THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE - I WANT YOU TO WANT ME

"I want you to want me

I need you to need me

I'd love you to love me

I'm begging you to beg me

I'll shine up my old brown shoes

I'll put on a brand-new shirt

I'll get home early from work

If you say that you love me"

CHEAP TRICK (From the album "In Color" (1977))

A/N: Sorry for the wait with this one, but I had a story idea that I tried to get to work, but just couldn't, which is why this one went through several rewrites. I hope that you'll enjoy it and as always, any comments are more than welcome.

In order for Jen's plans to fix Henry and Mandy up to work, it required both her and Dawson to do their share of prep work, before the actual plan was put into motion. On Dawson's part, this mostly consisted of him talking Henry up to Mandy and trying to make her see why she would be better off showering her affection on someone her own age than someone like him, who aside from having a girlfriend also was on a whole different maturity level than her. Jen's own part was a little trickier, since she first had to convince Nikki to make Mandy a part of a play that was already fully casted as it was and on top of that, trying to get her boyfriend to cheat on her. Something that she was having her troubles explaining to Nikki, before the day's rehearsal was about to begin.

"Let me get this straight. You want me to hire a girl for the show, who hasn't asked to be in it, so that your boyfriend will cheat on you with her?" a majorly confused Nikki asked her, while they were waiting for most of the rest of the cast and crew to arrive.

"In a nutshell, yes" Jen answered her, knowing fully well how crazy it must have sounded to an outsider's ears. "Look, I want to break it off with Henry, but I can't now that he's in the play with me, so in order for me to not come out looking like a complete bitch here, I have to get him to cheat on me first!"

"What? Why? Jen, I feel like I need subtitles right now!"

"Try to look at it from this point of view: Here's me, a sixteen-year-old girl from the big city, who'd tried more things by the time I turned thirteen than Henry had in his entire life when I met him and is someone, who's already got somewhat of a shady reputation to begin with. Here's the local boy Henry, innocent and fresh-faced and the sort of kind-hearted boy that wouldn't hurt a bee, even if it had just stung him. If I first seduce him and make him fall for me, only to stomp on his heart a few months later, what does that say about me? Or, what's just as important, what will it make everyone else say about me? Henry will get over it and move on to some other lucky girl, but things like that stick to your reputation a thousand times harder than a piece of rock-hard gum at the bottom of your shoe" Jen tried to explain to Nikki, who at least somewhat looked like she got the meaning what she was saying.

"You don't think that it'll hurt his reputation, if he's caught cheating on you with one of his female classmates?" Nikki asked, bringing up a point that Jen honestly hadn't considered all that much, if she had to be honest.

"He has the excuse of being fourteen and in his first relationship, I don't. If he messes it up, then he'll just be par for the course with his peers that tried and failed at it just like he did, and if he's lucky, he'll find out that Mandy is the girl of his dreams and that'll be that for him. Just sunshine and bright skies ahead, like it always should be for one of the good ones like him! I basically put my entire reputation on the line when we went public with our relationship, so please, can you help me out here? I promise that I won't ask you for anything ever again, for as long as I'll live" Jen pleaded with Nikki, whom she at least managed to get a small nod out of.

Andie's life had been about dealing with the toughest subjects that any teenager could be faced with for so long, that when she'd met her near-namesake on that magical evening in the woods, she'd felt like it was starting to change her from the cheerful and carefree girl that she had been, into someone that she was finding it increasingly hard to recognize when she looked at herself in the mirror. Of course, a huge part of this was thanks to her beginning to get visions of Tim again, that in the wake of her mother's suicide had only become even more frequent, but (crazy as it sounds) dealing with delusional visions of her long-deceased brother (that she knew deep down was her own mind's strange way of dealing with her insecurities), was a foe that was common to her and even in the worst of times, she'd still been able to hold onto who she was to the core inside: Someone, who always tries to see the glass as half full and does her best to spread joy to those around her.

She'd even begun to turn towards self-loathing, ever since the onset of Summer had left her with more time alone with her scattered thoughts than she would have preferred to have, and it only made her all the happier that all of those months earlier, Pacey hadn't responded to her advances towards him like she'd wanted him to, because what kind of girlfriend did she have it in her to be to him? Not that she knew for sure, having never been anyone's girlfriend before, still she could only imagine that he would be walking around looking as constantly depressed as she felt, which in turn would only have made herself feel even worse inside and lead to her having to break up with him, if he hadn't done the dubious honors first. Adding to that, she would have had to deal with the carrying around the figurative crucifix of being known as a boyfriend stealer, and if there was one type of girl that was generally looked down on by most of the others of her gender at their school, it was those who had trouble with keeping their hands to themselves in regard to other girls' boyfriends, with the worst "Secondary Crime" being if they'd slept around on said boyfriends. Or been a complete bitch to everyone of course, as in the case of Belinda McGovern, but then again, Belinda was a special sort of case and not one of those, you run into on an everyday basis!

As for herself, she didn't look down on them too much, often reminding herself of when her mom had told her several years earlier that when you're new to the game of love, mistakes can and will more often than not also be made, as well as that growing up is a learning process where you can sometimes learn more from your mistakes than you do from the things that you did right. Something that she herself had tried many times already, just in the year or so that she'd called Capeside her home. That was just who Andie McPhee was though, whether she liked it or not, the always rational thinking girl who played by all of the rules and rarely, if ever, would ever dream of straying from them.

One thing that she figured that she could change pretty easily though, was how everyone saw her as being predictable and perhaps that was why she'd paid a visit to Jen the day before (while she was still riding high off getting her first real kiss less than a day earlier) to add some, in her own opinion, much-needed variety to the clothing that she wore to school each day.

"Jack, what's the big deal? If anything, I thought that you'd be glad to see me dressing more like everyone else" she asked her brother, who hadn't said much to her after she'd presented him with her look for the day that (along with being mostly borrowed from Jen's closet) consisted of a pair of not too tight fitting jeans (a benefit to being a little smaller than Jen in most ways, except for the vertical one), a dark-blue hoodie with what she thought was a pretty cool image printed on it's front (inspired by some sort of rock band that she had to admit to never having heard of before) and her very comfy sneakers, that she practically never wore outside of when she went out for a walk in the woods to clear her head.

"It just isn't you, Andie!" Jack retorted, as they made their way to the first class after a short break that she'd mostly spend waiting in line to use the girl's room.

"How do you know that I'm not secretly a huge fan of "The Offspring"?" she retorted back, while pointing to the band logo on her recently borrowed hoodie.

"Name one of their songs, then. Just one, and I'll let you off the hook!" Jack dared and in doing so was asking her the one question that she'd least wanted him to ask.

"Ehm ..." she began mumbling, just as an unlikely savior emerged, walking down the hallway towards them and talking to what she guessed was one of the girls in his grade, who from how she dressed and looked was probably into the same styles of fashion and music that he was. It was Andy and holy crap, was he looking all kinds of great in Andie's eyes! As their eyes met and he smiled in a flirting way at her, she could swear that she could almost feel her knees buckle underneath her.

"Hey, Andrea, also known as Andie. I like your new style" he smilingly greeted her and in doing so, made goosebumps rise up on her arms that would have been visible for everyone, if she hadn't had the hoodie on to hide it.

"Thanks" was all that she could think saying, which also had the adverse effect of making Jack stare at her like she'd just arrived on the first shuttle from Mars to take the place of his real sister.

"You're an Offspring fan too, huh?" the girl that Andy was with asked her, probably just in an attempt to start up some small talk. "What's your favorite song of theirs?"

"Oh, I don't know. There's just so many of them, you know?" she tried floundering to avoid giving them a real answer that she in all honesty couldn't have given them, even if she'd wanted to! Luckily for her though, Andy could see that she was in a spot of bother, so he mouthed out a title to her that she could use.

"There's that song, I think that it's called "Self Esteem". That's probably my favorite!" she tried with, and from the knowing glance that she got in return, she could guess that it wasn't the worst answer that she could have given.

"Yeah, I really like that song too. I'm Casey, by the way. Andy and I have been friends since middle school. It's nice to meet you, Andie" the girl introduced herself with a friendly smile to match.

"The same to you. This is my brother Jack" she quickly introduced her brother to this pair of seniors, even if she knew that he probably would have preferred it, if she hadn't done so.

"How do you two know one another?" Jack asked her, sounding as suspicious, as anyone could be.

"I ran into Andie out in the woods, and we ended up getting to talking. She's a pretty cool chick, your sister, in case you didn't know" Andy replied on behalf of both of them, which while it was very sweet of him to say, almost made her blush to look like an overly ripe cherry right then and there. "Anyway, we should get to class. I'll see you around, Andie with an i and an e".

"In a small school like this, we're bound to, aren't we, Andy with a y?" she bade Andy goodbye, before he left with Casey to get to the next class on their itinerary for the day.

"I have so many questions right now! The most obvious ones being when, how and why!" Jack said, making it clear that he wanted some answers right away.

"The when part is easy, because I met him when you were in Boston with Jen and dad was down in Providence."

"So, this past weekend. I'll need you to fill in the blanks here, Andie, because I can't come up with any kind of scenario in my head, where you and a guy that looks like him, suddenly and out of the blue decide to strike up a conversation with one another!"

"Why not? Do you look down on guys, who have long hair and wear an earring, is that what this is about?"

"That's ridiculous and you know it! For what it's worth, I think that his haircut sort of suits him and I'm not bothered by a guy wearing an earring at all either, but he's a senior and not only that, but he's also the kind of guy that you've always walked in a wide circle around, whenever you've seen them out in the real world!"

"Well, maybe I'm starting to think that doing all of that judging a book by its cover has been pretty dumb of me, have you considered that?" she asked Jack, who clearly didn't know whether to buy her explanation or not, yet was also having immense troubles with coming up with a good comeback.

"I guess, if that's the reason why you've decided to throw the rulebook into the garbage for once, then it isn't the worst reason in the world! What's he like?"

"He's as nice, as they come and a lot smarter than you'd think from looking at him. I know in my heart that mom would have instantly taken a liking to him too" she told Jack as they shared a warm smile of remembrance of the woman, they both missed so badly.

"Coming from you, that's a hell of a compliment. Then again, he apparently thinks that you're a "cool chick" and I've never heard anyone say that about you before! It felt nice to try it for once, didn't it?" Jack asked her, and while she could have tried to keep up a facade in front of him, she knew that it wouldn't have lasted long, anyway.

"Yeah, it did. I just want to find some sort of path towards feeling like things are back to normal again, Jack. I hope that you can understand that" she explained to Jack, who replied with a knowing nod and a quiet acceptance that she needed to do what she needed to do, in order for her to get there.

"Hey, if anyone understands what you're going through, then you're looking at him. If dressing to look a bit more like the other girls here and making a few friends outside of our little clique is your way of doing that, then I'd say that it isn't the worst way of dealing with it. Just promise me that you'll use your better judgment and be open about it, if there's anything that you need to talk about. I mean, if we can't lean on one another at a time like this, what does that say about us a family?

"I will" she promised her brother, even if it was a hollow promise at best.

"I don't believe for a second though, that you've ever heard a single note of that Offspring song that you said was your favorite! I saw how your semi-boyfriend helped you out back there!"

"Uh-huh, I have!" she replied, re-using a phrase that she probably hadn't used since their early childhood on him. "Anyway, Andy isn't my semi-boyfriend! Why, do you think that he likes me?"

"Just on general principle, I don't know why anyone wouldn't like you, Andie. He thinks that you're "Pretty Cool" though, so that isn't the worst place to start off from. Of course, we both know that dad would absolutely hate it with a fiery passion, if you brought someone like your near namesake there home for Sunday dinner ..."

"Tell me about it! I'm not sure that he wouldn't disown me right then and there! Then again, if there ever was a time when he might be more open to suggestion, I guess that it could be now" she thought out loud, as they rapidly began to make their way to a pair of classes that all of their chatting about life and prospective boyfriends had made them quite a bit late for.

With Jen and Dawson needing a plan and fast, they decided to deal with it in the most "Dawsonian" way possible and get some inspiration from the world of Hollywood, to see how you can get two people to date, without them knowing about your true purpose. This of course narrowed their choices down significantly and by the time they'd made their final choices, they'd strayed quite a bit from their original demands and settled for movies that only came anywhere close to them.

"Remind me again, how does watching this movie figure into our plans?" Dawson asked her, as they laid on his bed and watched the previews on the first of two VHS tapes, that they'd just rented from the video store where his girlfriend, also known as her half-sister, also worked. They'd invited Eve to come along of course, but she'd insisted that she couldn't continue leaving work early every day or she'd surely end up getting fired soon, plus she'd already seen both of the movies, so she'd decided to take a rain check.

"Well, ehm ..." Jen began, as she tried to remember what her reasoning for renting "Mallrats" was. In truth, her main reason was that she'd wanted to see it again and little else, after it had been laughing riot when she'd first seen it a few years earlier, but of course, Dawson didn't need to know that! "Oh, now I remember! The movie is about two couples that have broken up and need to get back together, kind of like with Henry and Mandy, right?"

"I guess, but Henry and Mandy have never been a couple. So, it isn't really the same, is it?"

"It still falls into the same main category! Anyway, watching it could be a learning experience for you, when it comes to what not to do as a boyfriend. Let's face it, Dawson, you went from dating one of the easiest to please girls in town to a girl, who knows what she wants and just as importantly, how easy that you are to replace" she told Dawson, who looked like it wasn't subject that he wanted to waste more time arguing about.

As they watched the movie together, Jen had to admit to having a pretty damn pleasant time, a stark contrast to the last time that the two of them had watched a movie alone together, on that evening that already felt like forever ago, when Joey and Pacey had gone out on their first date. That evening had felt like a chore to get through, and most of it came down to Dawson talking so much over the movies that even the customers coming into the video store had only been a minor inconvenience in comparison. Not that he stayed entirely quiet, but he was a completely different kind of relaxed this time and not trying (and failing) to impress her with a bunch of memorized movie trivia that she couldn't care less about. Why, if she had to be honest, this was the most comfortable that she'd ever felt with a guy, who wasn't named Pacey!

After they'd finished watching "Mallrats" (that had been just as funny as she'd remembered it to be!), it became time for Dawson's far more artistically correct choice for the evening, at least compared to an R-rated comedy about a bunch of lovesick, smalltown teenagers, who spend a lazy Saturday on hanging out at their local shopping mall. Not that it was by much though, although it did fit a little better with their theme for the evening, since the movie that he'd chosen was the dark comedy "Small Soldiers". A movie that she hadn't seen before either, which only helped to make the evening even more interesting and it did at least have a very cute love-story between that girl from "Interview with a Vampire" and some boy that she could have sworn that she'd seen in something before this, and they were roughly Henry and Mandy's ages, although with rest of the movie's premise, you couldn't exactly say that it helped them in the making plans department.

One thing that Jen had to admit to however, was that she was having a splendid evening all evening long and that the reason for it was lying next to her for nearly the entire time, when he wasn't off to grab them another soda from the fridge or to get them something to snack on, while they enjoyed the movies together.

Honestly, if she had thought of this evening as a date, then it would have been the simplest and best date that she'd ever experienced in her entire life.

Andie had, before this day, only one time been nervous over making a phone call and it was a day and call that she didn't want to think back on. On that day, roughly a year and a half earlier, she had what could only be described as a total mental breakdown and in order to hide it from everyone, she'd run away from school and made her way to a bus station, determined to never come back again. When she got there though, she found out that her money wouldn't take her all that far away and with reason prevailing in the end, she'd called home from a pay phone to get her parents to come and pick her up. This time, it was for a much more pleasant reason, and she could practically feel the butterflies flying around in her belly, as she dialed up the number that Andy had given to her on a small slip of paper that prior Saturday. At first, she got a hold of what sounded like it was Andy's younger sister, whose name apparently was Becky, and it took half a minute of waiting or so (that felt like it was far more than that) before she got him on the other end. Once she did though, it didn't take long for them to make plans to meet where they'd said their goodbyes after their first hook-up, at the fork of a crossroads that was more or less an equal distance from both of their houses.

"Are you surprised that I had the courage to call you?" she asked Andy, as they made their way to a private spot in the woods that he knew of and would be perfect for the kind of date that you don't want everyone else to know about.

"Not really. Would you usually be afraid to call up a boy and ask for a date with him?" Andy answered with a small smile that she couldn't help herself from returning in kind.

"Actually, that was the first time I've tried it. Was I good at it?" she asked Andy, who chuckled a little at her question.

"Yeah, I guess so. I mean, you said what needed to be said. Look, Andrea ... is it okay, if I call you Andrea from now on? It's just a little weird to me, with us having the same nickname and all of that ... you get what I'm saying, don't you?"

"Andrea is fine. What did you want to tell me?"

"I want to make something clear from the start between us and it's that I'm not on the lookout for a girlfriend, at least not right now. You're really sweet, it isn't that and we can still go on a date and hook up now and again or I don't know, just meet up to drink a few beers and smoke a doobie somewhere, but I've tried the whole girlfriend experience enough times to know that I don't want to get involved with someone, when I'm less than a year away from leaving for college. You can understand that, can't you?" Andy told her, and while some of those words that he'd said stabbed at her heart, there was still enough reason and kindness in the way that he'd said it that it was impossible for her to get mad at him.

"Is there a limit on how often, we can go on these dates?" she asked him, after a few moments of considering what to say.

"I guess not. I try not to plan too far out into the future though, so keep that in mind. It's just that I don't want you to go off and wasting your money on buying concert tickets for us, for some show that isn't until several months from now, do you know what I mean?"

"Got it."

"I'm also not going to sit with you at lunch and walk down the school hallways holding hands with you. What you and I do in private is no one else's business than our own, are we agreed?"

"If that's how you want it to be, Andy" she told him and only a few minutes later, they'd reached their make-out spot, a gorgeous spot that couldn't have fit better with the purpose of their evening.

Had she expected to go all the way with him on that evening? Not at all, but he'd made sure to be gentle with her and had taken his time with warming her up, to when he was sure that she was ready to receive him, before he'd entered her and stripped her away the virginity that she'd held precious for so long.

After they were done, she felt like she should have regretted that it had happened like this, only she couldn't and for one simple reason: She was in love and there was no denying it.

"Honestly, Jen! I don't know what to do with you anymore!" Abby scolded her, after Jen had just told her about what a pleasant experience that she'd had with Dawson the evening before.

"What? All I said was that I had a nice time with him!" Jen tried defending herself with, even if she could see that Abby wasn't buying it for a second.

"Let me ask you a multiple-choice question, then. How many times during this supposedly completely platonic date with you half-sister's boyfriend, I might add, did you think about kissing him? Is it A: One to five. B: Five to ten. Or C: Are you frigging kidding me, Jen?" Abby bluntly asked, like only she could.

"A. Okay, so it was more like B, but not more than ten times, I swear!" she replied to Abby, who was already rolling her eyes at her in response.

"Are you for real or a soap opera character, who's been somehow birthed by the demons of bad TV to be sent to live among the rest of us mere mortals?"

"Sometimes, I have my doubts, I really do! I mean, there's being hormonally disturbed and then there's this ... whatever kind of emotionally uncontrollable monster it is that I've turned into!"

"Relax, there's still hope for you yet, my young Padawan! You at least feel guilty over it, so that's something. You can't seriously be thinking about making a move on Dawson though, can you?"

"Probably not, although ..."

"No "Althoughs", Jen! Keep your mittens to yourself, when it comes to this one!"

"I just meant that Eve probably won't be here next year. From what she tells me, her plan is to save up enough money to leave for college after the summer rush here is over. Of course, Dawson could move away to be with her, but could you really see that happening?" she asked Abby, who managed to calm down a little.

"I guess not, but Jen, you can't jump into something with Dawson right now, for lots of reasons that I don't think need to be explained to you. And, for God's sake, break up with Henry and get it over with, so you can both move on! It's been time for it for a long time now!"

"I know and I will. I just need to get the timing right" she explained to Abby and thankfully, Abby didn't have more in her arsenal to throw at her.

For now, at least.

END OF CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE