THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE - RUNNING DOWN A DREAM

"I'm running down a dream

That never would come to me

Working on a mystery, going wherever it leads

Running down a dream"

TOM PETTY (From the album "Full Moon Fever" (1989))

Dawson had (strangely enough) always seen the theater as a realm of entertainment that just wasn't for him. Not that he couldn't appreciate the historical value of theater or that there were undoubtedly some masterpieces out there, when it came to the works of the great playwrights of the past, but compared to movies, theatre had so many limitations to what you can do that he'd never seen the point in dabbling in one, when the other offered him close to boundless opportunities. This play that they were doing now for example, only had one set that they needed to use for every scene, with only a few props being replaced to signify it, when they jumped from one location to another. It was primitive for sure, but therein also laid the challenge, because if their actors couldn't sell the play to the audience, then there would be nothing to distract from it and the play would bomb as a result. As he'd had to admit to himself, the part where it would all be laid out on the line and you don't have the option of doing a second take, kind of appealed to the adventurous side of himself, although he couldn't see himself making a career out of it. The world of movies was where it had all begun for him after all, and where he saw his future as lying.

Still, it didn't mean that he couldn't take this unexpected opportunity to help out Nikki with rescuing her play from the ashes, as a fun learning opportunity and with him also having the extra motive of perhaps getting her to help him out by the assistant director on his next movie (something that would take a lot of pressure off himself), there was no reason for him to not throw himself into it head first and give it the old college try.

"Do you really think that we can pull it off without embarrassing ourselves?" Henry shyly asked him, while they were waiting for the rest of their cast to return to the classroom that they'd been allowed to use, after what for some of them would have clearly been a much-needed bathroom visit. With Nikki having taken over the auditorium and the job of getting the rest of the technical parts ready for opening night, Dawson had more or less taken over directing the actors and after only a little over a week, they'd gone from a cast that he saw little to no hope in, to one that he'd probably want to cast a couple of when it came to the next movie of his, to be based off the script that he'd worked tirelessly on whenever he'd had a moment or two to himself.

"If things keep going like they are, I can't see why it shouldn't be a roaring success" he told Henry, who smiled to himself at his words of encouragement.

"As long as they don't boo us, I'll be more than satisfied" Henry answered him, before they nodded in agreement. "It wasn't like I was planning to be in the play anyway, it just kind of happened that way, you know?"

"I'm guessing that you wouldn't have even thought about it, if it wasn't for Jen" he slyly brought up to Henry, now that they had a few moments alone together.

"Can I ask you something? About girls, I mean" Henry stumblingly asked him, getting a "sure" in return. "It's just ... how do you know that you're with the right girl?"

Dawson couldn't help himself from smiling a little at Henry's question, although he stopped himself from laughing out loud.

"You just know deep down, I guess" was the best answer, he could think of giving this rather nervous freshman, who'd decided to come to him for what should have been big brotherly advice. "Are you in doubt about you and Jen?"

"She doesn't seem as interested in me anymore, as she used to and please don't tell her that I said this, but I'm starting to think that she's a little too old for me. My mom certainly thinks so, anyway and she doesn't mind being vocal about it. Plus, Jen has tried all of this stuff, and I haven't really tried anything before. The more that I'm thinking about it, it would be nice to try all of that stuff with someone, who's trying it for the first time too, you know? I'm sorry, I know that I'm really bad at expressing myself!"

"I get what you mean, believe it or not" he told Henry, without getting into the details of how much their lives were mirroring each other. "All I can tell you is that I'm glad that I chose to start off with a girl, who was starting from the same point that I was. If you want me to be truthful about it, I don't think that going through all of those little firsts with her would have been nearly as exciting, if it had only been me experiencing them for the first time and not her too. There's just something magical about going on that thrill ride together, I guess."

"Why aren't you still with her, then?" Henry innocently asked him.

"It's a very long story and one that I'd like to forget about. Before she left me though, God I was so in love with that girl, you wouldn't believe it! It was like every little thing that we did together meant something special, you know?" he asked Henry, who looked as if he got the basics of what he was saying. "Honestly, I can only wish for every guy out there that they could be as lucky, as I was."

"It sounds nice. It's nice with Jen too, don't get me wrong, it's just that what we do together in private clearly isn't as special to her, as it is to me, if that makes any sense."

"It does. Look, I love Jen to bits, so I won't sit here and tell you that you should break up with her, but you're probably right that it isn't as special to her, as it is to you, because she's already done all of those things plenty of times before. Just remember what I told you, okay?" he told an understanding looking Henry, just as the rest of his cast began to make their way back into the classroom from their short break.

After the rehearsal was over and as he stood there waiting for his dad to come and pick himself and Jen up to give them a ride home, he couldn't help thinking to himself that while his and Henry's situations were in some ways wildly different, in many ways they were eerily similar. For as much as he liked Eve, which was a lot for certain, the age gap between them also meant that it felt like she was in charge of the relationship, like she pretty much was when it came down to it. After all, it was her that decided solely when they would go on a date (if you could even call a make out session with little said between them in his room a date!) and the longer that had passed since they'd become an official couple, the more it also bothered him that they never had anything to talk about, outside of the usual chit-chat about how their day had gone. Even then, it seemed clear to him that he was an afterthought in her life under the best of circumstances and it made him wonder if she would even remember him for a second, once the time came for her to do what she'd told him from the beginning that she would, that being taking off for college after the next tourist season was over.

As little as he wanted to admit it to himself, it had (at first, at least) actually been nice to feel as wanted as Mandy had made him feel with her untold number of text messages, even if he still couldn't remember doing the slightest thing to lead her on, or to make her believe that anything could ever happen between the two of them. Eve only cared about him because of a physical attraction and because he allowed her to control every aspect of their so-called relationship. If you could call it that, like he'd become increasingly unsure of as the weeks had passed by.

When his dad finally pulled up to the curb, Dawson was surprised to see his mom sitting in the passenger seat next to him. Both of them were smiling though, so that was a positive sign in any case.

"Since when is picking me up after school a two-person job?" he jokingly asked them, as he got into the backseat next to Jen.

"We're going to the hospital. Pacey is about to become an uncle again" his dad informed him.

"I'm guessing this means that Gretchen has gone into labor" Jen asked his parents on behalf of both of them.

"Good guess!" his mom cheerily answered his classmate, before they made their way towards Capeside's small hospital, located only a five-minute drive away.

Pacey liked to think of himself as being a relatively level-headed guy. Of course, he'd sometimes managed to screw up or put his foot in his mouth at the worst possible time, still he was rarely someone that lost his temper and in situations where he knew that cooler heads usually prevailed, he was often the epitome of calm. When it came to his direct family however, and especially his very, very pregnant older sister, it was a whole different matter and even Joey, the otherwise most patient girlfriend in the entire world, when it came to lending an ear to him speaking about his issues and problems, had told him that it was getting excessive in regard to how much he'd been worrying about this particular day. The day, when a new member of the Witter family would be joining their family and even if the plan was for the baby to be adopted off once a suitable family for it had been found, he was still hoping dearly that everything would go off without a hitch for both Gretchen and her unborn daughter.

A daughter. If it had been himself, could he have given up something, or rather someone, who was fifty percent made of and by him? Sure, right now a pregnancy to Joey would be inconvenient to say the least, which was also a great part of the reason why they'd held off with going all the way, but what if happened three years from then, when they were Gretchen's age now? Would it really have been all that unthinkable in that case that they could raise a child together? Honestly, he didn't think so, even if it would be a strain on their relationship with Joey in college, himself having to work full time to support their family and them having to be parents to a baby that runs on its own schedule on top of it, yet his gut told him that their love was strong enough to get them through just about anything that the world could throw at them.

Right now, though, as he paced the halls of the hospital to pass some time while they waited for any news to come from the delivery room that Gretchen had already been in for over three hours, all he could imagine was the worst case scenarios, even if he knew that it was highly irrational of him to think that way and that every test that had been done on his sister had shown absolutely no indications that the pregnancy hadn't been flowing along exactly as it was meant to.

"Pacey, maybe we should go outside and get some fresh air. Your mom just complained to me that you're stressing everyone here out. The hospital staff included" Joey told him, in a friendly, but still decisive tone that made it clear that his mom had meant it.

"I can't just sit on my butt and do nothing either!" he told Joey, who took his reply with a smile.

"Your oldest sister has arrived too. You know, the one that you rarely talk about?" Joey said, referring to his half-sister Kerry that his father had as a teenager with a previous girlfriend, before he'd met Pacey's mom. Partly for this reason and mostly because Kerry had grown up with her mother in the same town that Dawson's girlfriend Eve now called home, he'd never seen her as a "Real Sibling" in the same way that Gretchen or Doug was to him, and whenever there was some sort of reason for their family to get together like this, the two of them rarely had much to say to one another that didn't involve bringing up things from his childhood, or discussing the usual pleasantries like how their lives were going. Not that he didn't like Kerry as such, mind you, and he was glad for her that she'd met the man of her dreams early in life and loved being a mom, it was more the fake smile that he had to put on for appearances sake and how he had to pretend that they knew a lot about one another, when they in reality were only one step above being strangers, that bugged him a bit when it came to his older half-sister.

"What did she call you this time?" he asked Joey to lighten a mood that definitely could use some lightening up at that moment.

"First, it was Josie, then Joanie, then Joanna, before she went back to calling me Josie again. Why is it so hard for her to remember my name?" Joey, looking slightly confused, asked him.

"She has a disease known as "I Don't Care-itis"! Alright, we can sneak outside if it can stop her from reminding everyone of all of the embarrassing things that I did growing up."

"Doesn't it make you glad that she wasn't there for most of it?" Joey asked him and boy, was she not wrong there!

As they stepped outside and took in a breath of the slightly chilly fall air, he looked around and saw someone, he hadn't expected to see, sitting on a bench by himself and looking equal parts worried and frustrated.

It was none other than the man who was one step away from becoming a father, Gretchen's ex-boyfriend Nick.

If there was one thing that Dawson truly hated, it was spending his time in a hospital waiting room and it all went back to one thing that had happened, when he was eight years old. Back then, Joey had still been determined as ever to show the boys that there was nothing that they could do, that she couldn't do as well, something that the younger and far more unruly version of Pacey took full advantage of by daring her to do increasingly riskier things to impress them. Being a natural born worrier even at that age, he'd warned Pacey that it was bound to end up going really wrong and indeed, on that day it truly had when Joey had fallen over ten feet down from a tree that Pacey had dared her to climb (by pretending that he himself had done so, when in reality it was seen as "Unclimbable" by most of the kids in town), right down on her arm and although, they'd gotten her to the hospital in what must have been record time, both his and Pacey's young heads had still been filled with a mix of worry and regret, while they waited for news about their fallen friend to arrive. Luckily, she'd only sustained a broken arm, and they could both still remember like it was the day before, how relieved they'd felt when they saw the little eight-year-old version of Joey with her arm in a cast and otherwise only with a few bruises to show for the accident. Of course, that wasn't the entire end to the story, and they'd been given an earful by both their parents and Bessie about what could have happened to their friend, words that still stuck with him and probably always would.

This time though, there wasn't much in the way of drama or suspense to speak of and it made for such a tedious time that he'd taken to playing a movie trivia game with Jen and Nikki (who'd used her friendship with Pacey as an excuse to her dad for why she had to be there), where he for once had to admit to having met his match. In the form of Nikki of course, not Jen, who's already declared from the start that she was expecting to lose big and for that reason was only playing for the fun of it.

"The movie that I'm thinking of stars Kirk Douglas, and it was Stanley Kubrick's first movie" he threw out there in the hope that the oldest movie, he could remember having seen, was also one that Nikki hadn't seen.

"I give up already!" Jen quickly stated, like he'd more or less expected her to.

"It's called "Paths of Glory" and is arguably the best anti-war movie ever made. Is that the best, you can throw at me?" Nikki cockily answered, while Jen shook her head at their shared movie-nerdiness.

"You two freaks should just get married right now and get it over with!" Jen bluntly stated, as she got up from her seat. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to find Joey, so we can have a normal, human conversation!"

As they watched Jen walking away from them, Dawson and Nikki couldn't help sharing a smile between them from knowing how right that their sometimes big-mouthed friend probably was.

"Don't you think that your girlfriend would mind it, if you decided out of the blue to marry me?" Nikki jokingly asked him, although he honestly wasn't sure with how aloof Eve was when it came to their relationship. Honestly, he could easier imagine her reacting with a shrug and a "Good luck with the future" than her getting all that upset over it.

"Probably" he quickly answered her, after realizing that a good handful of seconds had passed, since she'd asked her question. Suddenly though, he found himself smiling to himself and it made Nikki look curious as a result.

"What is it?" she asked him, sounding as if she cared, at least.

"I was just thinking back to a conversation that I had with Henry earlier today. He asked me how you know if you're with the right girl" he told Nikki, who began smiling along with him.

"I'm sure that his brain is full of questions like that one. I know that mine was, back when I was his age. What did you tell him?"

"I couldn't come up with a perfect answer, so I basically told him to follow his heart. I mean, what else can you do?"

"I guess that you're right. If you don't mind me asking, why isn't your girlfriend here with you?"

"Things like this just isn't her cup of tea" he replied, deliberately doing it in the vaguest way that he possibly could, so as not to divulge too much personal information to someone that he was essentially still getting to know. "She's more the "Turn up late in the evening for quick make-out session, before she heads home again" kind of girlfriend than the kind, who'll stand by her man in thick and thin."

"No offense, but she doesn't sound like she's much of a girlfriend to me. It sounds more to me like she's just taking advantage of you" Nikki said and in doing so, was echoing many of the fears that Dawson himself had been having too.

At first, Pacey had been apprehensive about talking to Nick. After all, they'd never had a conversation before this and the only time that he'd seen Nick in person was in that deli in Boston, when he'd driven Gretchen over there for a conversation between the two. The more that he looked at Nick sitting there alone and looking all kinds of pitiful though, the more he also started feeling sorry for the poor guy and after receiving some words of encouragement from his beloved girlfriend, he'd walked over to Nick and introduced himself, before sitting down next to him.

"I should have recognized you from the family pictures that Gretchen had hanging on her walls. Is she okay?" Nick asked him, sounding legitimately concerned.

"From what I know, anyway" he replied, if nothing else to put Nick's fears at ease. "How did you find out that the time had come?"

"Your sister stays in touch his some of her friends in Boston and I found out through one of them. I'd hoped that she would have called and told me in person, but I guess that was a fool's hope. Believe it or not, on the train ride here, I was starting to think that ... no, I shouldn't even be saying it out loud."

"You want to get back together with her, is that it?" he asked Nick and from the longing look that he got in return, his question had already been answered better than a thousand words ever could have.

"I really like her, Pacey. I have since the first time, we met at that study group session. Sometimes, it just feels right, you know?"

"Yeah, do I ever!" he honestly answered Nick, whom he managed to get a small smile out of.

"Gretchen told me about you and your girlfriend, how you've been close friends since your childhood and how she's the perfect girl for you. I hope that you know how lucky, you are, because it doesn't happen that way for most of us. The rest of us just have to rely on a wing and prayer that we've somehow managed to find the one and only, even if we all know that the odds are highly against it."

They would end up sitting there and talking for almost another hour about this, that everything between heaven and earth, but mostly about girls and how, even if you try to fight against it, they hold some kind of power of boys like them that no one, not even the smartest of their gender, could begin to explain in a rational way. The moment that Doug came out and gave them the best news of the day however, that both Gretchen and the baby were doing perfectly fine, and the birth had gone off like clockwork, all of that was forgotten and all either of them could think about was the new and tiny life that had just said its first hello to the world only minutes earlier.

Or, to put it another way, the latest link that had just been added to the long and storied Witter family chain-link.

As Dawson laid in bed that evening and tried to fall asleep, it was with a head full of cluttered thoughts, ranging from relieved to utterly confused when it came to the girls in his life. Mostly, of course, he was relieved on behalf of Pacey and his family that Gretchen was doing so well after the ordeal of having to give birth, and just as importantly that the baby was born perfectly normal and healthy. In many ways, thanks to him and Pacey having been friends since they were little kids, it also for better or worse meant that they'd become integrated into one another's families, even if Pacey was still far closer with Dawson's family than it was the other way around.

When it came to what to do about the fairer sex however, he was just as clueless as most boys his age were, and to say that they confused him was an understatement of epic proportions! Did Eve even care the tiniest bit about him, or was she just using him, like Nikki claimed that she probably was? For as much as he'd tried wrecking his head to come up with an answer that he could live with, he still wasn't sure and although, he'd gladly gone along with everything that she'd wanted to do, it still made him feel like he was being used and it wasn't exactly a feeling that he could claim to be a fan of.

Then again, who else in Capeside was he going to date? Joey was off-limits for sure, even if he had wanted to date her and with Jen changing her mind on her boyfriends as often as most girls changed their socks, he figured that he was better off just staying friends with her, at least until she'd become emotionally ready to be a part of a serious relationship. With Abby and Melissa both preferring the company of each other over anything else, himself and Andie clearly being incompatible in the romance department and Mandy being far too young to even consider going on a date with, this basically cut his choices down to one: The girl, who in many ways was his female counterpart in their little town.

END OF CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

Thanks for spending your time reading my little story here and have a great week ahead of you, all of you! As always (and since I don't exactly get all that many of them!), any comments that you might want to send my way will be most welcome.