Celestial

Chapter One

February 13th, 1997

To say Ross Geller was nervous was an understatement of the year.

Today was the day.

This is it.

He was gonna propose, today, on their first anniversary.

He had been planning the proposal for the last few months, starting when he woke up one fine morning - as he watched her sleeping peacefully next to him, and then he realized... This was it. He wanted to wake up next to her for the rest of his life. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

He wanted to marry her.

He had been doubtful, of course, questioning whether they were ready - whether she was ready for this step. After all, she had been the one who ran away from her own wedding and she had been saying lately, how much she loved being so independent - finally breaking free from her parents' financial support. So, there was a chance she wasn't ready for the marriage yet... And there was also this nagging voice in the back of his mind that kept telling him that he probably should've waited - that they hadn't been together long enough.

But... the more he spent time with his girlfriend, the more he realized that he couldn't wait anymore.

He didn't want to wait anymore.

He wanted to marry Rachel Green. He wanted to become his husband. He wanted her to become his wife. He wanted to move forward and build a family with her. He wanted to wake up and go to sleep every day in her arms, in the warmth of their marital bed.

He couldn't wait to start that chapter of his life - their life, together.

Although behind all that.... there might be another reason why he desperately wanted to make their relationship official, a reason he'd refused to admit out loud...

He was scared of losing her.

Lately, he felt like they were starting to drift apart. They spent less and less time together ever since she landed that new job. He couldn't even remember the last time they went on a proper date. She was very busy, barely making time for them, especially these past few weeks.

He missed her terribly.

Even on weekends, her work usually occupied her time and Ross was starting to feel like he was slowly losing his girlfriend. She'd be working late almost every day and because she said she didn't want to wake him up, she had been spending a lot of her nights in her own apartment. He had told her multiple times that he didn't mind getting his sleep interrupted, but she had insisted that it was better this way.

He was frustrated to say the least, especially when he knew she wasn't alone in those nights she was working late.

It was another thing that kept bothering him.

Rachel had a co-worker, or a boss - he wasn't even that sure about that, but the guy kept getting on his nerves. Ross was almost one hundred percent sure the guy had a crush on his girlfriend, but when he told her that, she looked at him as if he was insane.

He didn't understand how she didn't see it.

The guy, Mark - who happened to be an attractive muscular man, mind you - seemed to have a crush on her and the thought of an attractive man drooling over his girlfriend was making Ross anxious and furious at the same time.

It was not like he didn't trust his girlfriend, because of course he did. He trusted Rachel. She wasn't the problem. The problem was Mark. He didn't trust Mark, not even in the slightest bit.