This is the first time that he's gotten out of bed before me. I'm surprised that he had a chance to beat me to it, because I'm always so eager to run away from this situation after its over, fleeing as fast as my legs can take me, no matter how much I really want to stay. I feel like if I lie here with him for just one more second, I'll never want to go.
And that's not a feeling that I'm ready to deal with just yet.
He usually tries so hard to keep me here, wrapping his arms around me and begging me to stay, whispering tender promises of love and affection sweetly into my ear. But something has obviously changed tonight. This is the first time that he's acted indifferently towards me, climbing out of bed without a word or even a glance in my direction as goes to get himself a drink. The last thing that I'm used to receiving from him is indifference. We're always either fighting or fucking, both with an equal amount of passion behind it.
As hypocritical and insensitive as it may sound, considering that this is all that I ever do to him, I don't like being the one left behind, hoping that he'll come back to bed and hold me.
I almost didn't come at all tonight. I sat in my car--which was parked blocks away from Pacey's apartment, me being well versed in the rules of cheating--for an eternity, my head and my heart pulling me in two different directions, leaving my body stuck here in the middle. And when I finally managed to reach his door, my arms felt too weak to knock, my emotions playing tug-of-war with me once again. I think that I understand why I finally let myself knock.
My heart won.
I can feel his eyes on me and I roll over to face him, pulling the cover tightly around me. I don’t think that it's my nudity that makes me uncomfortable, it's these thoughts that I'm finally starting to acknowledge, feelings that I'm not ready for.
"You're still here," he says abruptly and I freeze, thrown off by his tone of voice.
"Do you want me to go?" I ask softly, feeling my voice catch in my throat. I don't think that I've ever felt this vulnerable when I'm around him. He's always given me the control and I feel helpless without that sense of power.
"No," he says, gently shaking his head. "I don't want you to go."
I meet his gaze again and smile faintly. "Are you coming back to bed?" I ask, patting the spot beside me on the bed.
He hesitates for a moment before walking over and sitting down on the edge of the bed, refusing to face me. I reach my hand over and place it softly on his back. His entire body tenses and I quickly pull my hand away, hurt by his reaction.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
He shakes his head. "This is wrong," he says slowly.
And there they are, those three painful words that always seem to come up whenever we meet. The fact that we never seem to find a solution for them never stops one of us from speaking them, but I'm usually the first one to bring them up, using them as an excuse to get the hell out of here.
"I thought that you didn't want me to go," I say, quickly side-stepping his comment, looking for an answer to the question that I want answered.
"That's the problem, Joey. I don't want you to go...ever."
Waves of relief and apprehension simultaneously wash over me. I sit up and lean back against the headboard, trying to figure out how to respond to this. There isn't really anything I can say, anything that I'm ready to say.
"Pacey..." I begin, reaching out for his arm, asking him to turn around. He finally does, and I'm confronted with the tortured look in his eyes that I wasn't prepared for.
I pull back my hand and stare down at the floor, to scared to accept the blame for hurting him like this. "Pacey, please don't do this. Don't make it harder then it already is," I say, the words tumbling out mindlessly, even though I know that he deserves a better answer then that. I know that there are a million other things that I should've said.
"Oh, right," he says angrily. "This must be so hard for you, Joey. Fucking me and Dawson both." He gets up and moves quickly across the room.
I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes and I recoil, the only thing that I can manage to do is cry. No words seem good enough.
"This is killing me, Joey. You know how badly I want to be with you, so you get to have me however and whenever you want."
I shake my head, but he's absolutely right. I hate myself for using him, but I deny it anyway, taking out the anger I have at myself on him instead. "That's not true. And don't act like some martyr."
"That's not fair."
Right again. But I can't do this now. I just want to be with him, forget about everything else. "Why do we always have to have this conversation? Why do you ruin the time that we have?"
He doesn't buy it and looks even more pissed off at me."You know, I can't do this anymore, Joey. It hurts more to have you when I can't be with you than it would be to never see you at all."
Nothing is working anymore. The tears start falling and I don't know what I've done. "Pacey, stop it already."
He leaves the bedroom. "You used to know me well enough to convince me that this was okay. But I'm not the same guy anymore. You've changed him" he calls back to me.
I can't seem to find the words, any words to help comfort him. He somehow manages to keep me speechless, which is a definite first for me. Since when has Joey Potter ever been speechless?
I pathetically continue crying.
And I'm left with the sound of the door slamming loudly behind him as he leaves. Everything he said was exactly right. If only he was smart enough to never let me come in at all, then he could save himself the trouble of having to be right.
And all I can think is how I wish I had the guts to tell him that I loved him.