THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER EIGHTY - 2 BECOME 1

"Candlelight and soul forever

A dream of you and me together

Say you believe it, say you believe it

Free your mind of doubt and danger

Be for real, don't be a stranger

We can achieve it, we can achieve it

Come a little bit closer baby

Get it on, get it on

'Cause tonight is the night when two become one"

SPICE GIRLS (From the album "Spice" (1996))

When Joey thought back to her sexual history up to this special day, where she would officially take the final step from being a girl to becoming a woman, it felt to her like it had all happened very fast, even if it in reality hadn't. From those first dirty dreams, through those few years after she'd found out about the joys of self pleasure and until she'd found Pacey to do those things for and to her, she'd done a lot of growing up both in a physical and a mental sense. If she had to be honest about it, it almost felt to her like you were talking about two different versions of herself: One of them a girl, who'd never tried anything and to whom a simple thing like getting her first kiss seemed like a mountain to climb and the other, a girl who'd become comfortable with the thought of giving herself completely to the boy that she loved.

Abby had been right on the money too, when she'd told her that there was no one better than Pacey for her to share her first time with and if there was one thing that Joey could say that she was sure of, it was that the boy who'd at the same time teased and protected her when they were growing up together, was also the only one that she could see herself giving herself to in such a way. She just needed to get past the last of her hang-ups and it would be smooth sailing ahead for them, or so she hoped.

The fact was though, that she still wasn't entirely sure if she was ready, in spite of them having been a couple for over a year and having gone through every thinkable small step on the way to getting them to where they were. Was it normal for every girl to feel this nervous before her first time? Honestly, she didn't have a clue, but at the same time, she figured that most of them had to have had at least a few butterflies flying around in their stomachs right before that first moment of penetration.

"Is there something that you haven't been telling me?" Jen inquired, while they were taking a small bathroom break away from the festivities at what so far had been a rather informal version of a Winter Formal. Something that they probably should have seen coming, considering that it at the same time served as a celebration of the coming Christmas and New Year's vacation for a bunch of teenagers, who needed to cut loose after a round of mid-terms that to some had been more grueling than it was for others.

"Why would you think that?" she asked back, seeing as she didn't want to announce to a whole girl's room full of her peers that after the formal was over, she would soon find herself lying nude in Pacey's bed and doing things with him that she couldn't ever tell her sister about.

"There's something different about you tonight. It's like you have a special glow to you or something" Jen told her quietly enough that it wouldn't be everyone in there, who could overhear it.

"If there is, then I can't tell you why" she quickly answered to get out it, still from the look on Jen's face in response to her denials, it looked like she already knew what was up.

"It wouldn't have anything to do with Pacey and you having his mom's house to yourselves?" Jen cheekily asked.

"How did you know? I mean, about Pacey being home alone this weekend?"

"I overheard him telling Dawson about it" Jen smilingly answered and seeing as there was no reason to try to hide it anymore, Joey found a small smile beginning to creep across her own face too.

"It has something to do with it. Okay, so it has a whole lot to do with it!" she admitted to her blonde friend, whose wide grin said everything about how happy that she was on their behalf.

"You don't need to tell me more, Joey" Jen whispered in her ear. "Just promise me that you're not jumping into it too soon because Pacey wants to."

"It's both of us, don't worry" she whispered back to her friend. "So, how's "The Chris Wolfe Experiment" progressing?"

"He hasn't given me any reason to tell him to get lost, so that puts him slightly ahead on points. If you want the truth, I've been on far worse dates than this one."

"But?" Joey had to ask, seeing as there seemed to be a "But" lurking behind Jen's words.

"I'm still far from sure if I can trust him or not. I want to, it isn't that. It's just with his whole history with girls and stuff like that ... I guess what I'm saying is that he still has to prove to me that he isn't full of it, before I'll start believing it" Jen explained and it wasn't hard for Joey to see where she was coming from. Had it been herself, then she wouldn't have trusted Chris any further than she could throw him and would have no doubt laughed it off, if he'd asked her out on a date. Still, she couldn't exactly say that she really knew him either, so perhaps there was more beneath the surface there than meets the eye.

When it came to herself, Joey's only immediate plan was to enjoy herself at the dance and push off any plans in her mind for what was to happen afterwards, until her and Pacey got closer to the big moment.

Jen had been on more than her share of dates for a girl of her age, with most of them being what you could classify as easily forgettable. Back when she was living with her parents, she would say yes to more or less any boy that asked her out, with the only exceptions being for those that for whatever reason creeped her out or had a reputation that was enough to scare her off. Funnily enough, her only truly successful date during those years had been with one of few guys that she'd asked out herself and even that wouldn't have happened, if the boy in question hadn't been the one to take the first steps towards them getting to know one another.

With Chris on the other hand, she still wasn't entirely sure what to make of him. The way that he'd been chasing after her for so long solely served to make her extra wary that he was only trying to get her into bed him, just so he could dump her right afterwards and make her feel as bad as he must have felt, when she'd told him in no uncertain terms why they were never going to become a couple.

"Is it just me, or are you actually enjoying yourself?" he slyly asked her, while they were standing in line to get some punch and she was lightly rocking out to "You Get What You Give" by the New Radicals, one of the biggest hits of those years and in Jen's own opinion, perhaps the best pop-rock song that had come out over the past couple of them.

"Can I be honest, and you'll promise not to take it personal?" she asked him and got a nod in return.

"Sure, if you want to."

"I didn't think that I would, but I am. As far as these kind of lame school dances go, it's been one of the better ones so far" she admitted to him, and it looked to her like this had been exactly what he wanted to hear.

"Are you telling me that you're starting to regret not taking me up on my offer of a date sooner?" he inquired with a flirty smile to match.

"A little, maybe" she had to admit to him. "I've definitely been on far worse dates than this one."

"You think that you've been on bad dates? I'm pretty sure that I have you beat" he somewhat gloatingly said, daring her to tell him her worst date story.

"Try me" she dared him back and it took him a few seconds to come up with the right one to present as his example.

"It was during those couple of months, while I was dating Hannah" he began his story. "I don't know why, but she was apparently feeling extra bitchy that day, even compared to her usual self. Anyway, by the end of our dinner at a restaurant downtown, I not only had to promise them that we'd never come back, I also had to apologize on Hannah's behalf to all of those in there that she'd insulted. She literally brought a waitress to tears, right in front of my eyes, Jen! If dating her taught me anything. it's that even the prettiest face on a girl doesn't always mean that it's worth it!"

"We all live and learn, don't we?" she rhetorically asked him back, getting a knowing nod in return. "My worst date story comes from a little under a year before I came here. It was at a dance kind of like this one, back in New York. To make a very long story short, it was with one of the few guys there, who I thought that I could trust and after we'd spend most of the day filling our brains with drugs and our bellies with Vodka, he left me passed out drunk and high in an abandoned hallway. If any of the teachers had found me, then I would have been kicked out of school for sure."

It took Chris a moment to think about how to react to such a heartbreaking and in some ways, also pathetic story on her part. When he did, he also happened to say the only thing that had been on Jen's own mind, when she'd woken up from that drunken and drug-laced stupor and somehow managed to sneak out of her old school and into a taxi outside, without being spotted by any of the teachers there.

"What a dick!" was all that came out of his mouth, and all that Jen could do was laugh at how right, he was! "I'm not an angel, but that's low beyond belief!"

"Oh, but the story doesn't end there! After he'd left me to potentially be kicked out of school or worse, he went right off to find himself a drunk cheerleader and got her pregnant! She had to get an abortion, not that his sorry ass cared!"

"If we ever run into this guy, remind me to punch him ten times in the face and kick him as hard as I can in the balls! Damn! You really haven't had much luck with guys, have you?"

"More like the opposite of it. Still, my luck has to change at some point, doesn't it?"

"Jen, I know that with my history, you have every reason to be on the defensive, but I've been doing a lot of growing up over these past months. Hitting rock bottom will do that to you."

"Isn't that the truth?" she sadly agreed with him and as they nodded in quiet agreement, she slowly began to see that perhaps they weren't all that different after all. In a few ways, anyway.

At first, when Jack had asked Ethan to be his date for the dance, he'd more or less only done it as an excuse for his semi-boyfriend to come to Capeside, so they could spend some time together. While on one hand it was very convenient for himself (as far as keeping up the appearance of being straight to most of the outside world, minus Jen and his sister) to be in a long distance relationship, being a couple that did most of their communicating over E-mail just wasn't the same as being a couple in the sense that Joey and Pacey was, where they were always there for one another. He wanted that as much as anyone does and if it hadn't been for that one little thing holding him back, that thing being him needing to find a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend, there would have been a far greater chance that it had already happened for him. It hadn't escaped his eyes that he sometimes got flirty glances from random girls and for as much as he tried to ignore it, there was sure to be those who were asking themselves why a relatively good-looking guy like himself was still single.

He'd already agreed with Ethan that this wasn't the evening for him to make a big political statement of gay pride, especially with Jack not being out of the closet yet and Capeside being a very small town in many ways, but they were still having a nice, albeit not great, time at the formal, just playing it off as a pair of old friends would. It wasn't as if he was the only guy without a date there anyway, and while there weren't (as far as he knew) any of the others, who'd brought an "Out of Town Friend" to it, everyone also knew that Jack and his sister were still relatively new there by Capeside standards and so, would naturally have more close out of town friends than most of the rest of the student population at Capeside High did.

Speaking of his dear twin sister, she'd chosen to tag along with them and considering the way that she'd been crying her eyes out just hours before this, neither he nor Ethan felt like they had it within themselves to say no to her. As an extra bonus, this gave both him and his date a more than willing girl to dance with and not only that, one that looked like her mood had been sharply on the rise ever since they'd walked through the doors to the gymnasium that evening.

"Your sister is sure having a great time with your date!" Abby teasingly remarked, while they were taking a break from the dancing and Abby was waiting for Melissa to return from the girl's room. "Why isn't that you out there and cutting a rug with him?"

"You should have seen her earlier today. Actually, be glad that you didn't! She needs to have a blast tonight, as much as anyone here does" he explained, while still trying to keep up the lies that so much of his life was built around.

"Jack, I get that you get a lot of your self-worth from being the best brother that you can for her. It's an admirable quality, but you can't tell me that you don't wish that you could be doing the same things with your date, that I'll be doing with mine after this dance is over?" Abby cheekily asked him, with a sly wink of the eye to match.

"You know, don't you?" he asked her back, as they looked each other in the eyes.

"What's the one thing that I've always been best at? Reading people, Jackers. Plus, Jen sort of told me a long time ago, back when you guys broke up. I just wanted you to feel like you were ready to tell me, before I spilled the beans to you. I also know how hard it is to come clean to yourself. It took me years to, where I was constantly acting out towards others, because I never really liked myself, but what I can tell you from experience is that it's so much better, when you've come out on the other side and you feel like you can be true to yourself all of the time" Abby explained with a small smile, and from the way that she'd said it, it made him want to announce to everyone then and there, who he was and why he'd really chosen to bring one hell of a handsome guy to the last dance of the year.

Joey's main thoughts during the roughly four hours that she spent at the Capeside High Winter Formal:

"Is this really the same place that we have P.E. twice a week? They've sure done a nice job at shining it up!"

"I wonder how many starving people in the third world that we could feed, just on the amount of money that's been spend on new dresses for this thing?"

"What do you know? Jen was right! At these things, there'll always be some girl bawling her eyes out in the girl's room at some point during the evening!"

"Andie sure looks like she's having fun! Is it the tears of a clown, though? That's what I'm asking myself."

"Jack's friend is hot! Not that I'd want to trade Pacey in or anything like that, but he's not too shabby!"

"Try not to think about sex! I know that it's hard to, especially given the circumstances right now, but you can do it!"

"What if I'm not good at it? No, don't think that way! You will be ... you hope!"

"Dawson and Nikki are such a cute couple! I wonder if they've kissed yet. If they haven't, then it'll probably happen tonight."

"Sometimes, I really wish that I was a better dancer!"

"Okay, so that's only five times that I've thought about sex over the last three songs. It might not be much, but it's still an improvement!"

"Oh, please no! Not "Cotton-Eye Joe" again! That's the third time that he's played that horrible song already this evening!"

"Jen and Chris. What's the final verdict? I'll give it a seventy percent chance that they'll be sucking face, before the night is over! Scratch that! Eighty! I'd better call it at Eighty-Five, just to be on the safe side!"

"I'm officially danced out! Is "Danced Out" proper English? Who cares, I just want to get the hell out of here!"

After what had been a well above what she'd imagined that it would be, as far as being an enjoyable date was concerned, Jen had to admit that Chris had at least acted like a nice guy all evening long and while she'd been afraid that he would start getting grabby, he'd kept a respectful distance between them during the fast dances, while they'd sat out all of the slow ones. The more that they'd talked too, the more she found out about him that made her think that perhaps, they weren't as incompatible as she'd first thought, they were. Both of them had distant relationships with their parents, her in more ways than one and a sister, who felt like one of the only ones in their family that they could talk to. She hadn't met his smart-mouthed (in Chris' words) thirteen-year-old little sister Dina yet, but it was obvious from the moon going by how he talked about the youngest member of his immediate family, that even if they had the usual sibling squabbles from time to time, little Dina was still no doubt the apple of his eye. It made Jen wish that she'd had a little sister of her own growing up to love and protect, even if she knew all too well that she had no reasons to complain when you consider how easily that she'd instantly connected with her own half-sister, practically from the moment that the two girls had met one another.

"It's a shame that this evening has to end so early, but if I don't have this car home by midnight, my parents will make me pay for it in one way or another. I'm still not entirely out of the hot water with them" Chris explained to her, as they pulled up in front of Grams' house. Inside of it, it was dark, like she'd expected it be, seeing as she knew that Grams rarely stayed up past ten o'clock at the latest.

"You don't feel just the tiniest hankering to go to one of the after-parties?"

"I've been to enough of those to know that it isn't worth the trouble, I'll find myself in afterwards. You?"

"The old Jen would have thought it was crazy not to. Now ... I don't know. It sort of feels like I'm getting too old for that stuff, you know? Like I've already gotten all of that need for wild partying out my system and it just isn't as fun as it once was" she explained to him.

"I just don't want my parents to yell at me more than they already have over these past months!" he confided to her, which also made her giggle a bit.

"That's a perfectly valid reason too!" she assured him, and after they were done laughing, they looked each other deeply in the eyes.

"I guess that this is the part where I ask you out on another date and you'll tell me why it'll only happen in my dreams" Chris mused, with a hint of playfulness in his voice. "It's okay if you just want this to be a one-off, Jen. I won't be a jerk about it and hold it against you, I promise."

After being given this potential out, Jen felt like she had a choice to make: Follow her gut and turn Chris down, or for once take a chance on a wild card that while he was far from perfect, also was undeniably worthy of being given a second chance, like she herself had been so graciously given.

Even if the Winter formal hadn't been the great romantic experience that Jack could have hoped that it would be with Ethan, he'd still enjoyed himself for the most part, if nothing else because it had felt for a few hours like they'd had the old Andie back again. Seeing a natural smile plastered on her face, after such a long time where he could tell that her smiles had been put-on for show, was proof enough to him that there was plenty of hope for her still.

Himself and Ethan had also managed to keep up the act of only being friends well enough for the entirety of the evening, that no one would be asking any uncomfortable questions, when he came back to school in the new year. For as much as Jack wanted to simply do as Abby had and put it all out there, he just didn't have the guts that she had, or for that matter the "Don't Give a Damn What Anyone Thinks" sort of attitude that the young Miss Morgan clearly had in abundance, with plenty to spare.

"When will I get to see you again?" he asked his date, while they were waiting for the last train of the day that would take him back to Boston.

"Sometime in the new year, I guess. Jack, what do you think that this thing between us is?" Ethan asked him and it immediately made Jack look around, just to be sure that no one could have heard them.

"The start of something. I don't know, Ethan. What do you want me to say?" he answered, while consciously avoiding any eye contact.

"Jack, I've been in your shoes, remember? I know what it's like to live that double life and I like you because you're a nice guy and I want to help you, but we're only ever going to become friends and that's it. You're not anywhere near ready to have a boyfriend yet, are you?" Ethan calmly asked him and while Jack wanted to tell him differently, there was little doubt as to what the truthful answer was.

"I'm sorry if you feel like I've led you on. It's just ..."

"It's okay, Jack! Love is a game, and we all need to learn how to play it, before we become good at it. You'll get there too someday and when you finally are ready to take it to the next step with someone, you'll know it within your heart, and it won't feel forced. Take it from me, if you let it happen naturally, then you'll do fine" Ethan assured him.

After they'd said their goodbyes and the train had left the station, Jack took a moment to reflect on everything that had gotten him this far. Sure, it had been an extremely bumpy ride, but he'd gotten through it to a point where he felt like his old self again, more or less, anyway. As for finding his first boyfriend, if Abby and Melissa had proven anything to him, it was that just about anything can happen at any time, even finding love in the most unlikely of places.

Who was to say that he wasn't the next one, it could happen to?

"Cheer up, sleepy Jean.

Oh, what can it mean to a daydream believer and a homecoming queen?"

If you'd given Joey a million guesses as to why she was hearing that old song by the Monkees playing in her head (that she'd sung as a duet with Dawson up his aunt Gail's house during the karaoke evenings of their childhood, so many times that she'd long since lost count of it), as she was lying just as nature had made her and basking in the afterglow with the boy of her dreams, she still couldn't have given you an answer that she was entirely sure of. The closest that she could come to one that made sense to her, was that she'd finally found her daydream believer from those old lyrics and while she was far from being a homecoming queen, it was almost like he'd made the song have a new meaning to her.

She'd already been sure that she was in love to him prior to this evening, where she'd taken arguably the biggest step towards adulthood in her so far sixteen years in this world, but now that they'd shared what can only be described as fifteen to twenty minutes in their own little version of heaven together, it felt to her like they had practically melted into one. She'd been nervous and slightly trembling, it almost goes without saying, when that moment that she'd been building up in her mind as the end all, be all of her teenage existence was about to happen (which had also made Pacey ask her one last time, if she was absolutely sure that she was ready to go this far) and while it had hurt a little when he'd first entered her, within seconds it had begun to feel like the most natural thing in the world for them to be doing. When it came to the subject of orgasms, she'd had to settle for a few small ones, but that wasn't what they were doing was about. It was about showing and feeling love together in a way that they hadn't before and in that sense, it had both been a perfect representation of who they were as a couple and all that she'd ever dreamed, it could be.

Would it have felt this amazing way, like it was something that they'd both been born just so they could do together someday, if they'd gone for broke on that Christmas eve a year earlier, where she'd first told him that she was ready? It would have still been a nice and memorable experience for sure, because after all it would have still been with Pacey, and she knew for sure in her heart that he would have been just as sweet, affectionate and caring towards her through every second of it as he had been this time. Still, she was glad that they'd waited for as long as they had and until both on them felt ready in both body and spirit. Now, where she'd tried what the physical act of making love feels like emotionally, knowing that she would have had to leave him behind for half a year would have been almost unbearable. In turn, it would have no doubt led to her longing for him even more than she had and probably so much that the homesickness would have surely set in, and her time over in France wouldn't have felt as special and magical to her, as it had.

"Did it live up to your expectations?" he romantically whispered to her, while he was spooning her from behind and she could feel his erection slowly beginning to subside, as it pressed up against her bare-naked butt-cheeks.

"That and then some. You?" she asked him back, as she turned her head to look into those eyes of his that she sometimes found herself being lost in, for no reason at all except for her being as head over heels in love with him as it is possible for someone to be in love with someone else.

"I don't know what I was expecting. I can tell you this, though, there isn't another girl in this entire world that I would rather have had my first time with" he sweetly answered her, before planting a soft kiss behind her ear that made the goosebumps rise up on her entire body.

Did she feel like she was a woman now, compared to how she felt when she'd begun that day? If she had to be perfectly honest, she still felt like she was the exact same old Joey Potter that she'd always been. Smart, when it came to some things and still having a lot to learn, when it came to others and even if she didn't live on the wrong side of the creek anymore or had a dad in jail, she still basically felt like that same awkward and insecure girl, who'd started out on the crazy journey known as adolescence a few years earlier.

If she had to be truthful about it, there was only one thing that had really changed in her life. That where she'd sometimes had the feeling that she was alone in the world before her first kiss with Pacey, she now knew for sure that she would never have to feel that way again.

END OF CHAPTER EIGHTY

THAT'S THE END OF THIS SEASON! THANKS FOR READING AND HAVE A GREAT DAY!