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

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.