THE BIG LEAP

Just a little foreword here from your humble author. This is pretty much my first attempt at writing an actual novel and I expect it to be around fifty chapters, by the time it´s finished. It´s basically a Joey/Pacey focused story that follows the events of season 6 episode 22 and ignores the final two episodes and I´ve been posting it over on AO3 for about a month now already, which is why I´m releasing the first eleven chapters right away, so that story on the two sites will be up to date with one another at all times. I´ve already written pretty far ahead, which is why I´m releasing two chapters twice a week, on Monday and Friday, meaning that the next two chapters on here will be released on Monday.

Anyway, that´s pretty much enough info from me at this time and I just hope you´ll enjoy the story! As always, comments are appreciated, as long as it isn´t spam and they´re kept relatively civil. Being critical is one thing and that´s something I can learn from, but if it´s just to tell me that I suck, then don´t bother. Guests reviews that don´t live up to those two criteria get instantly deleted, just so you know.

CHAPTER 0NE - FROM BOSTON WITH A BROKEN HEART

A little six word sentence thought had been running through Pacey´s mind time and time again throughout the day before his going away party, before he was flying across the Atlantic ocean to live in a strange. small country, that he had honestly never really thought about, until he got what he thought to himself would no doubt be the most unexpected job offer of his life.

"What the hell are you thinking?" was that phrase and even though Joey had tried to assure him time and time again, that it was just him being nervous over how he would be so completely out of his element for the first time and that he would do perfectly fine, because he was always great at making friends in no time (which he had to agree with her with, for the most part anyway), it still lingered heavily on his heart and soul.

But the fear that he would hate it and get homesick right away, was what really stuck with him. It was the hardest fear, he´d had to shake, since him and Joey had to come clean with Dawson back in their Junior year of high school, when the attraction between them that had been growing since the beginning of that school year, led to them finally (after an insanely long build-up, when he looked back at it now) gave into temptation and went for nothing, so to speak. She was still his best friend, who knew him in way that no one else, not even Dawson anymore, did or perhaps ever would,. But the fact was that half of the reason he´d said yes, was to get away from her. Crazy, right? Well, not when you consider how the last months between the two of them had gone.

In retrospect, he´d been cursing himself for trying his luck with her again a few months earlier, knowing that she came into it on the rebound. Yet, her ditching him just after they´d gotten back together, and for Eddie no less, a constantly self-pitying and inherently selfish jackass that he absolutely couldn´t stand and had zero clue what Joey saw in, stung like hell and she´d hurt him more than any break-up or fight he´d ever been in had even come close to.

Being around her now was both his crutch to lean on and pure mental torture at the same time. He still wanted the best for her and was glad that she had found out for herself, that there was no future for her with some miserable guy, who would only drag her down to his level, if she chose to stay with him. Still, he couldn´t entirely forgive her and it made hanging out with her and pretending that it hadn´t shaken him, far harder to deal with, than it should have been.

A year away from her was in many ways exactly what he needed, even if she had promised him, that she would come to Copenhagen with Audrey, Jen and Jack for Spring Break. Thankfully, that was still over half a year away and by that time, he hoped to feel like he was fitting in and could show his friends that he´d become a success story in his new, temporary home country. Right at this moment, the thought of being alone and a fish out of water in a big city in a different country, scared the hell out of him and he´d been wavering between staying and leaving ever since he´d received his final work visa in the mail a few weeks earlier.

After the fiasco of that salesman job, he´d had last, and not seeing any future staying in Capeside, he´d decided to move back to Boston and go back to the one job, he´d had and liked since he left his small home town behind following high school coming to an end: Cooking. Only, he didn´t want to just be a fry cook or a kitchen assistant, he wanted to become a real chef, hopefully one with his own restaurant sometime in the future. Jack had been a great help in helping him to figure it out, when they´d gone out on an all-night bender on their last day together after shooting Dawson´s movie, and Jack had told him, that he could only wish he had the talent for cooking, Pacey has. It wasn´t only that moment of course, and growing up so close to the restaurant business no doubt had played it´s big part too, but the way he had said it filled him with a feeling of "I can do this" and the stubbornness to follow through with it, that´s just as, if not more important, to a guy like him that´s grown up full of insecurities over not feeling like he was ever good enough.

The day after, he boarded the bus to Boston, moved in temporarily on his sister Gretchen´s couch and started to look for cooking jobs around the city. After only a few days of searching, he´d found one down by the harbor, that seemed like a perfect fit for him. It sadly had only lasted him a month and a half before new owners, who wanted to turn the space into a furniture store, took over and his old boss fired everyone, him included. On the positive side, he´d become pretty good friends with the head chef Michael and that was what had led to this opportunity coming his way: The chance to work at a three Michelin-Star restaurant for Michael´s father Enzo, a world renowned chef and someone that he could learn more from in a year, than he would have if he´d gone to culinary school and finished it and it was far too much of an opportunity to resist. He would have to work his way up from the bottom of course, and he was perfectly fine with that prospect. Considering how much he´d learned from that handful of weeks working with his son, the idea of learning first-hand from the man who had taught Michael everything he knew, was enough to make his mouth water with anticipation.

Soon, what had only been a small remark spoken by him after their last shift together, about how he wished that he could learn from a master like that too, had led to Michael asking him if he was serious about it and him getting an offer, he couldn´t refuse. Hell, just being given a chance like this seemed almost like a dream that couldn´t be real. Nevertheless it was, and in less than two days from now, he would be settling into a new apartment on a continent he´d never set foot on before and until very recently, didn´t think he would.

It was nice to know that everything would already be set up for him, when he arrived there. He´d been sent a few pictures of the small, but cozy looking apartment he would be living in, that luckily for him was a one-year sublet that also came furnished. Once that year was over, he would decide whether to stay or not, but he was determined to at least make it that far, before he considered throwing in the towel and heading home with his tail between his legs. A future co-worker from the restaurant would be sent to pick him up at the airport and take him there, some guy all he knew about was that he was named Joe, and like himself also had roots in the states, but unlike himself had been living in the Paris of Scandinavia for the past several years.

His sister, as he´d expected her to from the moment he told her, was the one most excited on his behalf and constantly filled his head with fantasy stories of him falling in love with some blonde Scandinavian beauty named Helga or something like that, along many, many other more or less far-out scenarios, she seemed to come up with in what seemed like a never-ending stream of consciousness on her part. His dad didn´t like the thought at all and had immediately bombarded him with conspiracy theories of how they were going to try to turn him into a Commie over there in that "Cursed Socialist Hellhole", but Gretchen, who had once been there for a few days on a backpacker tour of the major cities of Europe with her ex-boyfriend, had assured him that the natives to her had seemed very friendly and that he would get along fine there, just speaking English as his only language, another thing he had been seriously worried over up to that point.

It was too late to go back on it now, anyway, where he was making enough Guacamole and Buffalo Wings to feed a small army, let alone his small close-knit group of friends that would be there to wish him the best of luck in the next year and would no doubt make him second guess himself even more, than he already was. Gretchen and him had already said their goodbyes that morning, seeing as she had to travel to Philly to be there for one of her friends, who was having yet another boyfriend emergency of some sort. Even Dawson was flying in from L.A. to see him off, one of the rare occasions that they saw one another these days. While he knew that he would end up missing all of them like crazy, he was also ready to try something new and exciting in his life, that would take him to new places and experience things, there was little chance of him getting to experience here. After all, what could be more new and exciting than this?

END OF CHAPTER ONE