Audrey is from L.A. and Jen is from New York and if there's one thing they have in common it's the label. The don't-ask-don't-tell dark-secrets sex-and-violence big-city bad-girl label. There's a certain magic to it, that live-it-up glow they've got. The jealous ones might think the world is out to please them because they're blonde, good looking, reasonably outgoing. But it's not that simple. People eye them differently, call them slutty, think they're easy. Maybe they are, were, have been. In the past. On the outside. And nobody's looking deeper than that sparkle-bright surface. Boston's no different. Here, like anywhere, it seems they both have big scarlet letters pinned to them that only the wrong guys can see.

If there's anything else they have in common, it's a history filled with a lot of wrong guys.

How many guys? How many people have you slept with?

Pacey asked, or didn't ask, or implied that he was asking. How many? Normally Audrey wouldn't freak, not at a question that simple. Of course she'd lie. Of course she'd never want anyone to know exactly. Round it up, round it down, an approximation, a guesstimate. The truth at the time depended on how drunk she was, who was asking, whether she wanted to go home with a certain someone or a certain someone else.

But Pacey asked so earnestly. And here--this, with Pacey--was a good thing, the first good thing maybe, the first real chance that she wouldn't have to lie, this time. He wouldn't run. He was, in no sense, her mother, who knew nothing but believed everything as long as it was bad. So she told him. The truth. For real.

Twenty-two people.

It sounded okay when it came out of her mouth. It sounded like honesty at last. Then the look on his face told her it was enormous, shameful, freakish. Like he was holding back on asking how she'd managed to even meet that many people in her short, albeit boisterous, eighteen years.

In L.A. it's not hard, not if you know where to look.

Maybe she'd answered the wrong question. How many people? he'd asked. How many guys? had a different answer.

Five. Only five guys.

Well, that reassured Pacey. Too bad she was lying again.

Billy was not the reason Jen's dad kicked her out. Sure, getting caught mid-coitus on your parents' bed was no recipe for a family love-in, and chronologically speaking, it was the last big mistake she'd made before she was sent packing to Grams' and Capeside. But Billy was nowhere near the worst of her offenses. Not in her father's eyes.

At least Billy had been a guy.

When Dawson asked, when the gang wanted to know, it was just easier to point to Billy and say, "There. That's how bad I am. That's rock bottom." But Billy was, always had been, an excuse.

In New York, someone once tried to teach her that judging was the worst thing anyone could do to you. Sticks and stones and broken bones were nothing compared to what happened when your friends turned on you. And anyone could look at Dawson and know that he was a giant font of righteous anger that could never be exhausted. That he was judgment personified. So it was better that he didn't know. Better, therefore, that no one in Capeside had a clue. Better to forget that someone from New York, the someone who was the real reason Jen hadn't had so much as a phone call from her mother or father for nearly four years.

She tried to forget, couldn't, regretted that she'd wanted to. Then came college, the move to Boston. Walking with Jack across campus, she pointed out all the cute guys to him and tried not to wince when he did the same for her. The guilt was always there--that little nagging voice that wondered why she was forcing Jack to do this alone when she should be doing it with him. When he got nervous around guys, when he couldn't lean on Tobey like a long-distance crutch anymore, she felt like shouting, "At least you can kiss who you want to kiss, chase who you want to chase."

She chased a lot of people she never wanted that year. Did that instead of letting go and trusting Jack. She never told him the truth, never let him be her friend the way he thought he was.

Maybe three months in the jungle with Jack wasn't the best way to keep her secrets.

Somehow the sadness didn't really hit Audrey until she came home from her last exam and found the dorm room empty. Sterile. Smelling like lemon soap and bleach. Trust Joey not to let the dust mites win. All her stuff was thrown slap-dash into ragged cardboard boxes, neatly labeled in Joey's crimped handwriting. "Audrey--CDs." "Audrey--shoes." "Audrey--beer."

Now there was a year in three words or less.

She threw herself down on the bare mattress and pouted. No pillow to pull over her head, even. Her mother was sending movers to bring everything to the airport. Of course they wouldn't allow alcohol on the flight.

So, better drink it now. Let it wash the tears back down her throat. Ignore the fact that in a day or less she'd be 'home'. She popped the top off, noticing the ragged line under the drawer-handle where the varnish had worn away. Archaeological evidence of generations of students sans bottle-openers.

She sat up at the tentative knock on the doorjamb. Jen poked her head into the room, raised her eyebrows at the emptiness and the open box of bottles. Audrey waved her in with the beer.

"Joey around?"

"Nope. You need her?"

Jen didn't answer, seemed to shrug, sat down on Joey's bed. "Well...now that you mention it..."

Audrey nodded. "Let me guess. The nostalgia has enveloped you in its cruel embrace. You needed someone who's been there, seen it all, walked the less-trodden path at your side. A friend, confidante, arbiter of secrets..."

"Mind if I have a beer?"

"Be my guest." Audrey nodded again, to herself really, noticed the fall of Jen's hair hiding her face, the line of her back as she reached into the box. "Maybe I can help. I'm no Joey, but I could pretend. Hmm...Pacey. Dawson. Soulmate. My choice could change everything."

"Hey, at least we know you're not bitter about Pacey." Jen pounded the beer open on the dresser. "I don't know, though..."

"Anything to keep me from thinking about home. I don't wanna leave. This place..."

"This is home now?"

"Yeah. But we aren't talking about me." Audrey patted the bed beside her. "Come tell Auntie Audrey all about it. We can get drunk and maudlin together."

"I warn you, I'm not a maudlin drunk." Jen accepted the invitation, sat down thigh-to-thigh with her. Audrey took another swig of beer and refrained from asking exactly what kind of drunk Jen was. Because she thought she knew. Now was not the time for dangerous questions.

They drank, Jen in slow sips, Audrey with a wild flair that was her secret to success at parties. Finally, when the suds were all that was left in the bottles, Audrey said, "So...?"

Jen looked up, gave her shy half-grin, and Audrey thought it might be best to back up on the bed a little, think about different things. Helpful, friendly things. Things that were not the lips of friends of friends of hers.

"My parents want me to come home for the summer."

Audrey groaned. "Oh, not you too."

"They haven't said anything to me...called, or...anything, in a long time. Everyone thinks I should give them another chance."

"You've conducted a comprehensive poll, then?" Audrey shifted, nudged Jen's knee with hers. To show she was kidding.

"Jack and I were going to go to Puerto Rico."

"Sounds better."

"But, I don't know. I'm like you, I guess. Boston is my home now. I want to travel, but I don't want to leave here. Grams is here, and everyone..."

"The same 'everyone' who's giving you bad advice." Beer bottle tossed in the garbage can for emphasis.

Jen looked down, aside, anywhere else. "You're not. Giving me bad advice. If the criteria we're going by is advice that I actually want to follow."

Audrey shrugged. "I'm not your everyone."

Jen lay back on the mattress, holding her empty bottle up to the light. "You're...part of my everyone. You're--you. You're..."

"Getting you another beer. Are you always this cheap a drunk?" Audrey grabbed for the drinks, bending low across Jen's lap to reach the box. Six to go before the movers got here. Which would be soon. Too soon.

"Yeah. They all think I can drink them under the table, you know that?" Jen's fingers brushed Audrey's as she took the opened beer.

"Ha! They're all lightweights. I swear Joey would pass out if she got a whiff of the fumes alone."

Jen grinned. "Here. Cheers."

They clinked bottlenecks, and Audrey settled on her back beside Jen. Side by side, sprawled diagonally on the bed, heads down near the footboard, they spilled beer as they tried to drink lying down. "Doesn't matter," Audrey said. "When Joey comes back she'll probably flip the mattress."

Jen nodded, took a sip. "Maybe I won't go home. Or anywhere. Maybe I'll stay here. Maybe you should, too. Do what you want."

"I've got nowhere to stay." Thinking about Mom and purse strings and all the things L.A. didn't mean anymore.

"So. Stay with me." Jen turned sideways. Their eyes met, inches apart, rough mattress under their cheeks, breath beery. Jen looked away first. "I mean, Dawson's leaving, the attic's there. Grams and Clifton are going to Las Vegas, if you can believe that. We could get summer jobs..."

Audrey set her beer down, blindly. Jen's face was flushed, and she drank quickly, started choking and coughing. "Ugh. Went up my nose," she said, sitting up. She reached over Audrey for the Kleenexes. Leaned, really. A little too close, a little too long.

Audrey tilted her head back, closed her eyes. Let her stomach meet Jen's when they breathed. Felt the brush of Jen's breasts against hers tingling all the way down inside. Opened her eyes to see that heart-pounding smile up close, Jen's hands on either side of her head, the beers and Kleenex forgotten. A shy smile. Questioning. "I will if you will," Jen said. Not meaning anything about staying, going, traveling, parents, Boston, and what truly constituted a home.

Audrey hooked her arms around Jen's neck and brought her lips down for a kiss.

Maybe it was a good thing that Joey found them, rather than the movers.

Jen and Audrey have given up on labels as a bad job, and on parents for now (though later there might be second chances given and received). They've got more in common than the names people are all too willing to stick them with. They've been judged, are being judged, but at least they've kicked the wrong-guy habit.

And Audrey is still from L.A. and Jen's still from New York, but together they're from Boston and that is what matters.

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February 14, 2004