"You have my cell phone number. The number for the police is on the fridge, and Sheryl’s number and the number for Trattoria Bella is on the counter. And, uh, 911 I think you know already."

"Okay. Got it," Jim nods.

"Listen, I really appreciate this, Jim. I know it’s Saturday night and all, but, um, it was short notice and I couldn’t get anyone else, so..."

"Don’t...don’t mention it, man," Jim insists. "Anytime." He knows dates are few and far between for Toby.

"Well, I guess I’m going to go now. Sasha’s in her room playing Dora the Explorer on GameCube. She didn’t take a nap today so she should be ready for bed in an hour or so. She had a bath earlier and she already ate dinner so all she needs to do is brush her teeth." Toby looks at Jim dolefully and shrugs. "Nothing’s changed much."

Jim doesn’t know why those words bite into him they way they do, but somehow he knows Toby’s not just talking about Sasha’s bedtime routine.

"Jim!"

The little girl comes bounding down the hallway in her nightgown. Laughing, she wraps her arms around Jim’s legs and squeezes, pressing her face into his shin. He scoops her up and she hugs him.

"Hey, Sasha!" He can’t keep himself from smiling like a huge dork but Sasha does it to him every time. He hasn’t babysat her in almost a year. "Wow," he says. "Pretty soon you’re going to be as tall as me."

"No!" She shrieks, shaking her head, her blonde hair whipping Jim’s face.

He sets her back down and she says goodbye to Toby as he leaves, and then she turns back to Jim.

"Do you want to come play Dora with me?"

"Sure." He lets Sasha take his hand as she leads him back to her bedroom.

Her room looks the same as the last time he was there, walls painted a pale lavender with fluffy white curtains on the windows. Disney princesses and Barbie dolls are everywhere. Jim pauses in front of a collection of watercolor paintings, obviously done by Sasha. The colors are bright and vibrant, yellow, orange, green, purple and red. He kneels down to get a better look.

"Sasha, these are really nice," he says. She stands next to him.

"Thanks. These ones are fireworks," she points. "And these are flowers. Pam did them with me."

"Pam?" He turns and looks at Sasha but she’s already plopped down on the floor in front of her video game. "Does Pam come over here?"

"She did once," Sasha says, staring intently at the TV screen. "She watched me when Daddy had to go somewhere." She looked back at Jim with huge blue eyes. "Will you paint with me later?"

"We’ll see," Jim replies as he settles next to Sasha on the floor. "But for right now, I want to watch you play Dora because I have never been able to beat this game, and the word is that you’re the best in town at it."

* * * *

It’s eight-thirty and Sasha is still nowhere near tired enough to go to bed. Jim lets her pick out a DVD from the array of movies in Toby’s entertainment system. After twenty minutes she finally decides on Barbie, The Princess and The Pauper.

Jim finds himself getting more into the movie than he probably should. Sasha’s head is in his lap and he thinks she may be falling asleep, but then she shifts, her little hand holding on to his knee.

"Jim," she says, watching the screen as the king in the movie appears. "Do you have a girlfriend?"

He hesitates before answering. "Yup."

"Do you love her?"

"Mmm, not exactly." He’s not sure whether or not to elaborate his relationship status to a five-year-old and he decides not to.

"Yeah." Sasha sighs. "My daddy has a new girlfriend. I don’t think he loves her either."

"Well," Jim answers gently, "I know for a fact that your dad loves you more than anybody."

"I know. He tells me every day."

* * * *

Jim tucks Sasha into bed and flops back on the couch in the dark living room. The menu to the Barbie movie is replaying, over and over again, and it’s too much pink for him to stand but he doesn’t feel like turning it off.

His eyes are heavy and he shouldn’t be this tired at nine o’clock on a Saturday night. Yet, lately, the only time he feels awake is when he’s lying in bed, trying to sleep but can’t because all he can do is think.

He thinks about how quickly he’d said yes to Toby when he was asked to baby-sit. He thinks it’s because the extra money will help out with Christmas coming, and he knows Toby needs to get laid. But the real truth is that he was inexplicably relieved not to have had to make an excuse... to not make plans with Karen.

She’d laughed at him when he had told her what he was going to be doing, that he was going to be baby-sitting Toby’s daughter. I see how it is, she’d joked. You’re standing me up for a five-year-old. And even though she was kidding, he’d tried not to take it personally and he’d bitten his lip to keep from getting defensive.

But it’s been getting harder and harder for him to do that.

I mean, really, she'd thought to herself.  On what planet does a twenty-seven-year-old guy offer up his weekend night to baby-sit?  She’d even offered to come over and hang out while he baby-sat but he’d told her he hadn’t thought it was such a good idea. And she hadn't been able to help but feel dejected when he had done that.

So now it’s nine o’clock and she’s trying not to wonder what he’s doing, because she doesn’t do things like wonder and she’s trying to keep busy so as not to call him, because she doesn’t check up on people.

She decides to stay home and watch a movie, because she’s faced the fact that she doesn’t have any friends yet in Scranton. She’s really got no one besides Jim, and she figures that maybe it’s good he’s got other plans tonight. Dependency isn’t in her nature and she’s starting to get the creepy feeling that she’s becoming clingy. It’s weird enough that she’d moved here to begin with, but what’s done is done and now she’s sitting on her couch on a Saturday night wearing flannel pajama pants and her old sorority sweatshirt, watching a movie she’s not even really paying attention to.

She’s been hit on exactly twice since she’s moved here.

The first time was when she and Jim had been eating dinner at Farley’s. Jim had gotten up to go to the bathroom. She had waited at the table by herself, and a guy in his mid-twenties, in a suit, had approached her and offered to buy her a drink. The second time while she was in the grocery store, it was a guy who was maybe in his early thirties, and he’d asked her to help him find the peanut butter. Both men had been entirely inconsequential and she had totally blown them off.

But now as she sits, curled up in a ball on the sofa, she wonders why she can garner so much attention from men, and yet have such a hard time making girl friends. She thinks that’s what she likes so much about Jim. He’s a guy, through and through, but she can talk to him like she would a girl. Like, the time she’d accidentally let it slip that she’d had really bad cramps, he hadn’t recoiled in disgust. He’d made some dumb joke about Midol. She liked that.

She figures maybe that’s why she’s so disappointed in the fact that he has other plans tonight. It’s like being stood up by your best friend and your boyfriend all at once.

She tries to pay attention to the movie, but it’s impossible. She clicks off the TV and jumps to her feet.

Karen isn’t one to hang out in bars alone.  But there’s no way she’s going to spend a Saturday night sitting home.

* * * *

She sits at the bar in Coopers. She’s finished two glasses of red wine already but she’s decided ladylike doesn’t matter tonight so she orders a Coors Light draft.

She grabs the cold glass and swallows the beer down, not liking the way it feels in her stomach but deciding it’s better than the emptiness.

It's too tempting to call Jim because she knows he won't get mad or take it the wrong way if she does.  But she's not that girl and even though she's mesmerized by him, she can't let him think she is because that's the way it works.  She doesn't play games and she likes that about herself, but she knows the rules and she understands the concept of personal space.

Coopers is dead for a Saturday night and she figures it’s probably because people are out Christmas shopping, or at Christmas parties. The realization that Christmas is coming finally hits her and she thinks about her family back home in Connecticut. She’d be making the trip home to see them on Christmas weekend, and that was something to look forward to. She’d have new stories to tell, about her new office and her new boss and her new apartment, in a new town. She hopes she can smile while she talks about it all.

She wonders if she’s really happy here.

He had met her at the gym. She was pretty, and blonde, and she'd made him smile. Chelsea was her name. He had been running on the treadmill, engrossed while listening to Dave Matthews when she first approached him. Running had cleared his mind and made his heart beat fast and his blood flow, and it was his favorite thing to do after eight hours of mindless work at Dunder-Mifflin. But when he saw her, he’d realized he wasn’t running anymore and his heart was still beating, and his blood still flowing.

She had asked him to go to her company’s Christmas party at the Trattoria Bella in Wilkes-Barre. He’d almost declined because a party meant dancing and laughing and conversation, all of which he hadn’t been sure he was ready for with someone so new to him.  But the thing is, he hadn't had a chance to think or worry about that because she'd said hi and complimented him for doing five miles in under thirty-five minutes.  And something about her lips had made his stomach drop. 

Yet he'd still almost declined.

But here he is, on Saturday night, at a party full of people he doesn’t know, with a girl he’s only spoken to twice at the gym and once on the phone. She’s bubbly, and he laughs sincerely at her jokes.

"You know, Toby," she says, touching his arm, "when I first saw you, I was afraid to talk to you."

"Really," he says, taken by surprise. He’d had three Jack and cokes and it’d helped him immensely. "Why?"

"Because. You always seemed so, I don’t know, distant. Like you were there at the gym for a purpose, and nobody’d better talk to you or bother you. I’ve noticed you for a while."

"Oh," Toby looks down at his drink, unsure of how to answer her. He wants to say he’s noticed her too, and that he’d wanted to talk to her for a while. But that wouldn’t be the truth.

"But don’t worry," she says. She’s almost drunk and Toby can tell. She goes on to say something else but all Toby can do is let his eyes drift down to the deep v-neck of her sweater, and the quarter inch space between her breasts. He’s not listening and he almost feels bad.

"...every time. Don’t you think?" She asks, and his eyes snap back up to meet hers.

"Oh...yeah," he recovers, and vows not to let that happen again. He glances at her. She has green eyes and ivory skin. He thinks she’s beautiful and feels so bad for not listening to her.

"So do you want to dance?" she asks, smiling. She’s that type, he thinks.

"Um," he hesitates.

"Or not," she shrugs. "I’m not much of a dancer anyway. Actually I think dancing on the first date is a terrible thing to do, unless you really want to make an ass of yourself. I don’t know about you, but that’s the last thing I want to do on a date. Do you want another drink?" She points at his glass which is now full of ice water.

"Sure," he says. "Let me go."

She agrees, and he gets up, making his way to the bar.

He’s not sure he’s prepared for this, for her, but he's desperately willing to wait and find out.

This one is no different. He’s fucked up already and it’s only nine-thirty. He takes a swig from his bottle of Yuengling and squeezes through groups of people that he doesn’t know and doesn’t care to, because then he’d have to explain what he did for a living, and why he wasn’t one of them anymore. And that wasn’t why he was here.

This particular party had been thrown by a couple of guys that he used to go to business school with. They’d had finals the day before and were celebrating before winter break. As he walks through the hallway of the house, he greets people he recognizes and he can’t stop himself from thinking that he should be happy, too. Happy because all of his studying had been put to use. Happy because he’d aced his finals. Happy because all of his hard work was going towards something bigger, better.

But instead he’s settled for the fact that that’s not his life right now. So he drinks more, and feels a little better because even though he’s put school on hold, at least he’s got a job, doesn’t have to live at home with his parents, and getting his degree in business is always a viable option for the future. It was a lucrative endeavor, and really, what was more important than making money?

He remembers it’s Saturday, and he’s still got exactly thirty-four hours before he really needs to worry about anything.

He’s starting to get dizzy and he needs to find a place to sit. He sees an empty couch in the living room and plops into it. He hates sitting alone at a party but he can’t find the guy he came with and he doesn’t feel like looking.

He checks his phone and Kelly’s tried calling him twice in the past half-hour, even though they’d had an agreement that Saturdays were his nights out. Or, at least, he’d had that agreement.

He hears a female voice to his left and he looks over and up and sees a short, skinny girl with curly brown hair.

"Hey," she says. He recognizes her but he can’t remember how.

He lets his hazy eyes focus on her a little better and she’s got olive skin and dark lips. Italian, maybe? He thinks.

"Hey," he gives a quick smile, looking down.

She sits down next to him and even though the whole couch is empty she lets their thighs touch and Ryan jerks, as if he wants to move over. But he stays where he is because he thinks that if he moves he might throw up. He takes a drink from his beer to wash away the thickness in his throat.

"You were in one of my classes last year," she points at him.

He doesn’t remember and it may not even be true, but he nods his head. "Oh...yeah, I think so."

"It’s not...Jason, is it?" She squints, tilting her head and she’s incredibly cute.

His lips are dry. "No. Ryan." He holds his hand out and she shakes it.

"Ryan," she repeats. "Who are you here with, Ryan?"

"Um...I came with Alan. He’s...somewhere."

"Oh." She nods in response, pursing her lips. "How’d your finals go?"

He bites the inside of his cheek. "Pretty good," he lies.

She smiles and proceeds to tell him how hers went and then she starts talking about music and her car and the 76ers game she went to last weekend. And Ryan doesn’t think he’s said a word in response but he can tell she’s really into him.

When she finally stops talking her hand is resting lightly on his thigh, her palm facing up. She’s looking down but her hand begins to slowly move upwards and he feels himself getting an erection.

He doesn’t know how much time passes before she’s leading him down the hallway by the hand and he can’t see anything but her tiny back and her brown hair. His stomach is burning and his legs ache but he’s following her anyway.

They’re in the guest room and she sits him down on the bed and begins to unbutton her cardigan and he’s watching but he’s not really sure who or what he’s seeing. He lets her push him backwards a little so that he’s lying down and she’s straddled on top of him, her knees beside his hips. He lets her take her hands and run them down his chest and he lets her unbutton his jeans.

But then she tries to kiss him, and he finds himself staring into brown eyes that aren’t Kelly’s and...he can’t. He just can’t.

So he gets up and she moves to his side and looks at him. "What’s wrong?" she asks.

"Nothing." He leaves without another word and he pretends not to see her sitting on the bed, cross-legged and without her top.

He’s out the door before he knows what’s happening and it’s a good thing the house is close to the university because he didn’t drive, and he really needs a taxi.

As he sits in the backseat of the cab with his sweaty forehead pressed against the cool glass of the window, he tries to figure it out but it’s impossible. He tries to tell himself he’s not going to call Kelly when he gets home, tries to tell himself he won’t sit through forty-five minutes of endless inane chatter, and tries to make himself believe that he was just too drunk to have sex with a strange girl at a party.

But that’s impossible, too.

She sits in front of the blank canvas on the easel she keeps set up in her kitchen. She’d taken to painting in the kitchen lately, and it’s got something to do with a phone call she’d accidentally answered a few months ago, a call that had turned her inside out , a call that she’d come this close to having never answered.

But she doesn’t believe in things like fate anymore.

She isn’t sure what she believes in but she does her artwork in the kitchen because it makes her think of him and when she does, she’s happy with what she creates.

Pam uses art better than she uses words.

Staring at the whiteness of the canvas, she tries to picture what it is she’s feeling but there are no colors or shapes to describe it. Nothing precise, anyway. Nothing real enough to paint.

She hates the fact that she knows he’s babysitting Toby’s daughter tonight. She almost wishes he’s with Karen on a date somewhere because then she wouldn’t have the nagging desire to call him, to talk to him. Talk to him about anything. Life, work, dirt. She didn’t care. But she’s babysat Sasha before and she knows Sasha’s sleeping right now. She knows Toby’s not home yet because it’s only ten and she knows Jim’s still there. And she knows she should be focusing on her art assignments but she also knows that she’ll never get anywhere with it, feeling as confused as she does.

Pam contemplates sending a text message but she thinks about how that had gotten her nowhere last time and how badly that had stung. And even if she did send one, she wasn’t sure what she’d say.

Sighing, she sits and stares, and it’s too quiet and the florescent lights are too bright and it’s just too empty.

She thinks.

She remembers the taste of grilled cheese and the hot, smoky smell of fireworks, and how they had sort of danced but not just when the music was playing.

She remembers a January night and the soft sound of water lapping and his gentle smile that had faded into something else, and that she hadn’t really been cold, at all, standing there, facing him. In fact she’d felt warmer than she’d ever been in her life.

She remembers his hands holding hers, feeling his breath on her lips and his eyelashes against her cheeks.

She paints.

She remembers his arms around her when he’d come back, how he’d held her so tightly, and how when she’d slid out of his grip the smile in his eyes had made her come alive again.

She keeps painting.

* * * *

By eleven o’clock, her assignment is nearly done. She’s a mess, there’s paint covering the dropcloth she’d put down on the linoleum floor, and her jeans are stained with red and blue and orange and purple.

She hears a faint buzzing and she thinks maybe the radiator is broken again. Sighing, she gets up to check on it when she sees her cell phone vibrating, dancing on the end table next to her armchair.

It’s from Jim. And it simply reads:

She texts back:

His response:

She replies:

And he answers:

She thinks her Saturday night didn’t turn out to be so bad, after all.