He wasn’t there. He hadn’t come to their graduation. He had left. She was alone, alone on one of the most important days of her life. Maybe it wasn’t one of the important days then.

She had smiled throughout her speech but only because she was expected to. It was a show, everything was a show now ... without him.

Dawson had tried to drag her to his party but she had rejected. She didn’t feel like partying and there was no way she could have kept this charade up any longer. She needed to be alone by herself, not alone with company. Just by herself because there was no ‘we’ or ‘themselves’ anymore.

~*~

Joey curled up on her bed reaching for the framed picture next to her. It was Dawson’s Christmas gift, the black and white picture of Pacey and her standing under the Leery’s Christmas tree. Right then they had been happy and oblivious to the fact that someone was freezing their love in a picture.

Joey traced the outline of Pacey with her index finger feeling the tears welling up in her eyes. She stood up, locked her door and programmed her CD player to repeat a single song endlessly. As the music started to fill the silent room she turned up the volume almost to maximum as if to drown out the rest of the world. She didn’t care if there were any guests at the B & B, she didn’t care if there was anyone or anything. She was alone.

Joey returned to her former position on her bed staring at the picture and listening to the song.

Slowly their images became blurred and Joey reminisced about the past two years. So much had changed from good to better and now to the worst possible. Scene after scene appeared in her mind as clearly as if she was watching a movie.

The day when Pacey and her went to search snails for their biology project back in their sophomore year. She saw him kissing her before she pushed him away. She had asked him why he would kiss her and now she asked herself what might have been if she hadn’t rejected him.

Then there was the moment when Pacey comforted her after she had offered herself to Dawson in a fit of desperate insanity. She cried over what she thought was her first love and the idea that nobody loved her or wanted her. Pacey offered her his friendship and maybe even more but she was too blind to realize what this could mean to her, at least at the beginning of their junior year.

Nevertheless it didn’t take her long to feel something, something she wasn’t sure what it was. She had still been confused and surprised but then she felt attracted. Unbelievable as it seemed to be but she started to notice the tension between them and she wasn’t the only one.

She would never forget their dance lessons and the things their teacher Penny told them.

Maybe both of them had been too stubborn or to scared or to insecure but they denied the obvious, well they denied it towards each other. Penny just stated what turned out to be nothing but the truth.

And as Pacey told her about his meaningless sex pact with Jen she was jealous but more hurt than jealous. She started to accept the possibility that Pacey claimed more and more room in her heart. She loved to spend time with him and she thought that he liked to be with her too.

Then the mural incident took place. She had spent hour after hour painting and thinking. She only allowed Pacey to see her work. Not even or maybe especially not Dawson was allowed to peek, only Pacey. It was her way to show him how much he already meant to her and then...

After Pacey found out who had vandalized her mural he had beaten up Matt Caulfield and was in actual danger to be suspended from school which would have meant the end to his high school time.

She was horrified that she would be the reason for that and all because of her stupid mural. Of course she had felt humiliated but she was more afraid that Pacey might have ruined his life for her. She wanted to talk about it but her temper got the better of her and they started to fight.

She had allowed herself to trust him, to actually let him in her heart and the thought that he was only babysitting her was killing her. Once again she felt rejected and embarrassed.

After their respective hot tempers had cooled down they kind of made up. In a way Pacey admitted that he actually liked spending time with her and that it wasn’t out of a favor for Dawson.

Anyway the damage was done. Even though her feelings for him grew stronger every day and she turned to him with everything including the whole A.J. debacle she remained careful. She thought she had to protect herself and therefore she fell back into her old habit of denial. They made one step forward but she made three steps backwards.

"Alright, what did you mean by that?"

"You were the first person that I thought of, Pacey."

And then he had kissed her again and she had pushed him away again. But Pacey refused to give up on her and on them.

The trip to Dawson’s aunt Gwen changed everything... for a while at least. Pacey forced her to finally vocalize her feelings. Forced was the wrong word. He never forced her to anything or pushed her to do something she wasn’t ready to do by herself. He encouraged her to grow, to find out what she wanted for herself and for others.

She wanted to be brave and she wanted to show him how much he loved him. She couldn’t let him go away and so she kissed him. That was the best thing she had ever done in her whole life up to then.

Only a few days later she hurt him and her to the core. She let Dawson decide about her life again. She was weak, too weak and afraid.

Still Pacey fought for her. He had always been the bravest of them all.

At the Anti-Prom she tried to approach him despite the heartache she had caused for him and he let her. She knew right then she could never stop loving him.

Nevertheless she was still too afraid to act according to her feelings and continued to hurt him while it was killing herself.

If it hadn’t been for Doug she wouldn’t have known that Pacey started to loose faith in her.

~*~

Joey sat up. Tears were streaming down her face. The last time Doug had informed her about Pacey’s plans to leave. Back than he had given her a chance, a choice... not this time. Maybe she wasn’t worth it. Maybe Dough thought it would be for the best, perhaps he tried to protect his little brother.

The last time she had accused Pacey of letting her down, of leaving her without so much as a goodbye.

This time wasn’t different at all. He had left. Of course there were other reasons now. But added to them there had to be the same reasons he had when he tried to leave her the first time.

She had never fought for their love, not then, not now. Not in the way he had fought for her. Admittedly she had run to him at the last possible moment. She had told him that she loved him, that she needed him and that she wanted to sail away with him.

But in the end she had failed him. She had taken his love for granted and she hadn’t realized that he needed more from her. She hadn’t been able to take his fear away that she didn’t love him as much as he loved her even though he told her that he was afraid to lose her.

Everything came back to Dawson... always... and she refused to see it or better put she wanted to ignore it. As strong as Pacey always was... Dawson was his personal Achilles’ heel. She did nothing to prove him wrong.

The night on their ski trip, when everything should have been only about the two of them he was still afraid that she didn’t really want him. After listening to her anxieties regarding sex, respecting, understanding and supporting her, he finally told her what he was afraid of.

"What I am scared of is that little piece of your heart that will always belong to Dawson Leery. Ok? I'm scared of that piece of your heart that always envisioned your first time being with him. I'm scared of that part of you that just doesn't want it to be me. That's what I'm scared of."

And what did she do? She assured him that she loved him, that she wanted to experience her first time with him. It was the truth and she would never ever regret her decision. Pacey had been so sweet, so passionate and gentle.

And again... what did she do? She betrayed him, she was fully aware of what she was doing and yet she did it, she denied their love once again, belittled what they had, acted like she... like they... had done something to be ashamed of.

Maybe she had believed she would tell Dawson the truth, maybe she thought she wouldn’t have to talk about that with him at all, because she never thought Dawson could be so tactless and actually ask her about their sex life. Pacey knew that he would and of course he was right.

And she lied. She had lied to Pacey. Lying to Dawson was wrong but lying to Pacey was the worst thing she could have ever done. He didn’t deserve that, especially not from his girlfriend, not from her... never.

~*~

"God, what have I done, Pacey? If I could just turn back time.... If I just hadn’t been so selfish, so ... non-caring...", Joey clutched her pillow. Her eyes remained fixed on their picture but her mind didn’t stop producing images of its own.

She had had everything she could have ever dreamed of and only after she had lost everything she was able to appreciate the value of Pacey, of their relationship, of their love.

She had been to occupied to dwell on her own insecurities than to acknowledge that Pacey had to deal with as much of his own.

He made her feel alive, he was the reason that she was truly happy for the first time in her life and she... she made him feel like nothing. She took everything he had to offer her but what did she return to him? Not enough.

It wasn’t important if Pacey really believed that he was stupid, worthless or any other negative impression he had of himself. The only thing that mattered was that she failed to see his pain. That she didn’t make him feel that he was everything to her, that he was worth everything and more. He made her feel like that every second, she didn’t.

After this horrible prom night Pacey apologized for his behavior.

There she had the perfect opportunity to apologize for her very own mistakes and failures but she didn’t. Just another mistake she desperately wanted to undo.

Again she didn’t fight for their love. She accepted Pacey’s decision and didn’t even try to convince him of her love or that they could find a way to deal with their problems together.

Of course she didn’t want to be his friend. She loved him but she didn’t tell him and because of that she forced him to do what he did.

She remained passive. Only the possibility of a solution for their problems made her take the initiative for once. She prayed that Kubelik’s offer would be what they both longed for but you don’t get answers served on a silver platter. You have to work for them and she didn’t. She had just waited for something to magically solve their problem.

There, he had told her that he was also waiting for a sign. Maybe he had just waited for a sign from her and she hadn't given him one. Maybe he needed her to say something, do something but she didn’t.

Why the hell hadn’t she said something, anything? There had been so many opportunities and she had taken none of them.

She loved him and he loved her still. That was their sign: love, ... true love. No matter what storms they had to face they still loved each other. What more could they ask for?

~*~

"God, I’m so stupid. I am sooo stupid.", Joey yelled frustrated. She stopped the CD and wiped her tears away. It was late but maybe not too late. She remembered what the Dean had offered Pacey.

At first she had been mad and hurt that Pacey had left without saying goodbye and telling her where he was going. Now she remembered the previous night. Pacey had said goodbye... in his very own way, but he had.

"I'll see you, Joey."

Joey put the picture back to its place.

"I don’t wanna wait for that one day, Pace."

~*~

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