{joey tribbiani ff}
•book one•
Heather Bing moves to New York, hoping that her life will continue to be as perfect as it currently is. She has a comfortable place to live, friends to laugh with and a boyfriend that she truly loves.
"I could've reach...
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chapter fifty nine ~ the one with the black eye Joey's POV
Joey could sense that something was wrong with Heather, she had been acting weird ever since she went for that interview. He didn't ask her questions like the others did, he didn't want to pressure her into answering something that she wasn't ready to answer because he didn't want to upset her. But he knew that something had gone wrong for her to have turned down her dream job at this really fancy company where she could have started doing what she had been studying hard to do. Instead of working professionally in the job that she's always wanted, she was still working as a waitress in the crappy diner that Monica worked in. It didn't make any sense and even though he didn't want to pressure her into telling him something that she didn't want to tell anyone, he knew that he needed to know the truth and that she needed to tell the truth otherwise she would never move past this incident. Which was why he went to her apartment and asked her about what had happened during that job interview.
"Joey? What are you doing here?" She asked as she opened her front door.
"I need to talk to you, can I come in?"
Heather opened the door wider and stepped aside so that he could step into her apartment and then they could talk about everything that's been going on. He only wanted to know the truth so that he could help her move past this stage where she seemed afraid of her own shadow and he even noticed how she would flinch around the rest of their friends. Something else had happened, something that she hadn't told anyone and if she didn't tell someone soon then they would lose their friend without even knowing why. Even now as he waited to talk to her, he could see that something was wrong as she nibbled on her bottom lip and hugged her arms around herself; she was uncomfortable and she shouldn't have been because she was with one of her friends.
"So, what did you need to talk to me about?"
He took a deep breath. "I need to know what happened at your interview."
That took her off-guard, she was sure that there would be no more questions about that because it had happened days ago and she had already lied to everyone about why she declined the job. She wasn't expecting Joey to be the person to see through her lies and ask for the truth about what happened. She also hadn't been expecting it to happen right that second, otherwise she would have prepared herself to lie once again but now that he had caught her off-guard, she knew that she couldn't lie to him. Joey would know what she was making up and wouldn't be happy with it, he wanted the truth and wasn't going to leave until he got it.
"Okay, but do you promise not to tell anyone?" She said quietly, taking a seat on the couch.
Joey nodded, sitting beside her and waiting to hear her story. "I promise."
The story was hard to tell, Heather felt uncomfortable reliving the whole thing and hated to look weak in front of her friend but couldn't help it. She had felt weak and vulnerable when sat in that office and hated the way that the employer made her feel. Joey sat and listened, clenching his jaw every time her voice wavered or a tear slipped down her cheek; he hated the way that that man had made her feel and hated that she had felt as though she couldn't tell anyone. All he wanted was to hold onto her and never let anyone hurt her again, it wasn't fair that she had been through so much and was still on the receiving end of this negativity. A part of him wanted to tell the others so that they could help but he wouldn't betray her trust, not after he promised to keep it a secret.
When she had finished, Joey pushed the box of tissues over to her so that she could blow her nose and wipe her eyes because she had cried a lot through the story. His knuckles were turning white from how hard he was clenching his fists and he knew that he needed to do something otherwise Heather would never recover from this. She had been fragile anyway because of her recent breakup but this guy had gone way further than that and he wasn't going to sit back and let this happen to anyone else. Joey knew what he had to do and knew that Heather wasn't going to approve of it, but he had to do it, he had no choice. He got up from the couch and headed towards the door, which caught her attention; when she had decided to tell her story, she hadn't been expecting for him to listen to the whole thing and then leave when she needed reassurance. She didn't understand what he was doing but he had a plan and needed to get it done.
"Where are you going?"
"There's something that I need to handle, I'll be back in an hour."
He didn't wait to hear what she had to say about his departure because he knew that what he was doing was the best thing and didn't want her to try and stop him. Joey wasn't going to tell their friends about this because she didn't want him to, he understood that this was her story to tell and that she would share it when she was ready; he didn't want to break their promise by telling everyone when she wasn't ready for them to know. But he instead had somewhere that he needed to go, somewhere that he hadn't thought he would be going because he had never needed to go there before. However, due to something that he had just heard though, he needed to see this guy and teach him a lesson, Tribbiani style. It took an hour, and right on the dot, he was back at the apartment like he promised; only when heather opened the door, she was greeted with a different sight than what she was expecting.
"Oh my God, Joey, what did you do?" She gasped as she opened the door and dragged him to the couch.
"I was handling something." He replied, wincing as she grabbed his hands and inspected them.
Heather dropped his hands and instead gripped his chin, moving it gently to check the bruise around his eye and the cut on his lip. "What exactly did you handle?"
Joey didn't say anything as she rustled around the bathroom and came back with a first aid kit which she was going to use to treat his wounds. He wasn't that badly hurt, he was just caught off-guard by the other guy, who had managed to swing one good punch before Joey had knocked him to the ground. In all honesty, he didn't care that he was hurt because he had seen what had happened to the other guy and was more than happy to walk away with just a black eye and a cut lip. The cuts on his knuckles had appeared after he had landed a few punches, only cracking because it had been a while since he had to beat someone up but it was worth it because he had defended his friend and felt good about it.
"Joey, you shouldn't have done this, you didn't have to."
He reached out and grabbed her wrist, halting her movement as she reached for the icepack which would rest over his eye. "I didn't have to, I wanted to. He shouldn't have gotten away with what he did to you."
She pouted. "But you got hurt."
"Hurt?" Joey scoffed, ignoring the stinging of his eye as he looked up at her. "Please, you should have seen the other guy."
a/n: i have to re-write my assignment today with the changes that my tutor wants me to make 🙄 but i really cba 🥺 -lizzie ⭐️
