SOS by Glory, Girl Writer.pdf - Dawson's Creek Fandom Wiki

Disclaimers: Nope, don't own them. Didn't make them up. Just letting my mind wander.
Rating: Eh, it's PG-13 for language for now. You never know.
Acknowledgements: Well, the fanfic fiends over at Mighty Big TV are so cool and so
funny that they inspired me to join them. So a merry GloryGirl hola to Isadora, Ginni,
AndYourPointIs, Neo, the Lauras, LaaLaa, Kaytee, and of course the Divine Miss S, who
keeps all of us in line AND who started this WHOLE thing long ago, I think, by making a
passing reference to Laura's "Ante" . . . .
Feedback: You betcha. Write me at glorygirlwriter@yahoo.com.
Disclaimers: Nope, don't own them. Didn't make them up. Just letting my mind wander.
Rating: PG-13.
Acknowledgements: Well, the fanfic fiends over at Mighty Big TV are so cool and so
funny that they inspired me to join them. You have to understand that these women
(and the occasional stray man) are fun and enthusiastic in a way that strikes the perfect
balance between devoted and downright demanding. They are endlessly supportive, full
of good ideas, unbelievably friendly, tremendously helpful (banners and art are courtesy
of those of them with substantially more artistic talent than I could ever dream of having),
and they just generally provide such a positive and good-spirited vibe that they've kept
this story -- originally conceived as one that would have four or five parts and constitute
my entire fanfic career -- going much longer than it probably needed to. I've never met
any of the MBTV forum chicks, but I do consider them my friends. So, having said that,
here's a merry GloryGirl hola to: Isadora, Ginni, AndYourPointIs, NorthBeach, Neo,
jkowal, diesel, ShiningBright, the Lauras, duckie, pootle, dirtyoldlady, Kaytee, herman,
ophy, Ophelia, supernaturalblonde, Eponine, wacked-kath, Bronwen, Jojo, Psychic Cat,
SimoneS, Nat1, especially the fabulous LaaLaa, the too-long-neglected SarahJanet,
*linda*, cab_girl, teasa-b, cmbd, Tori623, Breezy K, jmb, creekintheknees, Kimmie, xsquared1,
techmuse, StaceyRosie, and of course the Divine Miss S, who keeps all of us
in line AND who started this WHOLE thing long ago, I think, by making a passing
reference to Laura's "Ante" . . . .
Feedback: You betcha. Write me at glorygirlwriter@yahoo.com.

part one: run
Pacey squinted at a smear of blood on his finger. He'd opened up the same fucking
blister he'd been swearing about for two weeks. He put down the sandpaper and
reached into the metal bucket he was using for a toolbox. One Band-Aid left. He heard
footsteps on the dock just as he finished wrapping the strip around his finger.
"Hey, Pace." It was Jen, of course. It was always Jen when he had just gotten through
doing something stupid, and it was especially always Jen when he was in no mood to be
incisively analyzed.
"Hey, Lindley. Wandering aimlessly in hopes of being captured by an eligible pirate?"
"No," she said, smiling a little. "I came to talk to you."
He nodded. "Okay. What's up?" He knew what was up.
There was a long and uncomfortable silence. Suddenly, after spending what felt like
long minutes unable to speak, Jen seemed to be saying about three things at the same
time. "Look, you know why I'm here, and we don't have to talk about it if you don't want
to, but I just think this is crazy, and I don't want to deal with you all year while you
mumble about regrets, and I don't think I have to tell you that --"
"Does this have something to do with Joey?" He stopped sanding and dropped down to
sit on the dock with his legs dangling over the edge. "Because I'm guessing that it
does."
"You know she's leaving. This is the day they leave, the moment of truth, the point of no
return." Jen sat down next to him. "She's going to be gone, you know. It's real."
He opened a bottle of beer and gave Jen the first shot at it. "Look, I appreciate what
you're trying to do here," he said, "but you can't really think I'm going to go down there
and make a scene at her house. Beg her to stay, put on a show, try to pry her out of
Dawson's clutches? Give him a boot to the forehead and grab her and run? It ain't
gonna happen, sister, so you can forget it. Besides, who am I to deprive her of the
college experience?"
"This isn't about the college experience, Pacey. She doesn't want to go. You know what
she's been like since you two broke up. I mean, sure, Dawson's doing his whole
wunderkind ex machina thing, emerging at the last minute to bail her out. But it isn't

what she really wants, and you know it." She paused and knocked into him gently with
her shoulder. "Go talk to her."
"Can I ask you a question?" Pacey took a long drink from the bottle and wiped his
mouth with the back of his hand. "Why is she going?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well," he continued impatiently, "you're standing here telling me she doesn't want to
go. Furthermore, you missed Jack by about twenty minutes, and you know what he was
doing?" He met Jen's resigned and somewhat guilty expression with one of triumph.
"That's right. He was telling me she doesn't want to go. 'She doesn't want to go with
him, Pacey,' that's what Jackers had to say. 'Go talk to her, go tell her not to go, saddle
up the white horse and get crackin'.' But, you know, neither one of you has explained to
me why, if she doesn't want to go, she's sitting at her house with packed bags and an
airline ticket, waiting for Dawson to cart her off to the other side of the country."
"You know why. He's safe." Jen took a deep breath and continued. "Her dad died,
Pacey. She doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know which end is up."
"So, in other words, what you're saying is that the real problem is that her dad died?"
"Kind of."
"You do realize," he said as he watched a distant boat throw a wake across the water,
"that if I go to her house and put into action whatever dramatic scenario you're
envisioning in your inventive blonde noggin, and I tell her not to go, and she doesn't go,
and she comes with me, her dad will still be dead?"
Jen blinked several times. "Sure."
"So what then?" When Jen didn't answer, Pacey continued. "What happens then?
She's carrying around the fact that her mom died, she's carrying around the fact that her
dad died, she's carrying around whatever the fuck it is she has about Dawson not
thinking she was pretty when she was thirteen, she's carrying around how much she
hates being tall, she's carrying around Bessie and the whole out-of-wedlock thing, she's
carrying around being poor . . . there's not one of those things I can fix, and I can't keep
getting my head kicked in over it."
Jen looked at him incredulously. "You don't have to fix it, Pacey. You make it easier to
take. People you love just make those things easier, you know that."
"It isn't enough." He took another drink and handed the bottle back. "This is a new boat,
Jen, and it's a pretty damn good boat, too. But I put Joey on this boat with the baggage
she'd be bringing with her, and I guarantee she'll sink it." He jumped up and went back
to work.
"I can't believe you're going to let her go because you're too stubborn to go and get her -
-"

"No!" he cut her off angrily. "I'm not too stubborn." He chuckled in total frustration.
"Don't you think I want to go and get her? Don't you think I want to bring her here and
keep her here and rip her clothes off and keep her from crying and not get off the boat
for a month? Don't you get what I'm saying? It won't work. I'm not the Marines,
Lindley. I don't do rescue operations."
She nodded slowly and stood up. "So you're going to let this happen."
He sighed long and deeply. "Like I said, I appreciate what you're trying to do. But you
gotta know that however badly you want me to do something . . . ," he spoke slowly,
inches from Jen's face, "it does . . . not . . . even . . . register compared to how badly I
want me to do something. If I can successfully beat back every instinct I have, I can
certainly defeat every argument you're going to come up with." He cleared his throat
and started sanding the boat.
"And it's okay with you? You can live without her if she leaves?" Jen was almost done.
She was almost out of arguments, and Pacey was about to throw her bodily off the dock,
but she felt like she had to try one last time.
"It's not okay with me." He sniffed ambiguously. "But yes, I can live without her if she
leaves. I'm doing the right thing, and if I know I did the right thing, then . . . I can sleep.
If I did the wrong thing, if I went over there and grabbed her, brought her back here, and
crawled under the covers with her, then . . . I'd lie there waiting for the next time
something backs up on her and she gets herself into an emotional crisis and I'm left with
a great big hat with no rabbits in it."
As Jen watched him work, she was suddenly aware of how pale he seemed, how gray
and grim. It was worse than if she had stumbled across puffy eyes and a runny nose.
He didn't look like a guy who needed a hug or a Kleenex. He looked like a guy who
needed a coffin. "Okay. Do you want company, or shall I leave you alone?"
"I'm not a lot of fun to be around right now, so . . . I'll just catch up with you later." He
didn't say it, but the words hung in the air with an acrid certainty. After they leave. She
walked away slowly, and before he could stop himself, he called out to her one more
time. "Lindley?"
"Yeah?"
Without even looking at her, he slowed his hands to a stop and leaned against the boat.
"She'd come with me, wouldn't she? If I went over there. She'd let him go and she'd
come with me."
Briefly, Jen wondered whether to tell the truth or not, but it didn't seem like there were a
lot of other appealing choices. "Yes. She would."
He smiled bitterly and nodded as he started to work again. "Right. That's what I
thought."
***

Joey suddenly felt the crush of silence around her as she sat among her luggage. Are
you really going to do this? She pushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear, but she
heard it again, coming unmistakably from somewhere inside her own head. Are you
really going to do this?
She was, of course. There had never been any real question. As soon as Dawson
asked her to go with him to California, everything else had gone out the window. She
could pretend she had agonized over it, given it hours of thought while scribbling pros
and cons in her journal, listened to the sage advice of her sister and her friends . . . but it
was a lie. The invitation had come to her like a lifeboat, three weeks after her father
died, two months after she broke up with Pacey. Dawson had started talking about how
excited he was about Los Angeles, about school, about the beaches and the palm trees
and doing everything he'd ever wanted to do. She had felt herself leaning in toward his
enthusiasm, trying to wiggle into it like a cat lying on the floor in the last stripe of
afternoon sunshine. He was happy, and she wasn't, and she wanted to be. So when he
looked up with a start one day and said, "You should come," she had as much as
packed her bags the minute it was out of his mouth.
She'd wondered whether Pacey would be upset, even though he didn't have any reason
to be and, as far as she could tell, it turned out he actually didn't care very much. They
weren't together anymore, thanks to one last argument about school that proved to be
too much to get over. She'd said a few things she probably shouldn't have said, and one
that she really shouldn't have said (something about his "living down to her every
expectation"), and suddenly it had been over. At first, it had been like having her hand
cut off. She felt like she couldn't do anything, couldn't think straight, couldn't stand to
see anyone. Over time, though, it had turned into a dull empty feeling from which she
was mercifully distracted when she got word that her father had died of a sudden heart
attack in prison. That particular news hit with such a resounding thud that she didn't get
out of bed for a week.
And now she was off to California. New life, new start, new state, new plan . . . and then
that voice in her head again. Dull old albatross boyfriend. "Shut up," she said out loud,
checking one more time that her plane ticket was in her purse.
"Hey, gorgeous, you about ready?" Jack leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, then
surveyed the room. "I'd say you've got enough stuff."
"Yeah, I'm ready. Thanks for giving me a ride to the airport. Mitch and Gale wanted that
last tear-jerking journey all to themselves." She picked up two suitcases and let him
grab the other two. "Is Jen coming to the airport?"
"She's going to meet us at the gate." He shrugged. "She had a few errands to run."
Joey wanted to ask, but she didn't. Instead, she pressed ahead with forced cheer that
felt like it was choking her. "Okay, well, let's go then."
Jack stopped briefly in the doorway and turned to look at her. "You're sure this is what
you want to do?"

Oh, for just a minute, she was so tempted. She was so close. She almost dropped the
bags and threw her arms around him and buried her head in his shoulder and poured
her heart into his light leather jacket . . . no, no, I don't want to go . . . get me out of here .
. . take me to the boat . . . tell Dawson I can't go . . . She could actually feel the leather
on her cheek, Jack's hand on the back of her neck, how they would stand like that for ten
minutes before they moved again. She saw herself running down the dock toward the
new boat, just like she once had toward True Love. In her imagination, she found him
working or eating or drinking, and he looked up and saw her, and she ran over and
tumbled into him, kissed him, apologized for everything, ran her thumbs over his
cheekbones, breathed him in like oxygen.
And then she felt herself drop back into her own life, and felt the rough luggage strap in
her palm. "Sure, yes. I'm sure."
Jack had seen her go. He'd watched her eyes soften briefly, and then he'd seen the
rapid-fire blinking when she came back. Whatever had happened, though, it was over.
There was nothing to do now but take her to the airport.
***
At the gate, Dawson was already waiting with his parents. When Joey got there, he
hugged her warmly and excitedly, entirely oblivious to how close she'd come to turning
back over and over again in the last week. Jack watched from a few steps away as
Dawson prattled about the plane, the seats, the in-flight movie, the weather, and
apparently whatever else ran into his head on the endless circular reel of small talk he
always had handy at times like this. When Jen approached, she came to Jack first.
"She doesn't look too good," she muttered, watching Joey feign interest in Gale's
endless last-minute instructions.
"You should have seen her when I picked her up," Jack said, leaning against a post.
"I've never seen such a blank stare in my life."
"I can't believe Dawson can't tell how unhappy she is," Jen whispered, shaking her
head. "He's normally a little dense, but this is ridiculous."
"He doesn't want to know. I talked to him the other day, and he's convinced this is a
whole new start for them."
Jen's head snapped around to face Jack. "He wants to get back together with her? I
thought they had a deal. The whole platonic apartment-share thing."
"Yeah, well . . . " Jack raised his eyebrows. "Dawson missed a meeting on that
particular deal."
"I know you went to see Pacey," she said, a little guiltily. "I did, too."
"Apparently we had equally good luck, given that he's not here."

"It was weird," Jen mused. "I really wanted him to stop all this, but when he was telling
me why he wasn't going to, it seemed like it made a lot of sense. He was saying how if
she has all these things going on, then she'll have them going on whether he's around or
not . . . it sounded really smart. Very adult."
"Andie." Jack said it simply, but clearly. "He learned that with Andie."
The announcement came over the speaker right on time that the flight was about to
board, so the two of them walked over to Joey and Dawson. As Joey hugged her
friends, she kept noticing that strange feeling in her feet, like something was physically
dragging her, telling her to run, run, run! Jen gave her a book to read, Jack gave her
shoulder an encouraging squeeze, and Mitch and Gale promised to tell Bessie, who was
traveling with Bodie and Alexander, goodbye.
Joey gave a long look around the terminal. Up the corridor, back the way she'd come,
across the crowds of people, and all the way to the security checkpoint. There was no
sign of him. Get it through your thick skull, that voice came back. He doesn't care.
"Are you ready to go, Jo?" Dawson smiled down at her with such fondness and
familiarity that it almost made everything all right. She felt a smile spread across her
face, and she nodded.
"Let's go."
***
Pacey sat on the boat and looked at his watch again. They had a 6:55 flight, and it was
6:50. The sun was starting to set, and he'd gotten a good day's work in. Aside from the
blister, it had been a fairly pleasant day of communing with the boat, chatting up the
regulars who strolled by, and generally doing his damndest to forget all about Joey. The
fact that she was leaving, the fact that he wasn't going with her, the fact that she was
going with Dawson . . . the list of horrors went on and on. He had prepared himself for
the expected visits from Jack and Jen, though he'd expected they might come as a pair,
for the sake of efficiency. He had found it harder than he'd anticipated dealing with Jen's
barrage of insistences that he was being a fool and a creep and a chicken of the worst
kind. "You're going to let this happen," she had said. And he had thought to himself
then, just as he was thinking now, with what he was trying to fashion into steely resolve,
"Yes, I am."
He envisioned Joey on the plane, stuffing her black backpack into the overhead bin. He
could see her slide into her seat next to Dawson as he pulled out his copy of
"Premiere." He'd make a comment about how excited he was about this movie or that
movie, and then she would mention that one of the actresses obviously had implants,
and then the two of them would start to banter, and all would be right with the world.
"Dawson and Joey, sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G," he sang to no one in particular as he
opened another beer.
"If this is how she wants it, this is how it's going to be." He muttered it aloud now, but it
had been a largely silent mantra for a month. He had had enough of emergency tutoring
and warring with bullies and secret pleas to third parties on each other's behalf, and he

couldn't see adding to that ugly tradition by running to the airport with a fistful of roses,
prepared to make the plane pull back to the gate so she could escape. The grand
gestures were escalating to the point where someone was going to have to climb Mount
Everest in order to prove something, and that was no good. "If this is how she wants it,"
he breathed to himself, "this is how it's going to be."
He checked his watch. 7:05. They were probably gone. He drank beer and cried for
about fifteen minutes, and then he gathered up his stuff and headed home.
part two: bolt
There were things you were allowed to miss and things you had to show up for, and
Thanksgiving with Grams was not optional. She called, you answered. She asked you,
you went. Even, in Dawson and Joey's case, if it meant flying all the way from
California. So it was that they were there, side by side in coach, somewhere over
Oklahoma, when Dawson decided to bring up the obvious. "So, have you told anybody
about us?"
She put down her magazine and grinned coyly at him. "What about us, exactly?"
"Well," his voice dropped to what he thought was his enticing growl, but which always
struck Joey as more like a whine played at half-speed. "That we're back together."
"I told Bessie," she said with a chipper nod. "Bessie knows."
"But not anybody else?"
"Who else am I going to tell?" She shrugged broadly. "Jack's preoccupied with his own
flourishing love life, Jen's so wrapped up in her classes that she and I have spoken a
total of three times since September . . . and you know I don't talk to Pacey very much,
so . . . that about does it." Suddenly, a distressing thought hit. "Have you told
anybody?"
"No. I thought Thanksgiving might be a good opportunity, actually. Sharing glad tidings
with family and friends is actually one of the few holiday traditions I enjoy." He kissed
her dully on the mouth, and he tasted like gum, as always.

Pacey, on the other hand, was usually a little salty, or even garlicky. Not that you
remember.
Dawson smiled at her and went back to trying to sleep. As Joey settled back in her seat,
she gazed at him and smiled slowly. There weren't really any seasons in southern
California, but if there were, she would have said it had been a good fall. They had a
little apartment, for which they paid an ungodly sum they never could have afforded
without the benefit of some probably ill-gotten gains her father had managed to stash
away for her before he died. Dawson was in school, hanging out with people who were
just as pretentious about movies as he was, and Joey was waiting tables, which she
figured made her an honorary actress. They spent a lot of time at the movies, and a lot
of time cooking and doing the laundry and basically having the life she'd been afraid she
couldn't have anymore after her father died. It wasn't exciting -- nothing like sailing down
the coast with Pacey, a memory that had become so distant she could barely catch hold
of it anymore. Imagining herself doing such a ridiculously impulsive thing was just about
impossible. It was, however, the first time in her life she'd ever lived in a place that felt
like it was her own, and when she walked in the door at the end of the day, there was
peace, and that meant everything.
They'd sort of slipped noiselessly back into dating, or whatever it is you're doing when
the rules are that you're living together but not sleeping together -- that kissing is
allowed, but walking around naked is not. One day, he'd just kissed her, as if he'd been
doing it all along. As if they hadn't been broken up for years. It was like going back to a
house she'd once lived in, where there weren't any new rooms to discover, but at least
she knew where everything was.
The plane floated toward Massachusetts, and Joey began to rehearse what she'd say.
How happy they were in California, how eager she was to start school in the fall.
"Probably art history," she whispered confidently to the back of the seat in front of her.
She'd have to say something about the apartment. "Small, but comfortable, you know . .
. "
She worked every day at not missing Pacey, which unfortunately felt a lot like missing
him. Whenever she and Jen talked, Jen would pass on news about him, pretending to
be casual, and Joey would listen to it, pretending to be uninterested. Her favorite line
was a practiced, neutral, "Oh, really?" There seemed to be quite a collection of girls
here and there, silly flirtations that seemed destined to come to nothing. The fact that
this came as a relief always felt like a distant ominous lightning bolt. Someday, she'd
think, he really will meet someone. She tried not to think about it.
***
Pacey was standing on the porch of his house enjoying the chill of the afternoon when
he heard the unmistakable McPhee war cry, a veritable explosion of perk that nearly
shook the earth. "Paaaacey!" Andie bounded toward him with abandon, screaming
something in French that he assumed meant something like, "I'm so happy to see you,"
but that she, as usual, delivered as if it were more like, "Your hair is on fire." Jack trailed
behind her, grinning.

"McPhee," he sighed, sweeping her into his arms with the same mix of adoration and
regret that she always evoked. "You look lovely and blonde and French."
She pulled back and flicked her eyes over him, head to toe. "You look good," she said
through a toothy smile.
"As stated above, so do you," he volleyed back, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
"Evidently, Europe agrees with you." He extended a hand to Jack, who grasped it
firmly. "Hey, man."
They went inside, where Andie regaled Pacey with tales of Paris, which had been her
next stop after Italy. Harvard, surprisingly enough, had gotten the back of her hand once
she experienced the black-turtlenecked poets and fresh bread overseas. She had
enrolled in a University that Pacey never remembered the name of, and was living in a
little apartment with a temperamental ballerina by the name of Marie-Chantal. "I swear,"
Andie bubbled as she drank from a bottle of root beer, "she's got fifteen boyfriends from
every country in Europe, she smokes like a chimney, and she doesn't eat. Ever."
Pacey laughed as he handed Jack a drink. "Sounds like you may have met the only girl
in France as high-maintenance as you are."
"So how are things with you?", she asked, trying for a tone of casual interest.
"Things are fine." He glanced at Jack, who looked at the floor. "They are. They're fine.
Ask your brother. I don't have a major yet, but I do have a B-plus average and a very
glamorous job washing dishes at one of Capeside's finer restaurants, which keeps me in
coffee and comic books, as my father would say."
"Are you seeing anybody?" She was dating a member of the French national soccer
team, he knew, which probably made this question a little easier for her to ask.
"Not right now. I was seeing this one girl Emily --"
"The bug scientist," Jack interjected.
"-- and before that I was with Alison -- "
"The actress/juggler."
" -- who was friends with Naomi -- "
"Delivered singing telegrams."
" -- and there was Tara, and Kimmy, and Lila -- "
"Nudist, cultist, smelled like a fish truck."
"Would you shut the hell up?" Pacey shook his head and laughed. "Or we'll get into
your sparkling romantic situation, Mr. Man-of-Action."

Jack held up his hands in defeat. "Okay, okay. I'm not doing much better. But you have
to admit that I haven't managed to date such a wide array of unsuitable people. I think
we both need to take a lesson from my sister and take up with international celebrities."
"Not to change the subject," Andie said pointedly, "but who all is coming to this dinner
tomorrow night?"
"Well," Jack held out his fingers and rattled off the guest list. "Grams and Jen, obviously,
then there's Dawson's mom and dad, Bessie, Bodie, and Alexander, Doug and
Gretchen, and then you, me, Pacey, and Dawson and Joey."
Andie let a long pause settle, and finally said, "Is this going to be okay for you?"
Pacey looked up with a start, trying to act surprised. "What, for me? That Joey and
Dawson are coming? Sure." He knew she didn't believe him, and Jack didn't believe
him, and even he didn't really believe him, but he pressed ahead anyway, as if he were
eating something he didn't like, but felt obligated to finish it for the sake of the starving
children in Africa. "It's all water under the bridge now, as they say. It was a long time
ago, she's moved on, it's . . . you know, it's okay."
"Are they together, or are they . . . together?" She directed it mostly to Jack, but it was
Pacey who answered.
"Officially, they're supposedly platonic as of the last Lindley update." He shook his
head. "But I guarantee you it's only a matter of time."
Jack leaned forward and raised an eyebrow. "And what will you do if they show up and
announce they're back together for another round of their epic romance?"
"I'll be fine. I'll congratulate them."
Andie took a shot. "And if she gives you that cheery, strange, crooked Joey-smile like
she's possessed?"
"I'll pat her on the head and send her on her way."
She went on. "What if he compares their story to some old movie he probably hasn't
even seen?"
Pacey couldn't help chuckling. "I'll congratulate him on the astute observation."
Jack went in for the kill. "And if he uses the word 'soulmates'?"
Pacey didn't pause for even an instant. "Oh, I'll kick his ass."
They both paused to take this in, and then nodded slowly. "Sounds good," Jack
managed finally.
***

part three: blush
"What are we here for again?" Jack asked as the automatic door swung open.
Jen pulled the list from her pocket. "Flour, butter, half-and-half, nutmeg, and -- I think
this is Pacey's handwriting -- 'the cranberry sauce that slides out in the shape of the
can.'"
"Ah, haute cuisine." Jack headed toward the back of the store, which was full mostly of
men, most of whom were puzzling over lists that looked a lot like the one Grams had
given to Jen. He plucked a small carton of half-and-half from the shelf. "So when are
Dawson and Joey supposed to show up?"
"Dawson and his folks said they'd be over at 5:00 or so, and the Potterfamilias gave us
an ETA about a half-hour later." She grabbed a pound of butter and pointed him toward
the baking aisle. "Do you think it's going to be horrible?"
"Well, Pacey claims to be fine, although he's wound a little tight. I hope Grams is
keeping him and Andie busy, because otherwise I think he's going to spend the
afternoon thinking of ways to separate Dawson from his eyeballs."
"Well, call me an irrepressible optimist, but I insist on proceeding under the delusion that
very little physical violence can take place at a gathering attended by Dawson's parents
and Grams." She picked up a bag of flour. "Besides, they say time heals all wounds, so
maybe it's already healed these."
He led the way toward canned goods. "I hope you're right. I think you're dreaming, but I
hope you're right. Now what are we looking for?"
"'Cranberry sauce that slides out in the shape of the can.' You know, it's like Jell-O. It
makes that slurping noise, like . . . " She produced a wet, very nearly obscene sucking
sound.
"Mmm, very appealing," he said with complete disgust. "Hard to believe you aren't
dating."
"I love that noise."

Jack and Jen both turned around to see where the voice had come from. A tall, thin guy
with light brown hair was turning red and laughing. "I'm sorry. I wasn't meaning to
eavesdrop, but it really was a very good reproduction."
"I keep telling her to practice her noises in the house, but she just doesn't listen." Jack
couldn't help noticing, purely in passing, what a high-quality blush it was, and gave a
little grin himself. "You shouldn't encourage her."
"I'm sorry. I think I'm a little punchy. My aunt sent me out to do the ceremonial grocery
run of total panic, in which she suddenly realizes that she doesn't have all the things she
needs to make all the things nobody wants to eat anyway, and sends some poor soul --
this year it happens to be me -- out at the last minute to remedy the situation. My father
told me he'd give me twenty bucks if I promised not to find the olives."
"Ah, a moral dilemma," Jack offered as Jen pretended to be examining the canned
green beans. "Please the father or please the grandmother?"
"Well, I get so few opportunities to please my father these days." He seemed to pause
for a minute, and then he forged ahead. "Last Thanksgiving was a little tense, you
know? 'Dad, this is Mike, Mike, this is Dad.' It was disappointment way beyond olives."
"Ah." Jack went for the cranberry sauce and didn't make eye contact. "Dad handling
Mike a little better this year?"
"Well, fortunately for Dad's blood pressure, Mike's not really in the picture this year, so . .
. you know, it's a little easier for him." Tall-and-brown-haired was blushing again. "I'm . .
. uh . . . I'm Pete, by the way." He held out his hand.
"I'm Jack. This is Jen." It was a good handshake. Not quite a shake, really. More like a
nice grasp. "We're gearing up for a dinner that's probably going to be even more tense
than yours." He turned to Jen, hoping she'd jump in, but she was intently reading the
ingredients on a can of spaghetti sauce. "It's a nightmare," he went on, "Old friends,
everybody hates each other now . . . it's going to be one big seventh-grade slumber
party."
"Well." Pete squinted and pushed his round glasses a little farther up on his nose. "I
actually have a sort of a . . . you know, a winding-down thing . . . planned for after dinner
. . . " The words continued to ease out like toothpaste from a hesitant tube. "I'm having
some . . . some friends over . . . for . . . " He went for the glasses again. It was officially
adorable. "For . . . winding down . . . purposes . . . and if you want to come over, that
would be great. I'll be . . . home from my aunt's by about . . . ten o'clock or so, so . . .
you'd be welcome if the slumber party gets a little intense. Bring your . . . bring your
friends, you know, or whatever." Suddenly, he reached in his pocket and pulled out
some crumpled papers. Picking one, he flattened it out and scribbled on it. "Address.
In case you decide you want to show up. Anyway, I'll . . . I'll see you, Jack. Nice
meeting you. Nice meeting you, Jen."
Finally, Jen seemed to emerge from her canned-vegetable reverie. Once Pete had
ambled off, she smacked Jack on the arm. "You are so going."

"We'll see." He was smiling, though. "Maybe."
"He's cute," she stage-whispered as they headed for the checkout line. "He liked my
slurping noise."
"Oh, shut up."
"You're telling me Jack got picked up at the grocery store?" Pacey picked at a plate of
cheese and crackers that Andie had meticulously arranged and then foolishly
abandoned on the kitchen counter.
***
"He got picked up but good. And we're all going to this party, too, because he'll chicken
out if we don't." Jen laid the groceries on the counter and folded up the bag. "Besides, I
have a feeling we'll all be in a mood to unwind."
"Don't start," Pacey warned, popping another cracker into his mouth. "Just don't start."
Jack's voice drifted in from the living room. "Are you in there talking about me, Jen?"
"No," she said sweetly. She slapped Pacey's hand away from the tray and picked it up,
and he followed her into the living room, where Jack and Andie were sharing a couch.
Just as they were about to sit down, there was a knock at the door. "I'll get it," Jen said
as she set the tray down. Pacey stood, watching the door with some combination of
anticipation and dread. Jen swung it open.
"Hello, sweetheart," Gale gushed with a broad smile, giving Jen a motherly hug. Mitch
followed close behind, kissing the top of Jen's head and handing her a loaf of nut bread.
"Hi, you guys, come on in." Jen stood aside as they entered. "Where's Dawson?"
"He's on his way in," Mitch said as he pulled off his coat and took Gale's from her. "He's
got a gift for your Grams."
Just then, Dawson appeared at the door, carrying a broad, flat package wrapped in
brown paper. He set it down inside the door and went to Jen. "Hey, you." He hugged
her enthusiastically and then pulled back to take off his coat. "It's for Grams. I flew it all
the way here from Los Angeles, so I hope she likes it."
"What is it? It looks like a painting or something."
"It's a picture of you, actually, from when you visited this summer." His eyes swept the
room, settling on the easiest task first. He walked over and bent to kiss Andie on the
cheek. "You look great," he said approvingly as he took in her new shorter hair. "Hey,
Jack." They shook hands, and then it was time.

"Pacey, it's really good to see you." He extended a hand. For a long moment, the room
seemed to fill up with silence until it almost hummed. Finally, Pacey shook it and
smiled.
"It's good to see you too, man. Where's your girl?"
This was something Dawson wasn't ready for. He looked blankly back at Pacey as his
father disappeared with the coats and his mom headed for the kitchen. "She -- she's
coming later with Bessie and Bodie."
Pacey knew this, of course but he figured he had just spared the room about twenty
minutes of Dawson's awkward efforts to share news that was coming anyway.
"Come on, sit down." Pacey gestured toward an empty chair and then chose another for
himself. "Tell me about California. How's school?"
"School is just what I hoped it would be. A bunch of other people who are just as
obsessed with movies as I am." He laughed weakly. "So it's been good. How's
everything with you?"
Jack fought the urge to drop to his hands and knees and make a desperate crawl for the
door. Anything to get out of this room.
"You know me, Dawson. Everything's always fine. I'm in school, I'm still living with
Gretchen, I'm anxious to get back on my boat in the spring."
"I was happy to hear that you had a new boat." Dawson clung to this new, unthreatening
topic like a life preserver. "Tell me about it."
"Well, it's no True Love," Pacey shrugged, "but I guess I'll take what I can get."
Dawson's safe topic had just gone all Bermuda triangle on him. He turned to Jen,
hoping for a rescue. "And how are you?"
"Oh." She seemed surprised to suddenly have to participate in something she'd been
gaping at like a car accident. "I'm fine. Still living here, going to school, working for . . .
your parents . . . as you know . . . " it was a pathetic attempt.
"I'm sleeping with a French soccer player," Andie suddenly blurted.
"You -- you are?" Dawson nodded, chewing on this fact. "And how's that going?"
Jack fought the urge to grab for the cheese knife and commit ritual suicide.
***
Joey had been to Grams' house so many times that she knew exactly how long it usually
took for Jen to come to the door. Feeling a little bit not-quite-ready for what she knew

was coming, she trailed behind Bessie and Bodie, who was carrying Alexander on his
shoulders and a sweet potato casserole in his hands. Bessie rang the bell.
Deciding what to wear had turned into a referendum in her mind on the purpose of the
evening. The part of her that believed it was to be a warm family event was advocating
her fuzzy brown sweater. The part of her that believed it was an opportunity to bask in
the glory of her new relationship with Dawson was leaning toward a striped sweater he'd
given her for her birthday. The part of her that wanted to see Pacey so badly she was
almost shaking seemed to favor the blue sweater with the snowflakes, which she knew
to be his favorite.
The snowflakes won.
The door opened, and Joey would later remember absolutely nothing of the next five
minutes except seeing Pacey sitting in Grams' living room, feet on the coffee table.
People hugged her, someone took her coat, someone asked her how she was, she said
something noncommittal. And she stared at him as if she thought she could pull him
across the room by sheer force of will. He was wearing his hair a little shorter than when
she'd left, and he had on a red cable-knit sweater that she was fairly sure she'd never
seen. She seemed to suddenly be sitting across from him in the living room, and her
eye fell on the scar on his cheek. Her fingers almost reached out to touch it, but she
pinched the leg of her jeans instead.
Pacey stared back at her, realizing with unrestrained horror how much more beautiful
she was than he remembered. His memory had flattened her features, taken some of
the shine out of her hair, shortened her delicate fingers, and dulled her skin. And now
she was here, sitting opposite him in a room full of people, and he was literally pressing
his back into the chair to keep from flying over the coffee table and engaging in some
Thanksgiving activities with her that were definitely not sanctioned by the Pilgrims.
***
Dinner started out fine. And it continued to be fine, right up until Dawson shared a story
about Joey's broken tooth.
"I had this entire evening planned, with dinner and a movie and everything, and we went
to this beautiful Italian place and ate pasta until we were about ready to blow up, and
then we went to the movie." He took a sip of water and went on. "We're at the movie,
and she takes a big handful of popcorn and tosses it in her mouth with all the
appropriate enthusiasm, and then she hollers like she's being strangled. I'm leaning
over her, 'Jo, Jo, what's the matter?' And she's moaning and clutching her mouth . . .
turns out she snapped her tooth clean in half on an unpopped kernel. We decided not to
sue, which we know makes us not really good Americans, but we had to run her to this
emergency dentist with this giant hands who kept talking about how you should never
eat popcorn, because just this kind of thing can happen, and he knows so many people
who have lost teeth to movie popcorn . . . it was a complete nightmare. We didn't get
home until three in the morning. What's more, the guy went completely nuts with the
Novocaine. Joey's tongue was numb for a week."

Pacey would spend the next twenty years swearing he didn't intend to say it until it was
out of his mouth. "Are you sure that was the dentist, man? Maybe it was dying of
boredom."
***
part four: pulse
It created an interesting dilemma at the dinner table. The line echoed in the room.
Maybe it was dying of boredom.
"Don't be silly," Grams said as she buttered a roll. "I'm sure Josephine's palate is just
fine. California has plenty of good food, even if they don't know how to make a good
New England clam chowder without resorting to a can opener."
Jen made a mental note: Buy Grams flowers. Then she scribbled out that mental note
and composed a new one: Buy Grams a car.
Pacey was now miserably staring into his plate. Dawson was making a half-hearted
effort to cut into a slice of turkey, and Joey was rhythmically tapping her mashed
potatoes with her fork. Jen stood up and dropped her napkin on the table. "I want to
see you in the kitchen. And you, and you." She walked over to the kitchen door and
held it open. Dawson went through first, then Joey, then Pacey, who grimaced at her as
he went by.
"What did I do?"
"Get in the kitchen," she whispered harshly. A stunned Jack and Andie quickly
downshifted to entertaining the adults, all of whom were taking larger-than-usual sips of
wine.
As the door swung shut, Jen looked at the three of them lined up against the counter.
Dawson and Pacey, with Joey in the middle. How depressingly literal. "Look, I don't
know what the three of you think you're doing, but Grams invited you here for dinner and
you're acting like you've been cast in the dullest one-act play a college theater
department has ever produced. Now I don't care who's angry at who, or who doesn't
bring who flowers anymore. I don't care what torches people are carrying, I don't care
what grudges remain to be resolved, and I sure as hell don't care about a love triangle
plot that wouldn't even make for a passable episode of Growing Pains. But I do care
about the fact that all three of you are making me wish I'd told Grams not to invite you."

"I'm sorry about the tongue thing," Pacey offered gamely, smiling a little in a way that
normally she found very appealing, but which at that moment made Jen want to break
his nose. "I thought Grams made a nice recovery."
"Jen, I don't know why you dragged all three of us in here," Dawson complained. "He's
the one who said it. I thought everything was fine until then."
"Sure you did," Jen snorted. "You sat there serving up every adorable little tale the two
of you have managed to generate in whatever brief time you've been romantically
reunited. I can't imagine you've been in California long enough to say very many more
precious and nauseating things to each other than you've managed to share at the table
as your personal prelude to indigestion, Dawson, so I'm thinking you're pretty much
pouring out the contents of the entire catalogue. You may be able to fool everybody else
in that room, but get this straight: I know exactly what you're doing. Consider his nose
rubbed in it, would you? It's enough."
"I'd say more than enough," Pacey made the mistake of chiming in.
"Don't you even start," she snapped, turning her pointing finger at him. "You're the one
who escalated this from an uncomfortable but manageable undercurrent to a full-blown
adolescent smackdown. Given the number of times in the last six months that you've
told me you're fine, I'd think you could make it through dinner without coming on like the
Portrait of the Artist as a Jealous Angry Bastard." She turned her eyes to stare at Joey.
"What? I didn't do anything."
"Yes." Jen said it gently, but emphatically. "That's exactly right. You didn't do
anything." She took a deep breath and launched into her final assault. "Now I want you
all to listen. After dinner is over and we've done our duty helping Grams with the dishes,
we're going to put all this behind us and go hang out with a guy Jack and I met at the
grocery store. We're all going."
"I don't want to go," Pacey said with a brisk shake of his head.
"I don't give a shit." She smiled grimly. "Jack has backed every single one of us up in a
variety of situations in which we didn't really deserve it. And," she looked pointedly at
Joey, "this in spite of the fact that I think it's fair to say he hasn't had a very easy life
himself. So we're all going to take our heads out of our asses and stop acting like the
world revolves around our petty romantic entanglements, and we're going to take a few
hours and act like the world revolves around Jack's petty romantic entanglements. I
don't want to hear any griping, I don't want to hear any complaining, I don't want to hear
any obscure pop culture references that could possibly be construed as complaining,
and if any combination of the three of you starts anything except a campfire singalong, I
will personally strip you naked and tie you to a flagpole. Got it?"
Joey looked moderately amused for the first time all evening, which was more than could
be said for Dawson, who appeared to be afraid that Jen might hit him. Pacey, on the
other hand, was grinning openly. As the three of them filed past her back into the dining
room, he kissed her on the cheek. "You are a force of nature, Lindley. And I'm sorry."

"You are not."
He grinned again. "All this, and psychic too."
***
Jack, called upon to put knuckles to wood, found that he was too nervous to knock. He
was afraid to let Andie knock, for fear that in her nervous state, which usually manifested
itself in an overdose of enthusiasm, she would spontaneously leap into the arms of
whoever answered the door. Joey's mood had clearly improved since dinner, but now
she and Dawson were occupying themselves doing some sort of nuzzling-giggling thing.
Jack suspected that this routine was, on both of their parts, for the benefit of Pacey, who
was checking out the wall sconce by the apartment door in a desperate attempt not to
notice the giggling and nuzzling. "Jen, knock on the door."
"Oh, for God's sake, do I always have to be the only grown-up in the room?" She
stepped forward and knocked briskly.
Pete answered the door, looking more relaxed than he had at the store. "Hey, Jen.
Jack." He gave a little nod, which Jack returned with a sort of sneaky eagerness. "The
rest of you I don't know."
"Oh." Jen pointed to each of them in turn. "This is Jack's sister Andie, and these are
our friends Dawson, Joey, and Pacey. Guys, this is Pete." "Hey"s all around.
It was a nicely-furnished two-bedroom apartment, and there were about twenty people
milling around. They looked primarily like college types, and only a few of them looked
genuinely drunk, which seemed like a plus. Andie quickly went off in search of a 7-UP,
Dawson and Joey went to follow up on news that in one of the bedrooms, a small group
was watching Jaws on DVD, and Jen dragged Pacey over to check out the CD
collection. "Wow, your friends don't like you very much," Pete said as Jack looked
around, stunned at the flood of departures.
"They're subtle, aren't they? I'm thinking they don't have much of a future as
international spies." It was at this point that Jack realized that the flirtation from the store
had just become something only a few degrees from a date -- the covert had become
the overt. "Thank you for inviting us, by the way. We could really use the outlet at this
point."
"That's right, the slumber party." Pete sat down on the living room sofa, and Jack
dropped down next to him. "How's it going? They don't seem to be acting up too badly
right now."
"You're lucky you missed dinner. It's complicated."
"Tell me."
"Well, you might have noticed that Jen did the short version of the introductions. The
long version would have gone something like, 'I'm Jen, and this is my ex-boyfriend, my

ex-boyfriend's girlfriend, his girlfriend's first ex-boyfriend and second ex-boyfriend, and
her second ex-boyfriend's first ex-girlfriend.'"
"That's a lot of ex's," Pete said. "Where do you fit in?"
"I'm the first ex-boyfriend of the ex-boyfriend's girlfriend." Jack laughed and shook his
head. "Came up with that pretty quick, huh? Not sure that's a good sign."
"So you dated one of those girls?"
"I did." Jack picked a thread on his jacket. "It was a long time ago." He didn't think it
was necessary to belabor the point, and he turned out to be right.
"I had a girlfriend for three years in high school. I still talk to her every year on her
birthday." Pete took a sip from something red he was drinking. "You know, I don't
normally invite people I meet in grocery stores to my apartment. It's not a habit. I just
thought I should say that."
"Well, don't worry. I don't make a habit out of this kind of thing, either, but . . . I have
very persistent friends."
"Jen worked on you, huh?"
Jack chuckled. "I was . . . I was amenable."
***
Tripp Berkowski was the guy you aren't supposed to invite to parties, because although
he's a perfectly nice person to spend time with in a museum or even at a movie, you
don't want to mix him with booze -- tequila, in particular, was his drug of choice. Pete
hadn't known this, of course, so Tripp was on his eighth margarita in two-and-a-half
hours when he ran into Joey in the kitchen, where she was pouring a Diet Coke. He
eyed her from behind with a predatory leer that would have been a helpful sign, had she
seen it. She, of course, didn't. When she spun around and saw him there, she jumped
a little.
"I'm sorry, you startled me." She tilted her head. "Are you looking for something?"
"Nope." He sidled up to her and waggled his index finger. "I know you."
She smiled, a sort of nice-person reflex she had learned at her mother's knee. "I don't
think so."
"No, I know you." He took a drink. He didn't have her cornered, exactly, he just was
standing between her and the door in the way that men can learn if they devote enough
effort to it. "Your dad was that guy."

How sad, she somehow had the time to think, that whenever people claimed to have
heard of her father, she hoped they were thinking of someone else. How nice it would
have been if this from him had been good news. "I don't think so."
"Yeah, yeah. He had that restaurant." Tripp clamped his hand on her elbow in a way
that could arguably have been construed as friendly if they knew each other. "I loved the
fried clams there."
She stared at him blankly, unsure of what to do next. She tried to look past him in case
she could catch someone's eye, but Tripp was positioned perfectly. "My boyfriend is
watching a movie, so I'm going to go back." She took off to pass him before the situation
had a chance to get worse, but she was inches from him when he grabbed her arm.
"I know your sister, too." He, as if he were starring in a cautionary elementary-school
filmstrip involving Little Red Riding Hood, actually leaned over and sniffed Joey
menacingly.
The first one, the one to the gut, she would later admit was a sucker punch. It was worth
it, though, because he made a satisfying sort of "oof" noise, just as he would in a comic
book in which words like BAM! and POW! appeared superimposed over him in jaggedy
white balloons. Her second shot was perfectly fair, though, connecting with his mouth
with a dull thwack. He stumbled backwards, and she saw that her hand was bleeding.
"Fucking bitch!" He wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve. "What the fuck is your
problem?"
At this point, with Dawson still peacefully watching the shark he loved so well as it
stalked the unsuspecting tourists, two people appeared in the kitchen doorway. The first
seemed to be a friend of Tripp's who was probably about to start kicking himself for
falling down on chaperone duty. The second, because the universe was nothing without
its sense of humor, was Pacey.
Friend-of-Tripp took a step toward Joey. "Bitch," he nearly spit at her.
"Okay, okay, okay. Nothing to see here, show's over." Pacey tugged on Friend-of-
Tripp's sleeve. "You deal with your fighter here, I'll take mine to the bathroom and work
on her hand, and we'll forget the whole thing."
"Fuck you we'll forget the whole thing!" Tripp was back on his feet now, and loaded for
bear.
Pacey stepped up so he was about a foot away. He took a deep breath. "Let's not do
this." At this, Tripp backed away and laughed.
"Fuck it." He went back into the living room, taking his friend with him.
Joey looked at Pacey, then down at her hand, then back up at him. "Ow," she mouthed,
then let loose with a full laugh he hadn't heard in literally six months.

"Come on, there, Sugar Ray Potter, let's see what we can do for your battle wounds."
He hooked his finger through her belt loop and led her into the small bathroom off the
kitchen. Closing the door behind him, he pushed her gently down so she was sitting on
the tub. "Well, Ms. Potter," he prattled as he rummaged in the medicine cabinet, "I
diagnose you with having accidentally hit your hand on an ugly drunk. For that, I
prescribe . . . no, not peppermint foot lotion . . . no, not Alka-Seltzer either . . . ah, yes."
He pulled out a Band-Aid and a tube of ointment. "Just what the doctor ordered." He
handed her both items to hold, and pulled a washcloth from a small rod by the sink.
"I can't believe I did that. One minute he's just giving me typical shit about my father,
and the next minute I'm turning into some kind of a crusading vigilante." She shook her
head. "What an idiot."
"Hey, don't knock that girl. I used to be crazy about that girl." He ran hot water on the
cloth and wrung it out.
"What girl?"
"Oh, you know." He walked over and knelt down in front of her. "Fifteen-year-old Joey.
Un-new, un-improved, plain old Joey." He held the warm washcloth to her knuckles and
slipped into a sort of wrestling-announcer growl. "Joey with a Y, and the Y stands for
'why are you still in my face?'"
She smiled. "I'm not sure I ever merited quite that description."
"I seem to remember a football player who still has the imprint of a Capeside High
School cafeteria tray on his forehead who might be inclined to disagree with you."
"Right. Tomboy Joey, skinned knees and all."
"It wasn't the fact that you hit him, Joey." He squeezed a little of the ointment onto his
finger and rubbed it into her scraped knuckles. "Well, okay. It was partly the fact that
you hit him. But more than that, it was the way you were. You just had something that
other girls didn't have." Bandaging her finger, he remembered how he'd struggled with
his finger on the day she left with Dawson. He looked up into her eyes, and gazed at her
for just a minute unguarded. "God, you were something."
She felt herself sinking into the blue of his eyes, and then felt her throat tighten. "When
did I stop being something? When did I stop being anything?"
Pacey watched transfixed as a tear hesitated on the inside of her eyelid. He had her
right hand in both of his, and he slowly turned it over until her palm was turned up. He
reached for the fingers of her left hand, and guided them to the inside of her wrist. "Do
you feel that?"
She felt the warm flutter of her pulse. "Yes."
"It means you're still in there, Jo. One of these days, it's all going to come back to you."
He brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them. "It's all going to come back to you,"

he repeated. At this, she smiled, and it seemed to come from farther down than usual.
"I miss your smile," he said simply.
Tentatively, she lifted her fingers and touched his cheek. "And what else?"
His face flushed with the realization of what she was doing. "I miss here," he said,
sliding his hand up the sleeve of her sweater to touch the inside of her elbow. "And I
miss here." He lifted a finger to her temple and drew it down to her jaw. Unmistakably,
she leaned toward him. As she did, he drew back. "But more than all of that," he
dropped his voice to a whisper, "I miss being with you. I just . . . I miss being with you."
He stood up and walked out of the room, leaving her sitting there.
She looked down at her hands. Slowly, she pressed her fingers into her wrist again.
Beat-beat-beat. One of these days, it's all going to come back to you.
***
part five: trace
"It's all about you and me, Lindley, so Happy New Year." Pacey walked into the Ryan
living room with a bag of chips under one arm and a six-pack of beer in the other hand.
Jen was lounging on the sofa with her eyes fixed on the football game. He dropped the
chips on the table and peeled off a beer for each of them. "Who needs family when we
have each other?" He handed her a can, picked up her feet, sat down, and lay her legs
back across his lap.
"I don't know if Grams really thought I was going to go with her, but the last thing I want
to do on a family holiday is see my parents." She opened her drink, and he did the
same. "Thanks for coming over."
"Hey, I was grateful for the company. I actually figured there'd be a shindig at Chez
McPhee, but seeing how everyone we know is soaking up the warm California sun, the
pretentious French atmosphere, or a certain bespectacled new beau, I figure that leaves
you and me." He squinted at the television. "Who's winning, anyway?"
"The guys with the tight pants and the big butts."

"Mmm, very informative. You'd be great on TV. 'Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jennifer
Lindley, I'm standing somewhere where, moments ago, something occurred. Details to
follow as events warrant.'" He popped a chip in his mouth.
"So you were going to tell me." She sipped her drink casually, lying on her side and
keeping her eyes on the screen.
"Tell you what?" He was stalling, of course.
"Before you went into the kitchen, you were going to tell me what happened on
Thanksgiving between you and Joey."
"I was? I don't remember that." He looked at her, feigning puzzlement, but his
enthusiasm for the game wilted when she shot him a motherly look. "You know I don't
kiss and tell."
"You kissed her?"
"No. But I don't bandage and tell, either." He munched on another chip and wiggled his
eyebrows tauntingly.
"Yeah, I heard about the bandaging. I heard that she punched some guy and knocked a
couple of his teeth out, and then I heard that he tried to attack her, and you dragged her
off to the bathroom and then . . . ," she nodded knowingly, "there was touching."
He grinned. "Well, I'd say the entire thing has been blown a little out of proportion, as
these escapades so often are. She didn't take out any teeth, but she did pretty much
knock him on his ass, and I wouldn't say he tried to attack her so much as he tried to
save what was left of his withering rep as a he-man."
"And?" Now she rolled onto her back and faced him. "What happened?"
He looked down at his hands. "Well, there was indeed a brief remembrance of things
past, but . . . nothing to speak of. Hands were held, but there was no lip." He took a
long drink and then frowned. "You understand, she was entranced by the sparkling
Witter charm, but I, ever the gentleman, returned her to Dawson with her purity none the
worse for wear."
She watched his face for a long minute. "You really can make anything into banter."
His face flashed with pain, and then he shook his head and chuckled. "Well, what were
you hoping to hear? That it hurt so bad to walk away from her that I felt like crawling into
bed for a week? That the minute I touched her hand, I started shaking and I still can't
believe she didn't call me on it? That . . . that I saw a ten-second glimpse of the only girl
-- the only human being -- who ever made me completely happy, and then she was gone
so fast that it was like seeing a ghost?" He glanced at Jen, who had reached down and
taken his hand. "None of that's true, of course."
"Of course."

***
Joey's mind wandered back to Thanksgiving. She thought of the moment when Pacey
grabbed her by the belt loop and pulled on her. It had felt strangely like being led by her
hips. And then in the bathroom, he had touched her hands and reached up her sleeve .
. . I miss here, he had said.
The voice in her head was insistent and irritated this time. Your boyfriend is kissing
you. You should be paying attention. She immediately jerked her head back, her mouth
making a loud smacking sound as she disengaged from Dawson.
"What?" He looked stunned. "Joey, what's wrong?"
"I -- I -- nothing." She smiled as warmly as she could. "I'm sorry." She turned around so
her back was to him, then sank back into his chest. She pulled his arms around her, and
turned her attention back to the movie. "Did I miss the part where Harrison Ford drag
races Paul LeMat and the girl from 'One Day at a Time?'"
"No, still to come." He ran his fingers over her hands as they sat pretzeled on the
couch. "Are you sure there's nothing wrong?"
She wasn't listening. She was already back in the bathroom of Pete's apartment, with
Pacey's hand up the sleeve of her sweater. He touched her arm with warm fingers, and
she stopped breathing. His hand pulled out of her sleeve and moved up to her cheek,
she tilted her head down to meet it, his finger was on her jaw . . . I miss here. She
closed her eyes, and now she was back even farther.
Trace. She ran her hand up her sleeve to the inside of her elbow, then ran her finger
back and forth inside the bend of her arm.
"Joey, did you hear me?"
She snapped her head forward and almost felt the time rush forward until she wound up
here, on this couch, with Dawson. This is wrong, and you know it's wrong, and it's not
fair to him. She hated that voice, because it was always right.
"No," she said plainly. "I didn't hear you." She shifted and turned so she was facing
him. Staring into his eyes, freed suddenly from the task of trying to be in love with him,
she felt an overwhelming rush of affection. They were six again, seeing E.T. for the first
time. They were ten, sharing a pint of Ben and Jerry's on the end of the dock. They
were twelve, in her room the day her mother died, his arm around her shoulders, her
face buried in his shirt. How was she going to do this? Finally, she spoke. "I want to
thank you so much for bringing me to California with you."
For just a minute, it didn't register. Some part of his brain actually started to form words
like I'm glad you came with me, to be delivered as an even response to this spontaneous
burst of gratitude from Joey. But then he saw the way she was rubbing her hand against
the leg of her jeans. Something was very, very wrong. "Where is this going, Jo?" His
eyes were dark.

She was surprised how easy it was to find the words, now that she saw it all clearly.
"Don't you want more than this?" It was, in a way, the worst thing she could possibly say
to him, carrying the implications it did that somehow he had fundamentally failed, failed
to give her what she wanted, failed to make the dream come true, failed to fill the
spaces.
"More than . . . more than what?"
She tried a different, more concrete approach. "Why haven't we ever had sex,
Dawson?"
He blinked widely and started making sort of "wh-wh-wh" noises, like a lawnmower that
wouldn't start. Finally, he shook his head as if to knock the bugs off. "Because we
decided to wait."
"Is that it, really?" She shifted on the couch and looked at him hard in the eye. "Does it
kill you that we haven't done it?"
He gave that annoying laugh-snort that always made her want to poke him in the eye.
"How am I supposed to answer that, Joey? What's the right answer? I mean, if I say
yes, then I'm some kind of dog, and if I say no, then I'm not validating your sexuality."
You have just heard your boyfriend use the expression, "validate your sexuality." It is
time to get out. "Dawson, there's not a right answer. You're supposed to answer it by
telling the truth."
He shook his head, then ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. "No, it doesn't kill
me, okay? And I don't understand why this is so surprising to you, Joey, considering
that you and Pacey spent three months in a boat where there was barely enough room
to turn around, and you've told me on previous occasions that you managed to make it
back to shore a virgin."
"Right. I did. And it practically killed us both."
Dawson recoiled. This was more than too much information. This was genuine
nightmare material. But all that came out of his mouth was, "Oh."
"Does that surprise you?" She had stopped fidgeting, and now she was trying to get him
to look her in the eye. "Because it shouldn't."
His face was sort of twitching and jumping. "I -- no, I guess I just always sort of thought
that -- I don't know, that --"
"Oh, my God." She cut him off. She really had known him too long, she concluded,
because she knew exactly what he was going to say. Her voice became low and
familiar. "You thought I didn't really want to sleep with him. You figured I never would
because I never really wanted to."
He made a gesture of pure helplessness, like a shrug crossed with a muscle spasm.

"You did. You thought I didn't want to." Astonished as always at his inability to read her,
she leaned toward him. "Dawson?"
"Yeah?"
She whispered now. "I really, really wanted to."
"I want to go back to the issue of Joey's purity," Jen said as she started in on her third
beer.
"What?" Pacey had Jen's socks off now, and was examining her toes.
***
"You said you returned her to Dawson with her purity intact. Now, that isn't literally true,
is it? Please, Pace, tell me that isn't true. I mean, don't break my heart and tell me that
the entire time the two of you were dating, you never managed an actual sexual
encounter. That would just make me too sad. For Joey, mostly."
He pulled on her big toe. "No need to be sad," he assured her. "We did indeed do the
deed, if I can use that awkward semi-poetic formulation. Not on the boat, of course,
when it would have been most convenient, not to mention romantic, but later on dry land
. . . it happened." If he hadn't been a little drunk, there was a chance he might have held
back some of this information, but under the circumstances, it seemed like it didn't
matter.
"And was it the most wonderfully satisfying sexual experience of your relatively
inexperienced life?" She wiggled her toes playfully.
"No," he said plainly. "I can honestly tell you it wasn't. At least what you're thinking of
wasn't."
She sat up, intrigued. "Is this where I ask you about the most wonderfully satisfying
sexual experience of your relatively inexperienced life?"
He sighed, and ran a finger from the tip of her third toe down across the bottom of her
foot to her heel. "That would be the day before the day you're thinking of." He leaned
his head back against the couch. "Trace," he said in a near-whisper.
***

part six: touch
"What does 'trace' mean?" Jen asked, as Pacey sat with his head slumped back.
"Huh?" He pulled his head up and looked down at her. "What does what mean?"
"'Trace,'" she said again. "You were talking about you and Joey, and then you said,
'trace.'" As he ran his finger along her heel, it occurred to her that she probably knew.
"It was a . . . it was a sort of a . . . a pact or a promise or something." He got very still.
"It was a way of making us both a little less nervous."
"Are you going to tell me about it?"
"Not right now." He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "Maybe someday."
She looked at him, at the way his face always softened when he talked about Joey.
"You miss her so much you can't breathe, don't you?"
"You have good feet." Pacey rubbed his thumb over the ball of her bare foot. "I'd have
to say you have the loveliest feet of any girl I ever met." He looked her in the eye. "Very
nice feet indeed."
Jen squirmed on the sofa, shifting a little in her reclined position. "Okay, first of all, that
tickles, and second of all, you're changing the -- " She paused to wiggle a little again as
he put her heel in his other hand and lifted her foot until it was inches from his examining
eye. " -- subject."
He nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, I guess I am changing the subject. But I'm not sure I
believe you . . . " He traced circles on the top of her foot with his middle finger. " . . .
that it tickles."
Suddenly, she could hear herself breathing. "You've never heard of having ticklish
feet?"
He smiled at the way the 'f' in 'feet' was a little breathless, like a sigh. "Oh, no, I have."
Now he had her foot firmly in both hands, and was massaging it firmly with his thumbs.
"I'm just not sure the tickling is the issue."
Her head fell back and pressed into the sofa cushion. "It's just like you to have raging
podiatry issues that prevent you from having a real conversation about anything." She
curled her toes and pressed the arch of her foot into his hand.
"I'd have to say," he breathed, moving his hand down to her ankle, "that it's really your
podiatry issues that are interfering with conversation at this point." He ran his fingers
over the soft skin of her leg, his hand disappearing up under the bottom of her jeans.

"Because if you didn't have that look on your face, this situation would be substantially
different."
She swallowed. "I don't have a look on my face."
"Oh, yes, you do." She could feel his breath on her toes. "You're turning red, for one
thing."
She closed her eyes. "I am not turning red."
"You're about to." He lifted her foot and flicked his tongue over the tip of her second toe.
She drew in her breath. "You don't know where that foot's been," she managed in a low
tone.
"I trust you." He laughed a little. "Besides, I don't think it matters where it's been. It
matters where it's going next." He drew two of her toes into his mouth and sucked them
lightly.
"Oh, God," she moaned, tilting her hips up off the couch. She gripped the cushions
under her with tense fingers, digging her nails into the scratchy fabric. His hand slid
further up her leg as the other held her heel. She felt his tongue on her skin, and slid her
other foot across his lap.
He slid his teeth over her slim toes, letting out a hard breath as he felt her touch. He dug
his nails into her calf, then sucked harder as she cried out. She moved rhythmically, her
free foot and restless hips sliding in sync with her hurried breathing, now peppered with
fluttery sighs. She felt every brush of his tongue on the tips of her toes, and the way his
hand moved across her leg roughly. "Please, please, please . . . ," she heard herself
say.
"Please . . . what?" He kept her toes at his lips, still touching her lightly.
"Please . . . kiss me." She stared hungrily at his blue eyes. This was obvious insanity,
she thought briefly as he released her foot, then crawled up her body until his face was
inches above her. He began to bend his head toward her, then pulled back a little, then
down, then back. Finally, he brushed her mouth with his. He lay fully on top of her as
his mouth trailed down her neck, landing finally at her collarbone. She clutched at his
short hair with anxious fingers, then moved her hands down his back.
"What exactly are we doing here?" he said into her shoulder. It was a fair question.
"I think that . . . we're keeping our clothes on." It sounded both ridiculous and obvious.
He stopped moving and pulled back until he was looking her in the eye. Then his face
broke out in the familiar grin. "Okay," he panted as he went back to her neck. He kissed
and licked at the skin as she sighed and laughed and ran her fingers over his neck.

They lay like that for long minutes, a fluttery blur of kisses and fingers and fearlessness
that didn't seem likely to last. Finally, she put her palm flat against his cheek and
pressed her lips to his gently. "Thank you for that," she said softly. He ran his finger
down the side of her face and smiled down at her.
"Well, yes, it was quite a lot to ask of me." He slowly moved away from her, unsure now
what was next.
She sat watching him, how drop-dead gorgeous his eyes were, how rough his hands
seemed, how his soft mouth curved into so many kinds of smiles. Suddenly, she
laughed. "I know, I know, you have to go home." She swept her mouth with the back of
her hand. "I'm not really sure what to say."
He sighed and reached for her hand. Holding it tenderly, he shrugged. "I think that we
just did something that was definitely something . . . and definitely not something else."
She stood up and leaned down to kiss his forehead. "That's exactly what I was
thinking."
***
"Joey," Dawson said as he picked up her reluctant hand. "I know you may have had
those feelings about Pacey at one point, but I also know -- and you know, too -- that that
was never permanent."
She stared hard at him. "And what makes you say that?"
He looked back blankly, hesitating. "Well, frankly . . . it didn't last, did it?"
"Dawson, just because my relationship with him didn't work out, that doesn't give you the
right to act like it was some kind of summer flirtation that was doomed to fail when we
went our separate ways after the big campfire at the end of our four weeks at camp."
She shot him a look that he read as defensive, which was unfortunate, because he
would have been better off reading it as foreboding.
"Hey, you can't blame me for the fact that the dynamic wasn't exactly stable. Maybe if
you had based it on something real to begin with, instead of what you seem to be telling
me it was based on, which was apparently sex, it might have lasted a little longer." This,
he would think later, was a mistake.
"What the hell are you talking about, Dawson?"
"Well, Joey, you just told me this was some kind of lust connection from the beginning,
so excuse me if I'm not surprised that under those circumstances, he didn't exactly turn
out to be the love of your life." He met her eyes as she jumped up from her seat.
"Who says he didn't?" She watched as Dawson registered this. He didn't merely look
disappointed, or even depressed. Something in him seemed to sink into the ground, as
if some part of what held him up had collapsed.

"You and I are meant to be, Jo." It was a mantra, said without passion or thought.
"If you say 'soulmates,' Dawson, I'm going to pick up a lamp and crack your skull, and
I'm serious." She wrinkled her brow. "How dare you sit there and judge a situation you
know nothing about? You don't know why I was with him, you don't know why I broke up
with him, and you don't know how I feel about him now."
"Joey, where is all this coming from? Everything's been fine, you came out here with
me, we've been happy . . . "
"No, Dawson, you've been happy. I've been sitting here trying to figure out how to keep
myself from going out to one of those beautiful cliffs and jumping right off. You don't
listen to me, you don't see what's happening to me, you don't know anything about me
right now. I want something else. I want more than playing house with my best friend
for the rest of my life."
"Joey, I don't know if the point of all of this is supposed to be that Pacey is passionate
about you and I'm not, but if that's the point you're trying to make, it's completely
ridiculous. I think you're beautiful, Joey." He reached for her hand, but she was having
none of it. She looked at him, disbelieving.
"Are you serious? Dawson, you spent ten years thinking of me as nothing but an
ungendered sidekick. You spent your time mooning over Jen and her ilk, and I spent
mine sitting there wondering why it was that the person who knew me best in the world
didn't seem to find anything about me remotely attractive. Then all of a sudden, I wind
up in this beauty pageant as a complete act of desperation that's about nothing but
money, and the minute you see me dressed up like a Barbie doll, you decide that maybe
I'm a girl after all. And you probably still wouldn't have done anything about it if I hadn't
threatened to go to Paris. It had to be this big dramatic thing, because when you come
right down to it, you're not the least bit passionate about me."
He shook his head, again and again. "I don't understand where this is coming from."
"I am so sick of being your fucking safety valve." She looked out the window at the palm
trees and the people and the endless, unbroken sunshine, and she hated it all. "You
think you brought me here for me, and I thought I came here for me, but we're both here
for you."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that whenever your life is a little uncertain, whenever you aren't sure what's
going to happen, whenever you think you might have to actually go out and figure out
who in the hell you are, you suddenly have this overwhelming need to have me with
you. You bring me along like some kind of good luck charm, but it doesn't have anything
to do with actually wanting me with you." Joey waited for some kind of response but he
just stared back at her, shrugging helplessly. "I'm sick of sitting behind a pane of glass
in the wall, waiting to be broken out in case of emergency. I want somebody to be
excited about me, Dawson, and I want to be excited about him, too. You and I are
friends, don't you get it? We are in each other's lives. We are always going to have

each other. It's okay. You don't have to chase me, you don't have to ask me, you don't
have to pretend that you're in love with me."
"Pretend? Joey, that's crazy, I -- "
"Because we are not in love here." She shook her head sadly. "This is not a love story.
It's not a romance, it's not the beginning of 'happily ever after.' This is a friendship. And
I'd really like to keep it. I would. But it doesn't take the place of somebody who's
passionate about me. I want that. I deserve it. It's not too much for me to expect, and I
think it would be unfair of you to suggest to me that I should do without it, just like it
would be unfair of me to suggest to you that you should."
"I don't think," he said evenly, "that you have an accurate understanding of my feelings.
I don't think you have any idea how deep my feelings about you really are, or how
incredibly aware I am of the qualities you have that aren't at all friendly in nature."
"Does it strike you as odd," she said quietly, "that you are always most attracted to me
when I'm most unhappy?"
"Tell me what that means."
"I was miserable -- uncomfortable and lost and totally out of my own skin -- at that stupid
beauty pageant. I hated it. I'd like to be able to tell you that it let me free up my
sexuality or my new and improved body image or my natural beauty, but you know
what? It didn't. It wasn't me. It didn't feel right. I went home and I brushed my hair and
I put on a pair of jeans, and then I was me again. And then when I was thinking of going
to Paris, I was just suffering so much, because I wanted so badly for there to be
something between us, and it was right then, when I was at my very lowest, that you
kissed me. And how about the prom? Your big play to get me back after you found out
about me and Pacey? God, Dawson, I was so unhappy. I was hurting more than I ever
had in all my life, and you thought it would be a good time to take me to a dance at
which, I might add, I also dressed up like someone I wasn't and felt like an idiot. Then
my father dies, and you suddenly want to wrap me in a blanket and bring me to
California. It's a pattern, can't you tell? It's a pattern, and it's . . . so bad."
"You wanted to come to California, Jo. You jumped at the chance to come with me."
"Yeah, I know I did." She sat down next to him again and nodded sadly. "It's a script,
and it wouldn't work at all if I weren't playing my part perfectly. When I'm unhappy, you
come and save me, and I let you, and then we both feel like the world is as it should be."
He shook his head. "I think you're just . . . I think you're wrong about all of this." He
looked up at her, completely perplexed. "You've got to tell me what I can do to make it
better."
She stood up and crossed the room, picking up her purse. "For one thing," she said as
she made sure her credit cards were there, "when I'm trying to talk about my feelings, it
would be nice if you didn't look at me like you're trying to do long division in your head."
She swept out the door, ran to the corner, boarded a bus, and headed for the airport.

***
part seven: pass
When the phone rings at seven in the morning, it's almost never with good news.
Someone's sick, someone's dying, someone's missing, someone didn't make it home.
This had been Jen's philosophy since childhood, when the phone rang early one Sunday
and, within two hours, she was in the car on the way to Pittsburgh to go to her aunt
Brenda's funeral. When the phone rang on the morning of the third day of January while
Grams was still out of town, no one was sick, and no one was dying, but it was a call that
was, in some ways, equally unwelcome.
"Hello?", she muttered into the phone, rubbing her eyes.
"Jen?"
She froze, blinked, and managed a squeaky, "Joey?"
"Jen, I'm really sorry to wake you up so early, but . . . ummm . . . I'm at the airport."
Jen put her hand to her forehead. "The airport here? You're at the airport here? Why
are you at the airport here? You were here visiting, like, a week and a half ago. Is
everybody all right?"
"Everybody's fine. I took this flight, and I got in at like three in the morning, and I've been
sitting here . . . I can't call Bessie because they're out of town at Bodie's folks', and I tried
Jack, and he's not home, and I . . . I can't call Pacey, you know, so . . . I was wondering
if you can come and pick me up. I'd take a cab, but it's like a half-hour drive, and I left in
sort of a hurry so I don't have any money anyway . . . "
Jen could hear that Joey's voice was shaking. "Dawson isn't with you?"
There was a pause. "No, no. Dawson isn't with me." It was more than an immediate
observation.
"Go buy yourself a big cup of coffee, Joey, and I'll be there before you finish it."
"Thanks, Jen. Really. Thank you." Joey hung up.

Jen slowly put the phone down, and couldn't help catching a glimpse of her bare feet at
the bottom of her plaid flannel pants. She thought of New Year's Day, and immediately
got a headache. "Well, this will be interesting."
***
Jen was true to her word, and Joey still had about two swallows of dark French roast left
in her cup when she saw Jen pull up in her new blue Saturn, a Christmas gift from her
guilt-ridden mother that Jen had decided, against her better judgment, to accept. Joey
tossed her cup in the trash and hustled out to the car, almost leaping into the passenger
seat as soon as the door was unlocked.
"Joey, you don't even have a suitcase." Jen said this with more sympathy than surprise.
"No, I don't even have a suitcase." She hugged her purse to her chest and pulled her
coat closer around her. "I have my purse, and I have my coat, but I don't have a
suitcase." A fat tear wandered down her cheek as Jen grimaced empathetically.
"Okay, that's okay. We'll go back to my house, and you can borrow whatever you want.
You must have been wearing those clothes since yesterday." She pulled the car out and
started toward the highway.
"Day before yesterday, actually." Joey pulled a tissue from her purse and started to dab
at her face as she talked. "I left on New Year's Day, but I couldn't get a flight, so I stayed
in the airport and ate . . . I don't know, eight-dollar hamburgers and three-dollar bags of
potato chips, which is why I'm practically broke. Then yesterday . . . yesterday was the
second, right? Right, right. Yesterday, I was there all day again, but then they finally got
me on a flight to Dallas, and then I came here from Dallas. I'm rambling, right? I'm tired,
and I smell really bad, and I'm rambling, and I got you out of bed early and -- "
"Joey, it's fine. You would've done the same for me." They drove in silence for a few
minutes, not looking at each other, not turning on the radio. "Joey," Jen finally said, "do
you want to talk about why you left California without so much as your toothbrush?"
Joey sighed heavily. "I was really unhappy." She looked down at her hands, then she
said it again. "I was really unhappy."
"Too much sunshine?" Jen finally glanced over at Joey with a smile.
"I thought I was doing the right thing when I left, you know? I thought I was moving
forward, getting on with my life, getting out of Capeside like I always wanted, making
progress in some kind of positive direction. I wanted it to work so badly, because it was
going to make everything make so much sense. Me and Dawson, California, a brand
new start . . . it seemed like the right thing to do."
"I gather it didn't work out that way."

"No." Joey stared out the window determinedly, as if she were scanning the landscape
for signs of change. "We got there, and I felt empty and lonely all the time, like I was
suffocating. And then I kind of found myself with Dawson again, only it felt like . . . "
"It felt like what?"
Joey chuckled bitterly. "It felt like we were still fifteen. It was strange. Everything was
different, but nothing was different. I had dragged myself all the way across the country,
and I had brought with me the one thing I needed to leave behind if I was ever really
going to figure anything out for myself."
"You didn't seem this unhappy when you were home for Thanksgiving, or even when I
saw you last week."
"Last week, I think I knew it was ending. Some part of me saw that there was an end in
sight, and that I'd be home soon. It was like it put me at peace against my will. As far as
Thanksgiving, well, I was going crazy, actually, but I didn't exactly want everybody to
know."
"Everybody?"
Joey nodded acknowledgement. "I didn't want Pacey to know."
Jen's heart quickened, but she just smiled with the understanding Joey would expect.
Joey didn't even seem to be talking to Jen anymore. She had leaned back into her own
mind, clearing out thoughts that had been the only company she'd had during a
sleepless stint camped out at a series of airline counters. "I had been so afraid to see
him anyway, because I knew that as soon as I saw him, I was going to break open. I
was terrified that I would start crying the minute I laid eyes on him, so I tried not to pay
any attention to him, and I tried to hide a little, but then there was this ridiculous incident
at that party we went to. He and I ended up in the bathroom putting a band-aid on my
hand, and I swear I almost told him that I was going home with him whether he liked it or
not."
"You didn't, though."
"No, I didn't." Joey shrugged. "I figured that if he had wanted to be with me, he would
have said something before I left. He knew I was going away with Dawson, he knew
what day I was leaving, and he knew that part of me didn't want to go, so when he let me
leave, I decided that I needed to accept the fact that he didn't care that much whether I
left or stayed. It wasn't like I was completely surprised by it. I had done too much and
waited too long. So when I saw him at Thanksgiving and he touched my hand, I really
wanted to just give everything away and tell him I hated California, tell him I didn't love
Dawson, and tell him . . . that I loved him so much that being without him felt like being
alone in the world."
"Wow," Jen breathed, her mind's eye wandering involuntarily to the sight of her foot at
Pacey's lips. "Why didn't you tell him any of that?"

"Like I said, I didn't think he loved me anymore." Joey smiled slowly. "But now I think he
might."
"Why?"
"Because," Joey said, a rush of calm unexpectedly coming over her, "I love him so much
that if he didn't love me back, the world would be so out of balance that you couldn't walk
straight."
Jen felt her eyes start to sting, and she swallowed hard. "It's a good theory."
Joey's shoulders came up a little, and she turned to Jen. "So what did you do for New
Year's?"
Jen could feel her heart now, pounding and trying to crawl out of her throat. She said
the first thing that occurred to her. "Just me and my TV, couch potato that I am."
"Oh," Joey frowned, "you were alone?"
"As a matter of fact, I was," Jen said smoothly.
"I was, too." Joey looked back out the window.
***
As she went up the stairs to Pacey's new apartment, Joey had to continually command
her legs to keep walking. Left, right, left, right. Finally, she was there, standing at the
door. She fleetingly feared she would have steeled herself only to find him not home,
but when she leaned her head tentatively against the front door, she faintly heard
music. She stood up as tall as she could, and knocked on the door three times. The
silence was interminable, then the sound of the deadbolt sliding open, then the clickclack
of a hand on the knob. Finally, the door swung open. She caught her breath. I'd
forgotten, she thought with a start. I thought I remembered him, but I'd forgotten.
"Hi." It was all she could manage.
He stared back at her, briefly wondering whether he might be imagining that she was
there, or whether he was for some reason in California, at her door, about to see
Dawson come bounding in behind her with that interminable smile on his face. "Joey."
She was really there. She was at his door, wearing her familiar black coat over a
sweater that some part of his mind recognized as Jen's. Her hair was wet, and pulled
back into a ponytail. She was so beautiful that he had the incongruous urge to take her
picture. Without thinking, without asking her any of the questions exploding in his mind,
and without even wondering whether she wanted him to, he stepped to her and pulled
her to him, wrapping his arms around her, bending his head to bury his face in her
shoulder, memorizing the smell of her neck. He felt her hands on his back and her cold,
wet hair against his cheek. Then, he heard her start to cry.

It was cold, even for January, and Joey's breath came in sharp white puffs as she wept
into his shoulder. "I'm so sorry," she heard herself repeating over and over. "I'm sorry,
I'm so sorry."
"No, no, no." He felt tears in his eyes, too. "I'm just so happy to see you."
She sniffed and laughed. "You could have seen me a week and a half ago if you had
come to the party."
"I couldn't," he whispered, still into her shoulder. "I'm sorry. I should have come. I
wanted to see you."
Reluctantly, they pulled apart and stared at each other, and he smoothed his thumbs
over her eyebrows. "Are you cold? You must be freezing."
She smiled. "It'll pass."
"Come inside."
***
part eight: spring
She loved the apartment instinctively, because it was him. His Easy Rider poster was
on the living room wall, his Dumbo clock ticked contentedly on top of the TV, and the
whole place smelled like soap and suede and burnt toast, which must have been
breakfast. Joey collapsed onto the worn sofa, which was comfortable in spite of -- or
maybe because of -- the holes in the upholstery and the mild musty scent. She could
hear him in the little kitchenette, opening cabinet doors and running water into the kettle.
"If you're making me a cup of tea," she called, "I'm going to give you a thousand dollars
and write a song about you. I'd be willing to look into the possibility of a national holiday
in your honor."
He emerged smiling, and sat in a mismatched armchair facing her. "I don't even need a
national holiday. I'll be happy if it melts the frost from your nose."
She slipped her shoes and socks off and started rubbing her feet. "More like my toes.
My feet are freezing." She glanced coyly up through her eyelashes at him. "Want to
give me a foot massage?"

He went a little pale and felt his mouth go dry. "I have bad technique, actually, but I'll
lend you a pair of warmer socks." He got up and went in the bedroom, talking to her the
whole time. "So how long have you been back in town?"
Still a little surprised by what she perceived as an unjustified snub of a perfectly
appealing come-on, she frowned a little before answering. "Since about three in the
morning."
He returned and handed her a pair of gray wool socks, which she put on gratefully. "Do
you want to tell me what's going on? Why you're here without Dawson?"
She leaned back and started to pull at her damp ponytail. "It was the wrong thing to do.
I went with him because it seemed like the right thing to do, and it . . . wasn't."
"Did you break up with him?" He asked this as evenly as he could, ignoring the way his
breathing had quickened.
She stopped fidgeting and looked at him. "Yes, I broke up with him."
Pacey considered this, nodding and tapping the thumbs of his folded hands. "And how
did that go?"
She sighed. "Well, I said something on the way out the door that I'm going to have to
apologize for later, but other than that, it wasn't any worse than it was going to be
anyway."
"What did you say on your way out the door?" Secretly, he hoped it was something
very, very bad and very, very petty -- something about his hair, or his forehead, or his
imbecilic film oeuvre with its overwrought plots and bad dialogue and precious, campy
special effects.
"It doesn't matter. It was mean. I was angry at him. We'll work it out later. We always
do."
It was something about this last comment that began to take the air out from under the
wings he'd been on since the minute he opened the door. He looked at her again,
thought about how she looked, remembered how her lips felt and how her skin could
sweat, and resolved to ignore it. "What made you decide to put an end to the most
tortured romantic saga since The Thorn Birds, anyway?"
She could feel herself staring at him, watching the way his eyes skipped over her face
every so often, and the way he leaned forward toward her in his chair, like he was under
the influence of some independent gravity that had sprung up from the floor between
them. He was wearing a blue sweater she had given him the Christmas before, which
struck her as an enormous and auspicious coincidence, bordering on a sign, because
she was entirely unaware that he wore it and washed it three times a week, to the point
where it was on the verge of dissolving into a ball of blue lint. "You," she said simply. "I
missed you, and I wanted to be with you, and I knew that I didn't want to be with him."

He froze. "Is that the real reason?"
Joey blinked twice. "I don't know what you mean. Of course that was the reason."
Nervous in spite of the moment they had already shared at the door, she stood up and
walked over to him. Placing a hand under his chin, she lifted his face and smiled. "Is it
so hard for you to believe that I would fly across the country to be with you?"
She smelled like roses. This, he knew, was the lotion she always had in her purse,
which also accounted for the nearly unbelievable softness of her fingers on his skin. He
breathed her in, and with all of the pent-up energy he had stored during the months and
months he'd been without her, he lifted his hand and pulled hers away from him. "We
have to talk."
Her face sank and paled and became teary, all at once, faster than he'd ever seen in
anyone. "Is something wrong?"
"Yes, Joey." He looked up at her. "Something is wrong." He gestured across the room
weakly. "Sit down." The teakettle whistled insistently, and he disappeared, returning
with a mug that he handed to her. She took it, then backed up until she reached the
sofa. She sat down almost primly, putting her cup on the end table and folding her
hands in her lap, as if she were a child expecting a talking-to about the broken plate in
the kitchen. "Tell me what's going on."
"I can't do this again, Jo. I just cannot do this again. I can't be the guy who isn't
Dawson, and I'm pretty sure Dawson's gotten tired of being the guy who isn't me."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Yes, you do." He was speaking so softly she leaned in to hear. "You come to my door
and you fall into my arms and I get to touch you and smell your hair and have your
breath on my shoulder and it feels better to me than anything that's happened to me
since the day I was born, and . . . within five minutes, I'm imagining how long this is
going to last before I have to start drinking beer and listening to Miles Davis and sanding
my boat and just . . . wondering how it all fell apart."
"Why are you thinking that?" She was incredulous. "I ended it with him. I came back
here. I'm telling you it's over with him and I want us to be together. What am I supposed
to do to convince you? What?"
"You're supposed to be with me for some reason other than that you don't want
Dawson. You're supposed to not be with Dawson for some reason other than that you
would rather be with me. It's a circle, Jo, don't you get it? This time you want me
because he doesn't make you happy, but then next time, when I don't make you happy,
you're going to want him again, and you know why? Because the issue isn't that he
doesn't make you happy or that I don't make you happy. The issue is that you're not
happy. You're not really happy, Joey, ever. You're always looking ahead to the next
disaster, the next catastrophe, the next person who's going to take a chip out of you.
You can't even explain to me why you're here except that you want to be here more than
you want to be in California."

"I'm here because I love you." She looked stunned and tired.
"What does that mean, Jo?" He was beginning to raise his voice, and he had sat up in
his chair. "Tell me what that means to you when you say you love me."
To her horror, the voice in her head had gone silent. "It means that you're wonderful and
sweet and loving and smart and funny. It means that when I'm not with you, I miss you.
It means that the whole time I was in California, all I could think about was how sad I
was not to be with you." She wasn't sure if it was enough. "What is it supposed to
mean?"
"Do you know how much I love you, Joey?" He stood up and started to pace the floor.
"The day you left for California, I sat on the dock and I drank and I cried like an idiot
because I knew your plane was taking off and I knew there was nothing I could do about
it. I could see myself -- I could actually, in my mind, see myself -- running down to the
gate, maybe knocking over a few security guys, maybe dodging to avoid one of those
golf carts that beep and carry the old people. I could see myself at the gate, and you
there with Dawson and everybody standing around. I saw myself grabbing you and
pulling you back while Dawson screamed and protested and tried to deck me. I saw us
running, me and you, holding hands like it's some bad action movie, running back down
the terminal while everybody stared and pointed and phony cops yelled at us to slow
down. I saw Dawson at the gate alone, getting on the plane, resigned to the fact that
he'd lost you for good, telling some poor stranger in seat 12C the story of his life and
why he was in 12B but 12A was empty. I saw myself bringing you home, both of us
landing on our knees inside the door and kissing like we used to kiss right at the
beginning. I'm telling you, I saw every minute of this."
She swallowed hard. "Why didn't you come get me, then?"
He stopped pacing and faced her. "Why do I have to come get you?"
"What?"
"Why do I have to come get you? Joey, you were there. You were at the airport. You
were the one who was leaving. Leaving was your choice. Going with Dawson was your
choice. You were in the airport, at the gate, on the plane, and in California because you
decided that was what you wanted to do." His voice became sharper. "It is not my job
to change your choices. I would have been happy to talk to you about them, I would
have been happy to change my own life to accommodate them, but it's not my job to
save you from yourself."
"Who said it was your job to save me from myself?"
He stared at her hard. "Did you want me to come to the airport? Did you want me to
come to the airport and stop you from going to California? Did you want me to pour out
my heart to you, tell you how much I missed you, tell you how much it was gonna kill me
if you left with him?"
"Yes!", she shouted, cutting her hands through the air in frustration.

"Then why didn't you just get the hell out of there? I was on the dock. I was at my boat,
waiting to see if you were really going to go. If you were sitting there wishing for me to
come to you, why didn't you come to me instead? Why would you get on a plane with
him if you knew you didn't want to? If you knew you wanted somebody to come and tell
you it was a mistake, why didn't you just admit to yourself that it was and not do it?"
"We were broken up. I didn't know if you would want me to come to you. I didn't even
know if you liked me anymore, let alone loved me or wanted me to come back to you
and -- "
"Are you saying that you got on a plane with Dawson, professing the entire time how
excited you were, when what was actually going on in your mind was that if I wanted
you, if I came to the airport and asked you not to go, you wouldn't go, but if it was a
matter of you taking that risk yourself, you'd rather play it safe and go with him, because
you knew he was never going to surprise you with what he might or might not feel? Do
you get how shitty that is? Do you get how unfair that was to Dawson, if nothing else?
God, Joey, it's no wonder you were miserable in California. You can blame him all you
want, but the one who got on that plane under false pretenses was you." He pointed at
her accusingly. "You are the one who created that entire situation. I'm not happy with
Dawson about a wide variety of things, but this one is on you."
She shook her head slowly. "If you had been willing to do anything to give me even a
hint that you cared anything about whether I left or not, the situation would have been
completely different."
"Whether I cared that you left? How can you even say that?"
She fell back onto the couch. "We were broken up. I didn't have any way of knowing
what you were thinking. I didn't know whether you loved me anymore, I didn't know
whether you were going to miss me or not, and I didn't know whether you even gave a
damn whether I got on the plane with him."
"Fuck that! That is the most unfair thing I have ever heard. How can you tell me you
doubted whether I cared about you? How can you say you didn't know whether I loved
you anymore? Why do I have to engage in some ridiculous dramatic gesture to make
you believe that I love you, when the truth is that any fucking insincere prick can come
up with one great love scene? Don't you get it? It doesn't matter whether I come to the
airport and save your ass. It doesn't matter whether I beat up some bonehead because
he messes up a mural that you painted. You should need exactly none of that to be
convinced of how much I love you. I love you so much I don't even remember myself not
loving you. I don't remember waking up in the morning and not thinking about you. And
I could never say something to you like, 'I wasn't sure you loved me anymore.' I have
never not believed that you loved me. When we broke up, when you left, when you
came back at Thanksgiving and I saw that amazing glimpse of the incredible woman I
know you are, when I saw you at my door, and even now. I've never believed that our
problem was that you didn't love me, any more than I thought it was that I didn't love
you." He looked down at her and realized that she was sobbing. Her shoulders were
shaking violently, but she was almost silent. Wordlessly, he fell on his knees in front of
the sofa and she leaned forward into his arms.

"I'm so tired," she choked, "I try to do the right thing, and nothing ever works, and I know
everything you're saying is true, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do to make it
better. I came back here and the only thing that kept me going was that I thought we
could finally be together after all this time because I miss you so so much, and now I
don't know what I'm going to do. I mean I literally don't know what I'm going to do."
"Well, Jo, that's the first thing you've got to figure out." He stroked her hair, her back,
her arms. "You have to figure out what you're going to do to make yourself happy, and
then when you've done that, you can figure out whether you want to be with me, or with .
. . with whoever. But until then, I really think we should just be friends, and we'll love
each other like always, but we'll . . . we'll overlook it."
She started to get her breath back. "I have a feeling this is going to be a really long
winter."
He took both of her hands in his and pulled back to look her in the eye. "That's why they
invented spring."
***
part nine: step
He said it mostly out of nervousness as Joey left his apartment, still wearing his socks,
still red-eyed and looking a little weak. He was filling the endless pauses that seemed to
stretch out in front of him as he walked her to the door, marveling at his own ability to
congratulate himself for being so wise and so adult while simultaneously fighting the
overwhelming urge to slam the door, pull her down to the floor, and kiss her until neither
of them could breathe. Nervousness, he had always found, could make him say things
that were not only ill-advised, but quite possibly the emotional equivalent of throwing
himself on a grenade. He later would muse that it was also possible that he was
overcompensating with bravado for what was, in fact, a lingering guilty ache. Either way,
had he given it a moment of rational thought in advance, he would have put on the
brakes before it ever made it out of his mouth. But of course, that didn't happen. It
never does.
And so he said it. "Look on the bright side, Jo. If we both play our cards right, next year,
maybe I can spend New Year's with you instead of playing lonelyhearts with Lindley."
Joey, standing in the open doorway, turned around and looked at him. Not quite
suspiciously, just curiously. "You spent New Year's with Jen?"

He wanted to take it back. It was too late. "Yeah. Just hanging out, watching TV.
Why?"
Tipping her head to the side a little, she watched his face, which she had known since
she was three. There was a glint of panic, a flash of fear, and then a wash of regret that
seemed to almost knock him over. This display took only seconds, but it seemed to go
on for days. There had always been nothing false in him, and there was nothing false in
him now. The blood felt like it drained not only from her face, but from her entire body.
She slowly pulled herself up tall, and smiled broadly. "No reason. It sounds like fun."
He strained to read her expression, but it was like reading road signs in the dark. She
had thrown that smile, beautiful but exhausted and sad, on top of whatever else she was
thinking, and it was interfering with his radar, which usually was reasonably good. "Are
you okay, Joey?"
"I'm fine." She reached up with one finger and touched his cheek. "Don't worry. I
promise I'm fine."
"You're not gonna leave town or anything without telling me, are you? I mean, you're
staying in Capeside?"
"Yes." She gave his hand a squeeze and nodded reassuringly. "I'm staying."
As she walked away, he wrestled with the uncomfortable feeling that his blundering
mention of the holiday he had most wanted to avoid discussing had somehow put him
exactly where he didn't want to be. She had said she was fine, and she hadn't even
asked anything else about Jen, so it seemed impossible that she could know, but there
had been something about the hollowness of her goodbye that suggested to him that,
one way or another, she did.
In her car, which of course was actually Bessie's car, Joey fastened the seatbelt, then
looked in the side mirror to make sure Pacey had gone inside and shut the door. She
rested her hands on the steering wheel and sat, motionless. He could have been talking
about New Year's Eve, she thought rather desperately, and she was talking about New
Year's Day. Or the other way around. This seemed plausible, strictly speaking.
Unfortunately, it didn't account for that strange series of expressions on his face that had
suggested that for some reason, there was something he didn't want her to know, or
something he thought she didn't really want to know. Slowly, she started the car and
pulled away from his building.
She knew, of course, about Pacey and Jen's previous ill-fated experiment with casual
sex (an downright fiasco Pacey often referred to as 'Fornigate'), but as far as she knew,
it had never even gone anywhere then, let alone been repeated recently. Obviously,
though, something had changed, because she was more and more certain that Jen had
lied about being alone, and that Pacey had lied about just watching TV, and she could
think of only one reason why either of them would lie to her. Besides, she couldn't help
remembering that both of them had worn strange combinations of guilt and sympathy
when they talked about it. It was at this point that Joey began to feel even worse, and
there was that voice again.

You are so stupid. He's with somebody else. He's with Jen. He's with Jen, and you
called her up and made her drive you home from the airport, thinking the whole time that
you were just going to come flying back into town and pick up everything right where you
left it a year ago, like nothing would have changed. Joey turned the car toward the B&B,
suddenly happy that Bessie still wasn't home. You showed up at his apartment without
calling, you practically threw yourself at him, and the whole time, he was with somebody
else. And instead of telling you that he was with her, he gave you that whole speech
about all the reasons he couldn't be with you.
Now, this voice, always distressingly ready to jump to attention and connect whatever
dots it could find on the page, was on a roll.
Which means that that entire heartfelt speech wasn't real. He didn't say no to you
because he doesn't want to play games about him and you and Dawson. He said no to
you because he's with somebody else, which makes you not only the world's biggest
idiot, but quite possibly the world's most pathetic loser.
And then that voice said the last thing it always said. The comment with which it closed
every conversation she had been having with it since she was five years old. The
comment that it had in the back of its mind every time it opened its mouth.
No matter what it takes, we have to make sure that nothing like this ever happens to us
again. Ever.
Suddenly, Joey jerked the wheel to the side, throwing the car onto the shoulder of the
quiet, deserted road. She jumped out and slammed the door, pounding her palm
against the car roof. She walked around to the passenger side and leaned against the
side of the car. Slowly, she slid down, covering her eyes with her hands, until she was
sitting on the cold ground, which had been snow-covered only a week before. For what
must have been the twentieth time in four or five days, she started to cry, wrapping her
arms around her knees and shaking. She hoped, in an incongruous flash of rationality,
that no one would come along and slam into the car, which was barely off the road.
More than that, she hoped that no one she knew would come by and see her sitting on
the gravel next to her car, giving every impression of having a nervous breakdown. At
the same time, though, her mind kept drawing a picture of Pacey driving up in his truck,
gathering her up, wrapping her in a blanket, and driving her back to the apartment. This
was ridiculous, of course. Only a few minutes ago, they had talked about this very thing
-- no more drama, no more love scenes, no more rescues. Somehow, the clarity with
which she had understood this at the time had faded. In whatever journey she and
Pacey had just agreed she needed to take, it appeared that the first step was to stop
wanting things at exactly the same time she was professing to herself that she didn't
really want them.
She sat there for half an hour, getting so cold that her teeth chattered and her fingers got
stiff and numb. No one ever did come along, either to laugh at her or to rescue her.
When it got so cold that she couldn't stand it anymore, she got to her feet, got back in
the car, and drove to the B&B, closed while Bessie and Bodie were away. There, she
took the key out of her pocket, went inside, made her way to her bedroom, and fell
asleep without taking off her coat.

"Hello?"
"Jen?"
"Pacey?"
"Yeah, yeah, I need to talk to you." Pacey was walking the floor of his apartment,
holding the phone in one hand and anxiously rubbing his other palm against his leg.
"Did you tell Joey anything about New Year's?"
"You saw her." Jen sat up on the couch, muting the sound of the old movie she was
watching.
***
"Yeah, I saw her." There was a pause. "It was this morning. She left around noon, so
I've been sitting here for, like, six hours trying not to think about this, and it's making me
pretty much crazy . . . did you hear what I asked you?"
"I heard you. No, I didn't tell her anything about it. In fact, she asked me how I spent the
holiday and I told her I was by myself." He didn't say anything for a minute. "Pacey, are
you still there?"
"Yes, I'm here." He held one hand over his eyes. "You specifically told her that you
were alone on New Year's?"
"Yeah. She asked me." Jen wrinkled her brow. "Is that a problem?"
"I told her we hung out."
"You told her?"
"I didn't tell her, you know, the whole story, but I told her we hung out. And she was . . .
she noticed the difference in the stories, I think." He sunk down onto the couch. "Shit."
"I'm sorry. I mean, I'm sorry if it creates a problem, or if I shouldn't have --"
"Hey, don't apologize. You didn't do anything wrong. It's not . . . it's not like I cheated on
her, or like you helped me cheat on her or anything like that. Besides, I don't mean to
make you feel like I want to treat it like some scandalous secret thing, or like I'm
embarrassed or anything like that." This was a conversation he'd been meaning to have
anyway, so it was, he figured, just as well.
Alone in her living room, Jen pulled at a stray thread on her shirt. "I know."
He cleared his throat. "I wasn't sure if I should call you, or if you would want to talk, or if
you would think that if I didn't call you I was, you know, specifically not calling you, or if it
would be better to just leave it alone."

She smiled. "Believe me, I understand."
"I'm not sorry about anything."
"No, no, me neither."
"And you really are an amazing girl. I don't want you to think I don't think you're an
amazing girl."
"And you really are a remarkable guy." She waited a beat, able to hear him breathe a
little on the other end of the phone. "And I know that you aren't sorry, and I know that
you care about me, and I certainly know you like my feet." He laughed. "But I also
know," she continued, "that you're very afraid that Joey is going to misunderstand the
situation and jump to conclusions that aren't true. And I know that there's nothing that
would be more upsetting to you than that, because I know better than anyone that if I
could open up that great big heart of yours and look inside, I'd find nothing but Joey's
fingerprints all over it."
"And footprints," he muttered bitterly.
She chuckled. "Well, maybe those too. But I said to you then, I said to you on New
Year's, that I knew how much you missed her. And I still know how much you miss her."
Pacey suddenly saw himself as if from the outside, saw what he was doing, saw himself
on the telephone having this particular conversation with this particular girl, and it made
him a little queasy. "Am I a dog? Am I a horrible, unfair, disgusting dog? Am I one of
those guys that angry women singers write about? Am I one of those guys who your
future husband is going to have to make up for?"
"No," she assured him simply. "You're one of those guys I'm going to think of as
somebody who almost, but not quite, was a pretty good prospect. Who knows? In a
different universe where you're not madly in love with somebody else, maybe you would
be a pretty good prospect. But I really don't have much interest in being anybody's
second choice, so don't beat yourself up. If you had approached me with a different
angle on what happened between us, I would have come back with the one you're taking
right now."
"I'm not sure I'm not making a mistake of epic proportions here," he said softly.
"What would be a mistake of epic proportions," she sighed, "would be if you let this thing
with Joey get away from you again. You have to clear this up with her, because if she
did catch on to the New Year's thing, God only knows what she thinks is going on
between us. And understandably so."
"So you're telling me to go to the B&B and talk to her before it gets out of hand."
"You should have hung up on me thirty seconds ago, because that would put you in your
truck right now."

"I'm crazy about you, Lindley, you know that?"
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Go get your girl." She hung up the phone, turned the TV sound
back on, and munched on a handful of popcorn.
In his apartment, Pacey threw down the cordless phone, grabbed his jacket off a hook
by the door, and was gone.
***
Joey was still asleep when there was a knock on the door. She opened her eyes slowly,
realizing she had been asleep for hours, but was still in her coat from that morning. She
threw the coat on the bed. "Coming, coming." She kicked off her sneakers and padded
through the living room in her socks, finally making it to the door as the persistent
knocking continued. She swung open the door.
"Dawson."
He was standing there next to a suitcase she recognized as her own. "I didn't think you
really meant to leave without any of your stuff."
***
part ten: cross
It was like opening the newspaper and seeing your own obituary. Seeing Dawson filled
Joey with an exhausted sense of the inevitability of it all, and somehow seemed
impossible at the same time. It had to happen someday, but I didn't think it would be
right now, and I'm not sure I'm ready. His smile was both warm and scolding, sending
an absolutely unmistakable message: he was ready to forgive her, whether she was
asking or not.
"Dawson, come in." She rubbed her forehead as she stepped out of the doorway to let
him by. He hoisted her suitcase and brought it inside, looking approvingly around the
B&B where they'd been together only a couple of weeks before. Absurdly, Joey found
herself saying, "Thank you for bringing my suitcase."
He pulled off his coat and draped it over a chair. "I thought we needed to talk."

These, or variations on them, had become the worst words Joey knew. She longed, with
an intensity that was sometimes overwhelming, for certain simple experiences she
remembered from what didn't seem like it could have been that long ago. How she and
Pacey had once been able to lean on each other, not figuratively but literally, truly,
feeling each other's heartbeat and body heat and breath, sharing the same space.
Breakfast with Bessie and Bodie, sometimes not talking at all, eating and sipping coffee
and passing sections of the newspaper back and forth in a familiar rhythm that spoke of
the many times they'd done the same dance. Reading to Alexander from "Goodnight
Moon" as she rocked him in her lap, smelling his just-washed hair. Sunburns and
sunsets and spicy food, cracking her knuckles and stubbing her toes and dancing.
Things that seemed real. She had talked enough for three lifetimes, and now she was
here again.
"If it's about what I said when I left," she said, sinking into the chair opposite him, "I'm
honestly sorry."
"Joey, I know you were upset. I know you didn't mean it." He put his feet on the coffee
table. "It was a really intense time, I know."
Oh, I meant it. I just shouldn't have said it. "Thank you for understanding. And . . . I'm
sorry that I took off without telling you where I was going or what to do about my stuff or
anything like that."
Dawson stared back at her blankly. It was then that she realized that until this very
moment, he believed she had left for a break. He had come here, her suitcase in his
hand, thinking that he needed to talk to her, to show his devotion, in turn allowing her to
get over whatever was preventing her from seeing things as clearly as he did. He had
believed they would fly back to California together. The mention of "her stuff" had
blurred the picture. "Joey, are you saying you aren't coming home at all?"
"No," she said, as gently as she could. "I'm saying I am home." When he didn't answer,
she shifted in her seat, sighed, and tried again. "This is where I live. This is where my
life is. Everything I said on New Year's Day, Dawson, it's still true. We aren't together.
We aren't a couple."
"Jo, how much of this is really about you and me, and how much of it is about Pacey? I
mean, if you didn't believe that by coming back here, you were going to rekindle some
wildly impassioned affair with him, would you be doing this? Do you really think being
with him is the answer?"
"I'm not rekindling anything with Pacey," she said simply. "Pacey and I are . . . well,
we're not a couple either."
"How long is your resolve on that point going to last?" Dawson snorted.
She looked up at him, trying hard not to cry, because he'd think it was about him. "It's
not a matter of my resolve on any point, as a matter of fact." She stared back down at
her hands. "He's with somebody else."

This was a development Dawson hadn't anticipated. He frowned. "I didn't get the
impression he was involved with anybody when we saw him over the holidays."
"I don't think," she managed evenly, "that he wanted us to know."
"Why not?"
It was the first time Joey had said it out loud, and it sounded foreign and jarring, like
someone else's voice coming from her mouth. "It's Jen. He's involved with Jen."
Somehow, hearing herself say it brought a faint protest from some part of her mind that
knew that she was operating on fairly scanty evidence. "I mean," she added for
clarification, "I think he is."
Dawson could have tried to be shocked, but he didn't even make the attempt. "Well, I
guess that makes a certain amount of sense."
Joey leaned forward a little, and her voice rose sharply. "This doesn't surprise you?"
What one person believes to be a simple matter of realizing you've struck a nerve,
another might believe to be the emotional equivalent of being drawn to the smell of blood
in the water. Either way, Dawson shrugged in an attempt to display ambivalence he
wasn't feeling in the slightest. "Of course not. I mean, come on, Joey."
She narrowed her eyes. "Come on, what?"
Now he chose his words carefully. "They're two of a kind, Pacey and Jen. They're both
basically hedonists at heart, soaking up everything they can, and not worrying too much
about the trail of tears they're leaving behind. Don't get me wrong -- they're great
friends, great to hang out with, great to talk to, but . . . when push comes to shove, they'll
push and shove you right out of the way. You know that, Joey."
You do know that. He's right. "I don't know any such thing."
He heard it in her voice, and leaned forward to press his case. "He didn't have anything
to say to you when you left for California. The guy was supposed to love you. He was
supposed to be this great love of your life, who was going to be with you and stay with
you forever, and he couldn't even catch a cab to the airport? Don't fool yourself, Joey,
he's not the long-term relationship type, and you know it. Thanksgiving, he was still
putting on his great show of how torn up he was about you being with me, and by New
Year's, he's moved on? How much can you really love somebody if you drop them for
somebody else?"
"I've been known to be in one relationship while my heart was in another," Joey said
matter-of-factly.
"That's exactly my point. That's who you are. Your feelings don't change like Pacey's
do. Look at the history, Joey. Look what happened with Andie. He loves her, he makes
all kinds of promises to her, makes unbelievable declarations about how much she's
changed his life, he gets her to the point where she's totally dependent on him, and

when she makes one mistake, he drops her and moves on, and before the body's even
cold, he's decided the next great love of his life is going to be you. Be honest, Joey. If
Andie can be completely left behind for one act he sees as a betrayal, there's no way
he's going to put anything on hold for you after you go to California with me. It was
Andie, and when that didn't work, it was you -- what makes you think that moving on with
Jen is any different?"
"You're saying he's going to keep doing the same thing over and over again until he runs
out of women friends?"
Dawson shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe he's finally found the right one."
"What do you mean?"
"It's like I said, they're two of a kind." He leaned his head back on the sofa cushions. "I
guess I think of Pacey and Jen as one kind of person, and you and I as another kind of
person."
"Explain."
He scratched his head. "They're adventurers, Jo. They like being out there on the
edge. They like the excitement of not knowing what's going to happen, of not being tied
to anything. You know what her life was like in New York, and you know how he's never
wanted to commit to school or work or anything very much. They're just like that. But
I'm not. I'm not, and you're not."
"How do you know?" She folded her arms across her chest.
"Joey, I've known you since before you could talk. Give me a little credit for knowing
how your mind works. After everything you've been through with your parents and
Bessie and everything, I don't think you're looking for a life spent waiting for the next
dramatic catastrophe. Quite honestly, I think you'd be willing to give up some of the
excitement that comes from that kind of thing if you knew it meant you wouldn't have to
work so hard trying to guess what was going to happen next." He smiled. "There's no
shame in being risk-adverse, Joey. There's no shame in not jumping out of windows
because you don't want to get your neck broken."
She thought of California. The apartment, the trees, the restaurants where the
November produce was ridiculously fresh, and the ocean with its sunny blue waves.
She imagined being on a plane with Dawson, drinking orange juice and sharing the
crossword. You could forget all about them. It would be easy. She looked at her
suitcase, then at him.
Suddenly, her mind seemed to spontaneously create a movie that jumped from scene to
scene as if it had been pieced together in a jumble from badly-indexed archives.
Pacey's mouth on her bare shoulder, nipping it with his teeth. The two of them doubled
over laughing in front of a dinosaur exhibit at the history museum. Wrapped in blankets
in the front seat of his truck after the carnivorous snail fiasco. Lying fully clothed on his
bed facing each other, engaged in one of their many staring contests, which never really
made good contests, because they invariably ended when he sprang toward her,

pouncing on her mouth and kissing her while she laughed. Her hands in his hair. His
boat -- their boat -- sinking into the water as the rain poured. The look on his face the
first time she told him she loved him. His fingers pressing the inside of her elbow. Him,
literally kissing tears off her face. His smile, broad and open. Her, kissing his
forehead.
"I'm sorry, Dawson, but I'm not going back to California with you. Not now, not
tomorrow, not next week, not ever. It's not going to happen. And it isn't because I don't
agree with a lot of what you said. I don't deny that I don't have Pacey's knack for total
insanity. And I don't deny that there's probably a lot more risk involved with him than
there would be with you. In fact," she continued, nodding half to herself and half to him,
"I don't deny that probably, his being with Jen isn't a surprise or even a bad thing."
"Then why aren't we reaching the same conclusion?"
"Because," she said, "you seem to think that I have a choice in this, and I know that I
don't."
He frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Dawson, I didn't choose to fall in love with him in the first place. I didn't choose to need
him so much that my feet can't even find the ground when I can't be with him. I certainly
didn't choose not to be in love with you, given that everything you said is true, and being
in love with you would be so much easier than anything else I could do. The only thing I
can choose is what I do about it, and the worst thing I could do would be to get on a
plane with you and go to California just because I can't have him. That's what I did six
months ago, and I haven't done anything but regret it ever since." This last bit of
honesty was perhaps more than she should have said, but when you're trying to break
bricks, you need a heavy hammer.
Recovering from his fits of confusion, Dawson now stared back at her bitterly. "Well, I'm
sorry to hear that life on the West Coast was so painful for you. Far be it from me to
deny you your opportunity to throw your life into chaos. I mean, I guess I thought that
after watching your father and your mother and your sister all do the same thing, you
might be tempted to opt for something a little more rational, but I suppose it's just one of
those things. Blood is thicker than water, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, things
like that."
Neither of them had seen Pacey, who had let himself in through kitchen with the key that
Joey had never had the heart to take back, standing in the living room doorway. Now,
they both saw him as he crossed the room, yanked Dawson up from the couch by the
front of his shirt, and connected a single, clean punch to the jaw. Dawson fell backwards
and landed hard on the floor. "What the fuck is the matter with you, Dawson?" Pacey
shouted. "Do you hear yourself? Do you hear the things you're saying to her?"
"Pacey, it's -- it's all right," Joey stammered through confused tears. "It doesn't matter."
"It matters to me," Pacey insisted loudly. He turned his attention back to Dawson, who
was slowly standing up. "Do you sit around all day just storing up ways to take how
much people care about you and use it against them? God, I don't know anybody who

can do that like you do. You know her, you know what she's scared of, and you step up
and deliver it right down her throat. Can't you give her a fucking break? Can't you give
everybody a fucking break for once in your life?"
"Since when did you become Joey's protector, anyway?" Dawson spat back. "What
gives you the right to lecture me on the right way to treat her? You and Joey weren't
even friends until you decided she was your next likely sex partner. You didn't give a
damn about Joey for the first sixteen years that I knew her."
"Well, if you really believe that, you're even a little more unaware of other people than I
thought you were, which would be worthy of hearty congratulations, since I wouldn't
have thought it was possible." Pacey stepped forward, until he was inches from
Dawson's face. "Get this straight, because the next time you and I have to have this
conversation, one of us is going to end up in the hospital." He took a deep breath.
"Whatever it is that leads you to equate friendship and ownership, it's time to put it away
as an ancient relic and choose another approach. And another thing." Pacey chuckled
a little. "Not like it matters, but if you honestly believe that Joey and I spent ten years
spending half our time together and didn't like each other, you're kidding yourself."
At this, Joey couldn't help smiling, just a little, inwardly.
"As far as Joey goes, the difference between you and me, Dawson," Pacey went on, "is
as simple as the fact that most guys have, somewhere in their lives, whether they mean
to or not, two kinds of girls. There's the kind of girl you fantasize about, who you think is
probably way too good for you, who you think will never be able to look at you the way
you look at her, because she's so beautiful and she's so amazing and she makes you
want to do things you'd never do otherwise, and she's the kind of girl who makes you
understand how someone invented every ridiculous expression like 'shouting it from the
rooftops' how much you love her. And then," his voice dropped, "there are girls you use
as backups. Girls you adore because of how good they are to you, and because of how
they make you feel about yourself. They make you feel safe and happy and whole,
because you know that they will always be there, no matter what happens. Everything
else falls apart, and you still have them." Pacey stepped back and shrugged. "For you,
Joey is, was, and always will be a backup. For me, Joey is rooftops."
"Joey is rooftops this week," Dawson said ominously. "Joey is rooftops when you're not
with anybody else."
"Joey was rooftops when I was ten," Pacey said plainly. "When I was ten, when I was
twelve, when I called her names, when I made fun of her, when I watched you totally
ignore her until her confidence got so low that she actually believed she needed to act
out some kind of beauty queen fantasy to live up to whatever it was she thought you
wanted. You can say whatever you want about what a jerk you think I am, Dawson, and
I really don't believe in playing 'I saw her first,' but if you insist on playing that game, I'm
here to tell you, you may have met her first, but I . . . " He looked over at Joey. "I saw
her first."
She stared at him, breathless, thinking she should thank him or say something, but she
didn't.

"Well," Dawson said, picking up his coat and heading for the door, "I hope the two of you
will be very happy together." He put on his coat and then turned back, as if with an
afterthought. "I meant you and Joey, of course. I mean, it might have been confusing
and everything, what with the fact that you're also with Jen, but hey, they're both terrific
girls, so I'm sure you'll work something out." He slammed the door and was gone.
Pacey turned to look at Joey. "You look so tired," he said.
She smiled. "Yeah, a little." She rubbed her eyes.
"Can I tell you something before you go back to sleep?"
"Sure."
He walked over close to her. "I'm not with Jen."
Her eyes widened. "You're not?"
"No." This was the more difficult part. "I'm saying I'm not with her now, we're not dating,
it's not an ongoing thing."
It was the word "ongoing" that made it clear to her. "Oh." She nodded slowly. "I -- well,
that's -- okay. I'm glad you told me, I guess."
He frowned a little. "Are you not upset?"
She raised her eyebrows. "About what? You and Jen?" Joey walked over and sat back
down on the couch. "I'm sad, if that's what you mean. I'm sad that I went to California
and didn't stay here. I'm jealous, of course -- I don't exactly love the images that are in
my head, whether they're the right ones or not. But . . . what am I going to say? 'How
dare you fool around with somebody else while I'm living with somebody else?' That
would seem a little galling, don't you think?"
He smiled and came to sit beside her. "You've had a hell of a week."
"You know," she said, "it's like crossing a bridge." He looked at her, puzzled, so she
went on. "I was in California, and I decided to just change everything and fix it all, and it
was like walking out on one of those rickety bridges they always have in the movies,
where it's 'one false move, and you're in the river,' you know? I felt like everything was
crazy, but I stepped out there anyway. And I walk out on this bridge, and I can see the
river, and I'm looking at my feet, and suddenly I'm halfway across and I don't know if I
can make it the rest of the way. I mean, I'm okay so far, but it seems like so much work
is left to get to the other side. So part of me wants to forget the whole thing, but the
other part of me thinks that now that I've come halfway, it's just as much work to go back
as it is to just keep going. Dawson was here, and saying all these things to me that I'm
sort of afraid of anyway, and it was like my mind was just, you know . . . 'quit or cross,'
'quit or cross.'"

Pacey reached out and took both her hands from her lap. He took the fingers of her left
hand and pressed them into the inside of her right wrist. "Is it still there?"
Beat-beat-beat. She grinned. "Yes, it's still there."
"Well," he said standing up, "I guess it's 'cross,' then." As he walked to the door, she
said his name and he turned around. "What?"
She smiled a little. "I thought you didn't believe in rescues. The whole 'punching out
people who insult me' thing has rescue written all over it."
He shrugged. "Yeah, but that wasn't really for you. That was purely for myself. I put it
off for too long, actually." He gave a little wave and started out the door.
"Hey." He turned around again. "I think you're rooftops, too."
***
part eleven: rush
Joey stood in the doorway as Chris Cummings, who put the CC in CCGraphics, puttered
around his office trying to get ready for his 9:30 meeting. He was running late, as usual.
"The Pritchett memo and the March spreadsheet are in the red file folder by the phone,
you're set for the flight to Atlanta on Wednesday morning at 7:15, and I found out from
his assistant that David Holland is a vegetarian, so I canceled the Friday lunch at the
place with the great steaks and made you a new reservation at the place that makes that
thing with the white beans and spinach. I put a rush on the copies of the brochure for
your presentation, and you have some kind of brown crusty stuff on your tie, so grab one
of the ones in the top left drawer and don't spill anything on it on your way into the
conference room. Oh, and don't forget you have a dentist appointment at 3:30, so don't
eat garlic at lunch."
He stopped digging through the desk and turned to look at her impatiently. "I don't have
a dentist appointment today. I have a dentist appointment on April 12th."
She raised her eyebrows and stood, staring silently at him.
"Is today April 12th?" he asked disbelievingly.
"There you go." She crossed the room and handed him three pink slips with phone
messages on them. "You don't care about any of these people."

"Thank you." He tossed the messages in the trash and fetched a tie from the drawer.
As he took off the one he was wearing, he smiled a little. "It's a wonder I can dress
myself, isn't it?"
"Well, it would be a wonder if you could dress yourself, if that's what you mean."
"In case I haven't told you lately how totally overqualified for this job you are," he said as
he straightened the new tie and picked up a leather portfolio, "you're totally overqualified
for this job."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Unfortunately, what I'm qualified to be is a brilliant up-and-coming
intern, and somehow, as paltry as my current wage may be, I think I would notice the
abrupt drop to zero." She handed him a pen as he went by her on his way out. "This is
so you don't buzz me in five minutes and ask me to bring you one." He smiled gratefully
and brushed by her. Joey went back to her cubicle, where a small, tense-looking
woman was waiting predatorily. "Hello, Laurie. How are things in marketing?"
"I need half an hour with him tomorrow."
Joey opened the calendar and scanned it. "I don't have half an hour tomorrow. I have
half an hour on Monday."
"It can't be Monday, it has to be tomorrow." Laurie looked impatiently over Joey's
shoulder. "I'm sure there's some time open."
"Well, there's no time open, because he's busy all day, but I'd be happy to put you in for
Monday." She wondered who had sold Laurie that eye shadow. Purple, frosted,
hideous.
"He can't be busy all day, Joey," Laurie whined, then shifted to what she seemed to think
was a sweet-talking tone. "Can't you just sort of squeeze me in around the edges?"
Joey eyed Laurie with a distinct chill. "Here's how this works. Chris comes in at 7:00
every morning, and he spends the first half-hour doing the five things he left on his desk
when he went home at 10:00 the night before. At 7:30, he pulls a granola bar out of his
briefcase and eats it while he reads e-mail that showed up overnight. At 8:00, he has his
first meeting. He has meetings, appointments, and other assorted commitments every
minute of the day until 12:00, when he stops to spend twenty-five minutes eating lunch
followed by five minutes telling me how he needs to stop taking on so much stuff,
because it's driving him crazy. At 12:30, the endless stream of individuals starts again,
and not only does every single one of them take their entire allotment of time, but I
usually have to go in there with a cattle prod and a block of cheese to either bully or lure
them out of his office so that the next vulture can go in and do exactly the same thing.
He usually stops for dinner at about 7:00, when his 5:00 appointment -- which has
probably started an hour late and stayed a half-hour too long -- finally leaves. While he
eats dinner, he writes me a list of things he needs me to do the next day, and then he
works nonstop for another three hours, at which time he leaves the last five things he
should do sitting on his desk to be dealt with at 7:00 the next morning, and he goes
home. Now unless you can show me where, on last night's 7:00 Joey-please-do-this list,
it says I'm supposed to clear time in his schedule to hear you tell him again why four

months of research has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that nobody is going to visit
a web site with yellow and green menu bars, you're going to have to wait for an available
slot, just like everybody else. He has no free time tomorrow unless you want to plan to
follow him into the bathroom," Joey said in her perkiest tone, "and although you're
welcome to do that if you'd like, I've been told he's not particularly receptive to new
creative ideas when there's a stall door separating him and you." She pointed to the
calendar. "Shall I pencil you in for Monday?"
"Monday's fine," Laurie snapped, pulling herself up to her full five-feet-two and clearing
her throat. "All hail Joey," she said with a sarcastic smile, "Queen of the Clerical Help."
"Hey, it doesn't bother me," Joey grinned. "After all, there are no small jobs. Only," she
stood up, fully five-ten in her heels. "Small employees."
Laurie skulked off, and Joey sat back down at her desk. "Bitch," she whispered. The
phone rang. "CCGraphics, Chris Cummings' office."
***
Dawson preferred not to dwell on his flaws, but he'd be the first to admit he wasn't good
at parties. He usually wound up doing what he was doing right now -- sitting on a couch
somewhere, feeling like an idiot and wishing he were somewhere else. Things on this
particular evening began to improve, however, when a girl actually came over and
dropped down next to him. "Hi," she said.
"Hi," he replied evenly.
"I'm Megan," the girl said, offering her hand.
He shook it. "Hi, I'm Dawson." That was easy enough, he thought to himself.
"You look like you're not having any fun," Megan said, smiling not-unsympathetically as
she sipped from a red plastic cup.
"Oh, no, I'm just . . . I broke up with somebody, and I think it's still kind of getting me
down."
This sparked her interest. She leaned in and wrinkled her brow. "When did you break
up?"
"January," he said, not noticing the look that flashed across her face. "She was living
out here, but she moved away."
"How come you broke up?" Megan took a sip of her drink and crossed one leg over the
other.
"Oh. I'm, uh . . . " He chuckled. "I'm not sure, actually. She sort of trampled all over my
heart, and I don't even know what hit me."

"What happened?" She leaned forward, hoping for gossip worthy of being repeated to
her friends later.
"Well, she got involved with my best friend," Dawson said simply. "And it was pretty
much all downhill from there."
She gasped. "Your girlfriend and your best friend? That's horrible! How long had you
been going out when she slept with him?"
Dawson hesitated. "Well, that's a complicated question. She and I were sort of off-andon
for a while, you know, and so it's hard to say exactly how long we'd been together."
"But how long had you been on when she got together with him?"
"Oh. It was really a strange situation . . . she and I were actually . . . not dating when the
two of them, you know, first got together." Again, a look from her that he missed
entirely. "But it wasn't over, either, you know, so to me, we were still dating, in a way."
Megan shifted in her seat and eyed Dawson a little differently. "You were broken up?
When she got with him, she'd already broken up with you?"
"Ummm . . . well, she'd broken up with me, yeah. And then she sort of wanted to get
back together, and I couldn't --"
"You couldn't?" She made a face. "What were you, in the space program or
something? Flying off to Venus the next day?"
"No, no, it just wasn't good timing. She hadn't gotten in touch with me all summer, so it
wasn't like we could just pick up where we left off." He frowned a little. "It was weird,
you know, because we'd been friends for a really long time, and it took a long time for us
to get together in the first place."
"And why was that?"
He began to feel just a little trapped. "Uh, she -- she was somebody who I thought of as
a friend, you know? Somebody I hung out with, but not somebody I wanted to date at
that time. So I had a girlfriend, but things didn't work out well with her at all, and after
that ended, Joey and I finally started going out."
"Joey? That's the name of the girl you just broke up with?"
"Yeah, yeah. Anyway, we were together for a while, and then we broke up, and then we
got back together and then we broke up again, and that's kind of when she started
dating my best friend."
"Well, it doesn't sound like it had been going all that well between the two of you
anyway."

"No. But -- it would have worked out eventually. I mean, the only person I saw during
that time was somebody I wasn't serious about at all, it was just sort of a fun thing, so I
always figured we'd get back together eventually, and we would have, except that he
came in and sort of pounced on her, and when they finally found out that they were
dating --"
"Oh, did they keep it a secret?" She was starting to see his side again, he could tell.
"Yeah. I mean, sort of. For, like, a week." He looked at her hopefully, but she was
wearing a relatively dubious expression. "Anyway, I found out, and I told her basically
that I didn't think we could be friends if she was going to date him, of all people, so she
broke up with him, actually, and then we were kind of getting back together -- we went to
the prom, and did a couple of things together -- and then all of a sudden, he leaves town
in this big dramatic gesture, and she leaves with him." He cleared his throat. "They got
back in the fall, and they apologized and everything for what happened, but it was really
hard for me to get over, you know?" She was nodding slowly, but looking at him a little
sideways. "So anyway, they broke up after her dad died, and she came out here with
me, but at New Year's, she just totally freaked out and went back to the East Coast. I
went to try and get her back, but she didn't want to come. Furthermore, the best friend
punched me in the jaw."
"I can't believe that," Megan said, stunned.
"I know. He just stepped right up and --"
"No, no. Did you say that they apologized to you?"
He blinked. "Yeah."
She raised her eyebrows. "For what?"
Dawson stared back at her. She was absolutely incredulous. She had no idea. "For
sneaking around behind my back. For -- for betraying me completely."
Megan put her drink down, turned to fully face Dawson on the couch, and took a deep
breath. "You're saying that this girl was in love with you for a long time, and you totally
ignored her and went out with somebody else."
"Well --"
"Yes or no?"
"I guess so, yes."
"And then after your other relationship ended, you decided you'd date the faithful friend
after all, but that sputtered from the very beginning."
"I -- pretty much, yes."

"And eventually she made the last attempt to get back together with you, and you turned
her down flat."
"Yes."
"And you went off and had some kind of fling, which didn't count as dating anybody
else?"
"Basically."
"Basically?"
"Yes."
"But then she met and got involved with somebody else who happened to be your best
friend, and the two of them told you how they felt, at which point you threatened to dump
them both if they didn't break up."
"I wouldn't put it that way," Dawson protested weakly.
"But did you do it that way?"
"I guess so, yes."
"And at that point, they actually did break up, and you tried to pressure her into coming
back to you even though you knew that her heart wasn't really in it."
"I didn't know that her heart wasn't in it."
"You knew she would have been with somebody else if you hadn't blackmailed her,
though, right?"
This had turned thoroughly ugly, and was beginning to take on a strange, out-of-body
feeling. "If you want to put it that way, I guess that would be . . . one way of describing
it."
"And eventually she went off with him, which, let's face it, she probably wanted to do all
along. Then they break up while she's in the middle of an emotional crisis, and you
seize on the opportunity to start things up with her again, but -- shock of shocks -- it
doesn't work out because, again, let's face it, she probably wanted the best friend all
along. So you follow her across the country in yet another attempt to get your way, and
when you don't get your way, you sulk back here, where you've been moping about this
ever since."
He felt like he'd been hit with a tranquilizer dart. "I -- I -- I --"
"Frankly, I would have popped you one, too." She stood up. "It was nice meeting you,
Dawson."

He smiled defeatedly. "I guess it's a little late for me to say, 'What's your major?'"
She took the last gulp from her drink. "Pre-law. Catch you around campus."
Jack and Jen lay in the grass in the dark, staring up at the sky. "I swear," she said,
"after the way winter was, I thought it was never going to get warm again."
"Well, that's why I wanted to do this tonight," Jack replied, rolling a blade of grass
between his fingers. "It's the first nice, warm night, and I didn't want to miss it."
"Where's Pete tonight, anyway?" Jen watched the bright light of an airplane streak
across her view.
"He's got his English Lit study group. There are about a month of classes left in the
semester, so he's trying to make sure he doesn't fall behind."
She smiled and shifted on the blanket. "Everything still good with him?"
Jack sighed. "Very good." He paused, then said it again. "Very good."
***
"Ooh, that's twice. Glad to hear there's hope for the supermarket as a pickup joint." She
laughed. "Imagine how different your life would be if we hadn't gone looking for the
cranberry sauce that comes out in the shape of the can."
"Hey," he said softly, not sure whether to bring it up, "how about you?"
"What about me?" She knew.
"Are you seeing anybody? I mean, are there prospects on the horizon?" He imagined
the look he was sure was flashing across her face, and it made him want to reach over
and put his arm under her neck, but he didn't.
"I seem to be doomed at the moment," she said softly, watching a slight breeze ripple
the tops of a tall tree. "I don't seem to be able to meet anyone who's remotely available.
If there's one thing the universe has in plentiful supply, it's men with girlfriends."
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure."
He thought about how to say it, whether he would hurt her feelings, and whether he
wanted to say it at all. Maybe it was better to leave it alone, in case it was going to open
a wound she was still working on recovering from. In the end, though, his concerns
about not asking beat the ones about asking. "Are you . . . are you sad about Pacey?"
She had told him the story a couple of weeks after it happened, insisting from the
beginning that she was fine, that she wasn't upset, and that she'd known from the
beginning that it wasn't a relationship or anything. He didn't think he quite believed her.

Jen suddenly could hear herself breathing. "What made you bring that up?"
He continued to stare up at the black sky. "I'm just worried about you, you know. I know
you said it was fine, but I guess I keep feeling like it's something we should talk about."
She hated -- hated -- the fact that her eyes started to sting, but she forged ahead
anyway. "If you're asking me whether I'm surprised that nothing else happened between
the two of us, I'm not. And if you're asking me whether I had some kind of expectations
that went unfulfilled, I didn't. And if you're asking me whether I think he did something
wrong, I don't. And if you're asking me whether I think he belongs with Joey, I do."
Jack rolled over onto his side, facing her, resting his head on his arm. "I didn't ask you
any of those things." He reached over and pulled a leaf out of her hair. "I asked you
whether you were sad."
She turned her head in the opposite direction, away from him. "I don't think I have any
right to be sad."
He rested his hand on her arm. "Yeah. I actually didn't ask you that, either."
At this, she turned her head and looked into his eyes, almost angry at him, but grateful,
too. "Yes," she said simply, "I'm sad." She put one hand to her eyes and started to cry,
and she felt Jack's arm slip under her neck. He eased closer to her, draping his other
arm across her stomach.
"It's okay to be sad, you know. You're not expected to be made out of stone."
"It's stupid, though," she sniffed, "because I knew it was just a thing we were doing, and I
knew it was just this crazy sort of impulse, and it's not like we dated or something, so I
just feel like a total idiot."
"Jen, I don't think you're just sad about New Year's." He wiped a tear off her face. "I
think you're sad because you like him, and you know he likes you, and you know that
even though it's not gonna work out, it's about as close as you can get to something
being right without it actually being right."
"I just don't understand why everybody else is always in the middle of these great
romantic dramas and I'm over here by myself, feeling like I'm supposed to apologize for
every feeling I have. I mean, I feel disloyal to Joey, I feel disloyal to Pacey, I feel like I'm
screwing everything up because I can't look at it the right way." She wiped her eyes with
her sleeve.
"I don't think there is a right way," Jack said. "I think you're doing the best you can, and I
don't think anybody is going to judge you for that. You're going to get over it, Jen, but
you can't rush it. You're not here -- you know, in your life, in other people's lives -- just to
do what's convenient for them. You have to do what's best for yourself."
"I'm not sure it was a very good idea that I ever fooled around with him in the first
place." She sniffed again. "I should have known nothing good was going to come of it."

"You're being way too hard on yourself." He rubbed her stomach reassuringly. "It's all
going to work out, you'll see. You tell the truth, you take care of yourself, and everything
will work out okay."
"You promise?" She looked over at him, and absurdly, she realized she really wanted to
hear him promise her. If he said it, it would be true. He had never lied to her, ever.
"Absolutely, yes. You have my word." He kissed her on the cheek. "There's a happy
ending for you, too, Jen."
***
Pacey bent over the book and squinted. "'Find the standard deviation of the values in
problem 12-2,'" he read aloud. "I can do that." He scratched his head. "I can do it, I can
do it." He was pulling the formula from the recesses of his brain when there was a knock
at the door of his bedroom. "Yeah, it's open, what?"
Gretchen came in, holding an overburdened tray of food. "I thought I would offer you a
little sustenance in your time of need." She held out a bunch of grapes. "Here, have
some fruit. It's good for you."
"Fruit? Didn't you bring me some Oreos or some Fritos or something?" He surveyed the
tray, which was loaded down with her usual selection of whole-wheat crackers, fresh
vegetables, and a dip he suspected was made from tofu. "I love you, big sister, but this
is the worst attempt at a study break I have ever seen."
She set it down on the end table beside his bed. "Oh, all right, I give." She went out in
the hallway and returned with a bag of Doritos and a box of Thin Mints. "These are the
last Girl Scout cookies I had in the freezer, so enjoy them while you can."
He grinned. "That's more like it." He took a cookie from the box and bit into it heartily.
"I'm not much for group activities," he said through a mouthful of chocolate, "but this Girl
Scout thing, I'm in favor of."
She looked at the frustrated scribbles on the pad of paper he had been working on.
"You get so stressed out when you study now, I can't believe you even made it through
high school."
"Well, you have to remember," he said, brushing a crumb off his book, "I usually had the
help and support of one of the many women in my life, particularly Joey, who singlehandedly
made sure I graduated on time and therefore single-handedly made sure I
could go to college, where I am now desperately attempting to maintain my B average."
"Harder without your own personal cheerleading squad, huh?"
"You know, it's weird." He put his pen down. "You'd think it would be, but I kinda like it.
Makes me feel like an intellectual. I'm tellin' you, I'm a pair of glasses and a pocket
protector away from being at the top of my class."

"Well, I'm proud of you." For some reason, this made his face fall a little. "What's
wrong?" she asked.
"I'm just dying," he said through a reluctant smile, "to call Joey. Every time I get a B,
every time I get a paper back and the professor has actually claimed to have understood
it, every time anybody pays me a compliment, I'm just overwhelmed with this feeling of
wanting to talk to her. And I know I can't, and I know that's a good thing, and I know
she's happy in Boston, but . . . I miss her like you wouldn't believe."
Gretchen frowned. "Tell me again why you can't call her."
Pacey took another bite out of his cookie and chewed it thoughtfully. "I can't call her,
because she and I have a deal. She's doing her thing there, and I'm doing my thing
here. That's what we decided. We don't talk, we don't write, we don't e-mail, we just . . .
we don't."
"Well, why did you make a stupid, moronic deal like that?"
He chuckled. "Gretch, Joey and I have done nothing but go around in circles since the
day we started dating. We're together, we're not together, we're dating, we're just
friends, we're with other people . . . it just got ridiculous. And after she moved back from
California, we agreed that we shouldn't get back together right away. It was a bad idea.
She needs to finish up all this old stuff in her head, and so do I, and we agreed that
taking some time apart was the best way to do that."
"Why can't you be friends? Why can't you talk on the phone like friends?" Gretchen
shrugged. "Dawson and I do."
"Can you please not make me relive that particular festival of horrors?" Pacey looked at
his cookie distastefully, then put it down. "You've literally put me off my feed there, sis."
He rolled his eyes. "Anyway, we can't talk on the phone like friends because we agreed
that we've talked about everything there is to talk about until we both feel ready to move
on. And maybe that will be together, and maybe not."
"Very adult," she said, nodding.
"We thought so." He picked up his pen again.
"It's good of you not to rush her," Gretchen said admiringly.
"Well, it's good that she's in Boston, because right at this particular moment, if you put
her in the same room with me, you can bet your ass I'd rush her. I'd rush her like I was
going for the quarterback sack." He popped the rest of his cookie in his mouth. "Thanks
for the food. Now go pester Dougie, because I've got stuff to do."
***
part twelve: give

"It's 8:00. It's Friday night. You should go home." Joey stood in Chris's office doorway,
tapping a pen against her palm.
He waved his hand dismissively, not taking his eyes off the letter he was reading as he
reclined on the couch in his office. "I'm fine. I have about five more things to do, so I'll
get home at a reasonable hour."
She nodded. "Okay. Let me rephrase, then. It's 8:00. It's Friday night. I'm going
home."
He laughed. "Yes, of course, that's fine. I always forget you feel this need to hover over
me until I leave. Feel free to take off." Now he eyed her. "Do you have big plans or
something? Something I should know about? Do I need to make him come and explain
his intentions? I do the big brother thing pretty well, so if I need to worry that it's a biker
or a frat boy or something like that, I'd be up to the challenge."
She blushed. "Well, I appreciate the offer, but it's not a date or anything like that. I have
to go home and pack, actually. I have a flight to catch in the morning."
He turned his head a little. "Oh, really? And where are you going?"
"You know this already. I'm taking Monday off, because I'm going down to Capeside for
the weekend. It's an engagement party for one of my friends. There's a picnic
tomorrow, then the party's on Sunday."
He sighed. "Ahh, right, right. Deserting me in my hour of need. Sounds like fun. It's a
nice weekend for it. I'll be here, of course, trying to make sense out of a bunch of market
reports from 1990." His eyes lit up. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather stay here and do
this, and I'll go to your party? I could wear a wig and pretend to be you, although I'd
have to work on the attitude. Maybe I could wear brass knuckles." He chuckled to
himself.
She raised her eyebrows. "Yeah, very funny. Of course, you say that as if you'd
actually ever leave your work for an entire weekend. I'm thinking an actual weekend off
is unlikely for a guy who takes his cell phone to the bathroom." Looking disapprovingly
at the paper he was holding, she took two steps into the office. "Tell me the truth, Chris.
What would happen if you didn't make sense out of the marketing reports from 1990. I
mean, honestly, what would happen? Would the world cease to spin? Would martial
law be imposed? Would the flying monkeys come along and gather up the employees
and take them to the Wicked Witch of the West?"

He scratched his head. "Well, I'm not sure. We're talking 1990, so presumably, there
would be a lot I didn't know about something or other that was sold when I was in college
and couldn't afford it."
"I think you should come to the party," she said simply.
"Oh, yeah, right," he scoffed, going back to his reading. "Like you're going to drag your
boss on a weekend trip that you're taking for the express purpose of getting away from
work."
"I'm not taking it for the express purpose of getting away from work. I'm taking it for the
express purpose of my friend being engaged. And to be honest, it's really very selfish on
my part to invite you, given that one of my main motivations for doing it is that I expect
you would be a lot easier to handle if you actually took a deep breath more than once
ever five years." She walked over and took the papers from him. "I'm serious. You
should come."
"I'm not going to bust up some intimate gathering of friends and family. Besides, if the
things you say about your friends are true, I'm apparently in imminent danger of
becoming romantically involved with two or three of them at a time if I venture anywhere
near whatever those voodoo vibes are that they give off. I'm too busy for angst."
"It's hardly an intimate gathering. Between the people that know her, the people that
know him, the people that know those people . . . nobody is going to notice one
corporate weasel in the crowd."
"I can't cancel everything I have all day Monday, Joey. You keep my schedule, you
know how it is."
She snorted derisively. "You have Petrie at 8:30. He wants more money for that stupid
thing with the animated monkey, and you're not going to give it to him, whether he begs
you or not. You have Kate at 9:00, and she wants you to throw a party for the interns,
and she's going to make one of her moving speeches, and because her being married
hasn't stopped you from having a monster crush on her, you're going to pay for it,
whatever she wants, whether she begs you or not. At 10:00, you're scheduled for part
five-hundred-and-twelve of the what-will-we-do-about-employee-parking discussion,
which you're eventually going to leave up to Dave and Ben because you don't care one
way or the other. At 11:00, you're supposed to go across town to have lunch with Marty
Brown and his Nerds of Renown while they give you an hour-long presentation that they
could just as well give you in a two-page letter. 1:30 is Fisher Frye, for God's sake, so I
don't have to say any more about that. 2:30 is that lobbyist guy from the Chamber of
Commerce who always calls me Joanie, who's coming here to kiss up to you so you'll
write a letter saying you can't get any good workers because of the unfavorable tax
climate, which letter you aren't going to give him, because you don't even like the
Chamber of Commerce. 3:30 is Margaret, who you know perfectly well doesn't have
anything on her agenda except maybe a PowerPoint presentation on the pros and cons
of getting in your pants. At 4:00, you've got an hour with someone from the accounting
department who probably wants to discuss long division. Finally, 5:00 is the business
reporter for the Globe, who wants you to say something embarrassing on Monday that

he can misquote on Wednesday and retract in 2-point type on Friday. It's safe to say the
world can live without you."
He frowned. "Well, I'd love to go, but I'd never get a place to stay, and I don't think I'd
feel comfortable asking you to put me up."
Joey grinned and nodded. "Yeah, that's a nice try, but you have no idea how totally
busted you are, because when I told you long ago that my family has a B&B, I didn't
mean a breakfast burrito. That'll teach you not to pay attention while I'm talking."
He squinted at her resentfully. "Their place could be full."
"Could be." She threw the papers down on the desk. "Isn't, though." She snapped off
the light on the desk. "You're going, so you can go peacefully, or I can hit you in the
head with something heavy and you'll come to on the plane."
"I can't believe you would do this to a guy who could fire you," he pouted as she took his
coat from the rack and handed it to him. "Think of your high standard of living and how it
could be compromised if you fail to live up to my expectations."
She stared straight-faced. "You don't pay me enough for the work I do managing Laurie
alone. If you fired me, you'd have to talk to her about ten times as often as you do right
now, so I'm thinking my job is fairly secure. You're going home, you're packing, and
tomorrow morning, I'm coming in a taxi to pick you up and get you the hell out of here."
As she dragged him toward the door, he grabbed for a file folder on the desk. "Oh, I
don't think so," she muttered, swatting his arm and pulling him out of the office.
***
Pacey sat on the porch swing with his eyes closed, listening to the crickets. Despite all
the hassles of living with his sister, having a place to go where the rest of his family
couldn't find him was well worth it. Tomorrow would be wall-to-wall insanity, the way
parties like this always were, but tonight it was him and the porch light and the crickets.
And now, he noticed walking up to the house, Jack.
"Hey," he called down as Jack came up the steps. "Pull up a piece of swing, man. It's a
great night."
"Thanks." Jack sat down next to Pacey and ran his hands over his hair. "What a day."
"All your relatives coming into town?"
"Most of them." Jack laughed. "My grandmother is having a crisis because she can't
decide what she wants to sing at the party."
"What are the options?"
"Ahhh," Jack groaned, "At this point, she's going back and forth between 'Unchain My
Heart' and 'Some Enchanted Evening.' I suspect that in reality, it's wide open."

"And how is the blushing bride?" Pacey took a drink from the glass of lemonade in his
hand.
"She's fine. You know Andie, she's always fine. The perk that keeps on perking." Jack
swiped his hand across his forehead. "Man, it's hot." He leaned forward with his elbows
on his knees and looked sideways at Pacey. "So, is this weekend going to be totally
weird for you?"
"Why? Because all the women and former women in my life are converging on my
humble existence at exactly the same time? I don't think it'll be weird at all." He
shrugged. "I do think it'll be an exercise in remembering why you should move to a new
town every three or four months throughout your entire life."
Jack smiled. "So how long since you saw Joey?"
Pacey looked skyward, wondering how long he needed to delay before Jack would be
convinced that he actually had to think about it. "Seven months and three weeks.
Beginning of January."
"Have you guys even talked since then? Phone? E-mail? Anything?"
"Nope." He took another drink. "We've been giving it a break." Her face seemed to
grow up out of his imagination all of a sudden, and he closed his eyes to make it go
away. "It seems like it's been a long time."
"Can I tell you something?"
"Sure."
Jack hesitated a little, then pointed vaguely at Pacey. "Your hands are shaking."
Pacey pulled up his left hand and looked at it, and sure enough, it was trembling. Not a
lot, but a little. Enough. "Jesus, man, would you look at that? She's not even in town
and she's giving me the shakes. She's gonna get here, and I'm gonna have all kinds of
thoughts, and all I'm gonna want to do is just give in to every single one of them, and I
don't know until she gets here whether that's what I should do or not."
Jack stared out toward the water. "I have a feeling it's going to be quite a weekend."
Pacey nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, me too."
***
It was one of the nicest days of the year. Sunny, warm, with a soft breeze that was just
strong enough to dry the thin layer of sweat that formed on the forehead. As nice as it
was, though, Dawson couldn't help feeling a little ill as he stared out the window of his
parents' car on the way to the park. It might be too much -- just seeing Joey might be
too much, and there would be more than that to handle. There would be questions
about how California was treating him, which he wasn't especially anxious to answer,

given the fact that he hadn't exactly set the place on fire the way they might all be
expecting. There would be Pacey, who had punched him in the mouth the last time
they'd seen each other. There would be Jen and Jack, who he knew he had virtually
ignored. There would be Andie, with her exotic European athlete-fiancé, making him
feel even worse about the state of his own love life. He was tempted to turn back -- to
run as fast as he could back to the house, back to the plane, back to the opposite
coast.
As he followed his parents from the car to the picnic shelter, he found himself scanning
the crowd for signs of any of them. Who would he see first? Who did he want to see
first? When his eye fell on Jen, he found himself smiling and walking a little faster. She
spotted him, and grinned, trotting toward him and jumping up into his arms. "Hey, you,"
she said in his ear. "I'm so happy to see you."
He set her down on the ground. "You look great," he said, running his hand over her
hair. "Just really great."
She beamed. "Come on, come on. We're over here." She took his hand and, as his
folks headed over to confer with Jen's grandmother, Dawson followed Jen to a picnic
table where Jack and Pacey were already sitting. Immediately, Pacey stood up and
walked off in the general direction of the barbecue, feigning intense interest in the
progress of the orange coals. Dawson gave a little shake of his head, then held out his
hand to Jack. "Hey, good to see you."
"Thanks for coming, Dawson," Jack said as they shook hands. "Andie was really excited
when you said you were going to fly in. It's great to see you." The three of them stood
in a triangle until Dawson finally dropped onto the bench, followed by Jack and Jen.
"He's never going to forgive me, is he?"
Jack and Jen shot each other a wide-eyed look. "You mean Pacey?" Jen asked.
Dawson nodded. "Well, nothing I can do about it now."
Just then, Andie bounded over and flung her arms around Dawson's neck from behind.
"Dawson!" she squealed delightedly. "I'm so happy to see you!"
He turned around to face her, grasping her hands. "Andie, congratulations. You look
gorgeous."
She looked down at her denim overalls. "Oh, thank you. Hey, you have to meet Michel.
Come with me." She pulled him up and led him off in the general direction of her fiancé,
who was surrounded by Andie's curious family as well as a number of admiring young
women who seemed to have materialized at the sight of him.
When Dawson was gone, Jack reached over and took Jen's hand across the table.
"Well, this is fun so far." As they watched Dawson shake hands with Andie's imposing
other half, Pacey slowly wandered back over and sat down, drumming his fingers on the
table. "Hey, thanks for taking off," Jack said with a roll of his eyes. "You're helping a lot
with the tension inherent in the situation."

Pacey narrowed his eyes. "You'd rather I hit him again?"
"I, for one, would rather you got over it," Jen interjected. "As a concession to the
shortness of life, can't you just shake hands and move on? I understand this thing with
Joey was very hard on both of you --"
"This isn't really about Joey," Pacey interrupted. "Believe me when I tell you that there
were bad things going on between me and Dawson long before I got involved with her.
Before either of us got involved with her, actually. He and I built our entire friendship on
this idea that he was good and true and pure and dull, and I was fun and entertaining
and unreliable and destined for the scrap heap. He's said plenty of things to me that
have nothing to do with Joey that are just . . . too much to take back."
"And what about you?" Jack asked. "Did you play no role in this ongoing feud at all?
The Hatfields made trouble while the McCoys stayed inside and played gin rummy?"
"I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that whatever I did, I'm not waiting for him to forgive
me, and whatever he did, he shouldn't be waiting for me to forgive him, either." Pacey
looked over at Jen, and saw that she was looking over his shoulder with a look that was
an interesting mix of curiosity and concern. Turning his head to follow her stare, he saw
Joey making her way toward them. He looked down and saw that his hands were
shaking again. Looking up, he saw that Joey was laughing. She was ambling down the
path with loose-limbed ease, carrying a bag of groceries on her hip, just behind a guy
carrying what looked like a plate of brownies. Pacey smiled.
And then it occurred to him. That guy isn't just walking down beside her. That guy is
with her. He was tall, or at least taller than Pacey, and he was laughing, too. They were
walking along together, laughing. She had brought someone to the party. She could
have at least warned me.
"Hey," Joey said in a cheery but slightly shaky voice. As Jack and Jen greeted her,
Pacey kept his eye on her date, who was shifting back and forth a little uncomfortably.
"You guys," Joey finally said, gesturing toward him, "This is my friend Chris. Chris, this
is Jack, Jen, and Pacey."
Chris's eyes widened a little at the mention of Pacey's name. "Oh, right, okay."
Pacey hated him instantly. He looked snotty and rich and entirely too old for Joey.
Bastard.
Jen, on the other hand, took to him immediately, which made her a traitor, as far as
Pacey was concerned. "Chris, let me show you where you can put those down." She
walked off toward another table, and after shooting a glance at Joey, who gave an
encouraging nod, Chris followed her. Pacey, Joey, and Jack stood in silence for what
seemed to be an interminably long time, after which Jack muttered something under his
breath and just walked away, defeated entirely.
Joey looked sideways at Pacey with a smile. "Pace?"
He cleared his throat. "Yeah?"

"He's my boss." She grinned.
Pacey frowned. "Your boss? You think that's smart?" He failed to see the humor in the
situation.
"Pacey," she repeated. "He's my boss. He's here in his capacity as my overworked,
overstressed, very nice and friendly boss." She walked over and stood next to him,
arms folded, mocking his annoyed posture, so they were shoulder to shoulder. Tipping
her head to the side toward him, she whispered conspiratorially, "Got it?"
He smiled slowly, and extended his arm behind her. Trailing it down the far side of her
hip, he hooked his thumb through her belt loop. Pulling her toward him just a little, he
turned so his lips were directly in her ear. "That was not funny," he whispered.
His breath made her gasp a little. She turned her face to him, and touched her forehead
to his. "Well it didn't really start out to be funny," she whispered back, "but when you
looked at him like you were going to rip his heart out and make it into a salad, it kinda
took a turn in that direction." She flitted her eyes around to see if anyone was watching,
and when she saw that no one was, she kissed the tip of his nose lightly. "I'll catch you
later." She started to walk away.
"Hey!" he called out. She turned to face him. "I don't think we should do this anymore,"
he said simply.
Her face darkened. "Do what?"
"Seven months and three weeks. January to August. Let's never do that again, ever, no
matter what." He raised one eyebrow. "Deal?"
"Deal," she repeated, her face dissolving in relief.
"Now, see, that," he said, pointing with one finger, "was funny."
***
part thirteen: smile
Jen lay on her back on a picnic table, staring up at the late afternoon sky. After Pete
showed up, he and Jack had started making the rounds together, and with Andie
occupied by her fiancé and Pacey and Joey dancing around each other in what seemed
to be some strange combination of avoidance and foreplay, that left only Dawson to
keep her company, and she knew he was just as blue as she was. She could have put

on her brave face and tried to pull him out of his funk, but she just wasn't up to it. There
didn't seem to be a single shred of forced courage left to be summoned. So, as Andie's
grandfather started to regale the guests with stories about his days in the Navy, she'd
slipped away from the party and found her way to this spot next to the creek, where a
single table sat like an abandoned afterthought. Now that she thought of it, she was
feeling a bit like an abandoned afterthought herself. She sighed and laced her fingers
together over her eyes.
"Hello."
She jumped, her eyes flying open and her body jerking as if she'd been shocked.
"Chris," she said, sitting up a little as he approached. "You surprised me a little."
"I'm sorry." He smiled. "I didn't mean to. You just looked so peaceful down here, it
seemed like the place to be."
"Not having fun at the party?" She lay back down.
"Oh, no, it's fine, as long as you don't pay any attention to the fact that I wasn't invited,
don't know anyone, and seem to have been abandoned by the only person I did know,
who seems preoccupied with the guy she's allegedly not dating right now." He sighed.
"How about you?"
"Well," she said, "for some reason, whenever all the people I really like get together in
the same place, I inevitably find myself needing to throw up. Believe it or not, this is an
improvement over Thanksgiving. Compared to then, we're pretty much dancing together
around the maypole, kissing each other politely on the cheek." She raised herself up on
her elbows and looked at him. "Let me guess. It's killing you, right?"
He frowned. "What?"
"Oh, you know." She rolled her eyes. "You came here with Joey, she's preoccupied
with Pacey, you're sulking --"
He cut her off with a loud laugh. "Oh, no," he said with a strong shake of his head.
"Joey and I are just friends, believe me."
"Really." Jen stared at him skeptically. "Not suffering in silence, even a little? Not
writing in your diary every night about how she only has eyes for the boy back home?"
Chris made a face. "No. No. Joey and I are friends. She's also the only assistant I've
ever had who's actually been able to increase, rather than decrease, my productivity.
She's kind of like one of those attack dogs, where the owner insists it's harmless, while
secretly training it to bite a guy's leg off. But . . .," here, he shook his head again, "it's
nothing like what you're thinking. For one thing, she's 19, and I'm 28, but for another . . .
" His voice trailed off.
"For another, what?" Jen looked at him with curiosity.

"For another, she's not really my type. If you tell her I said any of this, I'll deny it, but
she's really a little . . . you know, needy and moody and kind of tightly wound. Don't get
me wrong -- we're friends, and I'm crazy about her, but she's not really the kind of girl I
would go for." He shrugged and sat down on the bench. "I get the feeling this surprises
you."
Jen laughed, a little bitterly. "Joey has this way with men we know. I'm sure she told
you about Dawson, and you know about Pacey, and then there's Jack --"
"I thought Jack was gay."
"Yeah. Yeah, well, Jack's universe of people he's been attracted to basically consists of
men and Joey. She's remarkable, really." Suddenly, Jen heard herself and cringed.
"I'm sorry. I don't mean all of that the way it probably sounded." She sighed. "Unless,
of course, it sounded jealous and petty and bitter, in which case I suppose I meant it
exactly the way it sounded."
"I'll tell you what," he said, "you make a little room for me there so that I can stretch out
and share your idyllic little piece of sky, and we'll both agree to forget this entire
conversation."
"Deal." She wriggled over to the edge of the table, hanging one leg over the side. He
climbed up and slid in next to her, fitting closely against her shoulder. It felt, she had to
admit, good.
"Wow," he said, gazing at the uninterrupted blue, not unaware of the faint smell of vanilla
coming from Jen. The sky was so clear and flawless that it gave him the feeling of being
underwater, of not being sure how far from it he was, as if he might stretch out his hand
and run smack into a wide puddle of blue paint. He reached into his pocket and pulled
out his cell phone. He hit a button, and with a little beep, its display went dark.
"What was that noise?" Jen asked.
"Nothing."
***
"I don't think your great-aunt understands the nature of your relationship with me," Pete
muttered with a tiny smile as he and Jack huddled over a piece of cake they were
sharing.
Jack nodded. "I know. Of course, my great-aunt doesn't understand how touch-tone
phones work either, so don't take it personally."
Dawson came over and stood beside their table. "I hope I'm not interrupting -- do you
guys mind if I sit down with you?"
Pete pointed at the bench across from them. "Please. We were just debating the
mental well-being of Jack's relatives, so you've arrived at the perfect moment. At least,

it's the perfect moment if you were looking for a discussion of the mental well-being of
Jack's relatives."
Jack looked up thoughtfully at Dawson. "So tell me about California. How's everything
out there these days?"
This was the question he'd been dreading. "It's all right. It's not, you know, necessarily
everything I was hoping for, but then, I guess nothing ever is."
"How about the dating game. Are you seeing anybody?" Pete picked up a frosting rose
and popped it in his mouth.
Dawson squirmed and started to run his fingers over the rough surface of the table. "Not
right now. I was in some kind of romantic suspended animation, and by the time I came
to, I had apparently become such an insufferable drag that I didn't think there was much
point in pursuing anyone." He paused, frowned, and went on. "I met this girl at a party,
actually, and she pretty much wrestled me to the ground and rubbed my nose in the dirt -
- figuratively speaking -- and I haven't really been able to stand up straight ever since."
Dawson took a sip of lemonade from his cup. "One of these days, I suppose something
better is bound to come along."
"You should meet my sister. She's coming to the party tomorrow night. You'd like her."
Pete looked over at Jack. "Don't you think he'd like her?"
Jack's eyes widened. "Oh, I don't know. I'm not sure if she's the kind of person I'd
necessarily recommend for a guy who's feeling gun-shy. You know how she is."
"How's that?" Dawson asked.
Jack looked at Pete, then back to Dawson. "Oh, you know, I didn't mean anything by it,
it's just that she's sort of . . . you know, aggressive, personally. But nice, though. And
cute."
Pete resumed his efforts to make the case. "She's very cute. She's very nice, she's
very cute, she's very smart, and she's very much in town. She goes to school out in
California, too, actually, so the two of you have something in common. Come on, now,
how bad can it really be?"
Dawson frowned. "Probably worse than you think, considering my recent luck."
Suddenly, he had a thought. "Just so I feel absolutely confident that I'm not going to run
into some sitcom-style misunderstanding or some coincidence of epic proportions, tell
me your sister's name."
"Her name is Rebecca," Pete said, gesturing for Jack to take the last bite of cake. "R-E-
B-E-C-C-A."
"And she doesn't have any pet names, pen names, nicknames, alternate names . . . "
"No. 'Rebecca' is pretty much it."

Dawson paused once more. "What does she look like?"
Jack rolled his eyes. "Come on, Dawson. She's a girl. She's blonde, tall, wears glasses
. . . you're totally desperate. What do you care?" He turned to Pete. "No offense." Pete
rolled his eyes.
Dawson nodded with relief. "I don't really care. Just making sure it's not anyone I
know. I have this way of winding up in ridiculous situations, and I don't want to get into
another one." Dawson rubbed his forehead. "Yeah, sure, I'll make sure to dance with
your sister tomorrow." He stood up. "I'm going to get a brownie. I'll be right back."
As Dawson walked off, Jack slowly turned to Pete. "Did you say your sister is bringing a
friend to the party tomorrow night? A friend from school?"
"Yeah." Pete laughed. "Now she would not be the girl for a guy who's recovering.
Dawson's actually going to be very happy I fixed him up with Rebecca if he meets her.
Why do you ask?"
Jack took a long drink from the bottle of beer in front of him, then chuckled.
"Nevermind. It's, like, statistically impossible."
***
It was getting dark as the picnic finally broke up. As the last bags of trash were thrown
out and the last boxes of leftover food packed into SUVs, Joey found a glass beer bottle
under one of the benches. "Hey, where's the recycling, anyway?" she called out.
"Behind the little building where the bathrooms are," Jack shouted back. "The big green
bins."
She took the bottle and headed up the path. She ran into Chris, who was walking the
other way. "Hey," she said cheerfully and a little suspiciously, "where did you wind up?"
"Uh . . . I was just sort of wandering around." At her dubious expression, he tried again.
"I was enjoying the great outdoors." He pulled his phone out and showed it to her.
"Look."
Her mouth fell open. "Your phone is off. My goodness, Chris, what's happened to
you?"
"Nothin'." He grinned and walked by her.
Joey paused a minute to wonder just what had him in such a merry mood all of a
sudden, then continued on her way. She stepped around the back of the little stone
building and opened the bin that was marked for glass. Tossing the bottle in, she
noticed that one of the other bins was overflowing with plastic bottles. She opened it,
and gingerly tried to crush them a little. Just as she forced the lid closed, she felt hands
slide around her waist from behind.

"Have I ever told you that I find environmental activism totally hot?" Pacey said, directly
into her ear.
She laughed and put her hands over his. "No, but it's no more difficult for me to believe
than a lot of the other things you think are totally hot."
He slid one hand under the bottom of her shirt and ran it across her stomach. "Such
as?"
"Well," she said, "such as my ratty Red Sox shirt."
"Mmmmm, baseball," he groaned, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close
against him.
"Or the sight of me covered with paint."
"Paint's good." He opened his mouth a little and scraped his teeth across the back of
her neck.
"And," she said through quick breaths, "there's how you are about the water."
He grabbed her hands and straightened her arms until they were at her sides. "Well," he
said into her hair as he ran his fingers up her forearms until they found the insides of her
elbows, "at least I can wear short sleeves without risking a sudden sexual awakening
when an innocent passerby takes my arm to ask me for the time." He pressed his
fingers into her flesh, and she cried out softly. "See what I mean? You're gonna get in
big trouble with that someday."
Barely breathing, she let out a nervous, high-pitched laugh. "That's your fault.
Remember what you said?"
He continued to skim his fingers over her arms. "No." It was a lie. "Tell me what I said."
She spoke in a near-whisper to him as she tipped her head back against his shoulder.
"You said it stood for everything else. You said, 'when I touch you here . . . '" Now she
reached back and found his arms with her fingers, "'It will only be because I can't touch
you everywhere.'"
Roughly, suddenly, he spun her around and kissed her, hard, digging his hands into her
hair, plunging his tongue into her mouth again and again until she let out a whimpering
moan. She clung to him, pushing her hips against him, struggling for breath. He slowed
his movements and gradually pulled back a few inches from her, just enough to talk.
"We can't actually do this here."
She nodded. "I hope we can do this within about five minutes of here."
He grinned. "I can drive really, really fast." He walked out from behind the building
ahead of her. Dawson, Jen, Chris, Jack, and Pete were still standing around, apparently

making a plan for the evening. Joey walked over to Chris and put a hand on his
shoulder.
"So, what's the plan?" she asked feigning patient disinterest.
"We were talking about maybe going out for coffee or something." Chris looked at Jen.
"Right?" She smiled and nodded. "Yes, coffee," he repeated. "You guys in?"
"I'm kind of tired," Joey said, yawning broadly. "Long flight, long day. You know how it
is."
"Hey, Jo, I'm on my way out," Pacey said with an air of nonchalance, "so I can give you
a ride back to the B&B, and Chris can see the sights with these guys."
"Go ahead, Joey," Jen assured. "We'll take care of him."
Joey raised her eyebrows at Chris. "Is that okay with you?" He nodded. "Okay, then, I
guess we'll see you all tomorrow." Pacey took her arm, and the two of them walked
quickly toward his truck.
As the group watched Pacey open the door for Joey, Dawson made a little "hmmph"
noise. "What's up?" Jack asked.
Dawson stared hard at the departing truck. "So they're gonna go have a lot of sex,
right?"
"Oh, yeah," Pete said, nodding vigorously. "A lot."
"Great." Dawson rubbed his hands together. "Let's go and drink coffee with hemlock in
it." Jen smiled sympathetically and put an arm around Dawson's waist, and the two of
them led the others toward the rest of the cars.
In the truck, Joey turned to Pacey, a little confused, and said, "So Jen and Chris are
going to go make out later, right?"
He started the truck. "Oh, yeah. All over the place."
***
part fourteen: drop

"This is taking more than five minutes," Joey complained a little breathlessly as Pacey
sped down the street.
"We're gonna get there soon enough," he responded, vaguely aware that she was
actually squirming in her seat as she spoke to him. "I'm taking you back to the
apartment where you can be ravaged properly. I'm not going to pull over and throw you
against a tree."
There was a long pause. "And why was that again?" She looked at him sideways, not
really sure whether she was kidding or not.
"That was because I waited a year for this," he said hoarsely, making the tires squeal
just a little as they took a turn. "And it's me and you. And we're not doing it somewhere
that I can't even offer you a glass of water or a place to put your shoes. We're having a
serious love scene, here, Josephine, and I'd like it to be memorable for something other
than grass stains. Besides," he smiled a little, "aren't you enjoying this whole
anticipatory want-to-but-can't-yet thing? I know I am."
"Pacey?"
"Yeah?"
"I've had more than a year of want-to-but-can't. If you want the truth," Joey said, forging
ahead in spite of blushing rather madly, "'want-to-but-can't' has been the theme of
practically my entire life since the last time we were together." Her eyes narrowed with
urgency. "I think if I have one more day of want-to-but-can't, I'm either going to build an
anatomically-correct robot copy of you, or I'm going to get arrested for lewd conduct in
public. I don't need a glass of water, and quite frankly, as for my shoes --" She stopped,
then quickly rolled the window down. Reaching for her feet, she slipped off her sandals
and held them up, displaying them to him. With a quick flick of her wrist, she flung them
out the window. The damp summer air roared in her face as she yelled over the noise.
"Am I . . . being clear enough?"
He coughed. "Yeah." He pressed the gas pedal to the floor.
"That's more like it," she said with a small smile, pressing her head back into the
headrest.
Pacey ran three stop signs, narrowly missed a guy crossing the street while talking on
his cell phone, and took six months off the lifespan of his tires, but within two minutes, he
screeched the Jeep to a halt in front of his building. They jumped out of the car
simultaneously, and he ran up the stairs to the door. She was two steps behind, and
wrapped her arms around him from behind as he fumbled with his keys.
"Get the damn door open," she whispered, laughing a little nervously.
He finally got the key in the lock and turned the knob, then pushed the door open. He
turned around and pulled her with him into the apartment, dark except for the dusky light
coming in through the sliding glass doors. She reached back and swung the door
closed. As she turned back to face him, they grabbed for each other, greedily and

clumsily. He held her hips, pulling her roughly against him, meeting her eager lips with
his, matching the insistent rhythm of her tongue as she moved it in and out of his mouth.
She was warm and perfect, just like always, still smelling like roses, and he put one hand
on the back of her neck just to feel her hair, soft as silk on the back of his hand as she
moved with him. She pushed him backward until he collided with a cheap folding table
against the wall, sending a stack of books crashing to the floor. "Sorry," she mumbled
into his mouth as his hands restlessly roamed across her back.
Her hands crept under his shirt, one reaching around to pull him closer against her, the
other pushing the fabric up and up until it bunched under his arms. He stepped back
long enough for her to pull it up and over his head, and then drop it to the floor. She bit
and sucked at his bare shoulder, tasting the sweat on his skin and feeling his breath at
her ear. He gave a raspy groan, and lifted her face to kiss her again. "This . . . off," she
pleaded, working on the top button of her shirt. He stared directly into her eyes as he
clenched the fabric in his fists and ripped the shirt open, sending the buttons clattering to
the floor. She laughed as he peeled it off her arms. "I can't believe you did that," she
breathed. She made a soft but insistent sighing sound, percussive but airy. "God, I miss
hearing that sound," he whispered in her ear.
"Believe me," she said, reaching between them for the top button of his jeans, "you don't
miss hearing it half as much as I miss making it."
This seemed to make something in him snap, and he grabbed for her with such force
that both of them stumbled and fell, knocking over the CD rack and landing on the floor
in a tangle. She laughed, a good laugh, an alive laugh, a laugh like the girl she was and
had always been, and he was suddenly so full of feeling that it froze him.
"What . . . are . . . you . . . doing?" She stared up at him, shocked to see that in the
middle of this rather desperate encounter, he was at a dead stop, staring at her like a
crazy person.
"I'm thinking," he said, gently touching her cheek with one finger, "that I'll just keep you
like this forever."
She dropped onto her back again, her fingers scraping against the cheap carpet, her
breath coming in uneven gasps. "Well, I'm thinking that if you keep me like this for
another thirty seconds, I'm . . . going to burst into flames and . . . ruin your carpet and
you're . . . not going to get your security deposit back."
"Me and you," he whispered.
"Well, what do you know?" She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him. As she
rubbed her bare foot against one of his, she managed to kick over a halogen lamp,
which tipped slowly and finally smashed spectacularly to the floor.
At the sound of breaking glass, Joey jumped, driving her elbow into his abdomen. "Oh,"
he groaned. "Right in the bread basket, there, Jo."
She lay back down and stared up apologetically. "I'm sorry. I wasn't ready for sound
effects."

They both laughed, low and throaty, then he sighed and buried his face in her neck. "I
could tell you how much I missed you, but I'd get it so wrong. It would sound like I just
wasn't as happy without you as I am with you, and that's just not even it at all. I'd never
be able to tell you," he said, watching a bead of sweat work its way down the side of her
face, "how much my life wasn't my life, or how much I wasn't myself, or how much
everything's just been totally, ridiculously wrong since the day you left."
She ran her fingers through his hair. "It's my fault for leaving. Have I told you how sorry
I am about that?"
"You have," he nodded as he rolled off her to lie on his side. "but you didn't even have
to."
She looked at him and rolled onto her side to face him. "Can I tell you something?"
He shrugged. "Anything."
"You are the most amazing person I have ever met." Somehow, when she said it, it
wasn't a cliché. He heard in it all the times he had held her hand, all the times he had
leaned over and touched her forehead with his, all the times he had told her things she
desperately wanted to hear, and all the times he told her things she desperately didn't
want to hear. He heard fifteen years of history and, if he wasn't mistaken, more years
than that yet to come.
He reached over and touched her cheek. "Thank you, Joey," he said, then took his
thumb and brushed away a tear winding down the side of her nose. "Don't cry." He
chuckled. "Don't cry, because you'll make me cry."
"Too late, huh?" She drew close to him, and kissed the corner of his eye, tasting the
salty dampness that was half a tear and half sweat. "Love you," she whispered.
He kissed her, softly, simply, and almost chastely. "Love you, too."
***
"As fascinating as all you people are," Jack said as he stood up to leave, "it's ten o'clock,
and if I don't get a good night's sleep, I'm not going to be able to stay awake at the big
bash tomorrow. Besides, Andie made me promise I'd get in at a reasonable hour.
C'mon, you." He gave a quick tug at Pete's sleeve.
"He's very warm and giving, but he's extremely strict about curfew," Pete said as he
threw some money on the table. "That should cover us."
"Dawson, it's great to see you, Chris, it was great to meet you, and Jen, it's great to see
the pink back in your cheeks." Jack winked at her. She glared back. "Okay, tomorrow,
then." Jack and Pete strolled out the door of the cafe and disappeared.
Chris and Jen stared across the table at each other, then fixed their eyes on Dawson.
Almost immediately, he raised his eyebrows. "Right. Well, you know, if I don't get a

good night's sleep, I'm sure I'm going to miss ten or twenty really awkward moments that
are bound to happen within the next forty-eight hours, all of which are going to pale in
comparison to the one I'm going to experience if I hang out here anymore. What do I
owe, do you suppose?"
Chris reached up to shake Dawson's hand. "I got it, man."
"Boy," Dawson mumbled with a nod, "you get out of a rich guy's way while he's hitting on
your friend, and you can score free food. If I'm ever poor and alone in a large urban
center, I'm going to remember that as an alternative to doing dishes or singing for my
supper. Later." He waved and walked out.
Jen cleared her throat. "Those are my friends."
"Yeah," Chris smiled and nodded. "They're very interesting."
She stared down at the table. "They're nineteen, you know."
He hesitated. "Yeah. Yeah, I know they are."
She drummed her fingers on the table. "I'm nineteen, too."
His head snapped up, and he stared at her, feigning shock. "No. Really?"
She laughed. "Make fun of me all you want, but you said before that Joey being
nineteen was among the reasons the two of you were just friends."
He frowned. "You know, you're right. I did say that." Chris took a long drink from his
coffee cup. He raised one eyebrow in an exaggerated villainous gesture. "I wonder if
there's some way to buy my way out of this whole issue." When she gave an explosive
chuckle, he went on. "No, really. I mean, I pay people to mow my lawn, I pay people to
cut my hair -- hell, if I didn't want to use the turn signal when I drive, there's somebody
somewhere who would take ten bucks an hour to sit in the passenger seat and operate
it. There's got to be a way I can buy you a few years."
"I don't know," she said, chewing loudly on a piece of ice. "I'm pretty young."
"Well," he countered, "I'm pretty rich."
She stopped chewing and looked at him, suddenly feeling her cheeks turn red. His face
went from a joking smile to a warmer one, and then melted into a sort of fascinated
gaze. "What?" she asked.
"Wow." He slapped his hand on the table. "Wow," he repeated.
She laughed nervously. "What?"
"I'm going to kiss you." He seemed to be making an observation more than an overture
of any kind. "I really am. I'm going to kiss you."

Jen swallowed hard. "And you're telling me this as a point of information?"
"I'm telling you this," he blustered ahead, "because it's really kind of remarkable. I mean,
I'm the guy who schedules himself for a flossing. I'm serious. I have a little sheet of
paper at home, like a to-do list, and if you look at it, every day, it says, 'Floss.' I haven't
taken an entire day off from work in more than two years, I don't live here, you're
nineteen, and nevertheless -- I'm going to kiss you!" He stared at her expectantly.
"Hey, you know what you should do, then?" she asked in a cheerful voice.
"What?"
She leaned over until she was inches from his face. "You . . . should . . . kiss . . . me."
Her heart pounded as he moved toward her, and as he pressed his lips against hers,
she felt a familiar warm rush of blood all the way out to her fingers. It was a good kiss,
with just the faint taste of coffee and chocolate. As she pulled back from him, she took
in his dark, deep-set eyes and slightly crooked teeth. "You kissed me," she said with a
slowly growing smile.
"That I did," he replied softly, glancing at a strand of hair hanging on her forehead. "And
now I'm thinking about brushing a piece of hair out of your eyes, but I'm thinking that's
more of a second-date maneuver."
She sat back in her chair and brushed her hair back. "Well, then, I guess we can save
that for next time you're in town."
Mirroring her movements, he sat back too. "Next time I'm in town? Aren't you coming to
this party tomorrow? According to Joey, I'm certainly going, so . . . "
"I don't know," she said with studied nonchalance, "it's awfully short notice. I mean, ask
a girl on Saturday to a party on Sunday . . . you'd think you were taking me for granted a
little." She took another mouthful of ice and sucked on a cube thoughtfully.
"I'm just enjoying the strange circumstances." He shrugged. "We're skipping steps in a
way I like."
She cocked her head to the side. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, I don't know." He sighed. "I get so tired of the whole ridiculous movie-dialogue
thing where I feel like I'm supposed to go out and meet women and dazzle them with
some kind of hilarious back-and-forth repartee, which I'm really not that good at. It's like
everybody's seen so damn many romantic comedies now that you're supposed to meet
people and pretend that you don't like them, and they don't like you, and you certainly
don't give a damn whether you ever see them again or not, and you're certainly not
supposed to tell them what you're actually thinking."
"Which is what?"

He met her eyes evenly and intensely. "Which is something like, 'I'm really excited that I
met you, and all the little bells I have are ringing simultaneously, and I'm so tired of
dating and games and being wrong about people that there's really nothing that would
make me any happier than finding out that I'm not wrong about you.'"
Jen smiled. "That was really good, what you just said."
He nodded slowly. "You are having an extremely strange effect on me."
***
part fifteen: glow
Joey's eyes opened, and it dawned on her somewhat slowly and deliciously where she
was. They had moved to the bedroom at two or three in the morning, crawling under the
covers and collapsing in exhaustion. She had fallen asleep right where she landed, with
her head and arm draped across his chest, which is exactly where she was when she
awoke. Barely moving, she glanced around the room, noticing for the first time that
there was a picture of her taped to the mirror over his dresser. In the picture, she was
no more than fourteen or fifteen, and something had clearly struck her as hilariously
funny, because her mouth was open in a raucous laugh and her eyes were squeezed
shut. She had no idea when or where it had been taken. She had no idea where he
would have gotten it. It wasn't, in fact, a particularly flattering picture. Too tall, she
thought, and too skinny, and making a weird face. But there it was, and it made her
smile.
And then it was like one of those Magic Eye books with which Dawson had been briefly
fascinated, where you were instructed to un-focus your eyes until an image of a bird or a
cat or a bicycle emerged from an apparently incomprehensible blur of color. Once she
had noticed the one picture of herself, she saw another, and another, and another. Her
mouth opened slightly as she realized there were at least ten. Her high school
graduation picture -- we weren't even dating then, how did he get that? -- was in a silver
frame on the bedside table. Four little ones, all from the summer on the boat, in two
folding frames on top of the stereo. One, stuck to his dresser with masking tape, cut out
of the school newspaper when she organized the ultimately unsuccessful Principal
Green rallies. One that Bessie took of the two of them for a photography class,
silhouetted in profile and facing each other, was stuck to the closet door. One of her and
Andie, from the weekend at Aunt Gwen's, was pinned to a small bulletin board and
peeking out from behind a pair of movie tickets. One of her and Dawson was under a
magnet on the metal switchplate just inside the door.

She closed her eyes again, and listened as the wind moved the branches of a tree
outside the open window. When the silence settled over the room again, she became
aware that she could hear the sound of her own heartbeat pulsing in her ear, pressed to
his chest. She listened to it for a minute, steady and reassuring, and then realized that
she could hear his, too, only a little more distantly, alternating with her own. His, mine,
his, mine, she chanted inside her head. She took a deep breath, and as she exhaled,
she started to think about how many mornings she might wake up like this. Let's see.
We're nineteen. With luck, we've got at least fifty years. What's fifty times three hundred
sixty-five? Three hundred times fifty is half of three hundred times one hundred, so
that's half of, what, thirty thousand? So that's fifteen thousand, and then sixty-five times
fifty is . . . three thousand and something . . . that's eighteen thousand times, on the low
end, not even counting leap year, and who knows what the medical advances could be
by then? We could live to be a hundred. What's eighty times three hundred sixty-five?
She flattened her palm against his stomach and smiled.
He shifted underneath her. "Hey, there, Jo."
She didn't move. "Good morning."
"What have you been doing while I was lying here comatose?" He reached behind his
head and propped himself up with another pillow. She finally lifted herself up on one
hand and wriggled up to put her head on his shoulder.
"Believe it or not," she said, breathing in the scent of his skin, "I've been doing math."
***
It was one of life's little cruelties, Dawson thought as he waited for Pete to bring his sister
downstairs, that people always believed that the best time to meet someone was at your
lowest point. He had never felt less appealing, and yet here he was, waiting to meet a
girl who, while he might actually like her very much, would probably turn up her nose at
the stench of sad-sack stagnation that he was fairly sure he emitted at a level detectable
for miles. Somehow, he'd felt unsettled and unsure of himself for a number of months,
and he was about ready to put a stop to it. Nevertheless, it didn't feel like a blind date
was exactly the answer. It was at least a minor stroke of luck that he had come by with
his parents' wedding gift for Andie and found Pete having a late breakfast, because this
at least meant that he could meet the sister in a setting other than a formal party. All the
suits and ties and the champagne and the music . . . it was too much pressure. Better to
meet her here, without the tie. He would have plenty of time to embarrass himself later.
"Let me run upstairs and wake her up, and I'll bring her down to say hello," Pete had
said. At Dawson's dubious expression, Pete had just rolled his eyes. "Oh, pipe down,
Sylvia Plath. It's just 'hello.'"
So now, he was waiting in the living room, feeling like something between a condemned
man awaiting his final Lobster Newburg and a recurring boyfriend on "Father Knows
Best." He glanced around the room uncomfortably, and then heard footsteps on the
stairs. He stood up and turned around. It took a minute to figure out who she was, it
was so out of context. On the other hand, though, it seemed like a bit of poetic justice.
He was being punished, he realized, for thinking that his weekend was incapable of
deteriorating any further. "M -- Megan," he stammered. She was wearing a white T-shirt

and blue plaid boxers, and her hair was in a ponytail. She did not, however, in spite of
what his memory would have told him, actually have fangs or talons or a forked tongue.
"Oh, my God." She blinked. "You're -- you're Dawson. We met at the party at Bailey
House, right?" He nodded. She squinted at him. "What are you doing here?"
"What am I doing here?" He looked around him, sighed, and sank back into a chair. "I
am apparently being punished for a multitude of sins, is what I'm doing here. What are
you doing here? You're not Pete's sister. You can't be Pete's sister. I specifically
checked, I specifically verified that you, specifically, are not Pete's sister."
"No," she shook her head and walked slowly toward him, "I'm not. Pete's sister's name
is Rebecca."
He glared up at her. "Yes. I know. My careful research suggested as much."
Megan sat down across from him. "I'm a friend of hers. We're roommates, actually."
Dawson rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You're telling me that when I sat down at that
party, I was approached entirely at random by the roommate of my friend's boyfriend's
sister? As a matter of chance?"
She nodded. "So it would appear." A long silence passed. "How've you been since the
party?"
This was what did it. Something about the look of her, about the subtle hint of humor in
her eyes -- a nice, deep, brown, he suddenly noticed -- and about the absurdity of the
question, made him laugh. It started out as a small laugh, tinged with frustration, but by
the time he looked up and saw her, giggling, with her knees pulled up to her chest, it was
a full one. "I've been sucking bus exhaust since the party, to be perfectly honest." She
threw her head back and laughed. "I've pretty much been throwing lawn darts into my
head to break the monotony."
She regained her composure first. "What ever happened with your friends, anyway?
Your girlfriend, your buddy, your whole 50-megaton bomb of betrayal?"
"Ah, that." Dawson ran his hands over his hair. "They're pretty much not talking to me."
"They're not talking to you?" She considered this for a minute, examining her
fingernails. "That seems to be an attitude adjustment."
"Yeah, well, I had this horrible experience," he groaned, staring at her hard, "in which I
was cross-examined within an inch of my life by this treacherous lawyer-in-training, and
ever since then, I've pretty much been keeping my tales of woe to myself."
"Well, I know an attorney who says, 'In a good cross-examination, you do not set the
witness on fire. In a good cross-examination, you hand the witness the match.'" She
raised one eyebrow. "You had no case, was your problem."

He put his feet on the coffee table and crossed his arms. "Yeah, I know."
At that moment, Pete bounded into the room, followed by a tall, attractive blonde girl
Dawson assumed was Rebecca. He stood up and shook her hand. "Dawson," Pete
said, "this is Rebecca. And -- hey, I see you've already met Rebecca's friend Megan."
"It's good to meet you, Rebecca." He found himself exchanging a strangely
conspiratorial glance with Megan.
Megan turned her back to Dawson and the girls stared at each other. Something was
being said, or rather mouthed, though he couldn't imagine what. Rebecca apparently
couldn't either, because she frowned and looked confused. Megan leaned over now,
and whispered something into Rebecca's ear. Suddenly, Rebecca broke out in giggles
and her face flooded with recognition.
"Oh, Dawson. Oh. Oh, my God." She laughed and shot another wide-eyed look of
shock at Megan. "It's really nice to -- umm, to meet you. Finally." Dawson smiled and
held his hands out in a broad, what-can-I-say gesture.
"I'm completely confused," Pete mumbled. "Have you guys met?"
"They have, actually." Rebecca pointed back and forth between Megan and Dawson.
"These two. At a party. He poured out his heart, she ripped out his throat -- they're old
friends."
>
Dawson, surprised, looked slyly sideways at Megan, who shrugged. "So, will I be seeing
both of you at the party?" he asked.
"We'll be there. If you're lucky, you and Meg can get into it again, and that'll provide her
with the rosy glow of battle. She's never cuter than when she has the rosy glow of
battle. And in my experience," Rebecca continued as Megan pulled desperately at her
arm, "men are never cuter than when they're being torn limb from limb -- you know,
figuratively speaking -- so you wear a good tie, and she'll -- " now Rebecca was literally
dragged out of the room by her friend.
Pete and Dawson stared at each other for a minute. "I didn't know," Pete finally said
simply.
"Oh, no, you couldn't have." Dawson sighed. "I couldn't have, you couldn't have. It's
completely absurd, actually. Absent divine intervention, or whatever the demonic
opposite of divine intervention is, it's really not possible that your sister brought one girl
from the entire state of California home with her and it turned out to be the one girl in
California who ever served me my head on a platter."
"So," Pete said grandly, "how does one respond when divine intervention enters one's
life?"

"Well," Dawson countered, "I'm not sure what the answer to that is, cosmically speaking,
but in the practical sense, as it applies to my life at this particular moment, one goes
home and irons one's shirt."
Pete nodded. "Can't argue with that."
***
Andie had driven the hotel staff to the ends of their patience in the two weeks before the
party, but even they had to admit her results were impressive. The Boston Room had
dark wood trim and deep blue walls, and she had filled it with explosively colorful arrays
of flowers and a talented five-piece band and a catering staff that bustled efficiently
around the room setting every table and laying out place cards according to her diagram.
A half-hour before the party, she walked carefully around one large, round table, reading
the cards to herself in order. Jack, Pete, Rebecca, Joey, Chris, Megan, Pacey, Dawson,
Jen. She frowned, remembered Thanksgiving, and moved them around. Now Pacey
and Dawson wouldn't fight. But now, of course, Joey was next to Pacey, which was fine
if you didn't mind people having sex in the middle of the table. She moved them again,
but Megan wound up between Dawson and Joey, and Andie didn't think anyone
deserved to be stuck between Dawson and Joey for hours. The next adjustment landed
Pacey next to Jack, which was no good, because they would get drunk and pick on her
all night. She moved them again, but wound up with Pacey next to Jen, which didn't
seem like such a great idea, given the tale she'd heard from last New Year's. Jen
shouldn't be next to Joey, because -- well, that never was safe. If she put Pete by Jen,
they'd get into one of their political debates, and if she put Dawson near Chris, they'd
talk about movies and computer graphics all night, which would be just a little too much
nerd energy for one evening. Rolling her eyes, she gathered up all the place cards and
threw them in a pile in the middle of the table. "They can figure it out for themselves, or
they can damn well just stand around."
***
"You have better hair than I do," Jen insisted, looking at Joey's reflection in the bathroom
mirror as the two of them 'girled it up,' as Pacey would have put it, during the first break
the band took.
"Ick," Joey snarled, hitting the hairspray again and smoothing with her hands. "I'm
hoping split ends make a comeback, because I can't keep paying for trims. Besides, I
like your dress better than mine."
Jen glanced down at her ice-blue sheath and made a noncommittal noise. "I suppose
so. On the other hand, you're taller."
"Well, you're blonde."
"You'd be surprised how little that does for you when you don't have breast implants."
Jen reapplied her lipstick.
"I'm sure you can manage." Joey smiled. "Back to the party -- I'll see you out there."

"Joey?" Jen put a hand on Joey's arm.
"What?"
Jen stared at her intently, holding on to her arm. "Don't fuck up."
Joey looked back, shocked. "What?"
"You're getting a second chance, Joey. One that there's a good argument you don't
really deserve." Now, Joey understood. "You've used up all your chances, and I hope
you know that there are scars on him, and they took a long time to heal. I don't want you
opening them back up. I know you love him, and I know he loves you, and despite what
this must all sound like, I'm genuinely happy for you, but I'm here to say, don't fuck up."
Joey shook her head, agreeing. "No."
"Because if you do, if you run away from him, or if you devise any more tests of loyalty,
or if you demonstrate in any way that the understanding of how obscenely blessed you
are has somehow escaped your attention, you're going to put yourself in a hole you can't
dig out of. It's put-up-or-shut-up time, understand?"
Joey nodded. "Yes."
Jen snapped her purse shut. "I assume you also understand that I know damn well it's
none of my business."
"You cleaned up after more than one mess that I left behind," Joey said, staring at the
floor. She looked up and met Jen's eyes. "You've earned your say."
They nodded quickly at each other, then made their way back out into the ballroom.
Joey walked over to where Pacey was standing, and grabbed his hand, holding it with
both of hers. He looked at her with surprise. "What's up?"
"Nothing," she said, holding on tight, but staring at the couples dancing. "I'm thinking
about how obscenely blessed I am."
***
part sixteen: wave
Chris and Jen sat by the hotel pool in the dark, dangling their feet in the water, his
pantlegs and the bottom of her dress bunched around their knees.

"Two words: Leg. Warmers." He looked at her triumphantly.
"Belly-button rings," she came back.
"The Go-Go's."
"The Backstreet Boys."
"Michael Jackson."
"Adam Sandler."
"Journey."
"Matchbox Twenty."
"Ronald Reagan."
"Bill Clinton."
"'The A-Team.'"
"'Touched By An Angel.'"
"David Lee Roth."
"Jennifer Love Hewitt."
"Rubik's Cube."
"Razor scooters."
"The Smurfs."
"Pokemon."
He hesitated, then looked sideways at her. "Yentl."
She didn't even blink. "The Mirror Has Two Faces."
Chris sighed and nodded. "Yep, I give. Your first twenty years have been worse than
mine were."
Pacey walked up behind Andie as she inspected a centerpiece, and he pinched her
waist lightly. She gave an alarmed squeal and wheeled around, almost landing an
***

inadvertent right cross. Seeing him flinch, she laughed. "Don't sneak up on me. I'm
incredibly high-strung right now."
He grinned and nodded. "You can tell I'm being very deferential to how high-strung you
really are, because I'm not taking advantage of even one of the copious jokes that arise
from you declaring yourself to be currently high-strung, as if it's a temporary condition. I
must say, in all fairness, though, that it seems to have been a very successful cocktail
hour. If dinner is any good at all, I think you're in for rave reviews from the masses."
"So," she said, unable to keep an almost-lascivious grin from spreading across her
cheeks. "Tell me about you and Joey. Is everything going the way you hoped?"
Pacey held up his hands, and crossed his fingers. "So far, so good."
"What happens now? Do you move there? Does she come back here?" Andie absently
straightened forks.
He wrinkled his brow. "We haven't actually had that conversation yet," he admitted. "I
guess I was assuming she'd come back. We had said all along, you know, that she was
going to go and figure things out for herself and get some space, but now . . . I assume
she'll come home. It makes the most sense."
"Is it wonderful being back together?" she asked, tugging a wrinkle out of a tablecloth.
He sighed. "McPhee, I gotta tell you the truth. The experience is somewhere in
between going back to replay a casino game you've already lost twenty times and going
back to the only house you've ever lived in after spending a year in a Motel 6."
She turned to face him. "Is that good?"
"Well, the casino is under new management, and they tell me there are new rules, so as
far as I know, yes." He looked fondly at her, suddenly realizing that all of it was real --
this was him, a guest at Andie's engagement party. What a strange feeling it was, he
thought, to experience something that at one time, you would have considered
unthinkable.
"What's wrong?" she said, touching his arm.
"Nothing." He smiled. "I'm just . . . you're really getting married."
"Well, I certainly hope so, because if I'm not, there are a lot of people here to watch a
mediocre band play Rolling Stones covers for the next three hours." She paused and
regarded him for a minute. "Can you believe it? All of us here, like this."
He leaned over and kissed her forehead. "That soccer player of yours is one lucky
French bastard," he said, running his hand over her hair, then pulling back to face her.
"His knees will go, you know."
She shrugged. "Mobility is overrated."

"If you go visit him at work, you'll be surrounded by hooligans with broken bottles." He
pantomimed a stabbing motion. "It's very dangerous, that European football stuff.
Nothing but unwashed armpits and dark beer and a lot of guys named Marco and Nigel
and . . . El Fuego."
She nodded gravely. "I'll make sure I have a bodyguard at all times."
Pacey took her by the shoulders. "If he makes a mistake on the field," he said gravely,
staring into her eyes, "they'll come to your house. I tell you, these people are without
mercy or fear."
She tried to play along, but couldn't hold her concerned expression. She exploded in
laughter, and wrapped her arms around Pacey's neck, surprised by how comforting it still
felt. "I love you," she said with a grin.
"I love you, too, Andie."
***
"So, Dawson," Megan said as they danced uncomfortably at Rebecca's urging, "tell me
the truth. Were you really horrified when you saw me at Pete's?"
He raised his eyebrows. "Oh, yes, completely."
She made a face. "Eh. Fine. Well, I wasn't horrified to see you."
"Of course you weren't," he said, leaning down slightly toward her. "Getting ready to go
to law school is probably like medical school, only instead of a steady supply of corpses,
you need a steady supply of unsuspecting dupes on whom you can sharpen your
litigious claws." He was smiling. "I have to tell you, though, that just as I expect to have
some say over whether my corpse eventually is dissected so that my testicles can serve
as educational devices for some eager young scientist, I would have appreciated
knowing you were using me for target practice from the beginning."
:"Oh, yeah, boo-hoo," she snorted. "You'll be lucky if anybody wants to study your
testicles while you're alive, let alone when you're dead." She narrowed her eyes and
tried again. "Let me ask you one thing: was I wrong about anything I said to you that
night?"
He didn't say anything for a minute, playing her words over and over in his mind as he
had so many times. Suddenly, he looked up with a jolt. "I can take the Fifth. I can. If
I'm under examination, I can take the Fifth. I refuse to answer on the grounds that it
might . . . you know . . . "
"Might prove that you're totally full of crap," Megan finished, grasping his shoulder. "You
should go talk to him."
"To who?" Dawson asked, pretending not to know.

"The buddy. The friend. The famous Vile Betrayer. You should go tell him you're
sorry." She looked around Dawson's shoulder at Pacey, who was playing with
Alexander. "That's him, right? Over there?" She tilted her head in Pacey's direction.
Dawson looked over his shoulder. "Yeah," he said, turning back to her. "That's him."
Megan sighed. "God, he's really cute. I would have dumped you for that one, too."
"Oh, fine, forget it," Dawson muttered, letting go of her and turning away.
"Kidding, come on, I was kidding." She grinned and took his hand again, and he
reluctantly rejoined her. "What are you so afraid of? I mean, the good news is that as
things currently stand, you're not speaking, so you know it can't get any worse."
Dawson shrugged. "He's not going to want to talk to me."
Megan looked at him for a minute with something that looked like tenderness. "Dawson,
this is so stupid. You're sacrificing what's probably going to be your best chance to
make up with him for a long time."
"Why do you say that?" he asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer, but helplessly
fascinated, sort of as he always was by people with pierced eyebrows.
"He's happy," she said simply. "He's happy, he's drinking, he's dressed up, and to tell
you the truth . . . " She looked over at Pacey again, and then back at Dawson with a
veritable gush of sympathy. "If his appearance is any indication, he's just recently had a
large amount of very good sex, which I expect will smooth things over considerably. I
mean, he's not going to want to waste time fending off your attempts to make amends,
because he's going to be anxious to get back home and have some more of that very
good sex he's apparently been having."
This time, he didn't even bother to be offended. "You think you're cute, don't you?"
"What I think," Megan said, sliding her hand down Dawson's arm until she was holding
his hand, "is that every day of my life, I wake up and get through the day by relying on
what's essentially an unsupportable and logically preposterous notion, which is that the
people I care about are going to have the grace to forgive me for all of the limitless ways
in which I don't live up to their expectations. And in return for that," she continued, giving
his hand a squeeze, "I try hard to have the grace to forgive them for all the ways they
don't live up to mine." She dropped Dawson's hand and tipped her head toward Pacey
again, then walked away toward the punch bowl.
For a minute, Dawson just stood still. "Whoa," he finally said, staring down at the hand
she'd been holding.
***

Joey and Jack sat at one of the round tables, sharing a plate of vegetables and dip.
"So," Jack said to her, munching on a green pepper strip, "I gather things are going well
between you and Pacey."
She blushed, thinking about the broken lamp.
"Ah, apparently they're going very well," he chuckled. "I'm happy for you, Joey."
"Well, I'm happy for you, too," she said, pointedly looking at Pete, who was dancing with
Rebecca. "You seem settled and totally content."
"I'm still a little skeptical about the idea of 'totally content,' but I'll admit, it's about as
close as I've been." He took a sip of water, and Megan caught his eye as she breezed
past. "I don't think the setup of Dawson and Rebecca went very well for him, though."
"Why's that?" Joey picked at a couple of carrot curls.
Jack held up one finger while he freed something from between his teeth with his
tongue, and then he went on. "If you can believe this, Rebecca brought a friend back
with her for the wedding, and it turns out that she knows Dawson, and I think they're
actually doing some kind of weird mating dance."
"Dawson and the friend?"
"Yeah. Her name's Megan. From what I hear, he was giving one of his woe-is-me
speeches at some party, and she just shot him out of the sky like the big old overinflated
Goodyear blimp he is when he gets like that, and he hasn't been able to stop thinking
about her ever since." Jack watched Joey's face for signs of discomfort that didn't come.
Joey sighed. "I guess statistically it's pretty remarkable that it would turn out to be the
same girl, but it's not hard for me to believe that Dawson could fall for a girl like that."
"Why?"
"Because he's one of those people," she said with a grin, "who, deep down in his heart,
is smart enough to know that he badly needs somebody to tell him to shut up from time
to time."
"Do you suppose that he's a little short on his quota for that because you guys haven't
been speaking?"
Joey played with the edge of a napkin on the table. "I don't know. If that's the case, I'm
happy that he found an acceptable substitute." She tried to smile.
"Don't you think he misses you, too?"
She watched Dawson, who seemed to be eyeing Pacey over by the punch bowl. He
looked good in his navy suit, and he had finally found a haircut she didn't hate, and all in
all, he looked a little like a guy who had come to this event hoping to impress someone.

But not me, she thought with a nostalgic twinge that wasn't regretful, just sort of dully
aware. "I don't know if he misses me. I handled everything so badly that I'm not sure he
sees it as such a loss, and frankly, I'm not sure if I really blame him."
Jack reached over and took Joey's hand. "Have I ever told you I think you're a little hard
on yourself?"
"I'm just . . . I have regrets, you know? Not about where I am or anything, because I
know I'm right where I'm supposed to be, but I feel like I've broken all of these rules. It's
like somewhere, there's a giant scorecard that shows that I owe everybody so much for
so many mistakes that I can't possibly make up for it." Joey stared over at Pacey, who
looked just plain knock-you-over gorgeous in a charcoal suit she was sure was new.
"I think that's the wrong approach, Joey. There's no scorecard with the people that love
you. There's just you and them, every day, doing the best you can." He looked across
the room at Pete, still dancing, and smiled. "At least that's the philosophy I operate on."
Joey shook her head. "Intellectually, I know you're right," she said, "but I just did all of
these things wrong. I messed things up with Pacey in the first place, and then I went to
California, and then I was horrible to Dawson, and then I was horrible generally . . . "
"You came back, though," Jack pointed out. "Whatever else happened, the fact remains
that you came back here, to the person you really loved, and you did a lot of really
difficult things to get yourself here. It's not wrong to mess up, it's just wrong not to be
able to recover. Besides, you've made all these really remarkably good decisions since
then . . . you left town completely and found your way, and now you seem completely
different."
She looked up at him and smiled hopefully. "I do?"
He laughed. "Yes. I think that life away from the dramas of Capeside agrees with you."
"Speaking of which," Joey said, raising one eyebrow, "where's my boss, anyway?"
Jack waved one hand dismissively. "You're not gonna see him until you put him on the
plane. I think Jen's occupying pretty much all of his free time until he leaves town. She
put some kind of a whammy on the guy, because he's pretty much lost his mind." He
nibbled on a radish, then made a face and put it down. "Speaking of which, is your boss
going to have to face your impending departure soon?"
"Why?"
"Well, because of Pacey. I guess I assumed you guys would want to live closer
together, now that you seem to have had this impassioned reunion."
Joey tipped her head thoughtfully. "Yeah, I guess, but I have a job there, and he's
between school years, so he could come to me, instead. I mean, I finally have a job I
actually like, and Chris relies on me and everything, so I'd hate to leave." Her face
darkened. "Do you think it's going to be a problem?"

Jack rearranged his silverware self-consciously. "I don't know. Probably not."
***
part seventeen: ring
Dawson stood just inside the patio doors, watching Pacey, who was standing outside
under the floodlights, charming one of Andie's French friends -- a girl with upswept hair
and a chunky silver necklace and, of course, a delighted, flirted-with expression on her
face. Dawson eased out the doors until he could hear what they were saying.
"I have a boat," Pacey said. The girl giggled and shook her head. "A boat," Pacey
repeated, making a sort of waves-on-the-water gesture. "For the water. A boat." She
just raised her eyebrows. "A boat, like the Love Boat. Like Gilligan's Island. Like in
Titanic."
Now the girl grabbed Pacey's arm. "Ah, Leo!"
Pacey nodded. "Right. And in the movie, Leo was on a boat. A big, big boat."
He had always envied that way Pacey had of making girls purr like they were being
petted. Needless to say, he knew he didn't have that quality. Girls would occasionally
look at him indulgently, like he was a charming five-year-old in a frozen pizza
commercial, but there was rarely anything more than that. There was never any purring.
When the girl gave one last laugh, smiled, and moved along, Dawson walked slowly
towards where Pacey was standing. As he approached, he discovered that he had only
rehearsed the middle of the conversation -- the important things he didn't want to get
wrong -- but he hadn't devised a plan for how to start. He thought of the last time they'd
seen each other, that last day at Joey's, and he absently ran his tongue over the crown
the dentist had put on the tooth Pacey broke. He had no idea where to begin. He had
considered just opening with the apology, but it seemed too abrupt. He couldn't very
well just walk up and say, "Remember me? You hate me. But I wish you didn't." Surely
there was no joke, no icebreaker, no friendly jab that was safe. So, buddy, how's the old
ball and chain?
With a level of regret that seemed to strike with a dull thud, Dawson realized that he had
nothing to say because the two of them didn't really even know each other anymore.
They hadn't really been friends, after all, since the night he walked out onto his porch
and saw the two of them. There had been such a conspiratorial haze swirling around

them, sweeping them into something of which he was absolutely not a part. He
remembered it with such sharpness that it seemed like he could still reach out his fingers
and run them over the memory. It had been two and a half years. Two and a half years,
he thought, can that be right? That can't be right. But it was. He and the kid he'd
befriended as a five-year-old had ignored each other at their high school graduation.
He'd missed Pacey's rally and eventual academic triumph. Pacey had missed his
acceptance to film school. It was enough.
"Hey," he managed, sort of sidling up to Pacey, not looking him in the eye but looking off
in the same direction.
"Hey, Dawson." Pacey took a sip from his drink.
It was immediately clear. He's not going to help me. "It's quite a party in there."
Dawson glanced over, but Pacey's face was cold.
"Well, Andie aims to please."
Dawson shifted back and forth on his feet a couple of times, then tried again. "It sounds
like Joey's been really happy in Boston, huh?"
Pacey shrugged. "Seems that way. But you know, Dawson, I wouldn't really have any
way to know. You have to remember, I haven't been with her, not until this weekend.
We've been apart more than a year." He smiled bitterly. "You probably remember some
of that, right?"
Running his hand over his hair, Dawson considered bailing out entirely, just walking
back inside and never looking back. He could still try to make it right with Joey, could
still determine to be civil and eminently fair and just generally the bigger man. Instead,
he tried the only avenue that seemed to be open to him.. "Look, I'm wrong about
everything."
Pacey's head turned. "What are you getting at, Dawson? What are you doing out
here? What is this about?"
This was the hard part. Ugly and difficult, humiliating and painful. "I'm saying I've been
wrong the whole time. About Joey, about you and Joey, about you in general. I'm not
kidding -- I'm wrong about everything."
Pacey stared hard at him, not moving. "I hope you'll forgive me, Dawson, if this all
seems a little too easy, and that you won't think I'm ungrateful if I inquire about exactly
what brought you to this little epiphany."
Dawson chuckled and sighed a little. "Is it really important?"
"It's really important." Inside, the band swung into a melancholy number.
"Well, Pacey, if you really want to know, I'm not sure it qualifies as an epiphany so much
as a long and painful education." He swallowed hard. "I'm not sure where to start."

"California would be a good place," Pacey said.
Dawson gave one nervous cough and plunged in. "California. Okay. Well, I took Joey
to California with me, and I knew she wasn't really happy at first, but I really believed that
she would be okay once we got out there, you know? Somehow she'd get in the sun,
and she'd sort of perk up."
Pacey nodded slowly. "Like a plant."
Dawson shook his head and smiled ruefully. "I walked into that one, I guess." He
fidgeted and looked at the ground. "Look, I was wrong to ask her to come with me to
California. I knew -- I mean, I didn't consciously know, but I knew on the inside, I think --
that everything with her dad had her so crazy that she wasn't exactly going to make the
best possible decisions on a day-to-day basis. Just the fact that she wasn't going to go
to school . . . it was crazy, you know?" Dawson searched Pacey's face for a sign, but
there seemed to be nothing yet. "And I think," he continued, nodding slowly, "that I also
knew that she wanted to be back here with you."
Pacey looked at Dawson quizzically. "Then how could you put her on that plane with
you, Dawson?"
"I put her on the plane because . . . " He glanced over his shoulder at Joey, who was
inside dancing with Jack. She suddenly seemed incredibly far away, unrecognizable to
him in her red dress and heels, so impossibly happy. "I put her on the plane because I
hoped I was wrong, I guess. And because it seemed like it was so right that it couldn't
possibly be as wrong as the signs all suggested it was."
"I thought you just didn't see those signs," Pacey said, staring out into the dark.
"I saw them." Dawson laughed. "I ignored them, but I saw them. I sort of hoped that by
making it my full-time job to prove they were false, I might actually make it happen."
"That's the part I've never understood." Pacey turned a little to face Dawson, leaning
against an iron railing at the patio's edge. "Why you thought you could change how she
felt."
Dawson put his hands in his pockets and scraped the patio stones with his toe. Finally,
he looked up at Pacey. "Give me a minute. I'm trying to think of something that sounds
better than 'unbridled arrogance and a twisted notion of the nobility of unending
pursuit.'" This, to his great relief, made Pacey chuckle. "I think," Dawson went on, "that
everybody has always understood that Joey relied on me and my family for a lot, you
know, because of how crazy everything was at her house when she was a kid. But I'm
not sure they ever really get how much I relied on her, and how much it threw me when
she walked away from me."
Now, he had Pacey's attention. "Go on."
"In one fell swoop," Dawson said, gesturing broadly, "you and Joey made me obsolete in
each other's lives. She didn't need me as the boyfriend, because she had you. You

didn't need me as the best friend, because you had Joey. So the happier the two of you
looked, the more I felt like everything was sliding out from under me."
Pacey considered this for a minute. "You know, though, that we both would have
enormously preferred not to have you disappear? That we both would rather have had
you around for the last couple of years."
"It's like I said before, I was wrong." Dawson looked up and locked eyes with Pacey. "I
want to make it right."
Pacey sighed heavily. "I'm glad, Dawson. I am. I know how much it means to Joey,
and it means a lot to me, too."
"I have a feeling you're about to say 'but.'"
"But it's not that simple." Pacey looked past Dawson, into the party, and saw Joey being
dipped by a laughing Jack. A warm rush of affection flooded him. "She's quite a girl,
Dawson, but she's really not the issue."
Dawson blinked. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," Pacey continued, "that the problems between us go back a lot farther than
Joey. I mean that we weren't okay before I got together with her. I mean that there are
old wounds there, and it's going to take some time. I don't want to be the poster boy for
Junior Underachievement, and I don't think you want to carry the banner for the Quiet
Hero Society, so . . . "
"So what?"
"Well, so we have to figure out whether, when you tear all that crap down, there's
anything left."
Dawson raised his eyebrows a little, but couldn't argue. Just then, Joey, breathless from
a heady combination of dancing and laughing, came toward them. "Hey, you two," she
said hopefully. "What's this little tête-à-tête all about?"
Pacey put an arm around her and pulled her to him. "Dawson and I were just talking
about how amazing you look in that dress, and how much we both want to dance with
you next."
She looked back and forth between the two of them. "And what did you decide?"
"You two go ahead," Dawson said quickly. "Really, go. Have fun."
Joey took Pacey's hand and started toward the doors, but he pulled her back. "No. No,
Joey and I have plenty of time to talk. Besides, the girl's got two left feet. You'd be
doing me a favor, man." He picked up Joey's hand and kissed the inside of her wrist.
"Go on," he said softly, looking in her eyes and tilting his head back toward the party.

Dawson stepped toward Joey awkwardly, finally offering her a smile. He put his hand
lightly on her back and they walked off together, leaving Pacey on the patio with his
drink. He turned away from the lights again, staring off into the night. He found himself
wondering what they were talking about, wondering whether they would be able to figure
things out, whether they would smile at each other in that goofy, aren't-we-adorable way
they'd been smiling at each other since they were about six. They would, he hoped.
"Pardon me, sir, is this the meeting of the Too-Cool-To-Care Club?"
He smiled. "I'm sorry, no, this is Wretched Exes."
Jen was beside him. "Wretched Exes . . . cute. Speaking of which, I saw that a couple
of exes we both know are taking a spin around the dance floor in there."
"I know," he said, shaking the ice in his glass.
"You seem fairly calm," she said with mild surprise. "I'm surprised you and Dawson
aren't pulling each other's hair and hitting each other with your purses."
"Surprisingly enough, I was forced to call off the rumble when he came at me with an
approach that was pretty hard to argue with."
She wrinkled her brow. "And what was that?"
"Well," Pacey said slowly, "if I'm not mistaken, he threw himself on the mercy of the
court."
Jen's eyes widened. "Really? Came around all at once, did he?"
"Believe me, I was as surprised as you are. Who knew the guy was going to go all adult
on me? I mean, I could have believed 'grudging acceptance,' or maybe even 'selfaggrandizing
self-aware self-sacrifice,' but I wasn't anticipating 'gracious good humor.' It
confused me."
She shook her head. "Just relax and enjoy it. It'll make life a lot easier for you and
Joey." She stared at a spot over his shoulder. "Speaking of which, you two seem to be
doing well."
His voice softened. "Yeah. Yeah, pretty well."
Jen looked down at her hands. "I'd say you're the guy who's got all your baggage
packed away and all your old debts settled up, then."
He nodded. "Most of them. I do have one left, you know."
She cleared her throat. "And what's that?" He stared back at her with an intensity that
was a little unsettling. She tried to look back expectantly, but he didn't blink, didn't move,
didn't pretend he believed she didn't know what he was talking about. "Pacey, it's okay."

"I feel bad," he said simply. "I feel like I did something I shouldn't have. I feel like I
should apologize to you, but I'm not sure what for."
"You have nothing to apologize for," she said, smoothing her dress across her hip. "I'm
telling you it's okay. In case you haven't noticed, I'm having a highly impractical
weekend fling with a rich computer design mogul, so I'm not exactly sitting in my lonely
bedroom, licking my wounds."
He walked slowly around behind her and wrapped his arms around her in a way that
struck her as brotherly, more than anything else. "I'm just going to stop talking, then."
She put her hands over his. "Okay."
***
Joey was surprised to find herself thinking about the night sophomore year when she
and Dawson had gone to some ridiculous school dance in the early stages of his crush
on Jen, with Dawson desperate to track her down on her date with that oafish football
star Dawson had hated so much. He had grabbed Joey and ordered her to dance, more
in the manner of a forced march than anything, and then they had found themselves
face to face, hands actually touching, and he had suddenly looked at her like he'd never
seen her before. It had lasted only a minute, but it had made her stomach fluttery and
her face hot and her knees oddly reluctant to support her. And here they were again,
five years later, and it was like coming full circle. She seemed to be seeing him, not as
an obstacle or a threat or a savior, but as himself, for the first time in so long she could
hardly remember. His hand on her back felt friendly and relaxed, and his hand felt
familiar in hers.
Dawson reached over and hooked a finger under the strap of her dress, which had
slipped from her shoulder. Briskly, he slid it back up into place. "It was falling down."
"Thanks." She smiled. She heard the music, was aware of the people swirling around
them, and could see out of the corner of her eye that Pacey was talking to Jen outside,
but Joey felt utterly cocooned. Images of Dawson, images of herself -- younger,
dumber, more sure of everything -- flashed in her mind. She remembered, with an
almost unbearable rush of something bittersweet, the first time Dawson ever kissed her.
She had been so surprised and so relieved -- he feels something, I'm not crazy, I'm not
doomed -- and the next morning, when she woke up, she had looked at herself and been
convinced that she seemed ten years older. She'd felt like she had seen and felt and
done things that nobody had ever seen or felt or done before, ever. All the songs were
true, all the poetry was about something after all, and she had crossed some
momentous threshold. She'd been picked, chosen, delivered, rescued from the swamp
she'd been swimming in for a year. That was the way it had seemed then.
Dawson realized that he'd never really noticed how beautiful she was. He'd thought he
had, but now he could see that in his mind, she'd always been fifteen, a little gawky, a
little unsure of herself. Somewhere along the line, she'd become this woman. He had
the sad feeling that he'd missed it for some reason, maybe because he was too busy
adoring her for being frozen in time, his one constant reassurance that not everything
changed. He remembered their first date, when she'd come down from the porch as an

almost-miraculous combination of the girl she'd always been and something so different
it had nearly knocked him over. It had been so unnerving that giving her a flower had
felt daring and so risky, like tightrope-walking or jumping a motorcycle across the Grand
Canyon..
He didn't think he'd ever really wanted her to stop being exactly that girl -- the girl who
walked down from the porch, the girl with the daisy in her hand, the girl who hooked her
fingers through his and smiled. Everything after that had just been his own effort to find
that girl, wherever she'd gone, and bring her back. Don't go off with Pacey, don't get on
the boat, come to California, come back to California -- it all meant the same thing. IIIt
was a cry to the girl with the daisy in her hand to please come home. She's not coming
home, he thought, looking at Joey and noticing how little she resembled the picture in his
head anymore.
"You look beautiful, Joey," he said warmly, pulling her a little closer and steering her
through a slow turn.
She smiled. "Thank you."
"It's eleven-thirty," Chris said matter-of-factly, pouring himself another cup of coffee as
he and Jen sat alone at what had been the dinner table. "In a half-hour, we turn into
pumpkins, and this entire experience is bound to go up in a puff of smoke."
She nodded slowly. "You've got that right. Then you fly away, I stay here, and my life
continues to be one long medley of songs that can't be adequately performed without
steel guitars."
***
He laughed and casually put his hand over hers. "There's got to be a better choice than
that. I don't really like country music."
Jen turned her hand over to wrap it around his. "This is going to be really, really
complicated, you know. I'm still nineteen. I haven't gotten any older since yesterday."
"No, I know you haven't. But I'm still looking into it. I know a lot of powerful people." He
stroked her hand with his thumb. "I might be able to get some kind of waiver, or if I can't
make you any older, I might be able to make myself younger."
"I also live here," she pointed out, gesturing at the crowd with her chin. "And you live
there."
"It's a modern world, Jen. You don't have to travel by horse and buggy. Planes, trains,
cars, buses, roller skates, hot air balloons, skateboards, scooters, cross-country skiing --
"
Jen laughed. "It's either late summer or early fall right now, and either way, the crosscountry
skiing season is still a long way off."

He leaned over and brushed his lips against hers, then planted a quick kiss on her bare
shoulder. "I expect to be around for it," he said softly.
She pulled back from him sharply, glaring with feigned suspicion at his surprised
expression. "Are you sure you aren't some kind of alien or a spy or a scientist doing an
experiment on me? This kind of thing never, never happens in my life."
Chris chuckled, then leaned back in his chair. "You find it hard to believe I'm serious,
don't you?"
Jen wondered how much she should say. "I have lots of strengths and weaknesses, but
I would particularly say that the placement of faith in other people is not exactly one of
the things in which I excel."
Suddenly, he reached into his pocket. "I know. I'll give you my most prized
possession." He handed her the smallest cell phone she'd ever seen. "Take it. I'm
serious. Take it as a token of my affection and as a souvenir of this lovely weekend."
"So now I'm going to get all of your urgent phone calls? Thank you, what an unusual
gift."
He rolled his eyes, then flicked her on the forehead with his finger. "No, Jen. I'm going
to change the number. I can change the service, and then nobody will know the number
except for me."
"Well, if nobody knows the number except for you, what's a cell phone going to do for
me?"
Chris paused, then took her hand again. "It's gonna ring, Jen. It's gonna ring a lot."
She smiled and laughed, running her fingers over the hard plastic case. "I'll take your
word for it."
"My word's good," he assured her, throwing her a wink.
part eighteen: chase
Dawson had always loved the porch of his parents' house. He had been known to sit
there for hours, staring at the creek with his feet up on the rickety wicker table. In
California, his apartment had a tiny balcony on which he had perched a white plastic
chair, but the view of the Target and the Payless Shoe Source just wasn't the same.
Now, back on that porch in the darkness, enjoying the slight breeze that cut the warm air
of late summer, he was reminded of all the things he had done on that very spot. It had
been home base for hide-and-seek, of which he, Pacey, and Joey had long ago played
an unconventional version which usually ended when either Pacey or Joey quit because
the other had committed some mysterious rules infraction that went unspecified. The
porch had also served as an impromptu craft services table when Dawson made his

second movie and his mother fed the skeleton crew an impressive layout of cold cuts
and potato chips and, if he remembered correctly, peanut butter cookies. It had been
where he first saw Pacey and Joey together.
Now, sitting on the steps with his tie dangling around his neck, he couldn't help noticing
how different everything seemed. It was still the porch, still the creek, still his parents'
house, but somehow it wasn't quite as much a home.
"What time is it?" Megan asked, her voice jumping into the silence and startling him.
He looked at his watch. "It's two-thirty." He glanced over at her and noticed that she
was running her hands up and down her upper arms as she sat beside him on the
steps. Wordlessly, he slipped out of his jacket and handed it to her. She pulled it on
over her dress, and he smiled a little at how her hands stayed half-hidden. "So, how did
you enjoy the party?"
She wiggled her arms around inside the sleeves, enjoying the feel of the lining on her
skin. "It was fun," she said finally. "I like your friends."
Dawson looked over at her. "Did you get to talk to Pacey, or did you just admire him
from afar?"
She laughed and bent down to wrap her arms around her knees. "Oh, I got to talk to him
a little. He's quite a charmer."
"Yeah."
"He really didn't seem quite as bad as you told me he was. I mean, he seemed like a
pretty good guy." She looked up at Dawson out of the corner of her eye.
"He is a pretty good guy. And in case you're wondering, I did talk to him."
"You did, huh? How did that go?" She was staring at the toes of her blue pumps,
studiously avoiding looking at him.
Dawson rested his elbows on his knees and folded his hands. "It went okay. He didn't
exactly say he was ready to forgive and forget, but I did escape this encounter with all
my teeth still inside my mouth, so it ended better than last time we ran into each other."
She finally looked over at him, smiling involuntarily when she saw his painfully earnest
expression. She stood halfway up until her weight was off the step, scooted and
shuffled over until she was just next to Dawson, then plunked herself back down beside
him, her leg against his. "You did a good thing."
Dawson studied her up close now, noticing how dark her hair was, how pink her cheeks
were, and how fascinated he suddenly was by the curve of her ear. "Can I ask you a
question?"

She turned to look at him again, startled to find that their faces were only a few inches
apart now. "Sure," she said quietly.
"Why would you even want to talk to me after what happened at that party when we first
met? I would have thought you'd run off at the sight of me, but for whatever reason, you
seem to be indulging me far beyond what I could reasonably expect."
"Ah, what an intriguing question." She bent over again so she was hugging her knees.
"You definitely were no barrel of laughs, and I'm sure you realize now that you didn't
have a leg to stand on in terms of hating them for betraying you, or whatever it was you'd
convinced yourself you had on them. That's basically why I went prosecutorial on you,
which you deserved completely, and which I would maintain turned out to be of
substantial benefit to your personal growth." She looked up at him expectantly.
"No argument," he said with his hands in the air.
"On the other hand, though . . . " She bent and straightened her arms a couple of times,
finally resting just the knuckle of her bent index finger on his knee as she talked to him.
"Everything you were saying, you obviously meant. It might have been total crap, but it
wasn't a line, you know? It was strangely refreshing to hear something that was so
unmistakably pathetic that I knew you couldn't possibly be saying it to impress me."
He was aware of her touch, just as tentative and arguably insignificant as it could
possibly be. Showing a burst of initiative he hadn't really been inclined to employ since
the first time he kissed Joey, he grabbed Megan's hand loosely, tangling his fingers with
hers. "What makes you think I'd say anything to impress an aggressive shark-in-training
such as yourself, anyway?"
"Well, I'm sure you wouldn't." She bumped him with her shoulder. "What makes you
think it would work if you did?"
"You may not have heard the news," he said, cocking his head to the side and glancing
sideways at her with practiced self-importance, "but I happen to be a wunderkind."
"Oh, yeah, right." She rolled her eyes. "Wunder-bread, maybe."
They both laughed, loudly enough that it seemed to echo in the silence draped over the
yard. As he recovered, he squeezed her hand a little. "Thank you."
"For what?"
"Well, I was actually laughing, and for once, I wasn't laughing at how pathetic I am."
She nodded slowly, then shrugged her shoulders. "That's what I was laughing at."
He grinned. "Yes, yes, I'm sure you were."
Megan pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "So, when we get back to school, you're
going to call me, right?"

"Do you want me to?"
She turned to him and dropped her chin onto his shoulder so that she was speaking
directly into his ear. "Yes, you dope."
***
"For a guy who once told me he doesn't floss without planning it ahead of time, I have to
tell you, you can really kiss." Jen was leaning against the passenger door of her car, out
of breath, staring intently at Chris, whose face was inches away, returning her gaze. He
leaned forward again, pressing her against the car, holding both her hands as he kissed
her lower lip, then swept his tongue into her mouth. It filled her with a bubbling
eagerness that drove her to pull her hands free so she could wrap her arms around him,
pulling him closer to her, running her fingers over the short, stubbly hair on the back of
his neck. He moaned and flattened his palms against the car window, pushing against
her with his hips and coaxing a whimpering sigh from her. He felt her legs begin to part,
felt his knee begin to press into her, and abruptly pulled back. He pulled her arms from
around his neck and stepped away from her, holding his forearm in front of his mouth as
if he could use it to stop himself from going back to her.
"What's the matter?" She was breathing hard, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.
He shook his head. "N -- nothing. Nothing's the matter. Everything is good. You're
great. But it's -- it's -- what time is it?" He looked at his watch. "It's almost three in the
morning, and this is where I'm staying, so I should get inside." He pointed vaguely
toward the B&B and coughed.
She took a couple of steps toward him. "I could . . . come in with you," she said in a low
tone.
"I think that's probably not such a good idea." Chris stepped back further. "But you
hang onto that phone, because like I said, I'm going to call you."
Jen blinked incredulously. "That's it? You're leaving in the morning, and that's it?"
He looked at the ground, then back up at her. "As opposed to what, Jen? You want to
come inside and have rapid and unsatisfying sex while we try to make sure we don't
wake anybody up?"
"I was thinking 'slow and satisfying,' but I think the point remains the same."
"No," he said simply, shaking his head. "I just -- no."
She tried to laugh. "What is the matter all of a sudden? Did I do something? Did I
elbow you in the stomach or something like that?" She stepped closer. "Tell me."
He ran his hand over his hair. "I'm twenty-eight," he shrugged.

Jen reached into the car through the window and grabbed her purse. From it, she pulled
out his phone. "What did you give me this for if you were going to say 'Oh, Jen, never
mind, I'm too old for you'?"
"I'm not saying that." He was whispering harshly, suddenly very aware of all the
sleeping people not very far away. "I'm saying that of all the guys I'm willing to be, I'm
not going to be the guy who's ten years older than you are --"
"Nine."
He rolled his eyes. "The guy who's substantially older than you are who sleeps with you
and flies away in the morning and you wind up regretting it."
She shifted her feet impatiently. "Who says I would regret it?"
"Nobody says you would," he replied, slightly distracted by the smell of her perfume as
he got near her again. "But what if you did? What if I took you inside and made love to
you and in the morning I left, and once it was actually happening -- once I was actually
gone, and you were sitting there by yourself, what if you felt bad?"
"What do you think I am, Chris? Some kind of a withering virgin? I'm not going to cry
into my pillow because you didn't give me your high school ring. I'm telling you, I'm not
going to feel bad."
"Well," he said, "I am." At her surprised expression, he went on. "I haven't known you
that long, Jen. I've known you a day and a half, pretty much. It's seemed like more than
that, but it's not. And I don't claim to know everything that's going on in your head, but
from things you've said, it's looking to me like you haven't had the best of all possible
luck where guys are concerned."
She felt tears stinging her eyes. "Well, now I'm not sure it's improving any, either."
He smiled ruefully. "That," he said with a nod of his head, "is exactly what I'm talking
about. I have a weird feeling that you have a script of some kind in your head, and that
in some way I don't even know about yet, if I take you inside with me, I'm going to be
playing my part in it perfectly. And I have an equally weird feeling that if I play my part
perfectly, I'm going to find that my curtain call comes sooner than I'm expecting, and
even if I tried to avoid bowing, the director would come and chase me off the stage with
a wooden bat."
"Are you enjoying this tortured metaphor? Because I'm really not." Now, she was
crying, although she hid it surprisingly well.
"As a matter of fact, I am enjoying it," he went on, unfazed. "I'm enjoying it enough to
say that somehow, I feel like if I don't take you inside with me, if I stand here and I tell
you that I'm going to be thinking about you, and I'm going to call you, and I may be back
in town as soon as, say, next weekend to visit you, but that I think it's not a good idea for
us to see each other naked quite yet, I'm going to break the script wide open."

"You think that's a good thing?"
"I think it's a really bad thing if I want to maximize my chances of sleeping with you
before I die, which is actually a strategy that has a certain appeal at this point. But I
think it's a good thing if I want to maximize my chances that I'm not going to wind up as a
shrunken head on your Wall of Men Who've Done You Wrong."
She stared at him for a long minute, then finally nodded. "Well, if that's what you think, I
guess there's not a whole lot I can do about it."
"Nope. There sure isn't." He came over closer to her again and put his hand on her
arm. "Jen, I'm not telling you 'no.' I'm telling you 'yes.' I'm just telling you 'yes' in a way
that I think sounds like 'no' to you because you're used to having people say 'no' to you
in a way that sounds like 'yes.'"
Jen sighed and swiped the back of her hand across her eyes. "That's a very fascinating
theory," she said with sarcastic rancor.
He turned to walk up the steps of the B&B, and over his shoulder, said softly, "Good
night, Jen."
She said nothing, but just got in her car and drove home, barely making it inside the door
before she dropped onto the couch and fell asleep.
***
At the Capeside High School baseball diamond, Joey and Pacey lay in the grass in the
middle of right field, sprawled out in a T with her head on his stomach. "I'm ruining my
dress," she said matter-of-factly.
"Are you complaining?"
Just hearing those three words -- are, you, complaining -- Joey was struck again by how
remarkable his voice was. She was constantly amazed by the way he laced everything
he said to her with that combination of romantic swoon and playful wink, as if everything
they did together contained elements of both sex and kick-the-can. "No, I'm not
complaining." She squinted up at the sky. "Is that the Big Dipper?"
"Is what the Big Dipper?" He stroked her hair. "Where are you looking?"
"I'm looking right there." In the pitch black, she pointed straight up.
"That's very helpful," he said, staring up at the wall of stars. "I can't believe how clear it
is."
"I never see this many stars in the city."

"You never will, either. Just another reason why you should really get the heck out of
there and come home." He tried to say it casually, but knew right away that it hadn't
worked.
She was suddenly happy he couldn't see her face. "I love it there, actually. You'd love
it, too."
"Me? Well, I'm in school here, so I can't really leave. Classes start in, like, four weeks,
and everything is pretty much going to go nuts at that point. I'll have work study again,
and everything gets harder once you get past the low expectations and beer blasts of
first year. Besides, my charming sister would have trouble affording the Seaside
Witterdome by herself, and my parents would drive her completely crazy." For a speech
assembled on short notice, he thought it was fairly compelling.
"Well, I don't want to move, either." She squirmed a little. "I really love working for
Chris, and I'm actually good at it."
"Don't you want to go to school?"
"You know, Pacey, this may come as a shock to you, but they actually do have a thriving
undergraduate climate in the Boston area if I decide that's what I want." She threw
together everything she'd been thinking of all night. "You could move up right away,
because I have room in my apartment. You could transfer someplace for the fall, and
we could be a real live couple, living in our very own place." She reached out and
stroked his knee. "I'd make you breakfast every Sunday."
Pacey laughed uncomfortably, disengaging his hand from her hair. "I'm really happy
here. I know the professors at school, and I'm finally getting somewhere after being a
major academic washout for about fifteen years, as you well know." He gave her
shoulder a little squeeze. "Wouldn't you like being home with Bessie and Bodie and
Alex?"
"Not really," she said simply. "When I'm there, it's like nobody knows anything about me
except what I decide I want to tell them. They don't know about my dad, and I don't tell
them. They don't know about the Icehouse, the drugs . . . and they don't know about
me, either. They've never heard of Dawson, never heard of Jen, never heard about all
the stupid things I've done."
"Never heard of me?" he asked softly.
Joey chuckled. "The ones who know me at all hear about you soon enough, don't
worry." She sat in the quiet for a minute, listening to a distant car engine. Who could be
up at this hour, besides us? She sighed. "I just don't feel like I can leave. Where I am,
and what I'm doing . . . I think it's where I'm supposed to be."
Pacey touched her hair again. "That's really funny, because that's exactly how I feel."
A long silence settled between them. He felt the weight of her head on his stomach, her
soft hair under his fingers. She stared up at the sky, still wondering whether the stars

she was looking at could be made to form a constellation. It seemed impossible, what
she was about to say, but now it seemed inevitable, too.
"I guess neither of us is moving," she said simply.
"Are you upset?"
God, why does his voice still have to be like that? "No, I'm not upset." She swallowed
hard. "I think, actually, that we're both right."
Pacey suddenly couldn't breathe. They were really here, lying in the grass, after all that
had happened, deciding that this wasn't going to happen. Realizing it wasn't. "I keep
thinking there has to be another answer."
"Well, there isn't." She sat up straight, pulling away from him with such sharp crashes of
emptiness that she almost dropped back down, said she was sorry, promised to
abandon everything. But she didn't. Slowly, he sat up, too. Now they sat in the grass,
not facing each other, not talking. Finally, she found her voice. "This has to be wrong.
We can't be deciding this."
"I think we just did." She wasn't sure, but she thought she heard a catch in his voice.
"What does it mean?"
He cleared his throat, and now she was more sure of what she would be seeing if it
weren't so dark. "Well," he said, "it means that it's time for me to stop chasing you and
you to stop chasing me and for both of us to just go and do what we're supposed to do.
If we were supposed to be in the same place, then one or the other of us would feel
wrong about being where we just decided we feel right." He chuckled. "Did you follow
that?"
"Yes," she said, choking back a sob. "I got it." She pulled her knees up to her chest. "I
got it," she repeated.
After a long pause, he finally spoke. "What time is it?"
"It's about four."
"You have to get back to your life tomorrow. We'd better get going." He stood up and
reached his hand down toward her. She took it, letting him pull her up to her feet. She
could just barely see his face in the dark. "I love you," he said to her. "You know that
part, though, right?"
She nodded, smiled, and leaned over, touching her forehead to his. "I love you, too."
part nineteen: fly

The West coast had the sand and the waves and the sun beating down on you, and the
Southwest of course offered canyons and cliffs and red dirt roads, and the Midwest had
all those broad, green swaths of farmland, but for pure, unadulterated climatological
bliss, Joey remained convinced you couldn't beat October in New England. It was fortyfive
degrees, overcast and breezy, as she walked home toward her apartment with a
bag of groceries clutched against her right side. Dry leaves crunched under her feet and
she kicked an acorn with her toe, watching it bounce ahead of her and then off the
sidewalk. Red and orange leaves were everywhere, and seemed to cast a fiery orange
eye on everything below. She stopped to hitch the bag a little higher on her hip, pulled
her purse strap up on her other shoulder, and kept going.
She hadn't seen Pacey in two months. They hadn't spoken on the phone. They hadn't
e-mailed, they hadn't written letters, they hadn't spoken through intermediaries or
communed in a séance. Every once in a while, Jen or Dawson or Jack would mention
something about him -- he's doing well in school, the proofessors really like him, it turns
out he's a writer -- but mostly, there was nothing but empty space where he'd been. It
wasn't like the last time they'd gone without speaking. She knew they weren't waiting,
weren't trying to accommodate strange timing, weren't putting off the inevitable. They
had said goodbye, and they'd meant it, and whatever else she knew for sure, Joey knew
that if she talked to him or saw him or especially touched him, it would only make it
harder.
She stopped at an intersection, staring blankly at the red illuminated hand across the
street. Don't walk. She rolled her eyes. "Don't tell me what to do," she muttered under
her breath. When the light changed and the strangely posed white stick figure lit up, she
strolled across the street, stepping onto the opposite curb and continuing toward her
building. She passed a guy and a girl, both in Harvard sweatshirts, and she couldn't
help smiling. Maybe that would be her next year.
Chris had finally given her a talk that was somewhere between an embrace and an
eviction notice. In September, he'd called her into the office to fire her, telling her he was
only giving her twelve months' notice. In a year, he expected her to be on to bigger and
better things. "You're canned, Joey," he'd told her, shrugging his shoulders. "You're
bounced, you're history, you're fired. You've got fifty-two weeks to clean out your desk."
Everything since then had opened up. Maybe she'd give one of the Ivies a try. Maybe
she'd go to some enormous, swarming sea of undergraduates and wade directly into the
seamiest underbelly of arrested adolescence. Maybe she'd find a bohemian paradise
where she could resist the patriarchy and drink four-dollar cups of coffee with the rest of
the suburban exiles.
And one day, she really would meet someone.
***
Jen's phone rang while she was walking from psychology to French, although of course,
like all good cellular phones, it didn't just ring. It didn't just make an undistinguished
tootling electronic melody, either. Jen's phone played "Take The A-Train."

She yanked it from her bag and hit the green button. "Jen Lindley's House of Horror and
Pancakes. Home of the Frankenwaffle."
"Pretty good," he said, "but not as good as yesterday."
"What was I yesterday?"
"You were the Porn Hut."
"Oh, right." She narrowly missed being flattened by a skateboarder. "Sugar and Spice
at a Reasonable Price."
He laughed. "Right. How was psych?"
"We talked about our feelings."
"And now you're on your way to French."
"Oui."
"Are they going to teach you about kissing?"
"You ask me that every day."
He gave an indignant snort. "You keep saying no."
"What makes you think I need to study kissing?" She started up the stairs into the
language building.
"Hey, I'm just looking out for the quality of your educational experience."
"You're just looking out for the quality of your weekend."
"Speaking of which, I'll be there Friday at the usual time."
"Bring me flowers."
"I always bring you flowers."
"Well, I'm just saying, I like it. You should keep doing it." She stopped in the hall outside
her classroom. "I'm here, I have to go."
"Okay. Talk to you at noon."
"Noon."
"Crazy about you."

"Me, too." She hit the button, dropped the phone in her bag, and walked into class
smiling.
***
When Pacey had moved out of his old apartment, he'd figured he would have trouble
getting used to anything new, but the new place was okay. Leaving Capeside had been
hard -- Doug had become downright tolerable, and he missed Gretchen like crazy -- but
the close proximity to Joey without actually being able to see her had eventually gotten
to be too much. Leaving school had been even worse, but he could start again in
January. So now here he was, with at least his Dumbo clock as a mark of familiarity.
He lay down on the couch, put his feet up, and put his hands over his eyes.
When she had left after Andie's party weekend in August, he'd been sure he and Joey
were doing the right thing, and equally sure that it was going to hurt as much as anything
he'd ever done. At first, it had actually been easier than he thought. He spent a lot of
time working, eating, going to the movies -- anything that would keep him from having
those horrible moments when he stared at the wall, seeing her face grow out of it like a
ghost. When he'd gotten back to his apartment just after she left, he'd collapsed on his
bed exhausted, only to notice that the pillows smelled like her, so much that he
momentarily buried his face in them and inhaled deeply. Almost immediately, though, he
took them from the bed and threw them into a laundry bag, stuffing the sheets in after
them. He propped himself up on his bed with pillows from the couch and lay in the sunlit
room, thinking about her, for long hours until he finally fell asleep.
The biggest surprise of early fall had been a phone call from Dawson. At first, he'd been
inclined to be bitter -- sure, now that I can't have her eiither, we can be friends again --
but to his surprise, Dawson had wanted to talk about everything but Joey. It was the first
time he remembered ever talking to Dawson without there being some reference --
whether explicit or clumsily veiled -- to her. These days, Dawson mostly wanted to talk
about Megan, who had him in such an explosively good mood it had almost lifted him out
of the ostentatious self-importance he'd picked up somewhere around the ninth grade.
Among her charms, she had an exercise she'd put him through three times since the
beginning of the school year. The way Dawson told it, Megan would take him to a party,
and tell him that he was forbidden to speak to anyone in declarative sentences. He
could employ interjections, like "Wow!" and "Sure!" and "Thanks!". He could say hello.
He could ask other people questions. He could nod, he could gesture, he could send
smoke signals if he could figure out a way to do it -- but no declarative sentences. She
called the game "How Long Can You Go Without Talking About Yourself?" It made
Pacey laugh just thinking about it.
He had made it through September, but a week into October, he had hit a wall. Knowing
Joey was still so close, knowing that Bessie was in town, knowing Joey would be home
for holidays and he'd have to see her over and over and over again, it had hit him like a
ton of bricks that it just wasn't going to work. The nauseating irony was not lost on him
that if he had known he wasn't going to be able to take it, he could have saved them
both all the hurt that the goodby had caused, because as it turned out, he'd had to leave
school anyway. He'd left Gretchen, left Doug . . . why hadn't he realized this was going
to happen just a little sooner? Now, lying on the couch staring at the toes of his shoes,

he shook his head. "Because you're a dope," he muttered to himself. There was
nothing he could do about it now, of course.
He stood up again and moved the Dumbo clock to a slightly different place on the built-in
shelf where he'd placed it. Taking three steps back, he looked at the arrangement and
nodded approvingly. He crossed the room to sit in the soft armchair next to the coffee
table that had originally belonged to Dawson's parents. Fortunately, Dawson had
passed on it, which had left it available for the taking. He picked up a picture of himself
and Joey in a simple silver four-by-six frame. They were side by side, his arm around
her shoulders, the two of them looking startlingly like a conventional couple of the most
saccharine kind. He loved the picture, but looking at it, he missed her so much he
almost couldn't breathe. He put the picture back down, picking up the one next to it,
another favorite of his in which he had Joey on his shoulders. "For a feminist, she sure
did get a big charge out of being carried," he sighed. He rubbed his eyes.
Suddenly, the lock on the front door clicked and turned. Pacey stood up and looked.
The door swung open, and she was standing there, a bag of groceries on her hip. She
put the bag down on the table, not even seeing him, starting to tug one of her lightweight
gloves off with her teeth. She turned around and closed the door, and then as she
turned back around, she saw him standing in her apartment.
"Hey, Jo," he grinned.
She didn't speak, didn't smile, didn't make a sound. She closed the distance between
them in three steps, throwing herself against him and wrapping her arms around his
neck. She buried her face in his shoulder, feeling his hands in her hair. She pulled back
from him, touching his cheek with her fingers. "What are you doing here?" she said
finally.
"It's no good, sweetheart." He tugged her jacket off and tossed it over a chair, then
laced his fingers together behind her back. "I thought I could do it, but I can't."
Slowly, it came to her what he meant. "What about school?" she asked, blinking
rapidly.
"There are a lot of schools."
"What about being happy where you were?" She ran her hands up and down his arms.
"I thought you said you were happy."
He frowned. "Have you been happy?"
Her eyes widened. "I -- I was trying to be happy. I could have been happy enough."
"I could have been happy enough, too." He touched his lips to her forehead. "But I
missed you so much I couldn't see straight, so I figured I'd come here and see if you
were feeling the same way."

"Yes." She nodded slowly. "I was feeling the same way." Suddenly, she wrinkled her
brow. "How did you get in here?"
He smiled. "Chris has a key to your apartment." Now Pacey raised an eyebrow.
"What's that about, anyway?"
"I gave him my key so he could feed my goldfish when I was away for a weekend."
Pacey looked around the apartment. "You don't have any goldfish."
"Yeah, I know." She laughed. "I was out of town, so I wasn't here to remind him to do it,
so he didn't do it."
He kissed her softly, pulling her against him, finally moving his lips to her cheek. "Are
you happy to see me?" he asked.
She ran her hand over the back of his head. "Yes," she said into his ear. "I'm happy to
see you." She hugged him hard, impulsively, like a little kid, and then pulled away. "I
thought you didn't believe in grand gestures. I thought you didn't believe in rescue
fantasies."
"I don't."
"You came to my apartment. You brought your Dumbo clock, I see. This entire thing
has 'grand gesture' written all over it. And it smells a lot like a rescue fantasy."
"Yeah, I thought about that." He rubbed his hands together. "But what I'm thinkin' is that
I'm not really sure whether I'm offering a rescue or . . . you know, asking for one. So I
guess I think if we're not sure who's being rescued and who's rescuing, then maybe it's
okay." He spread his hands. "What do you think?"
She took both of his hands in hers. "I think it's an excellent theory."
He smiled. "Good." He kissed her again, swooning against her and breathing in her
scent. "Besides, I figured I was allowed to make grand gestures as long as I kept it
within reasonable range, you know? Breaking into your apartment was okay, as long as
I didn't, you know, put ten dozen roses in your bedroom."
She laughed. "Okay. We'll accept that as a limitation on order of magnitude." For a
long minute, they just looked at each other. He remembered the first time he'd seen her
in a real grown-up dress. She remembered the first kiss, not by the side of the road but
before that, when she was in love with Dawson, and how it had surprised and unsettled
and scared her. He could hear her saying, "I want to go with you." She could see the
wall -- ask me to stay. "Is it too late to ask you to stay?" she asked.
"No."
"Okay. Consider yourself asked." She stared into his eyes, which were just a little
playful, like always. "Pacey?"

"Yeah?"
"If I go in my bedroom, there are going to be ten dozen roses, aren't there?"
"Yeah."
She put her arms around him again, feeling his shoulders, his back, his neck. "Thank
you. I love you."
"I love you too, Jo."
***
part twenty: love
"Joey, unless you want your 'something borrowed' to be my foot on loan to your ass,
open the door and let me in." Jen pounded on the door again. "Joey, you can't stay in
there forever. When people get to the church and there's nobody there in a white dress,
they're going to start getting suspicious, and I am not taking your place." She flattened
her ear to the door. "Joey?" She pounded again. "Let me in."
"Forget it, Jen. I'm staying in here. Tell everybody to go home."
Jen rolled her eyes. "Joey," she called through the bedroom door, "do you know how
much food is over at the restaurant? Do you really want to spend the next year eating
your way through four thousand honeydew melon balls and five hundred individuallywrapped
'Joey and Pacey' special-edition custom-made chocolate hearts?"
"I don't care about the food," came the agitated reply. "I'm not going."
Jen smacked her palm against the door, hard enough to sting. "Now you listen to me,
you little drama queen. I'm out here in a shiny green dress and shiny green shoes, and I
have little white flowers in my hair. Your options are to come out of there and get
married, or buy me a corsage, put on a tux and take me to the prom. I'm leaving it up to
you, but I'm telling you right now, if you choose incorrectly, I will make you do every
single slow-dance."
Suddenly, the door swung open. Joey was standing there in jeans and a white T-shirt,
her eyes puffy and red. "I can't go, Jen."
Jen tilted her head to the side and regarded Joey sympathetically. "What exactly is your
problem?"
Joey rubbed her hands along her thighs. "The dress doesn't fit."

Jen's eyes widened. "It -- it doesn't fit? Haven't you tried it on, like, eight times?"
"Yes." Joey nodded. "But I've been really crazy with all the wedding stuff, you know,
and I ate all these Girl Scout cookies that were in the freezer, you know, the Thin Mints
and the little shortbreads and those peanut butter things covered with chocolate . . . and
then -- then people kept having all these showers and parties and feeding me cake and
that punch with the -- the ginger ale and the sherbet and everything, and then the sugar
had me so wound up that I couldn't sleep, so I couldn't wake up unless I had one of
those enormous Starbucks mochas -- you know, the extra-grande ones in the cups that
are like a foot tall -- and I must have just grown right out of the dress in the last week,
because it doesn't fit." Joey sighed despairingly, rubbing her forehead.
Jen frowned at the dress, which Joey had laid on the bed after apparently giving up on
putting it on. "Joey, when you tried this on before, was Bessie with you?"
Joey nodded. "Yeah. She's over at the church. I told her if she stayed here and tried to
help me get dressed, I'd probably rip all of her hair out."
Jen rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm certainly glad I could stand in for her, in that case." She
approached the dress hesitantly, then picked it up and turned it around. "You saw that it
has a big giant pin in it, right?"
Joey walked around to where Jen was standing, and squinted at the back of the dress
as Jen held it up to the light. "A pin?"
"It has a big pin in it at the top of the zipper, which I'm assuming is some sort of clever
dress trick to keep it from falling off the hanger." Jen unsnapped the safety pin, pulled it
out, and held it in her outstretched palm. "You're not going to be able to put it on if you
can't get the zipper down, Joey, and you can't get the zipper down while it has a big fat
pin in it."
Joey stared at the pin in Jen's hand, then at the dress, then she bit her lower lip. "Can
you help me put it on?"
Jen laughed and pulled the zipper down as Joey started to unbutton her jeans. "Yes,
Joey, I can help you put it on."
***
Pacey was like a lot of men -- he complained incessantly about formalwear, but he knew
how good he looked in it. Now, tugging to straighten the corners of his tie, he watched
his reflection in the mirror with a certain degree of satisfaction. "Beat that, Ms.
Josephine I'm-The-Star-Of-This-Show-In-My-Fluffy-White-Dress Potter," he muttered.
"Well, that was just about the most pathetic display I've ever witnessed." Jack raised his
eyebrows as Pacey spun around to face him.

"Hey, if she can wear a dress that costs as much as my car, despite the fact that she's
never going to wear it again, I can give myself all the credit I want for looking just as
good for a much more reasonable price."
"You certainly are an incurable romantic." Jack smoothed the front of his own crisp
white shirt, then clamped his hand on Pacey's shoulder. "You ready?"
"Uhhh, I'm getting there." Pacey grinned and checked his reflection one more time. "Did
you make sure Doug has the ring?" he asked in a low voice.
"He has it. I checked twice. I asked him once in English, and once in Spanish, and then
I made him show it to me, and then I hid it and made him describe it to me, and then I
made him ask for it nicely, and then I gave it back to him. He has it." Jack gave a
broad, brisk, thoroughly sarcastic thumbs-up. "We're a go for launch."
Pacey clenched and unclenched his fists, starting to walk around the little room
restlessly. "God," he muttered, "this is all just a little too much to take in."
"What? The wedding? Just remember that in an hour, the part where everybody
watches you with an eagle eye hoping you do something embarrassing will be over, and
we'll be on to the part where everybody watches everybody else get drunk and hopes
somebody else will do something embarrassing before they do. And then tomorrow, you
and Joey will be winging your way across the Atlantic." Jack picked a piece of lint off
Pacey's elbow. When Pacey turned to look at him, Jack shrugged. "You had a thing on
your arm. I didn't think you wanted the most expensive pictures anybody's ever going to
take of you to feature a thing on your arm."
Pacey sat down in a worn armchair and ran his hands over his hair. "I just feel like this
is all going to go so fast, you know? I'm barely going to get to see anybody, because
wedding receptions are . . . they're like the Olympics. You just go from one event to
another without any time to appreciate what's going on in the background. I mean,
everybody I really care about is going to be in the same room at the same time, and I
don't feel like I'm going to be able to enjoy it."
Jack pulled a chair over and sat down opposite Pacey. "You'll be able to enjoy it."
Pacey shook his head. "I wish I were as sure as you are."
Jack leaned forward. "Okay, let me play filmmaker for a minute."
"Oh, for God's sake, Jack, are you turning into Dawson now? If you quote me
something from some Spielberg movie, I'm going to hang your stuffed head on the wall
of my apartment."
"Look, just bear with me. Close your eyes." Pacey snorted with disgust, then obeyed. "I
want you to make a movie in your head. Picture yourself at the wedding reception,
right? You're there, you're in your tux . . . "

One of Pacey's eyes popped open. "I'm in my tux now, so I don't really have to imagine
that. I could just look down at myself if you'd let me do this with my eyes open."
"Quit arguing with me and shut your eyes, you big baby. Okay. You're at the reception,
you're in your tux, you're surrounded by your relatives. Your mother is probably huddled
in a corner with the three people in Capeside who she actually likes, and they're
probably talking about how Joey -- who they're probably calling Joanie -- deserves a lot
of credit for her spunk, given her dire circumstances. Your father, meanwhile, is . . .
what, probably getting drunk and complaining about how your entire life would have
been different if only you'd been willing to take karate lessons. Some insane
photographer is endlessly telling you to smile, and flashing something in your eyes that
makes you see spots for ten minutes, so you can't actually see anyone, including the
bride. It's an hour into the party and all you've had to eat is three chicken wings because
every time you turn around, somebody you barely recognize is congratulating you and
wishing you every happiness."
"Is this supposed to be helping me?"
"Yes."
Pacey opened his eyes. "How exactly is that?"
Jack spread his hands broadly. "You know what we didn't include in that movie you just
saw?" Pacey raised his eyebrows expectantly. Jack smiled. "You're married. You're
married to Joey. Joey's your wife."
Pacey's face slowly dissolved into a grin of recognition and something approaching
wonder. "I'll be damned," he said. "You're right."
***
Joey's heart pounded as she stood at the back of the church alone. "No one gives me
away," she had insisted, despite offers from Jack, Dawson's father, and Bodie. So there
she was, clutching the hard grip of her heavy bouquet, staring at the closed door in front
of her. On the other side, she heard the organ music drifting down from the choir loft.
Unseen rows of spectators were waiting for her, probably admiring the blue and white
clusters of flowers tied to the pews, maybe looking at Doug and Dawson and Jack,
standing in a clean, straight row, probably all so gorgeous they were stealing attention
from the bridesmaids. Andie was probably reaching the front right about now, Jen would
be about halfway down the aisle, and Bessie had just vanished through the door, a blur
of blue in the simple dress Jen and Joey had found back in Boston.
She took a breath and leaned toward the door. She could almost feel him, through the
door, across the room. She knew that even now, with him scrubbed and clipped and
ironed, if she stood just behind him and inhaled deeply from the back of his neck, he
would have that familiar smell . . . that smell like boats and water and wind. Holding the
flowers in her left hand, she curled the fingers of her right, imagining that they were
closing around his hand. Her eyes closed, she stepped forward and flattened her palm
against the cold wooden door, a smile spreading across her face. He was so close now,
waiting for her, and even though she knew it would be only literally seconds before she

could go, she rocked back and forth on her feet impatiently. The music slowed and
stopped. She felt the hush, the rush of air that seemed to go through her from feet to
fingertips, and then it happened. The doors swung open from the other side, and she
stared ahead. New music. Different music.
A room full of people turned around to look at you is a strange thing indeed, she had
time to think. She began to take slow steps, not even taking the time to worry that she
would trip over her feet. People she knew from Boston, women who had been friends of
her mother, people who worked for Pacey's father, men who had washed dishes at the
Icehouse when they were boys, women whose hair Pacey had pulled when they were
girls. They turned and watched her, and she looked at their faces, and she felt
beautiful. A familiar flush of affection hit her as she skimmed her eyes over Andie's
giddy grin, Jen's warmly satisfied smile, and Bessie's brimming tears. Doug was
grinning stoically, if such a thing was possible. Jack was still just as awkwardly
appealing as he'd been the first day she met him. She saw Dawson's eyes on her, then
they flicked into the crowd, bringing a brighter, conspiratorial smile to his face.
Somewhere in this room is his girl, she thought.
And Pacey. She thought she'd known what to expect. She'd seen him in a tux before,
at parties and weddings and things, and she'd seen him happy before. But somehow
this collision of how perfectly beautiful he looked and how perfectly happy he looked
knocked the breath out of her for a minute. She knew she was smiling, but she also
knew that however she looked, it wasn't doing justice to how she felt. She stared at the
scar on his cheek, even though she couldn't see it yet -- she fixed her eyes on the spot
where she knew it was. Oh, we both have so many of those, she thought with a twinge
of sadness. She had left him, he had refused her, they had made so many mistakes in
so many different ways -- wise and foolish, rational and irrational, overly analytical and
blindly devoted, they had blundered forward one way or another, and now they were
here. Long roads, her father would have said, require great traveling companions. It
was true.
***
He didn't believe in the whole thing about not seeing the dress before the wedding. As
soon as she reported that she'd found it -- in a shop in Boston with Jen -- he had asked
to see it. "What if it doesn't go with my tux?" he had demanded. "What if it doesn't go
with the decor? What if I just don't like it?" These things were all impossible, of course,
but damn, he'd wanted to see that dress. Back then, it was six months before the
wedding, and he didn't think he could wait that long.
Joey had held firm. "I've done plenty of defying convention," she said with a shrug, "but
at this point, I'm willing to take any help I can get, whether paranormal or not." So he
had waited. He had complained regularly -- You can't honestly believe our future is
going to be affected by whether or not I see your dress -- but he had waited. And now
he was glad.
He thought he knew what brides looked like, for the most part. Wedding dresses have
so much in common that they often struck him as more alike than different. He knew
she'd look beautiful, because she always looked beautiful, but he had also started the

day reminding himself -- in a way that now seemed so preposterous it was downright
laughable -- to tell her how pretty she looked and how much he loved the dress.
When the doors opened at the back of the church, he felt his heart pounding so hard it
felt like it was going to jump out of his throat. When he saw her, though, it calmed a
little. Her dress was deceptively simple -- no sleeves, no lace, no beads, just a wash of
white silk from the deeply scooped neck to the floor. Clusters of lilies-of-the-valley in her
hair -- a feature that, when he heard it described, he had been afraid would make her
look like a hippie or a Precious Moments figurine -- instead made her look like she had
simply become so perfect and so lovely that she had exploded in flowers, and on
another day she might sprout stars or bright red hearts instead. She came closer and
closer, and he had a strange moment of regret that he couldn't stop her -- he would turn
her to face the crowd, show them how she looked, ask them if they'd ever seen anything
like it. The answer, of course, would be no.
And then she was there. They faced each other, and she handed her flowers to Bessie.
He took her hands, running his thumbs over them. "You made it," he whispered.
"We both did," she whispered back.
***
Grams sent everyone to the reception and insisted on staying behind to make sure they
left the church the way they found it. "You go with your friends, Jennifer," she had said
simply, "and I'll be there shortly. It's my church, and I want to make sure no one has
reason to think I didn't do my best to take care of it." She had kissed the top of Jen's
head, given a quick squeeze to Chris's hand, and sent them along.
Now, she walked down the aisle, between the pews, picking up stray tissues and a few
wedding programs. They'd come later for the flowers, she knew, but she just couldn't
walk away from trash on the floor. She made her way into the little room where Joey
had finished getting dressed, and noticed a folded sheet of lined yellow paper on a little
white table. Picking it up and unfolding it gingerly, she read just the first line. I have
loved you since I was much too young to know what it meant. Grams slipped it into her
pocket. "Well, Joey will want this back, I think," she said softly to herself. Everything
else was spotless, so she slipped across the hall to the other dressing room.
Surprisingly, a small stack of index cards was sitting on the seat of a chair. She picked
them up and turned them over. You are a light in the dark, Josephine. Shaking her
head, Grams took this with her as well.
She wandered back into the pews and slid into one, happy to take the weight off her
tired feet. Feeling a little guilty, she pulled the paper and the cards from her pocket. "I'm
not invading anyone's privacy," she said softly, "because I've already heard them. I just
want to . . . hear them again." Holding a finger to her chin, Grams skipped her eyes
across Pacey's vows, then Joey's.
You are a light in the dark, Josephine. It has never been a simple thing to love you. An
easy thing, but not a simple thing. Nevertheless, I cannot tell you how many times I
have gotten up in the morning and somehow forgotten for just a minute that I have you in
my life, and when it hits me again, I am always struck by a tremendous sense of

indebtedness. No matter what I do, no matter how often I try to tell you how much you
changed my life, you're never really going to know, because you don't even see me the
way I was before. You've always seen me as the man I am now, and that's the way I got
here in the first place. So what I promise you is that I will always try to see you not only
as the person you are, but as the person you're going to be in five years when you've
spent that five years soaking up the total and unbounded faith I have in you in all things.
You are the most important thing in my life and the best dream I never woke up from.
And even though everything changes, I have a strong feeling that never will.
I have loved you since I was much too young to know what it meant. You were that
insufferable boy who never walked when he could run, never walked around what he
could climb over, and I loved you. Much later, by the time I realized I was in love with
you, it was very, very close to being too late. It wasn't, though. It was just in time. And
ever since that happened, every day of my life has been better than it was before. Even
the sad days, even the dark ones, even the ones when I wanted to crawl into bed
because I couldn't face anything -- they were all better days because I lived them with
my whole heart. For all the times you've told me that my life is what I take from it, I
cannot help thinking that you are the one who did this -- who let me live with my whole
heart, every day of my life. And every day of my life, I will be humbled and grateful and
in awe that you love me and that we got to this point. And I promise that nothing is ever
going to make me forget how lucky I am to know you. To quote a thousand songs and
to borrow liberally from other people's poetry, I am yours because you are mine, and that
strikes me as very nearly miraculous.
When she was finished, she gathered the papers into one hand. She drew them to her
and held them lightly against her chest. "Bless their hearts," she said softly.
***fin***