You know how sometimes you build things up inside your head to such proportions that the actual materialization is bound to be a let down? Sex was like that, this mythical, mystical event that everybody talked about but only a few of us had experienced. And while it was partly exciting, it was also partly scary. What if I didn't know what to do? What if I didn't turn him on? Yet at the same time, there was this certainty that the moment he would touch me, all these doubts would fly out of the window. I would know what to do and it would be glorious and spectacular and the most overpowering event of my young life.

It wasn't like that at all. It was clumsy. I was awkward and painfully aware of my inexperience and I felt so exposed. But Pacey was so sweet and patient and gentle and oh god, when I felt him inside me for the first time. That's what I will remember most about that night. And how we slept in each other's arms for the first time.

And then I ran into Dawson and everything started to unravel. I didn't mean to lie to him, but he put me on the spot and I honestly didn't know what to do. Dawson always makes me feel like I'm fifteen and incapable of making my own decisions. I found myself in that room again, defending myself for falling in love with Pacey.

"Do you love him or do you just wanna sleep with him?" were the words he'd yelled at me that day. I always thought that Dawson knew me, understood me. When he asked me that question I realized for the first time just how wrong I was. "It's what he's gonna expect," he'd hurled right behind it and another realization dawned on me. He'd never known Pacey either.

So why did I lie? It wasn't that I was ashamed of what we'd done, though I'm sure that's what Pacey believes, but it was something so personal, so private between Pacey and me. It was all still so new, so vulnerable. I didn't feel that Dawson had a right to intrude on that. I still don't understand how he thought he had a right to intrude on that. So he apologized afterwards? Big whoop, to quote Pacey. The damage was still done. The snowball started rolling.

It rolled right to this moment.

Sitting on the window sill, I wrap the blanket a little tighter around myself, my legs pulled tight against my body as I watch the man sleeping in my bed. As always my gaze involuntarily moves to the window, to the dark, abandoned street below. Out there somewhere there's a boat, where somebody else is lying in his arms.

Funny isn't it? All the time I was with Pacey, I felt like I was missing out on something. For so long, by so many people, I'd been told that Dawson and I were soulmates; that we were destined to be, that it was inevitable, like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. When you've listened to the same thing your whole life, it becomes very hard to ignore it, very hard to let it go. I couldn't let go of Dawson. It turned the man I loved into a shadow of himself, who needed to put so much distance between himself and me that he ran off to the Caribbean, not even bothering to say goodbye, not even bothering to drop me a line or give me a call in three months.

I thought I died when I saw him in the kitchen of that restaurant. All this time he'd been in Boston and he hadn't even bothered to let me know? I knew right then and there that the reason he was in Boston wasn't me. Any fantasies I might still have had left that somehow we could make it work flew out of the window. And at the same time I couldn't help but smile. He was working as a cook?

At the thought of Bodie my eyes drift towards my bed again. My sister doesn't have the next Steven Spielberg lying in her bed, but she's happy. She's got a wonderful man by her side, a beautiful son, a thriving business. She doesn't sit on the window sill of her bedroom, wishing for might have beens.

There's one thing Bessie did I will never forgive. That time I thought I was pregnant, she came down on me so hard, accusing me of being stupid and careless. Of course I threw the accusation right back at her. How dare she point a finger at me when she was the unmarried mother?

"At least I have someone to take care of me," was her impassioned defence. I just took it with my head bowed.

Even now the memory makes me cringe and I shiver underneath the blanket. I should have said something. I should have stood up to her. I should have yelled at her, "And just what the hell is Pacey then? Who was it who worked his fingers to the bone setting up this B&B for us? Who got his father's deputy force to work for free because we couldn't afford builders? Who spent nights fiddling around with that damn furnace? Who, Bessie? Cause it sure as hell wasn't Dawson."

I didn't say any of those things, because deep down I agreed with her. Deep down I blamed it all on Pacey. I'd be knocked up at the age of seventeen, my dream of college and escape from Capeside gone forever, all because I'd let myself get involved with the town screw up. The town screw up who wasn't there for me in my hour of need because his brother had taken him on a camping trip to knock some sense into him. When Pacey called me that night, we could both hear the goodbye in the other one's voice. That night I cried myself to sleep.

One week later he broke up with me.

He just couldn't take it anymore. Maybe he could have lived with my lie to Dawson, if it had ended there. It didn't. Time after time I fed his insecurities about Dawson. The first time I spent the night at his place, I hid in the bathroom when Dawson showed up unexpectedly looking for Gretchen, because I didn't want him to know I was sleeping with Pacey. I was too high and mighty to apply for a student loan, so I accepted sixty thousand dollars from Dawson to pay my college tuition.

That was the final straw. That was the moment I felt Pacey pull away from me. That was when the numbskull got it into his brain that he wasn't good enough for me. If I'd loved him half as much as I claimed I did, I would have got him off that crazy notion the only way I could, by showing him that his love was all I needed. The fact that I'm sitting here, gazing at the moon, wishing I could see the harbour and a certain boat from my window, speaks volumes for my failure to do so.

Part of me can't help wondering if Pacey always knew that this is how it would end, that no matter what happened between us I would always run back to Dawson, to that closet in his room where I can pretend I'm fifteen again, where nobody is forcing me to grow up, where I don't have to take responsibility for my actions. When did he know that this is how it would end? When I stood on that dock and told him I wanted to sail away with him? That first time he kissed me on the side of the road? Did he know it way back then? And he still put his heart on the line?

Other words suddenly ring through my head and they make me scowl at the face on my pillow, illuminated by the moonlight. "Don't cut me some slack, Joey. Don't make me feel like this."

"Like what, Dawson?"

"Like you're stuck with me."

The scream builds up inside me and I press my face against my knees, hugging my legs to me in comfort, biting into the blanket wrapped around me to stop the scream from escaping. Cause the realization has hit me full force, just like it does every night. I am stuck with him. I know it. Pacey knows it. The only one who doesn't know it is good old oblivious Dawson himself.

That spring he "freed" me to go to Pacey, as if I was some pet slave girl who had earned a good deed from her benevolent master and was given a moment in time to be with her beloved before her master reclaimed her. That's exactly how I feel right now. Not like I'm finally one with my soulmate, but like I've been reclaimed.

Does Pacey even care?

I thought he did. I thought he ran off to the Caribbean because he couldn't stand to watch me and Dawson together. How silly of me to think he was still thinking about me, like I'm sitting here thinking about him. Doesn't that blonde bimbo he's screwing prove just how much he doesn't care? Or his words the last time I saw him?

"You and Dawson. You deserve another shot at it. You never had one the first time around."

That wasn't Pacey freeing me to be with Dawson, the way Dawson had freed me. That was Pacey telling me, "Better stick with your soulmate, honey, cause I sure as hell won't put up with your fucked up shit anymore."

The tears stream down my face and I let them. So this is it, huh? This is it for the rest of my life? No more passion? No more challenges? Is this the price for college tuition? A lifetime of boredom to look forward to at the ripe old age of eighteen?

Sixty thousand dollars. The price of my soul. The price of my body. Maybe there's a career for me in prostitution if this writing thing doesn't work out.

The first time I slept with Dawson was so very different from my first time with Pacey, not that I didn't expect it to be. It was Dawson's first time, so of course I knew he wouldn't know his way around quite as well as Pacey did. But I did think that it would get better over time. My first time with Pacey wouldn't go in the annals of great sex, I was far too nervous and self-aware to really experience it. But once I allowed myself to stop thinking and start feeling, oh my god...

Those three words never seem to make it into my mind when I'm with Dawson.

Why did it take losing Pacey and getting back together with Dawson to make reality sink in? Yes, I love Dawson. I always have and I always will. But I'm not in love with Dawson. I had a crush on him when I was fifteen, a crush that grew into an obsession, that grew into this. Two kids afraid to grow up, clinging to a childhood memory, destined for tragedy.

Romeo and Juliet.

I can't help chuckling, even if it's far from amusing. But that's what Pacey called me and Dawson. Romeo and Juliet. And just like those two brainless children, we're heading straight for disaster.

Right there a thought flashes through my mind and my head jerks from my knees in shock, my eyes wide as they focus on the face on my pillow. No! It couldn't be. It can't be true. I didn't misunderstand his words that badly! Suddenly desperate to capture the memory in all its painful clarity, I snap my eyes closed. My whole body is shaking. I've got to remember the exact words, the exact expression on his face.

The image is there instantly, Pacey looking leaner, tanner, standing a hundred times straighter than when he was dating me, as he stirred a wooden spoon around and around the pot on the stove. He couldn't look me in the eye as the words tumbled out of his mouth, the words that drove me straight into Dawson's arms.

"Listen, if there's anyone understands all these various shades of grey, it's me. Anything Dawson does or doesn't do because of the way he feels about you, I get it. You two.... you deserve your shot. You never really had it. Way I see it, the world needs all the Romeo and Juliets it can get."

My heart had stopped beating when he said those words, the tears had started stinging in my eyes, my brain had fled the premises entirely. Never in a million years would I have thought he could give up on me... that easily. I barely noticed him holding the spoon out to me to taste his cooking. I barely noticed the look in his eyes, so afraid to meet them and have him see the world of hurt that was in mine. Did I miss something in his eyes? Did I miss something in those words?

I will myself to remember everything. Every nuance in his voice, every light in his eyes, every line in his face. It hits me so hard that a high pitched squeal erupts from my lips. My eyes fly to the man in my bed. He hasn't even noticed I'm not there.

For some reason I can now see the expression on Pacey's face a hundred times clearer than I did when he was standing right in front of me. More importantly I can read it so clearly it brings tears to my eyes. Those words weren't Pacey giving up on me, it wasn't him telling me to go to Dawson because I'd blown my chances with him. It was Pacey telling me that we don't have a future until I exorcise the demon that always stood between us that entire year we tried to have a relationship. It was Pacey telling me that we will never have a chance to make things work between us with the shadow of Dawson constantly hovering between us. It was Pacey pushing me to bury that ghost once and for all, and mean it this time. It was Pacey forcing me to grow up, forcing me to move forward, just like he always does.

The thought occurs to me that I could be wrong, that I'm just fooling myself to make myself feel better when I feel at my worst. It doesn't explain why I've been stripping my T-shirt and boxers off of me while the thoughts are still racing through my head, why I've slipped into my shirt and jeans before the full impact of Pacey's words have hit me. Every fibre of my being knows that this is the right thing to do, that this is what I need to do. And I need to do it right now. I need to see Pacey right now. He's probably with that blonde skank, or that other one, Whatshername, the one who works with him at the restaurant. I don't care. This needs to be done right now.

My gaze falls on Dawson. This is going to devastate him. Again. But I can't let it stop me. I can't let myself get guilt-tripped into staying with him. I'd only end up hating him for it. Like I'd already started to.

And we both know this is not where either of us belongs. I've felt the real deal. I can never go back to this half-assed attempt at passion. Even the way he lies there, breathing peacefully tells me that. Pacey would have instantly known that I wasn't sleeping curled in his arms. He would have been at my side, asking me what was wrong. I don't blame Dawson. He just doesn't know. And he should. He should find someone who will bring passion into his life. I can't be that one.

Hurrying over to my desk, I grab a pen and a piece of paper, scribbling down the words by the light of the moon, the explanation when he wakes up and finds me gone. It doesn't say everything, but enough for the time being. The full explanation, accompanied by the inevitable blow up will have to follow. This takes precedence.

As I put the note on his pillow I smile down at him. The words say what I should have told him a long time ago. Tears run down my face, this time with happiness, with a sense of purpose, as I silently slip out of the door, the words I've scribbled on the note ringing inside my head.

"I needed to know. Now I do. Goodbye, Dawson. I love you."