He gets up to take it down, and Joey thinks for a long moment, accompanied by The Flute Of Impending Reunion, before getting up and telling him hesitantly that she wants him to stay. Dawson turns around, frowning: "What?" Joey repeats it, adding, "There, I said it." Dawson pulls a really funny face and grumbles, "You don't think you could have maybe said something before I packed?" Hee! Joey then tells him to forget she said it, and Dawson is quite rightly like, "Nice try, but how can I forget that?" and Joey says that she doesn't really expect him to stay; she just wanted him to know that she wanted him to, and had thought about it, and she'd considered just keeping her mouth shut, but that's not her, blah blah blah "Merchant-Ivory movie" blah blah blah "suffer in silence" blah blah blah "impressed by their restraint" blah blah blah blah BLAH. Finally she winds it up: "Sorry, but screw that." Dawson's nostrils flare a little, and he stares at the floor. Joey quavers through the promo, namely that her best friend is leaving the next day and a big part of her wants him to stay. "So I hope you don't hate me," she adds lamely. He could never hate her, "and not for lack of trying, either." Wow, he's getting some good lines tonight. I guess the Beek's agent stormed the writers' room with an Uzi. Joey heaves a sigh and sits down, talking about the "one big soap opera" of the last couple of years, and she wouldn't take any of it back, but she's glad it's over. As she talks, Dawson's face is working, as though he can't decide what to do. Joey says she likes "the way things are now," and it's part of the cruel joke of her life -- oh, woe is Poor Little Joey Potter From The Wrong Side Of The Creek -- that "now that things are so nice -- [he's] leaving." Dawson is still trying to figure out a plan, and he comes to sit in front of her and tells her that he'd stay if he thought "for one second it was the right thing to do." Joey's face crumples. Dawson says that he has to go; he has to "get out of this room" (word), and she has to figure out who she is "without [them]." Tears roll down Joey's face. "This chapter's over, Jo. I can feel it." She nods sadly, then abruptly asks if he believes in magic. When he looks confused, she explains that she never used to believe in magic, what with her mother's death and her father's drug deals and so on, and she'd hope for magic but it would never come, and the magic with Pacey ran out, but then there's Dawson: "There's proof that someone out there is thinking of me -- my friend who is with me always." Crappy writing, but Katie almost sells it. Dawson looks stricken as Joey finishes, "It's pure magic." Well, it's "pure" something. Something like…"horseshit." Joey sighs and says that it's just "a long-winded way" of telling him she'll miss him. Staring at her like she's water in the desert, Dawson says he'll miss her too. Joey's face collapses, but she fights it, sniffling that it's getting late, so she should get going.