November 2, 2001, London, England

“I can’t tell you how proud of you I am, Joey,” Mel Smith exclaimed as she unlocked the door to the apartment she shared with her best friend, Ashley Timberlake, and the source of her pride, Joey Potter.

Kicking off her shoes as soon as she entered the apartment, Ashley echoed her sentiments.  “You kicked ass tonight, Joey, you really did.  You deserved that award.”

Joey offered them a lop-sided smile as she sank wearily into one kitchen table chairs, setting the heavy crystal down on the formica top.  “Thanks, you guys.”

Ashley sat down beside her, picking up Joey’s award and tracing the lettering etched into the glass.  “The B.K. Patel Award for Excellence in Drawing,” she read aloud.  “And what a beautiful drawing it is, too.”

“Yeah, well . . . thanks,” Joey repeated, running her fingers through her hair, suprised as always at the new length.  “But really, it’s him that makes it so beautiful.  I just . . . drew him.”

Mel leaned against the counter as she waited for the popcorn to heat in the microwave, a thoughtful expression on her lovely face.   “So, the man.  That’s Pacey, right?”

Joey sighed, the smile fading from her face.  “Yes.”

“Why don’t you ever talk about him?” Ashley asked, getting up to grab two sodas out of the refrigerator and bringing them back to the table.  “I mean, thanks to your drawing, we’ve seen him without a stitch of clothing, but we don’t know the first thing about him.  Except, of course, that he’s got an incredible body,” she added.

Exasperated, Mel said, “Isn’t it obvious that it hurts too much for her to talk about him?”

Ashley looked suitably chastised for a moment, and Joey took pity on the lively, pixieish woman.

“Do you really want to hear about him?”  Joey asked, toying with tab on the soda can.

“Oh hell yes we do,” Mel said, plopping indelicately into a chair opposite Joey, shaking the bag of popcorn into a large bowl in the center of the table.

Joey grabbed a handful of popcorn, and tucked a leg under her thigh.  “Well, do you want to hear the whole story?  Or the Reader’s Digest version?”

“I want to hear about the sex,” Ashley said immediately, stuffing her mouth full of popcorn.

“Ashley!  God,” Mel exclaimed, shooting the girl a forbidding look.  Turning back to Joey, she smiled and said, “Whole story.  Start to finish.”

“It’s going to be a while, get comfortable,” Joey warned, taking a sip of her soda. 

“Are you sure you want to tell it?” Ashley asked, concern evident in her expression, no matter how badly she apparantly wanted to know about Pacey.

Joey dug around inside herself for a moment, listened to her heart, and smiled.  “Yeah.  I think I’m ready to tell you guys all about the legendary Pacey J. Witter.”

“Legendary?” Mel questioned, quirking an amused eyebrow.

“Oh yeah,” Joey laughed.  “In his own mind, of course.”

“So he’s full of bullshit and charm, isn’t he?”  Ashley asked with a knowing smile.

Joey laughed, saying, “You couldn’t have described him better, Ash.”

“So, how did you two meet?” Mel asked around a mouthful of popcorn.

“I met him the first day of kindergarten,” Joey said, remembering.  “Thirteen years ago.  When the teacher called me Josephine, he laughed so hard he nearly peed his pants.  When I said that my name is Joey, he said that it was a boy’s name and that I’m a stupid girl with a stupid name.  I hit him in the arm and he pulled my braid.  All year long, poor Mrs. Permenter had to pull me off him, because I tried to beat the crap out of him every single day.”

Both girls burst out laughing.  “Was he that annoying?”

“Oh God.  You have no idea.  For years, he chased me around the playground at recess and picked on me until I hit him, and then he’d tell on me and get me in trouble.  He was a horrible boy who just would not leave me alone, and I hated him with a burning passion.”

“So you two were never friends?” Ashley asked, resting her cheek on her propped up palm.  The story was shaping up to be a good one.

“Not at first, no,” Joey said.  “He couldn’t stand me anymore than I could stand him.  He harassed me constantly, argued with everything that came out of my mouth, and generally caused me a whole lot of aggravation.   But around second grade, he started noticing that I didn’t wear the best clothes, or have the latest Lisa Frank school supplies.  My family is poor, as you know.  But anyway, the other kids started making fun of me because I wore generic Wal-Mart shoes and K-Mart blue-light special clothes.”

“Did he make fun of you for being poor?” Mel asked, her eyebrows knitting and her heart aching for the poor little girl Joey described. 

“No.  And he never let anyone else make fun of me to my face, either,” Joey told them.  “I didn’t find out until years later that he’d told the other kids that the next person to make me cry would get beat up, because nobody was allowed to pick on me but him.”

“Awww,” Ashley cried.  “That’s so sweet!”

Joey smiled.  “I know.  But like I said, I didn’t know it for years.  And it’s not like he didn’t make fun of every other single thing about me, either.”

“What made you start being friends?” Mel questioned, noting that the American girl seemed more animated now, talking about him, than she’d seen her in the nearly four months they’d been living together.  The day she and Ashley had come home to find her sketching like crazy, she’d been more frenzied than anything else.  Now, she seemed alive.

“The summer between third and fourth grade, my mom met a woman named Gale Leery at a PTA meeting, and they became friends, and found out that they both had children in the same grade.  Her son and I hadn’t really met yet but I’d seen him on the playground at recess, but I never talked to him because for one thing, he sat in the corner of the sand box and just seemed to wait until he could get back to class.  For another, Pacey never let me stop for a moment at recess.”

Joey took a sip of her soda and continued, her smile stretching.  “My most enduring memory of summer as a child is that of Pacey Witter’s sweaty little body plowing into mine and tackling me every day during camp.  Oh, how I hated him.  Anyway, he and I never truly became friends until I met Dawson Leery.”

“A boy named Dawson?  I bet he was beat every day,” Ashley snorted, garnering another disapproving look from Mel. 

“He wasn’t the most popular kid, I’ll just put it that way,” Joey conceded.  “The Leery’s were holding a barbecue and Mrs. Leery invited me and my parents.  Since I ran around in my swimming suit during the summer anyway, I just went like that, I remember.  When my mom rowed us up to his dock, he was swimming in the creek with some other kids.  Pacey saw me and waited until I stepped onto the dock before pulling me into the water.”

Joey smiled as she remembered meeting Dawson.  “I was embarassed because Pacey had nearly drowned me, and was expecting him to laugh at me.  His dad and my mom introduced us, and I pushed him and ran.  He chased, and after that, we were inseperable.  Absolutely inseperable.”

“So, hi.  Pacey.  When did you two become friends?”  Ashley asked, not liking the sound of Dawson Leery.

Joey laughed, the amused sound coming from her heart.  “Ashley, I’m getting to it.”

“Yeah, Ash, leave her alone,” Mel said, tossing a kernel of popcorn at her.

“Oh, kiss my ass, Mel,” Ash tossed off, throwing the kernel back and laughing when it got caught in Mel’s hair.

“Which acre?” Mel retorted, shaking it out of her hair.

“Anyway,” Joey continued smoothly.  “Pacey and I became friends, albeit just barely, because both of us were linked to Dawson.  Pacey had met him at the beginning of summer, and the two of them were already the best of friends.  Dawson and I grew close immediately, much to Pacey’s dismay, and Dawson never let him exclude me.  So for years, it was me and my boys, the three musketeers.”

“So what happened?”  Mel asked.

Joey took a deep breath, and plunged right in.  “Then we hit middle school, and while my life had never really been wonderful, my family fell apart during those years.  My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, and my father ran off with a younger woman while my mom lay dying.  My older sister Bessie had moved away to Boston and was living with a black man, Bodie.  When my mom died, she came home with him to take care of me, because our father wasn’t in the picture.  He was busy being a drug dealer, which Pacey’s father, the Sheriff, busted him on.  And then, of course, I fell in love with Dawson.”

“You’re shitting me,” Ashley said, and Mel was too busy picking her jaw up off the table to even shoot another reproving look at her.

“Nope,” Joey said grimly, smiling gamely.  “That’s what happened from sixth grade till eighth.”

“I had no idea, Joey,” Mel said softly, seeing the girl through new eyes.

“To continue, Dawson had no idea until sophomore year of highschool that I was completely in love with him, or so I thought I was.  I was awkward at fifteen, all arms and legs and a mass of sarcastic bitterness, and it didn’t help matters when in came sophisticated socialite Jen Lindley, fresh from a New York City sex scandal and holding all the appeal in the world for Dawson.  I was so green with envy and I didn’t let things like politeness and the Golden Rule keep me from spewing venom at her.”

“What was Pacey doing during all this?”

“Screwing his English teacher,” Joey answered quite calmly.

Ashley spewed soda all over the table and both Joey and Mel jumped back so they wouldn’t get hit by the spray.  “What the fuck?  His English teacher?”

Joey nodded, getting up to get some paper towels to wipe up the table.  “Tamara Jacobs.  Late thirties, freshly divorced, and Capeside High’s newest faculty member.  They met before school started, at the video store he and Dawson worked in, and they flirted and she rented, of all things, The Graduate.  When he found out she was his teacher, did that stop him?  Slow him in the least?  Not fifteen year old Pacey Witter.  He actually told me that he said to her, ‘I’m the best sex you’ll never have.’  Can you believe that?”

“So she did him?” Mel asked, her nose wrinkling delicately.  “Why?”

“Because she has issues, I guess,“ Joey offered, shrugging.  “The fling didn’t last long, though.  Being the fifteen year old boy that he was, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and discussed it with Dawson, and somebody apparantly overheard.  There was a hearing, and their whole “relationship” ended with him publicly humiliating himself and telling the court that he’d made the whole thing up.  She left town shortly thereafter.”

“Holy shit.  You’re straight out of a soap,” Ashley commented as Joey finished cleaning up the soda and grabbed a bag of chips and more soda on her way back to the table.

“I know,” Joey agreed, sitting again.  “Not long after that whole fiasco happened, things with Dawson came to a head. He’d gotten together with Jen, couldn’t deal when she told him about her New York City sexual escapades, and they’d broken up.  And he started to notice me as a girl and not one of his best friends.  And he kissed me.”

“And you pushed him away and declared your undying love for Pacey, right?”  Ashley pleaded hopefully, linking her fingers as if in prayer.

“God, you’re so immature,” Mel sighed, exasperated. 

“You’re hoping it too, don’t start with me.”

“No, I didn’t push him away,” Joey cut in, laughing.  “Not then, anyway.  To make a long story less taxing on me, we got together.  And it was great, wonderful, exhilerating . . . yet I began to feel suffocated.  Then came Jack McPhee and his sister, Andie.  Jack started working in my family‘s resteraunt and we became close.”

“Is he manlier than Dawson?” Ashley asked, taking some chips from the bag Joey offered.

“Actually, no,“ Joey said, laughing.  “He turned out to be gay.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  And he found this out after I left Dawson for him, no less.  Meanwhile, Pacey and Andie got together; a study in opposites, let me tell you.  Pacey never liked school, and didn’t care about his grades, and didn‘t exactly see the world through rose colored glasses.  Andie is an overachiever of the highest order, so perky it’s scary, and from a family that could give the Potters a run for our money in scandal.”

“That doesn’t seem possible,” Mel said, finishing off the popcorn.

“Here’s a short history of the McPhees, if you don’t believe me, “Joey said, and began counting on her fingers as she listed their troubles.  “Their mother accidentally caused their older brother, Tim, to die in a car wreck.  As a result, her dormant mental illness was triggered by post traumatic stress and caused her to be put in a mental hospital.  Their father is a workaholic who hardly ever has time for them.  Jack is gay.  Andie, who came to Capeside mentally troubled and recently off perscription anti-depressants, started to deteriate mentally after a horrible girl in our class drowned.  Andie retreated so far from reality that she believed she could see and speak to Tim.  She spent the summer in a mental clinic.”

“Well hell,” Ashley commented.  “Now I’m just dying to hear about Pacey’s family life.”

Joey laughed.  “His family life is not quite as scandalous as some, but nevertheless, odd to say the least.”

“Do tell,” Mel said eagerly, then seemed to remember that she was trying to be polite, to let Joey tell the story her own way.  “I mean, if you feel like you want to share with us.”

“Well, his father is the town sheriff, a hard man who never tolerated anything less than the absolute best from his family.  His mother is a nice woman who was raised to be nothing more than a decorative breeder.  Doug, his older brother, followed in his father’s footsteps and also became a cop.  Two of his three sisters are married and have families of their own.  And then there’s Pacey, the blacksheep of the family, who never made good grades, never said the right thing.  Never earned his father’s respect, only his begrudging love, no matter how hard Pacey tried.”

“It must not have helped matters much, his son hanging around with someone from the family you’re from,” Ash said, and immediately turned red.  “Oh, I’m so sorry, that came out completely wrong!”

Joey chuckled gently.  “You’re right.  The Witters are the very picture of a perfect, upstanding family, and to have the youngest son running around with a poor white trash girl was just intolerable.”

“Did his father ever try to separate you two?” Mel asked. “I mean, you were just friends because of Dawson, but still.  You two were together constantly, it seems.”

“When my mother died and my father had run off and Bessie had come back home with Bodie, and the Potters were the scandal of the year, his father told him that he wanted Pacey to have nothing to do with me.  Pacey said no, that I needed all the friends I could get, and took a beating for it that left him limping the next day.” 

“Oh, my God!” 

Mel echoed Ash’s words.  “That’s horrible.”

Joey nodded.  “Yeah, it is.  And I’m sure his father wasn’t thrilled when Pacey and I became the best of friends junior year, which led to us falling love and turning the world as we knew it upside down.”

Ash sighed, shifting in her chair to get more comfortable.  “Oh, I’m going to love this, I just know it.”

November 2, 2001, Boston, America

“So Pacey . . . tough class, huh?” 

Pacey Witter looked up from where he was shoving his books in his bag, and vaguely recognized the girl speaking to him.

“Uh . . . yeah, I guess,” he said, glancing at his watch.

“I just love a challenge, though,” she said, her eyelashes fluttering as she crossed her arms and squeezed even more cleavage into view, toying with her heart-shaped locket. 

Pacey stopped dead in his tracks when he realized she was flirting with him.

“I’m sorry, uhm . . . “

“Angela.  My name is Angela.  We have four classes together,” she said, and not without a little heat, either.

“Right!” Pacey said, snapping his fingers.  “Listen, Angela.  I’d love to stay and chat, but I have to get to work.”

“Maybe we could study sometime,” she said, leaning her breasts closer to his forearm, oblivious to the way he leaned away from her.  “Like, tonight after you get off work?  At my place?”

Pacey offered the girl a smile.  “I’m busy tonight, Angela.  Maybe there’s a study group or something you could join,” he said as he slung his bag over his shoulder and moved past her to leave the classroom.

She caught his arm and when he looked back, trying to keep the exasperation off his face, she gave him a practiced smile and said, “Well, if you change your mind, let me know.”

“I won’t, Angela.  Thank you for the offer,” he said, and gently disentangled himself from her.

Pacey walked down the corridor of the school he attended, Boston Community College, and shook his head.  Checking the time again, he realized he wouldn’t have time to go home and eat before leaving for work, and he needed to type up an essay anyway, so he headed into one of the many computer labs.

Sitting down at the terminal, he logged into the school’s system, and with every intention of working on his report, he opened the web browser and typed in an address he knew by heart.  Waiting for the Andrews School of Art’s News site to load, he closed his eyes for a moment, rubbing his ear, which had been burning for the last hour or so as if someone were speaking about him.

When he opened his eyes, he read the underlined heading American takes Highest Award at Ceremony and followed the link.

Along with the article, posted not even an hour before, was a picture of Joey Potter, wearing a black evening dress, her hair cut into a bob around her shoulders, and a drawing of a naked man projected on a huge screen behind her.  Taking a longer look at the drawing rather than Joey herself, he realized that the naked man was him.  And his heart nearly stopped as he realized that not only was she the American in question, but the work she’d won with was of him.

He read the article quickly, forcing his mind to focus on the words.  He mumbled some lines aloud as he read. 

“American girl from Massachusettes, Josephine Potter . . . scholarship winner . . . submitted her sketch at the last minute . . . won the B.K. Patel Award . . . charcoal sketch of a nude man sleeping . . . entitled simply Home . . . youngest student to take top prize.“

Well, she’d gotten her ass in gear, he thought, a proud smile lighting his face.  Highest award, hot damn. 

Pacey deliberately chose to concentrate on the fact that she’d found her focus and perservered without him. 

She’d named it Home . . .  Pacey clamped down on that thought and printed out the accompanying photo to torture himself with later.

Later on, at home that night when he wasn‘t in a room full of other people, he’d let himself think about what her inspiration had been.

November 2, 2001, London, England

“I just couldn’t see how Dawson could expect me to turn my own father in, after he’d just been released on parole.  And he said that if I didn’t turn him in, that he would.  So I worked with Pacey’s father, wore a wire, and caught my father’s confession to drug trafficking on tape.  And then I told Dawson that I never wanted to see or speak to him ever again,” Joey said in a quiet voice that screamed with pain.

“Let me just say, one more time, that I don’t like Dawson,” Ashley said, her delicate brows knit as she scowled.

“At the time, I didn’t like him either,” Joey commented drily.  “But then he went away for the summer with his mother to Philadelphia, and I went from hating him to forgiving him, seeing the situation through his idealistic eyes, to missing him and wanting him back.  But when he did come back, he came back with a dumb blonde bitch and a new attitude.”

Joey took another drink of her soda before continuing.  “Her name was, appropriately enough, Eve.  And she was an all-out ho-bag tramp.  And I’m not just saying that, either.  I met her the day Dawson crashed his boat into the marina I worked at, because he was so distracted by the blow-job she was giving him that he wasn’t paying attention to where he was going.”

“Oh, lovely,” Mel said, making a face.

“I know,” Joey agreed.  “And I was so distraught and jealous that the night he held a back-to-school party at his house, with strippers no less, I offered him sex to lure him back to me.”

“Tell me you didn’t.  Please, for the love of God, tell me you didn’t lose your virginity that way, to that guy,” Ashley said, closing her eyes and holding a hand up as if to shield herself from the words.

“Breathe easy, Ash, I didn’t lose my virginity that way to that guy,” Joey said, laughing as Ashley let out an overdramatic sigh of relief.

“What happened?” Mel prompted.

“I stripped off my shirt and he turned me down.  Thankfully.  I slinked back home to sit on my dock and cry in peace and quiet, but I wasn’t there long when who rowed up but Pacey Witter.”

“How did he know?”

“Get this.  Dawson had asked Pacey to look after me, to be my friend because he and I weren’t getting along and he felt I needed somebody.  So Pacey, being the dutiful best friend, agreed.  And he took Dawson’s boat, and rowed down the creek to my dock.  After I got through tossing off hatefully snide remarks at him, he sat beside me and held me while I cried.”

“I love Pacey,” Ashley sighed.  “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Join the club,” Joey responded, smiling.  “And after that, we truly did become friends.  He permeated my life just as Dawson faded from it.”

“Because he wanted to be your friend, or because Dawson asked him to?” Mel asked, stealing some chips from the communal bag.

“At first, only because Dawson asked him to.  But gradually, I began to feel as though he truly cared about me.  We became the best of friends that year, hanging exclusively with each other, it seemed.”

“Didn’t he go with Andie at the time?” Ashley asked, confused.

Joey slapped her own forehead, exclaiming, “Andie!  Oh yeah, I forgot that part.  While Andie was away at the mental clinic over the summer, she slept with one of the other patients.”

“Dumb ass,” Ashley remarked under her breath, and Joey continued as if she hadn’t heard.

“And when he and I went to get her, she acted freaky, and didn’t want to be alone with him.  And he’d been missing her all summer, and didn’t understand why she didn’t want to spend some quality time with him.  When she told him, he couldn’t take it.  She’d changed his whole life, dragged him up from the depts of barely-passing, and made him more responsible.”

“Don’t you love past girlfriends?  They do all the hard work, all the training for you.”

Joey and Mel agreed with Ashley, and she prompted Joey to continue.

“He broke up with her because, while he did forgive her, he couldn’t forget that she’d cheated on him.  She’d been his first emotional relationship, his first love.  Here he’d been waiting all summer long, and she tells him that after only a month or so of being without him, she had sex with another man.  He’d already been wondering who she really was, because when he met her, she was just recently off medication and he wasn’t sure if he’d really fallen in love with the real Andie, you know what I mean?  Pacey has had enough people shit on him his whole life.  He couldn‘t take it from her.”

“I reiterate:  Andie’s a dumb ass,” Ashley declared.

“I’m surprised you know what that word means,” Mel commented derisively, and Ashley stuck her tongue out in response.

“You two act like sisters,” Joey observed, laughing at the exchange.

“We’ve been best friends since we were zygotes,” Mel said. 

“Our mothers were always close, and since they’d married and become pregnant at nearly the same time in their lives, we grew up together,” Ashley added.

“Enough about us, let’s get back to Pacey.  So after their big dramatic break up, you two started spending more and more time together, right?”

“After a bit, yeah, but for awhile we didn‘t have much time to spend together, because Pacey bought a broken down sail boat and made it his mission to rebuild it, and I was working at the marina all the time for a prick of a slave driver, Rob Logan, who hit on me constantly.  I refused him one too many times and he made me work the night before the PSATs, and made sure I knew he was taking Andie out that night.”

“Uh-oh.  I smell trouble,” Mel said.

“No kidding.  I closed a little early and followed them on their date to warn Andie, and Rob fired me for it.  One night, while Pacey was over at my house helping renovate it into the Potter Bed & Breakfast, she called and asked me to pick her up in this tearful voice.  Pacey went with me and we picked her up at this lavish party being held by his parents or something, I don’t really remember.  Anyway, she said he made advances on her and scared her, which of course caused Pacey to hunt down Rob and punch him.”

“Did Rob really assault Andie?” Ashley asked, an expression of disbelief on her face.

“Who knows?  I sure don’t.  But if she intended to work Pacey’s inherant sense of right and wrong to get him back, it worked.  Temporarily, anyway.  They slept together.”

“Andie and Dawson are so on my shit list, I swear,” Ashley cried, exasperated.  “And Pacey!  God!”

“I know, I know.  But while the experience made Andie believe she’d gotten him back, that he’d forgiven and forgotten, it made him realize that he couldn‘t be with her, knowing that he hadn‘t been good enough for her the first time around.  And when he told her that, they broke things off permanently.”

“So then you guys starting hanging out more?  When did the bonding start?  I want to hear that part,” Ashley announced.

“Around that time,” Joey answered.  “He helped renovate my house, in fact it had been his idea, and he was there nearly every day.  He split his free time between the B&B and his boat, which I also worked on with him.  He was sad about Andie, and being the macho guy he is, threw himself into the labor.  I was lonely without Dawson, and he was just . . . there.”

“When did you start having feelings for each other?” Ashley asked, impatient to get to the good stuff.

“I’m not really sure.  It was a gradual thing.  But I remember when I realized it, that’s for damn sure,” Joey said.

“What happened?”

“We went on a school project/campout thing that involved me, Pacey, Dawson, and Jen.  Still frustrated from the thing with Andie, Pacey didn’t have the most romantic ideas about relationships in general, but he was certain about one thing.  He missed the sex.  And Jen, disgusted with a freshman boy desperately trying to woo her, agreed with his philosophy.”

“NO!”  Ashley yelled.   “I can’t take this.”

“Calm down!” Mel snapped, frustrated.  “Go on, Joey.”

“Well, they made this pact.  Meaningless sex between friends, no strings attached.  They tried for weeks to get it on, but Jen would laugh at his advances, and it turns out that she wasn’t attracted to him at all and he couldn’t have sex without emotions.”

“She wasn’t attracted to him?  Okay, and Andie’s the crazy one, right?” Ashley asked.

“Right.  Anyway,” Joey said, “he and I were taking ballroom dancing lessons, because I wanted the scholarship they were offering and he owed me for saving his trigonometry grade.  And we were trying to keep it quiet because I didn’t want other students to get wind of the scholarship, and he didn’t want to appear any less masculine than his reputation alludes.  To get to the point of it, after a comedy of errors Shakespeare would have loved, Dawson and I found Pacey and Jen in the corner of the coat closet at the studio, making out.”

“And you were jealous,” Mel guessed.

“I wanted to stomp the bitch, but mostly I was diasppointed.  I thought I knew Pacey, and I thought that something so seedy as a meaningless sex-pact would go against his moral code.  I overreacted, which didn’t go unnoticed by Jen.  She broke what little they had off because of it, and when I came back to the studio to apologize, he let me know that he hadn’t slept with her, and that he was well aware that I’d overreacted for a reason.  But he let it slide and I figured he just thought I was possesive of him because he was my closest friend.”

“So then . . . ?”

“So then me, Dawson, Andie and Jack went to Cambridge University on our junior tour, and because of a misspelling of my name, I was roomed with a guy with an equally gender ambigous name, A.J.”

“Oh, great,” Ashley sighed.

“He and I didn’t hit it off very well, because he came off totally condescending for one thing, but by the end of the trip, we began to actually like each other.  He asked for my phone number and we started a long distance thing.  Meanwhile, Pacey had struck a deal with his English teacher.  If he played Paul in Barefoot in the Park, the school play, he’d get a C for the semester.  And Pacey actually liked acting, even though Andie turned out to be the director’s assistant.”

“They’re not going to have sex again, are they?” 

“No!” Joey exclaimed.  “He ran lines with me at my house, helping out with the B&B work.  When we opened, with a half-finished room and questionable pancakes, he went and did this incredibly sweet, stupid thing and invited a prestigious travel critic to the place to review it.  He even supplied faux guests in the forms of Dawson, Jen and her Grams, Jack and Andie, and Dawson’s parents.  But when the furnace broke down, and the toilet overflowed, Pacey workd his ass off to fix everything and I have to admit, I wasn’t the nicest to him.  But that didn’t keep him from sitting in a rocking chair for hours, watching me sleep, according to my sister Bessie.”

“Awww!” the two girls sighed together.

“The night his play opened, I missed it because A.J. came to Capeside to take me to one of his old professor’s parties to see the Northern lights.  And Pacey was just crushed when I told him I couldn’t go, and he showed up right before A.J. did to ask me to the after party for the cast.  A.J. kissed me, which freaked me out a little, and I went to the after party.  Pacey seemed sad, and it didn’t help when A.J. followed to continue our date.”

“You broke up with him that night, right?” Ash prompted hopefully.

“No, Ash. But I did become closer and closer to Pacey. A few weeks after the play, the principal, Mr. Green, asked me to be one of three students to paint a mural on one of the hallways at school, a painting depicting school spirit.  I painted a Chinese symbol for possibillity, and only allowed Pacey to sneek a peak.  When the paiting was unveiled, someone had horribly defaced it with black paint.  I was devastated.”

Both girls shook their heads at the injustice.  “That’s so wrong, “ Mel said after a moment.

“Yeah.  And while Dawson talked on and on about how it wasn’t a personal attack on me and that I shouldn’t let something like that set me back, Pacey tracked down the guy who did it and beat the crap out of him.”

“Well of course he did,” Ashley said with a dreamy smile.

“And he went through a whole disciplinary committee hearing and everything.  The guy who defaced the painting, Matt Caulfield, got expelled, and Pacey got put in the Capeside mentoring program.  And then he rented me a wall in an empty lot in the middle of town to paint whatever I wanted.”

“I’m officially in love with Pacey, too,” Mel stated. 

Joey’s laugh was full and amused, and Mel blushed.  “That’s okay.  Eventually every girl does, it seems.”

“Go on with your story,” Ashley urged.

“Not long after that, I had Pacey drive me to the train station because I was going to Boston to see A.J. and support him at his awards banquet.  Pacey ranted all the way there, telling me that this thing I had with A.J. was nothing but an eyes closed wish and that it wasn’t real.  Turned out he was right.”

“Spill!” Ashley demanded.

“Turns out A.J. and his female best friend had a relationship that was painfully similar to me and Dawson of years past.  It became obvious to me during the ceremony that he was just as much in love with her as she was with him, and I encouraged him to go after her.  Then I went to the train station and called Pacey around one in the morning to come get me.  I was trying hard not to cry and I said if it was a bother that I could wait eight more hours and catch the train, but he cut me off and said to sit still and not talk to strangers and he’d be there as soon as possible.  And he told me not to cry.”

Joey got up to stretch her back and makes some coffee, and while she measured out the grounds, she said, “So two hours later, and the trip takes three going the speed limit, he shows up.  And we didn’t really talk until we neared Capeside close to dawn.  He pulled over to the side of the road, we got out, and he demanded to know why I called him in the middle of the night, why I’d said that he knows me better than anyone, and I was confused, he was upset, and he kissed me.”

“Oh my God, then what happened?” Ashley asked, nearly bouncing in her seat.

“After the best kiss I’d ever had until that point, I pushed him, yelling at him, for yards down the road.  Later on that day, we agreed that it meant nothing and we should just pretend it never happened.  But there was something in his eyes that just screamed for me to say that I couldn’t pretend it away, that it had been very, very real.

Joey busied her hands with the coffeepot as she continued.  “We avoided each other like the plague, of course.  The week after it happened was spring break, and Dawson and I had planned on going to his Aunt Gwen’s in the country with Andie and Jack.  Andie showed up Jack-less and not only did Pacey show up, he brought along and old friend of ours, Will.  I was pissed, of course, in a not-really-pissed kind of way, because he’d said he’d sit the trip out because things were awkward between us.  That night, we all slept in the large guest room.  Dawson, Andie, and Will in sleeping bags on the floor, leaving the bed to guess which two.”

“You shared a bed?” Ashley asked, grinning.

“Grudgingly.  And what a long damn night that was, too,” Joey said, sighing at the memory.  “I’d been spending the weeks since the kiss telling myself that I didn’t have feelings for him and this wasn’t happening and we weren’t betraying Dawson because nothing happened.  All night long, I though of his body lying inches from mine, and I didn’t sleep a wink.  He barely moved all night, but once, he shifted and his arm brushed mine and he turned on his side, and the blankets resettled around us, and I fought the urge, with everything I had, to melt against him.”

“You didn’t?” 

“No,” Joey said, amused by how crestfallen Ashley seemed.  “The next night, Aunt Gwen pulled out her karaoke machine and we all sang.  Pacey sang Wild Thing, who would have guessed?  While Dawson and I sang our old routine, Daydream Believer, Pacey got up and left to sit outside.  As soon as the song was over, I went out to see what was wrong and he was upset because he thought there was no way he could compete with the history between me and Dawson.  I went out there to resolve things, to get things clear between us, and the confrontation ended with Aunt Gwen catching us kissing by the fire.”

“Was she pissed?” Ashley asked.

“Of course she was, Dawson is her nephew,” Mel replied.

“Actually, she understood.  She had a similar situation happen to her.  But anyway, later on that night, I went back outside to where he was sitting by the fire, and he wanted answers.  I didn’t have any for him, and he said that he couldn’t keep on doing this.  Couldn’t keep on kissing me, giving me the answers.  He told me that if I felt a shred of what he felt for me, we wouldn’t be talking.  And then I kissed him.”

“WOO HOO!” Ashley exlaimed, jumping up from her chair and doing a little dance than made both Joey and Mel burst out laughing.

“You might want to save your “woo-hooing” for later, because the next part of the story sucks ass,” Joey warned, leaning against the counter.  “For the rest of the week, we pretended like nothing had changed between us when we were around the gang.  But when we were alone . . .  well, let’s just say that we got to know each other just a little bit better than before.”

“No.  No, we’re not going to just say that.  You’re going to tell us what happened when you were alone,” Ashley said matter-of-factly.

Joey laughed incredulously.  “Kissing, groping, making out, necking.  And avoiding the fact that we had to tell Dawson, and Andie, who never did get over him.  And of course, king of bad timing that he is, around that time Dawson began realizing that I am indeed his “soulmate” and started winding his way back to me.”

“This is going to suck, isn’t it?”

“Oh yeah.  Remember Jen?  Well, she’s an observant little thing.  And she noticed immediately, long before we did, that he and I had feelings for each other.  She was both our confidantes, listening to both sides.  The day he christened his boat, True Love, we decided he’d tell Dawson.  But I chickened out and stopped Pacey from telling him, and we stood outside his house, arguing about our relationship, and he came to the door.  And it turns out, Jen had accidentally spilled the beans earlier that day and he knew already.”

“Shit,” Mel said under her breath.  “I’m betting he wasn’t too receptive to the idea of you and his best friend together.”

“To put it lightly.  Not only did he bomb Andie with the news, he gave me an ultimatum.  His friendship, or whatever I might have with Pacey.  And before you start, Ash, let me just remind you that Dawson and I were family.  Everything I’d gone through, he’d been there with me.  And he was a good friend.”

“You chose Dawson?” Ashley asked gently, resting her chin in both propped up palms now.

“No.  I chose neither.  I broke things off with Pacey that night, down at the marina where I knew he’d go.  Back to where he and I began really began, at his boat, True Love.  It was horrible and and we didn’t speak for weeks afterward.”

“Not a word?” Mel asked, digging in the bottom of the bag for the last of the chips.

“Not even a glance.  Let me tell you how lonely I was during those weeks.  Dawson behaved as though I’d had a psychotic episode and been taken advantage of, and plied me with his intentions of getting back together.  Andie would only look at me like I kicked her puppy, and Jack was caught between me, his ex-girlfriend who’d done nothing wrong in his eyes, and his sister, who was still hung up on her own ex.  Jen steered clear of the lot of us.  And Pacey?  Not only did he not acknowledge my presence, he didn’t notice anyone else, either, and kept strictly to himself.  How I missed him.  Oh, my God.  And not just for what we’d begun to have that one, short week, but I missed his friendship, too.  Pacey is inherantly a loyal man, and if you get past his defenses and rejection issues and win his friendship, you’ve found yourself an extraordinary gift.  I hated myself, for hurting him, for hurting Dawson, for hurting, period.  I just wanted things to go back to the way they were before.”

“They couldn’t, of course,” Mel guessed.  “Can you bring me a cup, too?”

“And get me another soda, please,” Ashley added.  “So go on with your story.”

“He and I didn’t speak until the week of the annual Capeside Regatta.  Pacey was entered with True Love, and he was sponsored by the Leery’s through an agreement he’d made with Dawson’s mother and her resteraunt months beforehand.  So what did Dawson do?  Sign up for the regatta and go through Bessie to get the McPhee’s borrowed boat sponsered by the Potter B&B.  The race came down to him and Pacey, and Dawson, being the horrible sailor that he is, didn’t know or disregarded the rule about getting in another boat’s set course.  If Pacey hadn’t swerved at the last moment, they would have crashed.”

“I’m just loving Dawson, let me tell you,” Ashley said with a sarcastically bright smile.

“Then there was the whole anti-prom thing,” Joey said, pouring a fresh cup of coffee for Mel. 

“Why didn’t you just go to the real prom?” Mel asked, nodding her thanks for the coffee.

“Because when Jack went to buy tickets for himself and his date, Ethan, he was denied.  So Andie and I said we’d boycott it, which upset Dawson enough to ask his parents to host an alternative prom at their resteraunt.  He and I had agreed our freshman year that if we didn’t have a date for Junior Prom, we’d go with each other.”

“Did Pacey go to it?” Ashley asked, taking the soda Joey offered her.

“Yeah.  He went with Andie, who wore a lovely dress but had some truly horrendous hair and makeup that defies description.  I wore a simple floor-length black spaghetti-strapped dress, and I had my hair in a sort of French twist.  Dawson was pissed because Pacey had the nerve to show up at his parents resteraunt, and proceeded to parade me around him. I got frustrated and escaped the place to find Jack all alone, and he told me that if I truly wanted to be right with both of them, that I needed to take the first step. Dawson went to go talk to his parents or something, and Andie went to the ladies room.  I asked Pacey to dance with me.”

Joey turned back to the table after pouring her own cup of coffee and nearly spilled it, laughing at both Mel and Ashley’s expressions.  “Joey!  You’re killing us!”

“So we danced, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, I was where I wanted to be.  He commented on how the gaudy diamond earrings I was wearing on loan courtesy Dawson’s mother didn‘t suit me, and then he took my wrist and told me that the bracelet I was wearing was like me; simple, elegant, and beautiful.  I told him it had been my mother’s, and he remembered that because I’d told him months beforehand one day at school, and he recalled the conversation clearly.  I couldn’t believe it, and it touched me,” Joey said, her eyes distant with the memory as she sat back down at the table.  “He pulled me close and whispered, “I remember everything.”

“I think I’m going to cry,” Mel said, and honestly looked a little teary.  Ashley likewise was too choked up to make a smartassed comment.

“When I opened my eyes, Dawson was standing there, glaring.  He looked at me and then took off, and I followed, trying to explain that I was trying to get things back to the way they were and that dancing with Pacey was a step toward that end.  He yelled at me, saying there was no way things could ever go back, and then he kissed me.  And while I felt something, felt a response to his kiss, it was nothing like the way I felt with Pacey.  Nothing.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“The next day, when I went to return his mother’s earrings, I told him almost exactly that, but without mentioning Pacey.  And we stumbled across his parents in the process of getting engaged.”

Ashley held up a hand, confused.  “Dawson’s parents weren’t married?”

“They had been, but they’d gotten a divorce because Mrs. Leery had cheated on Dawson’s father with her co-anchor.  They’d remained close, and had recently begun to see each other again.”

“Go on, then,” Ashley asked her.

“Pacey and I didn’t really talk much after the prom.  And Dawson continued to work hard at getting us back together.  The school year ended, and I found out that Pacey was leaving for the summer, taking True Love and sailing away to Key West.  I was pissed when Doug told me and I found him in town and demanded to know if that was his solution, leaving for the summer.  He was totally, annoyingly nonchalant and said yes.  I wanted to know if he was even going to say goobye, and he told me all about how he’d played it over and over in his head.  How he pictured it.  He’d come to me and tell me he was leaving and I’d be upset but accordingly sarcastic, and he’d never get what he came for.”

“Which was what?  You?” Mel asked, listening with rapt attention.

“Which was me, asking him to stay.  Because I never did, I never asked, and that’s what he wanted.  I told him that it wasn’t my place to ask, and that all I wanted was time.  He told me that I was going to get three more months of it, and I snapped something about how this wasn’t how he was giving up.  He turned me around and directed me toward the wall he’d bought me, and pointed out that just like us, it was unfinished.  I left in a huff and went off to Dawson’s parents wedding rehearsal.”

Joey toyed with the rim of her cup as she continued.  “I was miserable through the whole rehearsal and Dawson wasn’t happy about it.  I told him that if it hadn’t been for his ultimatum, things would probably be different, and that if I hadn’t been afraid that I’d lose him, afraid that he wouldn’t forgive me, that I probably would have been with Pacey.  While I was there with Dawson, Bessie called and told me to pick up some milk and a few other things on my way home.”

“Pacey was still at the wall, wasn’t he?” Mel guessed, a look of anticipation on her face.

“Yes, but he hadn’t been there the whole time.  He’d been at his bon voyage picnic down by the creek, and apparantly, something Grams said triggered a reaction in him.  When I left the market, I passed the empty lot with my wall and I stopped short.  Written across it, in red letters six foot high, were the words “ask me to stay” and he was there, paint-smeared and drinking the milk I’d bought and telling me that he wasn’t prepared to give up on me.  That he’d stared at the wall for hours, and now it was my turn.  Then he walked away.”

“He called Bessie to make sure you’d be there!” Ashley exclaimed, practically clapping her hands in glee.

“Yes, he did.  And I spent most of the night there, staring at the wall, at the words he’d written on the wall he’d bought me.  The next day at the wedding, Pacey was there, standing in the back and watching as I walked down the aisle behind the Leerys with Dawson.  At the reception, I came up to him and told him that I couldn’t give him a reason to stay, that I had to sort through my feelings and he told me that right there, I’d made my choice.  Dawson walked up and I wanted to get away from the two of them as quickly as possible, and when I started to walk away, he asked me if I was going to say goodbye,” Joey said, her words trailing off as she willed herself not to cry.

Mel and Ash were silent, waiting for her to continue.  “I forced myself to smile and I said goodbye, and walked away.  He left shortly after, and I just barely kept from crying when I danced with Dawson and talked about all the fun we’d have that summer, the two of us.  He must have realized how close I was to breaking down at the thought of Pacey leaving in the next few days, and during his best man speech, he spoke about forgivness.  About love ending, and beginning again.  And he looked at me the whole time and I could see in his eyes that his words were directed at me and not his parents.”

“Oh my God!  So what happened?”

“I went up to him afterward and I asked him if he meant what he said, and he told me he had, and that’s why I should go to Pacey.  I was confused, here I’d given up whatever I could have had with Pacey, and now Dawson was telling me that even he could see that I want to be with him, and that he wasn’t going to stand in my way.  He wanted me to make my choice freely, with no ultimatums, and after trying to make sure that our friendship wouldn’t be completely ruined, I turned and ran as fast as my legs could carry me away from Dawson Leery toward who I truly wanted to be with,” Joey said, her fingers trembling slightly as she recalled the look in his eyes before she’d turned away from him on the dock.

“Pacey,” Mel sighed, a happy smile on her face.

“Oh, yeah!” Ashley agreed, grinning.

“I went home and changed out of my dress, then went to the docks because I knew he’d be working on True Love.  I ran into Doug, and asked him where Pacey was, and he said that I was probably already too late, that Pacey had decided to set sail early and leave that night.”

“No!” Ashley said, jumping up with an angry scowl on her face, stomping her foot.  “He didn’t leave without you!  No he didn’t!”

“You’re right, he didn’t.  I got there just in time to declare my love and ask to come along,” Joey said, smiling at Ashley’s reaction as she jumped up and down like a three year old.  “With nothing more than the clothes on my back and my ATM card in my pocket, I left Capeside with him.  Without asking permission, without giving Capeside more than a passing glance as we sailed off into the sunset.  And I sound like a romance novel!”

“Didn’t you get in trouble?  Didn’t Bessie send out the Coast Guard?  What about clothes?  Food?” Mel asked in disbelief.

“Screw that,” Ashley snorted.  “What about the sleeping arrangements?”

“We slept in two separate hammocks in the little cabin,” Joey said, smiling.  “And Bessie did go postal when I called her from the next port, but not as badly as I thought she would.  I bought clothes in thirft shops and we bought food as we went.  It was absolutely the most beautiful summer I’ve ever had.  We went to Disney World.  We had Georgia peaches.  We saw New York City from the water.  He showed me as much of the world as he could, and I fell more in love with him every single day.”

“But did you have sex?”  Ashley asked, cutting through her dreamy recitation.

“No.”

“NO?!”

“No.  Not until months later, back in Capeside.”

“Details!  I need details, woman!”  Ashley practically screamed.

“I’m sorry, that’s just too . . . private.  I can’t talk about our sex life,” Joey smiled apologetically, shying away from Ashley as she stood there seething.

“Too private?  Too private!  You drew him naked for all of England to see!  I know he has a mole on his hip!  Private!  Fuck!”

“Leave her alone, Ashley!  God!  Think about it!  If you were separated from him, thousands of miles away, would you want to discuss your sex life?”  Mel demanded, exasperated with her friend’s outburst. 

“Oh, shut up with your stupid logic!  I wanted to hear about the snogging!”

“Okay, okay, here’s the quick, PG-13 version,” Joey conceded, Ashley’s anguished plea having stuck a chord in her.  “He wanted to wait, so that we were both completely sure that we were in love before we did the expressing of it, so to speak.  And while we came close to it several times aboard True Love, we didn’t make love until the end of fall.  It was my first time, of course, and it was absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful.  That’s all I can tell you, I’m sorry.”

Ashley hugged Joey as she began to cry.  “Joey, I’m sorry!  I didn’t mean to sound so demanding!  I’m not usually like that.”

“Yes, you are,“ Joey said, spulltering out a laugh before disolving in tears.  “I’m sorry I’m crying.  I just, I miss him so damn much I can just barely stand it.  Everything is meaningless without him.  I love my art, I love to paint and sculpt and create, but I can only focus on him.  The drawing turned out so well because I love him so much, and that guided my hand.  It was just an expression of what I feel for him.  God, how I wish I were with him.”

Mel had been silent and thoughtful for the last few minutes, and she leaned across the table and took one of Joey’s hands in her own.  Then, the girl who mothered them and was always there for them with advice and clear-headed guidance, opened her mouth and released craziness.  “Then what are you doing here, crying in a kitchen in London when you could be on your way to America?”

Joey and Ashley both looked at her as if she’d gone insane.  “What are you talking about, Mel?”

“Listen to me, Joey.  Andrews is always going to be here.  You have enough talent that you’ll always be accepted back,” Mel told her.  “But Pacey, however much he loves you, however much he says he will, won’t wait around forever.”

Joey sat there, stunned, as Mel’s words sank in.  Ashley and Mel both stared at her, becoming worried when she didn’t speak for long minutes.

When she did, they nearly croaked. 

“Can I borrow five hundred dollars?”

November 3, 2001, Boston, America

Pacey sighed as he assembled steel car brakes, his shoulders having gone numb hours ago from the back-breaking monotony, and let his mind wander a little.

He was tired, having spent the night before staring at the picture he’d printed off the day before, and reading the article over and over.  He’d absorbed every detail of her he could, but she wasn’t the primary focus of the picture, and was mostly hidden behind a large, ornate podium.  The focus of the picture was the huge screen behind her, which projected her award winning charcoal sketch a hundred fold. 

She’d drawn him sleeping nude, stretched out on a blanket in beside a tree trunk, and he knew she’d drawn it from memory.  They’d made love in the forest one lazy Sunday afternoon, after a week of fighting about something trivial in retrospect.  He’d basically kidnapped her from work and drove to the woods near Capeside, and told her that they were going to stay there and work through it, however long it took. 

He remembered waking up to see her sitting there, watching him, and he’d laughed self-consciously.  And then, in the middle of the forest, with leaves in every color of the season falling all around them, they’d made love once again.

Lost in the memory, he was startled back to reality when a co-worker waved his hands at him.  Yanking the plug from his ear, he yelled, “What did you say, Carl?”

“Break time, Witter!” his supervisor yelled back over the clanging and the clashing and the constant noise of the factory.

Pacey waited until Carl sent another worker to relieve him, and switched seamlessly in the line with him and walked toward the door.

He went through the factory’s cafeteria, forgetting the food he’d brought as he made his way outside.  The air was cold and brittle and sucked the breath from him, cooling the sweat on his skin immediately as he walked to his car, but he didn’t care.  He sat outside by himself most every day, anxious to be alone and away from the noise.  Away from people who were happier than him.

Pacey turned the key in the ignition and let the motor run as he flipped on the heater, leaning back in his seat and staring out at the grey, overcast sky.  Usually he ate his two sandwhiches and took a nap before returning to work, but he just hadn’t felt hungry.  He felt as though there was something fluttering in his stomach, and he was too restless to doze, and he didn’t know why. 

Lying there in his reclined seat, he closed his eyes and tried to relax, only to sit up abruptly and check his watch.  Goose bumps were spreading over his body and he felt the way he did the night he’d inexplicably known he needed to call her, known something was wrong.  Only this feeling was much more intense.

Fastening his seat belt, he put the car in drive and headed out of the parking lot, heedlessly breaking the speed limit as he made his way to the grungy apartment building he’d been living in since September.

He didn’t live far from the factory, and moments later he unlocked the door to his apartment, tossing his keys into the bowl on the table and heading for the phone.

Picking it up, he hesitated only a moment before dialing the long string of numbers.

“Hullo?” a woman’s voice answered and for a moment he thought about just hanging up.  “Is anyone there?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “I’m here.  I’m, uh, calling for Joey Potter.  Is she there?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line and then the person asked, “Are you Pacey?”

“Yes,” he said, glancing at the clock on the stove.  He had fifteen minutes before he had to go back to work.

The shriek on the other end of the line startled him, followed by her yelling, “Oh my God!  Mel!  Get on the other phone!  It’s Pacey!”

“Is she there or not?” Pacey asked.

“No, she’s not here at the moment.  It’s so nice to meet you, albeit on the phone.  I’m Mel, and the screaming girl is Ashley.  We’re Joey’s roommates,” another, calmer voice told him.

“I’m sorry, she uh, she didn’t tell me about you guys when I spoke to her . . .” he trailed off, feeling foolish.

“We know all about you, though,” Ashley giggled.  “The whole school does, maybe all of England, thanks to her sketch.  And we’ve seen the dozens she didn’t submit, too.”

“Ashley!  Don’t embarass the man!” Mel scolded.

Pacey would have laughed, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something up.  “I’m not embarassed.  I’m honored.  Is she okay?”

“Yes, why do you ask?”
“I have this feeling . . . I don’t know, nevermind.  Would you tell her I called?” Pacey asked, running a hand through his hair.

“Oh, we won’t have -” Ashley began to say, then yelped in pain.

“I’m sure she’ll get the message,” Mel answered smoothly. 

Confused, Pacey opened his mouth to ask what Ashley meant, but heard the dial tone buzz loudly in his ear.

“God damn it,” he muttered, releasing a frustrated breath and slamming the receiver down.  He sat there for a moment, rubbing his forehead, before getting up and heading toward the door.  Pacey opened it and was about to walk through it when he remembered his keys, and turned to pick them up.

He turned back to the door and stopped cold, his heart skipping a beat, his breath leaving him altogether.  “Joey . . .”

She stood there, shifting her carry-on bag as his eyes devoured every inch of her.  She wore old blue jeans and a blue button down shirt he vaguely remembered as his own, thinner than he remembered her, her hair cut short and caught up in a messy ponytail.  Her face was pale but for her red nose, and her chin trembled as she stared him, scalding tears beginning to slide down her cold cheeks.

He barely had time to open his arms before she was in them, burying her face against his chest and throwing her arms around his waist, crying in earnest as his arms went around her shaking body. 

They stood there wrapped up in each other forever, it seemed, before he pulled her past the doorway into his apartment, shutting the door behind them.

“What are you doing here, Jo?” he asked, his voice cracking with emotion before he got himself under control.

“I’m here because I couldn’t be there any longer.  Not without you,” she said, her hands enveloped by his large, warm ones.

“What?” he asked, confused, wishing she’d stop crying, wishing he could warm her shivering body.

“I don’t want to be anywhere you’re not,” she said urgently, looking up at him with tearful, wide brown eyes.  “And I found out that I can do it, that I can function without you and even be successful.  But I don’t want to simply fuction alone, a shell of the person you fell in love with.  I don’t want to be successful if you’re not there to share it with me.”

Pacey closed his eyes, her words mending the pieces of his broken heart, barely believing she was there.  “Joey, you’ve dreamed of getting out of Capeside all your life.  You’ve dreamed of making something of yourself, of achieving goals nobody thought you’d accomplish.   Dreamed of being more than you were raised to be.”

“Now I dream of you,” she whispered, and kissed him.

He lost himself in her kiss, his hands burying in her hair and holding her to him as his tongue sought and gained access to the depths of her mouth, learning the taste of her all over again.

With control he didn’t know he had, he broke the kiss and stepped back from her, panting slightly.  “No.  No, I can’t let you do this,” he said, forcing his tone to be stern.

“Do what?” Joey asked, confused.

“I can’t let you throw your life away!”

Joey grabbed his hands in hers, shaking her head.  “No, I wouldn’t be throwing it away.”

“I don’t want you to give up everything you love to be with me,” he said, rubbing her hands with his, warming them without thought.

“I won’t be giving anything up.  I’d just be putting some things off for a year or so,” she said, trying to make herself clear.  “I’m not throwing my life away.  I’m giving it to you.”

“What?” he managed, his mind not wrapping around her meaning.

Joey took a deep breath, and sank gracefully down on one knee.  Her shaking hands clutching his, she stared up into his shocked expression and stammered out, “I don’t have a ring for you, I - I don’t have any money, I’m sorry.”

“Jo . . .” he whispered, his heart pounding painfully in his chest as stared down at her in shock.

Joey took a moment and felt a calm come over her as she looked up into the eyes of the man she loved more than anything else on earth, more than life itself. 

“Will you marry me, Pacey?”