THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR - THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT

"Two lovers kissing amongst the scream of midnight

Two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude

Getting a cab and travelling on buses

Reading the graffiti about slashed seat affairs

I say that's entertainment

That's entertainment"

THE JAM (From the album "Sound Affects" (1980))

A/N: Hi, my dear readers! Since I've been feeling a little extra creative this week, you're getting two chapters. So, if you haven't read the chapter that I released this past Monday, make sure to read it before this one.

It wasn't like Nikki had never been stressed out before. That day in that South Carolina courtroom where she had to testify against her ex-boyfriend Jerome, was one of the worst days of her life and her stress levels had undoubtedly reached their maximum peak during the questioning, that she couldn't have gotten over with fast enough. This however, was stress of a different kind, because at least her questioning had been over with relatively fast and afterwards, all she had to focus on was putting her past behind her, whereas this was the kind of stress that had slowly built up inside of her over the past two months, to where it was now like a giant bubble inside of her that was just waiting to burst out into a fit of rage!

Not that she was usually inclined to lose her temper and from what she could remember, it hadn't happened since grade six, when some girl that had never liked her, tripped her on purpose and caused her to get a bloody nose. She'd blown up on that shocked looking girl like there was no tomorrow and it had taken her a few hours to calm down again afterwards, still that was an easier situation to deal with too, because she'd had good reasons to be angry with that girl and again, it had been over and done with pretty fast. She couldn't really get angry at her actors for not living up to her own expectations for them, that perhaps in retrospect had been impossible from the start for any cast of untrained teenage actors to live up to, but nevertheless they were the only ones that she could cast any blame at, even if it was herself, who'd handpicked all of them.

"Wow! They've progressed from being terrible to just being mediocre!" Jack, who'd volunteered to step in and be a stagehand, after the boy that he'd replaced had broken a pair of bones in his hand in a skateboarding accident, remarked as they observed the latest line of rehearsals for "Barefoot in the Park" from the side of the stage together.

"Do really think that we can even call them mediocre?" she deadpanned in reply to him.

"Okay, so maybe below average is more like it, but you have to give them that they can get through the entire play now without looking at their scripts, so that's a big step up!" Jack, who was clearly trying to see the glass as half full, chimed in with.

"Is it, really? Jen takes an "artistic pause" at least twice in every scene, whenever she can't remember her lines. Mandy, my latest hire that I hoped could only be better than the actress that she replaced, is somehow even worse and Henry, bless his sweet and innocent heart, looks like a deer caught in headlights, whenever he has to show any emotion on stage. Let's be honest here, I've completely blown my shot and not even my dad will let me direct a play here again, after we've been booed off stage on opening night!" she told Jack and almost found herself becoming so emotional that a tear or two came out.

"It can still be saved, can't it?"

"With two weeks to go until opening night, I can't see how! Even if I can convince everyone to come in for extra rehearsal days, the absolute best that I can hope for is to get a passable performance out of my two leads and by that, I mean passable within the widest stretch of the imagination! No, what I need right now is a Bonafide miracle and the last time I checked, they don't happen just because you want them to" she mused out loud to herself, while shaking her head at the predicament, she'd put herself into.

"You could also just ask someone, who's had to get a passable performance out of a pretty terrible actor too and somehow, someway actually managed to get it done" Jack suggested, leaving her puzzled as to whom it could be.

Joey's general thoughts on the subject of Capeside could be cut down to three little words: Homely, predictable and small. Three words that for most of the time where she'd lived there had fit their small town perfectly, but lately it had slowly begun to change and not in a way that she was entirely satisfied with. One thing was the little things that came with progress, and you couldn't do much of anything about, like the fact that the town had been slowly expanding for as long as anyone could remember. With new houses being built on the outskirts of town all of the time, it was a positive sign for the town as a whole that at least their population size was on the rise, and it wasn't the opposite way around. It still felt homely to her as well (with the exception of those few months every summer where they were "invaded" by a seemingly never-ending horde of tourists), even if plenty of not so nice things had been happening lately (with her boyfriend being savagely attacked topping that list) and although part of her dreamt of getting out of there after high school ended, there was just a familiarity to it that she knew that she was unlikely to find anywhere else, she would call home in the future.

That only left the predictable part and lately, it had been anything but predictable up in their usually quiet little neck of the woods! One thing was how Jen's love life appeared to now be ruled solely by the laws of chaos theory, but she was slowly getting used to that part and had learned to take anything that her friend from New York said in regard to boys with a grain of salt, from knowing that those opinions could easily change from day to day. She'd even (after a rather uncomfortable talk) convinced Abby to try to keep it down during those intense lovemaking sessions with her girlfriend and whenever she heard a slight moan coming from the room next to her own, she'd learned to more or less block it out and not think too much about it, so it wasn't that either. For some reason though, seeing Andie McPhee come to school dressed in sneakers, a pair of loose-fitting jeans and an Offspring hoodie had her feeling like she didn't know anything about anything anymore!

"What's the world coming to?" she asked Pacey on their way to their first class of the day, drawing a small smile from him.

"Why, what do you mean, Potter?" he asked her back with that lovable scoundrel grin of his to add to it.

"It'll all going far too well! With Jack now also having found someone, it means that all of us are currently lucky in love! It can't continue this way, it just can't!"

"What about Andie? She hasn't found anyone yet, from what I know of."

"You don't think that her recent change in style has something to do with a guy of some sort, whom she has a crush on? Believe me, trying to change how you look to catch some guy's fleeting eyes is a very sixteen-year-old girl thing to do! Do boys do that too, by the way?"

"Sometimes, if the girl is hot enough or it's been so long since they got some that they're becoming desperate! Anyway, I really think that you're over-reacting again, Sweetie. Let's be honest here, it's a very you thing to do!" Pacey quipped back at her, in a way that made rolling her eyes at him seem like the most natural reflex in the world to Joey.

"This is how it all starts, Pacey! The next thing we know, we'll have alien invaders, cats and dogs will start living in perfect harmony with one another and you'll start getting straight A's!"

"Out of those three scenarios, which do you think is least likely to happen?" Pacey dry-humoredly asked her, before they in unison answered, "Option number three!" and shared a chuckle together.

"Isn't that the sad truth?" he rhetorically asked, before moving onto a far more pleasurable subject of conversation. "You know, we could spend tonight on my boat out on the creek, pretending that nothing in the world has changed since we were kids? We'll make an evening of it, what do you say?"

"That it sounds like the best offer, I'll get all day! You're on, mister!" she told her smiling boyfriend, before they had to let the subject lie for the time being, seeing as a day of school awaited them.

Nikki had only heard the basic outlines of what had happened, when Dawson had gotten himself involved with two girls at the same time and in all honesty, it hadn't stuck with her because frankly, it just didn't interest her all that much. Sure, she'd spoken to Dawson now and again, usually when all of their little clique ate lunch together, but he'd seemed kind of boring to her, plus it wasn't a secret that he was dating that very cute, short-haired blonde girl, who worked down at the video store. With Nikki figuring that she wouldn't stand a chance in competition with a girl who looked like that did, it wasn't like she could see him as a possible boyfriend for the future either.

After Jack had told her a little about how Dawson had been forced to try to get a decent acting performance out of one the girls that he was dating though, she'd suddenly found herself having a renewed interest in him. After all, he was in many ways her male counterpart at their school, and if picking his brain for advice turned out to be the miracle that she'd been praying for, she could see it as an unexpected bonus. With little left to lose, she didn't mind swallowing her pride a little either, for it to happen.

She managed to catch up with him in the computer room, surfing on one of the PCs before class started.

"Hi, Nikki. Have you checked out this webpage before?" he asked her, as she sat down next to him and looked at the screen as well.

"Imdb. No, I can't say that I have" she honestly replied to him.

"It has all of the information that you could want, about any movie! Finally, a website that I can actually use for something!" Dawson enthusiastically told her, and she couldn't help herself from smiling a little a how he was acting like a kid in a candy store over something so small.

"Congratulations, I guess. I was wondering if I could pick your mind on something after school" she shyly asked him, although it didn't look like he minded it all that much.

"Sure, if you think that I can help. Is the school production of "Barefoot in the Park" not going as you hoped?"

"That's the understatement of my year so far! I hear that you went through your own production troubles, back when you made your latest movie."

"Plenty of them. You've never seen it, have you?"

"Not yet. Are you going to invite me over to your parents' house for a screening of it, perhaps tonight? I won't tell your girlfriend, I promise."

"You could, if you wanted to, she's not what you call the jealous type. She's also won't be off from work until late tonight, so if you came over to my house around seven o'clock or so ..."

"I'll be there with bells on! Not literal bells, of course! Let me make that perfectly clear!" she joked to Dawson, who took her little quip with a wry smile.

Would it change anything in regard to the success of their upcoming play? Probably not, but it was worth a shot and in any case, it was an excuse that her dad would buy to let her spend an evening out of the house.

Joey's little date with Pacey had turned out to be exactly what the doctor ordered for her blues, just like she's expected it to be and after they'd reached the pier again and kissed goodnight, she figured that she would be floating on a pink and fluffy cloud of love for her entire walk home. With it being a regular Tuesday evening in Capeside, there weren't all that many people out on the streets either, only a pair of dogwalkers whose beloved pooches needed some fresh air and perhaps to mark off their territory one last time before bedtime. One thing that she'd figured out pretty quickly after they'd moved into their new house, was that when she was coming from the direction of the pier, she could take a shortcut through a patch of forest that would cut off a good five minutes of walking time and so far, she hadn't run into anyone on that little part of the journey. It was therefore somewhat surprising to her, when in the distance, she saw a pair of young lovers kissing. With her not wanting to disturb them, she thought about going back to the main road again and taking the long road home, but with the two lovers going their separate ways only moments later, she figured that she could sneak around the girl (whom she could now tell had blonde hair and was slimly built) without getting noticed.

As it so often happened with her plans though, it didn't take long for them to go flying out of the window, when she accidentally stepped on a fallen branch that snapped so loudly that anyone within a hundred feet of her would have heard it, if they weren't inside with the doors and windows thoroughly closed.

"Dammit!" she quietly swore to herself, as she could hear the girl coming towards her.

"Joey, is that you?" the girl asked and from the slightly high-pitched voice, she could easily tell who it was.

"In the flesh!" was all that she could think of answering.

"Why are you out here this late in the evening?" Andie asked, sounding mildly interested at best.

"I sometimes take this route as a short cut home. Who was the guy that you were playing tonsil hockey with?" she asked Andie back and even in the faintness of the moonlight that made up their only light source, she could tell that the other girl was starting to blush.

"My boyfriend. Or rather, sort of boyfriend. I guess that you could call him my fifty/fifty boyfriend, if you want to be exact about it" Andie answered, sounding both excited and a little confused at the same time.

"I've never heard of a fifty/fifty boyfriend before! What does that entail, exactly?"

"Basically, that we're only boyfriend and girlfriend when we're not in school, or when anyone else can see us."

"He doesn't want to be seen with you, is that it?" Joey asked, sounding quite suspicious of the whole arrangement.

"It's for my sake too. If my dad found out that I'm seeing someone like him, he'd force me to break up with him instantly. When I'm with Andy, I don't care about any of the bad stuff that's happened in my family or all of this pressure that there is on me to succeed. I just care about pleasing him, in the same way that he cares about pleasing me. You can understand that, can't you?" Andie asked of her, and for as little as Joey wanted to be accepting of what sounded like an arrangement that would allow an older boy to take advantage of a younger and very inexperienced girl, like she knew that Andie was, at the same time she could still remember the almost excessive need for closeness that she herself had felt in the wake of her own mom's death and it made it nearly impossible for her to look down an emotionally fragile girl like Andie, for wanting to feel it too.

"Yeah, I guess so. His name is Andy too, huh? Doesn't that ever get confusing?" she asked Andie, who was back to being one big smile after the change of topic.

"He calls me Andrea, when we're alone together. Joey, you can't tell anyone about us, please. I'll tell Jack soon, I promise, but if my dad found out why I've been sneaking out in the evenings ..."

"Don't worry, your secret is safe with me."

"Thanks. I think that I've already fallen in love with him, Joey. Is it crazy to fall in love with someone, after you've only been on three dates with them?"

"I really can't say, Andie. All I know is that we can't control who we fall in love with, and that sometimes, it's the one that you'd least expected it to be. If anyone around here is proof of that, it's me" she told Andie, who looked pleased with her answer.

"If I need to talk to someone about all of this "Boy Stuff", is it okay that I come to you? It's just that I don't want to talk to my brother too much about stuff like that, and I don't really know any other girls in Capeside that I'm comfortable being this open with, so you're sort of my only choice."

Did Joey want to become the confidant to a girl that she barely knew, outside of them small talking a little in between classes or on the rare occasion that their entire group of friends hung out outside of school? Not really, if she had to be honest, but part of her felt a kinship with Andie in that moment, which was why she gladly accepted and told Andie that anytime, she needed to talk, Joey would make time for her and that everything they talked about would stay solely between the two of them.

A promise, that had she known what kind of pressure it would put on her later to hold onto, she probably wouldn't have made.

Nikki had seen enough movies made by amateurs with more heart and good intentions than there was actual talent behind them, to know not to expect too much from seeing the movie that Dawson had made with his classmates from school, but to her surprise, she had to admit that it was pretty decent! Sure, it wasn't a masterpiece by any means and you could definitely tell many times that this wasn't professionally trained actors that she was watching on the TV screen in Dawson's room (with him sitting next to her and clearly studying her reactions to each high point in the script carefully), still he'd clearly managed to get a much better performance out of them than she'd managed to get out of her actors in the play so far. That he'd managed to do it under such stress too (she could only imagine what it would have been like to be dating two of the actresses in the movie you were making at the same time and was just glad that it wasn't her, who'd had to go through it) told her that perhaps asking him to be her assistant director or maybe even co-director wouldn't be the worst idea that she'd ever come up with.

"What did you think?" he asked her, moments after the movie had come to an end.

"Honestly, it's a lot better than I'd expected it to be. Are you proud of how it turned out?"

"I guess so, but it's bittersweet to know that my ambitions for it ended up costing me my girlfriend at the time. Apparently, It turned me into such a horrible guy that she had to move across the country to get away from me" Dawson told her, with a hint of self-loathing evident in his voice.

"Was she your first love?" Nikki asked him and could instantly tell what the answer would be.

"Yeah, she was and there isn't a day that goes by where I don't fantasize about giving her the apology that she deserves. Eve is a great girl, don't get me wrong, and I don't know what I'd do without having her in my life, but your first love is your first love. It's almost impossible to replace, you know?"

"Yeah, do I ever! Even if things with Jerome ended in almost the worst way that they could have, before then, we really had some great times together. I'll never forget how when I was with him, I felt like I was the luckiest girl in the world, because he'd chosen little, anonymous old me over all of those other girls, who would have jumped at the chance to take my spot on his arm. It just makes it all the sadder that I'll probably never see him again, but at the same time, I know that it's for the best for both of us" she explained to Dawson, who at least from what she could tell was understanding of what she was telling him.

"You almost sound like my ex-girlfriend right now" he told her and for some reason, she couldn't help feeling a little flattered.

"What's her name?"

"Mary-Beth. The last time that I heard from her was an e-mail that she sent me two months ago, so she's probably found someone to take my place already. I guess that I don't need to ask what your ex-boyfriend is currently doing" he dark-humoredly remarked.

"Thanks for helping him to see reason, by the way. You can call me crazy, but I still just want the best for him, even if that probably is being behind bars right now."

"Can you fill me in on what's happened to him? Pacey doesn't like to talk about it, for the obvious reasons, so I always try to steer clear of the subject when I'm around him. From what Joey tells me, he won't even tell her anything."

"I've only been told from one of my old friends that he's been sent back to South Carolina, to serve out the rest of his sentence there. What happens afterwards is anyone's guess, I suppose. I just hope that I won't have to see him again" she confessed to Dawson, who from the look in his eyes looked like he knew exactly what she was going through.

By the time that she headed home, she'd asked Dawson to be her co-director and after a little bit of persuasion, he'd accepted on the terms that they would both get an equal say on decisions regarding the play. Had anyone suggested that she should give away that much power a month earlier, she would have told them that it wouldn't happen in a million years, but then again, beggars can't be choosers and if this was what it took for the play that she'd put her name on to not go down in flames, then in her opinion it was a sacrifice worth making.

As it turned out, it wouldn't be long until Joey began regretting the promise that she'd made to Andie. In fact, it only took until around nine o'clock in the morning the day after, when Andie asked her to follow her to a place where they could talk in at least semi-private.

"What's up?" she asked Andie, while already silently dreading what was to come.

"I need you to be my alibi for tonight, so I can go out on a date with Andy" Andie asked of her and immediately, Joey hated the idea of it.

"I don't want to get caught up in the middle of all of this, Andie" she honestly told Andie, although it didn't seem to deter Andie too much.

"It's only this one time, I promise. You don't even have to lie or anything, just nod along when I tell everyone that we're studying together tonight."

"What about Abby. She lives with us, remember?"

"I'd almost forgotten about that. You don't think that you can send her out of the house for an evening?"

"I guess that I can ask her to take the love-making sessions over to Melissa's parents' house for an evening, but I'm not going to lie for you all of the time, so you can lead some sort of double life, Andie" she told Andie off, although it seemed clear to her that all Andie had heard was "Yes" and that everything else had gone in one ear and out of the other.

"You're the best, Joey! Maybe, we can finally become friends now!" Abby cheerfully chirped, but as for Joey, it was hard to be cheerful in any kind of way.

Because already, in the back of her head, she had a sneaking suspicion that this was only the beginning, when it came to Andie and what she would be asking of her over the coming months.

END OF CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR