater thrown on over her pyjamas, looking so at peace with the world, so damn stunning, that Rachel doesn’t even notice she’s speaking until her brain has caught up with the words tumbling from her mouth.
“I love you.”
Monica pauses, and then smiles at her, pleased and just a little confused. “I love you too.”
“No -” Frustration breaks off her sentence; she’s finally gotten the words out and they aren’t even convincing enough. “Mon, I mean, I love you. Really love you.” Take the leap - that’s what Chandler said, right? “I’m in love with you.”
The knife slips from her fingers, clatters on the counter. Monica barely notices. “You -”
“This doesn’t have to change our friendship,” Rachel says quickly, in case that is the reason Monica is staring at her like she’s just grown an extra head. “I just - I needed to get it off my chest. It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way - I mean, why would you? We can forget about this and just go back to how we were before, and Chandler has promised me a space on their couch if things get too weird.”
Monica, after another long moment, recovers - she raises an eyebrow, slowly. “You really thought this all out, huh?”
“Yeah.” Rachel shrugs, trying to keep nonchalant like she hasn’t just confessed her love for her best friend and roommate. “Being prepared - it’s a new thing I’m trying out.”
“Yeah?” The aforementioned roommate takes a step towards her, and all Rachel can hear is the sound of her heart beating and the echo of Chandler’s advice. Take the leap. “So have you got a plan for what happens if I told you that I felt the same way?”
Take the leap.
//
Monica’s lips are warm and gentle against hers, like Rachel has imagined they would be, and thinks it can’t possibly get any better than this.
For once, that voice in the back of her head is silent.