OH! DARLING | joey tribbiani

twelve

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."