"This bacon is so crispy," said Jen, dipping it into maple syrup before taking a large bite.
Doug lifted his head off the table for a moment. "Can you please stop talking about food?"
"We are at a cafe, we're surrounded by the stuff, we can hardly avoid it," replied Jen.
"Argh," he groaned into the Formica.
Joey dipped her sunglasses. "I agree with Doug. Let's lay off the food talk."
"Oh, boo-hoo. You guys are acting as though you've never had a drink before in your lives," said Jen.
Sipping his second coffee, Pacey said, "We're in our thirties now Jen, our recovery time is substantially longer than days gone by."
"Is this the part where I realize I'm a functioning alcoholic or that I have the perfectly preserved body of a twenty-year-old?" Jen smiled. "Why aren't I hungover? Why aren't I dead like Jackers?"
She poked Jack with her fork. He didn't move, but the shirt he wore, Pacey's shirt, moved up and down with his controlled breaths.
The fivesome had begrudgingly awoken to Jen's promises of a hangover breakfast, which was ironic, considering Jen seemed to be the only member of the group hangover free. Sunglasses firmly in place and shakily clutching water bottles, they ambled down the street to a cafe not far away. It was a diner of the original crappy variety, not the kitschy, gentrified one. The menu promoted 'hot food' and a five-dollar breakfast, of which the choices were eggs or pancakes.
Everyone was clad in random pieces from Pacey's wardrobe. No one was willing to relive their prom attire during breakfast, so they raided this closet for the least offensive items. Joey had dubbed them the Pacey appreciation society when they'd emerged from his house like a band of merry Witter-esque doppelgangers.
"Hey! This is a welfare check. Are you breathing?" Jen poked Jack again, harder this time, and he swatted at the cutlery.
"Quit stabbing and just let me die," said Jack.
"You can't die. You're getting married next week," Joey said.
A waitress arrived to refill mugs and nervously monitor Jack's comatose state.
"I'm going to call last night a resounding success, Pacey. The best bachelor party I've ever been to," said Jen after she ordered a strawberry milkshake and Doug dry retched at the thought.
Pacey handed him a napkin and replied, "What are your markers for success, Miss Lindley?"
"I'm pretty satisfied with an open bar."
"Fair point."
Joey was quiet, occasionally lifting the coffee cup to her parched lips and taking considered sips of the murky brew. If Jen's pointed stare was anything to go by, her silence had not gone unnoticed.
She kicked Joey under the table.
"I'm going to the bathroom," said a bug-eyed Jen to Joey.
Joey put down her caffeine source with some reluctance. "I'll join you."
Pacey slid out of the booth to let Joey through with an encouraging grin.
The girls jammed themselves into the single female stall under fluorescent lighting and the noticeably absent smell of bleach.
"Okay, what happened?" Jen asked.
"Nothing."
Jen rolled her eyes. "Liar."
"Fine, maybe some things may have happened."
"Wow. Descriptive."
Joey checked her reflection in the mirror to avoid Jen and recoiled, straightening her messy bun. "This is hardly the place for a comprehensive debrief."
"The hours I have with you are diminishing quickly, Joey. What happened?"
"I don't want to discuss it here. The fry cooks can probably hear us." With that, they heard the whoosh of a toilet in the next room flush.
"I can tell from the way he's looking at you that something happened. As soon as the bedroom door closed did you jump all over each other?"
"No," Joey shook her head and kept her gaze level.
"Did he run his hands all over your body?" Jen asked.
"No."
"Did you touch him?"
"No."
Jen huffed, screwing up her nose, "This all sounds rather anticlimactic to me."
"It really was no big deal," Joey reassured her.
Jen sighed and lathered her hands in soap to wash off the maple syrup residue. "It's so disappointing, I was expecting to wake up to Jen, you were right, we aren't faking it anymore, we've admitted to feelings."
Joey stayed quiet.
After drying her hands on a towel, Jen adjusted Pacey's tank top on her tiny frame and heaved open the restroom door.
The women reappeared, Joey shuffling back beside Pacey.
Jack hadn't moved. A trail of saliva was leeching from the corner of his mouth. Jen rubbed a napkin across his face.
With her return, Pacey leaned into Joey's space, his lips brushing against her pulse point, all of her quaking with the feel of him.
Jen's eyes lit up, alert.
"You two look cozy this morning," said Jen, pointing at the couple in front of her.
Pacey shrugged, "Us? Aren't we always cozy?"
"Not like this." Jen waved a finger back and forth between them, trying to get Pacey to talk when Joey had clammed up. "What happened post bachelor party? Anything new?"
Jack grumbled, apparently alive, "Please spare us the tales of your sexcapades over bacon. I'm struggling enough to keep my bottle of water down."
"Don't hate me because I want to live vicariously through their honeymoon phase," said Jen.
"Hearing the moans last night was sufficient for me to want to hack off my own ears with a butter knife," added Doug before stealing some bacon off Jen's plate and sniffing it warily.
Jen sat back in her seat, resting the tines of the fork in her mouth. " Moans? There were moans?"
"It was probably the raccoons, right, Pacey? Or Cat, he's always making creepy noises," said Joey, attempting a redirect of the conversation.
Doug screwed up his nose. "What I heard wasn't a Racoon."
Jen kicked Joey under the table, hard. Pacey witnessed it and responded by lacing his fingers into Joey's in plain sight.
"I didn't hear anything," said Jack. "But I also don't remember most of what happened after 9pm. I just keep getting flashes of oiled, waxed chests and Joey grinding against Pacey."
Joey poked Jack's arm, and he winced. "I did not grind! And I did not moan. It was the Racoons!"
"Oh, you were grinding," said Jen with a smile. Doug and Pacey joined in with bobbing heads, confirming the unthinkable.
Joey screwed her face up, wading through alcoholic memories like soup.
"Honey, it's okay to grind against your boyfriend when you're drunk. Don't be ashamed," said Jen. "Hell, I do it all the time with Dan."
Joey retaliated, attempting a redirect. "I seem to have a distinct memory of you dancing on the bar, Lindley."
Pacey trembled with repressed laughter.
"That's because you were on that bar with me, Potter ."
Joey hid her face as the vision of it swept back into the forefront, "Oh dear god. Why didn't anyone stop me?"
"I did," said Pacey, biting into cold, buttered toast. "I pulled you down because you almost fell into the wall of liquor."
Joey put her forehead onto the table, close to Jack's. "Please stop talking. I don't want to remember these things."
From the tabletop, Jack creaked open an eye and gave a half-smile as if welcoming her to the cool surface.
Doug said, "Okay, I won't tell you how you told me I was an attractive man, but had I met Pacey Witter?"
"No!" she cried.
"Joey, you gave me pointers for how not to get divorced, which, I've gotta be honest, was pretty helpful while at my bachelor party," said Jack, cheek still pressed against the table.
Pacey chuckled, "We won't discuss the singing then?."
"There was singing?" Joey asked.
"Joey does a great Tina Turner," said Jen.
They all nodded in agreement.
"Okay, that's enough. The Drunk Joey does stupid things retell is officially closed for the day," Joey sat up, lowered her sunglasses and buried herself in the collar of the Bruins shirt.
Doug nudged the fabric that was covering her face. "Hey, you were the life of the party, Joey. Don't be ashamed, it was awesome. Trust me, it was, even if you don't remember all of it."
She cracked open an eyelid. "Really?"
Doug tried to smile reassuringly, but he was keeping his movements limited.
"Really."
There was so much about the prom that she couldn't recall. But then, there were moments, vivid in clarity where she could recite every word spoken, every breath she took, every charged interaction.
Pacey leaned over and whispered in her ear, "Please tell me you remember what happened later in the evening?"
Joey blinked. Jen craned her neck to overhear, eyes like x-ray machines.
She put her face close to his, brushed a remnant of glitter off his neck, and said, voice low, only for him, "I remember everything."
The Night Before
Joey closed the door to Pacey's room and pressed her back against it. He was watching her, gold and shimmering from just a few feet away.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Sure, we're just a normal couple going to bed together, all very normal," she squeaked.
"Your tone of voice doesn't make it sound normal," he said.
She looked at the king bed, inclining her head. "Is this the part where I'm supposed to pretend I don't want to sleep in the bed with you and make a wall of pillows between us?"
Pacey grinned, "and I'm supposed to offer to sleep on the floor?"
"I'll make a counteroffer that I'm totally fine sleeping on the floor."
"But no, I'm the man. I'll collect some blankets and sleep on the carpet," he said.
"And then you end up so uncomfortable that I relent and let you join me."
"And then?" he asked, tone dipping, eye color suddenly indistinguishable.
"Then we lay awkwardly, side by side," she replied.
"And then ?"
Joey lost her nerve, stopping their repartee.
Pacey swallowed and waved a nervous hand. "At least we got the awkwardness out of the way."
She marked off an imaginary tally. "Tick that off the list. Awkwardness nil."
Joey remained plastered against the door. Pacey unbuttoned his jacket, but didn't remove it, nervously pulling a hand through his hair.
"Do you want me to get your pajamas?" He asked.
"Sure."
Pacey went into the closet. She stayed in position.
He passed her the items, folded.
"Can't I just keep them? This would save so much back and forth and unnecessary laundering," she asked.
"If you have them permanently, you won't come all the way to my house for sleepovers and the opportunity to wear them."
Joey played coy. "Do you really think that's the only reason I come here?"
"Well, that and Cat Stevens' stellar social skills."
She chuckled and staggered into his closet, closing the door behind her, ridding herself of the dress and the pins in her hair. She inhaled the aroma of Pacey's fabric softener, trying not to look at the coathangers full of garments he pressed her into during seven minutes in heaven.
She slapped her face a few times in an attempt to sober herself, but her ears buzzed and her limbs felt strangely disconnected from her body.
When she reappeared, Pacey was wearing boxer briefs and nothing else.
Joey chuckled and muttered to herself, "it's like Jen scripted this."
"What?" Pacey asked, head cocked to the side.
"Nothing."
"What did Jen script?"
" This. You in underwear, standing beside a king size bed, looking all ridiculously handsome and disheveled and -" she stopped herself from using the word edible.
"Why would Jen script this?"
Alcohol had loosened her tongue considerably. "Because I made a fatal error at the beginning of our little rebound agreement, I told Jen that this was fake. She took it upon herself to make it real."
"Jen knows?" he quizzed.
"Yep."
"So all her innuendo and forcible sunscreening was with full knowledge that our romance was bogus?"
Joey nodded.
"She's diabolical," Pacey said with appreciation.
"That's what I said!" Joey laughed.
"So, she's trying to concoct a relationship between us?"
Joey nodded. "I believe her words were ' smash you together like Barbie dolls.'"
"Descriptive," Pacey smirked deviously, relishing in the thought.
"She made an early prediction that by the first of August, we will have slept together," Joey tried to make the words sound casual.
"The first of August? That's in less than a week."
"I know."
Pacey paused, "interesting."
Every word felt like a premonition, verbally stumbling before an inevitable fall. The air was heavy with anticipation, crackling like static electricity. Pacey's bed loomed before them, waiting.
"On a scale of one to ten, how drunk are you?" he asked.
"Seven, eight if I'm being honest. You?"
"Six," he replied.
Joey nodded. Pacey's brow furrowed.
"Drunk Joey, I have a question."
"Yeah?"
Pacey asked, "What's happening here?"
"Between us?"
"Yeah. What's really happening? Not in our pretend relationship world, or what Jen thinks might happen. I want to know what you think is going to happen."
Drunk courage in Joey's throat said, "I think, maybe, we're about to rebound for real ."
Pacey ran frustrated hands across his face and something enticing flashed in his eyes, but then he said, "I can't express quite how much I want that to happen, but I have the faculties to know that I don't want it to happen when you're an eight on the drunk scale."
She backtracked, "No, seriously, I'm sobering up by the second."
He shook his head.
"When this happens, Joey, we can't be drunk."
"When?" She smiled, eyebrows raised.
Pacey sighed, "It's inevitable, isn't it?"
She nodded.
The house was silent; it was deafening. Pacey's internal turmoil was obvious, as though he had found himself in a situation with no solution.
He climbed into bed, beneath the sheets on the right side, and Joey slid under the left. For all her bravado of avoiding the only one bed minefield, they were squarely inside it. Those tropes had validity. The pillow wall and the one-person-on-the-floor rules gave protagonists a sense of surety, of comfort. She was lost at sea, inebriated in Pacey's bed, staring into his eyes, wanting one thing and one thing alone, and he had just told her she couldn't have it. But Drunk Joey was prone to babbling in spaces that should be kept silent, incapable of holding thoughts in, even if she wanted to.
"So we're proposing a change of rules to our wily scheme? I think the original regulations stated this needed to be done in a consultation format," she said.
Pacey propped his head upon his palm over a bent elbow. It made his bicep bulge, and his chest seem impossibly broad and unforgiving. "It's hardly a notarized document, but sure, I propose an amendment, a rather large one."
She mirrored his position, facing him. "Proceed."
"The fake part of the rebound, it's not really working for me anymore," he said.
Joey took a breath. "Agreed."
"Proposition to amend status from fake rebound to actual rebound?" he said, raising his eyebrows.
Joey's face was forcibly serious, "proposition agreed by all members. I will have the minutes drawn up over the coming days."
The dull lamp beside him made shadows loom on the white walls. His naked torso was veiled in darkness while his traps, deltoids and profile were bathed in light.
"I can't kiss you," he said finally, "Even if I want to more than anything I've ever wanted."
"I understand," she replied.
Once that began, there was no way it would stop. The gravitational force, science itself knew, would be impossible to halt. But the absence of their lips colliding and skin contact didn't dampen the unequivocal desire barreling through Joey. She wanted Pacey Witter, in ways she'd never wanted anyone before.
"Drunk Joey would like to make a confession, now that the boundaries have been redrawn."
"Proceed."
Joey swallowed, mobilizing courage. "I touch myself thinking about you sometimes," she said softly, unbelieving of the words that exited her mouth.
Pacey groaned, swiping a hand down his face at the torture of her confession. "Jo… you can't say that to me."
"Yes, I can. After we swam at Will's, after you bit me, I touched myself in the shower."
Pacey drew his lips into his mouth. "Really?"
Joey nodded.
His brows pulled together before saying, "I did the same."
The vision of Pacey stooped under hot water, relieving himself of their shared tension was vivid. A bolt of arousal shot through Joey, deep in her core. She slowly reached under the hem of the Bruins shirt and felt her peaked nipple. Pacey watched her hand movements in awe.
"What are you doing?" he struggled to ask.
Her heart was a hammer, incessantly pounding.
"What do you think?" she replied, her other hand snaking down her shorts and into her underwear. She parted her legs and slipped a finger between her folds like a breeze. A night of Pacey by her side had left her drenched and throbbing with desire.
His face was pained but intensely curious, watching the way her eyes lolled closed with every movement.
"What did you do in the shower? Tell me," she asked.
"Joey, I'm going to die. I'm going to spontaneously combust on my own bed."
"Fine. Then show me."
" Show you ?"
She nodded, lifting the Bruins shirt so he could see her hand playing with her rosy nipple. Her original fear had dissipated. This was Joey 2.0. She wasn't afraid of her own sexuality. Pacey had awakened it only feet away from them in his closet, and now she didn't know if she could ever turn back. Her body had thrummed with want for two whole days, turning to putty every time she imagined his fingers inside her.
Pacey's courage took a little longer to come. But he could only withstand watching her for so long before his own hand delved into his boxer briefs. When he touched himself, his body visibly relaxed, as though it was tightly wound, just waiting for a release.
"I feel like I'm sixteen again," he said.
"I never did anything like this at sixteen."
She watched the movement of his duvet, the way it tented and collapsed as he tugged back and forth.
"Can we pull down the sheets?" she asked, desperate to see him in the flesh.
He obliged with his spare hand, revealing only a peek, still in underwear.
Joey led, taking the palm from her exposed breast and lifting her backside, dragging her underwear down. Pacey licked his lips and did the same, pulling down his boxer briefs.
The scene was almost too much for Joey. Dark hair from his navel downward, leading like a trail of breadcrumbs to his hard cock clenched in his fist.
At the sight of it, Joey slipped a finger inside, wanting it so desperately to be what was right in front of her. Her knees were only slightly parted, clinging to the last vestiges of modesty and a lifetime of suppression. But Pacey's eyes, dark pools of desire, made her thighs part further, inch by inch, showing him exactly what he was doing to her.
With a lip between her teeth, Joey tried to reach out to Pacey, but he shook his head. "Joey, I can't, I want to. Fuck, I want to so bad, but, no."
She nodded, ever so slightly, and he watched as she drew out a finger and circled it around her clit, not touching the swollen bead, her hips arching themselves up to find it.
Pacey's tempo increased. Joey looked on in rapt fascination. She'd seen nothing like it before in her life. Dawson would have never done anything like this. She was sure a sight would have previously caused her to run from the room, but with Pacey, it made her ache for him, gulping with lust.
Joey watched his lips, imagining them caressing her neck and tasting between her thighs. She listened for his moans, each audible gasp of pleasure increasing her own tenfold. Finding his eyes, they consumed her, willing her closer to her release, bathing in her bliss.
She rocked her hand, matching his rhythm as it increased, sliding two fingers back in.
His thumb teased the throbbing tip of his cock, swirling it around, glistening.
"Joey," he moaned.
Her toes curled at the sound of his voice calling her name like that.
"Pacey, I'm going to come," she'd found the spot, crooked fingers working at it, the heat pooling, evolving into the place with no return.
Her eyes fluttered closed, the pleasure drew them down against her will.
"Look at me, Joey," Pacey growled.
She snapped them back open, and his eyes held hers. His pace had increased in a frenzy, watching her riding her fingers, his own breath stumbling and tripping.
A string of shivers zapped from Joey's neck to her toes and she toppled in the soft cries of his name.
Pacey watched as her muscles tightened around her fingers, glossy in the low light. His belly clenched, and he moaned her name loudly as he came, spilling over his knuckles.
Joey couldn't tear her eyes away, the throbbing hardness in his grasp, all for her.
She scootched forward on the bed. Pacey, weakened by his orgasm, had let his barriers down and she kissed him, hard and unrelenting. He didn't hesitate, his tongue meeting hers, his free hand tangled in her locks.
When they broke apart, he cleaned himself, and Joey straightened her clothes. They rejoined in the middle of the bed, Joey on her back, Pacey above her, looking down at her in the dim light, brushing tendrils of hair behind her ear.
All she could do was stare up at him, grinning with a crooked smile, crushed under the weight of him, crushed under the weight of her feelings for him.
They walked back to Pacey's house from the cafe with more vigor than an hour before, all except for Jack, who had succumbed to the inevitable and vomited in a well-tended garden of peonies.
Pacey and Jack stayed back to offer assistance while the women continued ahead.
"This weekend has felt like one of those moments," said Jen rather wistfully.
"Those moments?" queried Joey.
"You know, moments that seemed like they were only in adolescence. So vivid because you can feel how fleeting they are, even while you're living them."
Joey nodded. It was the perfect summation of her last few weeks here. They were a fever dream, a life so starkly different to the one she had known that she was in constant surprise. "I feel like my whole life, all my senses were at eighty percent. Everything was dulled. But now everything seems so colorful, so real."
"LA was never a place for you," said Jen. "You assimilated, but you were never truly at home."
"How can somewhere I've only spent a handful of days feel so familiar?"
"I don't know. Maybe it's because this is the first place you've lived without Dawson. Here you're allowed to put Joey first, to do what you want to do, to experience things without the lens of Dawson's analysis."
"Why, Jen, why did I stay with him so long?" Joey begged for an answer, for someone to explain how she lost such a monumental chunk of her life.
Jen wrapped her arm around Joey, "because you didn't want to break his heart."
"But by staying, I numbed my own."
"There is nothing wrong with your heart, Joey. It's bruised, a little strung out, but it will recover and it will learn to love, and be loved, properly, again."
"I feel a little better every day," said Joey, picking a white daisy as they walked past a cottage garden. "It's like I'm waking up from a long sleep."
Jen took the daisy from Joey's hands and twirled it between her fingers. "Joey, I think you stayed with Dawson because you needed a constant in your life. With your dad in prison, your mom gone, you only had Bessie, and she was battling her own demons. Dawson was the only person in your life that was predictable. As painful as he might be, with him you knew exactly what to expect. And for a child who grew up without stability, it makes sense that you craved it. So you ignored the fact that it was wrong for so many years because Dawson was your rock until you realized you could be your own rock. And I think that's why you feel so free here, Joey, because it's unpredictable and now you're ready for that. You can make fun of Pacey's Joey 2.0 all you want, but he's not wrong. You're crafting the new version of yourself, the version you deserve, the version that is wholly yours."
Joey had stopped walking halfway through Jen's words, letting them settle before Jen continued.
"So it makes sense that you find comfort in a fake relationship before a real one. A trial run before an actual relationship where you get to test this new version of yourself when the stakes are low. It's the same for Pacey. His heart has been broken, so in a contrived relationship, he can control how much he gets hurt. A fake relationship implies that you will only pretend to get hurt when it ends."
"You sound skeptical," said Joey.
"It doesn't take a Mensa graduate to see that the fake part isn't going so well."
"It's not."
"So the stakes get higher. You need to be wary of Pacey's heart. You're taking your new self for a test-spin, but he's already had a massive crash, and he's still healing."
"You're like a wise old owl," said Joey.
Jen feigned deep offense. "Who are you calling old? You're older than me!"
"You're right, naturally,' Joey acquiesced.
"Of course I am," Jen grinned and tucked the daisy behind Joey's ear.
Joey glowered at the sight before her, scratching at the seatbelt against her chest.
Airports, vile places swarming with people, taxis, luggage, and sadness. A place you say goodbye, a place you leave behind. The frown on Joey's face had been creeping downward all day, awaiting the inevitable.
"You okay?" Pacey had asked, flicking his blinker towards the short-term parking entrance.
Joey tried for a convincing head nod.
She had wanted to drive Jen, but her stomach was still churning and her shaking hands suggested a blood-alcohol level that was still too compromised to safely drive such a distance.
They were running late, on account of Jen's sluggish packing and long goodbyes to Jack and Doug.
"Just drop me off. I'm going to have to attempt some mixed martial arts to get to the front of the TSA line," said Jen, dragging her carry-on out of the passenger seat while Pacey pulled her luggage from the trunk. The whistling of runway takeoffs echoed in staggered intervals.
"Maybe you'll miss the flight?" Joey said with an air of hope.
"I'll just have to buy another ticket, and get on a later plane," replied Jen, pulling up the handle on her suitcase.
Pacey leaned against the car.
"Thanks for the ride, Witter," said Jen.
"My pleasure, Lindley."
"You're a decent guy who looks mean in a gold suit," she extended a finger, "you break her heart, I'll break your face."
Pacey saluted. "I wouldn't dream of it."
Jen hugged him.
Joey grabbed Jen's hand and they walked away from the car and out of Pacey's earshot. "Can't you stay? Sleep with me on Bessie's couch forever?"
"That wouldn't be fair. I think someone else wants you in their bed. "
"Jen!" Joey warned.
"I had an amazing few days, Joey and whaddya know - my stomach flu has cleared up!"
"It must have been the sea air."
Jen said, "Capeside was beautiful and I won't stay away long. "
"Promise?"
"Promise."
"I feel like I can't do this without you," said Joey with a sigh. All the bravado of the first few weeks had evaporated with a familiar friend to lean on.
"You don't need me, Jo. You've got this. All of it."
Joey shook her head. "I'm not sure I do."
"You do, Joey Potter. If the job in Boston is what you want, go get it. If Pacey's what you want, go get him."
Joey nodded. The women hugged.
"Bye," Jen pulled back with a wave, dragging her bag down rows and rows of cars, the wheels vibrating across the asphalt.
Just as Jen was about to enter the skywalk, Pacey shouted, "Lindley!"
It echoed off the parking lot concrete, and she turned.
Pacey took Joey's hand and pulled her toward him. He laced fingers into her hair and kissed her passionately. Jen watched the entire exchange and waited until they parted.
"No longer fake!" He hollered as Joey stared on in shock.
"Wooooohooooo!" Jen yelled back. "Are you going to admit it, Joey Potter?"
Joey laughed as Pacey wrapped his arms around her.
"You were right, Jennifer Lindley!" said Joey.
"I can't hear you!" Jen yelled back.
She cupped her hands around her mouth for maximum effect. "YOU WERE RIGHT, JENNIFER LINDLEY!"
Jen cackled. "No shit!" she yelled back, disappearing down the skywalk.
Pacey was still chuckling into Joey's neck when he said, "Ready to go home?"
Joey nodded.