There isn’t exactly strategic planning to the way he places his words. If he had actually tried to put more thought in to it then he probably wouldn’t have given in to this indulgence that let himself believe that this is what was best. He just lets himself get consumed by his own selfishness as he tells her he might need a little space when in reality it’s probably farther than anything he’s ever truly wanted.

Her eyes look up at him round from shock and red from the tears that are starting to fall out slowly spreading over her cheeks. She wipes them away quickly trying to gain full control of her voice as she asks him if that’s what he really wants. Her words quake with mixtures of hurt and anger but more importantly surprise. “This is really what you want, Jim?” she asks again a little louder than before.

He never stops watching her. Every word from her is a punch in his stomach that he’s all too willing to take. He made this happen and he’s not afraid to tell himself that as he himself starts to cry. “I just need to think about some things. That’s all. I just need to be alone for a little bit.”

“I’m not going to play games with you, Jim.” She’s stern, cold, and distant. He swears he can see her love slowly leaving her body as if she was turning to stone right in front of his eyes. “I don’t understand this and I’m not sure I’m going to.”

“I just need to think. That’s all.” His fingers reached out to her and spread across her hands trying to feel as much of her skin as possible. “I love you. I just need to think.”

“Think about what?” She yells yanking herself away from him entirely. There are no more tears, no endearing quality to the way she’s looking at him, nothing but anger. “What part of this feels like love to you, Jim?” One tear falls down his cheek, then a second before countless others follow. He expects her to reach out and wipe them away for him but she doesn’t move. Her eyes just dig holes in to him demanding more from him than he’s even sure he can give her.

“I do love you. I love you so much.” His hand touches her arm rubbing it slightly before his entire body starts shaking with disappointment when she pulls away. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Pam.” It’s almost as if the floor has been taken out from under him and he surrenders all control over falling in to the chair behind him.

She moves. The point where anger can no longer cloud love and hope all but stabs her, and leans in to hold him closer to her. She lets him cling to her abdomen as she runs her fingers threw his hair. “Then why are you doing this?” She whispers. “You don’t have to do this.” Her voice cracks against his head as she leans down to kiss his forehead softly. “We don’t have to do this. We can go lie down and just talk. We don’t have to leave things like this.”

“I just want to think about stuff, Pam.” He practically embeds his face in to her stomach like if he were to let go she’d disappear. “That’s it. I don’t want to lose you.”

“What do you need to think about?” She coaxes him as if he were an adolescent child. “Just talk to me.” She puts her lips right next to his ear letting him feel the warmth of her breath hit is face.

“You won’t be here tomorrow.” He lefts his face up to burry it in the crook of her neck. “When I go to bed tomorrow night you’re going to be hours away, and when I wake up in the morning you’ll be just as far. It hurts too much to miss you. I can’t look up from my desk and see you, or kiss you, or touch you whenever I want, you’re just not going to be around.”

“We only have one more month, Jim. Then I’ll be moving back to Scranton. We both know Michael is going to hire me back. He’d beg if I didn’t volunteer already.” She kisses his cheek. “I’m coming home. You know that.”

He brings himself to stand still leaning most of his weight on to her. “I don’t know if I can keep watching you leave.” His arms go empty and it’s almost as if he had just lost a piece of his own anatomy when she steps away from him to look him dead in the eyes.

“Do you want me to just stay? Not go back? Not finish school and work at Dunder Mifflin for the rest of my life?”

“No.” He shakes his head profusely. “I just need…”

“What about what I need? Are you interested in what I need?”

“Of course!” he demanded. There were no more tears, no lingering attempts to touch her. He took his turn to step away from her in complete shock by the obscurity of the question.

“I need to know that I have a home to come back to in a month. That I still have a life and a fiancé and a life.” All he can do is watch her twist her engagement, sliding it half way off her finger before pushing it back. She did this over and over again each time she’d push the ring a little further making it harder for him to catch his breath. When she did finally take it off her finger all together he felt the air leave his lungs and his world start to crumble. “Take it back.” Once he started to shake his head he couldn’t stop. “Just take it…” The tears that covered her cheeks couldn’t be wiped away or cleared up quickly. “Take it back and give it back to me when you really mean it. When you’re ready to give me what I need.”

“I won’t take it back, Pam.” He wanted to look her in the eyes to let him know just how much he meant every word but he couldn’t stop staring at how the ring lying in her hand like a piece of scrap metal. “I just wanted to slow down a little bit. Not… not like this.” He could see her body start shaking. He slipped one hand in to her hair letting his thumb rub against the stains on her cheek the tears left behind. He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, and when she closed her eyes he placed small kisses on top of them. As his lips went to hers his other hand reached out and took the ring while his other hand slipped down to find the right finger. He slid the cold piece of metal back down her finger.

They burned her as they rested in the corners of her eyes before plunging down towards the pillow. Her cheeks were warm while the rest of her body felt frozen under her giant feather comforter. Heat would cloud her face as her breath bounced back against the fabric. She tired everything she could to keep the sobs from rocking her entire body while the rest of her worked on swallowing her sounds. She had walked in to this with unrealistic expectations and now she was playing for it.

The front door squeaked as it opened and squealed as it was shut with a loud thud. The locks jingled for a moment until there was nothing more than slow footsteps, one after another pushing past boxes, coming closer. Her heart beat quickened with every step until another made an irritatingly loud noise. She slowly let go of her breath as she continued to muffle her own sounds and lying completely still.

He could see her eyes wide and red as he stood at was normally his side of the bed. His eyes never left her body as he slid down his pants watching how her silence sent convulsions threw her body in spite of how still she looked. When he climbed in to the bed he let his body fall limp throwing a heavy arm across her middle and nudging his face in between her shoulder blades creating small random kisses on her back. Right as his arms tightened pulling her even closer to him she let out a loud gasp but very little air could pass through her lips.

“Why did you tell my brother not to let me come over?” He asked in almost a whisper.

“Only if you drank too much. I didn’t want you getting hurt or anything.” Everything about her current state was feeble. Her voice had never been this weak and all he could was nod his head against her back and squeeze his arms around her to let her know he was still there. He turned her around in his arms easing her face in to the crock of his neck feeling her tears drown him. “I’m sorry,” said a strange voice that seemed like it was coming from another woman. She choked down two more sobs. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your poker party. I wouldn’t have come if I had known that you had people over.”

“Why are you crying?” His warm breath hit her ear as his hand continuous amerced itself in her soft curls.

“I don’t know.” Sniff. “I guess I just didn’t think you’d be busy…which is stupid. I’m being stupid.” She muffled another two sobs. “I don’t know why I didn’t think you’d be busy. It’s like I should expect you to sit at home alone every night randomly waiting for me to show up.”

“I have been waiting for you, for a phone call, anything.” There were so many times he thought about picking up the phone. His fingers would spread across the handle but he could never bring himself to move them. Behind his eyes the numbers dialed over and over again but when they opened no buttons had been pushed. Six unanswered voicemails and four unreturned text messages were already left on her phone. On top of that she had forgotten to call last night so he spent a good three hours sitting on the floor with his back against the bed post trying to decide whether or not he should just drive to New York before finally getting so worked up he had to force himself to go to bed angry.

He called once today. Saying he hoped everything was alright, kept things light by making a joke about being her emergency contact so they have to call him first, but in the end the joke sounded like more of an accusation. To be perfectly honest that was exactly what is was. Her phone hadn’t been off or dead because it never just jumped straight to voicemail like it usually did. “You haven’t called me in two days so I called my brothers.” His brothers came over ready with cards and beer. He didn’t get a chance to hear his phone ring in the next room or the message on his voicemail. “Hey, Jim. Please call me back soon. I…I really need to talk to you. I love you. Bye.” Instead he focused on the smoothness of the cards and the vibrancy of the numbers. He let his mind fill with the laughter of the room rather than loss of her voice.

He pulled away only enough to look in to her eyes and brush a small piece of hair behind her ear. “I wasn’t even sure if you missed me or not,” he said clearly in a monotone voice.

“I miss you.” No more sobs. “It’s hard to tell you that though.”

“How could it possibly to hard to tell your fiancé that you miss them?” There was something distant about him now and it was all her eyes could focus on. “It shouldn’t be hard for you to tell me anything.” Their bodies were no longer touching, no lingering looks of love or attempts to brush against each other.

“You replaced me already, Jim. Two months apart and you don’t really need me anymore.” In the mid-sentence her voice cracked, her face contorted, and she was uncontrollable again.

“What are you talking about?” He didn’t reach out to her. Instead he rolled over on to his back and left his arms at his side letting himself feel her entire body shaking with sobs next to him.

“The new temp.” She wiped away her tears concluding that he wasn’t going to do it for her. In her mind she saw his thoughts over her being immature and unattractive. “The last time we talked she was all you could talk about. How she was funny, the prank you guys pulled on Kevin, how she was so smart for thinking it up. She never lets the candy dish run out either.”

He turned to her now really looking so deep in to her eyes he could see the different flakes of color, not the mention what was behind them. “We talked about more than that.”

“No, Jim. We didn’t.” She spoke firmly. “I asked you how your day was, you talked on and on about her, and then said you had to go to bed because you were going to meet her before work tomorrow.” She rolled on to her side as close to the edge of the bed as she could get.

“Hey…” he whispered ready to bring himself to tears. “I never…” He crawled over to where she was and slipped an arm firmly across her waist, leaning over her slightly he laid small kisses on her shoulder. “I don’t even know what to say to that, Pam. I spend most of my time talking about you to everyone else.” He gently pulled some hair towards him and tucked it behind her ear so he could reach her cheek. He kissed it lightly. “I love you.” He kissed it again then removed all the hair that had been covering her neck entirely. “Is that why you haven’t been returning my messages?” He buried his face in-between her neck and her shoulder waiting to listen but she never spoke. She just slowly nodded her head. “What time do you have to leave?”

“I have to be up by four and out by six,” she mumbled. If he hadn’t had the experience of listening to her talk in her sleep he might not have understood her at all. There was silence for at least three entire minutes. “I’m not going.”

“What? You have to go!”

“No, Jim. I really don’t.” She rolled over to face him again. “I’ve missed one day the entire semester. I can miss one more.” Her hand slid up to brush hair out of his face, the first contact she had initiated the entire night. “Just one day. I promise.”

“Can I skip it too?” She smiled at his childish voice and the way his words curved around the small yet growing grin of his own. She leaned up and kissed him before looking him dead in the eyes. “I don’t want to be replaced.”

“I could…” Her finger was pressing hard on to his lips before he could even consider finishing.

“I don’t want to become irrationally jealous because my fiancé doesn’t think before talking incessantly about another woman. I don’t think he’d appreciate it if I talked about the nude models in my art class for over an hour before hanging up on him.”

“No. He wouldn’t like that. He’d probably be banging down your door in New York and then sitting in on all your classes to make sure knows exactly how taken you are.”

“I don’t want us to end because we’re stupid.” The next kiss didn’t end.