When Love Calls Your Name
Part 5 - First Time
by Karen H

Opening my eyes after spending an amazing night with Dawson I feel so content and ready to talk, to tell him how I feel. The initial realization came as we made love, when I saw him look in my eyes I knew I loved him. Turning towards the side of the bed Dawson occupied I find he’s gone and I wonder what the time must be.

Sitting up I see light under the bathroom door and smile as I hear the running of water, I could surprise him…but no sooner have I had the thought when he exits the bathroom fully clothed.

“Hey.” I sleepily greet him as he takes something out of the closet. “What time is it?”

“Sometime after six.” He replies quickly looking at his watch before he continues taking clothes out of his closet.

“In the morning?”

He nods his head in response.

“Someone’s up early.” I say and his lack of a reply makes me feel slightly uneasy. “Where are you going?”

“Back to Canton.” Dawson responds, his tone devoid of any emotion as he glances my way quickly. “I have a flight in a few hours.”

My facial expression must be one of confusion. “But you only got back; we were going to talk…” I gulp before asking, “what about us?”

He turns towards me, his eyes meeting mine. “There is no us.”

The words cut so deep and I feel my eyes start to sting. “But…” I try to respond but no words form, nothing will come out. My mind begins to race a mile a minute as I’m struck dumb by what he’s said.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” He says after a moment and runs his hands through his hair.

“What wasn’t?” I ask. “Was I supposed to wake up and see you were gone because you were too much of a coward to say thanks for the sex?” I manage to spit at him; I’m too in shock to be anything other than defensive.

“You really think that’s all it was?” His voice slightly rising as he looks pained.

“I have no idea what I’m supposed to think any of this was to you. I thought it meant…”

“It does.” He replies cutting me off before adding in a whisper, “It did.”

“Funny how your actions and words seem to be contradictory to that fact.” I respond wrapping the sheet tighter around me, remembering only too well what we did on this bed.

He rubs his chin and glances at the bottom of the bed, maybe contemplating what to say, maybe wanting to sit down.

I brush a few tears off of my face as I realize I’m actually crying, I thought I was somewhat composed.

“I don’t deserve you, deserve this.” He says after a few minutes silence, finally sitting on a chair by the window.

Perplexed I’m about to ask why, I actually open my mouth to speak when he raises one of his hands to stop me.

“I guess you could say it started over nine years ago, the day they died.” He begins and already I see his eyes water just thinking about it.

“Dawson, I…”

“No, I owe you an explanation.” He assures me as he looks down at his hands before continuing. “When Mom and Dad died it was like a part of me died too. They were everything I’d ever known and loved, they were supposed to be there for me through everything and after that day they wouldn’t be in my life again.” His eyes move back to mine again. “And I lost you that day to.”

“Not completely.” I tell him. “I wasn’t gone forever.”

“You may as well have been. At the time it certainly felt like it. I closed myself off from everyone except Gwen, if I could have been on my own I would have been.” He paused for a moment before taking a drink from a glass I hadn’t seen beside him before. “Those first few days were a blur, the funeral was unbearable and I just knew I couldn’t live in Capeside.”

“So you decided to sell the house?”

“I knew I couldn’t return there ever. How could I?”

He stops after asking that question and I’m not sure if he expects an answer from me and I don’t really know what to say.

“Everything I remembered about that place was tied to them and you and dare I say it, to Pacey…” He lets out a small chuckle, almost maniacal. “My best friend, or so I thought. He’s the reason all of this started and my therapist would have a field day deconstructing this ya know?”

Again, I think that’s a question I’m not really supposed to answer but I’m overcome with the need to wrap my arms around him. For someone who supposedly cares about him I never once thought of his needing therapy. I knew he’d need time to grieve but not for one minute did it occur to me that Pacey and I would have had such an effect.

“I thought I was over all of this but seeing you on opening night brought back so many memories, most of them good.” He manages a smile. “That was up until the point that you told me you were still with him as I walked with you to get a cab. I couldn’t quite believe it but I managed to make you think it wasn’t a big deal. It was hard for me to believe that after everything that happened you two were still together. Happy.” His last word is said dripping with venom.

I’d been wary about telling him I was still with Pacey but I felt I had at least owed him the truth. I owe him so much more than that.

“After that day, after it had all begun to sink in it was easier to be angry with people than focus on what I’d lost. And most of that was directed at Pacey, maybe not directly. I know he had nothing to do with my parent’s death but with you…” His voice sounds close to cracking.

“I loved you Joey and you were gone, he was the one person I could lay all the blame with although in the beginning I was angry with everyone. With Mom and Dad for dying, with you for leaving me and not being there when I needed you.” He manages a smile even though I know this is hard for him. “I was able to understand fully what you went through losing your mom and you would have understood my loss. And why weren’t you there?”

Another of those questions not requiring an answer.

“I really thought I had moved on from all of that. It was hard in the beginning, especially with you and Jen calling almost daily.” He takes another drink from the glass he’s been nursing in his hands. “Jen helped me move on from it.” He says pausing, possibly to gauge my reaction.

I’d never known Jen had still kept in touch with him, that of everyone he’d allowed her to be the one to reach him. I try to act as though this disclosure doesn’t affect me but the words sting.

“I refused to talk to Jen like I refused to talk with you and you eventually gave up but Jen, she just kept on calling. It must have been about nine months after I’d last seen her and I told Gwen I’d talk to Jen, tell her myself to stop calling.” He stops and appears to be staring off into space.

“And?” I prod.

“I started telling her but she cut me off and I just sat listening to her ramble on for a few minutes. I hadn’t realised how much I missed her voice, hearing from someone who knew me before I’d moved to Canton, not that there were many people.” He glances at his watch. “After that we started talking, communicating again. Sometimes I’d just sit listening to her telling me silly stories about something Jack did or stuff Andie said. Then that summer she turned up out of the blue.”

He smiles, obviously remembering that time.

“I was surprised to see her and she said she had to come for a visit before starting college, she wanted to see me. And we talked and talked for two weeks, I joked about how she was now a college girl and I was a lowly high school student because I’d taken a year off.”

It’d never occurred to me that Dawson may not have graduated the same year I did. He wasn’t experiencing the same things I was and I feel more fresh tears trickle down my face as I wonder what would have happened if I had kept calling.

“Once the school year began we couldn’t call each other so often but there was always e-mail and stuff. She’d been the one to help me settle into life in New York when I came here for college, helping me get acquainted with the city.” He pauses to take another drink of water.

I bring my knees in close to my body, hugging them as I wait for him to continue.

“She was my first.” Dawson says, his eyes never wavering from my face and I wonder if he saw me flinch when he said that as I hug my legs closer.

I feel like someone has literally punched me in the stomach but I have no right to feel that way. It’s not like I had some claim on him, maybe at one point or another it looked like it could have happened but I never expected Jen to be his first.

“It was nothing serious, we’d just somehow become close and both of us knew nothing else would happen after that summer.” He continues. “After Jen I’d dated a few times, nothing too serious. It was the only way to safeguard myself from the kind of heartbreak I’d gone thought before, the only way to stop anything being too serious.”

He runs his hand through his hair and puts the glass on the table.

“And then there was you, Joey Potter. The only girl I’ve ever been in love with.” He manages a smile. “I never expected to ever see you again. There’s some sort of irony in the fact we’ve ended up in similar professions, especially after we’d grown up having other career goals.”

I manage a smile through my tears; it had never crossed my mind.

“Why didn’t you pursue a career in filmmaking?” I ask curiously, my throat dry.

He lightly shrugs his shoulders. “Things change, I changed…I think as a result of everything that happened. Gone was the idealistic kid who thought he could make it in Hollywood and born was the cynical man before you. The one that couldn’t find any answer to the burning question of why his life turned the way it did from a Spielberg movie. Gone was the hopeless romantic.”

My heart breaks in this one moment as I realize the man I thought I knew is a far cry from the boy whose heart I broke. How I wish I could turn back the clock.

“I actually felt physically sick when you told me you were still with him, even though I covered it up.” He has that pained look in his eyes again, so much pain. “In that moment all of those feelings of anger, all the hurt seemed to resurface and I somehow believed that if I could make him feel one ounce of my hurt I’d feel better. Maybe it’d allow me to truly move on with my life, even allow me to find love again.”

“You made it so easy for me to do. I thought I’d have to somehow think of a way to seduce you yet in the end it seemed a two way thing. I’d managed to tell myself I was only out to hurt Pacey but I know now deep down, I wanted to hurt you too.”

“It’s no more than I deserve.” I find myself saying.

“I never said that.”

“But you thought it, right?” I ask not sure if I want to know the answer.

“I don’t know anymore.”

“So what were you gonna do?”

He looks away from me for a moment before running his hands through his hair. “I wanted him to find out about us, that you’d been with me. But I’d let him know that it was over and he was welcome to you.”

“Gee, that’s nice.” I say after a moment, surprised by his admission. “So why the change of heart Dawson? I’m assuming there is one, given you’re laying all this out in the open.”

“There was one thing I didn’t count on in all of this; I’d spent the last 9 years trying to make damn sure I never got too close to anyone and what happens?” He asks his voice again rising a little.

I shrug and avert my eyes from his for a moment as I wipe my eyes on the bed sheet. “Why don’t you tell me?” I ask my tone acidic as I start to feel angry.

Angry that I caused him enough pain for him to be this way, feel this way. Angry that’s this is how he’s turned out and angry at how he’s set out to hurt me.

“Come on tell me!” I yell at him.

“I started to fall in love with you!” He yells back, tears welling in his eyes and my mouth falls open. “I wanted to hurt you, but the more time I spent with you the more I started to feel things I hadn’t felt in years.” He pauses.

“And then I started to care, I didn’t want to but I did.” He sniffs. “It was like part of me had been dead and had started to come back to life. I never counted on that.”

He continues. “I’ve been with other women Joey, but none of them could ever reach this part of me. No one but you. That’s why I can’t go through with this. That’s why I couldn’t see you before, why I never called on Monday.”

“But you said…”

“I lied.” He admits. “I was back in New York by Monday and I wanted to see you, to end this. But I never had the guts. I realised over the weekend that I was falling for you all over again and I couldn’t hurt you like that. I came close to seeing you on Tuesday and ended up sitting in a café across the street from the bookstore for most of the day, trying to muster up the courage to tell you.”

“I…I don’t know what to say.” I manage to stutter out.

“You don’t have to say anything. When I walk out that door you won’t see me again.” He says as he stands up. “I set in motion this grand plan to hurt you which at one point or another I thought I would and could never do. I can’t deny I felt pure hatred towards Pacey and I thought that I hated you too.”

I think I’m in shock. He set out to hurt me and Pacey, he loves me, he’s been through so much…

“I’m truly sorry Joey.” He says putting on a jacket. “I wish things had been different, who knows where we’d be.”

“Me too.” I find myself saying as he sits on the bed beside me and he touches my tear soaked cheek.

"Maybe whatever we could have had would have burnt out long ago; maybe we'd still be going strong...we'll never know.” Tears start to trickle down his cheeks as he speaks. “But I'm sorry for all of this, sorry for hurting you."

“Dawson…” I start to say something when he lightly brushes his lips against mine. Giving in to this kiss my lips move with his, tasting him and the salty tears.

He breaks the kiss and traces the outline of my lips before he stands and walks towards the door. With his hand on the door handle he turns back to look at me.

"The one thing I never counted on was falling for you, funny how no matter what happened, what I thought I felt, I still found myself falling for you.” His eyes lock on mine for a moment, perhaps waiting for forgiveness or maybe he just wants one last look before he goes. “And I don't deserve you."

I sit on the bed hugging my knees and watch him leave the room, walking back out of my life. After a moment I can’t seem to think straight as my sobbing becomes too much and I lay back down. Reaching for the pillow he slept on, I can still smell him as I hug it.

The Dawson I loved is gone.

*to be continued...*

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