Hello everyone! Happy Friday! This week's ficlet takes a look at a missing scene from the Indian Summer episode... as always, we hope you enjoy and please let us know what you think.
*~* Plans *~*
Under the cries of wheeling gulls, Joey approached the battered boat. Despite the noise above, she could hear a slightly off-key rendition of Baby, I'm Gonna Leave You floating from somewhere in the general vicinity of the bow. She didn't see him but knew she would find him as she often did lately, earbuds delivering classic rock at an unfathomable volume, sanding block or hammer in hand. And despite her rage and subsequent anxiety over her final face-off with that low-life Logan, she couldn't help but smile.
Rounding the hull, she stopped in her tracks, surprised to find her breath catching a little at the sight of him. He was naked from the waist up, the slight sheen of sweat visible along his back, with his t-shirt hooked inside the back of his jeans. Indian summer still lingered and the late afternoon retained the heat of the day. All this manual labor was definitely giving her slacker friend definition that he'd never had.
She raised her voice to get his attention, "Hey!" She waved her hand in his peripheral vision.
He looked up and pulled the earbuds out of his ears and tipped his chin at her, "Potter."
"Don."
He wrinkled his brow with a smirk and said slowly, "Paaaaaa-ceeeeeey."
She rolled her eyes and simply stated, "Quixote."
"Ahhh… Trying to say this is the impossible dream?"
"Actually, no. Just looking for a little inspiration from the only one of the Three Musketeers who is currently putting feet to their dreams."
"That's me, Potter. All action."
"No thinking."
"Hey!!! You came here. If you're gonna abuse me, the least you can do is help." He threw her a sanding block.
"Are we still on this?"She caught the pitch deftly and following the nod of his head began working on a section of the hull closer to the stern.
"The sanding fairies haven't been working while you've been slacking, Potter."
Joey huffed and rolled her eyes more from habit than any real irritation. Now that she was here she wondered exactly what she had hoped to accomplish by wandering this way – besides conscription into the Witter work detail.
They worked side by side in comfortable silence until Pacey heard her sigh for the fifth time. "What's on your mind, Jo?" Because God knows, she did plenty of thinking.
"Bessie got the insurance check for the Ice House," she confided.
"Yeah? That's great." He glanced over at her slowly moving the sanding block back and forth in the same place, her eyes unfocussed on the task. "Right?" He queried. "That's what you've been waiting for, isn't it?"
She seemed to snap out of it a bit. "Yeah. Sure. Right." She nodded and then stopped sanding altogether. She suddenly turned to him and said accusingly, "Do you know what the start-up costs of a restaurant are?" Her voice raised half an octave and her hands began to flutter as she gained momentum. "Even used equipment is expensive! We'd have to find and hire a whole new staff. Bodie's committed to that place in New Bedford until after the holidays so he won't even be here. And the competition down on the waterfront is fierce. And I am going to have to go to school and study sometime…," she trailed off, still staring at him with narrowed eyes as if he had been the one to set the match to the Ice House in the first place.
Pacey stared at her with wide blue eyes, trying to determine exactly what was at the foundation of that rant. "Ummm… yeah… that sounds like it might be a bit much for sisters Potter to take on but what else did you have in mind?"
She threw her hands up in the air. "I don't know! What else is there in this tourist trap? And another thing! With Alexander, it's not easy for Bessie to go anywhere, even with live-in slave labor."
"Well, Jo, Capeside, is a tourist town. That's the biggest industry here besides fishing. So unless Bessie's gonna throw Alex on a trawler every day and compete for a haul with the big boys, you gotta think of something she can do out of the homestead. Can she bake?" he wondered.
The Ice House hadn't served dessert and since Mrs. Potter had died Pacey couldn't remember actually getting anything but Animal Crackers at the Potter residence. Up until Gale moved to Philadelphia, Leery's had been his best bet. Now he was dependent on Mrs. Ryan for anything homemade.
He continued, "You could bake and deliver to area restaurants." Warming up to the idea, he said, "Packaged right, you could have some of those shops downtown take stuff on consignment."
Joey chewed her bottom lip, a faint crease between her brows. She looked at him skeptically. "You think that would bring in enough to support us?"
Pacey shrugged. "I don't know, Jo. What's the going rate for home-baked cookies?" He paused and added comically, "In my world – priceless."
His words had the intended effect and Joey laughed. "Unfortunately, not everyone depends on your mom to get their quota of baked goods. Otherwise, we could make a killing." Joey and Dawson had only been invited inside at Pacey's house to play as kids a few times. They learned to politely decline anything proffered from Mary Witter's cookie jar as the contents were better suited to playing hockey than eating.
Both resumed their jobs smoothing the wood of the True Love, their silence still comfortable but now filled with the almost audible churning of gears in their heads. Finally Joey looked at Pacey out of the corner of her eye and said quietly, "You think we could fix the house up enough to turn it into a bed and breakfast?" There she had said it out loud. The words she had in her mind since she saw her mother in that home movie. The words that had just gotten louder and louder since Rob Logan fired her.
Pacey's hand stopped and he cocked his head to one side. "Hey, that's not a bad idea. Take a lot of work on the house," he said slowly. He raised one eyebrow at her. "Unless you're just planning to rent out the couch!"
"Pacey!" She admonished. "Yeah, we'd definitely need a few more bedrooms. Hey," she said brightly, "maybe I could finally get one of my own."
Pacey took a pencil stub out of his back pocket and roughly sketched the floor plan of the Potter residence on a discarded piece of plywood. "Look, Jo, if you knock out this wall on the far side and the one that faces the street, you could add some bedrooms, expand the kitchen and add a dining area. Spiff up the living room and wala! You got yourself a bed and breakfast!"
"Voila," she corrected him but grinned all the same; his enthusiasm was contagious. "You really think it could work? How much do you think that would cost?"
He tucked the pencil behind one ear. "Not sure. It depends on the cost of materials and labor but if you could get some people to pitch in the labor…," he paused thoughtfully. "I have an idea."
"What?" Joey's eyes were shining as she allowed a little flicker of hope to ignite inside her for the first time since that night Pacey had carried her out of the Ice House while it burned behind her.
He shook his head. "Let me check something out first," he answered.
She set the sanding block on the makeshift workbench Pacey had set up and reached around to pull out his t-shirt to throw it at him. Ignoring his dumbfounded look, she grabbed his arm by the wrist. "Come on!"
"Whoa there, Missy!" He struggled to put on his shirt with only one free arm. "Where are we going?" He dug in his heels and though Joey was strong, she couldn't budge him.
"To talk to Bessie," she pleaded over her shoulder as she continued to try to drag him in the direction of the road. "C'mon, Pacey, I'm gonna need backup."
He grabbed the wrist of the hand holding his arm and pulled her back to him. When she turned to face him fully, he said, "Hey, wait up. Don't you think it would be better if we had a plan to present before you talk to Bessie - one with some concrete information and maybe even some numbers to show her? How open is she gonna to be to this whole idea anyway?"
Joey seemed to deflate a little. "I don't know. To be honest, I think she'll be glad to have any idea that isn't another restaurant. But maybe you're right…"
"I'm sorry, what was that?" He cupped one ear. "Did you just say I was right?" He grinned.
Joey rolled her eyes and continued, "To be clear, I said, 'Maybe.' But I do think we should get some information together before we go talk to her. You will go with me, right? How long will it take us to figure this out?"
Pacey looked at the girl standing in front of him waiting for answers and wondered if this was part of the deal he had inherited from Dawson, and for how long exactly that deal was.
He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck and then smiled reassuringly. "Day or two. I'll make a couple of phone calls. In the meantime, you should…," he paused and grinned slyly, "…get back to work on my girl here." He tossed her the sanding block again. "Because we don't have a plan yet. And you gotta have a plan, Potter."
