At the front door, Pacey and Joey parted ways with an exchange of conspiratorial looks and small smiles he to search out Will Krudski, she to enter the house on her own. Joey watched him as he rounded the corner of the house to make his way to the back porch, grinning when he tossed his hand up to throw a wave at her behind his back without breaking stride or turning around. She laughed. Though he had already disappeared from view, she heard his answering chuckle. Smiling, she stepped into the front entryway.
Aunt Gwen's living room was silent, dark, and deserted, a stark contrast to the earlier evening scene of raucous teenagers and bad renditions of songs better left unsung. The fire had devolved into glowing embers, rather than the roaring flames of before, and the red-orange glints barely relieved the blackness of a room plunged into full-fledged night. The light was still on in the side studio room, and as Joey made to move quietly past its doorway, she casually peered in. She paused and her smile slipped when she realized that Dawson was still there, sitting quietly alone, his eyes glued onto one of Aunt Gwen's paintings. With a start, she realized it was the painting of her and Dawson when they were kids.
Rooted to where she stood, she looked at Dawson, transfixed. His gaze was focused, intense, and a tiny smile played at the corner of his lips. Joey scanned his profile, seeking out inner thoughts. Not necessarily his; more, probably, her own. There was a time not too long ago, though it now seemed like a lifetime, that Dawson would have inspired in her the deepest of longings a yearning for his attention, for his smile, for his love.
Yet here, in this instant, just beyond this open doorway where she was standing, half in shadows and grazed by the spilling light, she only felt that returning sadness. Things are changing, Dawson. People evolve, and some things drop away, she had said to him earlier that afternoon, sitting in the barn's loft, high above everyone else frolicking below. In that instant, she had felt as if she were someone suddenly full-grown, hovering just beyond a receding past, gazing back at a vanishing childhood.
Now, on Dawson's face, she saw a fading vision of herself transposed there that girl longing for a perfect forever, in the eyes of a boy she once loved. The painting was a deception, an illusion. Two children captured conveniently on a canvas, encircled by a bond rendered too apparent, making visible that connection which was always assumed. But Joey was coming to know that beneath the surface of things is where truth actually resides. The invisible is often the most genuine.
Joey closed her eyes. She could still feel Pacey's kisses on her lips, feel his hands on her body, hear his throaty whispers in her ear. Even in his absence, he felt so real. Opening her eyes again, she stepped back a little further from the doorway, from Dawson's dreamy gaze, ready to move past it. Because it was Pacey she now felt in her entire being, her senses thrumming from his recent touch, her bones still warmed from his passion.
Passion. Pacey had introduced her to passion. With a dawning realization, Joey conceded that passion had always been there between them. But this was a new iteration of it, transformed from their past antagonisms, and they had been transitioning to this for quite some time now. It was not an abrupt development. But what was this? She walked forward slowly, lost in thought, moving toward the bedroom.
"Joey?" Joey snapped her head up toward the whisper from the bedroom doorway. Andie stood at its threshold, a quizzical look on her face. "Are you okay?"
"Uh…yeah. Why?"
"You looked, I dunno…zoned out or something. Troubled maybe."
Joey plastered a chipper smile onto her face. "Nope. Just thinking."
"About what?" Andie asked, tilting her head, inquiring, her brown eyes curious.
Joey blinked and then stared at Andie for a long moment. Andie had been kissed by Pacey. No, she had been more than kissed by him much, much more. Unbidden, a thought shouldered itself front and center into her mind an image of Pacey touching Andie as he had just touched her earlier, his hand clutching at her blonde hair as his lips moved over hers. Joey felt a flash of mortification laced with envy in that moment, so she dropped her eyes hastily and shrugged, looking away to hide the blush she felt staining her cheeks.
"Nothing," she mumbled, stepping back uncertainly – smack into a solid wall of masculine chest. A pair of hands came up to grasp her upper arms and Joey felt her heart suddenly start pounding.
"You guys gonna block the doorway all night?"
Joey turned around, startled. "Will!" she exclaimed, almost passing out with relief. She checked herself, however, and stepped aside to let him pass. She glanced behind him, in case Pacey was bringing up the rear, but only saw Dawson walking out of the studio and into the family room, making his way toward the back porch. She paused a moment, knowing that was where Pacey had gone earlier, in search of Will. But Will was here. And Pacey was nowhere to be seen.
XXXXX
Will was nowhere to be seen. Pacey considered going back into the house, but the coolness of the outdoors was soothing, so he crossed over to a wicker settee and plopped himself down upon it. The wicker protested his weight, creaking mightily, as he flung a leg over one of its arms and let his other leg dangle down to the floor. He smiled to himself, recalling the recent interlude in the barn how it felt to hold Joey in his arms, to have her soft lips warm on his. He still savored the thrill of her pressed close to him and the feel of her hands in his hair. He wanted her. But it was more than that. He loved her.
Pacey shifted so he could look up into the night sky. The stars told stories from ancient times. His father had told him so during a fishing trip once when he was about twelve years old. Well, he told Dougie anyway, when they both thought he had fallen asleep, too bored to hear their tales. But he had listened, eyes closed, rapt. The stars told stories about heroic warriors and wayward maidens, vengeful gods and foolhardy mortals, mighty battles and loves lost. Epic stories transformed into histories, now permanently written onto the sky. The cloud cover was thick tonight but he could see the flashes beneath, as if those stars were stubbornly pushing their way into visibility, struggling to shine their stories on all the little people on this great big earth.
Pacey sighed, impatient. These grandiose thoughts did not suit him; he did not wear them well. So he shrugged them off and thought back to earlier, to his own history, to Andie, the girl he used to love. But don't you think it's better to just be honest and open about things like this? she had said. I mean, who wants to carry around this burden of guilt over moving on? Which, by nature, has to happen. I want you to be happy, Pacey. On earth, history was the mundane. It was a girl who rewrote his own sorry tale into something splendid, at least for a little while. It was a song that ensured an annual continuing duet between two skittish souls. It was all the things that meant much more than they seemed, and perhaps, much more than they should. Pacey closed his eyes and let these thoughts sit, idling.
Dawson came out to the back porch for a quiet moment alone, to think, maybe even to dream. But he immediately noticed that someone else was out there, settled in the shadows. More like sprawled actually, on a wicker settee, and if he had not known him any better, he would have thought he was asleep. But the one foot that rested on the floor was tap-tapping restlessly. Dawson smiled.
"Hey, Pace."
Pacey sent a startled look over to the doorway where Dawson stood.
"Uh…hey, D."
He shifted, bringing his legs over so he was sitting up, both feet on the floor now. Leaning back, he put both arms behind him, stretching across the seat back. Dawson walked over to the wicker chair next to the settee and plopped down on it.
"Man – what a day!" he sighed, brushing a restless hand through his thick blond mane.
"Yeah, you could say that. Most definitely," Pacey concurred, his tone soft, dropping his eyes as he brought one hand forward to brush some imaginary lint off of his knee.
"Did Joey find you earlier?"
Pacey looked up, startled again. "Huh?"
"Earlier. She saw you leave the house and went after you when we finished our song. What was that all about, by the way?"
"Um…I needed some air, that's all. Besides, you and Joey and "Daydream Believer"? Not exactly The Carpenters. Or Sonny and Cher. Or even the Captain and Tennille, for that matter," Pacey joked, slipping into a familiar guise of teasing sarcasm.
"Believe me, I'd take the Captain and Tennille any day," Dawson said on a laugh. Then, after a moment, "Are you feeling weird about Andie and Will?"
Pacey stared at Dawson, his mouth dropping open slightly. "Uh…maybe a little," he heard himself say. But he watched Dawson carefully.
"Yeah, it's always weird at first, when you see the girl you love with someone else. Even if you are apart for all the right reasons. I felt that way about Joey when she was with Jack. And then this AJ guy, well…let's just say, a part of me is glad it didn't work out."
"Yeah. He was all wrong for her," Pacey agreed vigorously, shaking his head.
"Exactly! So you saw that too, right?" Dawson was nodding, concurring. "But you know, I'm glad she had that experience. That she's out there experimenting. It will make it so much more real when we can finally be together."
Pacey's stare was blank, dazed, and then he was clearing a blocking lump out of his throat.
"You okay, Pacey?" Dawson asked, frowning.
"Uh…yeah. Um…just breathed down the wrong pipe," Pacey threw out, and then, rushing quickly past the nonsense of that statement, he asked, "So what brought on all this hypothesizing about love lives?'
"Well, Joey and I were talking earlier about growing up and moving on. She said people change things change. And I've been thinking about that a lot."
"And you've concluded…?"
"I've concluded that growing up doesn't have to equal growing apart. Joey and I – we're inextricably bound. Together, we make sense of each other's lives. We always have. And that's what I told her."
"And what did she say?"
"She called me an eternal optimist."
"And this, from the perpetual pessimist herself?"
"Exactly!" Dawson chuckled. "But I can afford to be optimistic. There's really no one else out there that shares the same history that we do. No one else can compete. Well, except for you, maybe. But you would never do that to me."
Pacey felt another lump forming itself in his throat. "Uh…Dawson-"
"I still can't believe Aunt Gwen is selling this house!" Dawson exclaimed, his eyes looking all around the porch, out toward the trees. "This cottage is a veritable temple to my quaint and storied past. And it's always been such a ritual for Joey and me – our annual springtime visit to Aunt Gwen. As I've stated before – it's the end of an era." Dawson sighed heavily.
"Uh…Dawson?" Pacey ventured forth, again. Dawson's gaze came to rest on him, waiting and expectant. He barreled onward. "What if she falls in love with someone else?"
"What?"
"Joey. What if she falls in love with someone else?" Pacey repeated, willing himself not to tear his eyes away from Dawson's face. "What would you do?"
"Why, do you know something I don't?" Dawson asked, teasing. Pacey felt the ground give way beneath him. He was glad he was already sitting down. Dawson laughed. "Man! The look on your face is exactly like the one when you came and got that videotape of you and Ms. Jacobs back from me. You remember that?"
"Yeah. Of course I remember that," Pacey said, dropping his eyes for a moment, fidgeting. He was probably the only teenage boy in America that had his own pornographic record of his first sexual experience archived on videotape. Then, he took a breath and looked back up. "You did me a nice favor that day, D. Giving me that tape back when I asked for it. I wasn't ready to have the world find out about my…uh…physical initiation into male adulthood just yet."
"Yeah. Some things are better left undiscovered, at least for a little while. And anyway, it was the right thing to do. Blood brothers, right?"
"Riiight," Pacey said, slowly, recalling their childhood pact. "So Dawson, last week, when we went camping up by the old fort, I wanted to tell you something."
"That's right. You did," Dawson was watching him more intently now. "What was it?"
Breathe, Pacey, he told himself. Slow and steady. "Well, see, Joey needed a ride back from Boston, after she broke up with A. J., and it was really late – early, early morning, actually so she called me."
"Yeah, I know you went to go pick her up, Pacey. She needed to call someone, and you two have actually moved a step past mere toleration these days." Dawson leaned forward and patted Pacey's knee reassuringly. Then, sitting back again, he looked thoughtful. "You know, come to think of it, ever since Joey got back from that trip, she's been pretty quiet about what happened. We've been hanging out a lot this past week and whenever I look at her, she has this intense, pensive look on her face. I can usually read her like a book, you know? But this – well – it's different. She's entirely closed off about it."
"Why do you think that is?" Pacey asked, never taking his eyes off Dawson's face.
"Maybe she thought she was really falling in love with this A. J. guy. Is that what you were going to tell me? I never met him, so I don't know. You did. Do you think she might have loved him?" Dawson's gaze was questioning. And trusting.
"Um…I haven't the faintest…uh...I have no idea how she felt about him," Pacey answered, tripping all over his words. "I know he kissed her once. When he took her out to see the Northern Lights. Um…I know she thought he was really smart. Uh…he knows Latin…"
Dawson jumped up, an idea grabbing him, lifting him out of his chair with sudden force. "I've gotta go. I'll see ya inside. Oh – and don't worry, Pacey. It doesn't bother me that Joey called you first. I'm just glad you could be there for her, man." He walked off of the porch quickly and, smiling, hurried off into the trees.
"Fuck!" Pacey swore into the night air. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Then he brought his arms forward to rest his elbows on his knees as he buried his face into his hands. "Fuck," he muttered grimly.
