THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR - I WALK THE LINE

"You've got a way to keep me on your side

You give me cause for love that I can't hide

For you I know I'd even try to turn the tide

Because you're mine, I walk the line"

JOHNNY CASH (Single from 1956)

From the moment that Abby had been told about her mom's early release from prison, it had filled her with a multitude of emotions that she hadn't had to deal with, while her mother dearest had been locked away behind bars. In many ways, ever since her mom had been involuntarily excluded from her life, it had felt like she could ignore the problems of the past and just concentrate all out on her future, but with her mother scheduled to return to town the day after this one, those days of pretending that she hadn't been a victim of domestic abuse at the hands of the one who was supposed to protect her, were coming to an untimely end. Of course, this was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to their screwed-up mother/daughter relationship and in truth, Abby still hadn't decided yet if she could forgive her birth giver or not, now that she had the benefit of hindsight.

"Are you planning on traveling down to the prison, so you can greet your mom when she's released?" Bessie casually asked her, while they were helping one another with sorting through the last of the boxes that they'd brought from their old house and hadn't gotten around to dealing with yet. With good reason too, since most of the contents of those boxes wasn't worth much to anyone in their house, if anything at all.

"I think that I'll stick with my original plan and try to ignore with every bone in my body that she's out, until she seeks me out. It's her that needs to apologize to me, not the other way around" Abby stated, although she wasn't sure if she had it in her to be tough enough to treat her mom the way that she deserved to be treated, given what she'd put her daughter through.

"I don't think that anyone would deny that but try to look at this from her point of view for a second. She hasn't seen you for over half a year either" Bessie answered and in doing so, pointed to the fact that Abby's number of visits to the prison had been limited to one, and even that lone visit had been only a few months after her mother's incarceration. Something that Abby had to admit to feeling a bit guilty over and had to concede that in retrospect, she probably should have done more of. "With what she did to you, I'm sure that she knows as well as anyone that it's a long road back for you two, but she's still the only mother that you'll ever have".

"You've been a million times more of a mom to me than she's been since I was a kid! All that woman cares about is herself" Abby sharply replied, and although saying so was a tough statement, there was definitely some truth to it. "No offense, Bessie, but you don't have any clue what it's like to be scared out of your mind of coming home, because you didn't know what kind of a mood that she would be in. Even if things were never perfect here, you still had a pair of parents who loved you and would never do the things to you that she did to me".

"I know and if you can't find it within yourself to forgive her, then I can understand why. I still think that you have to give it a chance though, or you'll end up regretting it later on. Family affairs can be complicated like few other things can, and I'll be the first to admit that it took me ages after my dad got arrested before I could even begin to think about forgiving him, but if I hadn't then I would have been carrying a lot of negativities around for what could have been the rest of my life. Abby, I know that what my dad did and what your mom did are two very different things and honestly, I couldn't tell you what I would do in your shoes. All that I can tell you for certain is that she'll be just as nervous of seeing you again as you are of seeing her, if not more" Bessie explained, before getting stuck into the last box in the pile that they had to get through.

In Jack's case, he'd finally reached the end of his rope, when it came to how much more that he wanted to deal with, when it came to his sister. One thing was that she'd gotten herself pregnant (that part was bad enough), but the worst part of it was that she'd been lying to him for what must have been months on end, before she finally came clean to him on that fateful evening that he wouldn't forget for a long time to come. It goes without saying that he was disappointed in her, but the worst part was the feeling of helplessness that seemed to practically have become a part of her. While he would be ready to help her out anytime that needed him to, he'd also reached the conclusion that she needed to learn how to help herself first and for that to happen, he couldn't hold her hand all of the way through this tough part of her life, or she'd never learn and wind up always being dependent on him.

All of that were things that he'd have to deal with in due time however, because it wasn't the only event taking place in his life at this time. While he'd never called or thought of himself as a jock as such, he'd always been athletically built (to where Jen liked to tease him that it was impossible for him to put any weight on, where it didn't look good on him) and back at his own school, he'd been a reliable second-string wide receiver for their football team. When he'd first moved to Capeside, he'd planned on trying out for the team, but with them already having a full squad and himself needing to prioritize other things like keeping up with his school work and making friends before he could concentrate on anything else, he'd pushed the thought to the side until Chris had mentioned to him that a pair of players had been kicked off the team for "Unbecoming Behavior" (whatever that entailed). With one of those players being a fellow wide receiver, he figured that there was nothing to lose by throwing his name into the hat and after a short audition, he'd been hired for the job by coach Mitch Leery, also known as Dawson's dad. To be honest, the team needed all of the help that it could get as well, given its long and storied streak of losing seasons.

"Do you have any golden tips on how to score some easy points with your dad?" he casually asked Dawson, while they were working on a rather boring two-person homework assignment for English class together.

"The best advice that I can give you is to just be yourself. My dad has a very well-developed BS detector" Dawson answered him with a small smile.

"I just hope that I won't make a fool out of myself out there. It's been over a year and a half since I last played in a game" Jack "confessed" to Dawson.

"Luckily for you, you're stepping into a team where the bar has already been set incredibly low! You can't possibly be any worse than the guy, you've replaced!" Dawson dead-panned in reply, before they got back to working on their assignment.

In any case, Jack figured that playing on the football team would be a welcome distraction from everything else and who knew? Maybe, he'd even manage to make a friend or two.

Pacey would change a lot of things about the world, if he could, but one thing that he'd conceded as simply being an undeniable fact of life was that he lived in a capitalistic society and that if he wanted to move out on his own or into an apartment with Joey after high school came to a close, then he had to make the money to pay for it by himself. This meant that he needed a job and while Capeside was an easy place to find employment during the busy summer months, during the rest of the year it was a completely different kind of scene where those that already had a job didn't want to give it up, seeing as they didn't know where the next job would be coming from. After walking around with a stack of resumes and handing them out to every employer in town where he could feasibly get a job, he had to face the fact that there was only one place that was ready to hire him, that being "24/7 Video", the chain video store that had taken over for screen time and in spite of its name, closed at nine o'clock every evening and didn't open again until ten o'clock the morning after.

Through his few conversations with their ex-employee Eve, he'd quickly found out that it probably wasn't his kind of place to work, but beggars can't be choosers as they say and already less than two hours into his first shift there, he was starting to long for the days when the store still had his old name and he could more or less do as he pleased, as long as it didn't chase the customers away.

"Is there a rule against smiling here?" he jokingly asked Cindy, a somewhat attractive single mother to a three-year old boy and college dropout in her early 20's, while they were busy stacking the latest releases onto the shelves. So far, she'd been the only one out of his three co-workers on the afternoon and evening shift, who'd spoken more than five words to him and as for the other two (a pair of guys in their thirties with perpetual looks on their faces like they'd rather have been anywhere else), his guess was that they'd forgotten his name about as quickly as he'd forgotten theirs (which is to say almost instantly!).

"There isn't, but no one has any reason to smile here" she dryly answered him, before checking out the cover of one of the latest releases, some teen horror movie in the vein of all of the other near clones of the first "Scream" movie that had flooded the market, ever since that previously mentioned movie became an unexpected mega-hit.

"That just sounds ... sad!" was the best way that he could answer her, not that his observation wasn't pretty much dead on in how it encapsulated the feeling of working there.

"I'm sure that there are graveyards, where it's more fun to work than at "24/7 Video", but it's a job, at least. Raising a kid on your own isn't cheap, even if you're still living with your parents five years after you hoped that you wouldn't have to live under their roof anymore" Cindy told him with a small and sad sigh to add to it afterwards.

She'd already told him the basics of her life story so far. How she'd had anxiety issues going back to her childhood and how, after she'd become pregnant with her boyfriend during her first year away at college, it had led to her suffering a major nervous breakdown and needing to move back home again to recover from it and have her child. Now, almost four years after dropping out, she'd become stuck in Capeside, working a dead-end job with no end in sight and from what he could tell, was just going through the motions from one day to the next.

Hearing it made him feel sorry for her, but what frightened him a little was to know that this what his own future could very well look like too, if he didn't at least try to shape up in school.

A scary prospect, if there ever was one.

After a workday that felt like it would never end (even if there had only been five very, very, very long hours of it!), he was supposed to head home where his homework for the day after was waiting for him. Before he did so however, he figured that he'd stop by Joey's family's "new" house for a goodnight kiss from the girl that he simply couldn't get enough of, whether it was in a naked sense or every other way that you could possibly think of. With their house only being slightly out of his way too, it didn't mean that he'd lose too much time by doing so.

"Is this going to be my consolation prize from now on?" Joey sweetly asked him, while she snuggled up in his arms out on their front lawn, after them sharing a greeting kiss that would have made the knees of even the strongest man buckle.

"You know that I'd rather spend my time with you, but the constantly more drying out balance on my bank account tells me otherwise. Anyway, you don't want to be dating some loser, who still has to live at home with his mom because he can't afford to move out, when you're off at college, do you?" he asked Joey back, and from the look on her pretty face, it seemed like she got what he meant.

"Yeah, well, you aren't the only one, who'll need to start making some moolah sooner, rather than later, if she doesn't want to have to work her butt off all of the way through college. It's funny that you should mention it, because I was actually offered a job earlier today" Joey told him, making him raise an eye.

"Where and by whom?" he had to ask, since the question of it puzzled him to no end.

"The answer to those questions is the yacht club and Drue Valentine" she answered him matter-of-factly.

"That slimy guy, who's been a thorn in Jen's side ever since he got here?"

"That slimy guy, exactly! Anyway, his mom is the restaurant manager down there and apparently, they've had so many waiters and waitresses quit since she took over that she's desperate enough to hire just about anyone with restaurant experience. Meet that just about anyone!" she jokingly told him with a small smile that made him smile along with her.

"Do you want to say yes to it? I mean, you're sure to make some decent tips from working there".

"I'm also thinking that there's a logical reason, why they're suddenly this desperate and it probably isn't that Mrs. Valentine is the nicest lady in the entire world! Plus, and I'm saying this as someone who only barely knows the guy, but I'm ninety-nine percent sure that Drue only told me, so he can use me to unknowingly help him with getting into Jen's panties. God, that guy just has scumbag written all over him, doesn't he?"

"You're preaching to the choir here, Potter!"

"I don't know. What do you think, I should do?"

"All that I know is that I'd take the job in a second, if they offered it to me. Compared to what I've just gone through these past hours, it's sure to be a cakewalk".

"It can't have been that bad! Pacey, there's something else that we need to talk about, but I don't think that here and now is the place for it. Do you have time tomorrow after school?" Joey asked him, and without thinking too much about it, he gave her a small nod in reply.

Abby spent that evening trying something new for her, or at least, something that she hadn't done in quite a while: Quiet reflection. Her little talk with Bessie that afternoon had really gotten her thinking, both about the nice times and the far from nice times that she'd spent with her mom, and in all honesty, she'd had plenty of the first kind from the times before her mom's depression hit her and with that, also a thirst for alcohol that was most likely what had led to them being torn apart as a family. Abby could still remember how she would look up to her mom as a kid, and how whenever she'd needed her for anything, her mom would drop just about everything to make sure that her daughter and only child was as doing peachy as she could be. Those were still memories that she deep down cherished, still it only served to make it all the sadder how their relationship had deteriorated, to where they were now both dreading seeing one another again. Or at least, Abby was dreading it, but she could only imagine that the feeling was one hundred percent mutual when it came to the one that brought her into this world. Her dad had never told her so in so many words, but during their weekly chats over the phone (which happened every Sunday at ten in the morning, where they would take turns being the one who called the other), he'd hinted that her mom's alcoholism was also a part of the reason why their marriage fell apart and that she'd been hiding it from both of them for a long time, until she simply couldn't hide it anymore.

In many ways, Abby's relationship with her father was confusing to her, because on one hand, she remembered how infinitely depressing that things had been at their house during the last years where her parents were still together. For that reason, she understood perfectly why he chose to leave Capeside and start over somewhere else, where he wouldn't have any baggage from the past to constantly have to deal with. That he'd so quickly managed to find love again with someone else didn't bother her in the slightest either, even if that someone had flat out rejected it instantly when she'd found herself needing a place to live. She could see from her dad's girlfriend's point of view, how suddenly living with a teenager that you don't know at all would be far too much and too soon, when they hadn't even been together a year yet. The most important part was that her dad was in love with her and while Abby didn't plan on calling this woman her mom from day one, she would give her new stepmom a chance at least, should her and Abby's dad stay together long enough for the two of them to finally meet. The other side of her relationship with her dad was that they hadn't actually been in the same room since the day where he'd left her behind to her mother's mercy, and she was still working on forgiving him for that part, yet it helped to remind herself that he couldn't have known how bad that it would eventually become. While no one would call their relationship perfect, they were at the least cordial with one another now and she hoped that it could stay that way.

With her mom however, it was like a giant wall had been built up to separate them over the past six months and the one time that she'd visited her in the slammer, it had been a quiet affair with neither of them knowing exactly how to get the conversation between them going. In truth, Abby had only stayed there for twenty minutes at the most and had left with a hollow feeling inside, like she didn't have a mother anymore, if we didn't count Bessie into that equation.

The day after, circa a quarter past five, Abby found herself waiting at Capeside's train station for her mom, in spite of her original plan of letting her mom come to her first. After an evening filled with contemplation, she'd come to the conclusion that she would have to deal with the elephant in the room at some point either way, so she'd made the choice to face it all head on and not hide out from it. A brave choice that she was slowly starting to faulter on, as she sat on that bench at the train station and watched the clock counting down to when the train that she expected her mom to be on, would be arriving there.

"Is there room for one more on that bench?" a sweet voice asked her, and as Abby looked up at Melissa shyly smiling back at her, she instantly felt a warmth fill up her insides to replace the dread that they'd only moments before been filled with.

"There always is, when it's you who's asking" she replied, before making room for her ex-girlfriend to sit down next to her.

"I knew that you'd be nervous about seeing your mom again, so I asked Joey when she was coming in. Are you okay?" Melissa cutely asked her, and as Abby looked into those mesmerizing blue eyes of hers, a flood of memories and regrets over everything that she'd had and lost began flowing through her.

"Yeah, I guess so. It's just my mom, right? I mean, what's there to be afraid of?"

"In your case, far more than in most other cases. I have an idea though, if you want to hear about it?"

"What is it?"

"Look, Abby, I miss us and everything that we were to one another. What do you say that if I try to forgive you, you'll try to forgive your mom?"

It didn't take many seconds for Abby to accept Melissa's proposal, which only left her with one choice: She'd actually have to try to forgive her mother.

If Jack had any fears as to whether he'd be accepted in by his teammates or not, those fears were close to non-existent after his first practice with them. Even if it had been a muddy and rather cold affair, he could also admit to plain old having had fun, and that simply having to concentrate on playing his part in whichever plays they were running had made for a nice distraction too, from the negative things that often occupied his mind. Mitch (or coach Leery, as his players called him during practice) had even given him plenty of praise too, which didn't hurt to hear for a guy who'd been doubting his own self-worth for a while by then.

As for making friends on the team, he'd already made his mind up in most cases, when it came to which of them that he could see himself hanging out with. Chris seemed like a mostly friendly kind of guy to him, but the way that he talked about girls in particular sometimes made Jack uncomfortable, and it felt like it created a rift between them that also meant that would never become true friends. Not that Chris was the only guy on the team, who was more than a little misogynistic in their general statements (far from it), but thankfully, those guys didn't make up the entire roster and one of the rest, Jen's ex-boyfriend Henry, he'd already begun to bond a little bit with.

"Here I thought that you were this sensitive artist type" he teasingly asked Henry, as they were leaving for the day.

"No one says that you can't play guitar and like to play football at the same time. Let me put it this way: If I play well on the pitch and my grades aren't a total disaster, then my dad couldn't care less if I spend the rest of my time on my music or my girlfriend. He's a big-time football nut, if I didn't make that clear already" Henry explained as the boys shared a wry smile.

"At least, he cares about something. Ever since ... some bad things happened in my family, all that it seems like my dad cares about is work, work, work!" Jack joked in the darkest way possible.

"Jen told me about your mom and your brother. I'm pretty sure that I would have lost my mind, if it had happened to me" Henry answered, at a low enough volume that no one else could hear it. "Anyway, I'm sure that you've done enough talking about it for a lifetime already, and that joining the team wasn't to do more of it, so if you want us to stick to discussing happier subjects, it's perfectly fine by me".

"Thanks. It's just ... I don't want to be known as someone that you need to feel sorry for, you know?"

"You want to be treated like everyone else does. I get it, Jack" Henry basically completed his sentence for him. "If that's what you want, it's what you'll get".

To Jack's ears, more welcome words could not have been spoken.

Pacey had been bored senseless at school that day, not that it was anything new to him. One thing that he'd luckily had to distract his thoughts with though, was the prospect of meeting up with Joey after school for a small chat and what he hoped would be some quick making out, before he had to suffer another five hours of boredom at a job, he was already considering quitting after his first shift there.

Seeing as their last classes for the day were different ones, they'd made the agreement to meet up at the entrance after last bell, whereafter they made their way to a small, wooded area behind the school, where they could talk in peace.

"What did you need to talk about?" he asked her, after a few small kisses to take the edge off for both of them.

"Pacey, what happened to Andie has ... I don't know if the right words are that it's scared me, but it's made me think a lot about us and what could happen, if the same thing happened to me. I don't think that I can have sex with you again for a while" she nervously told him.

"Have you thought about going on the pill?" he asked her back and instantly, wished that he hadn't.

"If I did, then Bessie is sure to find out about it. You know that I love you and it isn't like we can't do other stuff, or that I want it to be a permanent thing, it's just that right now ... if you want to break up with me, then I'll try to be understanding" she sadly said.

"Don't be ridiculous, Potter!" he told her right away, if anything just to put the poor girl's fears at ease. Which seemed to work too, given the wide smile that it brought on her face. "Joey, why do you think that I barely ever give any other girl a second glance? It's because you're the only one that I want to be with!"

"Do you really mean that?" she asked him cutely, just as a drizzle of rain began to come down upon them.

"For you, I'd wait until the end of time, if I had to" he replied, firing off one of the corniest lines in his life so far.

"I promise you that it won't take that long! Thanks for being understanding, Pacey. Sometimes, I forget how lucky I am to have you as my boyfriend" she sweetly told him, before he hugged her closely, just to drive the point home and in any case, he'd gone for over sixteen years without having sex, so he could do it again, right?

Even to his own ears, that statement sounded more than a little hollow.

END OF CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR