She didn't know how long she stood there after he climbed out of her window.
"But the point is not how I feel. The point is how you feel!" she opened her eyes when she heard Pacey's voice from the screen.
She remembered the very first time that she had seen this episode. She had walked around in a sort of adolescent-high all day, completely enamored with Pacey and replaying the angst and the romance of the scene in her head repeatedly.
No one had ever measured up to Pacey, and Joey by association, in her eyes. For her Dawson's Creek had had the perfect ending when Pacey and Joey had sailed off into the sunset at the end of the third season. Of the show's six seasons, she only owned the third one; for her, the entire show was season 3, the epic love affair of Pacey and Joey.
How silly that all sounded now. She didn't believe in "true love" anymore. Those days of weaving fantasies were gone… somehow, drinking human blood to remain in this permanent space between life and death did not jive with discovering true love. Besides, she watched what Stefan and Elena went through and knew that as much as it was a pain the neck, fighting evils like Katherine, Elijah, and the impending doom called Klaus were the only things that kept them distracted from what lay ahead for them. There were no easy decisions… none at all. And even if it could be that simple, Damon wouldn't make it so.
She, on the other hand, had given up hopes of her happily ever after. There was no happily ever after. This existence was only periods of grief alleviated by brief reprieves. No wonder her kind decided that emotions were a liability and shut them off. She had been tempted to do the same, but she couldn't… She wouldn't be Caroline without all the highs and lows that her emotions gave her…
If Tyler was a reprieve, it was a reprieve of gargantuan proportions. If she was fully human and hadn't had the past year that she had had, she wouldn't have been able to turn him away tonight…
But she knew she was in trouble. The memory of one kiss could somehow be pushed away... made to disappear… it was not true yet, but she wanted to think that it would be. The day after he had kissed her that first time, Matt had kissed her too. And she had given it her all, trying to recapture the sweetness that had been there before. The sweetness was still there… and a softness that made her heart ache. But it made her heart ache because she knew that even giving it her all didn't do the trick. She was likely ruined for a long time to come….however long it would take to forget how it had felt like when a werewolf had kissed her.
Still, the memory of one kiss could be forgotten with time, she was hopeful. But not when he started doing things like climbing into her bedroom in the middle of the night and stealing kisses.
Her eyes closed again as the memory of his lips against her neck assaulted her. She trailed her fingers along where his mouth had been and felt as if she had been branded.
Of all the guys in the world, she never would have guessed that he would be the one who would make her feel this way. Given her track record with the opposite sex, she should have known it. But she was going to teach herself through any means necessary that you always pick the good one, the sweet one… you never pick the asshole, no matter how many butterflies you get from his kisses… no matter how many times during the day your mind replays every time he has touched you… no matter that you are the only one who has ever seen him vulnerable…
Her lips parted even as her eyes squeezed tight in an effort to exorcise the memory of his words… "I wish I could regret this…"
She wanted to tell him that she did… she regretted every time she had accepted his touch. She regretted how helpless she was to resist… and she regretted what she knew was yet to come….