It was at about 5:02 on a Tuesday afternoon, as Andy was helping me slide on my pink fuzzy coat, discussing the weekend’s plans (with each other) that it hits me, like a diamond ring or a Pepsi truck (because it totally kicks Coke’s ass) or running into Britney Spears at Starbucks, all bald and babyless and sad. Wait, what was I talking about? Oh right…

“Oh my God! We’re, like, dating.”

Andy’s face fell, “Is that… not… okay?”

“Well… no. Not really.”

His face scrunched up in pained confusion.

"Wait. Explain double negatives to me again?”

My eyes rolled.

“It’s okay we’re dating Andy, geez.”

Andy grinned, wiping his forehead and nodding.

“Groovy.”

I nudged him out the door.

“You’re such a dork.”

He took me by the arm and I’ll admit, I totally swooned.

“I’m cool with that.”

“It’s burnt.”

“No, no, it’s just… Cajun.”

“How very culturally expansive of us.”

Pam places her hands on her hips, her expression stern but her lips twitching. Karen snorts.

“Okay, okay. We’ll just cut bits of the crust off where it’s the worst.” She angles her body toward the counter of their small kitchen, already in repair mode and her periphery blocked by still-lingering smoke. Their mangled fire alarm beeps weakly from the trash. “Hand me that knife?”

Instead, she feels Pam’s arms circle her from behind, fingers spread wide and warm over her ribcage and a chin resting on her shoulder.

“How about we let it cool first, yes?”

Her lips dance softly within the dip between her collarbone and her neck. Karen shivers as Pam’s curls tickle just behind her ear and she feels the wet of her tongue on her skin.

“Okay,” Karen breathes out between unmoving lips, Pam already walking them backward toward the living room couch, “You’ve convinced me.”

They end up covering the holes in the crust with whipped cream and their flushed cheeks behind the cupped hands of their mittens.

Katy’s the type of girl guys dream about. The kind that people throw pebbles against windows for, climb trees and stumble through window frames to get to. The kind you’d ask to sock hops or give a carnation to or meet her imposing daddy for. In short: Katy’s everything Pam always wanted to be in high school. Behind her arty, plastic frames and paint-stained jeans, she just wanted to be liked.

Which is why the situation they’re currently in is particularly ironic.

“Just move… a little to the left… put your leg…” Pam grasps Katy’s ankle to help her maneuver her thigh over Pam’s hip, but in the process of trying to get leverage knocks her head against the door handle. “Ouch.”

“You okay?” Katy questions breathlessly, running her purple-painted fingers through Pam’s wild hair.

“Fine. I’m just-“ She scoots back and up, so that her back is resting against the car door and Katy’s in her lap. Her hands run rivers up Katy’s jean-clad thighs, her thumb-nails catching against the inseams of the fabric. “Maybe we should go somewhere else. I feel like a horny teenager afraid to get caught by Mom making out at home.”

“But this is fun!” Katy whines with a persuasive lilt.

Pam can just make out the scarred skyline pocked by stars through the front windshield, the blanket they were using to keep warm abandoned in the front seat when Katy declared they could make their own heat. An owl hoots academically and the autumn leaves shift, restless.

“Come on,” Katy husks in her ear, “Don’t you want to see how far you can get with the captain of the cheerleading squad.”

And Pam giggles because they gave out prizes for that kind of crap in high school too. Just slip her a letterman’s jacket and call her quarterback.

So just for the record: all the way.

It’s movie Monday again. And it isn't the same as last week and the week before. Even though Michael still makes her pop five bags of popcorn that no one ever eats. And though everyone in the office has a cautious slump to their shoulders as they lug themselves into the conference room, caught between being annoyed by their boss’ forced fun and giddiness at getting a break from their droll work day. (It’s a tie.)

Because this time Karen’s sitting next to her in the staccato dark and she’s suddenly hyper-aware of the placement of her arm. How often Karen shifts in her seat. Every time her breath hitches at something surprising in the film. Pam’s so distracted that she doesn’t even notice what they’re watching until someone gets their throat slit and the cough syrup blood runs down the screen.

“Oh, eww.” She groans under her breath, closing her eyes tight and trying to dispel the image, giving her head a little shake. Someone screams, piercing and panicked, through the crappy television speakers, and something grabs a hold on her arm in a vice grip. Her head whips to the side, and there’s Karen holding on for dear life, face as white as, well… an Italian sheet.

Pam settles a comforting arm around Karen’s shoulders, and if she were a teenaged boy she’d probably be thinking how this is the perfect opportunity to “accidentally” feel her up. She’s actually not really sure if that’s not what she’s thinking, despite her age and gender. If opportunity knocks…

She knew there was a reason they chose to sit in the back row.

But she’s more focused on the way Karen’s heavy breathing evens out at their contact of skin-on-fabric-on-fabric-on-skin, and how she nestles further into the crook of her arm. How the whole top half of her body is bridging armrests to lay her head on Pam, and how she doesn’t really mind being used as a pillow because she’s pretty sure the tightness in her chest has nothing to do with Karen’s weight.

Another would-be-heroine bites the dust on screen as Pam lets out a contented sigh.


 

 

The snow forms miniature mountains around them, a growing valley where their arms drift side to side. If Pam had to guess this morning where she’d be on her break, she’s about 98% sure she wouldn’t have said lying in the snow with Angela. But the blonde is sprawled out passively beside her, every few minutes making a soft sound that could be mistaken for contentment if she isn’t careful.

And for some reason all Pam can think about is how she’d used the phrase “knock on wood” once, and how Angela had accused her of witchcraft. It seems so at odds with this quietness. This gentle existence. It makes her wonder how Angela could be so polar. Like how breath is warm huffed through an open mouth, but cold through pursed lips.

She experimentally breathes out wide and hot, watching as the air crystallizes into a fog just above her nose.

Maybe Angela’s just trying to save her soul, or some such thing, even if Pam is fairly certain her own words are on the whole more gentile than Angela’s.

But Angela doesn’t tell her she’s going to hell. Or that God is going to strike her down. She doesn’t even speak at all. Their girl time coffee talk presents itself in her memory and she wonders if maybe she’s the only girl Angela knows under the age of forty.

Angela’s actual breath humidifies the side of Pam’s neck just seconds before she scoots in close, her grey, wool coat pressing up tight to Pam’s arm. The snow compacts, shuffles into another bank by their feet and hair, top and bottom, and Pam turns her head just slightly to ask something pertaining to just what she thinks she’s doing (what they’re doing) but Angela’s lips silence her.

So maybe it’s not just a friend Angela needs.

Her hand hovers over Pam’s poofy winter coat before settling on her chest, an approximation of where her breast could, might, possibly be under all those layers, and Pam sighs even if she can’t really feel much more than the pressure of her tiny, pale hand.

It’s the gesture that counts. 
 

Her lip gloss smells like strawberries. Pam can taste it when Katy kisses her in the dimly lit hallway outside of the ladies’ room at Poor Richard’s, as it leaves a sticky trail down her neck, over the hill and valley of her collarbone, down to the neckline of her shirt.

“I’m drunk.”

Pam’s not sure if it’s an excuse or an invitation, even as the words leave her own mouth in a slurred breath, but suddenly Katy can’t stop giggling and it’s infectious.

“No, no really.” She manages to choke out between bursts of laughter, “I don’t get drunk that often but when I do…” Pam’s abruptly mesmerized by the shine of Katy’s mouth, and she only realizes the redhead is talking when her lips form the syllables of her name.

“What?”

“You’re silly, Pammy. I asked if you wanted to share a cab home.” The ‘o’ in home gets stuck in her throat for a second, and it’s almost enough time for Pam to realize that it doesn’t bother her so much when Katy calls her Pammy, even if she probably got it from Roy. Ass. Stupid finally-set-a-date-at-the-wrong-time ass.

She’s explaining all this in jumbled words as they stumble into the tiny yellow car of a taxi, and she only remembers that Katy told the driver just one address as Katy is opening the door to her apartment.

“Shhh,” Katy hushes when Pam giggles at the realization. She makes exaggerated tip-toe motions across the living room.

“Do you have a roommate?” Pam whispers.

“No.” Katy declares rather loudly, flicking on the hall light and blinding them both.

Pam collapses into her leather couch, wiggling around amidst the squeaky protests of the material to get comfortable. Katy’s thigh ends up over her own, somehow.

Her head falls back, Katy’s face just a breath away. Their noses brush and Pam begins to count to constellation of freckles across her cheeks.

“Kiss me?” Pam asks softly, and she does. She kisses her and her hand inches up her skirt, and she can’t even find in her the fidelity to stop her when her fingers slip into her cotton underwear.

She’s engaged. She should care that this is the second person’s lips becoming familiar with hers in the last week. Her second-hand glossy lips should be forming the words stop, I can’t, any one of the previous denials.

“Right there,” works too.

Roy doesn’t notice when she comes home smelling like strawberries.

Small studio apartments fill with sunlight nearly as quickly as they fill with oven heat, like water from an over-flowing bathtub. Pam watches the parallel lines of morning’s fingers reach into their bedroom, pressing thumbs into corners and drifting down the walls.

Karen is usually an early riser, with Sunday mornings being the only exception. Not even black coffee and a grape jelly doughnut will rouse her from her comatose state, ten hours since they fell asleep, satiated and sticky, last night. Karen’s back is bare, one arm shoved under the pillow and the other crooked above her head, an invitation for something Pam hasn’t decided on yet.

It strikes her like her muse would if she was something tangible, like inspiration and genius on a small, quiet scale.

Pam swings her legs over the edge of the bed, letting them drift like clock pendulums whispering time, before pressing them down onto the wood floors and padding over to her easel. Chartreuse and violet and sienna and scarlet fisted in her hand, Pam kneels down on the bedspread. She dabs a little auburn in her palm, placing a possessive handprint on Karen’s shoulder.

The Brooklyn Bridge where their eyes caught in traffic spans her lower back in indigo; train tracks just like the ones they first kissed under weave over her spin in red. Red like passion and love and the blood she’d metaphorically bleed if Karen ever said done. Green from Central Park and yellow like the cowardice that postponed the meeting of you and me to make us. Little polka-dots of orange, each for another sunset that predicts a sunrise where they’ll still be here, like this, together.

Karen sighs out an awake little breath, adjusting her shoulders; not enough to make the paint smear. Pam sits back on her heels. She surveys her work and admires the woman beneath it, the woman that is it. She waits for a response with baited breath.

But Karen smiles, grins even, blinking out sleep and motioning her closer.

“Morning.” 
 

Ketchup stains Kelly’s fingers, but as long as it’s her skin and not her pale dress, she’s okay. Well, at least okay in that sense. Okay with the mess at least.

“I’m just a stupid ass.” She sniffles. “Stupid Ryan with his stupid China or whatever and his stupid… hair! Ugh. Makes me so mad.”

The lake ripples like it agrees and she glares, hoping the sound of Michael herding her officemates and Angela being all disapproving and Stanley not caring will fade intro the distance. She has the lake. They understand each other. Just alone and cold and wavy. Egh, it’s not a perfect metaphor, okay?

“I don’t think you’re stupid.”

She glances up at Andy, wiping at her nose and hoping it isn’t all red and gross.

“Really?”

He tips her hot dog straight, which was about point five seconds or a sneeze away from falling into her lap, and offers her a smile. And it doesn‘t seem forced or like a peace offering or like he just thinks she’s crazy under it all.

“Really.”

It’s a smile she could get used to.

I’m a liar.

I told you we were (only) friends, and it was a lie.

I said yesterday that I didn’t mind listening to you rail on Roy for his latest bull-headed move, and it was a lie.

I tell myself I don’t love you, and it’s a lie.

Because of that cute face you make when I double-dog-dare you. Because when you’re really determined, you scare me a little. Because you’re wearing that pink sweater I told you looked pretty. Because I know you love me too. Because you draw cartoons of elephants and we can spend all lunch break writing thought bubbles for them. Because I love being the one that makes you laugh. Because I know you’ll never say it back.

I may be a liar, but I’m not the only one.

Solitaire becomes her haven when he’s gone. Pam flits through the digital cards, deck after deck after deck, marking win times as she goes. She thinks it’s because the rules here are simple; queen slips overtop king, jack follows after, ten after that, nine mounts ten, and so forth. Red, black, red. Aces up top. Spades go with spades and everyone goes home happy. Here the background is always green (she switches patterns for the backs of the cards because the little winking frog that Jim had picked out serves as a constant reminder of that one face that she couldn’t see). Here there are sequences, set groupings, re-deals. She doesn’t have to dwell on one miss or one mistake because there’s always the next game and the one after that. There’s no worrying if the Queen of Clovers is meant to go with the King of Spades, all pointy edges but dependable and protective, or the King of Hearts, rounded sides and red like the actual organ pumping in her chest.

But then Pam stops herself. There must be something wrong if she’s looking for the answer to her life in the inconsequential rules of a computer game.

Yet still. The Queen of Clovers goes with the King of Hearts. Black, red. Deal again.

There are only two things that anyone will remember about French night years later: the petits fours and Angela catching Karen and Pam hooking up in the stairwell.

(To be fair, the only reason why anyone remembers the former is due to Dwight’s passionate and lengthy speech about the inferiority of baby desserts and how if they really wanted to be eaten, they should grow up into real food and stop being so infantile. But this is beside the point.)

Angela blabs, of course. It’s inevitable.

So to the Dunder-Mifflin newsletter: (Cue blush.) No comment. (A cleared throat.) No, seriously.

Adrenaline is still pumping through his veins as Roy waits outside the stadium for the rest of the team.

“Got a light?”

The tiny, feminine voice matches the speaker, a cheerleader. Her red hair is tied back in a perky ponytail and she’s dressed in enemy colors. But the body underneath it is worth flirting with the competition.

He clicks his lighter beneath the cigarette between her lips.

“Thanks.”

He leans back against a minivan.

“There’s a party at my buddy’s house later. Free beer.” He shrugs like he doesn’t care.

She giggles, sidestepping.

“I don’t sleep with the enemy.”

Roy hadn’t expected to pick up a girl in the hardware store. Specifically the nuts-n-bolts aisle.

“Is this too big for a washer?”

Roy eyed the woman as he leaned over to help, satisfied that her pantsuit and slick, black hair were totally unlike ex-fiancé’s.

“I think that’ll do just fine,” he grinned charmingly.

When they woke between his flannel sheets, the morning-after dance wasn’t awkward. Neither clingy nor embarrassed, she looked at him like a swamp monster when he offered to microwave their cold, breakfast pizza, instead chomping down two pieces.

He decided this Karen girl was pretty cool.

Jim had never put much stock in fortune tellers, dismissing palm reading as hot air on cold hands. But in this case his hands spoke no lies.

“Your lines cross at a ridge.” Pam’s mouth had creased apologetically, delivering the bad news. “That sucks.”

(It was odd having his downfall predicted by the very same person that would cause it.)

Months later, graced with a view of the ocean and another girl, the memory of Pam in his arms won’t have faded with time or company.

Her neck had smelled like vanilla ice cream and her rejection like sour milk.

It’s definitely a three-cups-of-coffee-type morning.

He likes Karen, but these late-night interrogations are sapping his energy. From his desk-mate’s expression he knows they’d agree.

Angela swoops by, taking care to elbow his bobbleheads.

Angela and Dwight are in some kind of fight about smoked beets and fire extinguishers (or something; Jim doesn’t listen too hard for fear of mental scarring).

Jim and Dwight share a knowing look over his computer monitor and he wonders if they’ll reminisce in retirement like they old friends.

Dwight huffs.

“Women.”

And even though they’re kinda arch enemies, Jim knows exactly what he’s talking about.