What a crusher. She didn't remember me at all...People don't remember me. Really. It's not a paranoid thing; I just have this habit of slipping
through memories. It doesn't bother me all that much, except I guess that's a lie; it does. For some reason, I test very high on forgettability.
Joey never would have guessed how little she'd think of Capeside only three years after leaving it behind. During her first month of college she'd wanted to go home at least twice every half hour. And she'd called Bessie without fail once every other day. She had waited by the phone for the precise moment when the clock struck six and she knew her sister would be done putting Alexander to bed and would be available to talk. She'd kept Bessie on the phone for an hour every time whether she had news or not. But within a month, the calls had slimmed to one a week. They were reduced to a five minute "I'm okay" check-in. And Joey'd stopped thinking about home. By Christmas, she didn't feel bad about not being able to make the trip back East. By spring break, she was almost surprised that Bessie had expected her to visit at all. And by the summer, Joey found a job in San Diego and happily rejected any invitations to visit the creek.
Joey had managed to forget Pacey, too. Daily. She might see a Hawaiian shirt and think "Pacey," but that rarely happened. Especially not in a Southern Californian town by the beach. Hawaiian shirts were as rare as sunshine and surfers out here. Joey Potter was on her own in a city untouched by such silliness. These docks were different. It was sunnier here, warmer. The smell of salsa drifted out from nearby restaurants. Tourists showed off their newest bikinis, locals hid beneath dark sunglasses and an air of nonchalance. Nothing excited anyone out here. Her college was big and no one cared about the latest broken heart.
If she had been asked why she broke up with Pacey, she knew she wouldn't be able to remember now. Liar. Pacey broke up with her. But she couldn't remember the reasons. Well, she could remember the big things. The reasons Pacey had every right to dump her to the curb. There were a lot of those. But Pacey didn't dump her for those. Like with everything else, Joey was fast learning, the things that mattered were the small things. The things you couldn't see coming, the things that after they were through were all she could remember. The things you couldn't fix and you couldn't learn how to do right. Joey remembered those small things now. The way it felt when Pacey kissed her eyelids closed at the end of a long night. The way Dawson would let out a little laugh, only half a breath, when she talked about art.
She couldn't remember why Dawson had been her soulmate, she couldn't remember why Pacey wasn't. She remembered hurting Pacey, saying "no" when she should have said "yes," thanking him, but not for the right thing. When they finally broke up, it was over in a split second, and the next minute she was cold and tired and looking desperately to fix something. Anything. She could almost laugh at the weepy messages left on his answering machine. The dinner plates she'd stared at, refusing to eat, unable to fathom eating. The looks of longing they'd exchanged. They wanted to be together, but they couldn't. Correction, he couldn't. But this was all high on the forgettability factor now.
