THE FIRST TIME
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR - YOU CAN LOOK (BUT YOU BETTER NOT TOUCH)
"You can look, but you better not touch
Mess around and you'll end up in Dutch
You can look, but you better not
No, you better not
No, you better not touch!"
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND (From the album "The River" (1980))
When Jen woke up on this Saturday morning in late August 1999, it was with a for her unusual feeling. The night before, she'd had yet another ultra-romantic dream about herself with Henry, spoiling one another like lovers do, that still several minutes after she'd sprung to life was sending butterflies flying through her belly, like she hadn't experienced it since she was thirteen and she'd had her first crush, on a boy from her school that she predictably got absolutely nowhere with. Even if she now considered herself to be well-versed in the ways of dating, the much shyer early teen version of herself had been far too nervous to tell him anything about her feelings for him. Just to make it worse, he'd fallen for a girl that she couldn't stand, and she'd had to watch her at school five days a week, doing all the things with him that she wanted to do with him. Now, three years and over a dozen of unlucky crushes later, she finally had a boy in her life, who she was crazy about and felt the same way back about her and it should have been perfect, only it wasn't. She knew that she shouldn't, and part of her was a little angry with herself that she cared so much what a bunch of girls that she'd most likely never see again after high school was over, would think of her and send her demeaning looks, every time they saw her and Henry holding hands or kissing, but in the end, it was the only thing holding her back anymore.
Would it actually be that way though, or was this just her old paranoia rearing its ugly head again? In truth, she wouldn't know until she'd tried it, since there wasn't a single other couple at Capeside High, where the female part of it was older than the male part by more than a handful of months. At least, from what she knew. One thing was for sure though, that what they didn't know couldn't hurt them (yet, at least) and as she laid on her soft mattress and pictured what it would be like to have Henry kissing her and touching her in those naughty places, that he'd probably never touched a girl in before, she let a hand slip down the front of her panties and imagined, that she had him to do it for her, so she wouldn't have to always do it herself, whenever her primal urges starting taking over her mind. Yet another thing that, in spite of how well she knew her own body and what made her tick, had been sadly missing from her life, ever since she'd had her last "real" boyfriend (she couldn't count Jack as one now, with how it had ended and the revelations that had come out at their prom a few months earlier) back in NYC. Of course, that guy (who she'd all but gladly forgotten about), had been a horn dog who only cared about what was down between her legs and Henry was the diametric opposite of that.
After she'd spent a good half hour "playing" with her private parts, it became time for the day to begin in earnest and as she sat there, eating a hearty breakfast with Grams and Abby, there was a knock on their door. Thinking to herself that it was probably just one of Grams' church group members coming to deliver a message for her dear grandmother, she offered to check who it was and when she saw, a smile so wide that it had to have stretched across her entire face fell across it.
"I didn't know if you were up yet, but I just had to see you" a very nervous Henry told her, even if her inviting smile had brought one of his own on.
"Why?" she asked him, not that it wasn't easy to guess.
"I ... I shouldn't have come over here. I'm so sorry!" Henry quickly began to quake and began to walk away from her, before she stopped him.
"I'm really glad that you did! Actually, I was just thinking about you" she told him, not letting him know what she'd been doing while she was thinking about him, of course.
"You were?" Henry asked, like it was almost unthinkable that a girl like her could like a boy like him.
"Yeah. I was bummed out that we wouldn't get to hang out today" she told what had to be the happiest looking freshman boy in America, at that particular moment.
"I don't have any plans today, if you want to hang out. If you don't though, that's okay too" Henry told her so sweetly, that it took a mountain of willpower within her not to tell that shy and adorable boy then and there, that she'd fallen for him ten times worse than she'd ever fallen for someone before. At least!
"Just give me fifteen minutes to finish my breakfast and take a shower, okay?" she told Henry, whose pretty mug full of anticipation told her that it was probably the most welcome thing, anyone could have said to him in that moment.
And, with that, Jen's Saturday was suddenly looking a lot brighter, and it didn't have anything to do with the sun, that was doing its part to help as well.
At the same exact time as Jen was living out her love-struck feelings for Henry, Pacey was driving his sister over to Boston in his mom's car, where an uncomfortable conversation was sure to await her with the father of her unborn child. In many ways too, this was the final hurdle out of the way for her, before the baby came and she would have to make the final decision on whether to keep it or not. They didn't talk much on the way and he could tell from Gretchen's demeanor that she was mulling over how and what to tell her ex, so they stuck to listening to the cassette tapes, they'd brought with them for the trip.
"Son, she said. Have I got a little story for you. What you thought was your daddy, was nothing but a. While you were sitting home alone at age thirteen, your real daddy was dying. Sorry, you didn't see him, but I'm glad we talked" Eddie Vedder sang on one of the songs on their first chosen tape, a mix of rock songs from when his sister had been around his age, and as he sat there listening, while keeping his eyes on the road, he wondered if the child growing inside of her belly was a tiny boy, who would become his nephew, should she decide to raise her as her own. Something, he selfishly hoped that she would, although he was also resigned to it being her choice and only her choice, when push came to shove.
As they hit the outskirts of the city, where the American revolution had begun over two hundred years earlier, Gretchen began twitching in her seat, like being back there was bringing up memories best left forgotten.
"I won't look down on you, if this is too tough for you" he told Gretchen, in the most understanding way that he could, after they hadn't talked for what had to be half an hour, at the least.
"I have to do this, Pacey. I owe Nick that much" she answered him, bringing up a name that whenever spoken, instantly made a tiny bit of bile rise up in his throat.
"You really think so? If you ask me, that dirt-bag gave up every right that he had, when he walked out on you".
"Nick isn't a dirt-bag, not really. If I'd only been open with him from the start, we wouldn't be in this huge mess, we're in now" she said, making him bat an eye at her words.
"Weren't you?" he had to ask, since this was brand-new news to him.
"There's one part of it, that I haven't told anyone back home. You have to understand that after he broke up with me, I started to go into a panic pretty much instantly and ... I made a big mistake, the kind of which you regret instantly, but by then, it was already too late to do anything about it" Gretchen told him so quietly, that he almost couldn't make it out.
"What kind of mistake?" he asked back, even if part of him didn't want to know.
"The kind, that usually takes place in a bedroom. Just to make it worse, it was with one of his best friends" Gretchen confided in him, before she shed a few tears, that she quickly wiped away from her eyes.
"If it was after you'd broken up ..."
"How would you feel if it was you that got Joey pregnant, only to see her running right into Dawson's arms for comfort afterwards?" she asked him, bringing back some of the paranoid thoughts he had in the very start of his relationship with Joey, when he deep down still wasn't sure that she wouldn't trade him in for his best friend, should she have been given the chance.
"It would have been my worst nightmare come true" he admitted to Gretchen, just as they pulled onto the turnpike that would take them to Nick's apartment, after what hopefully hadn't been too much trouble with getting through the heavy traffic in a city, he'd never driven in before. Not that he'd ever driven a car in any city, mind you.
Joey's Saturday was almost embarrassingly open, now that she didn't have a job to go to and her boyfriend was off helping his sister for the day. With nothing else to spend her time on, apart from hanging out around the house, where Bodie and her dad were having one of those bad days, where they refused to speak more than a few words to one another, she made her way to the police station downtown. Of course, she couldn't say or act like what she'd overheard Belinda tell her friend was solid evidence, when it came to who had written those nasty words on Jen grandmother's car, but if it could help the police in their investigation, then it would definitely be worth her time.
As she walked in, the first one she saw was Pacey's brother Doug, whom it looked like was filling in at the front desk for the day.
"If it isn't my favorite sister-in-law? Of course, you are also the only one that I have!" Doug joked, when she walked up to his desk, and they made eye contact.
"I'll take that as a very mediocre compliment!" she quipped back at him, before it was time to get down to business. "Is you dad here? I have some information, I need to share with him, that could be important".
"What kind of information?" Doug asked her, quite logically.
"It's about the threats against Abby and her girlfriend. I overheard some stuff at school ..."
"Wait here. I'll get him right away" Doug bit her off, and less than a minute later she was in Pacey's dad's office with Doug and him as the only other ones in there.
"What exactly did you overhear and from who?" John Witter asked her, sounding like she had his full attention.
"I was in a stall in the girl's room, when a girl named Belinda McGovern came in with one of her friends" she began, not quite knowing how to say this in the way, that she wanted to. "Anyway, I heard Belinda's friend asking her if the cops had asked her boyfriend any questions".
"And her boyfriend is ...?" Doug asked.
"Chris Wolfe, a boy we go to school with. It sounded like they'd done something illegal together, that Belinda hadn't wanted him to, and she was all kinds of mad at him over it" she continued explaining, even if she felt sort of clunky, for how it was all coming out of her mouth.
"Like what?" John Witter asked, but all she could offer him was a shake of her head.
"She didn't say exactly, but she said that she would have been the first one they thought of. Abby and Belinda have a rivalry going back to their playground days, I can testify to that myself. While I was over in France, she was also the one who forced Abby out of the closet, only it backfired on her, and it made her lose the election for student body president as a result" Joey continued explaining.
"Do you think it would be enough to make her do something like was done to Mrs. Ryan's car?" Doug asked and she gave him a small nod as her reply.
"I wouldn't put it against her, in any sort of way. You have to understand that Abby humiliated her, when she showed her up, like no one has before or since. To a girl like Belinda, who's always had her way, that had to be a tough pill to swallow".
"And this Chris Wolfe, how does he fit into the situation?" John asked her.
"He was after Mrs. Ryan's granddaughter Jen all last year long, but she chose another guy over him" Joey answered, as Doug and John shared a knowing look.
"Is he the jealous type?" Doug asked solemnly.
"I don't know him all that well, if I have to be honest. He is a jock though, and we all know how much their reputations mean to them" she tried explaining to them.
"It sure sounds to me like we have our motives for the crime. Should I pay those two rambunctious teens a visit and see, what I can get out of them?" Doug asked his dad, who took a moment or two to consider it.
"Sure, if you can locate them. It is Saturday, after all. Thanks for coming down here and telling us this, Joey. It isn't hard to see why my youngest adores you, like he does" John told her with a small smile, now that their little talk was over.
Afterwards, she had to admit to feeling pretty damn good about herself, leaving only the problem of what to do for the rest of the day. Still, it was the sort of problem, she could live with having.
Jen was having a day for the ages, or at least for her, it was. After they'd left her grandmother's house (and being subjected to lots of teasing from Abby, who kept calling Henry Jen's new boyfriend), they'd taken a romantic walk down to the pier, where they'd rented a rowboat for the day. Luckily, no one from school had seem them together, or she might have become self-conscious about it, leaving her with little else to do, apart from enjoy this day for all it was worth.
"Have you ever kissed a girl before, Henry?" she flirtingly asked him, when they were far enough from the shore, that not a soul was in sight around them, save for the fish and the birds, who couldn't care less about them.
"Not yet" he shyly answered her, like he was almost ashamed of it. "I wanted to find the right girl first, before I tried it".
"Have you found her?" she asked, as they looked each other deep in the eyes.
"I'd like to think so. You are aware that it's you, I hope!" he nervously got out, making her giggle a little.
"I was sort of getting that feeling, yes! Well, do you want to try it?" she fumblingly asked him, like she was thirteen again and full of hope, that the first majorly romantic moment of her life was only moments away.
"Only, if you want to" Henry cutely replied, before she moved over to sit next to him, and they put an arm around the waist of one another. Strangely enough, since this was far from her first kiss, she started feeling goosebumps on her arms, as their lips slowly began approaching one another.
When they met however, it felt natural to her, like all of those other kisses, she'd shared with boys in the past, hadn't meant anything compared to this one.
"Wow! I know that I have absolutely nothing to compare it to, but ... just wow!" Henry adorably said, right after their kiss had come to an all too soon ending. As far as Jen was concerned, anyway.
"Allow me to second that wow! Do you want to try it again, only this time with our mouths open? That's what they call a French kiss, if you didn't know" she informed Henry, who was clearly still on cloud nine, after their first kiss. Not that Jen herself wasn't either, it should be added!
"I'm just afraid that I won't be any good at it" Henry answered. "I mean, it isn't like I've tried it before".
"Just do what I do, okay?" she cutely said to him, and it wouldn't be many moments later, before their tongues were playfully swirling around one another, doing a dance as old as time itself.
"Again, wow!" Henry let out, bringing a smile to her face.
"You don't have to say that every time, we share a kiss, Henry!"
"I know, but I wanted to. I really like you Jen, like really, really like you!"
"That's great, because I really, really, really like you too!" she answered him back and as for their third kiss, it took place less than five seconds later.
A few hours later and when they'd come to shore, she couldn't help herself from kissing him again, even if they now where in a place, where anyone from her school could have seen it. Seeing as much of her life had been lived according to Murphy's Law though, this was of course what had to happen, when they heard a girl laughing mockingly at them.
"Shopping in the Junior's section, are we, Jen?" she heard what had to be the last girl, she'd ever want to speak to, say. Unfortunately, she wasn't the only one there and next to her was Chris Wolfe, who wasn't nearly as amused by this turn of events, as Belinda was.
"It ... ehm ..." was all that came out of her mouth, while it felt like Henry's disappointed eyes were staring into her soul, because she wouldn't be open about what they'd been doing.
"Tell them, Jen" he implored her, and although, she wanted to, the words just wouldn't come out of her mouth.
"You're ashamed, aren't you? I should have known that this would happen!" Henry angrily scoffed, before running away from her with the mocking laughter of Belinda to only serve to aggravate the situation even more.
"I can't wait to tell everyone, and I mean everyone, at school about this! Let's get out of here, Chris" Belinda told the guy, who only a few weeks before had been seen by Jen as a prospective boyfriend in the future, but now was only looking at her with the purest of disgust.
"Yeah, there's nothing worth seeing here. I hope that you're proud of yourself, Jen. Then again, tearing the hearts of young men apart is just what you do, isn't it?" Chris accusingly said to her, before leaving her to the tears that had begun streaming down her cheeks.
Following this horrible encounter, she started the long walk home. She could have taken the bus of course, but with how incredibly self-loathing she was feeling, a good bit of punishing herself felt like just what the doctor ordered. Even when she made it there, all she could think about was what Henry had to be going through and how, if it wasn't for her selfishly seducing him, he would have been far better off.
Pacey had at first decided to stay down on the street in the car, while his sister sorted out her situation with her ex-boyfriend. As the time passed though, and it had been well over two hours already since she'd gone up to his apartment, his stomach began rumbling and with there being a deli almost right next to where he was parked, he made the snap decision to get a hoagie from there, that could soothe and settle his constantly more rumbling stomach.
As he stood in there and waited for it to be ready to serve, a guy, who looked strangely familiar to him, came in to pick up his order.
"Is my order ready, Sally?" he asked the girl working behind the counter, who fetched an already prepared plastic bag filled with what looked like sandwiches from behind the counter for him.
"Here you go, Nick. Paper or plastic?" the girl asked the guy, who Pacey suddenly recognized from a picture that his sister had.
This had to be "The Nick" and he would be damned, if he didn't give him a piece of his mind, now that he had the chance to. Then again, him saying anything wouldn't help Gretchen, probably the opposite of it, so he kept his mouth shut and grit his teeth, as he watched Nick pay for the food and leave again, as quickly as he'd arrived.
As he sat there in the car and chewed down on his dinner though, it was like he had a small epiphany, or whatever you want to call it. Ever since his sister had explained how Nick had left her on her own to deal with the baby, that was also his responsibility, as much as it was hers, he'd hated the guy, like he'd never hated anyone before. Bar none. The more that he thought about it however, the more he began to see that it could just as easily be himself, who would find himself in Nick's situation someday, with an ex-girlfriend who was having his child and himself being stuck in a situation where there were no winners, only losers. If that girl on top of it jumped right into bed with one of his best friends, could he forgive her for it? Honestly, the more he thought about it, the less sure he was, and it actually made him respect Nick more that he'd been the one to reach out to Gretchen, considering what had gone down between them.
Had it been Joey, he would have forgiven her for just about anything, but Gretchen and Nick had been complete strangers, when they'd met in a study group at college and a few days later gone out on their first date. They didn't have the ballast of having grown up together or knowing every little thing about each other, like Pacey and Joey did and when Gretchen became pregnant, they were still in that early phase where everything is supposed to be easy and uncomplicated, while you just enjoy the fuzzy feelings running through you and fill your head with ideas, that you could have found the one. All factors that made Pacey grateful that he hadn't blown up at Nick inside of that deli.
It would be almost two more hours, that he spent listening to the radio and otherwise being bored out of his skull, before Gretchen came back to join him. This time looking extremely relieved, compared to when they'd arrived at the Beacon Street apartment building, that her ex called home.
"How did it go?" he instantly asked his sister, after she'd gotten into the car.
"Better than I'd expected. I'll fill you in on the drive back to Capeside" she replied and not long after, it was bye, bye Boston, as they hit the freeway that would take them back to their mom's house, where they knew that a certain someone was probably waiting eagerly to hear some news.
From what Gretchen told him, what happened was this: At first, it had been very awkward between her and Nick, as you would have expected, he gathered. After they'd both apologized to one another though, him for walking out on her and her for the rather poor way she'd dealt with their break-up, they'd been able to keep a civil tone and agreed, that them being at odds wasn't helping either of them, in any way. By the time Nick came down to pick up those sandwiches, Gretchen had already forgiven him and they'd agreed that even if they weren't getting back together, they would still stay friends. Most importantly, it helped Gretchen to make a decision on what to do about the child growing inside of her, that both her and its father could agree on.
"And you're absolutely sure that adoption is the right path going forward?" he asked Gretchen, who looked more at peace with her decision, than she had about anything since her return to their small hometown.
"Surer than I've been of anything in my life. I can't raise a child on my own, not at this stage of my life, anyway. It's better that he or she gets to have the kind of stability in their life, that I can't offer them" Gretchen calmly explained, and it wasn't like he couldn't see where she was coming from.
"I would have helped out all that I could, you know?" he told his sister, who shot him a wry smile.
"I know that you would and mom too, but at the end of the day, it still would have been my job to be a mom and raise my child in the best way possible. I want to have children someday, don't get me wrong, but it has to be when I'm at a place in my life where I'm ready for it and just as importantly, be able to give my child a father who's ready for what he's getting into. Nick isn't and that's just how it is" Gretchen said, with a look of peace on her face that told him in unsaid words that this wasn't a decision she'd made without giving untold hours of thought to it.
If she could be so calm about it, then so could he, he thought to himself, as they pulled into the driveway of their mom's house, putting an end to their little road trip.
Joey's day had turned from being one, where she didn't know what to do with her time, to one where a pressing need to comfort Jen became her number one priority. A job that wasn't easy, considering the amount of self-loathing her friend was showering on herself.
"I'm the biggest bitch in the history of the world, aren't I?" Jen asked her with teary eyes, as they sat on the swings at the playground, Joey used to play at for hours on end when life was simpler and their biggest boy problems were with the ones, who tried to put gum in their hair.
"Considering the number of the über-bitches that have existed throughout time, you wouldn't even make the top billion of them!" she tried to reassure Jen, although it didn't look like it helped much. "If you apologize to Henry tomorrow, I'm sure that he'd forgive you in a second".
"Would you? He must have felt so betrayed and hurt, the poor boy. Maybe, I deserve to be alone, if this is how I treat someone like him" Jen sobbingly said, as she stared a figurative hole in the ground in front of herself.
"Jen, I'm not trying to sound like I'm Dr. Phil here, but you're still learning this whole relationship game, as much as I am. In other words, mistakes like that are bound to happen, once in a while. The only advice that I can give you, is to tell him how crazy about him you are and just lay it all out there. Everyone's going to know anyway, am I right?" she told Jen, who looked like she agreed with her.
"What about the ridicule, that's sure to follow?" Jen asked her, bringing up a logical point.
"I'm sure that it won't be nearly as bad, as you fear. You won't know until you've tried it, though" she told Jen and for the rest of the evening, they sat in Jen's room, listening to Bruce Springsteen's greatest hits, while her friend imagined that it was Henry, singing those songs just for her.
END OF CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR