She
couldn't believe it. For a wild moment Joey thought she was in a dream—a
nightmare. For a crazy second she thought she was in the wrong house. But no.
It was her house. And it was her den. And it was her husband. The husband she'd
been waiting all day to come home to and finally talk to. The husband she had
missed desperately. The husband she'd made love all night long to a mere three
days ago.
Joey
closed her eyes briefly and opened them again and took in the scene, trying to
remain calm. Her heart pounding madly in her chest, the pain coming in
unbearable waves, Joey blinked rapidly to stop the tears coming to her eyes and
clenched her hands into tense fists.
Stop
it! Joey
warned herself. Think. Think slowly. Be calm. Take in the scene calmly. Be
calm. Calm.
Pacey.
Girl. Sleeping on the couch. Under the goddamn covers. In each other's fucking
arms.
Okay.
Wait. Rewind.
Pacey.
Girl.
Sleeping
on the couch.
Under the goddamn covers.
In each other's fucking
arms.
Joey's first impulse was to
jump on the intertwined couple and rip them apart with her bare hands, starting
with Pacey. She actually started forward to do so, but her eyes fell on a pile
of clothes and a bottle of alcohol. Her second impulse was to smash the almost
empty bottle over Pacey's head and then use the broken jagged edge to slit
first his, then the bitch's throat.
She burst into tears
instead. Feeling weak and stupid for crying, furious and betrayed for the
obvious, Joey turned and stumbled blindly out of the room and out of the house.
Without
really knowing what she was doing, Joey peeled out from in front of her house
and drove like a bat out of hell for three hours straight, no destination in
mind. As soon as she got into the car she stopped crying. Her mind was tortured
by images of Pacey making love to that girl, screwing her brains out, kissing
her and touching her and making her scream with ecstacy the way he did with
her.
Bright
lights announcing vacancy at a motel caught her attention and Joey slammed on
the brakes, did a squealing U-turn, and pulled into the parking lot, stopping
in a parking spot with a screeching halt. She leaped out, and still on
autopilot, still seeing the Pacey and the girl having sex, Joey got herself a
room, and was soon standing in the middle of it.
There,
she came to consciousness. She was in a small motel room with a double bed and
a T.V. and a couch and a table with a couple of chairs flanking it. And her
husband was cheating on her.
And
Joey was furious.
But
moreover, she was heartbroken; and with that emotion taking over anything else,
Joey approached the phone.
Bessie
hung up the phone, a perplexed look on her face. She set the phone back on the
cradle and settled back in the bed, staring at the piece of paper with the
numbers she'd written on it. "What
happened to Joey?" Bodie asked sleepily.
Bessie
looked at him blankly, going over the phone call she just had with her sister.
She sounded calm, too calm; her voice was tight and slow, and Bessie could
detect a slight tremor in it. She calmly told Bessie that she was in a motel in
Long Island, and she gave her the phone and room number. "Don't tell Pacey
okay?" she'd said. "I'll be back. In the morning, tell the girls I'm sorry, and
I'll be home soon."
"What
happened?" Bessie had asked her.
"Don'
wanna talk about it." Joey mumbled.
"Joey,
you know you're my sister and I love you and the girls; but you can't keep
dumping the kids on me and taking off, especially without even giving me an
explan—" The sound of the dial tone resounded in her ear. Exasperated, Bessie
called back, but the phone was busy.
Bessie
looked at her husband. "She's having another crisis," she answered finally,
leaning up and turning off the lamp. "She wouldn't tell me. Go back to sleep.
We'll find out tomorrow."
The
sound of the phone ringing broke the silence in the house. Andrea Leery stirred
in the comfort of her husband's strong arms. They'd made love twice before
falling asleep, and the ringing of the phone was interrupting her deep,
sex-induced sleep.
"I
got it." Dawson's sleepy voice said.
"No,
you rest." Andrea stopped him, kissing his cheek. She turned over on her back
and stretched out an arm to get the phone, glancing at the glowing clock on the
nightstand.
"It's
a quarter to two in the morning, so this better be good." Andrea said with
uncharacteristic irritation. Interrupted sleep could do it to the best of them.
The
voice on the other line was shaky and desperate, "Andrea, can you put Dawson on?
Please?"
"Joey?"
Andrea asked in disbelief. "Joey what's wrong?"
Dawson
sat up beside her and took the phone out of her hands. "Joey?" he asked
urgently. "Are you okay?"
"I-I
. . . I'm sorry Dawson . . . I need you. Please. Come. I'm sorry . . . I'm really
sorry but . . . but Pacey . . ." She paused and Dawson heard her draw a deep,
unsteady breath. "Can you come Dawson? Please?"
"All
right Joey," he said, throwing the covers off and striding naked across the
room to the dresser. "Is anyone hurt? Are you hurt?"
"Not
physically . . . Well, unless you call ripping my heart out and stomping on it
physical pain." Joey said sarcastically. Dawson nodded to himself as he pulled
on a pair of boxers followed by some khaki pants. Good. If Joey retained her
wit, she wasn't over the edge yet.
"Where
are you?" He asked, flicking on the light and searching for a pen and a piece
of paper. Andrea got out of bed and, knowing what he was searching for, helped
him. She handed him a pen from her night table and he located a scrap of paper.
"What
happened? Is Joey okay?" Andrea asked earnestly.
Dawson
was writing on the piece of paper, and he held up a hand to indicate that she
should wait. "All right, I'm coming right now." He hung up the phone.
"No
one is hurt, honey," Dawson assured her. "Pacey just did something incredibly
stupid and Joey needs me."
Andrea
was a little annoyed. She knew that when they were younger, Dawson and Joey
were always there for each other; but he had a family now, and she lived
several hours away. It wasn't like he could just row across the creek to her
house. But she knew that if she said anything to Dawson, he would be angry with
her for her lack of understanding.
"So
what are you going to do?" She asked, watching him throw clothes into a
carrying case.
"I'm
going to go to her. She's holed up in Long Island. I'll call you tomorrow,
okay, honey?" He kissed her. "I love you. Tell Seven I love him and I'll be
back in a couple of days."
He
zipped up the bag and headed for the door. He hesitated. "Is this okay with
you? I mean, you don't mind do you?" He asked, looking anxious to leave but
also anxious not to hurt her feelings.
A
little. Doesn't make a difference because you'd go anyway. "No I don't mind, Dawson.
You're a good friend." Andrea said. Too good of a friend sometimes.
Dawson
walked back over to her and kissed her again, lingeringly. "Thank you for
understanding, Andrea. You are the most wonderful woman in the world."
"Hurry
up, Dawson," Andrea said. "And hurry back to me."
Dawson
nodded and left.
Joey
had left the door open. When Dawson walked in, she was sitting on the edge of
the double bed, staring straight ahead at the wall. "Jo?" He asked carefully,
approaching her. He had gotten to Long Island in record time, easily finding
the motel in Babylon. It was almost six o'clock in the morning and the golden
rays of dawn filtered in through the open vertical blinds covering the windows
that offered a breathtaking view of the parking lot.
Joey
looked up at him, slowly. "I could kill him," she said coolly. "I could blow
his fucking brains out."
Dawson
winced and tried to assess her mood. He eased down on the edge of the bed
beside her. "No you couldn't, Jo."
"Right
now, Dawson," she said evenly, staring him deep in the eyes. "I could do
anything I like. I could easily commit a double homicide without batting an
eyelash, and you," Joey paused and smirked, "you couldn't stop me if you
tried."
"So
why don't you? Go on and do it." Dawson egged, testing her to see if she was
serious. He would find out what Pacey did once he calmed her down, although he
already had a pretty good idea of what it was.
Joey
returned her intent gaze to the wall. After a long, tense moment, she murmured,
"Casey and Aliya."
Dawson
nodded wisely. "So you called me up in the middle of the night to inform me
that you were contemplating murdering two people, one of whom is your husband,
the other remains unknown." He stated.
Again
there was a long silence. Joey stared at the wall and Dawson studied her
profile. She was sitting with her back ramrod straight, her hands folded in her
lap, ankles crossed, her long dark brown hair tucked behind her ears and her
head slightly tilted to the side. Dawson astutely assumed that she'd found out
the Pacey was cheating on her, given the circumstance that she wanted two
people dead instead of just Pacey.
He
could see a tear forming in the corner of her eye, and saw the knuckles of her
linked fingers turn white. "I called you because I'm so angry that I'm going to
spontaneously combust," Joey's strained voice said to the wall. "I called you
because at the same time I feel this inconceivable sense of hurt and betrayal
that's tearing up my insides."
Dawson
frowned, feeling his friend's pain. He reached out and covered her hands with
his own. "I'm glad you called, Jo." He said quietly.
"How
could he, Dawson?" Joey asked the wall, every high school insecurity coming
back to taunt her. "How could he? He was probably glad when I went to
your house," she assumed bitterly, torturing herself, fighting the sting of
tears. "He was probably fucking that bitch to my house and fucked her in my
bed. They probably did the deed all over the place. They were probably just
screwing and laughing at me. That bastard. Jesus, Dawson, how could he?"
She turned to him, burying her face in his shoulder, her pain winning over her
anger as she cried. Dawson wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly.
"I
feel so ugly, Dawson." She sobbed.
"You're
far from it, Jo."
"And
stupid," she continued, not choosing to hear him. "I feel so stupid. I
t-trusted him. I loved him so much. He was my life, Dawson. My everything."
Dawson
listened to her in an angry silence. What the hell was Pacey thinking?
This was the second time Joey cried in his arms because of Pacey, in the same
damn month. Dawson did not appreciate Pacey making her cry.
Gritting
his teeth, Dawson wanted to beat the shit out of him. Instead, he just held
Joey as she cried, making little soothing noises. After a long time, Joey
raised her haunted, beautiful eyes to Dawson's, and she spoke hesitantly. "Do .
. . do you think that . . . we can sleep together?"
Dawson's brows snapped
together in shocked bewilderment. Joey hastened to explain herself. "I mean, I
just . . . I just want to turn back time and . . . I don' know . . . I just
want to go back before any of this happened. Remember? . . . Just you and me
and a movie and your bed . . . I just want to sleep with you."
Dawson stared at her. His
best friend. They'd been through so much together. She was so strong, so brave;
he loved her with an unswerving intensity, and between them was a bond nothing
or no one could break.
"Okay, Jo."