THE FIRST TIME
CHAPTER EIGHT - HUNGRY HEART
"Everybody needs a place to rest, everybody wants to have a home.
Don´t make no difference what nobody says, ain´t nobody like to be alone.
Everybody´s got a hungry heart, everybody´s got a hungry heart.
Lay down your money and you play your part, everybody´s got a hu, hu, hungry heart!"
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN (From the album "The River" (1980))
If there was one thing Dawson had been afraid of prior to his study-date with Mary-Beth, it was that his dad would make a big deal out of him having a girl over, who wasn´t living across the street or was named Joey. According to Murphy´s law then, it almost went without saying, that that´s exactly what he did!
"So, tell me about this girl, you´re having over and means so much to you, that you had me buy you chips and soda for the occasion. Is she cute?" his dad had asked him, while they were cleaning up after dinner and a short while before his "date" for the evening would be arriving.
"She´s just Mary-Beth. There´s really nothing remarkable about her, except that she´s better at chemistry than me and that´s why I asked her to tutor me" Dawson answered in a tone that he hoped did enough to imply, that this wasn´t a subject he was up for having any kind of major father/son talk over.
"Dawson, I ´m not so old that I don´t remember why half of the guys, who asked girls to tutor them back in high school, actually asked them. So ...?"
"She is kind of pretty, in her own very understated way. Did you know anyone, who was always there for most of the time, while you were growing up, you just never really noticed them being there?"
"Probably, yes. It´s most likely also why I don´t remember, what their names were" his dad admitted with a small chuckle.
"That´s been my relationship with her so far in a nutshell. I mean, she´s nice and it isn´t like we haven´t always been friendly with each other, I´ve just never thought of her as being more than, well ... Mary-Beth! Then again, with the slim pickings among girls my age here that I could possibly, in some way see myself dating, apart from the two you know, she is one of the few, I can´t remember ever having anything against. Maybe that should be enough for me" Dawson gave as the best answer he could, while they finished filling up the washing machine and afterwards got it´s cleaning cycle started.
"Either way, it´s nice for me to see you making new friends. I didn´t want to say anything before this, but I think, it could be good for you to branch outside of your usual social circle. I´m positive that your mom thinks so as well" his dad told him with a smile, that more annoyed Dawson a little, than how it was intended to come off.
"What´s that supposed to mean?"
"Only that now where it looks like Pacey and Joey´s relationship is turning into something more serious, at least as far as teenage relationships go, they´ll want to spent more time alone together and you´ll have no choice, except to be fine with it. We just don´t want you to become lonely, that´s all" his dad shared with him, before padding him on the shoulder.
Pacey was having the one thing, he for once in a rare while didn´t wish he´d had: A quiet evening at "Screen Time". His hope had been that with a steady run of customers, he would only have to check in with Abby in between himself having to work. That way he could say that he´d done, what he agreed to and didn´t run too much of a risk of himself saying anything, that could be considered flirty by her, in case that Dawson was right and she actually did have a crush on himself.
Unfortunately for him, they now had competition in the form of the re-opening of an old video store in the next town over, that had been turned into a brand-new Blockbuster and been advertising opening week prizes, that their own little privately run store couldn´t compete with. Probably for that reason alone, it had been an insanely slow afternoon, that from his experience from working there for practically all of the past year, also looked like it would be followed by an even slower evening, when Abby arrived, ready for him to keep her entertained.
It wasn´t as if he hadn´t begun to have protective feelings for the poor, unfortunate girl, after he´d begun to find out what life was like for her and gotten a small taste of what she was really like, behind her multiple layers of emotional armor. He liked to think that when she was alone with himself or Jen, that would be her chance to just relax and be herself and hopefully, little things like that would help her to cope with the rest of her sometimes-miserable life in Capeside. If he could, then it almost goes without saying that he would do more for her, but the one place he had to draw the line, was at anything romantic happening. He had Joey now, who was keeping him more than satisfied (although he was still somewhat in the dark, when it came to if she regretted what they´d done in the storeroom) and the thought alone, that he would end up doing anything, even by pure accident, to hurt that incredible girl, had sometimes been enough to make him feel physically ill.
"Just to do something rebellious tonight, let´s try watching a movie from the international film section" Abby suggested.
"As in "with subtitles"? I don´t know ..." he said in an annoyed tone, trying to get out of it.
"With as little reading as you do, when it comes to school, doing some reading on the job won´t hurt you! Who knows? Miracles might happen and you´ll find yourself feeling more sophisticated, when we´re done watching it! Granted, it wouldn´t take much, but it could be a good start for you!" she playfully taunted him and seeing as it would at least make it a tiny bit of a different workday, he (more or less) agreed to it.
"Nothing weird with a ton of symbolism! I´m a red-blooded, meat and potatoes American! I need my stories to be more or less simple, so I can understand all of the time, what´s going on!" he told her, laying down the rules. Moments later, they were going over a small section of movies, that were rarely rented out and when they were, it was usually to the kind of customers that Pacey could imagine liked to have a bit of "Herbal Refreshment", to go along with their movie watching (and he wasn´t thinking about tea!).
"No action movies and I want a movie with plenty of romance in it" she said, which cut around half of them, including most of the ones he had his eyes on, out of the running.
"No low budget stuff either. I´ve gotten enough of watching those, from having had to sit through Dawson´s movie with him, far more times that I would have wanted to!" he stated, which cut them down to a lean twenty or somewhere there about.
"It´s a shame, we don´t have that movie here!" Abby exclaimed to a wide headshake from himself.
"No, it isn´t!" he told her back instantly and unequivocally. "Okay, what about this one?" he suggested, while holding up the cover for the Luc Besson movie "Taxi".
"I said, no action movies! They always get me too hyped up, if I watch them too close to my bedtime and then, I can´t fall asleep afterwards. All I want is a movie with a cute love story, I can get invested in, without having to think too hard to follow it, some teenage characters that I can relate to ..." she stopped, after she´d set her eyes on a title on the display case. She picked it up and read what it said on the back, before presenting it as her next suggestion.
"What do you say to a movie about Swedish teen lesbians? You can´t tell me that as a boy smack-dab in the middle of the "24/7 Horny Age", that doesn´t pique your interest!" she asked, while holding up the cover for a movie called "Show Me Love", that they´d gotten in half a year earlier or so. He could only remember renting it out once and it was to some guy, that from the looks him, Pacey suspected wouldn´t be watching it for its story, as much as for the chance to see the two pretty teenage girls on the front cover, playing an intense game of tonsil hockey with one another.
Being that it was the best suggestion, they´d had so far and seeing as there was a side to him, that had long suspected that his brother was gay, he figured that perhaps it could help to broaden his horizon, when it came to same sex relationships. That and as a heterosexual fifteen-year-old boy, seeing those two cute girls on the cover making out was something, he just had to see for himself, now that the thought had already been put into his head!
Mary-Beth was already nervous enough without anything embarrassing happening on top of it and all she wanted was to carry herself with a little bit of grace, not to make a fool of herself and perhaps even, get a second study date out of it. Those plans already went out the window less than a minute after she´d walked through their front door, when she stumbled on her way up the stairs to his room and it send the notes that she´d brought, flying all over the place. He´d been very sweet in helping her with picking them up and hadn´t mentioned it again afterwards, but another downside was that her notes were now completely out of order and after she´d spent far too long looking through them for the first half hour, she had to concede that there was nothing to do, except to wing it for the rest of the evening. It had gone fine for the most part and she´d managed to avoid them having too many awkward silences, although she wasn´t sure that she hadn´t said something a time or two, that wasn´t blatantly wrong and presented it to him as fact.
So, she´d stumbled and not really been all that great of a tutor, but at least the bad part was over now and she could begin to try to enjoy herself. Or so, she thought.
Dawson spent the first half of his evening, not being entirely sure that someone wasn´t pranking him or had him on hidden camera. Because never in his life, had he ever met anyone or for that matter, thought that he would meet anyone, who was as clumsy as Mary-Beth! She´d started off by taking a nose-dive right into the stairs, the first one ever to do so, and from there on, it had only gotten worse. She´d spilled chips all over his bed more than once, spilled soda on her pants so many times that he´d lost count (seriously, had this girl somehow not learned after all of those years, how to drink from a glass?) and he was pretty sure that some of the things, she´d said, had been out and out false.
Why then, was he slowly starting to find it endearing, when it would have annoyed the heck out of him, if it had been Pacey or Joey, who´d turned his bed into a mess of crumbs and soda stains? Little by little, he found himself smiling more at her and in return, she smiled back at him in that adorably shy way of hers, that practically screamed out how innocent, she was. When she spoke, it was in this soft and feminine way, that was like an opposite to Joey, who had basically always talked like a boy would and still also different from Jen, whom he would place somewhere in the middle of that specter. In a strange way he kind of liked how it set her apart from them and the way she looked at him, like this study date was the most important thing, that had ever happened to her and like she really cared about everything, he had to say. A stark contrast to Jen, whom he could swear would tend to zone out, when they talked and unlike how it was with Joey, with whom it felt like he´d already debated every possible topic at least twice, with Mary-Beth, it was like he was starting completely fresh with a girl (their one "date", if you could actually call it that, excluded).
Maybe, he began thinking to himself, getting this one bad grade wouldn´t turn out to be such a terrible thing after all?
Pacey hadn´t expected to get more out of watching the movie than seeing a pair of girls kiss, but he (to his own surprise) found himself liking it a whole lot and almost as much, as Abby looked like she was. All things considered though, it wasn´t that hard for him to see why it would hit home with her, since one of the girls in the movie practically could have been modelled after her. The town it was set in reminded him a great deal of Capeside as well.
"That was exactly the movie, I needed to watch tonight!" Abby exclaimed, as some very girly pop song played over the closing credits.
"You´re not the homophobic type then, I take it?" he asked her, while already knowing the answer and he couldn´t help from himself from smiling a little at how cheerful, she looked.
"Anyone who is, is blasted in the brain, if you ask me! Girl/boy, boy/boy, girl/girl, who cares? As long as it´s consensual and no one is getting hurt, who are some narrow-minded bible pushers to say what´s right and what isn´t?" she told him and they clearly had similar points of view on the whole thing. From what he knew, he´d only ever seen one gay couple before in real life, a pair of clearly well-to-do twenty-something guys from Boston, that he´d seen around town lots of times and been told by Doug, come up to their neck of the woods once in a while for a quiet weekend getaway from the hustle and bustle of the big city (and to the delight of some of the locals, spend more than plenty while they were there). Of course, he had in all likelihood talked to several of them, without knowing it and honestly, he didn´t give a rat´s behind in any case. The way he saw it, who they fell in love with was only their business and for that sole reason, none of his.
"Could you ever see yourself kissing a guy?" she asked him.
"No!"
"Not even DiCaprio?"
"Not even Dicaprio! What about you? Would you kiss someone like ... that black haired girl from "Roswell"?"
"If I was paid enough ..."
"Without getting paid. Just for the thrill of kissing a girl like that".
"Would you?"
"We´re only talking about you here. Would you kiss her?" he asked again and the fact alone, that she had to take so long to think about it, told him what the real answer probably was.
"I wouldn´t. For one thing, I´ve never met her and she could be a total bitch, for all I know!"
"A-ha! So, you would kiss another girl, if you were friends with her first? Is that what I´m hearing?"
"Theoretically, yes. I would be willing to try it, if we were really good friends first and I knew for a fact that I could trust her, not to use it against me. Unfortunately, I have to take into account that we live in a small-minded town, full of those narrow-minded bible pushers, I mentioned before. Seeing as I´m having less success with the boys, than a normal house cat would have in an otherwise "Sharks Only Fish-Catching Competition", I may as well consider switching sides" she conceded with herself.
It´s always hard to say in the time after, which small moments are those, that change someone´s life. All Pacey knew was that after this evening, he never felt like he had any reason to be afraid of Abby having a crush on him anymore.
Mary-Beth felt like she could die of embarrassment, by the time their study date started to draw to a close. She would admit to sometimes being a little bit of a klutz, but it was like all of the little accidents she would usually have in year, had somehow been compiled into this one evening! Whenever one had happened, she would keep telling herself that this had to be the last one, but the mishaps just kept coming and she didn´t know how to stop them! To be truthful, she was surprised that he hadn´t gotten angry with her at all and every time been extremely patient with her. In that way, he´d actually been very sweet and shown her, that he was just like she´d imagined him to be: a sensitive artist, who treated girls gently and with respect. Or to put it another way, exactly what she´d been hoping to find in her first boyfriend.
What hope did she have though, that he would want to have her over again, after the walking disaster, she´d been all evening? It was therefore with little hope of her getting a third chance with him, that she stood waiting for him to open the door for her and let her probably leave his life forever.
"So, I guess, I´ll see you at school" she said, trying to not sound too disappointed in herself.
"You don´t want to schedule or next study session now? If this whole you tutoring me is going to be a regular thing, it would be nice, if I could plan for it" he (to her enormous surprise) asked her, which also had the unusual side effect of making her having to fight the urge not to throw her fists in the air in celebration, Bender in "The Breakfast Club" style, right then and there!
"Yeah, sure. Look, I want you to know that I´m not usually as clumsy, as I was tonight. It´s just that I was kind of nervous, since this was the first time, I´d tried something like this. I promise that next time, you´ll see a one hundred percent more accident-free version of me!" she confessed to him and hearing that he was able to laugh at it, in what was a new experience for her, made herself do the same.
"I´ll take your word for it. How does this Friday sound?" he asked and seeing as Mary-Beth rarely had anything of matter on her social calendar, she didn´t need to think too hard about it.
"That´s cool with me. Although, it wouldn´t feel right for me to take your money. I´m pretty sure that I stated some facts to you tonight, that were just plain ..."
"Wrong? Yeah, I picked up on it a few times! How about this, then? Instead of us calling it you tutoring me, we´ll just say that we´ve become study buddies?" he suggested and she could easily admit to liking that idea a whole lot better. Plus, with how much of a gentleman Dawson had been towards her all evening, in spite of everything that had happened, how could she say no?
"That´s fine with me. Friday it is, then! I should go outside and wait for my dad, I´m sure he´ll be here real soon" she got out nervously, as she waved goodbye to him and headed out the door to wait for her dad to arrive and take her home.
Over the following days, the two of them began talking more at school and as an added bonus, Mary-Beth found that being accepted by his friends was far easier, than she´d imagined it would be. It only took a few days, for them to start treating her like she´d been a part of their tightly-knit "Group of Outcasts" for ages already. By the time Dawson and Mary-Beth reached Friday, their "study date" had turned into dinner at the Ice House followed by them going to see the most romantic movie, they had playing at The Rialto that evening. To no one´s surprise by that point, least of all her and Dawson´s friends, the last thing they thought about that evening was studying.
END OF CHAPTER EIGHT