THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER SEVEN - SOMEBODY TO LOVE

Don't you want somebody to love?

Don't you need somebody to love?

Wouldn't you love somebody to love?

You better find somebody to love

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE "From the album "Surrealistic Pillow" (1967))

Dawson saw himself as being at least in the top half among guys his age, when it came to patience. When it came to one Jen Lindley however, it was safe to say that his patience was starting to run a little thin. This coupled with him really not wanting to be one of those pushy guys, who practically force girls into bed with them, made for quite the dilemma in his life. It was thanks to this, and since they hadn´t hung out nearly as much as they used to since she´d found a boyfriend (which while understandable, bothered him a little and made him feel underappreciated), that he´d invited Joey over for a movie night, where it would only be the two of them. Pacey was having to attend a "Family Thing", something that Dawson knew his friend would probably be enjoying as much, as he would getting kicked squarely in the balls by an angry horse, and with Jen being on "Abby-Watch" that evening, he felt like he would be a fool, if he didn´t use this chance for some alone time with the girl, who meant so much to him.

"So, how´s the whole "You and Pacey Thing" going?" he asked her casually, while putting his copy of "Hook" back in its case. If there was one movie that the two of them could always agree on was worth a re-watch, that would be it.

"Pretty good! I mean, the sex is terrible and he still hasn´t lasted a minute, but he does a great job at figuratively kissing my ass all the time, so I might as well exploit him a little more, while I can!" Joey joked and he had to smile to himself as well.

"Liar! You haven´t gone all the way with him, or I would have been able to tell from the goofy smile, he would have had practically sculpted onto his face for days afterwards!" he joked back, and it got a nice little laugh out of her too.

"I don´t think you would be entirely wrong there, let me leave it that! Actually, it´s kind of great, this whole being in love thing and having someone who´s that special to you there, for you to share it with. You should try it sometime" she told him more honestly and while the jealousy in him hadn´t entirely gone away, like he hoped it would in time, as a whole, he was just plain happy for her, that something was finally going the exact way she wanted it to, in her life. After being a witness to all of the bad and often completely unfair things that had happened to that girl over the first part of her teenage years, he felt like she deserved as much as anyone did, to get to enjoy to the fullest the remainder of them with someone that truly cared about her, like he knew better than anyone perhaps, that Pacey did.

"I´d like to, but it doesn´t really feel like I´m getting anywhere with that girl across the street. You know, the one that isn´t an old lady?"

"Or as she prefers to be called, Jen?"

"That´s the one. I don´t know, what´s going on with her. A month ago, it felt like we were getting somewhere and were starting to connect on a deeper level and now ... I can´t tell where I stand with her. Maybe, someone with more romantic experience would have been able to read her signals, better than I could. It just isn´t me, that´s for sure" he confided, before slumping down on the bed next to Joey.

"You do know that there are other girls your own age in Capeside, aside from myself and Jen, don´t you? It sounds insane, I know, but it´s actually true! You need to get out there and meet some new people, Dawson! Here´s a secret for you: It´s not as scary, as you think it is!" she semi-joked while smiling at him and while he wasn´t ready to give up on Jen yet, not by a long shot, it was also kind of obvious to him that with Pacey and Joey now being romantically involved and not having the same amount of time for him, that they used to have, it wouldn´t hurt him to get to know some new people, that he could potentially hang out with instead.

Pacey had been having an evening, that was like something straight from the X-Files, if we were speaking in an emotional sense. Growing up, the one thing he could say for his family was that they offered him a relative amount of stability and when his older sister Gretchen had still been living with them, he´d always had someone of a somewhat similar mindset as his own, that he could come to and talk about whatever was on his mind. Doug, his older brother, and he were like night and day in many of the ways they viewed the world, with Doug being first one to uphold the rules, while Pacey (in his rebellious teenage mind) wanted to break as many of them as he could, as long as he didn´t get caught and punished for it. Back in school, Doug had never been late for a single class, had never handed in a report late and while he didn´t bring home many A´s, he´d also never gotten below a B, something that Pacey had never been able to brag about, Still, when push came to shove, they shared a deeper connection from having grown up so closely together, that was undeniable to both of them and was why Pacey wasn´t afraid to admit, that he loved his older brother a whole lot.

When it came to his parents, it hadn´t been a secret to him or his siblings for a long time, that their marriage was most likely on the rocks. They barely spoke to one another and his dad would always fall asleep in front of the TV (usually after a healthy intake of beer during the evening, if he wasn´t working late and didn´t have the time for it), so in truth they hadn´t slept in the same bed for years and as for seeing any signs that either of them even gave a damn what happened to the other, they had been very few and very, very far in between.

Should it have been such a huge surprise to him then, when his mom had sat him and Doug down the evening before to tell them, that she´d kicked their dad out and was planning on filing for divorce? It didn´t feel like it should have, yet it undeniably had been and for the first time that he could remember, he started to feel sorry for his dad. From what their mom had told them, he´d told her that he was temporarily moving in with one of the officers at the station, until he found his own place. It wasn´t even known to her, that the officer he´d been talking about had been her own son and when he´d heard it, Pacey also had to feel sorry for "Neat-Freak" Doug, that he would have to house his old man, who wasn´t exactly known for taking part in any kind of housework, if he could avoid it.

"They´re really splitting up? I´m sorry, man" Dawson told him, as they were heading to the first class of the day, which happened to be a favorite of Pacey´s (and many other boys in that class). The sole reason was that they had a young temp teacher in her mid-twenties named Miss Foxworthy, or "Miss Foxy" as many of the boys called her, who aside from having one of the prettiest faces, he could ever remember seeing in real life, also sometimes clearly didn´t wear a bra. That one moment, where she´d leaned over to pick up a pencil and her sweater slid down just deep enough, that everyone in the classroom could get the tiniest glance at what was underneath that sweater, had without a doubt made for plenty of locker room conversations in its wake.

"It´s alright. I´m sure that "Miss Foxy" will find a way to cheer me up this morning!"

"Haven´t you been down that road one too many times, my friend?"

"It´s on a strictly "Only look, don´t touch level" this time, believe me!"

"That´s a small relief!"

"Anyway, I shudder to think what Joey would do, if she caught me cheating on her! I don´t know what it is, but lately, it´s like girls have begun to look at me in a different way! Like they're eating me up with their eyes or something!"

"Isn´t that what you always wanted?"

"Sure, when I was single, I did! There is the off chance of course, that it´s all in my head. I wouldn´t rule that out entirely either" Pacey had just said, when a rather cheery looking Abby caught up with them.

"What´s in your head?" she asked him, looking a little curious.

"Pacey has this idea ..."

"It isn´t an idea, it´s more like a ... feeling!" Pacey corrected him.

"A feeling then, that because he´s with Joey now, girls have started looking at him differently" Dawson explained and Abby only had an eye roll in response.

"Haven´t you guys learned anything about girls yet in your fifteen years on Earth? Deep down, many of us want what we can´t have, so of course they were bound to start looking at you differently, Pacey! So, anyway, what are we doing tonight?" she asked Pacey and from the excited look on her face, it wouldn´t have surprised Dawson to find out, that Abby counted herself among the others in Pacey´s new girls only Fanclub.

"You´ll be keeping me company at the video store, now that someone absolutely had to have today off. I´m sorry, but that´s all of the excitement, I have on sale today" Pacey fake apologized to her, even if it didn´t look like she minded one bit.

"That´s okay. We´ll just watch movies, shoot the breeze and stuff our faces with popcorn. Sounds like heaven to me! See you later, I have to talk to Jen before class starts" she said, before hurrying up the hallway.

"That girl likes you and unless I really don´t have a clue how to read girl signals, I don´t think it´s just in a friend way anymore!" Dawson had to tell his friend and judging from the facial expression, he got back, it didn´t look like it hadn´t crossed Pacey´s mind either.

Mary-Beth had always hated being the mousy girl in class, yet that was just who she´d become thanks to her shyness, that followed her like a curse, everywhere she went. Her parents had told her that back in kindergarten, she was always referred to as "The Quiet Girl", because she rarely said anything and perhaps that was why, she´d never made any close friends there either. The closest she got to it was the girls, who tried to tease her, but them not getting a reaction back (not because she didn´t want to, just because she was too shy to say anything back to them), meant that even they gave up on trying to talk to her and on most days, she´d felt like she was one with the wallpaper there. Her first years in school, she´d been lucky to find a friend her own age in Jessie, who´d helped her open up a little bit, to where she at least wasn´t afraid of talking to strangers anymore and Mary-Beth had always felt like if she had Jessie by her side, then it couldn´t go entirely wrong. Now that Jessie´s parents had moved to Canada and taken her with them however, Mary-Beth was back to being alone and as bad as she was at making friends, she figured that it was bound to stay that way for a while longer, probably until she reached college age.

Then there was the matter of Cliff, her crush since grade six and until recently, the only one that she´d had any kind of fantasies about, if we aren´t counting one or two-time occurrences involving various celebrities. What had become more apparent with every day recently though, was that her chances of getting her Prince Charming were approaching zero to none, with all of the other (much prettier in her own opinion and definitely more outgoing) girls than herself, who´d set their eyes on his hunky self. Even during their quasi-date (which was really a double date with two other people involved) at the annual Capeside fun faire, he´d shown little to no interest in getting with her at all and it was now clear to her, that she needed to look elsewhere for her next big crush.

It wasn´t like there weren´t options to choose from, as far as how many hot guys there were at her school, but she wanted it to be someone she had a realistic chance of scoring with this time around. That alone ruled out every guy at school, who was already involved with someone, and left her with the scraps, most of whom she could easily see why were still single. Like Kenny for example, who wasn´t ugly by any means and seemed nice, but whose personal hygiene left a lot to be desired and whenever she was sitting close him in class, she could easily smell the foul odors emanating from his corpus. Or Eric, who was arguably among the hottest guys in school, but clearly had the emotional maturity of a blueberry scone and still thought that the ability to make fart sounds with his armpit was greatest invention known to man. There was Dawson of course, her recent and so far only date of her life. He checked all of her boxes in the looks department and would have been a prime candidate, if it hadn´t been for him obviously having a huge crush on Jen, the relatively new girl in class. It was almost sad for her to see, that he was so bad at reading signals, that he couldn´t see she wasn´t interested in him when, if he´d tried asking Mary-Beth out for real, without it being a plot to mess up someone else´s date this time, she´d probably say yes just for the fun of it and to get a rare for her, evening out on the town out of it.

"I´m sorry. Are you okay?" Joey asked Pacey, before laying a soft and caring kiss on him that was just what he needed at that moment, after he´d told her the news about his parents.

"Yeah, it´s just weird, you know? I mean, with so many other people I know having divorced parents, it shouldn´t come as any major surprise and who knows, hopefully it´ll turn out better for the both of them, if they aren´t living together anymore" he said, while simultaneously desperately hoping in his gut, that he would be right.

"You just never thought it would happen in your family either, did you? I know that feeling from when we found out about my dad´s affair, believe me!" Joey told him and it wasn´t a surprise to him in any way, that she would understand, like she always did. It was little things like those, that sometimes made him wonder what he ever did before he had her to lean on.

"I´m sure that eventually we´ll all move on with our lives and things will feel like they´re back to normal, it´s just that right now that seems like it´s so far away into the future, that I can´t wrap my head around it yet. It´s too bad, you´re working tonight. I could use a bit of you "working your magic" on me" he asked her with a forced smile, so that it wouldn´t ruin her day too. Him knowing that she would in all likelihood end up feeling sorry for him, if he did tell her how depressed he was over the whole thing, was the last thing he wanted on his conscience.

"You´ll have to wait until tomorrow. Anyway, it was your own idea that you and Jen take turns keeping Abby company in the evening, so that she doesn´t end up getting too depressed over her home life and I didn´t choose to be with you, because you were a quitter!" she told him with that cheeky smile on her face, that made it humanly impossible for him to say no anything that she wanted from him.

"Let me just take a second to revel in this, Dawson. It isn´t every day that I score two whole grade points above you on any kind of test" Pacey said with a smug look on his face, that had a feeling of extreme annoyance building up in Dawson´s stomach.

"How could I have done this bad? A D minus? Really?" he said, while trying to grasp that he´d completely botched his latest chemistry test. Of course, it could have something to do with Jen sitting right in front of him during the test clouding his concentration, still he´d never expected to have done this badly. "Another question is how I´ll explain this to my parents?"

"Take it from a pro, when it comes to this stuff, my old compadre! Don´t ask, don´t tell, works pretty well, in cases of needing to hide a bad grade from your folks! Hey, that almost rhymed!" Pacey quipped, although Dawson found it hard to see any humor in the situation.

"My parents aren´t like yours. Mine actually care what grades I get!"

"There´s the possibility of seeing if you can come up with a good enough excuse, that they´ll allow you to take a make-up test" his friend suggested and it wasn't the worst idea, Dawson had ever heard. On the other hand, what kind of excuse could he come up with except for "I´m fifteen, which is why I´m close to constantly horny and the object of my affections was sitting right in front of me, so I couldn´t focus on my work".

"Nah, it´s too risky. Knowing my mom, she´ll try to find me a tutor or even worse, she´ll try to tutor me herself!" Dawson said, which made Pacey flinch, as if by natural reflex.

"You need to do anything you can, to prevent that from happening! No teenage boy should be forced to spend that much time alone with their mom!" Pacey stated and it wasn´t like Dawson didn´t agree with him. Surely, he loved his mom and having little talks with her now and again. The thought of being forced to spent hours at a time in close contact with her on the other hand, made stealing a boat down on the harbor and sailing away to an unknown destiny or running off to join a carnival sound like pretty valid options to him.

"You´re preaching to the right congregation, Pace, you telling me these things just doesn´t solve anything right now! What I need is a tutor, who´s someone I can stand to be around, for one thing" he thought out loud.

"That cuts us down to around five percent of the student population on these fine premises".

"Plus, they at the very minimum have to be better at myself at the subject".

"That cuts another two percent off! Sorry, Dawson, but your performance on that test was nothing short of pitiful!"

"You won´t hear any arguments from me! Where do I find someone like that?" he asked rhetorically, just as Joey came over to join them.

"Hi, guys! What´s up?" she asked smilingly, before giving Pacey a small hug.

"Our friend here needs to find himself a chemistry tutor in a hurry. He bombed pretty bad on that last test, we had" Pacey explained and it made Joey´s face scrunch up a little in sympathy with himself.

"How bad was it?" she asked him.

"The worst I´ve ever done on a test, by a long way! Let´s just say that it was so bad, that there´s sure to be a family meeting come out of it".

"Ouch! Have you tried looking for one on the school´s brand new online message board?" she asked and up until that moment, he hadn´t known that the school had one.

Now that he did, there was nothing to lose by checking it out and that was how he found himself in the library later that day, staring at a PC screen.

"This is a complete waste of time. "My Mommy, the Tutor", here I come!" he whispered frustratedly to himself without knowing that the answer to all of his problems was walking up right behind him.

"Are you going to be long on the computer, Dawson?" Mary-Beth asked him, and he turned around to look at what he had to consider the most overall average girl, he´d met in his life. So overwhelmingly average in fact, that he most of the time forgot all about her presence, even when he was in the same room as her.

"No, Mary-Beth, you can have it. I won´t find what I was looking for, anyway" he told her and stood up to let her take his seat in front of the PC. He was just about to leave, when she spoke again.

"What were you looking for? Maybe, I can help you. I´m pretty good with these things" she offered kindly and if nothing else, he felt that her friendliness needed to be returned in kind, so he turned around and smiled at her, in the nicest and friendliest way, he could.

"I don´t think, you can. Thanks for offering to help, but unless you know where I can find a tutor in chemistry by the end of today ..."

"I could tutor you, if you´d like. I´ve gotten A´s on every chem test, I´ve ever taken" she got out, before turning around to stare at the screen, like she was ashamed of having asked him.

"How much do you charge?" Dawson asked her and as she turned back around and smiled at him, he knew that he had his tutor in the bag.

Mary-Beth was nervous, as she walked up to Dawson´s house, after having been dropped off by her dad. Very nervous. While you wouldn´t think that a simple study date would be enough to get a girl her age that worked up, in Mary-Beth´s case it was also the first time, she´d been alone with a boy, as far as she could remember, anyway. That it was Dawson, who at least seemed like he was a step above most of the boys in their grade, when it came to maturity, only helped to heighten her enthusiasm and as a downside, also make her much more nervous, than she wished, she´d been. As she stood there on his parents´ front porch after having rang the doorbell and waiting eagerly, as she heard footsteps approaching the door, lots of scenarios played out in her head. More than one of them involving herself and Dawson sucking face.

END OF CHAPTER SEVEN

Okay, so I´m already having to break one of the rules I´d set up for myself for this story, seeing as I´m realizing that having to limit myself to songs from the 90´s/early 2000´s will be a hindrance sometimes and therefore, I´ve decided to give myself "Full Range", as far as the songs, the chapters are named after.

Thanks for reading!