THE FIRST TIME
CHAPTER NINETEEN - HONESTY
"Honesty is such a lonely word
Everyone is so untrue
Honesty is hardly ever heard
And mostly what I need from you"
BILLY JOEL (From the album "52nd Street" (1978))
Following the talent portion and while they were waiting for the judges to make up their minds, as if it hadn´t been made up for them already, Joey had a long overdue talk with Melissa in a private backroom.
"I never gave a moment of thought to how my dad´s arrest impacted you. Why didn´t you tell me?" Joey asked Melissa, who looked relieved to finally get to tell her side of the story to the one, she most wanted to tell it to.
"I knew that you were feeling horrible enough over everything that was happening to you, as it was. I didn´t want you to feel guilty on top of that, over whatever part, you´d invertedly played in my small problems, compared to yours".
"They didn´t sound like they were small. I guess, I never gave you a chance to explain yourself, before I kind of exploded on you, did I?"
"Let´s just say that it was bad, Joey. So bad, that it isn´t something, I ever want to think about again".
"Me neither" Joey answered and they smiled shyly at each other in agreement.
"I know what I did is a lot to forgive and I´m still not sure that I deserve your forgiveness, but is there a chance you think, that we could become friends again?" Melissa asked so sweetly, that Joey would have felt like bitch of the year, if she´d refused her.
"Yeah, I guess so. Two years is long enough to carry around a grudge" Joey told a glad looking Melissa and in doing so, felt a whole body´s worth of relief too herself, in the process.
They could have continued their conversation for a lot longer, but the announcement of the winner meant that they had to get back on stage in a hurry, if only to be there to fulfill the obligations, they´d already agreed to and to crown the most expected winner since last year´s "Miss Windjammer" contest, that was also won by ... you guessed it, Hannah Von Wenning!
If was therefore with a very slim hope of earning more than one of the consolation prizes (a coupon for a free medium soda, if you bought a pizza at "Pizza by the Pier", by far the worst place to get a pizza not only in Capeside, but quite possibly the entire state), that Joey and Melissa lined up with the other contestants. It wasn´t announced in what order they´d finished outside of the top three (if they had, then Melissa would have probably been the best guess for last place!) and after the daughter of the third richest man in town was given 3rd place, in spite of giving the absolute worst answer she could have in the Q&A section and showing no sign of any kind of talent whatsoever in the talent portion, there was little hope for Joey that she would come away from this day with more than a story to tell, that when she became an adult someday would be practically impossible to get anyone, that hadn´t known her at this time of her life, to believe in.
It was therefore to her uttermost surprise, when the host of the contest announced:
"Finishing in second place ... Josephine Potter!"
She hadn´t expected it to happen and with how political this whole contest was to begin with, it wouldn´t have surprised her either, if they´d chosen her just to get off a tiny bit of the stench of nepotism and give some "Hope" to the daughters of those, who by working for them kept making the leading families of the Yacht Club richer with every passing day. Still, it filled her with a sense of pride and in comparison, to the shattered claps of courtesy that her rival in third place had received, hearing that crowd applaud her like she´d just announced the cure for Cancer, actually gave her the kind of confidence boost that Jen had been telling her about, yet she´d never really believed that something as phony as a contest like this could provide her. It was lucky for her that she didn´t have to give a speech, because if she had been asked to give one, she would in all likelihood have been completely tongue-tied in that moment.
Who took first place was no surprise, with Hannah taking home the easiest win of all time. As little as Joey wanted to admit it (since the two of them weren´t exactly what you could call friends, back when they were kids growing up together), she probably deserved to win too, for looking like the only pro at this, in a contest where she´d been surrounded by a bunch of merry amateurs, none of whom ever had any realistic chance of being anywhere close to in Hannah´s league to begin with. Had it been a fair contest, Joey was almost certain that the girl who had been the first to come up with the teasing nickname "A Boy Named Joseph" for her (a nickname that she´d hated hearing, every single time she was called it), would have won by a landslide either way.
That could have been it for the surprises in this day in Joey´s life and she would have more than gladly have settled for this much or even less than it, when she´d woken up all nervous that same morning. In a day that had already been full of pleasant surprises however, there was still one last surprise to come. One, that she never would have imagined could have happened. It came after Hannah was done thanking the judges and declaring her love for the town, she hadn´t lived in since she was nine and had to be considered highly unlikely to ever live in for more than a few days at a time, again.
"The only thing is, it doesn´t feel right for me to take this check for five thousand dollars, when there´s someone up here, who deserves it more than I do and to whom, I can guess that this money will make a much bigger difference, than it would to me. That contestant is Joey Potter" Hannah declared and if Joey had been on level of surprised called "speechless" before then, she could best be described as being completely dumbstruck by what was going on now!
Pacey, of course, had wanted to jump up on the stage and give his girlfriend a hug and a kiss, the moment after she´d essentially won the contest (she did end up being the girl, who was leaving with the prize money, after all), but seeing as the backstage area was still off limits to him, he waited outside of the back door for her, in the fifty/fifty hope that he´d chosen correctly. A positive sign was when he saw several other contestants leaving through there, most of whom barely gave him a passing glance. The first who did, unsurprisingly, was his old frenemy from grade school, one Hannah Von Wenning.
"If it isn´t Pacey Witter? Still not a hit with the ladies, I see?" Hannah asked half tauntingly/half teasingly.
"Whereas I´m guessing, that there are plenty of high paid shrinks up in the Connecticut area, who have you to thank for having driven your share of boys crazy already?" he fired back and within moments, it almost felt like they were back to being a pair of far too big-mouthed kids on the playground again.
"it´s better than not getting any, isn´t it? If my first-hand assumption, when I saw you again among the crowd tonight is correct, it should be a topic that a guy like you would know all about!"
"If you´re by those remarks implying that I´m still single, I hate to disappoint a vile piece of devil spawn like yourself! No, wait! I don´t!" he joked and it got a nice little laugh in response from Hannah.
"I´m just playing with you, Pacey! I saw you and "Little Miss Rags to Riches", Joey Potter, sucking face like there was no tomorrow before the contest began. What happened there? Back when I knew you two, you were trying to put gum in her hair half of the time and she was far more likely to give you a black eye, than a big old smooch on the lips!"
"We grew up".
"That´s the most boring answer, you can give! You can at least tell me, how long this has been going on between you guys?"
"Long enough, that you can´t call it new anymore. Speaking of my girlfriend, you can´t tell me that wasn´t some kind of publicity stunt, you handing her the winner´s check like that?" he had to ask, even if the answer was already pretty obvious.
"My dad called it "By far the cheapest way to earn that kind of goodwill from those gullible suckers" His words, not mine".
"What about you? Was this a favor from a daughter to her parents or a paid gig for you?"
"Wouldn´t you like to know? So, what do you think the light of your life with spend all of that dough on?" Hannah asked, without a trace in her voice of her giving a damn about the answer.
"Why do you care?"
"I´m just curious! I´ve never tried what it´s like to be poor, remember? How would I know what a poor person would spend that kind of money on?" she joked, albeit not entirely.
"She has a trip abroad coming up soon. I´m sure, it´ll come in handy as spending money" he told her and it looked to him, like Hannah liked that answer.
"How nice for her. Tell her from me to have a safe trip and please, for the love of God, to throw that make-over coupon for "Betty´s Hair Barn" into the trash, where it belongs! I still remember vividly and not in any kind of a positive way, how they made up my mom to look at that place and that was all the way back in the 80´s! Trust me on this, it isn´t a look, you would want your girlfriend to have, if you´re planning on keeping her and not being ridiculed behind you back!" she quipped and they smiled slightly, as if in a show of respect for old times' sake, at each other.
"So, is this it for you and Capeside for this year, as per your usual yearly schedule?" he inquired, as a way to send a small barb back Hannah´s way too, after all of the ones, she´d thrown his.
"Show Joey a fantastic time tonight, Pacey. Now that she´s had to put up with you as her boyfriend, I´m positive that if anyone more than deserves it, it has to be her! You´ll be seeing me again, before you know it" Hannah mysteriously told him in passing, before walking over to and getting into the very expensive looking and chauffeured car, that awaited her.
Joey, exactly like Jen had hoped, was glowing with a glorious mix of pride and joy, after she´d figuratively ended up having her cake and eating it too, on an evening that she was unlikely to forget for a long time to come, if ever.
"I told you!" Jen teasingly said, while enjoying the sight of the enormous smile on her friends´ face.
"I didn´t really win!" Joey responded, in yet another one of her (to Jen sometimes a little annoying) ways to cut herself down to size.
"The winner was clearly already decided beforehand. You beat everyone else, fair and square, so just enjoy it!" Jen told her friend, who for once looked like she was enjoying the moment to the fullest, without any thought of what the future might bring, holding her enjoyment down. "Not to mention that I also win, because I get to take you on a trip to New York, my own personal home turf since I was born, that I now can´t wait to show you all the best parts of! So, when are we flying down there?"
"We´ll have to wait for the summer to do it" Joey shyly answered, with the ramifications of the answer going over Jen´s head for a moment.
"Or we could go down there for Spring Break? Wait, why did you say that we "have to" wait for the summer?" Jen asked, instantly being worried over what the answer would be.
"There´s something, I haven´t told you. I´ve been given the chance to live and study for free in France for a semester and as much as you know, I hate the thought of leaving you here all alone ..."
"This is something, you have to do. I get it. I mean, how can I or my friendship compete with a chance of a lifetime like that?" Jen rhetorically asked very sadly, probably not being the best in world history at hiding her disappointment and fear over what the next six months would be like, without her having her best friend there to support her through it all.
"Jen, you´ve become an amazing friend to me over these past months! Before I met you, I honestly didn´t think that I´d ever make a friend like I have in you, at least not one with a uterus!" Joey sweetly quipped and it managed to cheer Jen up a tiny bit to hear her say so. "In spite of my initial reservations and how horribly I treated you for those first weeks, after you´d moved here, you have managed to, in record time, I might add, become one of the most important people in my life, just by being you! When I come home, I´m expecting us to start, right where we left off and don´t think that you´ll get out of e-mailing back and forth with me at least once every two days! I´d like it a whole lot, if you could be my link to everything that´s going on back here, so I won´t feel like I´m completely out of the loop, when I come home at the beginning of this next summer".
"You got it. Now, that we´re confessing things, I have a big one for you. I´ve ... been having feelings for Pacey, of the "more than friend way type". I mean, it isn´t like I would ever do anything about it and especially not knowing all too well, like I do, that he would only see me as a temporary replacement for the girl, he truly wants to be with. I just ... I wanted you to know, okay? If only so it isn´t hanging over us like some dark cloud, that could destroy our friendship" Jen nervously got out and practically instantly, she felt an inner calm and a sense of peace of mind that made her question, if she´d ever felt entirely that way before now. Joey only smiling understandingly back at her, throughout her little confessional, did it´s share too, it should be said.
"Jen, nothing can destroy our friendship! Sure, there´s a chance that Pacey and me will last as a couple until we´re old and grey, but I´m still not surer of that, than I am of say ... what I want to do with my life, when I finish school someday. I mean, let´s be honest here. How many couples that are our age actually make it that far?"
"Not all that many, I bet".
"Do you know what I am totally, one hundred percent sure of? That we´ll still be friends by then. Ho´s before Bro´s, right?" Joey cheekily asked and now, Jen couldn´t help herself from smiling a little back at her anymore.
"That saying doesn´t work as well, when it´s said the other way around, but I´ll take it!" Jen answered, right before they shared a big hug.
Dawson had been waiting all evening for the "perfect kiss" that (hopefully) awaited him later on, but you couldn´t say that it had gone according to his plans at all. One thing was the beauty contest, which had gotten a slight bit in the way, still had that been the only obstacle himself and Mery-Beth faced, it wouldn´t have thrown his plans off too much. With Joey finishing second, before surprisingly getting the prize money after all and on top of that telling him that she had big news to share with everyone however, they couldn´t blow off her victory party, even if they´d wanted to. He was perfectly fine with this too, wanting to be there for Joey, now that she finally had her brief moment in the sun.
"I can´t get a small spoiler out of you?" he teasingly asked Joey, while they stood out on the porch of his house and waited for the rest of the guests to arrive and Mary-Beth was busy helping his mom with getting everything ready for the party. They would have helped of course, if his mom hadn´t been so adamant that they didn´t need it. He suspected though, that it mostly had something to do with his mother wanting some alone time with her prospective daughter-in-law, now that she had a rare chance to.
"I guess, with Pacey and Jen having found out already, it can´t hurt to tell you. Do you remember months ago, like way back long before the schoolyear started, when I told you that I´d applied to be in a free student exchange program?" was all she had to ask, for him to get the message.
"They accepted you?" he asked back, as she broke into a smile from ear to ear.
"Wow! Congratulations!" was all he could think of to say, as the scary thought of being without her for many times longer, than they´d ever been apart before, since they became friends as little kids, started creeping into his mind.
"I´ve been on the fence about it, since I got the letter and not just because I´d be leaving Pacey and you and everyone else behind here in the only place, I can remember calling my home. Since we moved here, I don´t think I´ve been outside of the town limits more than a hundred times and I´ve only tried it once on my own before. Another reason was because I could see any way, that we could afford to buy me a plane ticket over there and home again, plus I´d need to have at least some spending money, when I got there and now, it´s all fallen into place, thanks to the most unlikely source, I ever could have imagined, it would be. Hannah Von Wenning, of all people!" Joey stated, like it was the weirdest thing to happen in the entire history of humanity.
"And as a huge extra bonus, you finally made up with Melissa again. It´s been a day slightly out of the ordinary for you, hasn´t it?" he understatedly joked, while trying to hold back from showing the emotional turmoil, that was already beginning to build up inside of him. Half a year with no Joey in his life at all, except for the occasional e-mail or phone call, if he could even convince his parents to pay for it. Although, prizes on international calls across the Atlantic wasn´t his area of expertise, he couldn´t imagine that making a phone call to somewhere in France would be cheap.
"You can say that again!" she grinningly stated, before turning her head to look into his eyes. "Dawson, I know that we haven´t been hanging out nearly as much, as we used to these past months. That doesn´t mean you´re not still my best friend, it´s just that I have more than one best friend now. Jen has become one and Pacey, for as much as myself from half a year ago would have refused to believe it would ever happen, has been an amazing boyfriend all of the way. That alone makes him one too, but it doesn´t mean you´re any less important to me".
"I always knew that I couldn´t keep an unpolished gem like you, hidden away up in my room forever, Joey. I think, this thing we´re going through, where we´ve both been looking to expand our horizons beyond what we knew and experiencing things in life apart from one another, is just what you call growing up. Maybe, Pacey was right that we were a little too joined at the hip for a while and this is a positive sign, that we are capable of living our lives apart, at least for the most part. We only have a few years of high school left and after that, who knows where life will take us to? I´ve started looking into film schools and most of those that looked interesting to me were on the West Coast, so there´s a good chance that we´ll end up living on opposite sides of the country by then".
"Doesn´t that sadden you, just a little bit?"
"Sure, it´s just not something I´m getting nostalgic over already. We´ll still have plenty of time to do stuff together, when you get home, so don´t you worry about me!"
"Then, you´re not mad at me either? Man, everyone is being nice about this!" she apparently felt like she had to blurt out and even in this emotional state, it couldn´t help but bring a chuckle out of him.
"How did you expect them to react?"
"I was sure that at least one of you would be mad at me or at least a little disappointed, that you won´t be seeing me for so long!"
"They all agree with me, when I say that this town won´t be the same without you, but most of all, we want the best for you and if you believe in your heart, that this is it, then we trust your sixth sense on it" he assured her.
"What if it´s steering me wrong this this time? It isn´t just the moving across the pond part, I´m worried over. I´ll have to make brand-new friends, starting from scratch and get used to a completely different kind of culture, when it comes to a lot of things. You know how I am with new people and how long, it usually takes me to warm to them! If I go by that barometer, I´ll only just have started my make my first acquaintance, by the time I have to fly home again, roughly half a year from now!"
"You´ll do amazing over there, Joey! I´ve never been more certain of anything in my life!" he told her honestly, although what he honestly wanted to tell her was not to go and that just the thought of going for so long without her in his life, was physically making his stomach turn to knots.
"Will you be okay?" she asked very caringly and in the acting performance of his life up to that point, he managed to convince her, that he was sure, he would be.
Thanks to the party being at his parents´ house, he also got stuck with helping out with the cleaning and as for his and Mary-Beth´s first kiss, it ended up first taking place a week later, under a full moon and not all that far from the same spot, where he´d kissed Jen for the first time and after them having been on a more proper kind of date, to lead up to it. Nice as it was though, there was one enormous problem: As much as he tried to fight it and to be in the moment for this great girl, who was giving one of her most precious gifts to him, it soon became Joey that he imagined, he was having his first kiss with in that moment.
After Joey had announced her imminent departure to everyone present at the party in her honor, it had more or less turned into one long love-fest for her for the rest of the evening and no one there was happier to see it than Abby, who could barely believe, how well her plan had worked out for her former long-time rival. Not even Abby herself would have imagined, that Joey would have made up with Melissa or for that matter, taking home the first-place prize money (even though she hadn´t actually finished first, "But hey, five grand is still five grand!" as Abby told herself), while she´d been cheering on Joey harder than anyone else there at that contest. Their former rivalry now felt like something that had happened in a distant past and to say that Abby felt proud of her own part in helping Joey´s life to improve, would have been the understatement of a year, that was only a few weeks away from coming to an end.
"Why didn´t stuff like that ever happen to me, back when I was your age?" Bessie joked on the short car ride back to their house from Dawson´s house. Bodie had gladly volunteered to stay home and take care of his baby son (who was teething and making sure that everyone in their house was all too aware of it!), so it was only the three of them in the car.
"Before today, I thought it only happened on the Disney Channel, so I´m right there with you! The only question, I have left is who told Pacey about me going to France? Do you think, it could have been Bodie?" Joey asked her sister and Abby felt the need to close the subject quickly.
"Who else could it have been? It isn´t like anyone else, outside of those in this car knew" she said and the short explanation of her reasoning, that she´d come up with on the fly, seemed to sit well with the two sisters.
"Remind me to thank him, when I get the chance. It´s such a relief to have all of that weight off my shoulders, of Pacey and most of my other friends not knowing and me still being so much in doubt over everything!" Joey said and again, Abby had to quickly come up with something to say. to stop her from it.
"Do you know what would be even better? If you shared a knowing smile! Wouldn´t that be a much more memorable moment, than any long and probably slightly uncomfortable conversation, you two could have about it?" Abby tried with, even if she had to admit to herself moments later that her second try hadn´t been as nearly strong in her own opinion, as her first try was.
"Right now, you sound like a girl, who´s watched WAY too many chick flicks!" Bessie quipped and the laughter between them thankfully closed the subject.
"Totally guilty there!" a relieved and chipper Abby answered and suddenly, something Joey had said just then, dawned on her and it quickly began to bug her a little. "Joey, you said "Most of my other friends". Did anyone else know anything, aside from us and Bodie?"
"When I said "Most of", it meant that you´re included among my friends, Abby. I didn´t think, it needed to be said, but there you have it! We´re friends now and we don´t need to have some big heartfelt talk about it or a hug-out over it, it´s just the way it is!" Joey (in typical Joey fashion) replied.
"Abby, what my little sister is trying to say, is that just like Bodie and myself have so far had no reason to be anything, except for delighted to have you living with us, she´s secretly and even if she would never say it out loud, extremely thankful to have a friend like you in her life. One thing you learn quickly from knowing Joey, like I do, is how to become a bona-fide master on how to read between the lines, when it comes to her!" Bessie half-jokingly explained and the feeling of sisterly love between the three of them, that surrounded her, had Abby feeling like this was a moment, she´d want to be frozen in time for all eternity, if such a thing was possible.
For the rest of the drive home, what they mostly talked about was how they would handle things around the house and at the restaurant, now that Joey wouldn´t be there to help out for a while. And while she didn´t have the nerve to ask for it yet, Abby was pretty sure that she could convince Joey to allow her to use her room and not the least, letting Abby sleep on that very comfy looking bed in there, while she was gone, a massive improvement on her sleeping arrangement in the living room!
Even if she felt that it would be better, if Joey never found out about her own small part in Joey´s recent stroke of massively good fortune, Abby also felt like she deserved a little something, for helping out her "Temporary Step-Sister" this much, after all!
END OF CHAPTER NINETEEN