Rhapsody Redux

an intermezzo quartenary

in·ter·mez·zo n

a short piece of music that is performed between longer movements of an extended musical composition

qua·ter·nar·y adj

consisting of four parts, or occurring in sets of four

The Rescue (1)

My friend
It's a song
I can't tell you where it's going
Where it's been
When I turn around
It's here in my heart
And on my lips again
Can I tell you?
Can I touch you?
Can you hear me?

First stanza from My Friend by Annie Palmer

Pride can stand a thousand trials
The strong will never fall
But watching stars without you
My soul cried

Lavender pajamas.

Joey kissed him.

He caught her by surprise earlier that evening, touching his lips to hers, his chin made bare by an impromptu shaving session, hearts laid barer still, friendly intimacy uncovering something more. Something withstanding time and denial, escape and flight. Yet alone together that night, lying on two side-by-side sleeping bags, trapped inside a giant Super K-Mart, he told her she was right. There were a million reasons why she and he didn't work.

Pacey bought her lavender pajamas.

She countered him, told him there was one thing in the pro column. What's that? he asked.

Those lavender pajamas scattered blue and purple stars all over her body.

She slid over to him. He fell back, giving her room, keeping platonic space between them. She leaned in and pressed her lips to his, seeking re-discovery.

Lost herself in him.

He rolled forward, deepened the kiss, gliding his leg onto her thigh. His hand alighted at the small of her back, pulled her close.

Found all over again.

First kiss after so many various ones in-between. Touch, once familiar and sure, now tentative, exploring. Rhythm of kisses flared into tempo once again.

Fine cotton, those pajamas, downy-soft against her skin.

I miss you, she said after.

I miss you too, he whispered in return.

His lips grazed her forehead. Her pinky captured his finger, hooked and held. Head tucked into neck.

Lavender pajamas cuddled into solid arms, fell asleep, content.

XXXXX

Lavender pajamas. His wallet.

She kissed him.

A cold, dark winter's night, the crackling fire cast flickering orange, melting away shadows around the room, glowing them warm. She lay beneath him, nude and vulnerable, yet sultry and yearning. He hovered above her, naked and unsure, nevertheless sweet and smiling.

But before that, they bickered. Over something in his wallet. About one specific item, not any of the other things.

Not the laminated Capeside High School ID card, the one where he was newly-shorn, hair standing barely one-inch outward from his skull, mouth stretched wide into a cocky grin, navy-blue block letters stamping "SENIOR" below.

(I wanna throw the wrapper away, she said, turning quickly to face him when he started to protest with a nervous laugh, If this is about what I was— and she stopped him.)

That morning six months before, during the first week of school, she stood just beyond the photographer's shoulder and some boy passing by sing-songed, "Witter and Potter sitting in a tree, F-U-C-K-I-N-G" and she blushed heat-red and that grin spread onto his face before he could stop it. The camera snapped it into posterity and they fought all the way to their classes after, he slow-footing it to English and she swift-scurrying to History. They made up at lunchtime, behind the bleachers on the football field. Contrite, he apologized with a sheepish smile then stricken eyes when she started crying. He held her, whispering, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" over and over again while she dampened his shirt with humiliated tears and wetness from his own eyes smeared into her hair.

Not the "emergency credit card" branded VISA from his brother Doug, jointly managed with his sister Gretchen, that bore the soul-searing expression of a baby harp seal with it's large dark liquid eyes and sleek soft white fur against arctic snow and a turquoise sky.

(This is about how you carried my bag off the bus yesterday, she began, stepping closer to him.)

He used the card to buy a formal jacket, slacks and dress shirt, escorting her to an elegant dinner in December, that first nerve-wracked foray into the glittering world of Worthington College. Handsome and proud, he stuck by her side, his hand a comfort at her waist, at the small of her back. He dubbed her "Audrey Hepburn" to ease her flutters then charmed a circle of administrators at their table. Other girls threw yearning glances their way. But she was prickly, a bundle of kinetic anxiety, immersed within her own insecurities. She cried when she thought she failed; cried even more when she realized she pushed him away even as he drew folks closer to her. They exchanged forgiveness and he carried her coat, then held it out for her to slip into, ever the gentleman. Later, next to a twinkling Christmas tree at the Leery holiday party, he slid his arms around from behind, lay his lips against her ear, murmuring, "Brat" in a naughty, sexy tone and she smiled, blushing, and snuggled back against him. Dawson captured that moment with his ever-present camera, fortuitous, creating a favorite portrait. It still graced her room at the B & B. It always would.

Not the movie ticket stubs for X-MEN at the new and improved Rialto Multi-Cineplex on the big IMAX screen with "Love, Number Four" printed in neat block letters on the backs.

(This is about how... When we go to the movies and you go and you buy us popcorn you always make sure you bring back a napkin so I don't wipe all the grease on my jeans, she continued, leisurely unbuttoning his flannel shirt.)

"Number Four," he called her after Jen's Un-Birthday Party, teasing with a tender light in his crystal-blue eyes. She'd roll her eyes but her heart would smile. Her academic status became a constant source of jokes between them, relaxing her, mollifying him who worked hard for every miniscule decimal point inching upward in his GPA. On his nineteenth birthday, they suffered through twin disappointments. She mistakenly conspired a disastrous family dinner; he shouldered rejection from his one decent shot at college. Yet together, they struggled toward a celebration in fireworks at the end of the night, with his family and their friends beneath a sparking sky on the Witter lawn. Then after, alone, straddling in the dark intimacy of the front seat of his family car, hands and lips and tongues, stroking, pressing, swirling. She presented him with those movie tickets the very next evening, a belated birthday present, along with a large pepperoni and olive pizza from The Cape Man's Pie, his favorite, and a bottle of Martinelli's Sparkling Apple Cider which they opened and passed between them long after the movie, while they sat entwined on a moonlit beach, keeping each other warm with some kisses and a blanket. He grinned when he saw what she wrote and kept those stubs in his wallet thereafter.

Not the twenty-dollar bill nor the six one-dollar bills nor the fifty-three cents comprised of one quarter, two dimes, one nickel, and three pennies that constituted the remainder of his cash for the weekend.

(And this is about how just last week when we were at miniature golf you took all of the shots first so I would know the correct path, she went on, while he watched her, careful and silent.)

He took out one hundred dollars cash that week before, used a little over one-third of it during their conscripted double-date with Drue Valentine and rich girl Anna. They shared a spaghetti and Chicken Marsala dinner at a moderately-priced Italian restaurant and the "Couples' Special Package" at Capeside Miniature Golf World. Drue needled her about her non-sex status and afterwards, she and Pacey addressed the physical tension existing between them, the one that all of their fervent caresses and passionate kisses and thisclose encounters fell far short of easing. He admitted fear and she asked him if they could be scared together. They held onto each other, anxious. Yet instead of dissolving, that fear solidified into a knot greater than them both, opened up, swallowed them whole. They bickered about that too.

But not the Massachusetts Driver's License picturing a scrawny face with a bulbous nose and a god-awful Caesar haircut that allowed them authorization to drive to hidden places so they could partake of more explicit, though constrained, learnings far away from prying or vigilant eyes.

(You taught me how to drive, she whispered, taking his hand, kissing its knuckles, while wryness traced the contours of his tempting lips).

The same Driver's License he left at the B & B that night they went the furthest to almost-all-the-way during the wee early morn hours after a violent storm at sea almost killed Pacey, almost killed Jen too. Dripping wet, soaked to the bone, he drove her home from the pier to an empty house, Bessie, Bodie and Alexander gone, stranded in Boston, roads washed out by furious rain and brutal winds, messages from would-be patrons apologizing delayed visits. They stripped down, stepped into a hot shower, and she collapsed sobbing into his arms, kissing him, fierce, clutching him to her as if her life would end if she did not. He held her tight, aching, his heart hurting because one love was drowned and this one, submerged within the sorrow of a painful almost-was. Afterwards, he dried her with soft, gentle towels, and when they kissed again, lying together in her bed, skin-to-skin, bare and battered, swept away by turbulent emotions turning to increasing passion shifting into marvelous sensation, he paused, stopped them from going further, saying, No, not like this. He put clothes and blankets between them (plucking two of his clean t-shirts and two pairs of his boxer shorts from the pile of unfolded clothes at the foot of her bed, and in hindsight, Joey was grateful of his tendencies to sneak his laundry in with hers), then tucked her against him to tumble with her into healing sleep. They never came that close again.

Not the tiny strip of paper proclaiming "The future lies with you," a trite message from a fortune cookie she opened up the night after Andie's goodbye dinner, the one arranged to put everything back together again before perky McPhee left for Italy.

(And last year at prom... You knew that the bracelet I was wearing was my mom's, she reminded him, the corner of her lips quirking upward, his own mirroring hers, imbued with fond memory of a prior dance between them.)

They ate Chinese takeout over their books at the B & B, after a reunited afternoon spent with Jen, Jack and Dawson, catching up and exchanging funny, side-splitting anecdotes over boba tea and chocolate cupcakes at Goody's Soda Fountain on Main. While Andie pieced the broken pieces of shattered friendship back into place, Joey did her own patchwork in that hallway outside the bathroom door of Leery's Fresh Fish, telling him that though Dawson was the one who knew her best since childhood, Pacey would be the one to know her best in times to come. "It's a sign!" she announced, holding that tiny paper rectangle aloft, the very next night. He laughed, scoffing "Coincidence!" and then called her sentimental, a softy, and generally girly-girl for saying so. She protested, crumpling it into her hand. But he took it from her, leaned forward to lay a toe-curling kiss upon her, and then shoved it into his jeans pocket. Somehow, although he remembered everything, that scrap of fortune found its way into his wallet a little bit later, a pertinent reminder.

Not the limp yellow Screen Play Video Rental card, edges tattered, his signature, "Pacey J. Witter" scrawled, almost illegible, on the thin black line at the bottom, a ticket to all the evenings doing something else entirely, unrelated to cinematic edification.

(You kissed me first, sweetheart, she recalled, slowly working his flannel shirt off his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. The second time...you counted to ten before doing it again just in case I wanted to stop you.)

They rented movies the afternoon he returned from his road trip with Gretchen a few months hence, after Joey spent most of her weekend locked in with Drue in the basement of the Capeside Yacht Club. When Drue made inappropriate advances, she blacked his eye. When he pointed out the incongruous differences between her and Pacey, she told him that part of Pacey's recklessness was that he was constantly surprising her. And part of his rashness was that he was intensely passionate. She thought those differences were important, that they made for a richer relationship. When Pacey came back, driving straight to the B & B after dropping Gretchen off, she jumped into his arms and kissed him deep and hard. Chuckling, he said he should leave more often if she was going to greet him like that on every return. Smiling, she took his hand and led him out to the edge of her dock. They sat – she between his knees, he leaning forward into her warmth – and faced out towards the creek as they filled each other in on their weekend apart, laughing, hugging, peppering each other with affectionate kisses. Later, the movies they rented went unwatched as they shared a more sensual, though still prudent, homecoming on her living room couch, in complete locked-door privacy.

Not the hard maroon Capeside Public Library card proclaiming User ID number 3789276, scratches marring the smooth plastic finish after numerous checkout swipes for books to assist a determined study warrior.

(You bought me a wall, she whispered. I didn't buy it so much as I— he started to say, before she interrupted him.)

He gave her a blank brick canvas, awaiting her very own painted visions, presented it to her on a blustery spring evening the year before. But he was the one who scrawled a choice on it: Ask Me To Stay. Almost too late, she made that decision before the summer fled away from her, taking him with it. They took flight together instead. Three months later, it was she drawing choices for him: Pacey, a relationship isn't about a romantic three-month cruise. It's gonna be the details that define us. You know, like...the moments. And he took a deep breath and said, Okay. Joey...I am...really scared. Um...I think that I screwed up and I'm gonna flunk out of high school. So I need your help, um...really badly. Then he dropped his head, bowed by the weight of his distress, and she hugged him to her, cradling him, soothing him. That's all you needed to say, Pace, she told him. They consoled one another with ardent kisses and delightful touches, murmured endearments and sleepy cuddling deep into the night on the True Love, before he took her home, just this side of her curfew. They got that library card the very next afternoon on the following day.

Not the small photo, cut to size from a larger 3-inch by 5-inch print, of he and she laughing, settled on the bow of the True Love, her sitting between his bent legs, leaning back against his chest, his arms around her, her fingers enmeshed with his, all four hands resting in her lap.

(We were alone on a boat for three months and you understood without a word why I wasn't ready. Do you have to ask me now why I am? she asked, raising her eyes to his, intent, melting. He cracked the tiniest of smiles, brought his hand up, lay his palm against her cheek, achingly tender.)

They started their senior year arguing about Dawson. Once docked, stranded on land after flying free on the True Love for an entire magical summer, they faced down what their choices that last spring had wrought. A best friend hurt by the consequences of their decision to leave him and love each other. It blew up at The Dive-In, threw itself in their faces and she sought him out afterwards, after giving Dawson a present she hoped would be a first building block towards developing his own future that did not include her. Not in the way he always wanted her to be included, that is. He would always be her dearest friend. She stopped and started in the stick-shift truck she borrowed from Bodie as she made her way to the pier, to Pacey, to True Love. I stalled seven times and six out of the seven times, do you know what I thought about? she asked her boyfriend, pacing before him as he pretended immersion into their hardbound, tattered copy of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid." You, she continued on, intrepid. It's this secret thing I do whenever I get really pissed off or confused or angry or upset or sad. I think of you, and I immediately feel good inside. I guess it's kind of like taking a good mood pill or something. As his iciness melted and the warmth seeped back into his gaze, she said with a firmness born of deepest conviction, My heart? That's a fixed point. Three months riding the open waters couldn't shake it, and I'll be damned if I'll let your insecurities shake it. My heart never left this boat. It's never left you. As far as I can see, it's not going to any time soon.

So in that cabin, on that winter's night, before she ran through all of these things that truly mattered, they bickered over none of those things in his wallet except for that one tiny, flat, blue, square package that within sealed a tightly rolled, thin-rubber, softly-ribbed condom.

In the end, it was about fear and childhood dreams and letting go. About insecurity and long-held ideals and a golden boy she hurt by loving elsewhere. It should not have been about that. Yet inexplicably, it was. So it was up to her to make it about something else, all things else that truly mattered, because she realized she never really loved that golden boy at all. Not the way she loved this boy. Loving him was wrought with peril, full of angst, painful and frustrating and sometimes harrowing, yet it was also deep and all-encompassing and real.

Pace. I'm gonna count to ten... And then I'm going to start kissing you. If you don't want me to... she whispered, her voice caressing as she slipped his white undershirt up and over, removing it from the heated skin underneath, …then you're just gonna have to stop me. He stood before her, patient, awaiting. As she leaned up into him, lips hovering over his, she breathed, Ten, my love.

And she kissed him.

Fear fled as they came together, completely surrendered yet absolutely safe within the circle of that embrace. When she lay beneath and he hovered above, she looked up and they locked eyes. She yearned and he smiled, then he slid into her slow, then quick and abrupt. A brief burst of pain made her gasp as something within her resisted then gave way. He leaned down and whispered, "Shhh. It's gonna to be alright," pressing his lips to her forehead, her cheek, her mouth. And it was more than alright. It was the nicest thing she could ever imagine and the nicest joy she ever experienced in her life up to that very moment. Then it was more than nice and she had no words because it was all throbbing, overwhelming, ecstatic feeling. Moaning sounds and inside explosions and blissful shivering.

As she drifted off to sleep, his brown leather wallet lay spread-eagled on the floor, discarded. Next to it, that flat square package, ripped asunder, yawning empty. Next to him, arms wrapped around, she nestled, gentled tender, sleeping fulfilled.

XXXXX

Heaving heart is full of pain
Oh oh the aching
'Cuz I I'm kissing you, ooh
I, I'm kissing you ohh

Lavender pajamas. His wallet. Her dress.

Because she kissed him.

That's how it happened. The pain spilled over and they clutched at one more desperate soothing. Coming together, though already torn apart, just as midnight tipped into a fresh day proclaiming the end of Them. But when it first started, she agonized over a dress.

What do you wear on a date with your boyfriend that's not a date because he's no longer your boyfriend but you love him?

She bought the dress months before but had not yet worn it. When she saw it on the mannequin in the window of Jill's Boutique, she thought it was just elegant enough, just contemporary enough, just confident enough, just long enough. Vintage-inclined, champagne-colored, with thin dark maroon lines running across in diagonals. Pieces of the pattern were sewn into a figure-hugging silhouette, with tiny shoulder sleeves, material drifting down just below her knees but well above her ankles. She looked so good in that dress. When she originally bought it, she imagined the attractive picture she would make, wearing that dress, happy and relaxed on the arm of a sharply-dressed Pacey. They looked so good in that imagining.

But the week before the day she was set to wear that dress, he broke her heart into a thousand pieces on a dance floor, on a boat, in front of everybody they knew and all those they did not know as well. He threw vile accusations at her, self-imploded into a ball of anger, told her she made him feel like nothing. She died as he killed what they had together. Finding her voice, she told him to go to hell and went outside above-deck to cry in Dawson's arms. Yet she wanted to be in Pacey's arms instead and she hated that. She hated him.

He hated himself more.

She invited him to that last Worthington event, a final attempt to see if perhaps they were wrong, that the signs would point them right again. She wondered if she should wear the dress she bought, though that dreamy vision of them two had turned quickly to a nightmare of one minus one. As she pored over her closet, undecided, anxious, she also ran through regrets. Of all the things she never told him.

That she lied to Dawson about them sleeping together (though finally told him the truth much, much later). That she briefly thought she was perhaps pregnant with Pacey's child (but was not). That she was afraid he would leave her (and then he did). That she could never love anyone like she loved him, not even Dawson (never Dawson). That she loved him and always would (still).

Nervousness spurred her on so that she was sitting on the porch, dressed and waiting when he arrived. She decided to wear that dress. Standing as he approached, her heart fluttered at the sight of his handsome and somber figure, then plunged painfully when he leaned up to kiss her lips in greeting, out of habit, then checked himself, swerving off to the side into an awkward silence. Her gut clenched hard and she stepped away, saying, "We should get going," walking ahead of him to the car. Yet she felt his presence heavy and strained next to her, so near but the farthest away he had ever been.

The signs were mixed and eventually, brutal. They were not to be, after all. But when he dropped her off at the B & B, poised on a final leave-taking, she could not let him go. Not yet. She asked if she could go home with him. Just to sleep. Shattered resignation turned into frail empathy in his eyes as he agreed, enfolding her into a mournful embrace. She went to her room, grabbed jeans, her jacket, a sweater, some socks and sneakers. Shoving them into a small navy duffel bag, she returned to a subdued Pacey, awaiting her in the foyer. She took his offered hand, and he pulled her behind him as they went back out into that night, into his car, driving to an empty, Gretchen-less house. She shed her dress, donned one of his t-shirts and boxer shorts, perhaps for the last time, and slid into his bed. He took her into his arms, held her close, spooning warmth around her.

Just before midnight, she awoke, completely turned around in his arms. Facing him, she observed how his ridiculously long lashes shuttered his eyes as he slept. The evenness of his breathing in slumber, rising his chest, falling it too. The vulnerability of his expression as he slept, gentle and defenseless as a baby. She reached out her fingers to feel the softness of those lean cheeks beneath sensitive pads, the tickling of those lashes at their tips. Then, she leaned forward and kissed his lips. She could not help herself.

Awoken by her soft mouth, her exploring tongue, he mumbled sleepily, incoherent, and brought his hand up to clutch a fistful of her dark hair, returning the kiss, taking up his own position in that passionate dueling. Shifting so he was above her, he covered her, plunging into her from above – first tongues, then fingers, and finally him, hard and ample. She took him in, frantic to fill that inconsolable emptiness. He was frantic too.

Afterwards, they lay spent, that brief moment of fullness, of elation, fleeting then gone, rendering them still inconsolable, perhaps even moreso. He said, "That was weird" and turned over, away from her. She said, "Yeah" and lay staring up at the ceiling, forcefully squashing the sobs in her throat, keeping them from escaping into sound, into air. Then she turned onto her side, her back to him, rolled herself up into a ball, and clenched down on her pain as hard as she could until she fell asleep.

The next morning, Pacey was gone. Joey dressed into those jeans, the jacket, her sweater, some socks and sneakers, rolling that dress up into a cylinder of yesterday's visions departed, stuffing it into the small navy duffel bag. She sought him out, found him stewing over his own regrets at the end of a pier at the Marina, his eyes seeking out the ghost of True Love out on the horizon. He apologized again for his shortcomings, told her about the guy he despaired he had become and said, "I hate that guy." She sat next to him, told him, "You're not that guy." They were soft with each other, tender and sad, steering resolute to a kinder and gentler resolution. She reached over, took his hand from his pocket, clasped it firm between both of hers.

They both looked out at that horizon.

XXXXX

Lavender pajamas. His wallet. Her dress. Pair of boots.

They kissed, she thinks.

A hazy recollection perhaps, but Joey never forgets the feel of Pacey's lips brushing against hers.

When they were teenagers, in all of her youthful fervor, she thought that the feeling of being kissed could never be the same with any other boy. As she grew older, she deduced that this initial speculation was a fallacy. The rush of emotion, the shiver of pleasure, the heating of lust – it would spring to life whenever her lips touched those of a boy she found attractive, that was in turn attracted to her, instigating the spillage of endorphins and heightened nerves and sensory responses existent within every human being that had lived and loved, across generations and centuries and eras and millenniums.

She was right. But she was also wrong.

Different boys engender different emotions and so too, do their kisses. And even after all this time, Pacey's kisses were distinct. Still were, even after goodbye.

She got outrageously drunk at Pacey's party, the month after she left Eddie on the beach coast of Santa Monica, California and returned to the bayside city of Boston, Massachusetts, courtesy of a one-way first-class plane ticket paid for by a grateful and appreciative Mrs. Liddell. Before leaving, she went to the Santa Monica Place shopping mall and bought a pair of fine black leather boots at the Kenneth Cole store there. She liked those boots. They were now her favorite pair.

So Audrey was in rehab in Santa Barbara, Eddie was at the California Writers Workshop near Malibu, Dawson was doing post-production in Hollywood, Jen was frolicking with C.J., Jack was monogamizing with David, and she was drinking Pacey Alcoholic Specials, once more, alone.

So she and Pacey commiserated together, flirted innocuous, drank and danced and played party games. They were friends again, better friends than before when all that linked them was a deep affection for Dawson and an intense hatred for each other. But when Dawson was cut from the equation, passion flared hot between them, connecting them, soldering them to one another. Then that bond broke, they teetered apart, licked their wounds, separate. After that, they forged friendship instead and it was deeper, stronger, everything she needed and anything she wanted and she was so very glad. She believed it was so for him too. He did not disagree.

So at Christmas she took advantage of a Drunk Def Con 4 Pacey beneath the mistletoe and that was very much on her mind when she embarked upon Spin the Bottle, already sloshed to the four winds and uncaring of consequences. But her Pacey mackage was interrupted by a sudden crash and he was leaping over couches, yelling loud, and when she stood up to inquire what all the fuss was about, she fell into blankness and did not remember much else after that. Yet when she awoke the next morning, snuggled beneath the warm, thick blue-gray comforter on Pacey's bed, her lips tingled in that familiar way she remembered and that pair of boots were off, tossed careless at the foot of the bed while Pacey was nowhere to be found. He slept downstairs on the couch instead.

So he fed her Cheerios with black coffee and orange juice when she stumbled down the stairs, only half-coherent, and despite a few searching glances that later she felt she must have imagined, his expression was open and friendly, candid and amused. He gave her some aspirin and she borrowed some socks. She put on that favorite pair of boots and he waved jauntily as she walked out of his apartment, down the elevator, through the front entrance, around the block, and to the T station to get back to her dorm at Worthington College.

And that was that.

Until he kissed her after she shaved off his goatee and moustache, the both of them seated, facing each other, her legs straddling his thighs, his hands on her knees, underneath the glaring lights in the hardware aisle at Super K-Mart a few nights ago.

Well... okay, so how do I skip the middle part? Like, if you could tell yourself something back then, what would it be? Harley asked Joey earlier that afternoon, seeking more than mere platitudes or trite aphorisms.

I've been wondering lately why things were different. You know, why I can talk to Eddie without being scared, Joey replied, attempting honesty, just saying whatever came to mind, unfiltered. And, you know, when you're sixteen years old, so many of your choices are motivated by fear. You know, like, one wrong move and the world is gonna end. And maybe that's what it is. Maybe it's just about... I don't know, taking a deep breath and... forgiving yourself for yesterday's mistakes. You know, you're gonna walk into school tomorrow, and you're gonna want to punch Patrick's face, but he might just say something that makes you change your mind. Hear it, Harley. Don't be afraid to move forward.

If all of this is about Eddie, why didn't you follow him across the country? Harley asked, insistent in clearing up her confusion.

It's not just about him, Joey clarified. It's... it's about me and...what I'm ready for.

What are you ready for? Harley asked.

Joey lay on her bed, wondering when the tables turned, when the tutor ended up being the one tutored. When two bratty teenagers in deep lusty like, perhaps approaching some kind of love, transformed into a window to her own past, linking random points of her continuing relations with Pacey into an emergent constellation casting relevance unto now. Staring up at her dorm room ceiling, she imagined a sky filled with stars, seen from various reference points. The Northern Lights when she learned that the strangest of places was something beautiful, after all. A universe of stories shining onto the earth below when she reached out, grabbed his hand on Aunt Gwen's lawn, sealing her yes with a kiss. Shimmering spectral lights cascading about them as they laughed and loved on the deck of True Love out on serene seas. Speckled bursts of luminosity washing down on them conjoined, whether a first time at a ski resort or a last time in a lonely beach house. Stalwart stars decreeing their presence despite being obscured by millions of city lights reflecting up from Boston Bay. He just shrugged, blue eyes twinkling in a tanned face hovering above a cheerful red shirt and said, What, the stars? Um...no, you can't see them very well. Then looking straight at her, smiling, he continued, But what the hell...I've seen them all before, right? She looked back at him, also smiling, and concurred, Me, too.

So Joey picked up the phone, dialed Pacey's cell phone number, and tired of goodbyes, she said hello and told him she wanted to try.

XXXXX

Touch me deep, pure and true
Give to me forever
'Cuz I, I'm kissing you, ooh
I, I'm kissing you, ohh

Lavender pajamas. His wallet. Her dress. Pair of boots. Boston Bruins sweatshirt.

Then she kissed him.

It was not her intention when Pacey arrived at her door late that night, driving straight to her dorm at Worthington, all the way from Capeside.

But she was wearing that Boston Bruins sweatshirt that he let her have, the morning after the night they spent together in the Super K-Mart. Just that Boston Bruins sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, her feet bare, her hair unbound. He knocked, strode in when she bade him enter, and then she walked right into his arms. Pacey surrounded her and Joey held onto him, felt the soothing contours of his solidity, breathed in the tangy smell of L'oreal Herbal Essence Shampoo. He must have gotten it at the sale proclaimed in the circulars just last week. Gone back to the Super K-Mart and stocked up because he was that kind of guy, and Joey sighed because this was knowledge hard-won and strangely comforting. The fragrance mixed with the not unpleasant scent of hours on the road – a rumpled odor, yet infinitely dear. She slid her hand up into his hair, starting from the back of his neck, upward slow, luxuriating in its springy softness, clutching gentle. Joey sighed again into his neck, fastened her lips at the nape of it, allowed herself a tentative nip to taste him, just a little. Pacey always tasted so good.

He rumbled a low chuckle and brought his hands up, clasping her about the waist, sliding them onto the small of her back, pressing her into him further. She yielded and melded herself against him as he twined his arms around her.

"Do you think we're relapsing?" Joey whispered, aching within this tenderness.

"I prefer to think of it as a rescue," Pacey murmured, his breath feathery against her hair, into her ear.

She remembered what she said to him, just a few nights ago, lying alongside yet apart, on the floor of Super K-Mart, in the dimness of a manufactured indoor night.

When you and I were on the boat...I used to dream that we'd be cast away somewhere. You know, your standard tropical island with the white sand beaches and giant stars overhead. We'd wear no clothes, and we'd splash in the surf all day. And then at night, the moon would be this...well, this giant thing. And it was always full.

"Yeah, okay," Joey agreed. "I like that thought too."

So they were kissing.

Practice makes perfect. Despite shared desire, they were distinct individuals, out of sync with one another. Hesitancy brought with it a slight bumping around, a few bashful chuckles. Not so good. Yet soon, they were naked, lying sprawled across her bed, entangled. He slipped inside, her hand guiding him. And then, it was great. His other hand took hers up, pressing palms, fingers entwining. He began to move, slow. She moved too, leavening a mutual pace. They transposed together into remembered rhythm. At once, it was extraordinary.

Moments collapsed onto each other on the time continuum, like their bodies collapsed into each other now, skin on skin, sweat slicking them each against the other. The closest thing to time standing still Joey could ever come close to imagining. This actual sex act was a mundane, temporal union -- limbs and sweat, mouths and saliva, fingers and touch, tongues and taste.

More resided in the emotions rolled up in one's deepest being. The eyes did it. To look into someone's eyes, without fear or wavering, was truly connecting, fathomless. Though sex was technically an intimate act, to see into one's eyes during the actual co-mingling of bodies and parts was not common. During sex with those partners since her very first one – Dawson, Eddie and Charlie, almost -- she would look into their eyes because it enhanced the sensations of every intimate insertion.

But the gazes never held all the way through. Joey always closed her eyes against the automatic pleasure of her sexual fulfillment, burying her face into a corded neck or thick, soft hair or arching her head back in ecstasy. Yet with Pacey -- her first and here, her present -- they held that connecting stare. They could not help themselves. Sometimes, they would keep the connection even while falling over the edge, individually, and oftentimes, as one. Pulling each other forward, they held one another, anchored each to the other's soul. Not just in that instant, but every instant they had ever known, exchanging a glance, a glare, a look, a stare.

Pacey's gaze plunged into hers and they locked together. So many beings were rolled up into this man above her, inside of her, surrounding her, filling her. A smart-ass little boy. An annoying pre-pubescent. A randy teenager. A cocky young man. Memories folded into each other while he was folding into her and she was folding into him. Yet a future settled there too -- a man emerging, sure of himself and his place in the world. Confident and resolute. Experienced and mature. Simple and marvelous.

Life was long yet and there was still so much to learn and experience. Joey wavered suddenly, absolute sureness warring with a shaky inexplicable dread. If this man became her world again, wouldn't she still just be exchanging one world for another's? What about a world of her own making?

It was her last coherent thought, because the universe exploded, and dimly, through the haze of her deep, bodily implosions, she saw those fathomless blue orbs roll up into his head, his mouth slacking into intense sexual release. His loud groans mingled with her stifled screams as he brought his mouth down to suckle her entire being back through her tongue and lips, easing her down, passionate, and then gentle, into that shaky yet languorous aftermath. Arms entwined, fingers tangled into hair, bodies interlocked, both of them descended from that peak, sensually overwrought yet completely sated.

No fear. No regrets. No goodbyes.

"I missed you," she whispered.

He smiled.

Pacey kissed her.

Where are you now?
Where are you now?
'Cuz I, oh I'm kissing you
I, I'm kissing you, ohh

-- Kissing You by Desiree