Sensory Pleasure
Part 9 - One night love affair
Karen H.

Joey’s dorm. The next day. (Wednesday).

There’s a knock at the door and I come out of the bathroom and walk over to the door and open it. I’m surprised to find Dawson standing there.

and that I'd be yours before the night was through

"Is Audrey here?" He asks.

"No."

"Good, because we really need to talk."

"I know. Come on in." I say as I walk away from the door.

He enters the room and turns to close the door. As he does this I can’t help but look him up and down before he turns back around to face me.

I pull out the chair at my desk and sit down, and he looks at my bed, closes his eyes and shakes his head. He then walks over to Audrey’s desk and carries her chair over to my desk.

Once he is seated and before he has the chance to start talking I place my hand on his knee "Dawson..."

We then both look down at my hand on his leg and I remove my hand. yeah

"I know that you came here to talk and you’ll get your chance but I’d really like to say what I have to say first."

"Okay." He sounds relieved.

Maybe he didn’t really know what he was going to say. Well I certainly know what I’m going to say, I haven’t thought of much else for the past few days. And if I don’t say my part before he does...who knows what will end up being said.

"Dawson ... I don’t know exactly why what happened the other night happened. Maybe we’d had too much to drink, maybe it was related to what I thought was happening at the restaurant...I don’t know. All I do know is that it’s something that I had thought of doing for a long time." Dawson raises an eyebrow, questioningly.

"Not recently." I say shaking my head. "When we where in high school."

"Right."

"It’s just that we have this whole funny relationship thing going on, and I don’t mean funny ha, ha. One minute we’re going out and the next we’re not. And then I’m with someone or your with someone, in between all of this there’s supposed to be something happening with us. And then through all of this we’ve somehow managed to stay friends. I really don’t want this to affect our friendship. It’s too important to me. Plus you have a girlfriend. Who just so happens to be a friend of mine. What I’m trying to say is that it shouldn’t have happened, not that I regret it or anything but still...we’re best friends, Dawson. We’ve already had too many things happen to us and we just seem to add more things that can complicate us. But then if anything else is going to complicate this, it might as well be sex right." I state this last part.

"Can I say something now?" He asks after I have been silent for a moment.

"Please." I say nodding my head.

"First things first. I don’t think that it was just ‘sex’." He says using finger quotes for that last part.

"It wasn’t?" I ask confused.

"No. And secondly..." I interrupt him. "Back to part one for a second. How was it not just ‘sex’?" He has me stumped with this one, even though I know that to me it wasn’t just sex. "

Because it’s us...even though we aren’t involved in that kind of relationship...I’d like to think that it was making love...there was some kind of love there. I can’t think of it as just being about sex Joey, not when it’s with you."

"Oh." I mouth as I try to convince myself not to cry, he’s more or less said that he loves me in some way. Which is nice to know. "Continue."

He smiles. "And secondly...I can’t explain why it happened either. Maybe we just got caught up in the moment, maybe it’s because deep down we might know that it was eventually going to happen...The only thing that I do know is that I..." He trails off.

"What?"

"I don’t want it to ruin our friendship either. I don’t want this to change anything." I don’t know if it’s just my imagination but I thought that he sounded hesitant about this final part. Does he want this to change things between us? I’m too afraid to ask in case the answer is ‘yes’.

We sit for a moment, both of us not knowing what to say. Then we both speak at the same time.

"When did..."

"So do you..."

We just look at each other and laugh.

"What were you going to say?" I ask.

"So do you think that we can try and do things that we used to do? To prove that we can still have a normal relationship."

"Yeah, I think we can." I say smiling, although all I can think about is how difficult it is going to be.

"I should probably get going." He says standing up. "What were you going to ask me a moment ago?"

I stand up and decide not to bother asking when Jen and Grams got back from New York. "I don’t remember." I reply.

As he opens the door, I walk over to the bathroom and open the door.

"I’ll see you later Joey."

"Bye...Oh and Dawson?" I say before he closes the door.

"What?"

"I was right about the long fingers." I start to laugh and before he starts laughing his eyes almost pop out of his head and his face turns crimson. Then he shakes his head at me as he closes the door.

Maybe we can get through this. Maybe I can just torture him with this for a while, remind him of what we did together. As I close the door to the bathroom and walk over to the mirror, I find that I know some things with one hundred percent certainty.

I know that I still love him. I know that I was able to lie to him a few minutes ago. And I know that I will never ever be able to enter this room again without thinking of what we did.

The scene then changes to Dawson standing leaning against the door to Joey’s room, his eyes are closed and he has a smile on his face.