They strolled along Main Street a while in silence, past the old Rialto and the ice cream shop, just enjoying the afternoon sunshine on this perfect spring day.

“Summer is just around the corner” Joey sighed. “Pretty soon this place is going to be overrun with tourists.”

“Yeah. I could never quite grasp the concept that people would actually plan their vacations and spend the whole year looking forward to coming to a place where I spent most of the year wanting to leave.” Dawson took a sip of his iced coffee as they walked.

Joey regarded him out of the corner of her eye and smiled. “It’s strange, huh? After all these years being back in Capeside?”

Dawson was quite for a moment and then answered slowly, “Well…yes and no. It’s strange, but all too familiar at the same time, you know?”

Joey just nodded in response and checked her watch. “Uh-oh. We’d better get back. I think the contractor said he was going to stop by around 4:00.”

They turned back down Main Street, walking down past the Public Landing and the boats bobbing up and down in the sparkling blue water, until they finally reached the little tree-lined lane. As they turned up the street and into the driveway, Dawson looked up at the house before him. He had vaguely remembered this house from when they were young. It had been covered in over-grown vines and climbing beach roses then, which had done nothing to hide the rotting wood and chipped paint, the crumbling remains of years of neglect. But now, with the brand new windows reflecting the sun, the freshly-painted white clapboard fence, rose trellis and trim a sharp contrast against the weathered gray Cape shingles, the bright flowers beginning to burst forth from all the window boxes and the blue ocean peeking through the hedges in the backyard, it looked like something out of a postcard. It looked like a home.

As they approached the front door, they could hear Bessie’s voice coming from inside. “Now, Ryan, what did I just tell you? No, Ben, put that down…”

“Oh, I’d better get in there,” Joey chuckled as she bounded up the front steps and through the screen door, letting it slam behind her.

Bessie was in the kitchen holding Ben on her hip, as the toddler wiped his teary eyes with his tiny chubby fists. Joey came in and immediately looked to her older son, who was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor regarding her somberly with a certain amount of guilt in his eyes.

“Ryan, what happened?” she demanded. Bessie handed Ben over to her, who wrapped his arms tightly around her, burying his face in her neck.

“Well, Ryan was just telling Ben that there are big scary monsters living in the closet of his new bedroom” Bessie explained, rolling her eyes at her sister.

“Ryan, that’s not nice.” Joey spoke sternly now. “Besides, you both watched Daddy check all the closets upstairs when we moved in. You know there are no monsters living in this house or Daddy would have found them. So, you tell Ben you’re sorry.”

“Sorry, Ben…” Ryan mumbled, looking at the floor and stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

Dawson had followed slowly behind and was listening to this exchange from the front hallway, smiling to himself in amusement. He now turned the corner and walked into the kitchen, pausing the doorway.

“Daddy! Daddy!” Ryan cheered, instantly brightening up. Ben lifted his head from Joey’s shoulder and squirmed to get down. “Da-da!” he laughed, all traces of his tears now gone.

Dawson watched as Pacey came in the back door and scooped the boys up in his arms in a simultaneous bear hug. He flipped Ryan over so he was holding him upside down as both boys erupted in squeals of laughter.

“All right, what’s going on in here?” Pacey spoke gruffly as he shook them in his arms.

Dawson had to smile as he watched them. Ryan was almost 4 years old and was all Pacey, except for that familiar little lop-sided grin, and baby Ben was all Joey, except for those twinkling blue eyes.

Pacey deposited the boys gently on the floor in a heap, both of them laughing and breathless, and leaned over them to kiss Joey on the forehead. She smiled up at him, briefly touching his cheek. They held each other’s gaze for a just a second, but it was an intimate enough moment to make Dawson feel like he was intruding somehow just by witnessing it.

“Bodie helped me clean out all the shrubs in that corner of the yard.” He nodded over his shoulder to Bodie, who had just appeared through the back door.

“Oh, great!” Joey turned to Dawson, beaming, and explained, “I’m going to try to start a garden out there.” Dawson just smiled politely, not quite understanding what would make someone so happy about digging in the dirt.

Pacey went over to the refrigerator, briefly glancing over at Dawson, his voice low. “Can I grab you a beer or something, Dawson?”

“Ahh…no, I’m all set, thanks” Dawson shifted his position in the doorway. Pacey just shrugged and looked over at his brother-in-law, “Bodie?”

“No, thanks, Pacey.” Bodie turned to Bessie, “You know, we better get going if we’re going to make Alex’s game. He’s starting tonight.”

The two little boys had been running around the kitchen in circles and now stopped short. “Alex’s game! Alex’s game! We want to go to Alex’s game, Dad!”

Pacey looked at them thoughtfully for a moment. “You want to go to Alexander’s game? Gee, I don’t know about that.” He took a swig from the lemonade bottle in his hand and continued, “If we went to the baseball park, all they have to eat there is hot dogs and ice cream…and who wants something like that for dinner?” Pacey made a face and shook his head slowly.

The two boys stared up at their father incredulously, not able to speak for a moment, their mouths open in amazement. “But, Daddy…We do! We do!”

“Okay, okay!” Joey interjected, laughing, “If we’re going to the game we have to go dig out your sweatshirts in case it gets cold later.” She began ushering the boys out of the kitchen, shaking her head at Pacey, who grinned and winked at her over his lemonade bottle as he leaned against the kitchen counter.

“All right, we’ll just see you there!” Bessie called as she followed Bodie out the back door, waving over her shoulder. “It was good to see you again, Dawson!”

“You, too!” Dawson waved back.

“Yeah, thanks again for all your help today, guys!” Pacey called after them.

It was just the two of them alone now in the kitchen. They stood there in awkward silence for a moment before Pacey spoke.

“Uh…thanks for coming over and getting Joey out of the house for a while. She needed a little break. As you can see, things have been pretty crazy around here.”

Dawson smiled, “Yeah, but to hear her tell it, it seems like it is a good kind of crazy - if that’s possible.” Pacey nodded and looked at the floor, smiling to himself. Dawson looked around him, actually taking in his surroundings for the first time that day. “So, you guys have put a lot of work into this place. It’s coming along great.”

“Yeah, it has been a lot of work.” Pacey looked around as well. “We wanted to try and restore as much of the original woodwork as possible, but parts of the house were so bad that we just had to gut it out and start from scratch. It’s been a long, slow process. And, despite the fact that we’ve actually done a lot of the work ourselves, we have managed to keep the bickering to a minimum, believe it or not,” Pacey joked.

“Well, considering who we’re talking about here, that is impressive,” Dawson snorted.

“Yeah,” Pacey continued on, almost to himself. “As a matter of fact, I think that our only real point of contention has been that extra bedroom on the second floor. One week Joey wants me to turn it into her home office, and then the next week she stops me and says she wants us to save it for a nursery for…uh, whenever number three comes along. I think she wants a little girl to...um, even things out around here, you know…” Pacey’s voice trailed off and he was scratching his head now, not really looking at Dawson.

Dawson raised his eyebrows at this particular bit of information and, feeling the need to respond in order to fill the heavy silence that hung over them now, he searched for something to say. “So...ah…how many bedrooms are there, anyway?”

“Three on the second floor, plus the full bath – that’s the kids’ bathroom - and a laundry room. Then the whole third floor is mine and Joey’s, it’s our…” Pacey seemed to be about to say something else and then changed his mind, “Well, the master bedroom and master bath are up there. That floor used to be the attic. We did some major renovations up there. New roof and skylights…the whole bit.”

Dawson suddenly realized that he was mildly uncomfortable at the thought of having to tour Pacey and Joey’s bedroom, but thankfully Pacey was now directing his attention through the adjoining family room to the French doors that led outside.

“Check this out,” Pacey said as he opened the doors, “We just put this back deck on last week. I bribed my brother Dougie and some other guys to come over and help me out.”

The first thing Dawson noticed on the deck was the two child-sized Adirondack chairs, both hand-painted with a fish and sailboat motif that was obviously Joey’s artwork. Then he looked out at the view and realized that from this spot they could see all the boats moored in Capeside harbor, as well as the wide-open ocean just beyond that. How appropriate, he thought to himself. Then he began to wonder just how much a view like this in Capeside would cost somebody.

Dawson had to admit that it still surprised him that Pacey Witter had turned out to be the most financially successful of them all. That Pacey had been the most successful one in all aspects of his life, really.

“The contractor came by right before you guys got back from your walk,” Pacey said as he leaned over the deck, looking down, “Joey was all worried because she thought there was a crack in the foundation over there, but we checked out okay. We’re pretty solid here.”

Dawson nodded absently. “Yeah, it would seem so,” he replied.

“So, what are your plans for this Saturday night?” Pacey chuckled. “I would wager that they’re probably a lot more exciting than ours.”

“Actually, I’m picking up Suzanne at the airport tonight.” Dawson was still looking out at the ocean. “She’s coming to stay for a couple of weeks before we go up to Canada to start filming that documentary. It will be the first time she’s been on the East Coast.” He quickly looked back at Pacey, “So, I guess I should probably hit the road now if I’m going to fight that weekend traffic up to Boston.”

Pacey nodded and followed Dawson out through the front hallway. “Hey, Jo? Dawson’s taking off…” he called up the stairs.

“Oh…okay.” Joey called back down, obviously too distracted by something the boys were doing to come to the stairs, “Thanks for stopping by, Dawson. You’ll have to bring Suzanne over for dinner some night next week while your still in town. We’d love to finally meet her!”

Pacey smiled to himself again as Dawson responded, “Okay, sounds good.”

They stepped out onto the front porch and the silence fell between them once more. They had long ago come to the realization that it would always be like this between them. Dawson knew Pacey no longer viewed him as any sort of rival for Joey. In fact, he was well aware that he had become someone who Pacey merely tolerated on her behalf. Pacey and Joey were a family now, and Dawson had finally come to terms with the fact that he was an outsider to all of that.

“Well, I’ll see you, Pacey.” Dawson flapped his arms a little, not being able to think of anything else to say.

“Yeah, okay, Dawson. See ya.” Pacey ducked his head with a little wave before going back into the house.

Dawson got into his car and started down the gravel drive. He paused for a moment before pulling out into the street, glancing back at the house in his rear-view mirror. When he had come back from California, he really believed that he and Joey were finally going to get the chance to be together. That everything was finally going to fall into place and be as it always should have been. And then – after a few false starts and wrong turns along the way – it seemed as if they were finally going to get it right. It started very slowly, gradually, and he had been fine with that – feeling like there was no reason to rush the inevitable. It was all only a matter of time, as far as he was concerned, and – besides - their bond had always been more spiritual than physical.

But then Joey just seemed to become more and more distant. She felt that maybe they should keep the option open for dating other people. And, as they each started gaining new life experiences at college, the experiences they had shared with each other seemed to become less and less significant. Dawson started to get worried that they might be drifting irrevocably apart. It was that concern that led him to look through her desk that day and find the paper she had written for an English class assignment. His heart bursting with new-found hope, he read her words describing her love for the boy she had grown up with, the boy who had been everything to her, the boy who had made her his world, the boy who still she dreamt about every night. There was a certain sadness to her words and Dawson decided that she must have been feeling that same sense of growing separation between them that he had been feeling, yet could not bring herself to tell him.

Dawson knew that Pacey and Joey had not really had much closure in their former relationship, but for some reason that had never caused him any worry. He would tell himself that what they had was really just a superficial high school fling, and the fact that it didn’t seem to matter to Joey who Pacey was dating at any given time – and vice versa - seemed to support his theory that whatever they had once had was unimportant. He would even overhear them discussing relationships together, swapping advice or a shoulder to cry on whenever necessary. It still didn’t bother him when they started spending even more and more time together. He knew Pacey was probably just a way for Joey to amuse herself while she tried to work through her feelings him, her soul mate.

When Dawson finally went to Joey to tell her that it was their time and that he knew she felt the same way, he had at first thought her tears were ones of joyful emotion. He didn’t quite understand when she began to tell him that she never meant to hurt him this way again. She said something about how much his friendship meant to her and that she hoped that he could still be in her life somewhere. In all truth, Dawson had really stopped listening after a while. In retrospect, maybe deep down he had known that she had actually been writing about Pacey in that paper. In any case, he ended up going back to USC the next semester, and ended up meeting Suzanne only a few months after that.

Dawson ended up staying in California and, after a couple of years had come and gone, he heard they had gotten married. No church, no big reception. Apparently, as the story went, Pacey had just shown up one day after her college graduation to ask her to go sailing with him, and they returned a few days later with the ring on Joey’s finger. Some joked that Pacey had actually refused to return her to dry land until she had agreed to marry him on the spot. Dawson remembered he had actually laughed when he heard that, “Well, that’s Pacey for you.” Though, in reality, he knew Joey had probably said yes before they were even out of the harbor. They did have a party on the beach later that same summer to celebrate, but Dawson had accepted a last minute offer for a summer internship and never made it home for that.

He was driving down the street now, headed out of town, still deep in thought. He had always believed in this concept that there could be one perfect person for you out there. And as much as he hated to admit it, he had been wrong in his perception of who that person was. He had felt that Joey was somehow his destiny because that is the role he had given her in the script of his life.

But, as the saying goes, you can't chose who you love. Pacey and Joey had beaten all the odds - everyone else may have given up on them as a couple, but in their hearts they had really never given up on each other. Not even Dawson himself could deny now that they belonged together, that something that had originally made no sense to him at all could now make absolute perfect sense. He pictured them sitting on that deck years from now, looking out at where they began, surrounded by their children and then maybe even grandchildren, and the memories they would have of a lifetime together. All Dawson Leery would probably be by then was a boy they used to know in school.

Perhaps, he thought, not without a certain amount of irony, he had not been so wrong in his youthful and idealistic notions of love. Because, after all was said and done, Joey Potter had ended up with Pacey Witter.

That was proof right there that some things are meant to be, right?

Pacey flopped into one of the deck chairs, sighing heavily and looking out at the last rays of the sunset disappearing into the ocean. He really didn’t think about the past that much any more, but Dawson just seemed to have that effect on him. Sometimes it seemed to him like he had been with Joey forever, that there had never really been a time when she wasn’t with him. Looking back now, Pacey realized that was because he couldn’t really remember a time when he didn’t love her.

Joey stepped out onto the deck, wrapping her sweater around her. Pacey tilted his head back in the chair towards her.

“Are they asleep up there yet?”

“Finally…”Joey sighed. “Ryan had to bring the baseball glove that Alex gave him to bed with him.” She came over to where he sat and Pacey adjusted his legs so she could climb between them, leaning back against his chest as he wrapped his arms around her. They sat there for a moment in silence, just enjoying the feeling of being close to one another.

“This is nice, being able to just sit here with you like this - no kids, no painters, no builders, no plumbers…” Joey adjusted her position, snuggling up against him. Pacey just smiled and rested his chin on her head.

When he didn’t respond, Joey looked up at him, “Pace? What are you thinking about up there?”

“Oh, just the same thing, really…that I’m just happy to be sitting here with my best girl.” “Your best girl…?” Joey giggled.

“Um, okay…my devoted wife?” he tried.

“Oh…you used to be so much better at this,” Joey groaned, rolling her eyes playfully.

“The love of my life.” Pacey whispered in her ear in that way that still sent shivers down her spine after all these years, pulling her in just a little closer to him. Joey closed her eyes and smiled as Pacey began nuzzling her neck, tilting her head to give him better access.

Suddenly he pulled back. “So, what am I, then?” he asked.

“What…?”Joey blinked her eyes open, as if she were coming out of a trance, the ocean breeze tickling her neck where his lips had just been.

“What am I?” he repeated softly in her ear, drawing out the words a little.

“Hmm…let’s see…my devoted husband?” she said, the laughter creeping into her voice.

“No, that’s not going to work, Mrs. Witter,” he replied, adjusting his arms to wrap them tighter around her, playfully rocking her back and forth a minute.

“Well, why don’t you help me out here, since you’re so good at this,” she smiled up at him.

“Okay, then…how about the best you’ve ever had?” Pacey grinned.

“Huh…I think I’ve been with you too long now, sweetheart…I can’t remember anyone else.” Joey pretended to think about this, and then giggled again as she patted his leg lightly.

“But…so, then what you’re basically saying is that – technically - I would be the best,” Pacey said brightly. “If I knocked all those other guys right out of your mind.”

Joey rolled her eyes again and sat up, turning to face him. She had been ready to continue their game, but there was a flash of something that crossed his face in that instant. A look in his eyes that she had not seen there in a long, long time. It was gone as quickly as she noticed it, but the surge of old emotions and memories that it sent through her threw her off guard and she changed her mind as to what she was going to say.

“You already know what you are to me, Pacey,” she said softly, tenderly, holding his face in her hands, “After all this time, why do you even need to ask?” She wrinkled her forehead a little, watching his face carefully.

He smiled and just shrugged, the twinkle in his eyes returning. Whatever else it was that she had seen there was gone now. He pulled her into a kiss, just touching his lips gently to her and breaking contact only to kiss her softly again. She finally opened her mouth to him, sighing as he slowly thrust his tongue in seeking the familiar warmth. His hands started to travel over her body, touching her in every way she loved to be touched.

“Just one more question…” he murmured against her lips.

“What…?” Joey sighed breathlessly, not wanting to stop.

“Why are we out here on a fairly uncomfortable deck chair when we have a nice new bedroom upstairs and a very small window of opportunity before someone inevitably wakes up needing a glass of water or another bedtime story read to them…?”

“Good point.” Joey jumped up, holding her hand out to help pull him out of the chair behind her.