THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE - LOVE STINKS

"You love her

But she loves him

And he loves somebody else

You just can't win

And so it goes

'Til the day you die

This thing they call love

It's gonna make you cry

I've had the blues

The reds and the pinks

One thing´s for sure

Love stinks!"

J. GEILS BAND (From the album "Love Stinks" (1980))


Andie had always wanted the best for her twin brother. That should almost go without saying and she hoped that he was never in any doubt about it, but one part of their interpersonal relationship that she´d only told him tiny pieces about, was how she´d secretly been steering him in the right direction, starting sometime in their pre-teens. To begin with, this has only consisted of simple things like looking over his English paper for spelling errors, when he wasn´t looking, or the first time that he attempted to cook for them and apparently had entirely forgotten that there´s a very popular ingredient called salt, that can be rather important if you want your food to taste of anything! In time though, her "duties" had increased with every passing year and when Jack had started dating, was when the scale of her interference in his life began to reach new heights.

Someone had to as well (or in any case, that was how Andie saw it!), seeing as his first choices of girls were like a line-up of one hopeless case after another, while Kate (their neighbor and only logical choice for him, who was crushing hard on him) had to watch with herself from the sidelines, as one "Not Having a Chance in Hell" girl after another got taken on dates by her oblivious brother. It wasn´t as if one of those date choices had been all that more disastrous than the others, so it was hard to pinpoint exactly when she´d decided that enough was enough and to fix Jack and Kate up, but once she had, all she had to do was let nature take its course, or at least that was how she chose to remember it. In reality, it had taken hours of convincing her brother, why it was such a great idea on her part, before he´d asked Kate out on their first date and after a week of them being a couple had passed, it almost seemed to her like he was losing interest in the relationship already.

When they came to Capeside, it hadn´t taken more than a few days of them knowing Jen, before Andie had become sure that her brother had found his perfect match. After all, where else was he going to find a girl, whom he found it so easy to talk to and had as much in common with, as he did with that fellow blonde friend of theirs? Nowhere is where and when they´d finally (after far too long of a build-up, for her own liking) hooked up, the naïve and hopeless romantic side of her quickly convinced herself that it would last forever between them, still it was like Jack was holding back from giving himself entirely to Jen and she couldn´t understand why. Perhaps, this was why she decided that it was time to give him another "A Helping Hand", even if he´d expressly told her to stay out of his love life from now on.

"Are you having as much fun, as I am?" she cheerily asked Jen, while they were waiting for their dates to return from the restroom, and at the same time giving their increasingly sore feet a rest from all of that rigorous dancing, they´d been doing for the past couple of hours.

"I don´t know if that´s possible!" Jen semi-joked in return, since it actually wasn´t that unlikely that Andie was having more fun than anyone else there.

"What can say? Going on a date, when there´s no chance of getting some can sometimes be more fun, than going on a serious date".

"Yeah, but you´re still hoping that you´ll be bringing a boyfriend to some of these dances next year, aren´t you?" Jen slyly asked and Andie while didn´t mind being single as such, she also couldn´t deny that her friend wasn´t entirely off in her assumption.

"Who knows? Bigger miracles have happened, am I right?"

"I´m guessing that you´ve had it said to you dozens of times before, but it really does usually happen to you, when you least expect it to. I mean, do you think I had any idea that I´d meet the guy, I´d end up having my first healthy romantic relationship with, when I turned up for school on the first day after Christmas break?"

"I´m guessing that you didn´t!"

"Not even the slightest suspicion, but that´s how life takes some strange twists and turns sometimes! All you have to do is be patient and it´ll happen to you too, is what I´m trying to say".

"We´ll see, won´t we? Speaking of my brother, I take it that you´re both still on cloud nine and everything is honky dory between you two?" Andie quietly asked and despite Jen being a little thrown off by her question, it also didn´t seem to bother her.

"Yeah, why wouldn´t it be?" Jen nervously answered and seeing the opportunity to, Andie just had to ask Jen the one question, she´d been the most curious about for a while by then.

"No reason! All I meant what that it doesn´t seem to me like you guys have lost your spark as quickly, as he did with his ex-girlfriend" Andie explained and hearing so also drew a small smile from Jen.

"That´s nice to hear. He doesn´t like to talk about her, unless I bring her name up".

"It doesn´t surprise me too much, because he rarely liked talking about her, or any of the things they did together, even when they were still a couple. If it hadn´t been for Kate spilling the beans to me, I still would have thought that he was virgin, believe it or not!" she sad jokingly to Jen, although the change in Jen´s expression told her that it wasn´t equally amusing to both of them.

And, before long, Andie would come to realize how she´d just stuck her foot in her mouth, like she´d never done it before.


"Are you sure, that they did it?" Jen asked back, as dozens of conflicting thoughts and emotions kept running through her mind. The biggest being a huge question mark on why her boyfriend would lie to her about not feeling ready to have sex yet, when he apparently was ready for it with his ex-girlfriend.

"If they didn´t, then Kate was putting on an acting performance for the ages in front of me, I can tell you that much! Haven´t you two ... because I kind of assumed, that you already had!" Andie, who was looking increasingly like she needed to apologize for something, stumblingly got out.

"If you´ll excuse me, I feel the sudden need to get some fresh air. Tell your brother that he can find me outside, will you?"

"Sure" Andie only just got out, before Jen was out of her seat and already on her way to the outer doors.

Luckily for her, it was rather quiet outside with the only sounds being the faint smacking of lips from couples, who were taking their own break from the school´s PDA code. that even if it was a party, was still in full effect and for those caught breaking it, there was a pretty good chance that they´d be starting off the next school year with a few days of after school detention to look forward to. Most of those couples stayed in the dark though, for obvious reasons, giving her some much needed privacy to think over what had just happened. It couldn´t be that the reason why he didn´t want to sleep with her, was that he didn´t find her attractive enough, could it? While she didn´t want to think it, there was an ever-present low self-esteem monster residing in her psyche that kept reminding her of every little thing, she didn´t like about herself and feeling like she was an ugly duckling had always been on the top of that list. Right now, it was telling her that it was only thanks to Jack feeling pity for her, that he´d pretended to like her back, the way she liked him.

"There you are! I can´t say that I haven´t had this idea myself too, a few times this evening" Jack smilingly said, as he came out to join her.

Seeing how down she was looking washed that smile off his face quickly however, and his facial expression quickly turned to one of concern instead.

"What´s wrong?" he asked, as if it was that easy for her to come out and tell him, how he´d made her feel like the most unwanted girl in the entire world, just from knowing what he didn´t want to do with her.

"Jack, tell me the truth this time. Did you have sex with your ex, yes or no?" she bravely asked, as she stared him into the eyes to make sure that she got an honest answer this time.

"Where´s this coming from? I never slept with Kate, I´ve already told you that lots of times!" he exasperatedly replied, with this only making her even surer that he hadn´t been entirely upfront with her.

"That isn´t what your sister just told me! If you think that I´m too ugly to do it with, you could have just said so!" she practically yelled at him and his pleas of "It has nothing to do with that!" went in one ear and out of the other, as she ran inside to do the one overly girly thing, she´d long sworn that she would never do at a school dance.

To run off to the girl´s room and cry her eyes out.


"What exactly did you say to Jen?" a rather angry Jack asked Andie, who´d only moments earlier seen Jen running off to the girl´s room, looking upset like she´d never seen her be it before.

"Nothing, really!"

"Andie, I have to hear the truth from you! Did you tell her things about me and Kate, you had no right to tell her about?" he accusingly asked and immediately, she had a pretty good idea what had just transpired outside.

"I was only trying to help, I swear!" was all that she could think of replying, even if it didn´t do much to relieve how upset her brother was with her.

"This is exactly why I told you to mind your own business! Why couldn´t you just have done that, like I´ve countless times expressly asked you to?"

"I will from now on, I promise!" she tried telling Jack, but it didn´t look like her apology was helping much and right after, he left her to go and find the girl, who was most likely crying her eyes out in the girl´s room, thanks to herself and her big mouth.

Thankfully, Pacey soon arrived to the scene and could easily see how upset, she was.

"What´s wrong?" he asked, looking concerned for her.

"Not much. Just that I´ve probably ended the best relationship, my brother´s been in, because I couldn´t keep my nose out of it!" she half-cryingly answered and like he always seemed to do, Pacey knew that this was the time to give her a comforting hug.

"I´m sure, that isn´t true" he reassured her. "Everything will be okay again, you´ll see".

"I´m not so sure this time. Jack is really mad at me and it´s hard to blame him for it".

"In that case, why don´t you put that big and clever brain of yours to work on finding a solution? If you can solve complicated math problems, that college professors would have trouble with, getting two teenagers who already like one another back together can´t be that hard" he continued to build up her self-confidence and following a few more minutes of it, she managed to come to a resolution on what to do.

"Jen, are you in here?" Andie tentatively asked, as she came into the girl´s room, that aside for at parties like this was only used during gym class, or whenever one of Capeside´s school teams were playing a home game.

"I´ll be out soon, Andie. You don´t have to worry about me" she faintly heard Jen reply from inside one of the stalls, in the otherwise empty restroom.

"Look, I shouldn´t have said anything about my brother and his ex to you. The relationship that you two have is so much healthier, than the one he had with her, and I don´t want to be reason, why you do something as drastic as break up with him. He really likes you; I know that for certain" she tried telling Jen through the door. It worked too, seeing as Jen came out of the stall, albeit looking far puffier eyed, than she usually did.

"Would you believe that this is the first time since my grandfather died, where I´ve allowed myself to cry like this?" Jen asked her, before looking herself over in the mirror. "I look like a mess now!"

"I´m sure that my brother wouldn´t agree with you!" Andie tried cheering her up with.

"Then, why doesn´t he want to do more than plain old kissing with me?" Jen asked and, in all honesty, Andie had no good answer for her.

"Nothing more than that, at all? "Andie had to ask, seeing as this was beginning to sound strange to her too. Especially, considering all of the things that she already through Kate knew, that Jack had done with her former neighbor and friend.

"There´s sure to be seventh graders out there, who have done naughtier things to one another, than we have! I just don´t get it! I´m not ugly, am I?"

"Of course, you´re not!"

"Then why doesn´t he want to do more than kissing with me? Here I thought that I had him figured out, but I guess that I don´t at all!" Jen frustratedly scoffed, before giving the wall a small kick for good measure.

"Jen, I know that I don´t have even the tiniest bit of experience, when it comes to being in a real relationship and that advice from me on them for that reason, has to sound kind of hollow. It sounds to me though, like you´re asking these questions to the wrong person" was the best answer, Andie could come up with on the fly.

As cliched as it was, however, it accomplished what it was supposed to and moments later, they were back in gym and looking for Jack, so that his poor girlfriend could finally get some of the (honest) answers, she very understandably craved.


Jen was done playing the nice girl and for once in her life, was demanding some straight answers, which was why she´d simply grabbed Jack´s hand and led him down to an otherwise abandoned hallway, where they could speak in private.

"Why could you do it with Kate and not with me, Jack? That´s all I want to know right now!" she told him, as the fear of what the answer would be, grew to be as large as her desire to find out the truth.

"It doesn´t have anything to with you!" he tried pleading his case, while sounding as unconvincing, as he ever had.

"If you don´t mind me saying so, I beg to differ! Is it that you don´t like me?"

"Not at all, Jen! If things were different, I would have considered myself the luckiest guy in not just this school, but the whole world, that I got to date you! Please, believe that!"

"What do you mean by "if things were different", Jack?" she inquired and for the first time, since they began this little "showdown", he couldn´t look her in the eyes and turned away from her. Wanting an answer more than ever now, she therefore grabbed his arm and forced him to look her in the eyes.

"You don´t want to know, Jen! I don´t even want to know it!" he emotionally answered, as a pair of thin streams of tears began flowing from his eyes.

"You´re not making any sense!"

"I can´t have sex with you, because I´m not turned on by you. Just like I´ve never been turned on by any girls, Kate included. I´m gay, Jen and I always have been. I tried all that I could to change for you, I just couldn´t and ..."

"Shut up, Jack. We´ve both said everything, that needs to be said" she bit him off, before putting her arms around him and hugging him tightly.

And, as she stood there and held him, while she listened to the barely audible sound of him crying, it was like a calm came over her along with a new resolution: That just like she hadn´t turned her back on Abby, when she came out of the closet, she would never dream of turning her back on Jack either.


Andie had been filled with relief, when she saw Jen and Jack returning to the dance together, although she couldn´t help noticing that they weren´t holding hands anymore. From the looks of it however, they´d had a probably long overdue talk and it seemed to her, like Jack was looking relaxed and like a man, who´d just had a weight pulled off his shoulders.

"We´re calling it a night. It´s been an eventful enough evening already for the both of us" he told her in the closest they could get to private in a crowded gym full of dancing couples, while Jen was off to get them their coats from the coat room.

"But you´re still together, right?"

"It´s complicated. There´s some stuff, I need to tell you too, that I should have long ago" he told her with a small smile, that comforted her fears over whatever it could be.

In either case, Jack and Jen didn´t miss out on much in the last hour or so, before the party guest were politely told to hit the streets, so the clean-up crew could get to work. After they´d dropped off Dawson and Mary-Beth (who´d, it looked to her at least, spent the entire evening flirting with each other), Pacey drove her the rest of the way home, while they listened to his mom´s Elton John mixtape, playing from the car´s cassette player.

"You know what just hit me? Our summer holiday has just officially begun!" he said with a smile, that she couldn´t stop herself from matching with one of her own.

"You don´t actually consider going to a school dance the same as going to school, do you?" she quipped back at him.

"I guess not, but you´re still doing something on school premises, aren´t you?"

"Keep up that level of thinking and you´re sure to get straight A´s all through the next school year, Pacey! Anyway, don´t you still have some summer school, you need to attend?"

"I´ll have Joey there with me, so how bad can it really be? The last time I had to go to summer school was after grade six and from what little of it that my brain has chosen to remember, I spent the vast majority of it goofing off with my old buddy Will. By the way, he told me that he´s coming for a short visit sometime during the summer, so you´ll get a chance to meet him".

"Cool! What´s he like?"

"Kind of like me, just with shorter and brighter hair!" Pacey lamely joked and like so many times before, even his lamest jokes still brought a giggle out of her.

"When you describe him in such glowing ways, I can´t wait to meet him!" she joked in return.

"I´m sure that you´ll hit it off. Just like you will with Joey, I have no doubt there. I´ll tell you what, McPhee?"

"What?"

"This, I´m absolutely sure, will be a summer that we´ll never forget, for as long as we we live!"

Would it be, though? Andie certainly had high hopes that it would and if the right boy happened to come along during it and swept her off her feet with the first kiss of her life, that wouldn´t exactly be the worst thing ever either, in her eyes!


"Wow!" was all that Abby could think of replying, as they were sitting on Jen´s bed and Jen had just explained to her what had gone down with Jack that evening. "You didn´t get any vibe off him, that he could have been ..."

"If there was such a vibe going on, I was far too oblivious in my crush on him to notice it" Jen truthfully answered.

"I know that this is a little out of context, but I actually had a dream a little similar to what happened to you, only a few days before I came out to everyone!"

"What happened in it?" Jen asked out of courtesy, not that she really cared.

"I was naked and making out with this really hot girl! I´m talking a perfect ten with a smoking body to match it ..."

"Is there a point for you to get to?"

"So anyway, in my dream I´m making out with this uber-foxy girl, when she stops me from kissing her and tells me that she´s only into making out with guys. It´s sort of the same, don´t you think?"

"Only, yours was in a dream and mine just happened less than two hours ago, in real life!"

"I know and I feel really sorry for you. I know that you liked him a lot" Abby told her with a sympathetic smile.

"I just keep thinking back to everything that happened and wondering if there weren´t any ... I don´t know ... signs that I should have picked up on, you know? Any little hints, that could have given away that he´s ..."

"As gay as Liberace was?"

"I don´t know if anyone in today´s world is that flamboyantly gay, not even drag queens! Most of all, it just sucks to be single again, now that I´d gotten used to having someone to spoil me and tell me sweet nothing´s".

"You can find someone here in no time, if you set your mind to it! If I can in a town with only one other lesbian girl, who´s my own age in it, as far as I know, then a single, straight, pretty and might I add, damn awesome girl like you shouldn´t have any trouble with it!" Abby said and maybe it was the way that she did, but it made things seem less hopeless all of a sudden.

After all, if you´d calculated the odds of Abby finding romantic love in Capeside compared to her own, it was no competition and even if Jen´s first real attempt with a boyfriend since leaving her wild days behind hadn´t ended like she wanted it to, it didn´t mean in any way that there wasn´t still hope for her.

Who on earth could it end up being though, therein laid the big question?

END OF CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

THERE´S ONLY ONE MORE CHAPTER LEFT IN THIS SEASON! THANKS FOR READING AND I HOPE THAT YOU LIKED HOW THE JACK AND JEN STORYLINE HAS PLAYED OUT, SO FAR AT LEAST.