THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER FIFTY - HOME SWEET HOME

"I'm on my way

On my way

Home, Sweet Home"

MÖTLEY CRÜE (From the album "Theatre of Pain" (1985))

It was finally "The Day", as in the day that Pacey had been looking forward to, ever since he'd kissed Joey goodbye and watched her walk all the way through the security check at Boston International Airport, until there was sight of her no more. In that moment, half a year had felt to him like it was a lifetime away and paranoid thoughts of how she'd tell him on her first day back, that he'd been replaced by some French guy, who was far more sophisticated than he was, flooded his mind and had made the rest of that day one of the most miserable ones, he could recount having lived through. Still, the next day he'd gotten on his bike and headed off to school, like he always did and with the help of his friends, both old and new, the months had passed by to get him to where he was now: On the verge of finally seeing the love of his young life again.

Before then however, he had a far more medial and less exciting task to deal with, that being helping his sister Gretchen move back into her old room, where she would see out the next several months of being pregnant in the loving embrace of her family. Or, in theory at least, that's how it should have been.

"Have you talked to dad, since you told him about your pregnancy?" Pacey asked her, while he was toiling with trying to fit his sister's rather enormous suitcase into the small trunk of his mom's car, that clearly wasn't built to house objects of such size.

"Only one time over the phone and after a few minutes, we were already down to talking about the weather. Dealing with situations like these has never been dad's strong side, has it?" Gretchen sighed, making him feel a bit sad on her behalf.

"Can you say that they're yours?"

"Not really! You know, even if the reason why I'm moving home again isn't the best one, I'm still glad that we'll be living together again. Sure, you can be a pain the butt sometimes, but I've still missed having you around to talk to!" Gretchen cheekily told him with a small smile, that he felt the need to match with one of his own. If only to try to cheer her up.

"That makes two of us. Nothing against Doug, I'm glad to have him as my brother, it's just ..."

"That he was born with a stick up the butt, and it's why you two, like it is with me and him, can never truly relate to one another?"

"Kind of, yeah. Hey, I've tried getting Doug to cut loose, just to get him to try what it's like for once, in his life filled with nothing except for going to work for fifty hours a week, before coming home and listening to his diva CDs, if he isn't rewatching old Streisand or Barbara Cartland movies, but he won't budge even a fraction of an inch on it! Just between us, I don't think that he'll ever learn to".

"Maybe, if we tried teaming up on him, we could achieve what no one else before us has been capable of, and actually get our brother to act his age!" Gretchen jokingly suggested, just as Pacey finally managed to get her suitcase dug far enough into the trunk, that he could close the hatch. How they were going to get it out again was a different matter and probably a much bigger problem, but also one that he didn't have to deal with in front of half-filled parking lot full of onlookers at Capeside train station, many of whom were snickering to themselves at the sight of his plight.

"I still don't know if I'd take that bet!" he cheerily replied, before getting behind the wheel of the well-worn 1991 Datsun (with over half a million miles to its name), that would take himself and his sister the rest of the way to her childhood home.

"Anyway, you'll probably be spending most of your summer playing the most adorable couple in all of Capeside with your little girlfriend, am I right?" Gretchen grinningly asked, as the engine (after a few sputters first to "warm up") roared to life.

"That's my plan! I just hope that it's hers too!" he truthfully answered.

Saying farewell to France and everything that it had meant to her over the past half year had been an emotional experience for Joey, not that she hadn't been preparing herself for weeks leading up to it, that it would be. After herself and Emma had gone to the end of the school year party together and she'd said goodbye to her few French friends, even if she would be hard pressed to call them friends as such, they'd only had a single day more together before her student Visa expired and she would officially become an illegal immigrant. Since this was the case, herself and Emma had made the most of it and played tourists for the day, going to see all of those sights in their soon to be former home city, that they'd kept putting off for another day, now that they only had one more day to.

In the evening, they'd had a fun time at home with her host parents and not the least, spoiling the one who'd miss her the most, to the extreme and making him feel loved: Her host family's cat Zizou, whom she had to admit that she would no doubt end up missing, probably almost as much as he would miss her. Part of her wanted to smuggle him home in her suitcase but knowing that they had two people in their household back home, who were allergic to cat hair, made her forget about what would probably have been an impossible (and sort of cruel) scheme to carry out, anyway.

She had to leave early the morning after, if she was to get to the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris in time for her connecting flight, that after the short local flight she'd taken from to Toulouse to Paris, would take her all the way to Boston, where her family and friends would be waiting to welcome her home. This entire first part of her day was mostly just stressful and a part of it, that she couldn't get over and done with quickly enough, so when she sat down to get comfortable in her seat in the huge Concorde jet from Air France, it was a relief to her to know that from here on out, it was severely limited how many things could go wrong.

Luckily for her as well, the flight was only around three quarters booked, meaning that she had an entire three-seat row of seats to herself, a huge luxury when you're on a very long flight, like she was. As for the in-flight movies, they weren't anything worth getting too excited over (first they showed "Free Willy", which also just so happened to have been the first movie that she'd ever seen in the cinema, followed by some far too dumb for her liking Pauly Shore movie, that she gave up on after five minutes, at the most), so instead she spent most of those many hours looking out of the window at the clouds and the sea whizzing past, down far below them, while fantasizing about all of the things, she would be doing over the coming roughly month and a half, before the realities of the world, and by this she meant school, started staring her in the face again.

So far, there weren't all that many things on her agenda for the summer, not that she minded it all that much. The only things that were set in stone were three things: Going on an extended weekend trip to New York with Jen, working at the Ice House and herself having to attend summer school a few days a week. Something, that in her own opinion didn't seem entirely fair, seeing as she had taken pretty much the same exams as her friends had, only she couldn't use it for school credit, just because she'd taken them in a different country with a different grading system, but that's a different story. The one positive side to it was that it gave her the chance to spend even more time with Pacey, the one thing she'd been looking forward to the most, especially on some of those cold and lonely evenings, where he'd felt so far away from her that she began fearing, if she wouldn't ever again get to hug and kiss him, not to mention touch the most private parts of his body, that he didn't let anyone except for her come close to getting their hands on.

Before she knew it, it was called out over the flight P.A. that they were starting their descent and would be landing in Boston soon.

Isn't it funny how the last minutes, while you're waiting for something big to happen can feel like they last an eternity, when the time leading up to it felt like it passed by so much faster? This little philosophical tripe was what Pacey had been thinking about, ever since he'd arrived at the airport with Dawson, Jen, Bessie, Bodie and Alexander, the only one of them who was blissfully oblivious, when it came to what was about to go down. Some of the others had wanted to come too, but someone had to keep the restaurant open, which meant that Abby and Joey's dad had to stay behind in Capeside (not that either Joey's dad or Bodie had minded, since the alternative of them spending several hours in a car together only spelled trouble) and they also didn't want to make Joey feel crowded during her first minutes back in the country, where she'd been born and called home. There was plenty of time to introduce her to all of the new friends, they'd made while she was gone either way, and they'd already planned a coming home gathering for her at Dawson's parents' house that evening, where she'd get to meet most of them.

All of that was so many hours into the future though, that in this moment, where his heart was beating ever faster, as he kept a keen eye on one of the giant airport clocks and counted down the seconds to when Joey would make her appearance in the arrival area and everything would be right in his world again, it couldn't have mattered less to him.

"Where could she be? Her plane landed over twenty minutes ago!" he annoyedly asked Jen, who was obviously almost as excited to see Joey again, as he was.

"Getting your suitcase in baggage claim can take forever, trust me!" Jen explained. "The one and only time that I went to St. Tropez with my parents, we had to wait for over half an hour after we arrived at JFK, before we got our luggage".

"Didn't you once tell me that your parents go there once a year?"

"They do. Apparently, it's always just been easier for them to leave their biggest piece of luggage, also known as me, at home, so they can live it up in the French Alps, as they see fit! I really have such wonderful and caring parents, that I should write a book about them, shouldn't I?" Jen sarcastically asked and once again she'd managed to make himself feel less sorry for himself, when it came to his own rather dysfunctional family unit.

"Look, there she is!" Dawson called to their attendance, as he pointed to the gate, where those who had just arrived on their respective flights came out of.

And oh dear, did Joey look prettier than ever or what? He'd kept reminding himself again and again over the past days, that she would probably look a little older, than the last time he'd seen and kissed her, but if she did then it was so little, that it was barely noticeable to the naked eye. After a few seconds of her nervously looking around, while she bit her lower lip, she lit up in a wide smile, when she saw them and rushed over to them so fast, that she almost dropped her suitcase on the way.

"It feels so nice to be back home with you guys again!" were the first words that she said, and if there was one guy in that entire airport, who could say that he agreed with her the most, then it had to be himself.

"How does it feel to back in Capeside again?" Dawson asked her, while they were lounging around in the living room at his house and waiting for the rest of the guests for the gathering in her honor to arrive.

"Nice, I guess. It's a bit weird though, to think that when I woke up this morning, I was all the way over on the other side of the world!" she bluntly answered him, getting a small nod in reply.

"I can only imagine that it is. If I'm going to have myself a career in the movie industry, it'll probably be the kind of thing, I'll have to get used to".

"Unless you get a steady gig on one of those soap operas that Bessie pretends like she's never watched, but she still for some "unexplained reason" knows the names of all of the main characters in?"

"It's steady money, I guess".

"You can't tell me that the big dreamer Dawson Leery has already resigned himself to becoming a guy, who'd be satisfied with making the purest kind of fluff-tv, if it means that he's making enough money to pay the bills?" she teasingly asked him.

"He's grown up a whole lot, while you've been away, Joey. All of the things that happened with Mary-Beth made me take a long, hard look in the mirror and I was selfish before, I can see that now. You can say that it's just because I'm an only child, but I know lots of others like me and none of them ... did the things, I did. Please, don't ask any more into it than that" he asked back imploringly.

"I won't, if you don't want me to. So, is it completely finished between you and MB, or ..."

"There are clear and obvious signs, that it isn't" he quickly told her with a small smile. "What about you and Pacey? Any grand plans for the summer?"

"Only if you count making out until our lips are numb!" she jokingly replied, just before the boy they'd just been talking about came in to join them.

"Sorry to break up the nice atmosphere in here, but do you think that you two can get off your butts long enough, to help Mitch and I carry everything for the party in from outside?" Pacey gaspingly asked and for some reason, she couldn't help herself from kissing him.

"What was that for?" he asked her.

"Just for being you and because it's my right as your girlfriend, to press my lips against yours, whenever I feel like it!" she smilingly answered, before laying another of those wild and wet kisses, that she'd been missing so much, for so long, on him.

The gathering to mark Joey's homecoming went about as well as could be expected, or so Pacey thought to himself by the end of it, as he was helping Dawson and his parents with cleaning up afterwards. As he'd expected it hadn't taken too long for Joey and Jack to warm up each other, although he couldn't have prepared himself for the news that him and Jen had for everyone: That they'd decided to break up but would still continue to be close friends. Honestly, he'd expected Jen at least to be more shook up over it, but from what he could tell, she seemed like it had been her choice too, making him think to himself that it was probably a mutual break-up between them. In any case, the details of it weren't any of his business and they were still looking as chummy as ever, so if nothing else, they'd both made a good friend out of their little romance with one another and for that, he was glad for Jen, whom you still couldn't say had all that many of them, when it came to boys. Or Jack, for that matter, whose social circle basically was comprised of the people, he was in the company of during their announcement, if we didn't count his mom and dad, who'd only recently left Providence behind, to come and live with the rest of his family.

The only one who Joey wasn't clicking with all that well was Andie, whom she didn't talk with for more than a minute or two all evening and only in short, one or two phrase sentences. It didn't worry him too much though, although he guessed that it must have bothered Andie, who left early, saying that she wasn't feeling well.

Joey obviously enjoyed herself though, and in his opinion, that was the main thing. After they'd kissed goodbye and she'd headed home with her dad and an already sleeping Alexander, all he could think about was how much he was looking forward to the both the day after and the many days after that, where they could simply enjoy one another and being together again, before the rigors of school and work would return and severely limit the amount of time, they could spend alone together.

"Was it just me or did this evening feel like it put a nice bow and arrow on this whole past year as a whole?" he asked Dawson, as they were taking the last of the trash out.

"In its own sort of way, I guess that it did. You still have one more thing to do though, unless you're forgetting it?" Dawson reminded him, not that he had to.

"Do I really have to do it? That was just some stupid throw-away idea, that I came up with off the top of my head!" Pacey tried arguing his case.

"Do you want me to tell Joey that you're the kind of guy, who goes back on his promises? I don't think, she'd like to hear that!" Dawson teased him and with it not looking like there was any way out of it, he still had one last thing to do, before he could move on with his summer.

"Pacey, this is by far the most ridiculous thing, you've ever attempted to do and for you, that's really saying something! You'll end up drowning and then, what was the point of all of those months, we spent yearning for one another?" Joey jokingly asked a gasping for air Pacey, who was still less than a third of the way done with doing what he'd apparently told Dawson, that he would do, if Dawson and Mary-Beth broke up before the end of the schoolyear: swim buck naked from one bank of the creek to the other!

Which, just about everyone could have told him was a near impossible endeavor, unless you were an Olympic swimmer in tip-top shape and for as much as she loved Pacey's trimmed down physique, by far the biggest reason that he had it, was thanks to him riding his bike almost everywhere, he went. Not thanks to him having the used the muscles that you needed to have properly trained up, if you were going to swim the just under a mile from one side of the creek to the other. Thankfully, he'd had enough sense in him, to ask her to sail in his boat next to him the entire way, just so it couldn't end in a total disaster.

"How far do I have to left?" he gaspingly asked her, before changing to a breaststroke again after a few dozen feet or so of doing could best be described as a doggy paddle, from what Joey could tell, since the dusk was only allowing her a small glimpse of what went on under the water.

"Way too far! What if I just told everyone, that you'd made it all the way to the other bank? Will that save your precious manhood from feeling threatened?" she quipped at him and after a few more feet of swimming, he finally conceded defeat and allowed her to help drag his naked corpus up on the boat, where he collapsed onto its deck instantly.

"I don't think there's a single muscle in my entire body, that hasn't gone into cramps!" he complained loudly, as she smiled at him and picked up a towel, that she wrapped around him.

"Is that better?" she asked him, before kissing his lips for what had to have been the six thousandth time already, since she'd landed at Boston International Airport, a little under a week earlier. This time, they tasted of a mix of salty sweat and what was probably rather dirty lake water, which admittedly wasn't the most pleasant taste in the world, but as long as those lips were attached to the boy, she loved, Joey couldn't have possibly minded less!

"Anything would help right now!" he jokingly answered her, while trying to stretch out some of his most sore muscles.

"You mean, like if I did this?" she cheekily asked him, before running her hands down his chest and to her prize, hiding down beneath his legs. After all, times alone like these were hard to come by, so why shouldn't they take advantage of the situation? What she felt down there, gave her the need to ask him a question, however. "Pacey, why is it so small right now? Or, is it me who imagined that it was bigger?"

"It's called "The Shrinkage Factor". I'll explain it to you sometime, when my entire body isn't hurting and if you really feel like you're on a need-to-know basis!" he jokingly asked back, as he all the while clearly enjoyed what she was doing to his nether regions.

"Why not now?" she asked back and was a little taken by surprise, when he instead of answering her, began kissing her and pulling herself down on top of himself and at the same time, began taking her thin summer top off. The shock of it made her let out a small squeal of joy, but when comparing the feeling of his hands exploring every inch of her naked skin again, to the multiple times where she'd played with herself while imagining this moment, there truly was no comparison.

"Because right now, we have my boat to ourselves, there isn't another soul in sight, I'm already naked and we can finally get to do, whatever the hell, we want to!" he gasped, although this time it was thanks to the erotic pleasure, she was providing him with and not just sore muscles. Even though, if Joey had to be truthful, she still wasn't always entirely sure of when which was which!

"What did you have in mind?" she teasingly asked him, before taking off her own shorts and panties, to put them on a more even playing field.

"This" he simply said, before he began sticking finger up in a most intimate part of her body, that it was only herself aside from him, who'd stuck one up in before then.

END OF CHAPTER FIFTY