THE FIRST TIME
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - HEARTACHE TONIGHT
"There's gonna be a heartache tonight
A heartache tonight, I know"
EAGLES (From the album "The Long Run" (1979))
"You have to promise me that you won´t laugh" Joey told Jen, who was waiting in anticipation to hear Joey´s speech for the upcoming "Miss Windjammer Contest", that was now only a week away with Joey clearly feeling no more ready for it, than she had when she´d signed up for the contest a few weeks earlier. This first dress rehearsal though, taking place in Jen´s room, had Jen thinking that her friend would win it without contest and not only just because Joey would be her own personal favorite, among the competitors.
"Let me tell you a story, Joey" Jen began explaining. "Six years ago, when I was nine, I was forced by my parents to attend the sixtieth birthday party for my great aunt Hilda. Hilda is not just one of the meanest and rudest women you´ll ever meet in your life but is without a shadow of a doubt the meanest and rudest person, you could ever meet, anywhere!"
"And you don´t get along with her? Color me shocked!" Joey quipped in response.
"So anyway, during the celebration of her being a year closer to the grave, my great-grandfather Albert decided to give a speech. Joey, he lost his hairpiece, mid-speech, and it fell right into his bowl of soup! I was nine, sitting no more than five feet away from him and I somehow managed to stop myself from laughing. If I could manage it at that age and in that situation, I´m sure that fifteen-year-old me can sit through your "Miss Windjammer" speech without cracking a smile!" she recounted to a giggling Joey.
"You laughed afterwards though, didn´t you?"
"I was nine! It was impossible not to! Now, go on and wow me, like you´re going to wow those judges at the contest. You´re really sure that they´re going to ask you the old "What would you tell the youth" Question?"
"From what I´ve heard, they´ve been re-using it every year, going back several decades. Part of it is inspired by you. Okay, here goes nothing" Joey began, before clearing her throat and holding up her piece of paper, from which to read from. "I'd like to tell today's youth that no matter where life takes you, big cities, small towns, you'll inevitably come across small minds. People who think that they're better than you are. People who think that material things, or being pretty or popular automatically makes you a worthwhile human being. I'd like to tell today's youth that none of these things matter unless you have strength of character, integrity, sense of pride, and if you're lucky enough to have any of these things ... don't ever sell them. Don't ever sell out. So, when you meet a person for the first time, please don't judge them by their station on life, because, who knows? That person just might end up being your best friend. Thank you".
As she applauded her friend, Jen could see the pride building up in Joey at the same time.
"I´m holding back the tears, really!" she told Joey, who blushed a little at all of this praise, she was suddenly getting.
"It isn´t that great" Joey said dismissively, once again letting her low self-esteem raise its ugly head. This time though, Jen was determined not to let it spread it´s negative vibes.
"In my opinion and as someone, who´s been to far more of those contests, than she wishes that she had, I can tell you that you have a winner there! I really helped to inspire it? That´s so cool!" she told Joey smilingly, making Joey smile along with her.
"I just thought about what would have happened, if we´d never had the chance to be introduced to one another, like we were. Before I got to know you, I had this idea in my head of what rich girls from Manhattan were like and if I have to be honest, it wasn´t exactly a pretty picture. The last thing I ever imagined was someday being friends with one, and now I see how narrow-minded, I was being. Now that I´ve gotten to know you, it´s opened my world up, like it never was before and it´s made me look at people as a whole in a different way. Where before, I was fine in my own little world and being closed off to them, now I want to be open to the world and new experiences and make even more new friends like you along the way. I have you to thank for all of that" Joey told her truthfully and Jen couldn´t have felt prouder in that moment, if she´d tried.
Of course, Joey didn´t know about the now long running and becoming more uncontrollable on a daily basis crush, that she had on Joey´s boyfriend and how hard it was to keep herself from telling him how she felt.
"Okay, you turn now" Joey ordered her, after a few long moments of sweetness vibes between them, that Joey was just as bad at dealing with, as she herself was.
"I don´t have it all planned out yet, but I have come up with an opening line. "Abby, we need to talk about that kiss between us. I´m sure you have a lot of questions; you could use some answers to". What do you think?" she asked, while trying to hide her lack of enthusiasm for the conversation, she was planning to have with Abby that evening.
"You still haven´t had kiss number one with Mary-Beth?" Pacey asked him for the third time, still clearly not grasping that such a thing was a possibility for two teenagers, who like one another and hung out as much, as he and Mary-Beth did.
"For the third time. No, we haven´t made out yet! Every time, I try to bring it up, she says that she wants to, once she feels entirely sure that I´m over Jen. I´ve been completely over her for weeks now" he told Pacey more or less honestly. While the young Miss Lindley still made the occasional appearance in his wet dreams, he´d accepted that they probably wouldn´t become more than close friends and was fine with it. Mary-Beth was so close to being on the same prettiness level as Jen (in his own humble opinion), that it ruled out looks as being a factor in his decision making. Best of all, unlike how it was with Jen, where she frequently had him confused over what his standing with her was, Mary-Beth had practically been like an open book, when it came to how she felt about him. At least, as far as girls her age went!
"Don´t you just have to convince her that you´re over Jen, in that case? It seems like the logical solution to me, your proud C-student oldest amigo!" Pacey joked, obviously without grasping how frustrating of a problem, this had become to him.
"I´ve tried! Of course, I´ve tried time and time again, but she won´t believe me. I don´t want to push her away, like I did with Jen, but I can´t wait forever for her either. I guess, what I´m asking if you have any ideas, that could work, because I´m close to being out of them".
"And the only ones left are those, you save for a truly desperate situation, am I right?"
"Right!"
Pacey took several seconds to think about it, before coming up with his first suggestion.
"You could borrow my sister´s old 80´s style boombox, stand outside of her window and hold it up, while it plays "In Your Eyes". It worked for John Cusack in "Say Anything", you can´t deny that!"
"Because, it was the song, he made out with the girl to, the first time they hooked up".
"I totally missed that part! It makes a whole lot more sense, why he chose that particular song now! Or better yet, why don´t you sing it to her?" Pacey suggested, getting a headshake in reply.
"You´ve heard me sing".
"Good point!"
"Anyway, I just watched that movie with her a few weeks ago, so she´d know where I stole the idea from".
"I should make a mental note of watching it again, the next time I have a boring shift at "Screen Time". Done! What else can we come up with ... okay, what about this idea? You kidnap the both of them ..."
"Hold on! Why do I need to kidnap them, when I can just as easily ask them?"
"To add to the drama of the situation! You know what they say, nothing sells a movie like a good piece of drama! Or these days, having Pamela Anderson´s giant boobs on your poster, but that´s a different matter! Anyway, every time the hero and the babe go through some kind of dramatic situation together, they wind up doing all sorts of things to one another afterwards".
"That´s a ludicrous idea, Pacey! What kind of things are we talking about?" he couldn´t help himself from asking.
"All of the things, you want to be doing with Mary-Beth, but isn´t currently getting any payback in the form of from her, for all of that time you´ve been spending together, my friend!" Pacey told him back with a knowing smirk on his face.
"This is the evening, where you get over these stupid inhibitions of yours and just go for it! Even if it´s your first kiss, it´s still just a kiss, nothing more!" Mary-Beth thought to herself, while finishing up the two-hour process of getting herself shined up and ready, for her study date with Dawson.
She wanted to have her first kiss with him, she was sure of it, there just never seemed to be the perfect occasion for it. The second kiss and all of those after it, she didn´t care where would take place, but she wanted her first to be one that she could think back on and smile, when she became old and grey someday far into the future, and the romantic moment, that she would measure all other romantic moments against in the future. He´d almost gotten it right a time or three, just not exactly right and now, she was beginning to worry that he thought she didn´t want to make out with him, when she really, really did!
Until he did get it absolutely perfectly right, she had the excuse of saying that she thought, he wasn´t over Jen yet (which he obviously was, but it was still the best excuse, she could come up with) and it had held him back so far, although it was an excuse, that was starting to wear thin. Maybe, she should just go for it and settle for a second-best or even third-best moment for her first kiss and that should be good enough for her, like it was for almost all other girls. Forget about these crazy, overly romantic ideas she had in her mind of what that special moment should feel like and come down to earth, where a world of mediocrity awaited her. Now that she had found the right guy, she definitely didn´t want to scare him off, by having him think that she wasn´t interested in him that way.
Seeing as this could be a defining day in her friendship with Abby going forward, it also had been extremely hard for Jen to concentrate on anything else during the day. Her classes had all gone in one ear and out the other, while several more or less far out scenarios over how it could turn out, played out in her head. Most of which did not have happy endings to them.
To take her mind off it, she´d offered to help Grams with cooking dinner and after her help had been gladly accepted, it had for the most part worked, for the forty or so minutes that they´d spent making that evening´s dinner. Abby was working her first shift that afternoon at the Icehouse and so, wouldn´t be coming over until half past seven at the earliest. In Grams´ world, eating dinner that late was the same as not going to church on Sundays, as in it being completely unthinkable, meaning that it would once again only be the two of them for dinner.
"Do you have a lot on your mind, Jennifer?" Grams asked her, after several minutes had passed during dinner without any conversation between them.
"Don´t girls my age always have a lot on their minds?" she answered neutrally, not really being in the mood for a confessional with someone, she knew lived and died by the words of the bible.
"They do, if they´re the same as they were, when I was one. You can talk to me about the things, that are going on in your life. You might even find out that it´s true, when they say that wisdom comes with age" Grams told her, in the warm and soft way, that it sometimes felt to Jen, like only she could.
"You don´t want to bother your head with my teenage problems, trust me!"
"Try me" Grams dared her and since there was nothing to lose in it, Jen figured asking someone with much more experience than herself, wouldn´t be the worst idea. As long as she kept the names of those involved out of her confessional, it goes without saying.
"Basically, I´ve gotten myself into a huge emotional and romantic mess, but what else is new? There´s this guy, who I really like and if we became a couple, I think it would be the thing, that would finally make me feel at home here. We´re already great friends, we´ve both gone through some stuff growing up and when we talk alone, he makes me feel like I´m not just some damaged girl, who came here to escape her dark beginnings. If he didn´t already have the perfect girlfriend, I´d be going after him in a heartbeat" she confessed truthfully, before Grams to a handful of seconds to think over what her answer should be.
"Why do you use the word "Perfect" about this other girl?"
"Because they´re clearly perfect for each other! They grew up together and spent years unknowingly flirting, to build up to where they are now. I can´t compete with that, as the new girl in town. On top of that, she´s one of the few of the girls at school, who´s been nothing but nice to me, since I came here. I don´t want to be the kind of girl, who pays that sort of kindness back to someone, who´s come to mean as much to me as she has, by being a rotten, boyfriend-stealing bitch! Sorry, Grams. I didn´t mean to swear at the dinner table" she said apologizingly, knowing how formal her dear grandmother was on these things.
"I´m sure that the good lord is willing to forgive such a small indiscretion, Dear. Especially, considering the, might I add very comforting to hear, context, it was said in" Grams assured her with a small smile.
"Then to make it even more complicated, there´s someone else. Another friend of mine, who I really like too and have already kissed with once, but I don´t know if I want it to become more with".
"Why not, if you don´t mind me asking?"
"Grams, in my whole life so far, I´ve had six of what I would call actual boyfriends. How many of them would you guess that I still talked to, the day after we´d broken up? Two, Dawson and the boyfriend I had last before him, who only wants to talk if it´s to hear me say that I´ll jump right into bed with him. As for the other four, I never talked to any of them again after our break-up. You´ve probably noticed that it isn´t like I have the biggest of social circles in Capeside, so I want to do everything that I can to hold on to those, who are a part of it. You get that, don´t you?" she asked, getting an understanding look from the elderly lady in return.
"Believe it or not, you and I aren´t nearly as different, as you think we are, Jennifer. I too didn´t have a large social circle, as you kids like to call it these days, and the small handful of friends I did have, meant the world to me at your age. With the exception of a few, who have passed away over the years, I still count them among my closest acquaintances to this very day. Of course, we didn´t mix as much across the genders in our little friend groups back in my high school years, as you kids do today and all of those in it were girls, so anything romantic happening between us wasn´t going to happen, but I can easily still see where you´re coming from, as far as your fear of losing any of them. I would have felt the exact same way in your situation. I´m afraid that the only advice I have for you, is to be open about your feelings to this boy and as for the other one, I agree that you shouldn´t do anything to mess up your friendship with that Potter girl. I´ve never liked her father and I´ll keep my opinion about her living situation to myself, but she´s always been a clever girl and she´s the kind of influence of you, I´m guessing that you could have used more of back home. Am I right?" Grams asked back knowingly.
"You would be correct there" Jen replied and couldn´t help smiling a little to herself at how well Grams knew her, after all. "Was it that obvious, from how I said it?"
"As you yourself said, Jennifer, you have a very small social circle. Is the other boy Dawson?"
"No, it´s not. It´s ... someone, I haven´t introduced you to yet. I only see them in school" she lied, playing it tactically in case Grams wouldn´t take too kindly to herself breaking one of the cardinal rules of the bible.
"I´m sure that you´ll introduce me to him, when you feel good and ready to".
"Grams, why did you say that there was no chance of anything romantic happening, just because it was all girls in your social circle? There is such a thing as homosexuals, you know?" she asked, as a way to run a covert test on how Grams felt on the subject. It bringing a sad look onto her grandmother´s face, was in a morbid way a little comforting.
"I´m sure that they existed back then too, without any of us knowing about it. Those poor people! To be forced to live a lie for your entire existence here on God´s green earth, because that´s what society dictated, has to have felt like it was a punishment so unfair, that it was brought onto them by the devil himself".
"I´m guessing that you didn´t have any gay kids in school back then, right?"
"The rumor alone that you could be "one of them" could lead to someone being shunned by practically everyone, even their closest friends. I only remember hearing some rumors about one girl at our school once, and from what people said it was enough for her parents to move away, just to get her as far away from those rumors, as they could. I don´t even think that anyone knew for sure, if she was one, but it was enough to make life for her there so bad, that she apparently couldn´t take any more of it. There are many things from years past, that I wish we had back, but it pleases me to see how tolerant of those with "different lifestyles" that your generation is, compared to the way of thinking that we were brought up on. It makes me think that your parents must have done something correctly" Grams quipped.
"Either that or pop music. My money is on choice number two" Jen sarcastically replied, while trying to come up with the perfect opening line for the conversation to come later that evening.
After the whirlwind of bad suggestions (also known as Pacey) had left, Dawson had a good hour to eat dinner with his parents, grab a shower and tidy up his room before Mary-Beth arrived. Going through his mind the entire time were different ways of asking her, what the deal with her not wanting to kiss him was. It couldn´t still be that she was afraid, that he wasn´t over Jen yet! He talked to Jen at school every day and they would hang out together, when they hung out as a group. As for him having a crush on her though, he was far past what happened between them at the end of their short relationship. Sure, it wasn´t how he´d planned it out at all, when they´d had their first kiss, but he was also enough of a realist to know that it´s what happens in relationships between two fifteen-year-olds, who were still practically strangers going in. Whenever he thought back to the best times of his and Jen´s romantic fling, he was just glad that he got the positive experience out of it, that he did, and had otherwise been ready to move on for a good while.
The subjects that they were supposed to be studying that evening weren´t what you could call romantic ones, so steering the conversation in the right direction wouldn´t be an easy feat. He had to find out though and soon, before he conceded that he´d been wasting his time on a girl, who would never like him back, like he liked her.
How can you find anything romantic about algebra? That was a question, Mary-Beth had asked herself several times, during the first hour of her study date with Dawson. Next after this was studying US history and discussing civil war battles wasn´t an easy segway into talking about kissing either. Even if they should be studying these things for class, she hadn´t spent two hours making herself look her best, just to discuss their views on the battle of Gettysburg with him! He´d said that she looked nice, when she´d arrived (which alone had been enough to give her a fuzzy and warm feeling in her belly), but since then they been stuck on solving equations for math class. Most which were so easy, that she could have solved them in her sleep.
"Last problem solved! Thanks for making an appearance algebra, but we won´t be missing you!" he joked, making her giggle a little. It took so little to make her giggle, when it came to him, that it sometimes astounded her. She figured that´s just what it´s like, when you have a huge crush on someone, like she had on Dawson.
"I concur!" she agreed with him.
"Do you want to take a break, before we move on to US history? I could use one" he asked her with a pleading look. Not that she minded taking a break at all.
"We´re far enough ahead of schedule, that we can afford ourselves one. We could go downstairs and watch some TV with your parents" she suggested. Mitch and Gail were always so nice towards her, that she almost felt guilty for not talking more to them than saying hello and goodbye to them, nearly every time she came over.
"I´d like to talk about us, if that´s okay" he began, looking like he was gauging her reaction to the question.
"Sure, we can talk about us" she replied nervously.
"Mary-Beth, I don´t know how many times I can keep on telling you, that I´m over Jen. Like, way over her! I mean ... do you even like me in a "You Want Me to be Your Boyfriend Way" or have I been completely misreading your signals?" he asked and it was enough to almost send her into a panic.
"No, I like you that way! Dawson, I really do!"
"Then, why haven´t we kissed yet? It isn´t like we haven´t had the opportunity to".
"It´s me, okay. I have this idea in my head, that´s probably a foolish idea, that my first kiss has to be everything, I´ve ever wished it could be. I know that you´re over Jen, it isn´t that anymore. I know, I´m a total far-too-overly romantic fool! I want it to be with you though, you have to believe me!" she exasperatedly told him, but it only brought a smile to his face.
"That´s the only reason, that you want it to be perfect? Why didn´t you just say that?" he asked her and now, she felt a little foolish for having hid it from him.
"Because true perfection is in nearly every case unattainable, and I should know that by now! It´s all me being silly and has nothing to do with you, I promise. I want you to be my first boyfriend and I think, we stand a pretty good chance of lasting as a couple for a long time. Probably not forever, but I can settle for less" she jokingly said, and it felt like a weight had been taken off her shoulders, now that she´d come clean.
"It´s too late to go out now. What do you say that you spend the time until this Saturday coming up with what your perfect first kiss would be like, and then after we have dinner at the Icehouse, we see how close we can come to making it come true?"
"You don´t have to do this for me, Dawson".
"I want to. You should have a perfect first kiss, Mary-Beth. It would be my honor to be the one, who gives it to you".
Moments later, she took his hand and their hands stayed locked that way for the rest of the evening, right up until she had to go home.
END OF CHAPTER FOURTEEN