1. Three weeks after her first day. And he isn’t sure why, but he’s never been so immediately smitten with a girl. He knows she’s engaged, but he also knows that she fought with her fiancé earlier today and he thinks they decided to take some time apart. So when they take the elevator down together at five, he kisses her before the elevator dings and the doors open. Kisses her quickly and shrugs, “Think about it.”

2. In the kitchen on a Tuesday afternoon. It’s her birthday and she looks sad. They’re eating lunch and when he presents the cupcake with the single candle to her, she almost cries. So he watches her as she closes her eyes and forms that little O with her mouth. And after the candle’s been blown out, she draws her head back slowly with her eyes still closed. Before she can open them, he leans across the table and kisses her. “Happy birthday, Pam.” There’s frosting on his tie and she laughs at him before devouring the cupcake.

3. The day of the booze cruise, after they finish doing their talking head together. Because she won’t stop looking at him and smiling. And when the crew leaves the room and she’s about to stand up, he stops her with his hand on her arm. She keeps smiling at him only now her teeth aren’t showing and when he leans in, it isn’t really a kiss because he starts to smile too. He thinks it counts anyway, because his lips tasted a little like cherries after.

4. Behind her desk after everyone’s left for the night. He flicks off the overhead lights for her and grabs on her bags which holds wedding invitations and various fabric samples in various shade of blue for bridesmaids dresses. She leans down to turn out her desk lamp and maybe it’s the weight of her wedding being literally in his hands at that moment or maybe it’s the way she looks for that brief second when just the light from the lamp is on her face. Either way, when she starts to straighten out, he catches her mouth with his and drops the bag. He doesn’t mean to, but he leans into her and presses her back into the edge of the desk, because it’s so horribly fitting to kiss her in a dark office with pieces of her wedding scattered around his feet. So fitting that when she pulls away, he says, “Sorry,” instead of kissing her again.

5. When the Stamford branch is incorporated into the Scranton branch and he finds himself at his old desk, but with a new title. Dwight and Michael have gone out to lunch with Josh and she comes over to talk to him. She leans back against his desk and her shirt tightens in various places that his eyes try to avoid. When she laughs, he feels like he’s been gone for years instead of just three months. And since nobody seems to be paying much attention to them and since the cameras left with Dwight and Michael, he tugs on her sleeve and she instinctively leans down toward him and he strains his neck to meet her halfway.

1. The morning following the Dundies, her head hurts and when she comes into work, she puts her head on the desk and tries to block out the florescent lights. She hears someone come in the door and she somehow just knows that it’s him by the sound of it. She manages to turn her head so her cheek is on the desk and she can watch him hang up his coat. When he notices her, he smiles this really gentle and understanding smile that reminds her of a look her mother used to give her when she was sick. He comes behind her desk and places a bottle of aspirin in front of her and then a bottle of water. She slowly lifts her head from the desk and smiles at him.

Later, she’s back to normal and she almost bounces over to his desk and returns his bottle of aspirin (which he’ll later place back on her desk, because he bought it for her) and says, “You’re a lifesaver.”

He asks her which flavor just to watch her cheeks when she laughs.

“Cherry.”

2. He drives her home on a night when Roy goes out with the guys and Angela has a bible study meeting. This is the first time she’s been in his car and it’s so clean that she laughs at him for it. It smells like glass cleaner and those disposable cleaning wipes.

“You were hoping I’d need a ride home today,” she says, narrowing her eyes at him.

“What?”

“Your car was obviously just cleaned. You even vacuumed,” she laughs, pointing at the mats on the floor.

“I just happened to clean my car out over the weekend, because it needed to be cleaned. That’s all.” He rolls his eyes, but he’s grinning as he starts the car and reaches quickly for the volume knob, because the music had been loud when he was alone.

“I think it had something to do with me.”

She smiles out the window and the car ride to her house seems shorter than usual.

3. The first time she goes over to his house is strange. It’s a Saturday in October and she has no reason to be going to his house, but she’s bored and Roy’s off somewhere without her so she gets in her car and tries really hard to remember his address.

When she pulls up in front of his house, she sits in the car for a long time. His car is in the driveway so she knows that he’s home. She tries to imagine him inside, moving around the place he thinks of as home. She wonders what he’s doing. Laundry, maybe. Or watching TV. She feels this strange warmth fill her as she imagines him ironing his work shirts.

She finally gets out of the car and is standing at the front door, ringing the doorbell. He answers the door in jeans and a t-shirt like she’d thought he would. When he sees her, he smiles.

“Hey! What are you doing here?”

She freezes. What is she doing here?

The t-shirt looks old, like he’s been wearing it since college. Like them hem of it would be soft beneath her fingers.

“I just wanted to see you.”

4. Roy’s asleep and she’s standing by the window that looks out onto the mountains. It’s not the best view, but the snow glistens beneath the moon and she presses her hand against the glass, pulling her robe around her even tighter. The window pane is cold in contrast with the heat of the room and she holds her palm there until her skin warms up the glass.

She likes the sound of snow crunching. She likes the way it looks in people’s hair. She likes the way it looks when it’s fresh and untouched.

She turns around to make sure Roy’s still asleep. He’s sprawled out on his stomach, snoring gently and so she finds her cell phone in her purse and pads softly across the hardwood floors which creak anyway. She closes the bathroom door gently and sits on the edge of the tub.

She breathes in and out for a moment, staring at the tiles on the floor. Then she dials his number before she can change her mind.

She realizes its three in the morning only when he answers and his voice sounds thick with sleep.

She doesn’t say anything for a second and then, “I love snow.”

“I know.”

“I miss you.”

5. He stares at her and his thumb is absently drawing circles on the inside of her wrist. She pulls her arm gently from his grasp and looks down and then back up at him and then down again because his eyes aren’t just windows, they’re doors.

She bites her lip and says quietly, “I don’t love you.”

1. [mood | tired]
[music | wilco]

We got a new receptionist at work today. Her name’s Pam. She’s actually sort of cute which is good news for me, because maybe now I won’t be so incredibly bored all the time. Bad news for her, because Michael is obviously going to exploit this at all opportunities and has already made a number of inappropriate remarks to her.

Anyway, so I turned on a little of that Jim Halpert charm, but as it turns out she’s engaged to this guy Roy who works down in the warehouse. It’s too bad, but this attraction could just be due to the fact that I haven’t gotten laid in over six months.

We’ll see.

2. [mood | confused]
[music | “love and some verses”, iron & wine]


So sort-of-cute-receptionist is turning into something more along the lines of the perfect girl. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that. I mean, she’s funny and smart and really good at coming up with pranks for Dwight.

For now, we’re just becoming really good friends. And she’s apparently been with her fiancé for ten years. And she does this thing with her head when she laughs- Okay, I need to stop, because this is obviously never going to amount to anything.

And now Mark’s telling me to go buy more beer.

3. [mood | fucked]
[music | for some reason “tiny dancer” won’t leave my head]

So she was drunk and she kissed me and I’m pretty much in love with her and it’s ridiculous that I just left her and I already miss her.

Fuck.

4. [mood | drained and maybe still half drunk]
[music | “you’re it”, halloween, alaska]

I’ve been listening to this Halloween, Alaska song over and over tonight. I’m not sure it’s helping anything at all. But it’s so fucking appropriate that I can’t turn it off.

She’s getting married in less than five months. Maybe I’ll get one of those user info countdown things.

But, seriously, five months? And he- I mean, come on. Him?

And just before all of this, we were out there talking (or mostly not talking) and it seemed like- She did everything but say that she felt something for me. But, as usual, we just let that pass.

She looked happy tonight, dancing with him. And I feel selfish because I almost hate her for it. That hurts because I used to be happy as long as she was happy and now I’m not. Now I want her for myself. Now I only want her to be happy with me, not with her fiancé. Now I resent her when she smiles and it’s not because of me. When did I become that guy?

5. [mood | blank]
[music | silence]

Everything is happening at once.

My hands won’t stop shaking and I wish I could breathe. But I really can’t feel anything right now. And it’s a wonder I can even type right now, but this needs to be recorded somewhere. I need to be able to remember that this happened.

I told her. I just said it. I had other words there, lined up on my tongue, but they didn’t come out. Instead I’m telling her that I’m in love with her. And it was that dress and the way she was smiling at me and the fact that she’s- God.

Then she just looked at me like she couldn’t believe I was calling her on this now. She said that she couldn’t. What does that even mean? She wasn’t denying it at all. She wasn’t telling me that she didn’t feel the same way about me. She was just telling me that she couldn’t. And then it was this bullshit about our friendship and misinterpretations and that hurt so much so I had to walk away.

I just walked in circles for a while until I could calm down. Honestly, I was terrified. Because, I mean, she’s my best friend not just the girl I’m in love with. And I was so afraid that I had just severed our connection entirely and I could not live with that. I really couldn’t.

She was using my phone up in the office when I found her and I caught the tail end of her conversation. Something about, “Yeah, I think I am…” And I somehow just knew what that meant.

So I kissed her. And she didn’t push me away. And then she told me that she needed time and I’m okay with that.

For once, I finally feel like I’m in motion.

1. He takes her to see a movie they both know is going to be horrible. He shrugs at the box office as he hands the cashier his money. “This way I won’t feel bad for missing two-thirds of it,” he says, smiling and reaching out to tickle her side gently while the teenaged cashier rolls her eyes and slides their tickets over to him. She giggles and then makes him order almost every single candy they have in addition to a large popcorn and a large soda.

She eats all of it before the movie actually starts and when he kisses her during the first scene, she tastes like Raisinettes and salt.

2. She makes him dinner, trying a new recipe she found in a magazine. She isn’t the best cook and he stands in the middle of her kitchen, smiling at her back. Something in the way she wipes her hands with the towel slung over the handle on the oven reminds him of being a kid and he can’t help but kiss that soft spot beneath her ear and breathe her in. When she turns around, she glares at him, “How is this helping me not burn the chicken?”

It burns anyway so he just kisses her and opens the bottle of wine he bought on the way over.

3. For his birthday, she takes him out for steak and watches his hands as he cuts into the meat. She makes him wear a ribbon she found at the dollar store earlier that day that says, “It’s my birthday!” with a random picture of a penguin on it. She’d pinned it onto him in the foyer of his house before standing on her toes to kiss the corner of his mouth and say, “Happy birthday, Jimmy.”

He smiles with his mouth full and she’s just about as happy as she could ever be.

He tries almost every imported beer the restaurant has until he feels just a little more than tipsy and then he switches to water. Still, he can’t stop laughing when a group of waiters come over and sing Happy Birthday to him, placing a piece of chocolate cake in front of him.

When they leave, she asks him, “So, did you have a good birthday?”

He smiles and leans across the table to kiss her. “The best.”

4. On a Saturday in October, he takes her for a drive through the mountains. It’s sunny and cool out. She brings her big sketchpad and a handful of freshly sharpened pencils and bounces in her seat on the way up.

He plays a CD filled with songs that remind him of fall and songs she’d told him reminded her of fall.

She makes this sound that he can only describe as the best thing he’s ever heard when they turn onto a road where all the trees are this bright yellow color and it’s like this tunnel of pure gold as the sun pours in. She rolls the window down and breathes in deep, smiling with her eyes closed.

They stop when they get close to the top of one of the mountains and she draws for an hour or so while he just watches. She fills almost half of her sketchpad and then looks up at him, “Let’s go for a walk.”

She holds his hand, her fingers knotting with his. The smell of wet leaves makes her lean into his side and when he laughs to himself, she feels it. So she stops and looks up at him, the sun hitting just behind his head so he glows when she tells him (actually tells him and doesn’t just say that she feels the same way that he does or something else that isn’t really telling him) that she loves him for the first time.

5. He doesn’t tell her where they’re going. Just tells her to wear that dress with the straps and the neckline that makes it hard for him to breathe. He’s in the living room, listening to her heels click against the floor of the apartment they moved into together just three weeks ago. He adjusts his tie nervously and when she finally comes out of the bedroom, she’s struggling with a necklace and turns around, holding her hair up so he can clasp it for her. And as the ends hook together and his fingers brush against the soft skin at the back of her neck, he knows he won’t last all fifteen miles to the restaurant.

He proposes on the sidewalk outside of their building.