If you know the "Love Bites" segment of DC, imagine "Just Another" by Pete Yorn playing in the background here…
I hope it works!
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Chapter Five
"Pacey's stepping on my toes. Will you take him back, please?"
"It's a conspiracy. New shoes, I think."
"New shoes."
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The last time we danced together, I polished up the old Oxfords like I was expecting a Marine inspection. I put a new sheen on the old, the comfortable, thinking that I could reinvent our relationship. But I pushed too hard; she wasn't ready.
I couldn't allow myself to see that.
Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, I realize now that I didn't want to see it—her distress, I mean. After two years of denying the history between us, we were finally back in sync. There was the beginnings of an "us" again. I know we both sensed that. And…
She looked so beautiful in that pale yellow dress. So beautiful—a vision of light. To pry my eyes away from her would have been sacrilege. Not that that was a new development, but what I was feeling seemed brand new. More precisely, born again… mature…real.
I took her arm in mine, happy and hardy, and we walked into that auditorium on such a cloud of euphoric expectations. The blissful, slightly dissonant chatter going on inside my head could not be silenced. This was our second chance dance!
I failed to recognize how formal she'd suddenly become, how tense. We bantered, seemingly like we always did except that—and here's that hindsight again—I was extending the frivolity and she was being blatantly honest; she was scared.
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"Harley, you're not the first woman in the history of semi-formals to accompany a non-dancing date," she said, confiding admonishment. "Mr. Witter over here was famously uncooperative when it came to the booty shake.""Hey, I danced," he protested good-naturedly.
"Under duress! And he broke up with me at our senior prom, so we never had the chance to dance at our own prom."
"Okay. Dirty laundry, Jo. Let it go," he said. He silently chastised himself for being a bit too curt as well as a bit too quick.
"Had to be said," she retorted, feeling the knife twist ever so slightly.
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I was a dumbass. Why didn't I see that I was excited about our reunion for much the same reason that she was terrified? I wanted to mend an old wound while she was still healing.
I thought that the pain that we'd mutually inflicted on each other had magically disappeared, but she simply figured out how to bury it even deeper. When I finally took time to listen, I realized that 'forlorn' was still in her present. I couldn't push her and make it right. The only thing left to do was to leave.
Yeah, well.
Leaving her never made anything right. Halfway down the block, my Sad Sack heart intervened, telling me I owed her more than that melodramatic departure. I should offer her a happier ending, unlike the unfinished one left precariously dangling there two years before. I refused to repeat mistakes of the past and play ping pong with her heart. I needed to let her know that I still cared, still loved her—I would always love her. I would never hold it against her that she couldn't go through with it.
So I went back and asked her to dance.
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The music had already begun and there we were again: stuck in a groove etched into memory two heartbeats ago. How did hope die so quickly? That seemed one of the great mysteries of life I might never be privy to. All I knew is that I was holding her in my arms one last time…
Our imperfect song of commiseration ended and I placed my hands around hers, joined one on top of the other, reconnecting that inner circle of sanctity and well-being. I walked away without looking back—physically, that is; mentally, the refrain continued. All I could think of was that history would again prove my brother Doug right: there was no way in hell I could leave that woman and not see her face everywhere I turned.
Doug was right…
That millennium summer I tried running away, I saw her face in every starlit night…in every sail as it unfurled…on the edges of waves as we came into port…and every goddamn time I closed my eyes. I was taunted by hazy images of her laying next to me as the early morning light tumbled down the stairs below deck…the warm, sweet sensation of her asleep in my arms.
Our first two ports of call, I was afraid to go into town, convinced there would be more visions of her or, worse, someone who looked like her. Walking down the street…sipping on a Diet Coke…tucked away in the loneliest corner of a restaurant. She haunted every waking and sleeping breath. That is, until the obvious dawned on me: that there was no one exactly like her.
It was Joey Potter who was the anomaly in my life.
After awhile, I began to relax as I allowed myself a measure of forgiveness, and I began to look forward to seeing that luminescent face—because it tormented me less. As days ran into nights and then weeks, I persuaded myself that she'd forgiven me, in her way. She might not be able to say it, but she would understand that we were both too young and immature to shoulder the pain of separate futures; our disastrous end had been fated.
I wrote her a letter but I never heard back from her. I had to see her again.
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Within a week of arriving in Boston, my buddy Jen—dear Jen—had tracked me down to Dean Kubelik's boat slip in the Commonwealth Marina. Though protesting mild irritation, I was actually happy to see her and get a full report on the Minuteman gang. She made sure I knew exactly what Joey had been up to over the summer (working non-stop, of course) and what dorm she was staying in on the Worthington campus.
I had to see for myself that Jo was okay. An hour after arriving on campus, I saw her jogging across the commons, then pop into a coffee shop. That brief appearance put a smile on my face for the next week. I was content knowing that I had been right, she was thriving in this new environment.
Without me.
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She was never "just another" anything…
Learning how to survive on our own had always been a common thread between us. A reality that settled on us before we even crossed the teen threshold.
"Pacey, when you learn to flip this here hotcake, people will wonder how they evah made it without you," Bessie's new boyfriend informed me as he skillfully and methodically tackled the breakfast rush at The Ice House.
"Sure, Bodi, sure."
"No, I mean it. You think yah gettin' off easy, hiding out from truant officers here, but I'm gonna teach ya what it really means to take pride in somethin' and do it well."
"Okay."
"And after that you have to promise me something."
"I…I…What do you mean, exactly?"
"Joey's mother had a really bad night. I think Joey's probably upset…but I haven't had a chance to talk to her because I had to set up for breakfast. Will ya check in on her for me?"
"I guess so…"
"She could use a hug right now, Pace."
I remember looking up. That was the first time anyone had ever treated me like an adult. "About the hugging part…"
"Do what ya can, 'K?"
His challenge inspired another first in Witter family history: Pacey J. Witter actually sneaking back into school. I found Joey in the back stacks of the library, pretending to read but not turning pages. The dark circles under her eyes had deepened; her hair, normally loosely pulled back into a ponytail, hid her face from view. Sitting down on the floor next to her, I could feel her turmoil reverberating between us.
"Hey, Jo, what language are you going to take next year: Spanish, German or French?"
"What?" she said, obviously perturbed.
"I just wondered."
"Well, I've been taking Spanish on and off since the 4th grade so, being a pragmatist," she snarked—despair hadn't diminished her ability to throw those verbal zingers, "I guess it's going to be Spanish."
"Not the language of love?" I asked, pretending to be disappointed.
"Why would I waste my time?"
"Okay then, what will you do when you go to study at the Sorbonne?" Joey didn't answer but stared dreamily off into space. "I guess you could use hand signals…"
Suddenly, the slightest of smiles lit her face and I took the opportunity to kiss her on the cheek.
"What the…"
"That was from Bodi," I explained quite naturally, quickly rebounding from the brief display of unmanly emotion.
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But then I never really needed much of an excuse to kiss her—stopping was the hard part. Stopping when all I wanted to do was reassure her, ravish her…make love to her on the dock without a care in the world.
Make love, not war. Detonate this unearthly silence between us, a self-imposed deténte fostered by a young man's escalating and irrational fear of divergent paths.
But we didn't make love.
Instead, we sat on that dock, once the path to freedom, and held hands, silently reassuring each other. We were unsparingly objective, if that was possible. This parting of lovers held out little hope for a continued future. Inevitability had become our harsh truth. While both of us fought against it, even those meager struggles had been strangely out of whack; we thought we didn't deserve any better.
Good fortune smiled elsewhere.
She clasped my hand in hers—it was so damn hard to let go! We couldn't even speak. We just watched the town wake up as a part of us died. Gradually, our breathing became calmer and she raised my hand to her lips, kissed it, and we both summoned up the courage to let go.
A killer ending to beat any pseudo-romanticschmaltz.
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I let her walk away…
I kicked another rock down the street as I called forth a happier memory: Joey kissing my hand and pulling both of us into the water. An incredible moonlit night with the warm Atlantic shimmering all around us.
She splashed iridescent water and challenged me to race her to the beach. The Carolinas have beautiful stretches of secluded beach and this was certainly one of them. I tried to grab her leg, hoping to disarm her by pulling her under, but she was too wily for me. She kicked and screamed her way on to solid ground.
If I didn't know better, I might have suspected that she purposely let me win—because my "prize" was a seductive dance on the beach. Joey moving her hips in time with music faraway as she gracefully waved around imaginary scarves. Teasingly, playfully.
She was unbearably sexy, and I was in heaven. I caught her hand and pulled her down to the blanket.
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It was time for another change of Pace.
It's been five indeterminable years since that heartbreaking dance of regret at the Milton semi-formal. Time enough for wounds to heal, scars to fade, and the only memories remaining to be about the best of times.
"May I have this dance, Ms. Potter?"
"Of course, Mr. Witter."
Fittingly, it was in Dawson Leery's backyard that we've found a way to begin our dance again.
We haven't seen each other for months—excluding a ruckus evening the night before—evenso, it seemed perfectly natural to retrieve her from her solitary stance at Gale & Richard's wedding celebration. Okay, I couldn't resist making that connection again. There aren't many opportunities a man has to take Joey Potter into his arms and I wasn't going to torpedo this one.
Mrs. Maddie Allen almost did that for me with her appearance just off the elevated confines of the dance floor. Hesitance turned into inspiration as I implored Joey for help and then ensnared her lips, executing a familiar kiss and dip maneuver. I felt like John Travolta V.1. It was electrifyin'.
I've made her think that the kiss didn't matter, but of course it did—it does—and it's taken everything in me to affect some nonchalance about it. I know she's living with someone. In fact, I have to admit that she seems happy. But I caught a glimpse of something unexpected. Was that contentment or longing that I witnessed reflected back in her eyes?
Je ne sais quoi.
Those eyes will be the death of me yet. Suddenly, I'm as confused as she apparently is.
Could it be?
Dare I hope?
The only thing I know for certain was that we're both wearing new shoes.
And…
I remember the eerie prognostications of a carnival psychic. The Magic 8 ball said: "Signs point to Yes."
