Do I know you from somewhere?
Why do you leave me wanting more?
Why do all the things I say
Sound like the stupid things I said before?
Kiss me I'm dying
Put your hand on my skin
I close my eyes
I need to make a connection
I'm walking on a thin line
I close my eyes
I close my eyes

Just sunlight, warm and somehow pure, lying like a heavy weight on top of her. She stretched a little, but there was no sense of urgency to her movements. They had all the time in the world.

The grass was still a little damp under her fingers, but it was refreshing rather than clammy. She extended her fingers a little, flicking drops of water off the grass, and then closed her eyes peacefully. He was already lying back, looking boyishly, peacefully, asleep. He looked like he was dreaming. Of what? she wondered. Or, more specifically , of who?

She was sitting upright now, glancing at him, but her gaze would settle for a few seconds and flicker away. There was something there she wasn't ready to face. It wasn't fear of anything or anyone. She knew fear. She knew how it felt to be afraid of someone. Even someone she cared about. It wasn't fear. Fear crept in the corners, but it didn't make her taut with a strange apprehension. The sky was empty of answers, but the deep blue was more free than she was. She didn't realize she was staring until his hand landed on her shoulder.

"What's wrong, Jen?"

She shivered, but not from cold. "Nothing. It's a beautiful day, isn't it?"

He cocked a quizzical eyebrow at her. "Are we reduced to making small talk about meteorology now?"

She socked him gently on the shoulder. "You know, when I dumped Dawson, I thought I'd got away from those kinds of words!"

"Oh, no, you're cursed," he said, rolling his eyes playfully at her and settling himself back onto the grass again. "Something in your karma will propel you to make friends with people who talk like thesauruses for the rest of your life."

She rolled her eyes back. "God, at least I have something to look forward to." She paused, and recklessness took over. "What about my boyfriends?" she said slyly. "Will they all be verbal geniuses as well?"

His eyes snapped open. "What?"

"You heard me," she said, twining her toe into the damp grass. "What about all my future boyfriends?"

"So Dawson's definitely past tense?" he said, sitting up again.

"Oh, definitely," she said, leaning a little closer to him. Intoxicated at the thought of being free. Of not having to hold every man she met up to her fantasy Dawson. "Dawson is definitely past tense."

"Jen, that's great," he said intensely. "That's really great. You're over him?"

She couldn't meet his eye, suddenly. "I think I am. I can think of him normally now. But I haven't even talked to him in almost a month. That's what I'm afraid of now, I guess," she said uncertainly, shivering again. "I'm afraid that I'll walk up to him and look him in the eye and open my mouth to tell him I'm over him. And I'll say I love him instead, and beg him to take me back. Feeling nothing for him when I don't have to see him is easy. Feeling nothing for him when I have to look him right in that face that I used to dream about... that's different. That's something that I still don't know that I can do."

"You can," he said, in a voice so low that she trembled a little. "You're stronger than you know. I think you can."

She sighed unhappily, and closed her eyes against the sun's harshened rays. "Pacey, it doesn't matter how much you believe in me. I can't do what I don't believe I can do. And I know I should, but... I can't. I'm too scared that my feelings will come back, and then I'll be back where I started. And everything you've done for me will be gone."

He was quiet. "I know how that is, Jen," he said finally. "Believe me. I know."

The words I know chased themselves in her mind for several seconds before she made the connection. "Tamara," she said.

"Don't go there, Jen," he said, avoiding her eye. "Just lie down again. The sun's gonna go in soon."

"No," she said petulantly, hating herself for sounding so much like a child. "Tell me."

"No," he said firmly, sounding just as childish. "I don't want to talk about it."

"You brought it up!" she said irritably. "You were the one that brought up this entire subject. I don't see why we can't just talk about it!"

"Because I don't want to!" he yelled, and then covered his eyes with his hands. "Jen, I don't want to fight with you, okay? Let's just relax." He pulled her arm back with him as he lay down again until her head rested on his chest; instinctively, she shifted, but he kept hold of her arm. "Just relax, will you? You're making me nervous," he said, in a harsher voice than he'd ever used before. She stiffened, but lay still.

After a while, she spoke again. "We never talk about you, you know."

He grunted.

"No, I mean it. You know all about me - "

"I know all about you, do I?" he interrupted. "I certainly know all about your puny affair with Dawson. I've heard more about your month or so of dating than I have about any subject since Dawson first discovered ET. Oh, yes, Jen, I certainly know all about you and Dawson," he said mock-sweetly, "because it seems to be the most interesting thing that ever happened to you in your entire life. Dawson."

She sat up sharply, leaving him still sprawled on the grass beside her. "Well, I'm sorry that I have a problem that you seemed to want to help me with once upon a time. I'm sorry that I actually fell in love, even if it was never going to work out. And I'm just so sorry that I'm incapable of knowing when you're tired of hearing about me. But what was I supposed to do about that? You don't want to talk about you. You obviously don't want to talk about me any more. Just what do you want to talk about? Huh? What would make you happy, huh?

"You can't give me the thing that would make me happy," he said eventually, turning his head to the side. "You can't...."

"Fine," she said dully. "I can't help you. That's fine."

He sighed, still looking into the distance. "Oh, Jen. I want to talk to you. I just don't think it would do any good... to either of us. Trust me, okay? I care about you. It wouldn't."

"We're friends, right?" she said, a thick, aching sadness growing.

Finally, he looked at her again, and she felt pinioned by his gaze. He was searching her soul, and she was caught in his glance like a rabbit frozen in headlights.

"Friends," he said flatly. "Sure."

Anger began to take over again. "Well, if we're not, then what are we? I've been crying on your shoulder for long enough - what am I, if I'm not your friend?"

"It's not like that," he said painfully, staring into her eyes with a look somewhere between tenderness and injured pride. "I can never be your friend like Dawson was your friend. You need to understand that."

Impulsively, she leaned into him and kissed his forehead, then resettled her head on his chest. "Don't worry about it," she said softly.

He murmured something inaudible and shifted a little, but he seemed to relax. Jen closed her eyes, and let her mind drift away to the rhythm of his breathing. It was peaceful again between them. On the surface, anyway.

Finally, she couldn't stand it any longer. "Tell me about Tamara," she said, watching the sparse clouds overhead. There's a blackbird...

He sighed deeply underneath her. "There really isn't much to tell, Jen."

"You're a liar. It was really important to you. I know you, remember?"

He sat up rapidly again, so fast that her head slid onto the ground with a painful thump. "I thought I knew you, Jen, not the other way around," he said, breathing a little faster.

"Tell me," she said insistently, and one of them sighed a little with pain. She wasn't sure which.

He drew his knees up to his chest, almost convulsively. "I don't know what I can tell you," he said distantly. "It feels like it happened to someone else, and I just stood and watched. I felt it, but it wasn't the me that you're talking to that felt it. I was a different person when I was with her. I couldn't think of anything except her when we were together. But I always knew it was temporary... that was part of the bargain. God gave me an angel for a little while, and then I lost her again just like I always do. And that's what made it so exciting, and that's what made it so hopelessly beautiful. And when everyone found out, that was the opposite. From then on, it was like the end of a war, when the relief that the whole thing is over is just crushed by the fact that everything's been destroyed."

Every breath that she took was a trial. "Did you love her?" she said painfully.

"I was scared of her," he said, watching the distant clouds. "I wanted to be with her all the time. I wanted to touch her every time I saw her. Is that love?"

"I don't know," she said, watching the outline of his face as he watched the sky. "Only you know. Did you love her?"

This time, the look that he gave her was both pitying and incredulous. "How can I tell you that, Jen?"

"Why can't you tell me that?" she countered.

"You know why," he said, getting up, and she scrambled to her feet to race through her garden and after him. He was striding purposefully, faster than she could move, and she broke into a desperate half-run as she followed.

"Pacey, where are you going?"

He swung round to look at her again. "I'm not going anywhere. Where you're going, however, is up the ladder and into Dawson's room."

Her eyes widened. "No."

"You have to," he said insistently, eyes locked on her face once more. "This will never be over until you face him again and tell him."

But what if I can't?" she said brokenly, tears suddenly blurring her eyes. "What if I can't tell him, and it'll never be over?"

"Think of Joey," he said nastily, shoving her roughly onto the ladder. "Then you'll tell him."

Do I know you from somewhere?
Why do you leave me wanting more?
Why do all the things I say
Sound like the stupid things I said before?
Touch me I'm trying
To see the inside of your soul
I've got this thing
I want to make a connection
I'm not like this all the time
You've got this thing
You've got this thing

What else could she do but to climb? He was right, infuriatingly. And she couldn't go down again, now that she was halfway up. She just couldn't admit defeat to herself, much less to him. She could feel his scornful eyes on her from the ground. To climb down before she reached the top, and to step off the ladder and look at him - She would tell Dawson.

The end came too soon, as ends always do, and she was stepping off onto his roof, and then through his open window, brushing aside the curtains that were blowing lightly into her face.

He hadn't even noticed her come in. There he was, familiarly slumped on his bed, engrossed in the Zeffirelli version of Romeo & Juliet. The familiar lines were echoing hollowly through the air.

"Did my heart love 'til now? Forswear its sight..."

"He is a Montague. The only son of your great enemy!"

"Prodigious birth of love it is to me - that I must love a loathed enemy..."

The air was too still and complete to be punctured; slowly, slowly, she turned around to go, and her hand met the windowframe with an audible crack. Moving as dully as a glacier, he turned his head towards her.

"Hello, Jen," he said, mouthing each syllable slowly. "Nice to see you."

Instinctively, she tightened her grip on the windowsill. The room took on an air of unreality. "Hello, Dawson," she said, equally flatly. "I came to tell you something."

He looked at her, eyes as glazed as honey, and nodded.

"I'm over you now," she said through clenched teeth, "and I forgive you for what you did - what you did in my bedroom. I hope Joey comes back to you."

He nodded again, and suddenly she was irritated with him, sitting so passively and stupidly in front of a silent screen. Then his face twitched and tightened, and she saw that he was near tears.

"I'm sorry," she said, knowing he would know what she meant, and he nodded one more time, with understanding as well as pain. And Jen mustered the last of her self-possession and smiled just at him for the last time.

She cried a little too, as she lowered herself back down to earth, and as she saw Pacey, face patiently upturned, at the bottom. He enfolded her gently as she stepped off, and they hugged for a long moment.

"You told him," he said, almost wonderingly.

"I told him," she said, filled with an indefinable sadness. "I don't know if I told the truth, but I told him. It's done."

He pulled her close again, and pressed his face into her hair. "Thank you," he was murmuring, and then, muffled, "I'm sorry I got angry with you."

She sniffled, wrapped in the warmth of his body. "That's all right," she said, into his shoulder. "I understand."

"No," he said intensely, pulling back. "You don't. You can't, Jen. That's what I meant. You just.." He trailed off, staring at her, and for once she didn't mind. He brushed a piece of hair from her face, slowly, and bent his head into hers until she could feel his breath on her mouth.

And she stood on her toes and kissed him, pulling the back of his head closer to her as he clutched at her waist; sweet, longing, lasting. But he pulled away from her, breathing heavily, and looked into her eyes.

"I can't - " he said, anguished, dropping his hands from her waist. "We shouldn't - "

"Pacey, no - " she said, disorientated, aching, hurt. "Don't do that - "

"You don't understand, Jen," he said hoarsely, and fled.

Do I know you from somewhere?
Why do you leave me wanting more?
Why do all the things I say
Sound like the stupid things I said before?
Kiss me I'm dying
Put your hands on my skin
I close my eyes
I need to have your protection
I close my eyes
I close your eyes

Do I know you from somewhere?
Why do you leave me wanting more?
Why do all the things I say
Sound like the stupid things I said before?