Two years later...
As the train pulled into the station, Joey thought about all that had changed in the time she'd been gone.
Joey used the voucher Pacey gave her and went to Paris for the summer. Given that you could go from country to country in Europe the way you could state to state in the USA, Joey traveled a lot, seeing England, Scotland, Germany and Italy while she was there, and she had never felt so free in her entire life. Well, almost never. But she didn't think about that. She loved it so much in Europe, that she decided to stay. Joey withdrew from Worthington and enrolled at Oxford, where she completed her English degree. Throughout her time abroad, Joey had a few relationships, none of which were serious. She told herself that it was because she wasn't staying, but it was really because of Pacey. No matter where she went or what she did, her heart never strayed from the fixed point it attached to in high school. Now she was coming home to re-establish her life in the US. She didn't know yet where she would end up, but she didn't care. What her travels had taught her was the the degree was just a piece of paper. It was how you lived your life and who you shared it with that really mattered.
While Joey was traveling, she checked in with Pacey via e-mail and cheesy postcards. However, it turned out that the tabloids were the easiest way for her to keep tabs on him given that he was now, well, famous. He'd quit his job with Rich Rinaldi (thank you God) and went into a partnership with Todd Carr, starting a production company for independent movies. Pacey handled raising the money and Todd, who had cleaned up his act for the partnership, handled the films, occasionally directing a few himself. That didn't mean Pacey stopped investing in stocks. On the contrary, he had padded his net worth considerably by getting in on the ground floor of Google's IPO, as well as DreamWorks and a few others. He was now living in Los Angeles half of the year and spent the rest traveling to meet with investors. As a multi-millionaire entertainment executive, Pacey J. Witter was now considered one of Hollywood's most eligible bachelors, though it was lamented among the female population that he was seriously involved with one Miss Melanie Shea Thompson, of the Boston Thompsons. A fact which Joey hated.
Jen and Jack finished their degrees at NYU. With Gram's cancer in remission, Jen and CJ moved back to Boston where they co-owned and operated a crisis counseling center. Jack moved to Capeside and was teaching English and coaching the football team at their old high school. He was lamentably single.
Andie, who Joey had briefly met up with in Italy over last summer, had graduated from Harvard and was enrolled in medical school there. Whenever she was on break, she was in Italy, which, she said, made her feel more alive and free than anything else ever had.
Dawson. What could Joey say about Dawson? He had been upset when she told him she was leaving for Paris. He questioned what he would do without her, but she told him leaving was something she had to do for herself. They kept in touch, but it was sporadic at best. She learned from Bessie who learned from Gail that Dawson was living in Capeside and working at the restaurant while the movie they'd filmed the summer before she left was in the process of being developed for television by a fledgling new teen-oriented network. This was, in Dawson's words, no thanks to Pacey, who'd refused to budge on his boundaries despite his own Hollywood success. While he and Pacey had struck up a new friendship, Joey had a feeling that Dawson resented Pacey for his unwillingness to help launch his career.
As got ready to depart the train, Joey stared at the journal on her lap. It contained what no one else knew: that there was never a triangle between Pacey, her, and Dawson. In the journal, she detailed their teen angst at Capeside High School from her vantage point. She had spent the last few years hearing and seeing Dawson's take on it all and she wanted to flip the script. For now it was just for her and maybe Pacey, but she had dreams of a national bestseller young adult romance series that would, with any luck, outperform whatever teen soap Dawson came up with.
A/N: Pieces of Part 2 are written, but I think the structure will be different than what you expect. Bear with me. It will all make sense in the end. I promise.
