It’s been five minutes since she turned out the light and we settled down to sleep. I know this because I’ve counted every second, measured the time with my own breaths. I’d count hers, but I know that doing that would just make me feel worse, make this knot in my stomach tighten, make this ache deepen.

I was hoping that counting would put me to sleep. But I know that it won’t – that it can’t. Because if I fall asleep, I know I’m going to gravitate toward her, roll up against her, press my body to hers and touch her, hold her. I want her so badly that I hurt. I hurt mentally and physically, I hurt emotionally. All I want is her, all I can see and breathe and feel is her, only I can’t do any of those things.

It’s wrong. It’s not what she wants. She wants to pretend like nothing has happened between us, that nothing has changed. But how can I pretend when my breathing just naturally paces itself to hers, when my heartbeat is intrinsically tied to hers?

I clutch my hands into fists and force myself to relax. Thinking about her is only going to make it worse. Thinking about the heat of her skin and the smoothness of her body, the gentle moistness of her lips will only make me want her even more, although I’m not sure how that’s possible.

I close my eyes and wish to be anywhere but there, even though it’s the most exquisite torture I can imagine. It’s like being caught on the cusp of heaven and hell. Everything you want right there within your reach and you can’t make yourself touch it.

I want to touch her. I want to look at her, but I know I can’t. I know if I do any of those things, I won’t be able to remember that we’re just friends, that it all meant nothing. All I’ll be able to think about is how good she feels and how much I need her.

And I won’t care that my ex-girlfriend, her ex-boyfriend and our mutual best friend are in the same room with us. I won’t care at all.

Six minutes.

I can hear him breathing and it’s driving me mad. It’s so even and controlled, as if lying next to me doesn’t bother him at all. How can it not bother him? I mean, we’ve spent the last two weeks avoiding each other as much as possible so that we didn’t have to deal with this weirdness. We made a deal with each other, the one day we’d run into each other after school, that we were definitely friends and there would be no awkwardness. Everything was cool.

But everything’s far from cool. In fact, I feel like I’m burning up, just from being this close to him. My blood is singing through my veins, pounding like an approaching army. I keep my back to him, afraid to look at him. Afraid to see him. And I don’t know what I’m more afraid of, him lying there staring back at me with everything I’ve come to realize he feels for me in his eyes, or him asleep, perfectly content to be lying beside me and not wanting me.

I’m a hypocrite. I tell him I don’t want him, that it meant nothing, but I’m lying here thinking about him, wondering at the possibility of us. I know it can’t happen. There is too much between us, too much to consider. All those things I said the day he first kissed me still hold true. Everything is between us. Andie, lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. And Dawson, lying there beside her.

It’s funny to think how little Dawson realizes about Pacey and me and it’s gutwrenchingly sad to realize how much he trusts us. How sure he is that we’d never betray that trust. Or maybe he’s just so sure that Joey Potter – the girl who’s loved him all her life, could never fall for her archenemy.

Have I fallen for him? I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to think about Pacey like that. I want everything to go back to normal; to be like it was a few weeks ago, before one of my best friends got the crazy idea to kiss me. Or maybe I’d have to go back several months before he got the crazy idea to fall for me.

He’s as much as told me with his actions. I know Pacey so well, and I know that he’d never have kissed me if he didn’t mean it, didn’t feel it. And I know that he’s probably been fighting with it for so long. But I still have to blame him. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t let myself think about it, the possibility of Pacey. I didn’t think about it because I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to be able to get it out of my head.

Because now that the idea is there? I can’t get rid of it. I watch him and I think about him and I want him. I don’t want to want him. I want the simplicity of what we had before. He hates me, I hate him. We snip, we snap, we banter, we argue. That was our world. And now our world consists of longing looks, embarrassed silences, uncomfortable moments, feelings of betrayal and kisses.

Well, a kiss. A kiss that took me by surprise, although not as much surprise as I made him believe.

I have to admit I thought about it a little. Maybe a lot. But I have to stop thinking about it. Because if I don’t, I’m going to want to kiss him again.

And that just can’t happen.

It’s been two hours.

How the hell did Dawson do this all those years? How the hell did he just lie beside her and not *want* her? Because I want her so badly. I want to turn on my side and kiss her shoulder. She’s got her back to me and I want to kiss her, even through the material of her robe. I want to inhale her soft scent and lose myself in the tangle of her dark hair.

I want to rest my hand on her hip and rub circles on her skin. I want to reach around and untie the robe so that I can push it off her, just a little, and feel the satin of her nightgown. I want this erection to go the hell away.

Yeah. Longest night of my life here, and I’ve got the hard-on to prove it.

I can hear her sigh in her sleep and I envy her the ability to distance herself from it. I envy the fact that she doesn’t have this emotional turmoil. I envy the fact that she cares so little about me that she can sleep peacefully while lying right next to me.

I wish I could. I wish I could pretend it wasn’t her. I wish it were Dawson or Will or, hell, even Andie lying beside me. None of them cause this emptiness inside me. None of them make me doubt my control of my feelings or my sanity. None of them make me want to scream with desire and frustration and hurt and want and every other emotion known to man.

Only her.

Emotion has always been a hallmark of my relationship with her. We were either fighting or arguing our entire childhood, trying to get the best of one another.

She’s won. She’s got the best of me. She’s got me tied up in knots so tight, I doubt I’ll ever come out of this intact. I’m probably going to lose everything here. My friendship with Joey is gone. I mean, we can’t even manage to see each other without the moment being laced with tension. Two of the most polysyllabic teens on the creek, and we’re reduced to saying “Hey” every time we see one another.

Somewhere downstairs, a clock strikes the hour and I exhale a sad breath. 2 AM. Only a few more hours of torture to go.

I start counting the seconds again.

Row, row, row your boat…

Okay, there are not enough songs to keep my mind off of him. Not enough inane lyrics to keep my mind off of what would happen if I were to roll over and face him. It’s tempting. And I don’t know what that means. I mean, Pacey and I are friends. We’ve been friends forever. Sort of friends. Friends in the way that we can give each other the hardest time and yet still know that we’re there for each other.

That night, on my dock? I knew Pacey would come, even if Dawson didn’t send him. I knew that if he knew I was hurting, he’d be there.

What does that mean? He asked me that before he kissed me the first time and I didn’t know what he meant, and now I don’t know what I mean. Because add on top of all that friendship the fact that when I look at him, I can feel my whole body heat up, I can feel his gaze on me like a caress, I can feel my hands start to tremble and I have no idea what to say. That’s what being around him feels like now. There’s no comfortable ease with which we used to joke and tease and banter.

Now there’s tension and a live wire of feeling between us.

I shift slightly on the bed and listen for him. His breathing is still steady, still unaffected by me. Is he unaffected by me? I mean, he kissed me first…I mean, he kissed me. I had no intention of kissing him. Ever. He’s Pacey. He’s not…

Except he is. He is kissable and desirable and all those things I swore he would never be. He’s become all those things and on top of it, he’s become this guy…this man that I want. I think I want. I don’t want to want.

I can feel him move just slightly, the bed shifting as he changes positions. He’s lying on his back, breathing peacefully and I’m curled up on my side wondering how stiff I’m going to be when I get up in the morning after not having moved all night.

Stiff.

Oh God.

It’s almost comical, almost tempting. I want to look over my shoulder casually and see if I affect him. I could tell in an instant. But then I wonder what would happen if he was and I saw and I…wanted…him? I mean, we’re in a room with all our friends. We’re just friends. We swore we were friends. He swore he was over the impulse.

Of course, I didn’t believe him then.

I didn’t believe me then. I wanted to, but I couldn’t because, even though I’m not sure of what I feel for Pacey, I knew it wasn’t nothing. It could never be nothing.

1000 bottles of beer on the wall, 1000 bottles of beer. You take one down, pass it around, 999 bottles of beer on the wall…

I’ve sung this thing four times already. I figured I’d be asleep by now, but something about unresolved sexual tension seems to make sleep elusive. At least for me. But then, maybe I’m the only one feeling the unresolved sexual tension. I mean, Potter says that we’re friends, we’re fine. Maybe I’m the only one that’s aching inside because I want her so much.

I mean, why should she want me, right? She’s got Dawson.

I have to admit it. I wasn’t going to come, even when Will showed up, but then I started thinking. Her and Dawson alone together in a romantic cabin with no one to stand between them. I mean, who would have stopped him from making a romantic overture? Andie? Doubtful.

So I decided that I needed to put a damper on things. Not that I don’t want her to be with Dawson. Well, I don’t, but that’s not the issue. The issue is the fact that I don’t want her to be with Dawson before she and I figure out what’s going on between us.

Because unresolved sexual tension has this habit of remaining unresolved until you resolve it. And as much time as I’ve been spending trying to ease that tension, it’s still there, whenever she’s around me. And unless I plan on dissolving my friendship with a certain Dawson Leery and moving the hell out of Capeside, there’s very little chance I’m not going to be seeing Joey Potter around.

Of course, if I start seeing Joey Potter, I might very well be dissolving my friendship with Dawson and running like hell out of Capeside.

How did this all get so complicated? Why did I have to start really seeing her again? Why couldn’t I have forgotten how much I like her, how much she makes me feel? Why couldn’t I have just turned Dawson down and stayed the hell away from her?

And why can’t I just have enough balls to tell him?

Because I don’t know how she feels. And if Joey’s going to just walk away from all this, I don’t want to lose the one remaining lifelong friendship I’ll actually have left.

But if this does happen? If she does feel something? I don’t know what to do.

The clock strikes four.

987 bottles of beer on the wall, 987 bottles of beer…

The fire has crackled 328 times. Andie has snored 125 times. The floorboards have creaked 28 times. Pacey has moved twice. Once he moved his arm and the second time he moved his leg. Neither time has he come close to touching me. He’s exhaled roughly 180 times in this past hour.

My foot itches. My brain hurts. My heart hurts.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this tense in my entire life. My whole body is coiled as tight as a spring, spiraling out from my stomach. I have knots in my stomach that seem to be suffused with this dull heat that flares to life any time I think Pacey might be about to move.

I am so in tune with him. Our breathing is in sync. If I didn’t know how very wrong this was, I’d be amazed by it all. My head is screaming at me to ignore all these romantic notions. My heart is reminding me that I’m going to hurt someone I love if I allow myself to give into this madness with Pacey.

Of course, my head then reminds my heart that no matter if I give in or not, I’m going to be hurting someone I love.

I’ve loved Dawson all my life, I think. Ever since the incident with my father, I’ve been trying to find my way back to that love. But I can’t find it. Not that I don’t love him, but I don’t see him the way I used to. For so long, he was my golden boy across the creek that could save me from everything else.

Now…well, now he’s just Dawson, my friend. My ex-boyfriend. My…

Everyone else would say soulmate. I wonder when that word got so associated with us. Did I start it? Did he? I looked it up once, when we were in the library for detention. According to Webster’s, it just means two people who are temperamentally suited to one another.

The definition loses the romantic luster, doesn’t it?

I don’t know if Dawson is my soulmate. Maybe by the definition he is. Nowhere in there does it say “fated lovers” or “destined to be together”. And I suppose, for all our fighting, Pacey could fit that definition too.

I love Dawson. He’s been everything to me for so long. I love Pacey. He’s been there for me forever, and he’s been everything for me this past year. We helped each other heal.

And now I have to decide if we help each other hurt the other people that we love.

You have to wonder about Scooby Doo. I mean, four kids and a dog traveling the country with no visible means of support, solving mysteries. Mysteries that are so complex that the local authorities – the ones that aren’t in on the deal, mind you – can’t figure them out. Yet these four kids and their dog, for heaven’s sake, just waltz right in and capture the bad guys.

What kind of weird message does that send to kids?

I suppose I’d be Shaggy. Dawson would be Fred and Joey would be Daphne. That would supposedly make Jen Velma and, as much as Velma was a hottie in the one with the Tiki god, I don’t see Jen as her type. In a lot of ways, I think Joey is Velma too, which is nice, since I think Shaggy sort of always had a thing for her.

I’ve been reduced to comparing my life to a cartoon.

I so need sleep.

Firelight on a ceiling is hypnotizing. I keep seeing patterns in the shifting shadows and my eyes long to close. I want to sleep. I think about that weekend. Firelight makes me think of that weekend at the B&B. All of us there like friends, like family. And it all ended with me watching her sleep. I can hear Mrs. Ryan’s words right now.

“You know you love someone when you can spend the entire night just sitting by the fire, watching them sleep.”

Was that when I’d first known, for sure, what was happening to me? I’d felt it before, stirrings for her. But I chalked it up for feeling responsible, wanting to help, getting over Andie and being grateful to Joey for being my friend.

But then, that night as I chopped wood, I kept thinking I’d let her down. And I hated myself for it. It was the failure that hurt more than any other. I can handle my father’s disapproval, I can handle Dawson’s disappointment, I can live with Andie feeling let down, like I let all her hard work go to waste.

But I can’t handle letting Joey down. I was so sure that was what I had done. I cursed myself under my breath until we’d curled up in the living room and talked and shared and been friends again. But she was so hurt, and I couldn't shake the feeling.

So when I’d gone back that next night, after everything had calmed down, I wanted to apologize. But seeing her like that, I knew I couldn’t wake her. I knew I should leave. Instead, I just sat there staring at her, not caring who saw what was in my eyes.

I love her.

I don’t know that she’ll ever know that. But I do.

I’d love to turn on my side and watch her sleeping by the fire as the clock strikes 6. It’s almost time to wake up, the sun will be coming up pretty soon, and I’ll have lost my chance. Tonight, Andie will be sleeping in this bed with her, if I have to beg, borrow or steal to accomplish it. I can’t do this again. I can’t lie beside her and pretend any more.

The sun’s coming up pretty soon and I’ll have made it through this night intact. So long as I keep this all a secret from those meddling kids.

The sun is rising. Little fingers of light are dancing on the wall I’m facing, coming in through the window on the other side of Pacey. I can hear stirring at the end of the bed and I’m forced into a decision. If everyone else wakes up, do I get up at the same time and wonder about Pacey? Do I stay in the bed and wait for him to leave the room first? Do I get up as the same time as him?

“Shh.”

I recognize Andie’s soft whisper. She’s always an early riser. When we had the slumber party at Jen’s she was up at the crack of dawn too. She’s way too motivated. I hear the soft sound of Dawson’s voice now and I can imagine he’s making some crack about Pacey sleeping in or he’s saying something about the fact that I deserve the rest.

It’s strange to hear Will’s voice in the mix. Strange, but nice. It’s a lot like when things were simpler.

I keep my eyes closed as they leave quietly, not wanting to disturb us. Which would mean I made my decision. I could have easily gotten up, stretched, yawned, opened my eyes, or done something that would get me out of this bedroom and away from him.

But the thought of being alone with him…I wonder if he’ll be awake if I were to turn over and look at him. I have this urge to watch him sleep, watch his chest rise and fall with every breath. But watching him will lead to touching him.

I may not know what I feel, but I know what I want. Or at least some of what I want. I want to touch him and, God help me, I want to kiss him again. I want to feel his hands framing my face. He has such nice hands, so strong and large yet so gentle. Even in the surprise of the kiss on the side of the road, he was gentle.

I have to stop thinking about this. I have to stop thinking about him. This can only end badly. I need to take whatever feelings I have for him, whatever they are, and stop thinking about them. Stop questioning what I’m thinking and feeling and just…stop.

Because this can’t happen. Pacey and I can’t happen and I…

Oh God.

He’s moving, ever so slightly. I can feel him moving; I can feel his arm as it accidentally brushes against my back. Oh God.

I thought my heart had been pounding before, I thought his kiss had made my knees weak.

I was wrong. Because nothing has ever felt like this. All he did was touch me, accidentally, casually. And my heart is pounding; my blood is on fire.

And I know he’s leaning over toward me, I know he’s going to kiss me.

And I know that I’m not going to stop him.

The night is finally over. But nothing else is.

I’ve memorized the ceiling. I’ve calculated the number of stitches in this quilt. And, even without looking at her, I’ve memorized Joey. I already have moments of her capture in my mind, things I’ll never forget she said or did or looked like, but this is different. I know how she breathes. I know her by heart and, after tonight, I’ll never have a moment that’s not laced with her.

The pull of sleep is getting the best of me right now, my eyes closed so that Dawson, Andie and Will don’t think I’m awake as they leave the room quietly. I need to be alone with her, even if it’s only for a little while. I know – logically – that none of this can work out, no matter how badly I want it. She’s been in love with Dawson forever. Dawson’s our best friend. All those things she threw at me the day I kissed her were true. They still are.

But I’m in love with her.

And these feelings aren’t going to go away, even if she tells me to get the hell out of her life, which knowing Joey Potter, she’s quite likely to do.

Now that the room is quiet, I open my eyes, blinking in the sunlight. They weren’t closed for long, but the ache of being open all night long is making them hurt. Turning slowly, I raise myself up on one elbow, my hand brushing lightly against her. I pull it away, hoping she didn’t feel it and hoping that she’s not going to turn around and accuse me of copping a feel.

I lean over her, looking to see if she’s awake, breathing her in. She smells like heaven: soap and powder and something just intrinsically Joey. I hear Gwen’s voice coming from downstairs, calling out to us.

“Sleepyheads!”

I move closer, leaning in even more. Her robe has slipped down her arm a little and the skin of her bare shoulder is golden in the morning light. I want to kiss it. I want to kiss her. I move even closer, my eyes closing once again.

“Breakfast!”

She moves slightly and I jerk back, hoping that she didn’t see. I stretch and yawn, making a big show of it. I don’t want her to know that I’ve spent the entire night lying next to her, wanting her. I don’t want her to know how much I don’t want her to walk away.

And I don’t want her to know how much it’s going to kill me when she does.

05/03/01