Saturday Morning

Joey tripped, then caught herself as she climbed the steps to her house. She looked back at Pacey, who smiled and waved from the front seat of his truck. She waved in return and walked the rest of the way to her front door without incident.

Once in a while, he thought as he put the truck in gear and started the drive home, once in a while I really outdo myself. The two had woken up shortly after dawn, when the sun had gotten too hot. They had made a half hearted attempt to clean up all the bottles, then set the bag next to the Wendy's trash can. Breakfast was quiet. Not exactly tension filled, but they exhausted every innocuous small talk topic from the weather to final exams to what classes they might take next year.

As Pacey tried to keep his sleep fuzzy eyes on the road, he scratched his side. Ouch. She'd left nail marks. And he had a bruise on his head from when they fell. Crazy girl. He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable because of the sand in all sorts of inappropriate places. He bet she had sand in some inappropriateplaces.

"And I'm a crazy boy," he said to himself. He pulled into his driveway and entered the empty house. After a few seconds of shuffling through his CD collection he found the copy of Radiohead's OK Computer. He nudged the volume up to six, thankful that he had the house to himself. Then, he nudged the volume back down to three, thankful that he knew where the tylenol was.

As he climbed the stairs to his room he started to try to sort out the events of the previous evening. He didn't want to. All he wanted to do right now was strip, shower, and get a few more hours of sleep. But the questions wouldn't leave his head.

His clothes dropped to the floor in unceremoniousm heaps. Naked, he walked to the shower, brushing off sand and again feeling grateful no one was home. Him and Joey, hmm? Him and Joey making out. Weird. He stepped under the stream of hot water. Him and Joey drunkenly making out on the beach. He soaped up his body and enjoyed the feeling of the water rinsing him clean. Him and Joey fighting, falling to the sand, dry humping and kissing like crazy. Oh jeez. The memory hit him full force and he had to pause and rest his forehead against the tiled wall.

He tried to ignore it, but finally said, why the hell not. Quickly, he relieved the tension he hadn't released the night before. With that out of the way he finished his shower and dried off. He felt considerably better, physically, but his brain still couldn't quite wrap around the concept of what he had done.

This shouldn't be weirding him out him out so much, he thought as he hunted for a pair of boxers. He'd been with a woman more than twice his age. He'd slept with her. He'd slept with her in a number of ways he'd thought only existed in porn videos. But, he realized as he flopped back against his bed, he'd never fingered her. They'd sort of skipped that step.

He was pretty sure Joey had never done that before either. Funny, after Tamara, he hadn't thought he'd had any firsts left. He tugged the sheets over his body and smiled. Him and Joey, hmm? For sheer bizzareness, it couldn't beat his affair with Tamara, but in a way it was just as strange. He'd known Joey for ages. And for the past couple months he'd put her pretty firmly in the catagory of "friend's girl, do not touch." She hadn't actually been Dawson's, of course. He doubted she'd ever be anyone's possession. And they hadn't actually been together. But anyone with half a brain could see they belonged with each other.

So why was he groping her on a beach at three in the morning? In all likelyhood Dawson would return from movie camp in a few weeks and realize what a dork he'd been. He was probably embarrassed about it already. After that first night when Joey had told him about what happened, he'd hung out with Dawson a few times. Dawson had suspected almost immediately how silly he had been, but he hadn't been able to work up the courage to talk to Joey about it. Pacey had tried to convince him to call her and give it another try. Or at least stop by and tell her he was leaving for a month. Dawson said he'd called her but she was never home. Pacey didn't think he'dtried hard enough.

Whatever strange little thing had happened between himself and Joey on this bed, he thought, wasn't any reason to stand between her and Dawson. But then Dawson didn't get in contact with her and tell her about screenwriting camp. That had surprised him. That had made him a little angry. Joey deserved to at least know that he was leaving for a third of the summer.

Then last night. Everything happened so quickly. Pacey rolled over and pulled the pillow closer. Everything that had happened just flowed into the next thing that happened until he was sitting there in the dark, watching her try to catch her breath. Like the events were just a great big ball rolling down a hill, gathering momentum.

He liked her, he realized as his eyes drifted closed. He liked her alot. Maybe she was using him to get over Dawson, or as a substitute for Dawson. Maybe he was using her to get over Tamara. He knew that wasn't true. At least, he thought as sleep overtook him, they had a month to sort this out or forget about it or whatever before Leery came back. Thank god for that.