~O~

 

They sat in the car in the driveway in front of the house.

“Jen, talk her into coming back.” Pacey turned off the ignition, and sat back in his seat. “Talk her into coming back to Capeside. She can be with you and Grams…people who actually care about her.”

Jen smiled.

“She wouldn’t…”

“Why not?”

“It’s just not her.”

“But if she did, she’d be happier. She’d be so much happier…and you’d be happier too. You’d finally have a mother again.”

Jen felt a lump rise in her throat. She looked longingly out into space, wondering ‘what if’…

“Pacey…I wish…”

“We miss you, Jen,” Pacey said softly. “Everybody does.” He swallowed hard, shaking his head. “It’s not the same without you around… There’s no one for Dawson to take advice from… There’s no one to explain to Andie and Jo the powers of womanhood.”

Jen laughed.

“And there’s no one there for Jack…at all.” His voice grew serious, and Jen found another lump rising in her throat. Pacey stared at her sadly. “Andie’s there, of course…but as his sister, and I’m there to pal around on the weekends, but…there’s no ‘you’. You and Jack were…and I hate to use the dreaded “S” word, but you two were practically soul mates, and I can see it in his eyes, when something comes up, you’re not there, and he’s just so sad…”

Jen started to cry silently.

“I miss you, too,” Pacey said, swallowing hard and staring at her with bright blue eyes. He reached down and squeezed her hand. “I just miss talking to you…seeing you…making casual sex pacts with you.”

Jen looked at him and smiled. Pacey always had a way of making people laugh, even amidst the biggest of tragedies, he was always there…

Jen wiped the tears back from her cheeks and sighed.

“Come on, Jen. Come on. Come home, to Capeside.”

 

Everything ever said by Pacey Witter sounded so easy and simple. When Pacey Witter spoke, there wasn’t anything that couldn’t be done.

 

“Get her to come back.”

 

“I’ll try.”

 

“Promise?”

 

“I do. I’ll try.”

 

~O~

 

I want you to call me. For anything, you call me… I mean it.”

“Thank you.”

Jen stepped forward and hugged Pacey one last time before the weekend was over, before he and Jack returned back to Capeside, and before Jen was left alone again.

Pacey took a step back and stared at her on her porch. Jen kept smiling, even though her heart was breaking, knowing that he and Jack would be leaving without her, knowing that she wouldn’t be going home.

“Tell Jack goodbye for me.” She said.

“I will.”

“Tell him I’m sorry for letting him get that messed up…I shouldn’t have let him… I mean, he… He had no idea—”

“Jen,” Pacey said, smiling slightly. “I don’t think Jack blames you. And I don’t think he regrets it all that much.”

“You’re right.” Jen laughed. “Well… Just tell him I love him, and tell him to call me.”

“I will.”

“And Pacey…” She smiled. “You call me too.”

“You can bet on it.”

 

He didn’t want to leave.

 

“Jen?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we come up next weekend?”

Jen’s eyes brightened.

“You want to come up?”

“Yeah…if that’s okay with you, I mean.”

“Of course it’s okay!” She gushed. “I’d love that.”

“Okay,” He said, beaming. “Jo is busy with the B&B, Dawson’s working on some picture taking rant, and Andie’s studying her ass off to get into Harvard… It might just be me and Jack.”

“That would be perfect.”

“K.”

Pacey moved towards her again, and to her surprise, he leaned down and brushed his lips against her cheek.

“So, next week then.”

“Give my love to everyone.”

“I will.”

Jen watched him bound down the steps and climb into Jack’s car. Jen smiled after him from her porch and waived as he pulled away.

Jen watched him go, and stood there for a moment longer. It was getting late. She turned towards the front door, and went inside.

 

~O~

 

“Mom? I’m home,” She called out as she ascended the wide banister staircase.

The house was dark. No lights were on...just the last of the day’s sunlight slipping through the windows.

“Mom?”

“Jen?”

“Yeah,”

“Come here.”

Jen followed her mother’s voice to her room.

 

~O~

 

A half hour later, Jen and her mother sat in their dining room at their long and ornate polished Mahogany table. The lights were still turned down and the room was silent except for the gentle scrape of silverware on the delicate porcelain of the expensive china’s surface.

Jen’s face was no longer red from a slap her mother had given her when she’d first gotten home late, and Jen wasn’t really thinking about it anymore. She stared at her food, thinking about her friends…

“So, Jen…how was your date?”

“It wasn’t a ‘date’,” Jen said in a low voice. “We’re just friends.”

“I remember John Witter…any outing with him was never just ‘as friends’…”

Jen glared at her mother, then looked back to her food.

“Well, Pacey and I are just friends.”

“Well, he’s a charming young man…how did it go anyway?” Helen took a long sip of her wine.

“It was fun.” Jen said simply, lifting her crystal glass to her lips to sip her mineral water. Perrier. She hated Perrier. She didn’t know why her mother spent so much money on mineral water when you could buy drinking water by the gallon for ninety-nine cents…

“You looked like you had fun,” Helen smiled. “I haven’t seen you smile in weeks…”

Jen’s face dropped as she thought to herself, ‘That’s because of you,’

“…and a young man appears at our door, taking you to lunch. I just can’t help but sense romance in the air.”

“We’re just friends,” Jen repeated.

“Close, I’d imagine…he makes you happy.”

“Yes, we’re close, and yes, he makes me happy.”

“Then that’s all that matters.”

Helen took up her wine glass again, staring over it’s rim at her daughter, but she didn’t sip.

 

Jennifer was growing into such a beautiful woman…Helen hoped her daughter would make all the right choices in life. She didn’t want her to end up as she had.

 

~O~

 

Three days had passed without incident, much to Jen’s surprise. Her mother and she were getting along well, for their standards, and Jen started to let her guard down. On the fourth day, Jen woke up to her mother screaming at one of the housekeepers for breaking a vase. She knew in her heart that this would lead to some sort of displaced reprimand later, and she tried to ready herself for it.

Jen didn’t even want to get out of bed that day. But she did.

And the reprimand came.

And later that night, after it was all over, Jen stood at the bathroom sink wiping the blood from her lip, and staring at herself in the mirror.

“You are so stupid,” She said in a trembling whisper. She slapped the glass hard, but not hard enough to crack it. “YOU ARE SO STUPID!” She screamed. She dropped back, against the wall and slid to the floor, trembling violently, but not crying.

 

Jen knew she shouldn’t have said anything when the first slap came. But she was angry, and it slipped out. It just infuriated her mother more. She wanted to hit back so badly. But she couldn’t hit her mother…she could never hurt her mother that way.

 

Jen was angry with her father for hitting her mother. It was all his fault.

Jen wished that her mother had never married her father, even knowing that that would mean she would never have been born. She’d easily agree to cease to exist if that meant that her mother would have never had to experience this… ‘No one should have to experience this’, she thought, still thinking of her mother.

 

She finally rose and finished cleaning up, and after tucking her mother into bed, she decided she needed to hear a familiar voice.

 

“Pacey?”

“Hey, how ya doing?”

“Fine,” her voice cracked.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” She said, blaming it on the reception in the phone line. “I just needed to hear your voice.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah…” Jen thought quickly. “I’m feeling homesick again.”

“That’s because you need to come home,” Pacey smiled.

Jen smiled too.

 

~O~

 

The weekend finally came, and there Pacey was standing at Jen’s door; this time dressed more appropriately for New York in dark jeans, a dark blue short sleeved button down shirt, and black steel toed boots. Jen smiled.

“Look at you!” Jen laughed. Pacey grinned, and spun around, modeling for her.

“I figured I should try to blend in...I ditched the shorts and sandals and went with my ass-stompers.” He said, stomping his foot on the ground. Jen laughed.

“You’ll blend perfectly.”

“Good.”

“Where’s Jack?”

“Oh…he couldn’t come. He had to stay and help his dad with some project…”

“Oh.” Jen said. “Well, at least he and his dad are getting along now.”

“Yeah, it’s important to Jack.”

“Yeah.”

They stared at eachother for a minute.

“So it’s just you and me.”

“You want to come in?” Jen asked.

“Yeah.”

 

Jen held the door aside and let him in. Pacey paused, looking around in awe at the extravagance of the house. He’d been in nice houses before; Jack and Andie were the richest people he knew, but this… This was different. He made a whistling sound through his lips.

“What?” Jen smiled.

“This house!” Pacey exclaimed draping his arm around her shoulder. “It’s immaculate!”

“Yeah, well, too bad the people who live in it aren’t,” She joked.

Pacey eyed her playfully.

“What’s the rest of it look like?”

“Shall I give you the tour?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, follow me.” Jen said taking his hand and dragging him towards the downstairs den.

 

~O~

 

“And this is the kitchen,” Jen said, walking through the swinging doors. It was the last place to show him on the first floor.

“Wow. This is totally gourmet.” Pacey said, his eyes alight with amazement.

“You want something to drink before we tour the upstairs?” Jen asked opening the refrigerator door.

“Is your mom home?”

“Not for a couple of hours…”

“You got any beer?” Pacey laughed hopefully.

“Yeah, can I trust you with it though?” Jen said coyly.

“You want trust, then I am your man!” Pacey grinned. Jen reached in and took out a bottle of dark ale. Pacey twisted off the cap, and took a sip.

“Rich beer is always the best beer,” He sighed.

“Come on, Samuel Adams, let’s see the rest of the house…” Jen took his free hand and led him out of the kitchen and up the staircase.

 

“This is my father’s main den,” Jen sighed as they entered the large bookcase lined room. “I used to think he spent his whole life in here.”

“It’s like two stories!” Pacey exclaimed, staring up at a circular stairwell leading to another level of shelves above with its own landing. “Jen, your house rocks.”

“It’s not my house,” Jen said. “It’s my mother’s.”

“Well, it still rocks.”

 

Pacey took a minute to wander around, poking around, fingering books, and taking a moment to sit in Jen’s father’s lush leather chair.

“So this is what power feels like,” He said, digging into the armrest and spinning the chair around.

“My father doesn’t have the right kind of power,” Jen said sadly. Pacey stopped spinning and looked at her. She shrugged off her frown and smiled at him.

“Where’s your room?” He asked.

 

“This is it,” Jen said.

“Wow.” Pacey repeated for the thirteenth time that day.

He went over to the large picture window staring out over the backyard and looked out. “Jen…that is an Olympic sized pool, isn’t it.”

“Yeah.”

“You wanna go for a dip?” He asked raising his eyebrow suggestively at her.

Jen thought of the bruises on her back and legs.

“Um, no.”

“Oh,” He looked disappointed.

“But you can if you want, I’ll watch.”

“No…that’s okay.” He took another sip from his beer bottle then turned to look at her bed. “Man, Lindley…you must be able to sleep for days on that!” He remarked at it’s size and plushness.

“I wish,”

“Can I try it out?”

“Be my guest.”

Pacey set his bottle down on the windowsill then ran and flung himself on the bed.

“OH   MY   GOD. THIS IS LIVING.”

Jen giggled while Pacey lay face down in the comfort of her designer sheets.

“Ahhhh…” He sighed. Jen went and sat down on the edge next to him. He rose up to a sitting position still in the middle of her bed and looked at her.

“You know what this reminds me of?” He asked suggestively.

“Mmm, I think I have a guess,” Jen smiled, remembering a time of sneaking around and playing in other people’s beds…

Pacey grabbed her and pulled her down. She giggled and he climbed over her, pinning her. He stared down at her wickedly, watching her eyes, and waiting for her response. She didn’t fight back.

“Just what diffused that little agreement anyway?” He asked.

“Um, if I recall, it took place after a little episode in a coatroom and involved a cynical brunette who laid into you about the meaning of sex…”

“Oh yeah,” Pacey said gruffly. “Joey.”

“Yes, Joey.”

“Hmn.”

“Hmn is right.”

“Well,” He said, lowering his face to hers. “Joey’s not here, and we’re in a much more comfortable place than that coatroom,”

“But I don’t want casual.”

“Who says it has to be casual?”

“Really?” She said almost hopefully.

“Really.”

 

They looked at eachother silently before Pacey leaned down and kissed her.

 

~O~

 

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