I advice you to listen to this song while you are reading: Evan & Jaron Through The Blue

There was two kind of people. The first kind was the ones who had been able to open a new page in their life and continue living. The second kind of people was, however, the ones who were trapped in the past yet acted as if they had forgotten. Pacey was sure he belonged to second kind. He had tried to forget everything that happened by working in a boat that traveled around the Caribbean Islands. It wasn't his fault it didn't work. Neither was the fact that he always saw the face of Josephine Potter every time he looked at the night sky. "Joey..." he whispered softly. It had been so long since the last time he said her name. She had been all he thought about from the moment he stepped on the boat. How was she? What was she doing? Even so, he had tried to continue living. He had done as Doug said and went to Civilization where he met Danny. That's how he explained the white uniform and the cook hat he was wearing. Danny had made him peel potatoes for days. At last he had allowed Pacey to start cooking something real. Still, his biggest problem was the fact he didn't have a home.

Joey was outside with Jen and her new roommate Audrey even if she didn't want to. She didn't feel good at all. All she wanted to do was to sit in her room and study. Keeping herself busy was the only way that prevented her from thinking.
"I heard that there was one of the best restaurants in Boston." said Audrey.
"It's the perfect restaurant for a girl-to-girl night." said Jen. "What are you thinking about, Joey?" she added.
Joey looked up with a surprised expression. "What?" she asked. She had no idea what they were talking about.
"Earth to Joey! Can you hear us?" said Audrey while laughing.
"Don't even try saying that you were thinking about studying and that we should have left you in your room." added Jen.
"But I have so many studying to do..." Joey complained.
"We all know this isn't about studying, Joey..."
They went in the restaurant and sat at an empty table. It really looked like a nice place.
"It's even better than the way it was written about in Time Out: Boston." Audrey said. "I think we did a good job with coming here."
They ordered their meals and drinks.
"You still aren't angry with us for making you come here, are you?" she asked.
"I'm still mad at you." answered Joey with a small smile.
"Ah, but you can't say that you don't love me..."

Jen's phone started ringing just at that moment. "Charlie!" Joey and Audrey said with a sing-song voice. They laughed. Jen was trying to make them both shut up while talking to Charlie on the phone.

"Booty call?"

"Pretty much…" Jen said.

"Wow, are you gonna go?" Joey asked.

"I don't know, I could use the snuggles." Jen said.

"Aw, I want some snuggles too!" said Audrey with a sigh.

"I'm gonna go to the bathroom." Joey said.

The person Joey saw while going to the restroom made her whole body freeze.

"Pacey?" she though. She could swore that person she saw on the kitchen was him. That had to be a trick her mind played to her. Maybe she was daydreaming… She blinked and he was still there. He was cutting some kind of vegetable with the white clothes he was wearing. She went back to the girls without going to the restroom at all.

"Joey, are you okay? You look pale." Audrey asked with a suprised tone.

Joey turned to Jen.

"He is here, Jen! Pacey is here!"

Jen looked at the tables around. "Where is he?" Jen asked.

"In the kitchen! He looked like he was cooking!"

"Pacey in the kitchen? But he is supposed to be in the boat! Oh, he must had had found a job here." She looked like she was talking to herself.

"What are you talking about? You knew that he was in Boston?" Joey asked, shocked.

Jen looked at Joey with shame written all over her face.

"Yeah, I knew."

"Why didn't you tell me anything?"

"Because he didn't want me to tell you, alright?"

Joey's face became rather sad when she heard that. So he still didn't want to see her after all the time that passed after the incident.

"Oh, I understand." she said, trying to not reflect the sadness she felt in her voice.

"How long has he been here, then?"

"Nearly a month." said Jen. She knew this would make her sad.

"So if he wanted to do so, he had enough time to see me." She said. She looked like she was talking to herself, actually. "But he didn't want to. Even though I should had been the one who didn't want to see him."

"So, can someone tell me what's going on?" asked Audrey, stating the fact that she was completely oblivious to what they were talking about.

"Since we finished our meals, can we go home already?" Joey asked. Her eyes were begging to go. She wanted to get away before Pacey had a chance to see them.

"But the deserts…"

"I'm full enough. I promise to buy you a dessert later, okay?" Joey said while trying to smile.

Pacey could pass out any moment now. It was the first time he worked so hard on a friday night. He noticed that he could really do something if he tried. He had never thought about becoming a cook before, yet, here he was, cooking a meal that was going to be eaten by one of the customers. He was at the stage where he was supposed to place the meal at the plate gracefully and Danny was teaching him the best way to do that.

"Serving a meal beautifully is important as much as cooking it correctly." He said. He picked up a square plate. Showing it to Pacey, he said,
"A plate isn't just a bowl. It also helps making the meal much more graceful."
He served the meal Pacey cooked and decorated it.
"Like this," he said, showing the plate to him.
"Definitely looks much more delicious." agreed Pacey.
"You are going to decorate your next meal yourself, deal?"
"Consider it done." said Pacey.

Joey was lying on her bed. She was just looking at the ceiling, actually. Audrey had gotten out of the shower and dressed up already. She was currently busy with combing her hair. She took a look at Joey. She looked sad. They weren't really that close but she wanted to talk with her about it. She wanted to know what made her new friend sad.
"Okay, let's talk." she said unexpectedly.
"About what?" Joey answered back unwillingly.
"Who was that man?" Audrey asked again.
"Which man?" Joey retorted back even though she perfectly knew who Audrey was talking about. She was talking about the man who had turned her life upside down.
"Come on, I know you well enough to understand you're just pretending. I'm taking about the man in the restaurant. He was obviously an important man in your life."
"Only important man in my life currently is the professor I have to give my homework to." She was trying to get away with her usual sarcastic answers.
"Look," said Audrey. "I was like a therapist for my friends back in the Los Angeles. They always talked with me about their problems and relaxed. I'm aware that we aren't close enough for you to tell me yet. And I'm also aware that you're sad. What I'm trying to say is that you can share it with me if you want. I promise I won't judge you." she finished with a smile.

Joey looked at Audrey carefully. She seemed to be honest. She felt that maybe she could tell her. She wanted to talk about this with someone. She took a deep breath.
"He's my ex-boyfriend."
"Just like I though." Audrey said with a smile.
"We were together back at Capeside. It goes so way back that I don't know here to start." she said, looking at Audrey hesitantly. "I've know him for so long that I don't even remember when we first met. Dawson, Pacey and I were childhood friends."
"Since Dawson is your blondie friend in Los Angeles, I guess the real guy is Pacey."

"My friendship with Pacey wasn't like what I had with Dawson at all. I used to think Dawson was my soul mate. We knew each other well enough to understand things without talking at all. And Pacey was the boy who chased me around and pulled my hair. We used to have fun by teasing each other. But I noticed he was far away from being the man I thought he was when we started to share our problems, when he was always there for me while Dawson wasn't. When he helped me painting my ruined drawing on the school wall white... And brought another for me to paint instead.

"He bought you a wall?" Audrey asked with a shock.

"Actually he rented it, but that costed him 100 bucks." Joey said with a smile.

"I hadn't even notice that I had feelings for him until after he kissed me. Everything happened so fast after that. Pacey was all I wanted all of sudden. Even though I knew it would hurt Dawson. I left Pacey when Dawson learned about us in order to not lose my childhood friend. That was the most stupid thing I had ever done in my life." she confessed truthfully.

"Then we spent the best summer in my life with him on his ship "True Love". We had lots of problems after that, but he was still the most important person for me. It was like no one else saw me like he did." Joey said.

"The fact that he wasn't gonna go to college while I was split us. When he saw me dancing with Dawson at the prom he went all out and said everything he hadn't until now... In front of all those people. It was so humiliating." said Joey.
It was like she was living that moment again. She cursed her mind for remembering what Pacey had said so clearly.
"That was the first time I saw him that angry in my life. It was last time I saw him, anyway." she added.

"Now I understand why seeing him in the restaurant affected you so much." said Audrey."

"I thought about his words all the summer. Thinking about the past and his words were very painful for me. I understood why I didn't see him at all in Capeside when I learned that he went to Caribbean Islands. All I did in the summer was thinking about what he was doing currently while looking at the sky. But he never called. I never knew what he was doing. And then I suddenly learn he was here, in Boston almost for a month. Furthermore, Jen knew he was here."

"You want to see him, don't you?" asked Audrey curiously.

"Yeah." She paused for a moment. "No. He was here for almost a month. He had enough time to come to see me if he wanted. He must not have wanted." said Joey. The last sentence was almost like a whisper, Audrey had almost missed it.

"Ah, sorry but are you an idiot? You know, a little, maybe? Of course he wants to see you!" she responded excitedly.
"How do you know?" asked Joey with frustration.

"Because you're a beautiful girl even if you're not aware of it. You're very clever yet you don't even believe that. Come one, you are the girl boys never forget! You're the girl who makes other girls compare themselves with you and get jealous! And why would he come to Boston if he didn't want to see you? Why Boston when there is lot of other cities to live?

"I don't know, Audrey. I don't want to disturb him."
"I think you don't want to disturb yourself."
"It's just so complicated... Our relationship didn't end very friendly and I don't wanna make it worse." said Joey. She sounded hopeless.

"Relationships aren't like homework, Joey. No one is going to look at how you handled it and rate you. Relationships are totally different. If you want to correct your mistake you have to start sometime soon."

Joey was looking at the boats on the dock. She wasn't sure if she had done the correct thing with coming here. She pulled her gray cardigan closer. She could make things worse than it already was. And that was the last thing she wanted to happen.

But just like Audrey had said, she had to try. She could never know without trying. She continued walking while looking at the boat. Then she suddendly stopped. It was him- Pacey. He was wearing a red hoodie and was currently struggling with something on the ship. She had no idea what to do or say to him, but that didn't stop her. She walked towards the boat. She stopped right next to it and watched Pacey work. Pacey hadn't see her yet.

"Can't see them very well, can you?"

The wave of shock hit Pacey. Did that voice belong to her? He turned his head to the direction he heard the voice coming from so quickly that it hurt. Joey was standing right next to the boat, looking at the sky and talking to herself as if he wasn't there.

"At night, in the city."
Pacey couldn't help it, he laughed.
"What, the stars?" he asked. "No, you can't see them very well. But I've seen them all before, right?"
"Yeah, me too." said Joey, smiling. She walked closer to the boat.

"Permission to come aboard?"

She wished she hadn't say that at all. All it reminded to her was the summer they spent at "True Love". Pacey swallowed in pain. That little sentence from the past had hurt him.

"I'm sorry." said Joey guilty.
Pacey decided to ignore it.
"So, I'm guessing that this means Lindley sold me out, right?"
"No, go easy on her. I saw you at the restaurant." Pacey wasn't expecting that at all.

"Yeah, my new stomping grounds."

"So l guess Jen's told you about these. Sunday dinners we've been having." Joey said.

"Yeah. l seem to remember something to that effect."

"Well, it's nice. l mean, we try to get together every week because it's easy

to get lost in a big city." She really hoped that Pacey'd come one of those dinners.

"Well, of course it is. You don't have enough stars to guide you." Pacey said while smiling to her.

"You should try to come sometime." She said. She really wanted Pacey to come.

"l'll try to do that." He wasn't sure if he really wanted to go but it looked like Joey wanted him to come. Pacey though he could try going at least once, after all, what could go wrong?