THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - TAKE IT EASY

"Take it easy boy, boy,

spend ev'ry dime have a good time

Take it easy boy, boy,

let the others make the money to you.

If you don't do what I say

you will soon grow old and grey

just walk out be glad and gay

singing ha-ha hey, hey!"

LEO "THE LION" MATHISEN (single from sometime around 1940)

Sent: January 19th, 1999

From: JenRocks

To: AGirlNamedJoey

Subject: Last night and how it could have changed Pacey´s life!

Hi, Joey. Even if you had been here for Pacey´s B-Day, I´m not sure that you would have believed your own eyes! A lot of things happened, all of which I´ll fill you in on, the best I can. To get the sad part out of the way, my grandpa passed away the morning before the party and if you want the truth, the last thing I was thinking about for most of the day was going to a celebration that evening. Grams however, apparently thought it would be good for me to get out of the house, so I agreed to go on the condition that she came with me. I´m getting ahead of myself though, because something happened before we went to Pacey´s party, that I need to tell you about ...

Ever since he was told that both of his parents would be attending his so-called "Sweet Sixteen" party that evening, Pacey had tried to keep himself from panicking and to remind himself, that this was supposed to be a day that he could look back on and smile, when we became older. Those smiles were hard to find however, when all of his instincts told him to make a dash for it and wait a few days, until he came home again.

He only had one choice, if his plan was to get the surprise party cancelled at the last minute. That was to go to the source of all of this party planning, his oldest buddy, Dawson. As an excuse to get him to come over to Dawson´s house that evening (the site of the hootenanny in his own honor), Dawson had asked him to come over for a movie night. It was with this pretense (and why he was carrying a pair of quickly picked up movies from Screen Time), that he made his way of the terrace to the always pristine looking Leery residence, that had been like a second home to him throughout most of his childhood.

Dawson looked a little flustered, when he opened the door.

"Aren´t you a little early, Pacey?" his old friend asked, while not doing a splendid job at hiding, that this wasn´t part of his plans for the evening.

"I didn´t have anything else to do, so I thought I´d stop by early. You don´t mind, do you?" he asked innocently, while weakly trying to keep up the act of not knowing, what was actually going on.

"I guess not, but ... it´s kind of a mess in there and you know how my mom is, when it comes to keeping a perfect house. I just don´t think she´d want you to see it like this".

"She knows that I won´t look down on her for it. Come on, Dawson! It´s cold out here, let me in!"

"I can´t! Not without ..."

"Me finding out about the surprise party, you´ve been planning for me?" he asked Dawson, who looked full of surprise at himself having found out.

"You knew?"

"You´re a lot of things, Dawson, but the next double O seven isn´t one of them! It isn´t that I don´t appreciate the thought, but we need to cancel. Thanks to my blabbermouth sister, my parents have found out and they´re both coming. Do I have to spell out the words "Recipe for Disaster" for you, or is it obvious enough, that I won´t have to?" he asked in a way, that he didn´t think could be mistaken.

"They can´t get along for one evening, for their son's sake? Or at least, have to common courtesy to ignore one another?"

"I can´t risk it! The way they talk about each other, you´d think they were talking about some kind of super villain! How would you feel if it was your family issues that were put on show for all of your friends, like some kind of absurd dinner theatre, that you´re forced to watch, even if you´d rather take a short walk off a pier?" he asked his friend, who seemed like he got, what he meant.

"It´s a little late for it, don´t you think? My parents have already bought all of this food for your birthday and I´d have to call everyone to tell them, that the party´s off. That´s if I can get a hold of all of them ..." Dawson began to say, making it all too obvious to Pacey (if it wasn´t already before), that he´d have to go through with this, whether he wanted to or not.

Some birthday this was going to be!

Jen´s plan had been to give the birthday, she´d played a vital part in planning, a miss and spend the rest of the day hanging out with Grams around the house. The death of close family member wasn´t exactly something that helped with getting her in the partying mood and although, she saw Pacey as one of her closest friends, there would be plenty of occasions to celebrate him in the future. As plans go though, this one worked out around as well, as most of her plans did and it wasn´t long, until she had Pacey knocking on their door.

"Is there room for a refugee at your humble abode?" he asked in his usual joking style, with one of those charming boyish smiles of his to match it.

"That depends. A refugee from what?"

"The reality of my surroundings" he told her and with a look on his mug, that said in more than a thousand words could, how me meant every word of it. With an answer like that, how could she say no?

Grams didn´t seem to mind her having company over and soon after, the two of them found themselves up in her room, listening to "Heaven Knows, I´m Miserable Now" by The Smiths (a fitting representation for both of their moods at this moment), playing at a modest volume from her just a modest small stereo.

"I´m sorry to hear about your grandpa. He´s always been nice, every time I´ve talked to him. If you need a shoulder to cry on, you know where to find me" Pacey understandingly told her, unknowingly sending memories of why she´d had a crush on him a few months before, momentarily running through her mind.

"Thanks, Pace. Even if I can´t say that his death came as a surprise, it´s still tough to deal with. I guess that in my ever-optimistic mindset, I didn´t want to admit to myself, that he wouldn´t pull through".

"Ever optimistic? You?" he dryly quipped, before they shared a small and very wry smile.

"Shouldn´t you be rehearsing, how to do your best surprised face for later on?"

"You mean, like this?" he asked, before putting on a funny surprised face, that got the smallest of giggles out of her.

"Something like that! You can tell me, Pacey. I won´t spill the beans to anyone, you know that".

"Okay, so imagine this: It´s the day of your sweet sixteen and you should be thrilled. After all, this is the day that most of those our age looks forward to for years and now, it´s finally here! There´s a party been set up for your personal enjoyment, where your friends are coming, and the food should be good. Now, imagine that your parents are both coming to that party!" he said and just the thought of it was enough to make her wince.

"I get where you´re coming from!" she answered him honestly. Not that there was any chance of them showing up for her B-Day a few months from then, but if they did, then she could only imagine that she´d end up spending most of her own birthday party, trying her hardest to hide from them!

"One thing is that I have to listen to them bad-mouth one another constantly in private. All I have to do is nod along and throw in the occasional "Oh" or "That´s true" at the right times and they´ll think, I´m listening to the garbage, they spew out. It doesn´t take a brain surgeon to know, that it took both of them for their marriage to fall apart, but apparently, none of them possess the self-awareness to admit that to themselves! It´s like I´m having to deal with a pair of five-year-olds, who refuse to get along and I have to be adult that has to force them to try. If you want the truth, I don´t think they´ve said five words to each other, since my mom kicked him out and if they have, I´m sure that they weren´t words I´d want to hear repeated".

"I´m sure that mine have said all of those things and then some to each other, when I wasn´t there to hear it. I tell you! If there are two things, I´m never doing, it´s having kids and getting married!"

"We won´t become like our parents! Or at least, I hope that we won´t!"

"It isn´t a risk, I´m ready to run! Look, Pacey, you can look at this in one of two ways. You can either see it as the worst thing, that could have happened or alternatively, as the best thing, that could have happened".

"Have you been reliving your old party-girl days, Lindley? Like by taking drugs that make you lose all common sense, for example?"

"Your parents will have to start talking again at some point, right? Isn´t this, an evening where there´ll be a certain amount of social pressure on them to behave themselves, the perfect occasion, if you really consider it? Pacey, as much as we´d like to, we don´t get to choose who brought us into this world, but we still have to live with them and the sometimes-dumb choices, they make, that affect us too. You can play the peacemaker between them here, if you give it a try" she advised him, even though she wasn´t entirely sure that it was sound advice, she was dishing out.

After he´d tried to take Jen´s advice to heart (and after having offered his sincerest condolences to Grams for her loss), Pacey made his way back to Dawson´s house for a "surprise party", that he by now would have had to be blind and deaf, not to have seen coming a mile away. As they´d sat and watched the guests arriving through Jen´s window, they´d also discussed how they felt about each of them. This was also how it became clear once and for all to Pacey, that Jen´s dream boy wasn´t too far out of reach for her and how he´d come to the decision, that he would try to play match-maker for the first time, since his and his sister´s failed attempt years earlier, to set his brother up with a girl from down the street that in almost every way, looked like she would be a perfect fit for him. All of that would have to wait for another day, because this evening was simply about two things: Trying to appear like he was enjoying himself and hopefully, not getting too embarrassed by the bickering coming from his parents.

He´d tried his best to act surprised of course, when he´d entered the Leery´s house and in his own humble opinion, had done a pretty decent job at it. Instantly seeing that only one of his parents (his mom) had arrived by that point, also gave him a short-lived sense of calm, that he wouldn´t have to deal with the breakdown of his family being exposed for his friends to see, right away at the least. If only Joey had been there, she would have been able to take the edge off his nerves, just by the way she was always able to keep him calm, the way that no one else were capable of.

As for his gift heist, it certainly beat last year´s (which had solely consisted of his dad giving him fifty bucks and telling him to not to waste it on buying the same kind of junk, he usually spent his allowance on) by a long way and most of them were pretty thoughtful gifts as well. Within fifteen minutes of opening presents, his CD collection had been upgraded from "Downright pitiful" to "Nothing, he needed to be ashamed of" and he´d received so many gifts in the way of new clothes, that he could throw some of his old rags sitting at home away, and wouldn´t have to buy any clothing of note for himself for the few next years and then some. The highlight, however, was the last gift to be "opened" and it was from his own and Dawson´s parents combined. They had to walk down to the Leery´s small excuse for a dock to find it and just to make a show out of it, they´d had his dad sail his gift from the boat shop and down there, while Pacey had been busy opening presents and exchanging pleasantries with his party guests inside. Sure, it was only an old twenty-footer, and it could use a loving hand here and there, but it was serviceable enough. Just the fact that he could call himself a boat owner, made his day better and his sense of inner pride grow a bit.

The way his parents refused to even look into one another´s eyes however, made the joy short-lived and from that moment on, he had to be constantly on the lookout for signs, that something was about to go Arye between them. One thing was what he chose to tell his friends, whenever he needed to vent his many frustrations over his family situation, but getting it all exposed was something, he wasn´t ready for yet, if he ever would be. For the first half of the evening, it went alright and they stayed away from each other (with his dad talking to Mitch for most of the time, while Gail and his siblings kept his mom covered on his behalf), but the more alcohol that he saw flying down their gullets, the more he also knew that the chances of them having an all too public bust-up that evening grew exponentially.

More than anything, he missed having Joey by his side to hold his hand, reassure him that it would all be okay and offer him inner peace, the way that only she was capable of.

Jen´s evening was one of slowest that she´d had in a long time and although, she´d made a solid decision not to go to Pacey´s party, the sounds coming from across the street had her curious, as to what was going on over there. Maybe, it didn´t feel right to be celebrating on the day of her grandpa´s passing, but the fifteen-year-old in her still also wanted to be there for one of her closest friends, on one of the biggest days of his adolescent years. Grams, being the great reader of people that she was, clearly picked up on this, while they were doing the dishes together after dinner.

"You know, Jennifer. If there was one thing you grandfather loved, it was showing his friends and family how much he appreciated them" Grams told her, as she washed off the last of their dirty dishes in the kitchen sink.

"I can still remember the sixth birthday, I spent here, while my parents were off on yet another of their "Networking Trips" to somewhere luxurious, I´m sure. Even if I didn´t know any of the other kids here, he still tried to make it as special for me, as he could" she answered, as a flood of memories, that she knew that she would keep near and dear to her heart for the rest of her life, started flooding back into her mind.

"I still remember that day, like it all happened yesterday. Thinking back on it now, it could have been the happiest, I can ever remember seeing you".

"Grandpa always had that effect, of making it feel like it was okay to be myself, on me. He wasn´t like my parents, who see me as a piece of clay to be formed in whatever way, they want to shape me into. We all saw how well that worked for them, didn´t we?" she sadly and rhetorically asked Grams, who responded with a kind and understanding smile.

"Jennifer, I´ll be the first to admit that it felt to me like I didn´t know who you were anymore, when I was told about the kind of trouble, you´d been getting yourself into. What´s worse is that I blamed you entirely and for that, I owe you an apology".

"You don´t need to apologize for anything, Grams. I mean, just with the way you´ve taken me in and given me some kind of normality to my life for the first time in what feels like forever, there´s no way that I could ever repay you!"

"As pleased, as it makes me to hear you say that you didn´t allow me to finish what I was saying. I was fortunate enough to be raised by parents, who did their best in teaching me right from wrong and would make time for me, when I needed their help. None of your friends, with the exception of perhaps Dawson Leery, have had that luxury and neither have you, by any stretch of the imagination. If you ask me, it´s why you´ve found your way to one another, even if the odds were heavily against it".

"Whoever said that gravitate towards our own wasn´t lying, that´s for sure!" Jen half-heartedly answered, as she put the last of the newly rinsed plates in the cupboard.

"Your grandfather told me the same thing, on one of the first dates we ever went on. Which is why I think you should at the least make a short appearance, at Pacey´s birthday party tonight".

"It wouldn´t feel right to attend a party, with everything that´s happened today. I´d feel like I was disrespecting grandpa´s memory".

"Your grandfather used to love throwing surprise birthday parties, back when we were young enough, that another birthday still felt like something worth celebrating. If anything, I´d say that you´d be honoring his memory, if you went over there and said hello" Grams told her, giving her an out of a rather depressing evening at home, if she wanted to take it.

"Only on the condition, that you come with me. I can´t enjoy myself, if I know that you´re over here by yourself, so what´s it going to be, Grams?" Jen asked back with a much bigger smile, than she´d had on her face for the rest of that day.

What Pacey had feared the most happened slowly, but surely throughout the evening. Starting with small barbs and remarks that had been said loud enough that everyone at the party could hear it, his parents were obviously working their way up to a fight for the ages, with himself and all of the others there as unwilling witnesses. Once that glacier of in-grown hatred started rolling, there was little that could be done to stop it, except for forcibly removing one of them from the premises.

The infamous moment of truth came when, after his parents had both done more than their share in emptying out Mitch and Gail´s liquor cabinet, his mom loudly remarked that she was far better off, now that she´d kicked "That Miserable old SOB" out of their family home. It had only taken mere seconds, before a full out verbal version of a Wrestlemania main event between his parents began playing itself out and once it got started, little could be done to put an end to it. Needless to say, it made everyone else uncomfortable, and all Pacey could do was thank his fairy godmother, that his birthday party only consisted of a handful of handpicked people among those closest to him.

After a few minutes of witnessing the unpleasantness of his family breaking apart for all of the world to see, he´d had his fill and slipped out of the front door as quietly, as he could. At that moment, he´d intended to walk away and not come back, but those plans were foiled by the sight of Jen and grandma coming up to the Leery front porch.

"Why are you running away from your own party, Pacey?" Jen asked him.

"It started out alright, but it´s turned into a nightmare in there! My parents are at each other´s throats, like I predicted they would be and everyone else looks like they´re trying to come up with an excuse, to do the same thing, I´m doing!"

"And what´s that, Pacey Witter?" Grams asked him calmly.

"Getting as far away from here, as I can!" he frustratedly explained, meaning every word of it.

"Won´t that be the same as letting them win?" Jen was the next to ask him.

"All of that in there, is just an illusion set up for one evening, to make me forget about how much my life sucks right now, Jen! I´m on academic probation and I´ll probably wind up getting held back a year, because I´m so damn lousy at schoolwork! My girlfriend, the one person I´d most like to be spending this evening with, is halfway across the world and we´re still months away from seeing each other again! My reputation at school is only slightly above being at the absolute bottom of the pile and my parents, the two people I should be able to count on to get me through all of this BS, are both too occupied with hating one another to pay any attention to any of it! I´m Pacey Witter, loser extraordinaire, who´ll never make anything except for an ass of himself, and nothing can ever be done to change that fact!"

"You aren´t a loser, Pacey!" Jen tried to assure him.

"If I´m not a loser, then who would be? Tell them "Thanks for trying", but I don´t need another reminder of why there isn´t anything in my life worth celebrating right now!"

"Before you leave, let me ask you one question, mister Witter. Why are you telling us these things and not the ones, you should be telling them to?" Grams matter-of-factly asked him. Honestly, he couldn´t tell her why, except for his sense of logic telling him, that fueling the fire of the already roaring flames of their internal family Vendetta, wouldn´t do his own situation any good.

"I .." he hesitatingly began, before quickly drawing a blank and Jen interrupting him.

"Pacey, us letting these things fester into something that can´t be saved, is exactly why I´m not talking to my parents right now and why, I have no clue when the next time I talk to either of them will be. Yours are right behind that door and they´ll listen to you, if you say it the way you did to us just now. I´m certain of it" Jen told him so imploringly, that something that day finally made sense to him.

Watching Pacey tell his parents off was in a strange way exactly what Jen needed to cheer her up and it also made her fantasize over what she would say to her folks, if she ever got the chance to openly confront them like that. More than anything, it made her felt proud of him and it must have gotten through to his parents too, seeing as they apologized to him and both of them left right afterwards with their heads hung in shame, over how they´d just acted moments before.

After the uncomfortable drama portion of the evening was over, they settled into more of a regular party atmosphere for the rest of the evening, with her even getting a chance to get to know Pacey´s sister Gretchen a little. Pacey had often described her as basically being a slightly older, female version of himself and from what Jen could tell, he wasn´t that far off in his description.

"Has it been hard getting used to living in a small town like Capeside, after you´ve grown in one of the biggest cities in the world?" Gretchen asked, while they were filling up bowls with chips and waiting for the coffee machine to finish brewing a pot for those, who were too old to fill themselves with the enormous amount of soda, that teenagers are capable of.

"At first, it felt like no one wanted me to have me living here. Now, I have a neat little group of friends to surround myself with, that keeps growing all the time. If I could find the perfect boyfriend, that would be the icing on the cake, but we can´t have everything, can we?" she asked back and saw a knowing smile creep across Gretchen´s pretty face.

"It gets easier, when you become my age, trust me! My romantic life in high school wasn´t anything to write home about either, if we don´t count the occasional feel-up in the backseat of some guy´s car. Being in those early-to-mid teen years, like you and your friends are, is just an awkward phase that you have to go through, before you get to do all of the really fun stuff later on" Gretchen, in a very older-sisterly way, explained to her.

"I´ve tried lots of stuff, it isn´t that. Of course, the one thing I haven´t tried is the one thing, I want to try the most".

"If it´s sex, then let me put your mind at ease. Your first time probably won´t be earth-shattering event, that you want it to be!"

"I´ve already had sex several times before, even if it was so long ago, that I´m beginning to count myself as a virgin again. I´m talking about being in love with someone, who loves me back. There´s this one guy that I´ve become sort of tight with, who I think that it could happen with, I just don´t know if he feels the same way about me. How did you used to find that stuff out?"

"You can´t just ask him? It´s always worked for me!"

"It has?"

"Boys your age are easy to deal with, when it comes to that stuff, Jen. You can play all of the games that you want on him, to try to investigate your way into finding out and he most likely still wouldn´t get the message, that you like him. If you think there´s a chance that he likes you, jump in with both legs and go for it! If he tells you that he likes you back, that´s great and if he doesn´t, you´ll eventually find someone who will, that you also like back that way. Love works in mysterious ways and it´ll find you, just like it did for another former seemingly hopeless case, when she was your age, in yours truly".

It was almost ironic that Jen, the one that usually gave love advice to everyone else, needed someone older than her, to explain something that simple to her. She would ask Jack how he felt about her and soon. Only, not tonight, where she´d already had to overcome one mental obstacle, just to be at that party.

At the end of what became a very long evening, Pacey could say he´d mostly enjoyed himself and that his birthday had been more or less successful. After the rest of the guests had left and him saying thanks and goodnight to the Leery´s, Doug had driven him home with a chatty Gretchen in the back seat. He´d been a little afraid that his mom could have continued the "party" at home and would still be up and drunk, when he got home, so he´d breathed a sigh of relief that the house was dark and in knowing that he wouldn´t have to deal with any aftermath of the evening´s events, until the day after.

It couldn´t be held off forever, though and it was an awkward moment for certain, when he came into their kitchen to see his mom there nursing a cup of coffee and trying to get a few slices of toasts inboard as well.

"How´s your doing head today?" he asked her, after a few moments of neither of them knowing what to say, had passed by.

"Not as bad as my conscience is, Pacey. Do you hate me now?" she asked back and he could see that she meant it when she said, that she was ashamed of her behavior the previous evening.

"Of course not, Ma" he answered, before slipping a pair of pop tarts into the toaster and getting it started on its cycle. "I´ve become so used to seeing it over the years from dad, that I don´t let seeing you drunk, and all of that stuff get to me anymore".

"You shouldn´t have to be dealing with it, Pacey. Look, I know that I haven´t been the best mom, but the least I can do is try to not be an embarrassment to you on top of it. I´ll give your dad a call dad later today and see if I can´t talk to him like we should be able to, as a pair of relatively normally functioning adults. Things will get better for all of us soon. You have my word as your mother on it" she told him and although, the sceptic in him had a hard time believing her entirely, at the same time he wanted to believe her.

Sent: January 19th, 1999

From: AGirlNamedJoey

To: JenRocks

Subject: Re: Pacey´s birthday party and how it could have changed his life.

Man, I wish I´d been there!

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN