“Imma Drunk Driver,” his face overwhelmed by a childish pout.

            Karen laughed softly and smiled. Too cute, she thought as she gently pulled the bike out of Jim’s clammy hands so that she could put it in the back of her SUV. 

            “I can see that,” she teased but Jim was absently chewing on the inside of his bottom lip and reaching for the handle to the back door.  He missed the first time and landed against the side of the car before he got the door open.

            “Imm juss gonna lay down back here, kay?” He crawled into the back seat and shut the door behind him, shaking her head at the ridiculous picture that his lanky frame made curled up in the still to small seat.

            “Just don’t puke, or anything,” she warned as she buckled her seat belt.

            As she put the car in gear she heard his slurred reply, muffled by fabric. She stole a quick glance at him in her review and felt an unexpected pang in her chest at the sight of him curled up with his eyes closed, the lower half of his face buried in his balled up suit jacket.  Tonight had been the first night since he’d transferred in that Karen felt she had seen Jim completely open and untroubled.  She couldn’t explain why, but even when he had jokingly helped her track down her favorite chips, or laughed with her when they had fobbed the broken desk chair neither had wanted off on Any, Karen had sensed that Jim Halpert wasn’t as happy as he appeared to be. 

But tonight…tonight he had been adorable beyond endurance. She had to admit she thought he was hot, and he was a pretty cool guy to be around.  She hear him groan slightly into his jacket and she suddenly had a vivid picture of him naked, on top of her, and as sweaty as he’d been that morning as he thrust into her.  She cleared her throat and went with that thought.

“So, Jim,” she bean. “What have you got planned for tomorrow night?”

She glanced in the mirror again and almost lost it when she caught site of his expression.  His forehead was crinkled in confusion over his comically squinted eyes and he’d unconsciously stuck the tip of his tongue out the side of his mouth.

“What day was tonight, again?” he asked.

Karen was prevented from replying by a loud humming coming from the vicinity of Jim’s pants pocket and laugh loudly when he leapt into a seat position from surprise.

“Jeeze, Halpert,” She chuckled. “Calm down, its just a text message.”

She saw Jim purse his lips in concentration as he tried to pull them message up on his phone, the his eyes widened and his mouth dropped open at whatever he’d read. When she saw his fingers hit the redial button, she had another graphic image of him with his head between her thighs.  As soon as he was done drunk dialing whoever had sent him that text, she was making sure they’d be spending Friday night with each other, and possible Saturday and Sunday nights as well if she could.  Then his raspy voice came from the back seat just as she pulled into the parking lot of his apartment complex.

“B-Beesly,” he stuttered, as she put the car in par.  When she turned around in her seat his eyes were slightly unfocused and glassy, like he might cry. Then he was shaking his head vehemently, despite the fact the person on the other end couldn’t see it.

“No, didn’t get your first m-message,” he said. “I’m drunk.”

Listening to his half of the conversation, Karen wondered if it was a brother or some other buddy of his scolding him for seemly partying it up without them.

“No, no bar…had ta stay late. Andy made me do Jagger shots. Very important tradition. Nuh huh another co-lady, co-sales lady, person, work..ugh! Karen drove me home”

Then he got quiet, his voice small, like a lost little boy and his next words stalled the x-rated video playing on a loop in Karen’s imagination.

“It sucks here, Pam. I miss you ssoo much.” A fat tear actually slipped out of his eye. “Why didn’t you tell me you called it off?”

Thoughts bounced around Karen’s mind like a ball bearing in a pin ball machine. Who was Pam and what could have been so big that Jim was drunkenly crying over her not telling him.  Her hopes of starting something with him died a little more are she watched his shake his head again.

“No, I wanted you to. I thought you didn’t care when you never…I didn’t stop…” He trailed off, confusion clouding his eyes enough to override his tears. “No, I still gotta go in early. Um, yeah I guess I could, I haven’t taken one yet so…Um yeah, hang on.”

Jim raised his head up and held out his phone to her.

“Pam said she wants ta talk to you,” he said matter-of-factly

As she put the phone to her ear, Karen knew she didn’t really want to have the impending conversation.

“Hello,” she greeted as causally as possible.

“Hi, is this, Karen?” came a soft feminine voice and even through the phone it was impossible not to catch the kindness in it. Karen sucked in a breath. Well, there goes my big plans if this is what I’m up against, she thought.

“Uh, Yeah,” she managed. “This is Karen Fillipelli.”

“Can you do me a huge favor?” Pam asked, her voice a little anxious. Karen wasn’t quite sure her ego could stand to help the woman who had effectively beat her out for Jim’s attentions, even if he hadn’t known she was interested yet.  Still, she found her self saying yes, she could and that it wouldn’t be a problem. Pam sounded noticeably relieved. “Okay, could you make sure to help Jim into his apartment and hide his key somewhere so I can find it? I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Jim drink much before, but when he gets as far gone as he sounds right now, he’s like the walking dead the next day.”

As if on cue, Jim groaned and let his head fall back on the head rest.

“Uuugh, ev’ry tings spinning,” He moaned. “Why did you let me drink so many, Fillipelli!”

He’d obviously had been loud enough to be heard on the other end of the phone, because Pam giggled into Karen’s ear.

“Yeah, that’s what he gets for letting me get wasted at last year’s Dundies?”

“Dundies?” Karen was confused.

“It’s an awards thing our boss here in Scranton came up with. Its stupid,” Pam quickly explained. “But, can you make sure that he’s settled so that he won’t hurt himself before I get there?”

“You’re going to drive from Scranton tonight?” Karen asked, sounding skeptical. “Don’t you have to work tomorrow too?”

Pam sighed, and Karen heard a note of the same sadness she’s sensed in Jim all these months.

“Well, Jim and I…we need to work some stuff out. Before he left, he told me…, “ Pam stopped herself. “Well that doesn’t really matter, but I was to much of a coward and I made a huge mistake.  I need to fix that and the only way I can is to talk with him about it you know?”

“Yeah,” Karen found herself agreeing.

“And anyway, with a boss like Michael Scott it won’t be too hard to come up with an excuse to take an extra sick day.”

Karen laughed at that. The stories of Michael Scott were the stuff of Dunder Mifflin legend.  Despite herself, Karen found she liked this woman she’d never met. As she handed the phone back over to Jim, she started the process of getting him into his apartment alive. Before she left she made sure to slip his key under the mat.

 *           *           * 

The following Monday, Jim came into the office with a big grin and a significantly more confidant gait.  Even Andy’s teasing him over “Big Tuna” not handling his booze didn’t seem to effect him.  Whatever Pam had said they had needed to talk about had been worked through, and when she caught site of the “Voluntary Admission of Relationship” form on his desk she had a fairly good idea of just how the weekend had gone.  Karen sighed as the office lights went out and her co-workers pulled up Call of Duty on their computers. She counted her blessings that she wouldn’t have to worry that he’d remember she had tried to ask him out.

            She looked up from her beer on the table in front of her when he walked through the door of the dimly lit bar and smiled as she waved him over.

            “Hey you,” she greeted enthusiastically. “So I feel that you owe me at least 2 alcoholic beverages for not warning me that the stories of Michael Scott are totally understated.”

            Karen smiled and rested her chin on her hand, learning flirtatiously closer to Jim as he sat down across from her. He smiled slightly as he draped his coat on the bench next to him.

“If I had told you the truth, would you have believed me?” He gave a little laugh, but to Karen it seemed as though something was slightly off about him right then, his cheerful mood a little forced.  In all honesty, he’d been acting oddly for him all day.  He’d hung back from the other Stamford people during Michael’s “meeting”; he’d kept their interactions to a minimum during the day; and when she had causally rubbed his back on the way back into the building from the parking lot, he’d tensed slightly and moved away from her touch. Initially she had written it off as having to do with being back at the insane asylum that seemed to be operating at the Scranton branch.  But, now seeing him in a different setting, she noticed tenseness in his posture and weariness in his eyes when there should have been relaxation and humor. 

Karen thought back over the day, wondering what could have been the cause. He hadn’t seemed overly surprised or shocked by Michael’s actions that day, so it couldn’t have been that. And, it couldn’t be that he was stressed over his duties as the Assistant Regional Manager since there hadn’t been much work done by anyone that day.  She’d seen him come in with Martin, laughing and joking around. Then the receptionist, Pam, had rushed up to him to give him a big bear hug.  They’d seemed to be on friendly terms, but didn’t talk for long before Michael had interrupted about some asinine thing or another.  She had seen them talking again briefly in the break room, but then she’d been distracted by Dwight asking her when her “cycle was scheduled to start” for “safety purposes.

It hit her that after he’d spoke to Pam the second time, Jim’s mood had taken a nose dive.  She couldn’t understand why.

“So,” she decided to ease into figuring out how to get him out of his funk. “Out of everyone, I think that Pam is the only sane person in that office.”

That got his attention. He sat a little straighter and his eyes widened.

“Yeah,” he replied, relaxing a bit and motioning to the waitress to bring him a beer as well. “Pam is…awesome.” He’d recovered quickly, but not before Karen had noticed the flash of something intense sweep across his face.

Part of being a good sales person is intuitively recognizing when something is going wrong for the customer.  Karen was a good sales person, and right now she knew that his edginess had something to do with Pam.  Suddenly, the idea of exploring what she’d thought to be a mutual attraction between them seemed like it might not be as good of an idea as she’d originally hoped. The waitress brought Jim his beer, and Karen used the interruption to gather her thoughts about how to broach the subject of his relationship with Pam.  She had a feeling this date wasn’t going to end with the two of them establishing themselves as a couple like she’d assumed.   When the waitress walked away, she took a deep breath and asked the question she knew he wouldn’t be able to deny.

“So, what did she do to break your heart?”

Having been in mid sip, Jim choked on his beer, his face flushed and eyes watery as he coughed into his fist.  He clearly hadn’t been expecting her to ask that.

“What?” He croaked when he could breath again.

Karen shook her head.

“Come on, Jim. I’m not blind,” she scolded. “I saw how excited the two of you were to see each other, but then you’ve been moody ever since.” 

Karen looked him straight in his eyes and was slightly taken aback by his expression.  Panicked didn’t quiet fit the mixture of fear, sadness and anxiety that floated across his face before he lowered his eyes to the beer in his large hands.  Even in the low light, Karen could see they were shaking a little.

“It doesn’t matter,” he mumbled.

Karen slumped back into her seat. Yeah, just what she’d expected.  Jim Halpert might be single, but he was definitely, completely unavailable.

“So, what happened?” She asked again.

He shook his head, as if to imply it hadn’t been that big of a deal, his body language alone enough to clue her into the fact he was about to lie his ass off.

“I told her how I felt, and she didn’t feel the same way. So, that was it. I moved on.”

It might not have been a total lie, but Karen was smart enough to know it was a gross understatement. She was angry for a few moments at how he’d lead her on, letting her think he was actually interested in her when in reality she was just a rebound for him.  But, then she noticed the way his lips were pursed together and the nervous way his fingers moved over the glass in his hands as the water came into his eyes again. It occurred to her that he probably didn’t see this thing between them as something he wanted to do, but something he thought he had to do to be happy.

And Karen could see it now, Jim Halpert wasn’t happy, at all. She doubted very much she’d ever really known what kind of person he actually was before he’d come to Stamford.  She suspected the flashes of his mischievous humor she’d seen were nothing in comparison to how he’d been before.  She felt sorry for him, sad that he’d been hurt so deeply. But still, she wasn’t going to let herself be his defense against getting his heart ripped out again. It was early enough that she could bow out gracefully with her dignity intact, without hating him.

“You know,” she began. “You’re a great guy, Jim.” 

He looked up at her and she could tell he understood what she was telling him. This wasn’t going any further, they’d be friends, but anything more than that was not a good idea for either of them. His lips twitch in an understanding smirk.

“Not really,” he said warmly. “Otherwise I would have warned you to sit down wind of Dwight.  The days when he fertilizes his beet fields before work are…aromatically appalling”

Karen laughed, glad she was able to do so. He really was a good guy.

“Good to know, Halpert,” she paused, debating on whether she should mention the sneaking suspicions she’d had since she’d seen Pam’s face when she’d hugged him hello.  In the end she’d decided to go for broke. “And, you know, maybe in the time you’ve been away some things have changed.”

He stopped laughing, confusion and wariness registering in his expression.

‘It’s just that, from what I saw today, I think you might not have to move on as much as you think.”

He swallowed hard and shook his head.  It was a long moment before he took a deep breath to respond,

“When I told her that I l…how I felt,” his voice broke and Karen wondered if he’d talked about this with anyone before now. “She was engaged. Had been engaged for three years to this dumb ass who works in the warehouse that never really appreciated her.  The guy even told me one time that he was glad I was friends with her, so he wouldn’t have to talk to her when they git home form work.”

Karen’s face must have reflected her shock at that little bit of news, because he sheepishly dipped his head and looked away from her as he continued to explain.

“Anyway, she said she was still marrying him and I transferred.  When she broke up with the guy, she didn’t try to get a hold of me or anything, so I doubt she did it because of anything I’d said,” he turned his eyes back to her. “I talked to her in the parking lot tonight and told her I was kinda seeing you and she didn’t act like it was a big deal so..” he trailed off helplessly.

Karen didn’t quite know what to say to that, she didn’t know Pam well enough to say one thing or the other about what her feelings for Jim might be. But one thing she knew for sure.

“Yeah, well, I’d try act like it wasn’t a big deal too if a guy who’d told me he loved me when I was engaged to someone else came to be later and told me he had a girlfriend.”

Jim’s eyebrows quirked. Yes, she thought, I picked up on the fact that you’d told her you had more than a crush on her, Halpert.

She was satisfied enough to see that she’d actually got him to think about that possibility.  She wasn’t going to actively play matchmaker for the guy she’d been casually dating and the girl who broke his heart, but she could at least rest easy knowing she’d been mature enough to give him a push.   Later that night, when she was curled up in her motel room, she started thinking about where she’d want to go, should a better job come along.  Maybe she could eventually get something at corporate, she had always liked New York.  And, there had been rumors that the Regional Manager at the Utica branch was planning on retiring this year.  It might be nice to run her own branch.