Andie stood in the doorway to Jen's room, one trembling hand fluttering over her mouth, which was stretched wide in shock at the conversation she had just overheard. She stared at the two of them, still stunned, the beginnings of pain creeping into her expression. "I…I'm sorry…I…I didn't…I…" For the first time since they met her, Andie McPhee couldn't find the words to make one coherent sentence. She backed up slowly, bumping into the door behind her on her way out, then she turned and bolted. Joey and Pacey stared wordlessly at the door, as if seeing a ghost.

Then Joey rubbed her temples. "Could anything else possibly go wrong tonight?"

Pacey sank down on the bed next to her and dropped his head in his hands and exhaled hard, still too stunned to talk.

"It's Ok, Pacey. I know you-" She stopped, squeezing her eyes shut. "You should go after her."

Pacey looked at her mournfully. What a disaster this night had turned into.  It was clear that whatever reciprocal declaration of love he'd hoped to get from Joey would have to be postponed. "Jo, about what I said before, I meant it you know."

She smiled at him, but it was somewhat bittersweet. "I know. Our timing seems to be a little off," she smiled crookedly, then turned somber. "Andie looked so betrayed…just like Dawson." She paused and shook her head. "You tried to tell me how complicated it was. I thought it was just an excuse, but you were right. I didn't think about how this would affect everyone, all of our friendships. I was so stupid and selfish," she pounded her fist against her thigh, shaking her head in disbelief. "I naively thought everyone would just accept this, us, and be OK with it. Sure they'd be mad, but I didn't think they'd be so…devastated."

Pacey was quiet for a long moment. In a very neutral voice, he asked her. "So you're saying you think it's not worth it, Jo?" He said "it" but he meant "me." Pacey was damned if he was going to let her know how scared he was feeling, though. He'd laid it all on the line and she-well, she hadn't rejected him, but it hadn't exactly been the reaction he'd been hoping for either. "So where do we go from here? We just go back to whatever we were before? Friends? Enemies?" His voice rose dangerously on the last syllable and he bit back the anger and the fear.

"Can you really do that Joey?  Is that what you want?"

She looked at him, her eyes reflecting her own confusion, then lookedaway.

He sighed and stood up, starting for the door. He paused in the doorway, turning back to see Joey looking out the window. She seemed to be looking toward the light now streaming from Dawson's bedroom. Pacey's heart gave a little hiccup. He stood in the doorway and watched her for a minute. His flash of anger had diminished and he wanted to cross the room and throw his arms around her, but he knew he couldn't do that. He'd told her how hefelt, now she had to decide what she wanted.

"Joey?"

She turned around. "I

just want you to do whatever's gonna make you happy-even if it means, well,  whatever it means. Go talk to him. If you decide to come back, I'll be here."  He turned around again and walked out of the room and down the stairs, not looking back this time.

A moment later, Jen rushed in, clearly anguished. "Joey, I'm so sorry, she came home early and wanted to see Jack, so Grams told her to go right upstairs. I was in the bathroom. I didn't know," she finished meekly, looking at Joey who was still staring morosely out the window. "What happened?"

Joey cleared her throat finding it hard to talk, but still her voice came out only merely above a whisper. "Pacey told me he loved me. Andie was in the doorway, she heard him."

"Oh crap. God, what a screwed up night this is." She noticed the brooding expression on Joey's face and frowned, sitting down on the bed next to her.

"Jo, I know the way it happened wasn't necessarily under the best circumstances, but aren't you a little happy, even? I mean I thought this was what you wanted, he was what you wanted."

"So did I." She turned to look at Jen, her face woeful and confused.  "It was everything I wanted to hear." She smiled sadly. "Jen, I didn't think it was possible to feel such highly conflicting emotions at the same time. My tremendous amount of happiness is only being paralleled right now by the tremendous amount of guilt I feel."

Jen's eyebrows arched and she looked at her suspiciously. "This must be about Dawson because you're vocabulary just shot up three reading grades. Feeling guilty, huh?"

Joey sighed and didn't answer right away. "You know despite my previous experiences with the male species and my own ill-fated luck, something made me believe this time would be different. I bought into the whole Hollywood  fantasy of a happy ending. Cue the fading sunset and all that." Sherolled her eyes. "I don't know what I was thinking. That Dawson would somehow magically forgive both of us I guess, even though forgiveness has never been one of his strong suits." She paused, her voice dropping to an anguished whisper. "I never imagined I could be happy while he hated me."

She looked at Jen. "Do you think he'll ever get over this?"

Jen shrugged slightly. "I think he'll hold a grudge for a while. But ultimately, yeah I think so. Despite the way he feels now, Dawson loves you both, you're his best friends. And I think when he actually sees for himself how happy you two are, he'll learn to deal." She tried to speak in a confident tone, but truthfully, Jen wasn't so sure herself.

"Pacey told me I should go to him and decide what I wanted. That he'd be here if I decided to come back."

Jen smiled and inwardly marveled once again at how Pacey had become so mature. She hoped Joey realized what she'd be giving up, if she decided to let her guilt dictate her decisions. Perhaps Dawson would see how

confused she was and would refrain from playing on that guilt. Yeah and maybe, she'd sprout wings and suddenly fly over Capeside. Then again maybe his self-righteous tirades would send Joey running back to Pacey anyhow.

She sighed. Her brain hurt from just conjecturing. "So, I guess there's only one thing left to do, huh?"

Joey hedged, not moving, looking out Jen's window to the Leery household again.

"You need moral support? I could go with you."

She set her shoulders and shook her head. "Thanks Jen. But I gotta face him, and I should do it by myself. Wish me luck."

"I'll have my fingers crossed for you." Jen smiled, as Joey left.

***

Pacey opened the front door of Grams' house and saw her sitting on the front steps, hugging her knees to her chest. She looked very small and fragile and Pacey felt horrible for causing her this misery. Before he could even apologize, Andie spoke, knowing instinctively that it was him. "Was it true? What you said?"

She stared straight ahead not looking at him. Pacey sat down beside her and saw the tears streaming down her face. Pacey sighed, he knew if he didn't tell her the truth it would only hurt her more, later.

"Yes. It's true. I'm so sorry Andie, I didn't mean for you to hear-"

She interrupted him, not wanting to hear how sorry he was. She spoke in a cold, brittle voice. "You said, you never felt like this about anyone.  So was it all a lie Pacey? Was our relationship just a joke? Or maybe it was apractice run? When you kissed me, were you thinking about her?"

"No! Andie, no. Joey and I didn't even get along till this summer. We spent a lot of time together but only as friends. Nothing happened until after you…after you broke up with me."

"Yeah, I'll bet she was only too happy to comfort you." She hissed. Andie had  never really had any problems with Joey as a person. She had tried to be her friend, although inwardly she'd always kind of suspected that Joey scoffed at her. But now that she had become the "other woman," it was a whole different story.

Pacey's temper peaked a little. He could understand that she was bitter and upset at the way she found out, but he the wounded girlfriend role seemed a bit hypocritical when she had been the one to do the dumping. "That's not fair Andie. She did comfort me and she listened to me and she stayed with me when I cried over you. But I wasn't the one who wanted us to break up," he sighed slightly. " I'm sorry you're upset and I never would have wanted you to find out the way you did, but the truth is, yes I meant everything I said to Joey. I do love her. I've never had someone who understood me and believed in me like she does."

The last remark hurt more than anything Andie had heard that night. More than the "I love you Joey." More than the "I never felt anything like this before." More than all of it combined. If there had been anything she'd done for Pacey, it was believe in him. "How can you say that, Pacey? I believed in you, I was always telling you that you could do anything if you set your mind to it, You just needed a little discipline and-"

"No, Andie. You didn't believe in me. You believed in some idea of me that you wanted me to be," Pacey said softly, patiently explaining. His voice held no trace of anger or impatience and in truth, he had long since gotten over it. He knew Andie had meant well, but now he just needed to make her understand. "I loved you and what we had was incredible, but, do you remember what I told you that psychic said at the Winter Fair. That I'm just a scared little boy who hides behind all these masks?" She nodded.

"I didn't want to admit it then, but she was right. All my life, I've been pretending, that I don't care what my father thinks of me, that if I'm funny and play the clown no one will notice how much I care. Then I met you, and you saw right through the bullshit, funny-man act and I couldn't believe it, but you liked me anyway. I had this beautiful, smart, sensitive girl who loved me-ME, the town loser. "And I tried so hard for you Andie, I tried so hard to live up to those great expectations you had for me. And it worked for a little while, I started doing better in school and somehow, I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I got cast in this whole white-knight-charging-to-the-rescue role. But all along, underneath, I was the same old Pacey, so worried and so afraid that I was going to blow it, that I'd say something wrong and you'd suddenly see that I wasn't this perfect guy who never made a mistake and always did the noble thing. Because I wasn't, Andie".

She was silent, staring down at the cracks in the concrete steps. He continued, desperate to make her understand. "You remember the fight we had when I stood up for Jack? I was like my worst nightmare coming true. You were so disappointed in me, because here was proof that I wasn't this self-effacing hero you'd made me out to be." She was silent, she realized with shame that he was right.

"Joey knows I'm not perfect, Andie. She's seen my flaws and my weaknesses and she doesn't care. She's seen the real me and she likes me as is. I think that maybe aside from Dawson, she's the first person in my life who hasn't tried to change me into something else, someone I'm not."

Andie looked at him. She knew she wasn't being fair, that it was her decision to end this relationship and she intended to stick with it. The summer away had done her a lot of good, but Andie knew she had a long ways to go yet. She still loved him, but her life had changed and so had his. He deserved to be happy and if that meant being with Joey, she would just have to grin and bear it, and ok, probably yak her therapist's ear off about it. Hell, just add it to the list, she thought with grim humor. She looked at him, feeling a little sheepish.

"I wanted a perfect life for a long time, Pacey. I always thought if I could just fix one little thing, then suddenly everything else would fall into place. The only problem was it was never one little thing." She paused, realizing she was digressing a bit. "I'm sorry I tried to make you into something you're not." She held out a hand to him tentatively. "But I'd like to get to know the real Pacey Witter. Friends?"

He looked at her hand and pointedly ignored it, reaching out to wrap his arms around her and give her a hug. "Always, McPhee. Always."

******

"Go away, Joey."

"No. I need to talk to you." Joey hooked a leg over the windowsill and climbed in as she'd done for most weekends of her life for the past 10 years.

"I shouldn't have run off like that."

"I don't have anything to say to you Joey. Or should I say Judas?" He scoffed at her and turned his attention back to the TV.

But Joey had had it with his wounded act. "You hypocrite! You want to talk betrayals. How about what you did to my family Dawson? I know what my dad did was wrong, but what you did was almost as bad. It was my family Dawson, not yours and it should have been my decision. But in your well-meaning, self-righteous way you swooped in, saying you knew what was best for me and you destroyed the little bit of happiness I had. Then you expected me to pat you on the back for doing the 'right' thing?"

"Joey, I'm sorry for that. I apologized at the bus station today, I thought I was protecting you, and you said you forgave me."

"I know what I said Dawson, and I am trying so hard to not remember what you did every time I look at you. But that doesn't mean we can just pick up where we left off before it happened. What you did Dawson, irrevocably altered the course of our relationship."

"What are you saying Joey? That one mistake, one admittedly grievous error in judgement, caused you to stop loving me?"

Joey sighed and exhaled slowly. "Dawson, when you left I tried so hard to turn off my feelings for you, just like a faucet. But I coudn't do it, because love doesn't work that way."

"That's funny Jo, because you certainly seemed to be gushing in Pacey's direction today. So tell me Joey, were you lying all the times you said you loved me?"

Joey softened at the hurt in his voice. "Of course not. You were the best thing in my life Dawson, and for a long time you were the only thing. But things are different now. I know you probably won't believe me when I say this, but telling you I didn't want to know you was the hardest thing I've ever done. But I didn't think I had a choice Dawson. I felt like I had lost everything. The Icehouse was gone, I couldn't trust my own father and I hated myself for turning him in and even though it wasn't technically your fault, I blamed you for forcing me to make such a difficult decision. But it didn't make me feel better to hate you. I had no one to turn to, my best friend had become my mortal enemy." Her tone changed, to one of shock and awe.

"And then my mortal enemy became my best friend. I never would have imagined it myself. But, Pacey was there for me whenever I needed to talk, he was incredible. He even told me I should forgive you. And he made me smile. And laugh. The day I had to wear that wire, I never thought anything would ever be funny again. We started spending more and more time together and somewhere during the

summer, I fell in love with him. For entirely different reasons and in a different way from the way I loved you."

Dawson ran his hands through his hair in frustration. "You know Joey, we keep talking about how we have this soulmate connection and yet every time I make a mistake, you run off into the arms of another guy. I mean it was bad enough the first time, when I didn't even know what I did and you claimed you needed to go find yourself when you really wanted to go find Jack McPhee. And now Pacey? God that's even worse. He's my best friend, I can't hate him like I hated Jack. I just…I don't understand. I tried to be everything for you, give you everything you ever wanted. Why wasn't it enough, Jo?" his voice trembled, and Joey could barely stand to see the pain in his eyes.

"Dawson," she laid a hand on his arm and flinched when he tried to jerk away.

"You WERE everything for me, for so long. And it scared me. Because when I was with you, I forgot about reality. I could push away all the things in my life that were horrible and climb up this ladder to your room and hide in your closet.  When my dad came back from prison, I was so happy and for the first time in a long time, I was living in reality and dealing with it. But you wanted so hard to tack on that moral, happy ending for me. Life isn't like that Dawson. It doesn't have a happy ending, as much as I'd like it to. It just goes on and you deal with it the best you know how. I know it wasn't really your fault, that the way you see things, in those unbending rights and wrongs, is just part of you."

He looked up hopefully, staring at her with wide eyes. She knew what she would say next would crush him, but she had to go on.

"But I also know I'm not the same girl who climbed into your closet with you.  We're growing up and things aren't the same as they were when we were kids."

She saw the hope die out of his face and felt a small tear in her chest. But she needed to go on. "There's a lot of shades of gray in my life, right now Dawson. Including my feelings for you." She looked at him. He was pensively staring at the floor. "We're 16. I don't have the whole world figured out. Maybe we are soulmates, maybe we'll be married with 6 kids by the time we're 40. I don't know." She smiled at him and paused. "But I do know that I can't imagine a future without you in my life. I will always love you Dawson. And part of me will always be that little girl hiding in your closet." She paused, her voice softening as she continued. "But only part of me."

He didn't say anything, didn't even look at her. Dawson's mind was racing as he heard in his head echoes of the things Jen, Jack, Pacey and Joey had told him tonight. He tried to imagine a future without Joey, another year without her smile, without her slightly cynical analysis on life that brought him back down to reality. He couldn't do it, the agony he had felt when she was with Jack and this summer when she was just out of his life was too much. He thought about the past year, the fights, the makeups, the breakups.  Somehow it seemed they just couldn't get it right. Maybe Jack was right and now wasn't their time. Maybe they both needed to pursue other things, other relationships before they could make it together. Dawson wasn't sure what to think, but he did know one thing. He'd spent enough of the past year apart from Joey and he wouldn't do it again. If all she wanted from him was friendship, then that was better than not having her in his life at all. Because he didn't think he could bear that.

Seeing no signs of life from Dawson, Joey sighed and stood up, feeling defeated and resigned as she headed for the window. How fitting, she thought, 16 years of friendship literally out the window.

Dawson lifted his head. "Joey?" She turned. He paused, it was obviously difficult for him to say

this. It felt like a decade went by before he finally spoke. "Tell Pacey I'm sorry. If he makes you happy… then I'm happy for you-both of you."

Joey felt her heart soar and she broke into a huge smile. He understood. Maybe they could make it through this after all. She crossed the room to him again, and smiled gratefully at him. Then she shook her head. "I don't know Dawson, I just don't think he'll believe me." She looked at him shyly, wondering if she'd be pushing it with this next request. "Maybe you could tell him. How about a movie night-for old time's sake? We can even watch ET."

His lips turned up in a small, sad smile. "Maybe not ET, but yeah, just give me some time ok?"

She nodded and said sincerely, "As much as you need." She hesitated, then stepped forward and touched his face gently. He reached up and touched her hand, enclosing it in his own and they stood silently for a moment, just holding hands. "Thank you, Dawson. Wherever the future takes us, you'll always be my best friend, Forever."

She leaned in and kissed his cheek softly, and he closed his eyes. He felt her move away, her fingers sliding through his, and in a moment, she was gone. Dawson walked slowly over to the window and watched her climb down the ladder.

"Forever" he murmured.

****

Joey jumped down the last two steps of the ladder and looked over at the house next door. True to his word, Pacey was sitting on the end of the dock looking out at the water. She took a deep breath and before she knew it she was racing across the lawn, nearly sprinting up to the end of the dock. As she crossed the yard, Dawson's bedroom light went off, plunging the night in darkness, but Joey didn't notice. She ran on, her only thought to get to Pacey and tell him everything was ok and that she loved him. Pacey heard footsteps echoing on the wooden dock behind him. He had been sitting here for nearly 20 minutes and had convinced himself Joey wasn't going to show up, that she'd chosen Dawson. Nervously, he stood up and turned, afraid it would just be Jack or Jen coming to check on him. His eyes  widened when he saw Joey barreling down the dock to him. She covered the remaining distance in three strides and jumped into his arms wrapping her legs around him, and giving him barely a moment to breathe before she was kissing him like there was no tomorrow.

Staggered by the extra weight, Pacey lost his balance and stepped backwards into the thin air and they tumbled into the creek. They surfaced a moment later, still locked together and laughing hysterically. Pacey beamed an ear-splitting grin at her and said, "Does this mean what I think it means?"

"I love you Pacey." She started kissing him again, but Pacey stopped her and looked at her seriously. "You're sure though, right Joey? Because I'm offering you everything I have, but I can't be him. The two of you, all that inextricably intertwined soulmate stuff." He shook his head. "I can't live up to that."

"Pacey, I don't want you to live up to anything. I'm not a little girl anymore. I don't need the fairy tale. I know what I want. I want you."

He smiled, it felt like a weight had been lifted from him. "You don't know how happy I am to hear that, Potter." He squeezed her tight, then pulled back to look at her again. His eyes shined with a wicked glint and he cocked his head to one side. "But of course, I wouldn't say no to a little more persuasion."

"Mmm...persuasion, huh?" Joey narrowed her eyes, edging closer to him.

"Maybe something along the lines of this?" She leaned in and gently nibbled on his lower lip.

"Actually I was thinking of something like this..." he ducked his head, kissing his way up her neck to her earlobe.

"Yeah well how about…"

It was some time later when Jen looked out the window and saw two dripping figures holding hands as they snuck across the lawn. She grinned as she closed the blinds and headed off to bed.

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