Career Tip # 6
Use your sick days sparingly. Sick leave is a privilege, not a right. We all know how tempting it is to take a day off work every now and then. But remember, every day you take off costs your employer money. So only use your sick leave when you need it, save your rest days for the weekend.
"Wakey, wakey snow white," Pacey pokes her gently.
Joey's eyes snap open. "I wasn't asleep."
"Liar, you were snoring." He says, swiftly backing away, "the snoring was better than the moaning, the frenzied cries of dream-induced passion."
Joey balls up a scrap of paper and throws it at him. He dodges it.
She looks at the clock.
"It's been ten minutes!"
"Trust me, ten minutes is more than long enough for a sex dream."
Joey had gone to the back office for a quick reprieve from the influx of customers this Saturday night. Somewhere peaceful to scarf down her salad sandwich, and put her head down on the table just for a minute… or ten.
"Blame Bessie, blame my dearest nephew," Joey takes a drink from her water bottle, rubs her eyes.
"Interrupted beauty sleep?"
"Nonexistent beauty sleep."
A month had passed for Screen Play Video's newest coworkers without incident. Customers were attended to promptly, the floors cleaned, the VHS tapes nearly lined. A subtle equilibrium had been reached whereby equal parts banter were combined with actual, bona fide work, thus resulting in a smooth four-to-nine shift. Memories of lipstick moments, and party secrets not forgotten, were accessed silently, and alone.
Joey relished the tranquility offered by her working hours. Compared to the diaper-strewn pandemonium at home with Alexander's recent birth, paid employment seemed like a vacation.
"As much as I'd love to leave you in the land of nod, I'm busting for the bathroom and there is a cavalcade of customers awaiting your exemplary service."
Joey stands, straightening her vest.
"It must be the rain," she glances in the tiny mirror, checking for evidence of drool patches.
"Makes for a good movie night," Pacey replies, exiting for the bathroom.
The rain started earlier in the day. Joey arrived to work under the protection of an umbrella. Pacey arrived beneath his backpack, sodden and held above his head. It continues to hammer on the roof above; the customers enter with dripping umbrellas, trudging slip hazards over the floorboards.
Pacey comes back from the bathroom with a mop, chasing the customer's feet to lessen the carnage. Joey scans videos, listening as the rain gets heavier and heavier.
The crowds dissipate as day turns to night, and the rain doesn't stop.
Soon, customers aren't prepared to traverse the roads. The door chime hasn't sung for over an hour. Outside, the incessant torrent overflows the storm drains, and the street becomes a river.
Pacey's face is plastered against the window, watching the Witter Wagoneer with water lapping its tires.
"It will be fine when it stops raining," Joey reassures him.
"If anything happens to it, I can never return home," he says.
"Stop being dramatic."
"I wish I was." His nose is against the glass, making two fog patches.
"Is it really that bad that if something happens to the car outside your control that you'd be in trouble?"
He nods.
"Big trouble?"
He nods again, forehead against the window. And for a minute, he is eight years old in Joey's front yard, getting scolded by Bessie for throwing rocks, begging her on bended knee, not to confess his sins to his family.
"For a person who usually has so many words, it's funny that talk of your family always silences you."
"Why would I give oxygen to such a topic, you know? Most days, I barely want to enter the front door. The last thing I wanna do is talk about it when I have no interest in living it."
Something hits the top of his head. Then again, and again. Instinctively, he turns to accuse Joey of launching projectiles, but she is diligently ensuring an inch gap between videos. The offending item is wet and continuing. He looks up. It's raining.
Inside.
Dripping from the ceiling.
"Uh oh."
They find a bucket.
And just as that bucket collects the errant drips, another leak forms closer to the computer. They don't have a second bucket, so use a plastic container that once housed Christmas decorations.
Before long, they are fighting multiple fronts. The roof is leaking in numerous places, a percussion of drips into makeshift containers is barely sounding over the roar of the rain outside.
"This isn't good," says Pacey.
He calls Keith to relay their current predicament. Keith would come and help, but his own house is succumbing to the elements. His car is in six inches of water. Can they sort it out?
Pacey mops as the horizontal rain beats against the front door, pushing a stream beneath the half-inch gap.
Not a soul has walked into the store for at least an hour. They keep busy mopping the floors and monitoring overflowing containers. Shoes in the corner, Pacey mops in bare feet, his jeans rolled up his calves.
"Do you think we'll still have a job after this cleanup?" Joey asks, observing the chaos of the store after they'd dragged aisles around to keep the videos from the worst of the water damage.
"The videos are safe, the rest will dry out, eventually," he leans on his mop, wipes his brow before taking a running leap, skidding across the wet floor in a seamless slide. He uses the mop to steady his landing.
"I'm not going to admit how much I wanted to watch you fall on your ass," Joey laughs.
He bows and does it again, this time with more gusto. Near the children's section, he almost loses it, his legs separating, slipping, but recovers.
"I should have been a figure skater."
Joey scoffs. "Shoulda. Woulda. Coulda."
"Okay, show me your moves," he extends the mop to her.
"I have no moves to speak of."
"Chicken," he calls out, wings flapping.
"I don't know about you, but I'm busy being an exemplary employee and saving the store from inundation."
He responds to her refusal with another romp across the room, this time sliding too fast and falling on his backside.
"That was as good as I had expected," she cackles, bent over.
Pacey stands, wiping his wet jeans. He won't be deterred.
Invisible microphone to his lips, he commentates. "Pacey Witter, gold-medalist from Capeside, Mass. going for his qualifying attempt at Floor Sliding. He came from behind to secure third in the World Championships in Tokyo. Can he nail the landing, and do it again?"
When worry isn't creasing his brow, Pacey sparkles, he glitters. His smile is the July sun. He flies across the room again, this time grabbing Joey around the waist, taking her with him for the last few feet of his slide. His rays warm her arms, her insides burn hot.
She doesn't move with his grace, shoes still on her feet, gripping the boards. They stop short of the Westerns.
He collects his microphone. "A dismal effort for Witter. He attempted the Floor Sliding Doubles with his reluctant partner, Josephine Potter, but her Keds slowed them down."
Crouching down, she unties the laces, pulls off her socks.
"'bout time you joined in," he grins, microphone gone.
"I'm blaming you if I get fired."
"Wasn't that my elaborate plan all along?" Eyebrows raised.
"Admit it, you like working with me."
He laughs maniacally. "Never!"
Shaking her head at him, she moves to where he started, considering the terrain, the best angle of attack.
"Okay now, the key is to get low," Pacey instructs. Crouching down, his hands slide across the thin layer of water on the floor. "You need a fast start, good propulsion. Don't let fear win. You'll probably fall over, and I'll probably laugh."
"Who died and made you the master of slide?" She asks, before a running start, traveling across the slick, wobbling her landing.
"Not bad. For an amateur," he teases.
"Alright, smart ass. Who can get further?" Joey lays down a challenge.
The mop handle is their starting grid, backs to the door. The finish line is the Disney display - the first to reach it, wins.
"Ready," he gets low, like a sprint racer.
The rain's song muffles the outside world.
"Set."
Joey doesn't wait for go. She pounces the start line, hits a puddle, flies. Her arms outstretched, crossing the finish line, touching Aladdin's foot.
Pacey yells "cheater!" while chasing behind. He loses his footing, looks for something to keep him steady, grabs Joey, pulling her to the ground with him.
"Ouch!" she calls, punching his side, breaking into laughter on a soggy backside.
"Sorry," his legs are over hers, tangled. "But that's what you get for cheating."
"I won, fair and square."
She could move away. But doesn't.
"Rematch?" He asks, head tilted.
He could move away. But doesn't.
She kicks her barefoot at his, resting ankle against ankle.
The door chimes, Joey jumps up, almost slipping.
It's John Witter, in his uniform, dripping all over the floorboards.
"Dad?" Pacey pushes himself to standing, grabs the mop handle, moving it across the floor diligently.
"You guys alright here?" John looks around at the buckets, at the water.
"We slipped over," Pacey stumbles to explain.
"I heard a few businesses were flooding. I thought I'd better check on you." When he walks, his pants jingle, his gun slaps against his thigh. There is something in his hand, balled up fabric, red.
Joey collects a bucket to empty it outside. John stops her.
"How are you, Joey?"
She nods, "Good, thanks."
"You keeping this one under control?" His thumb aimed at Pacey.
She laughs nervously, "Ha-ha, I try." And escapes out the door to empty the bucket.
"Not sure it's possible if I'm being honest," John steps carefully over the biggest puddles.
"You called Keith?" His eyes are on Pacey. "It's a real mess in here."
"Yeah. He's dealing with his own inundation issues at home. I told him we'd take care of it."
"That's not what it looked like through the window." He picks up a video. Silverado. He turns it over, reading the blurb, or pretending to.
Pacey wrings out the mop.
John puts the video down, waits for Joey to come back inside with the empty bucket. He unravels the fabric in his hand, holds it out.
"I found this in the Wagoneer the other day. Is this yours?"
Joey recognizes her scarf, its tasseled end hanging just off the damp floors. It's her favorite, a thick knit, scarlet red. She was sure it was lost forever.
"Yes, thanks," she reaches out and takes it. "I must have left it in the car a while ago. I looked for it everywhere."
Pacey stops mopping.
"Did Pacey give you a lift home?" he asks.
"He's my trusty ride, especially now with the baby here. Poor Bessie wouldn't be able to come and collect me every day."
John nods. "Anyway, it looks like you two have things under control," he glances out the window. "It seems to be settling down out there."
He strolls toward the door, opens it, but doesn't leave.
"You get Joey home safe now, Pacey."
He closes the door.
"Did that seem a bit weird to you, or was it just me?" Joey asks, watching John walk to the police cruiser through the window.
"You mean my dad, randomly appearing in the middle of a rainstorm to return your scarf from two weeks ago?"
"Yeah."
Pacey sighs. "Yes, it was weird."
"Pacey, your dad knows you drop me home, right?" She deposits the scarf on the counter.
"Sure."
Pacey mops silently. He doesn't slide; he doesn't invite Joey to join him. Back and forth, wringing it out, over and over again, until the clock strikes nine, the water is all gone and the rain becomes a drizzle.
Keith appears, flustered and apologetic, just before they lock the doors. "Sorry guys. What an absolute fucking nightmare tonight has been!" He's wearing jeans that are three sizes too big. Trust in his leather belt is strong.
He surveys for damage, finding the place surprisingly clean considering the weather. Buckets still litter the floor, drips seeping through the drywall.
Pacey points out each leak, and relays the efforts they made to keep everything from inundation.
"Thanks so much, guys, you did a great job," he slaps Pacey on the shoulder. "I wasn't sure about the two of you working together on the same shifts, but it's really worked out well."
"Yeah," Joey snatches a look at Pacey, "It hasn't been too bad."
"You're both coming to my Christmas party next week?"
They nod in time.
"Good. Go home. I'll sort the rest out from here."
They leap across puddles to the Wagoneer, which remained unscathed through the worst of the rain. Pacey starts the car and drives.
He doesn't play their tape.
Joey grips the scarf in her hand, waiting for him to talk, waiting for his memory. But it never comes.
The car comes to a stop in Bessie's driveway. Joey wants to ask him what's wrong, but she's left it too long.
They can work together, they can fight, they can tease and joke and torment. Pacey can delight her with endless memories of her mom, her dad, their shared childhood, but she's scared to scratch at the surface of him, to let her fingers sink into his skin, to see what is underneath. And Pacey isn't ready for that part of himself to be exposed.
"See you tomorrow. Don't forget the calculus test." They were supposed to revise tonight, but the rain stopped them.
"I won't," he forces a smile.
Joey goes inside.
On Monday, Pacey isn't at school. On Tuesday, either. Joey walks to Screen Play, unsure if he will be there to greet her. She pushes open the door, and behind the counter is Gemma.
"Joey! Hi!"
Joey's stomach sinks.
"Hey," she summons a smile that is entirely a lie.
Gemma is an eighteen-year-old mall goth whose father is a pastor at the Lutheran church on Jefferson street. Her nails are black, her hair is bluntly hacked and box-dyed green. She wears a Nirvana t-shirt, not because she likes them, but because it's ironic. A senior at Capeside High, they pass in the halls occasionally and exchange pleasantries at shift changeover on Saturdays.
"It's you and me today. Pacey's sick - allegedly. But we all know that usually means he got a better offer."
Joey reaches for her vest, puts it on. She avoids looking at his vest on the hook.
When Joey doesn't speak, Gemma continues.
"Honestly, I don't understand why Keith puts up with him. He barely does any work. Sure, he's cute and all, but he's unreliable. Why he gets more shifts than me, I'll never know. Keith told me he was going to fire him a few months ago, but maybe he's had a change of heart?"
Joey watches her burgundy-stained lips move, comprehension setting in.
"Fire Pacey?"
There is an edge to her tone that makes Gemma backpedal.
"Well. Yes. But I guess that was a while ago and -"
"And?" Joey is impatient.
"I thought you two hated each other. Isn't that your whole shtick?"
"That may be the case, but he's been working really hard lately. He's making a genuine effort to be on time, and he customers love him."
Gemma shrugs before bending down to refasten the laces of her Doc Martins. "I'm just saying what I heard. Not my decision, anyway. But I can't imagine taking days off work will help his cause."
Joey grabs a stack of returns almost too tall to carry and shuffles into the aisles. She rage-stacks videos to avoid any further discussions on Pacey's impending unemployment and Gemma is more than happy to man the register.
It's busy, making the hours pass swiftly. Gemma chatters incessantly, filling the store with a commentary no one asked for, least of all Joey. She offers monosyllabic replies, if required, but stays mostly quiet.
"I'll be out the back, eating my dinner," Joey excuses herself for a break, with a granola bar in hand at 6.05 pm.
At the table, she unwraps the bar, flicks through a magazine. On page 23, Tom Selleck's mustache has been doodled into long coils, he has devil's horns and a bull ring through his septum in blue Bic ink.
Joey goes to the phone, dials Pacey's number.
It rings. His mom answers.
"Hello?"
Joey hangs up. Pushes the phone away. What would she say? What if Pacey wasn't even there? She didn't want to get him in trouble. Maybe he was ditching school and work? Maybe he really was unwell? Maybe he was with someone?
Finishing her granola bar, she doodles glasses on the cast of Party of Five on page 41. Joey doesn't call Pacey's house again, instead going back to the register, and tells Gemma she can take her break.
She rewinds the returns, works the register, sweeps the dry floors and restocks the popcorn. Pacey's absence wanders the aisles. He throws Tape Ball to her, smiles across the store.
When the shift draws to a close, Joey should call Bodi or Bessie for a ride home. But they are both suffering the kind of exhaustion that only an infant with colic can bring, so she doesn't.
Gemma is picking nail polish off her thumb onto the counter. It floats like black snowflakes.
"Any chance you could give me a ride home?" Joey asks.
She seems to consider it for a moment. "I'm going to my boyfriend's, but I guess I can drop you off on the way."
"Thanks."
Gemma closes the store in the wrong order.
Vests on the hook. Computer off. Main lights off. Display lights on.
It's all wrong .
"That's mine," she points to the only car left on Main street. "It's a '79 Lincoln Continental. It was my uncle's, but he sold it to me cheap."
The car is so long it takes up two spaces. Unsurprisingly, it's black.
"Where do you live?" Gemma asks, pulling out onto the road.
Joey pulls her red scarf tighter. "Turn left here. Then left on Jenkins Road. Right at the end, number 39."
The interior is velvet, not leather. It smells of Royal Pine air freshener that dangles from the mirror. There is no tape player, only AM/FM radio.
It doesn't take long to get to the house. Joey counts to sixty, four times.
"Thanks for the ride." She pulls at the chrome door handle.
"Ignore what I said about Pacey being fired. I'm sure it's all fine now."
Joey gets out, closes the heavy door. The Lincoln rumbles away.
She's left standing in the street, starting at Pacey Witter's house.
The lights are on, muted television light strobes through the curtains.
Joey doesn't knock on the door, opting to go silently through the side gate. Reaching the window she knows to be Pacey's, she raps on the glass twice with a fingernail.
The window is slightly above her eye line, so she can't see inside. Not far away is a rotted stem in a terracotta pot, she drags it over, uses it as a precarious step.
Through the threadbare curtains, she can see inside. Pacey is in his room, on his bed. Legs crossed at the ankles, a novel perched in his lap.
Trying the window, it moves without protest, lifting and making Pacey jump. When he sees Joey's face through the curtains, he shakes his head.
"I thought you only knew how to climb through windows with blonde, blue-eyed boys inside?" Voice hushed, he lifts the window, helping her inside.
"Sometimes I throw a brunette in the mix, just for fun."
She stands in his room, gazing around. It's been a while. The threesome rarely hung at Pacey's house. It was the kind of place they breezed into to collect a pillow and a change of clothes for a sleepover, not the kind to stay and play.
But it's where he lives. Where he sleeps .
"What are you doing here, Jo?"
"You bailed on me! You don't look sick!"
He sighs, "I'm not."
"Then why did you leave me to deal with Gemma?"
Pacey flops down on his bed, blue sheets, unmade. "I dunno. Sometimes we all just need a day off."
"School too?"
"Yes! School too."
"You missed the calculus exam!"
His sarcasm slices. "Oh no, what a truly dreadful turn of events."
Joey is looking at Tape Ball sitting on his side table, a pile of dirty clothes on the floor.
"Look, I'm fine. You really shouldn't be here."
There is a loud crash when the window that Joey just climbed through falls with a bang, making them both jump.
"What was that?" John hollers from the living room.
Pacey's eyes widen. He doesn't speak.
"Answer him!" Joey mouths.
He shakes his head, glances at the closed window, searches the room for an escape.
"What the hell was that noise?" John's voice echoes through paper-thin walls and his chair creaks. Footsteps sound, the staggered kind, peppered with a deep, hacking cough.
They freeze, listening to the steps draw closer to the room.
"Pacey!" The voice booms.
With a firm tug on Joey's arm, Pacey opens the closet, pushes her inside and closes the door. Enveloped in black, smothered by Pacey's shirts drooping from hangars, she balances on a pile of trainers and a GI Joe figurine.
After a few more seconds of darkness and another booming, "Pacey!" The door opens, and Pacey climbs in with her, shutting the door silently.
"What are you do-" Pacey's hand covers her mouth.
The closest is tiny before clothes are even in it. Add clothes, shoes, humans and it's suffocating.
The bedroom door opens, footsteps close.
"Where is Pacey?" John calls out, circling the bed.
"Maybe he went to Dawson's?" His mom replies from her place at the sewing machine, swatches of patchwork between her fingers.
"It's late! He should be home by now."
Pacey's breath falls on Joey's cheek, but his exhalations are uneven, panicked. She grips his arm.
"I don't know dear, go back to the television," she placates him, barely looking up from the hypnotic chain stitch securing the pieces together.
John mumbles an obscenity, wanders Pacey's room once more before exiting, slamming the door closed behind him.
They stay frozen in the cupboard a little longer, until they hear the springs on the recliner squeak, until another Keystone can hisses its opening. The television goes loud.
Pacey bursts out of the closet, goes to the window. Joey is still untangling herself from his shirts.
"Let's go," Pacey gestures to the window, opens it, leaping out in a single jump.
He guides Joey out carefully. She shimmies backward. This time, he silently pulls down the wooden frame until it's closed tight.
With stealth, they walk the side of the Witter house, past the Wagoneer, down the drive, until they're far enough away that Pacey can breathe.
His neighbors have an oak tree, it's bare, twisted branches reaching into the night. Joey presses her back into the trunk.
"What was that?" Joey asks.
Pacey shakes his head.
"Why are we hiding? Why aren't you at work?"
"I told you, okay, I just needed a day off. Can't a guy take a day or two off without an inquisition, without someone arriving through his window?"
"Fine. Then why were we hiding from your dad? Why were you hiding? Why couldn't you just answer him?"
"It's complicated."
"Then uncomplicate it for me."
"My dad doesn't love the idea of us being friends."
"Why?"
He shrugs, taking a step away from her.
"Can we assume it's because of my dad, or a general dislike of me?"
"It's because of your dad. It's not you."
"Guilt by association." Joey shakes her head. "But he understands that we just work together, right?"
His eyes drift downward, to the puddles dotted around them. "Yeah."
"You lied to me. You told me he knew you were driving me home."
Snapping his head back up, he replies. "I gave you a vague affirmative. It was hardly a blatant lie."
"I don't understand why it's such a big deal?"
"Something about you has gotten under his skin. He didn't seem overly bothered when we were young, but since your dad went to jail, something changed. He liked that we fought, that we couldn't stay in each other's presence for more than a few minutes. I'd prefer if he didn't care, I'd prefer him to go back to a vague, disinterested acknowledgment of my friends, of my life. Under his magnifying glass isn't somewhere I like to be."
"Did he have anything to do with my dad's original arrest?" Joey asks. "I don't remember him there in court. I don't remember him being there when they took him away, but I was young, I was upset. I think I've blocked so much of it out."
"I don't know," says Pacey. "He won't talk about it, and I'm not game to push the matter."
"I might ask Bessie. Maybe she can remember something more."
A car pulls down the road, its headlights blind them before disappearing down a driveway.
"So why weren't you at work, or school, really?"
"After I got home, the night of the rain, we had a fight, a big one. My go-to punishment, for both myself and dad, is to skip school. It makes him furious. In a relationship where I have no power, it's the only piece of leverage I can use."
Joey shrinks into her jacket. "So, are you going to listen to him?"
He looks at her, confused.
"Are you going to stay away from me?"
"We just work together, you said so yourself," Pacey fires back.
Joey's face contorts, wounded by her own words.
"Would I be here, checking on you, if we just worked together?" She snaps.
"I guess not." Pacey's breath is white wisps of air. He's only wearing a sweater.
"I mean, I know you and your dad don't always see eye to eye. I guess I didn't realize -"
"You thought you had the patent on parental horrors?"
"It's easy to forget that just because your parents are still together, that it doesn't mean that it's an episode of the Brady bunch."
"I'm not sure there is a television show that accurately describes the nightmare that is the Witter family."
"Sorry I showed up to your house and made it worse."
Pacey shrugs. "That's what work friends are for, right? Dawson would just abide by my absences. He'd assume it wasn't his place, not his problem. So, thanks for coming, for checking on me, for giving a shit. No one's ever done that before."
"Cared?" There is shock in her tone.
He nods.
The neighbor's dog barks at them, once, twice. It's a small white yappy thing with an overbite and an inability to see through its fringe.
Pacey shushes the dog. It doesn't stop.
Joey draws her hands out from the pockets of her coat, pale in the darkness. She reaches out and pulls him into a hug.
At first, Pacey's arms stay at his side, like sacks of flour, stunned from shock. But Joey doesn't pull away. It's not an anomaly or an accident. It's a friend, hugging a friend.
His arms lift.
Pacey hugs her back.
The dog barks.
Beneath his clothes, muscles constrict under her icy fingertips.
The hug lasts long, lazy seconds until the inevitable pullback.
"I'll walk you home," Pacey strolls, a little ahead. Joey follows, catching up beside him, until the barking is a distant yap.
Something brews in Joey's chest. A feeling, an instinct, a swarm of butterflies trying to escape. Whatever it is cannot be named, because she has never felt it before.
The walk is a different route than they're used to. From Screen Play Video to the Potter residence is four turns, left, left, right, then left again to the driveway. But from the Witter to the Potter house, they take a series of shortcuts, between houses, through the playground, until they come to the creek. There they follow its winding path, the ground still soggy from rain.
Somewhere near the playground, Joey gives Pacey her red knitted scarf. He winds it around his neck and over his nose.
Eventually, they reach the Potter house. The lights all on, Alexander's wailing echoes across the water.
"With that sound, I'll give you a pass for a nap at work next week."
Joey looks up at the house and shakes her head.
He motions to the dock, and they wander over to it, sitting on the end, feet dangling into nothingness.
"We didn't share a memory the other night on the drive home," says Joey.
"No."
"Can I share one now?"
He nods.
"We were here, throwing rocks into the creek, skimming stones, seeing who could get the farthest. Dawson kept winning. You got mad, threw rocks at a tree, threw some at the house, broke the bathroom window."
Pacey's face falls into his hands. "Not this story."
"Yes. This story. Bessie was babysitting because my parents were working at the Ice House. She told you off and threatened to tell your parents. You begged her not to, but she didn't listen. The power of babysitting went to her head, and when your dad came by in the police cruiser to pick you up, she told him what you'd done."
"He was mad, but contained, and he walked you to the cruiser. Dawson had gone inside, Bessie too, but I sat in that tree," she points to a cascading willow, naked of leaves. "And I watched."
Pacey's legs stop swinging. He stares straight ahead.
"He slammed you against the car door. He spoke in a tone so low I couldn't hear it, but it scared the hell out of me. He pressed his arm against your throat. You clawed at it to be released."
"Finally, he stopped. Loaded you in the back seat of the police car like a criminal, drove away."
"You suck at memories, Jo."
"I know it's a horrible one, but Pace, I need you to understand that I know what he's like, I've seen it myself. You can talk to me about it."
He opens his palms. "What if I don't want to talk to you about it? What if I don't want to talk to anyone about it?"
"Then you don't have to. Just know that I'm here. When you're ready, if you're ready."
Pacey is quiet for a moment.
"I want to be a teenager who plays Tape Ball, and slides across a wet floor with you, and goes to parties, and does regular teenage things. I don't want to be a teenager who goes home after all these things and has to navigate an alcoholic, abusive father who moonlights for the townsfolk as a 'great man.' It takes the shine off the good things, it taints them."
Joey sighs, reaching out and touching his arm. "It doesn't take the shine off you, Pace."
He shakes his head, and Joey continues. "I don't want to be a teenager with a dead mom and a felon father. But I am one, so maybe, of all people, I understand your desire more than most, to be normal, despite it all."
"So you're saying we're alike?" His head finally raises, blue eyes hopeful.
"As much as it would have pained the Joey of just a few months ago to admit, yes. Pace, you and I are more alike than different."
"We're both devastatingly handsome?" He says beneath raised eyebrows.
Her leg reaches out, kicks his. "Stop covering serious moments with smart-ass comments."
"Smart-ass comments are more fun than discussing my dad."
"Okay. I'll stop talking about it, about him."
"I'd appreciate it."
The creek is a long stretch of still silence, frozen by the cold. Not even the bugs are willing to venture out tonight. Joey rubs her hands together, delves them back into her pockets.
"Do you want to go inside, get warm?" Pacey asks.
Joey shakes her head.
"Do you want to go home?"
Pacey shakes his head.
He shuffles closer to her on the dock until his jean-clad thigh is pressed against hers. Taking off her scarf, he loops one side around her neck, and then the other around his own until they're connected as one by knitted red wool.