THE BIG LEAP
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - NO FRIENDS LIKE OLD FRIENDS
Pacey couldn´t help himself from being flooded with memories of the past, as he stood down by train track number seven at Copenhagen Central Station, that Dawson´s train would soon be arriving to. Even if they hadn´t always been on the best of terms after Pacey at around age sixteen had decided not to let Dawson call all of the shots anymore, especially when it came to Joey, they´d eventually found a way to make it work again and it´s certainly true what they say, that absence makes the heart grow fonder. As it turned out, not being around one another all the time was the best thing that could have happened for their friendship, and while they weren´t nearly as close as they were as kids, them having each other was a rock for both of them to cling to, in case things got really bad.
They´d gotten to know one another in nursery school, but exactly how it had happened, he couldn´t for the life of him remember anymore. He remembered that they were very different, even as little kids, yet sometimes a friendship works best, if you don´t agree on everything. When they were six, Joey had joined the fold and they´d taken her in at first, both because Dawson´s parents were friends with her parents and were telling him to befriend her, but mostly because she was painfully shy and wasn´t having any luck making friends with any of the girls, three of whom (including a tiny little, already mean girl in training, Abby Morgan) had teased her mercilessly instead with how tall she was for a girl, even at that very young age. He still remembered vividly telling those girls off on Joey´s behalf, while Dawson and her had looked on with shocked faces, as the girls he was yelling at had started crying their little eyes out. Dawson had been too shocked to talk to him for hours afterwards, while Joey, after first being annoyed with him for making everyone on the playground pay attention to her, had later that day given him an ultra-quick hug and told him that she appreciated, what he had done for her. He´d (as he always did) ended up feeling bad about it and bought all three of the girls ice cream cones as an apology (which had cost him nearly a whole week´s allowance), but the end of it was that they hadn´t teased Joey again for a long time afterwards and for the longest while they were the three musketeers, pretty much doing everything they did together, hanging out every day after school and usually into the evening too, if they could get away with it.
Of course, at that time, Joey hadn´t been seen as either of them as more than a friend, who happened to be a girl. After they´d gotten past that hurdle, they simply started treated her like they would any other boy and the already very tomboyish little girl version of Joey was more than happy with them treating her that way at the time. As they all developed over the years however, she became so much more than that and when he looked back at it, by the time the three of them reached puberty, it had already become inevitable that she would eventually get between them. He hadn´t told any of them then, but his sexual fantasies about her went back to the earliest ones that he´d had and while it wasn´t like he was ready to tell her back then, he´d also had a gut feeling that eventually, even if it would take a few years or more for her to, she would start looking his way. It ended up taking until they were sixteen and when push comes to shove, it was probably for the best that they waited as long, as they did or they likely wouldn´t still be as close with one another, as they were now.
These days, with all of that far behind them in their rearview mirror, part of him thought that he should have just been honest with her when they were thirteen and seen where it took him. Not that he thought she would have said yes right there and then, but he had no doubt that they would have become an item much sooner, than they ended up being in real life. At that time, Dawson was still far too infatuated with Pacey´s older sister Gretchen to notice Joey "that way" and if he had opened up to Dawson about his crush on Joey then, his friend would have shrugged it off and with all sincerity wished both of them the best of luck with their romantic endeavors together. There would have been no jealousy, just one friend giving his blessing his two other friends, who have found out that they have romantic feelings for each other. The way it had gone down though, with Dawson (who was still in love with Joey at the time) finding out about his and Joey´s affairs behind his back in just about the worst way possible, when he´d caught them red-handed arguing over who of them should tell him, had rocked their friendship to its core and there was a long period of time, where he didn´t think they would ever become as close again, as they once had been. Since then, a whole lot of water had passed under both of their bridges, with the high emotion and resulting drama of that time of their lives being a mere memory of the past now, where Dawson was on the verge of becoming a father with Joey´s roomie and he himself was living on the opposite side of the world from all of them.
The two of them hugged hello, after Dawson´s train, the six-forty from Roskilde, had arrived and Pacey could see right away that his old friend had been working hard for several days in a row, from the bags under his eyes and the way he kept slumping in his posture. They only had six shooting days in Denmark before moving on to Berlin and with the tight schedule, this was realistically the only chance they would have to hang out.
"You look like you´re doing good" Pacey told him, not entirely truthfully.
"And you´re full of it, Pace. I know that I look as tired, as I feel" Dawson answered him and send him a wry smile.
They decided to go to an all you can eat pizza place close by, since if Dawson was only going to have one evening in the city, then spending two hours of it travelling to Pacey´s apartment and back didn´t make a whole lot of sense. Anyway, he´d been wanting to give it a try, pretty much since the first time he´d walked past there, one of his first days in the country. After playing their one hundred crowns each, around sixteen bucks, plus fifty crowns each for unlimited soft drinks to go with their dinner, they had a free choice between six different freshly made pizzas and whenever one was eaten up, a new one with different toppings was quickly put in its place.
"Can you imagine if we´d had a place like this is Capeside? It would have made bank!" Pacey said, after just having gulped down his third slice, this time one that had beef, bacon and pepperoni on it.
"Maybe you should be the one, who opens it?", Dawson suggested, before biting into a slice with kebab, red onion, mushrooms and green pepper.
It wasn´t a bad idea, Pacey thought to himself, as he got stuck into his fourth slice, that came from a delicious Mexican style pizza with spicy chicken, red pepper, taco sauce and garlic oil on it. One thing that Capeside had sadly been lacking when he´d been back there and living on his brother´s couch for that month or so, was a place to get a decent pizza, now that both "Pizza-Mania" and "Pizza by the Pier" had closed down, one thanks to its owner retiring and the other thanks to its owner getting sent to jail for three years for tax fraud. That only left the pizzas from "Dom´s Seafood Shack" and it was well known among most Capesidians that if you ordered from there, it was fifty-fifty at best that your pizza didn´t have a crust that mostly resembled and tasted like charcoal, which would entirely hide any hint of tastiness there may have been in the toppings. It was usually either that or you would be sitting there eating half-cold toppings and mostly raw dough, that was only just baked on the outside. Needless to say, their pizzas weren´t exactly among their top sellers.
"Have you considered what you´re going to do, when your year here is up?" Dawson asked him.
"Not yet. I mean, I like it here, it´s not that. I´ve made some good friends and my job is great. It´s just ..."
"That Joey isn´t here with you?" Dawson asked him.
"Kind of, yeah" Pacey replied truthfully. "I miss her every day."
"Probably not half as much, as she misses you. She wouldn´t want me to tell you, but you are hopefully aware that she´s completely head over heels for you, aren´t you?" Dawson said and it filled Pacey with a sudden sense of joy inside. He had an idea of course, that she might be having feelings for him, still hearing it said out loud like this was something different entirely.
"Actually, I wasn´t" Pacey answered him back.
"The question is: What are you planning on doing about it?" Dawson said, before leaving the table to load up his plate with more pizza.
He couldn´t give him a definitive answer and the truth was that there wasn´t much of anything he could do about it right now, save for giving up everything he had here to travel back to her. While it was tempting in one regard and he missed seeing Joey again like there was no tomorrow, he´d also worked so hard to get this far and he´d sworn to himself that he wouldn´t move back home, until at least this one year was over with.
"You could get your chance, before you know it" Dawson said, like he had somehow been reading his mind from afar, as he returned with another five slices for himself, as well as a tall glass of cola. "Don´t tell anyone, but I proposed to Audrey the day before I left the states."
"I guess that makes sense, if you´re having a kid together. Are you sure, though? I mean, nothing against her, but it´s Audrey we´re talking about here. She isn´t exactly known for her stability, is she?" Pacey asked while looking into Dawson´s eyes to make sure that he got an honest answer.
"I know that it´s crazy, but I´m in love with her. What can I say?" Dawson asked rhetorically and Pacey felt glad for his old friend. Audrey was after all and in spite of her and him not having lasted as a couple, a sweetheart at heart and he could have done a whole lot worse than her, that´s for certain.
"She wants to have the wedding before she starts showing too much, so probably sometime in the next couple of months. Joey, her best friend getting married, romance is in the air ... do I need to say more?" Dawson said, as he winked his eyebrows at him.
"Let´s see if you make it that far first. A lot can happen in two months."
"Thankfully, a lot less than there usually could, since I won´t be seeing her for another month. Cheers."
They toasted on their sodas and after having eaten far more than they should have, all they really had time for was a small tourist trip around the center of town, before it approached midnight and Dawson had to get home, so that he could some sleep at least, before he had to get up at five the day after. Pacey promised him on the way back to the Central Station that he would come back to the states for the wedding and once again, congratulated him on the whole thing, both baby and upcoming marriage. Perhaps they wouldn´t last and knowing the two of them, they had the odds against them. It seemed just as likely to Pacey that the two of them would break up within a week, as it was that they stayed together forever more.
After he came home, he turned on the TV and flattened out on the couch for an hour or so, before going to bed. There wasn´t any way he could fall asleep anyway with thoughts of Joey running through his mind constantly. Did she really love him the way Dawson had said, she did? The fact that he technically had another girlfriend was the furthest thing from his mind, as thoughts of dancing with Joey at Dawson and Audrey´s wedding brought a wide smile to his face, that wouldn´t disappear until he feel asleep that night.
END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Now that Joey´s crush on Justin has been confirmed, what will it mean for her future and now that Pacey knows for sure how Joey feels about him, what will he do about it, if anything?
Find out more on Monday, when I release another pair of chapters.
Thanks for reading everyone!
