This is my very first piece of fanfic ever, and I'm not totally sure that I'm done with it yet. I just wanted to put it out there.
P.S. I stole the title from an episode of Gilmore Girls, so feel free to suggest other titles.
1. Chapter 1 by Pseudonym
2. Chapter 2 by Pseudonym
3. Chapter 3 by Pseudonym
4. Chapter 4 by Pseudonym
5. Chapter 5 by Pseudonym
Everyday, Pam dreaded lunch time. She hated to see Jim go into the break room with Karen, hated waiting until the two of them were done talking and eating, hated sitting in there alone with Kevin or Angela or Toby. She started eating lunch at her desk, halfway hoping that Jim might notice and take pity on her, halfway hoping that he might bring his lunch and sit with her behind the desk so they could talk. He never did.
Today, Pam had been watching her computer clock tick towards noon, glancing at it in the corner of her screen. At 11:57, she glared at her computer, then looked up to see a woman walking through the office door, looking slightly unsure.
“Hi,” the woman said, leaning on Pam’s desk. Pam smiled politely. “Um, I’m looking for—okay, wait, are you Pam?”
“Yes,” Pam said slowly.
“I’m Sadie,” the woman said, grinning. She had wide blue eyes and a huge smile, and Pam found herself grinning back. “Jim’s sister-in-law?”
“Oh! Sadie! It’s really nice to meet you,” said Pam. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Karen move slightly at her desk.
“Jim’s told me about a million things about you. It’s so nice to finally put a name to a face.”
“Sadie?”
Both women turned to see Jim standing awkwardly a few feet away. He smiled, looking from Sadie’s face to Pam’s with confusion. Sadie stepped over to give him a hug.
“Pam and I were just getting to know each other,” Sadie said. Pam couldn’t help but notice that Sadie barely came up to Jim’s shoulder.
“Where’s Addy?” Jim asked.
“Oh, your mom has her for the day. I had to get out of the house. Apparently, newborns alternate between being incredibly boring and incredibly needy. I wanted a day off, so I pumped some milk—”
“And that is officially more than I need to know,” Jim interrupted.
“So I need to talk to you about something,” Sadie said. “Are you free for lunch?”
Pam tried not to pay attention as Jim glanced over his shoulder. Karen was pointedly ignoring him—she had been very effectively pointedly ignoring him for a couple of days now, although Pam couldn’t get Jim to tell her why. Jim threw his arm around Sadie and said, “Sure. I can take you to one of those classy local establishments I’m always raving about.”
“So, Chili’s?”
“Absolutely.”
As Jim grabbed his jacket, Sadie walked back to Pam’s desk. “You should come, Pam.”
Pam and Jim looked at each other for a second before Pam turned away. She started to shuffle a few random memos that she’d been meaning to throw away. “Oh, no, I don’t want to intrude on—”
“No, it’ll be fun. Come with us.”
Jim stood next to Sadie, putting his arms through the sleeves of his jacket. “Yeah, Pam,” he said finally. “Come with us.”
She shrugged with a tiny smile, then grabbed her purse from under her desk. She tried not to let her smile get too much bigger when Jim helped her put her jacket on. And she didn’t let herself turn around to see if Karen was watching, even though there was a part of her that was begging to see if she was.
“So I want to plan a surprise party for Jonathon,” Sadie said after the waitress had taken their orders.
“He’s turning thirty,” Jim said to Pam, who was still smiling because he had sat down next to her in the booth.
“And I know he won’t expect it, because he thinks I’m too exhausted to get out of the house and plan anything.”
“How old is your baby?” Pam asked, forcing herself to pay attention despite the fact that the whole left side of her body was itching to move closer to Jim.
“She’s exactly a month and four days old,” Sadie said. “And don’t think that I’m one of those obsessive moms who knows their child’s age down to the second. I’ve actually been keeping track of how many days its been since I had a conversation with grown ups about something other than poop.”
Pam laughed. “Sounds like you’ve had a rough month and four days.”
“No, it’s actually kind of fantastic most of the time. She’s a genius. Takes after me.”
“She’s also a giant,” Jim said. “She’s already like two feet long.”
“And in that way, she takes after the Halperts. Her feet are going to be huge, poor thing.”
Pam loved listening to Sadie and Jim play off each other as they joked about baby Addy, her prodigious poop, and her potential as a basketball player. She let herself watch Jim more freely than she had in months, and she felt the familiar jump in her stomach any time he met her eyes and smiled.
By the time the waitress came with their food, party plans were well underway. Sadie had already picked a time and a place, although she was having a hard time coming up with a theme.
“Oh, Pam can totally help you with that. She’s on the party planning committee.”
“And the Committee to Plan Parties,” Pam added. “We’re very good. We know where to get all the best streamers.”
“Then I will definitely need your help. You know what? We should get together some weekend and get all the decorations.”
Pam tried not to look surprised at the offer. Sadie noticed her hesitate, though, and said, “I need all the expert help I can get. Also, I can’t tell any of our friends until the very last minute. None of the women in my life know how to keep a secret.”
“Okay,” Pam said. “I’m in.”
“So now Jim needs to come up with a fake reason to hang out with Jonathon, and we’ll be ready to throw this thing,” Sadie said.
“And I will think about that,” Jim said, “after I wash my hands. Damn burger spit ketchup all over me.”
“Yeah, you got a little bit on your tie,” Sadie said, pointing helpfully. “Messy eater.”
“Laugh all you want, Sade. You’re going to be wearing baby puke on all your shirts for the next few months.”
“Ah, ever the supportive brother-in-law. I can’t wait to tell Addy how much fun it is to puke on Uncle Jim instead of Mommy.”
Jim rolled his eyes as he slid out of the booth. Sadie waited until she couldn’t see him anymore, then leaned across the table and said, “I want to tell you something.”
Pam leaned towards Sadie, enjoying the conspiratorial feeling she used to get when Jim would lean down to talk to her at her desk.
“You need to tell Jim,” Sadie said, her voice just loud enough to be heard over the lunchtime conversations going on around them.
“Tell Jim?”
“How you feel.”
Pam leaned back in her seat, staring at her hands as they gripped the edge of the table.
“Look, I’m sorry. I know that we met, like, two seconds ago and I have no right to get in the middle of this.” Sadie waited for Pam to say something, then sighed. “It’s just that—look, you’ve been pretty much all Jim as talked about for a couple of years now.”
Pam somehow managed to feel horrified and hopeful at the same time.
“Not to the whole family or anything. Don’t worry. But whenever he and I talk, you somehow manage to come up in the conversation. And I know that last spring, you guys—I know he told you how he felt.”
“Did he tell you?” Pam asked.
“He told me that he was leaving Scranton, so I just kind of…figured.”
“He left because of me?”
“Are you kidding? Why else would he go? It wasn’t just about a promotion, Pam. And I know that he was really sad for awhile, and not just because Stamford is a really shitty place to live. And, look, I want you to know something. Jim is a really, really forgiving person.”
Pam looked down at her hands again and forced herself to move them from her table to her lap.
“I don’t know, Sadie,” she said. “I think—it was worse than you think it was.”
“I saw a couple of really sad Jim faces,” Sadie said. “I know he was hurt. But Pam, listen—did Jim ever tell you that we dated?”
“You and Jim?”
“In college. We met during freshman orientation, then we had an econ class together, and I pretended to suck at econ so that Jim could tutor me. I was very cunning.” Pam smiled a little.
“What happened?”
“I married his brother.” Pam stopped smiling. “Not while Jim and I were dating, obviously. But he took me home at Christmas to meet his family and everything, and I met Jonathon, and by the end of January, Jim and I weren’t Jim and I anymore.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. I have to say, it sounds incredibly bitchy even to me. But as soon as I met Jonathon, I was lost. There was no way I could keep dating Jim when I knew I was going to marry Jonathon.”
Sadie stopped to take a sip of her drink and watch Pam’s face for a minute. Pam didn’t know what she should be thinking or saying. She just knew that while she stared at her hands, which were now busy folding and unfolding the napkin in her lap, Jim had made his way back to the table and was sliding back into the booth.
“You guys done plotting?” he asked.
“What?” Pam said, knowing that she looked distracted but not knowing what to do about it.
“The prank. Come on, I know better than to leave the two of you alone. What did you do?”
Sadie winked at Pam and said, “Nothing, Jim. We were just having a little girl talk.”
Pam let Sadie and Jim dominate the conversation on the car ride back to the office. She settled into the back seat of Jim’s car and stared at him in the rear view mirror. Once, he glanced up and met her eyes, and she smiled just a little. It wasn’t much, but now that she knew what it felt like for Jim to avoid her eyes, it felt good to see him looking at her again.
Sadie came back up to the office so that she could watch Jim write down the party’s date in his planner. “He can be a little unreliable,” she said to Pam. “He forgot his own birthday once.”
“Totally untrue,” Jim said over his shoulder.
“I actually believe you,” Pam said to Sadie. Jim pulled a face before walking over to his desk to find his planner.
“Pam,” Sadie whispered, “trust me. If Jim can forgive me, he can forgive you.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
Sadie smirked. “Liar.”
At that moment, Michael wandered over. “Paaaaaam,” he said. “Who’s your lovely friend?”
“I’m actually Jim’s sister-in-law,” Sadie said, holding out her hand. Michael was too busy staring at her breasts to notice. Glancing at Pam, she said, “You must be Michael.”
“He once taught a computer how to say ‘boobs’,” Pam said helpfully.
“Pam,” he hissed. “That’s—”
“Horribly offensive?” said Sadie. “Yeah, I agree.”
Michael started back towards his office, turning around to stare at Sadie’s chest one more time.
“I just gave birth,” Sadie said loudly to him. “These are full of milk. Are you just dying for a demonstration or something?”
Michael turned so quickly that he almost ran into his office door. Sadie rolled her eyes and looked at Pam again. “You know, I’ve heard stories, but…”
“Nothing like the real thing,” Pam said with a sigh.
“So I’ll call you,” Sadie said. “About the decorations.”
“Oh, yeah, let me give you—“
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get your number from Jim.” And Sadie smiled one more time, just at Pam, before she left.
“Did you guys have a good talk?” Jim asked.
“You really want to know what we talked about?”
“Um. Yes.”
“Girl stuff.” Pam grinned at him as Jim narrowed his eyes at her. “I need to get back to work.”
“You’re going to tell me someday, Beesly.”
Pam wasn’t sure she would.
When she came out of the bathroom after the last trip, she found Karen sitting alone at the table, staring into her cup. Pam stood with her back against the bathroom door for a moment, struggling to decide what to do. She and Karen had never really settled with each other. Pam had thought that they’d come close to being friends, but for the past few days Karen would barely look at her.
Still not sure of what she was doing, Pam sat down next to Karen and said, “Hey.”
Karen didn’t look up. “Hi.”
The two women sat silently for a few minutes, as Karen occasionally sipped coffee and Pam absently doodled on a napkin. At one point, Pam glanced up to see Jim standing at the break room door. He dropped his eyes and turned back to his desk.
“Are you okay?” Pam finally asked.
“My coffee is cold.”
“Oh, well, I can make more.”
“No.” There was a pause before Karen said, in a very flat tone, “Thanks, though.”
They went back to sitting in silence. After another minute or two, Pam got up to leave.
“He still has a thing for you,” Karen said, as Pam put her hand on the door.
“What?” Pam heard her voice come out in one low, shaky note.
“Jim. I ended it with him because he’s still into you. So, no. I’m not really okay.”
“Oh,” Pam said. And she walked back to her desk.
This was crazy. Even though she was sitting down, Pam felt like she was losing her balance; she felt unsteady, unstable. She felt like laughing. She couldn’t help but stare at Jim’s back and wonder if what Karen said was true. And what Pam could do about it if it was.
Karen left early that afternoon, stopping at Pam’s desk to say she had a dentist appointment. Pam just nodded, trying to read the expression on Karen’s face. Did Karen hate her now? Did she deserve to be hated?
When Pam noticed that Jim didn’t make any effort to say goodbye to Karen, she felt a little guilty—not for noticing, but for feeling so happy about it.
“Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam.”
“Pam, hey. It’s Sadie.”
“Hi,” Pam said, feeling herself smiling.
“So, I’m sorry for calling you at work, but Jim refused to give me your cell phone number until I told him what we talked about at lunch.”
“He drives a hard bargain,” Pam said, laughing at the back of Jim’s head. She could tell by the way he was tilting just slightly in his chair that he was listening.
“So I was thinking, if you’re free this Saturday, we can go decoration shopping.”
“Sure,” Pam said. “I’d love that.” She tapped her fingers lightly on the edge of her desk as she and Sadie made arrangements, and she watched the back of Jim’s head intently the whole time.
“See you Saturday, then,” Sadie said. Pam heard Addy crying in the background.
“It’s a date.” Hanging up, she laughed at Jim’s attempt to turn around nonchalantly. He caught her eye and raised his eyebrows.
“Big plans for this weekend, Beesly?”
“Hot ones,” she said, and she turned back to her computer.
Sadie and Pam met at the party supply store the next afternoon. Pam had been nervous all morning, changing her outfit three times as though she were going on a date. It had been awhile since she’d gone out with a friend—although maybe it was a bit early to think of Sadie as a friend, considering how quickly things had gone wrong with Karen. Pam had finally decided on jeans and the dark red shirt Kelly had forced her to keep. She’d never actually worn it in public before, although she had tried it on three or four mornings before work. No matter how hard she tried to convince herself, she had never managed to wear that shirt to the office.
She and Sadie wandered the aisles aimlessly for a few minutes, tossing around ideas about themes. Pam dismissed the luau idea (it was February), and Sadie laughed at the Mardi gras theme (she didn’t want people thinking about boobs). They finally decided to go with a disco theme to commemorate the decade when Jonathon was born.
Pam held up a disco ball. “This is a total necessity,” she said.
“Do you think they sell strobe lights here?” Sadie asked, putting the disco ball in the cart. “Oh, and those big afro wigs! We need to get some of those.”
Pam started giggling.
“What?” Sadie asked, throwing some neon pink streamers into the shopping cart.
“I was just thinking of Jim with an afro,” Pam said.
“Oh my God,” Sadie said, “you should have seen him at this party in college. He came as John Travolta—white suit, platform shoes, the works. He looked absolutely ridiculous.”
“God, I would kill to see that.”
“I bet I have pictures somewhere.”
They stopped in front of the plates and napkins.
“This is a tough decision,” Sadie said. “Will people eat off of hot pink plates, or will all the neon make them lose their appetites?”
“I don’t know,” Pam said. “Angela won’t ever let us get any colors that can’t be found in nature.”
“What a fantastic rule of thumb,” Sadie said, reaching for the hot pink napkins. “Oh, they have matching forks!”
As they waited in line to check out, Pam finally worked up the courage to ask Sadie the questions that had been rolling around in her head all week.
“Sadie,” she said, knowing she sounded tentative and wishing that, just once, she could sound like she had some nerve, “when you said that I should tell Jim how I feel—how did you know that I feel…” She let her voice trail off.
“You clearly have never seen how you look at him,” Sadie said.
“Is it that obvious?”
“To a normal human being? Yeah, it’s pretty obvious. To Jim? Probably not so much.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, I love Jim. He’s practically a brother to me—if you ignore the tiny detail that once upon a time we made out.” Sadie laughed at the expression that flashed across Pam’s face. “But I can tell you, the man is incredibly dense. Some things have to be spelled out to him.”
Pam sighed, thinking that Sadie probably could have said the same thing about her. How long had she let herself pretend that she and Jim weren’t flirting when they pulled those pranks? How long had she let herself believe that she and Roy actually worked together? Dense, Pam thought, was the perfect word for it.
They finished checking out and carried their bags out to the parking lot.
“Look, let’s go get some coffee,” Sadie said. “Jonathon can handle Addy for another hour without losing his mind. I’ll drive.”
Pam smiled and opened the passenger door, thinking that maybe she could start to think of Sadie as a friend after all.
“God, I missed coffee,” Sadie said, sipping her drink with a blissful expression. Pam just enjoyed the warmth of her cup of tea in her hands and felt herself relax. “So,” Sadie said, “we weren’t exactly finished with that conversation we were having.”
“The one about being dense?”
“Precisely.”
“Sadie?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you really think he could forgive me?”
Sadie put her cup down and nodded. “I kind of think he already has.”
“I don’t know,” Pam said. “It’s been weird for a long time. I mean, the other day, when we went to lunch—that was kind of how it used to be.”
“How did it used to be?”
Pam took a deep breath. She knew the answer to this question better than practically anything else in her life. She had spent months thinking about the time before Jim said he loved her, the time before he went away. She had spent hours daydreaming about tiny moments and passing touches. She knew how it used to be.
“Comfortable,” she said quietly. “Happy.”
Sadie nodded again.
“And I’m the one who screwed it all up,” Pam said. “I’m the one who said no.”
Sadie took a drink of her coffee and waited.
“I mean, God. He said he loved me. He loved me. How can he forgive me for saying no?”
Sadie raised her eyebrows. Pam felt her face start to crumple, and she hated that there was nothing she could do to stop it. Sadie just handed her a Kleenex and let her cry. After a minute, Sadie said, “Pam, why are you so hard on yourself?”
“I just don’t know why he wouldn’t hate me, after that.”
“For one thing, Jim was a jackass, saying that to you when he did.” Pam smiled a little, sniffling at the same time. “He had years to say something to you, and he waited until you actually had your wedding planned? Hello. Jackass.”
Pam took a sip of tea and tried to compose herself.
“I think he tried to say something before,” Pam admitted. “I think he tried, and I kept ignoring him.”
Sadie shrugged. “It’s possible. It doesn’t change things, though. I know Jim felt rejected, but come on. You had a whole life going on that he expected you drop. Totally unfair.”
“Maybe, yeah, but I was pretty unfair to him. I should have paid more attention. I shouldn’t have led him on. I mean, I didn’t really mean to lead him on, but I did. I totally did. And he had to watch me with Roy all that time. I never thought about how hard that must be—you know? Not until he came back with Karen.”
“Karen?”
Pam glanced up quickly. “The girl he was dating in Stamford.”
Sadie shook her head. “He never mentioned her to me.”
Pam sank into her chair a little without even realizing it. She felt like she was deflating.
“Are you okay?” Sadie asked, putting her hand on the table in front of Pam.
“Yeah,” Pam said, and she wasn’t sure it was true until it was out of her mouth. “I haven’t really talked about this to anyone, that’s all. I mean, I told my mom, obviously. But I didn’t have anyone else—anyone who really knows Jim.”
“Well, if you ever want to talk more, you can call me,” Sadie said. Pam smiled at her, relieved that Sadie understood that even though there was more to say, she wasn’t ready to say it. “And really, Pam. Try to cut yourself a little slack. People do stupid things when they’re in love.”
“So. Decoration shopping. Big fun,” Jim said, leaning on Pam’s desk and popping a jelly bean in his mouth.
“I’m not telling you what we talked about.”
“Fine. Hold out on me. I’ll break you down eventually.”
She bit her lower lip, determined not to show him how glad she was that he was there in front of her, maybe flirting with her, definitely acting like things were getting back to normal.
“So you’re coming to the party, right?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“No, you should come. I’d say I’d pick you up, but I’m going to be busy keeping Jonathon out of the way.”
“Yeah? What’s the plan?”
“Well, I was thinking that I could take him out for some paintball,” Jim said, raising his voice and looking towards Dwight out of the corner of his eye. “Do you know any good paintball places?”
“Hmm,” said Pam, pretending to think. “No, but I could probably find something for you.”
“Yeah, we’ll want to go someplace we can get lessons. From a pro.”
“Absolutely. Good thinking. I’ll get right on that.”
Jim winked at her before he went back to his desk. Pam watched her computer clock, waiting for Dwight to break down. She had bet Jim that it would take less than two minutes for Dwight to offer his services. He was definitely going to owe her some chips.
Pam owned nothing that could be worn to a disco themed party. She stood in front of her closet for ten minutes, staring at her clothes and wishing that, for just this one day, she had the wardrobe of a more interesting, more daring person. At one point, she got so desperate that she almost called Kelly, but she thought better of it and dialed Sadie’s number instead.
“What am I supposed to wear?” she said.
“Hi,” said Sadie. “Clothes.”
“I own nothing. My closet sucks.”
“Get over here, Beesly,” Sadie said. “Once upon a time, I was skinny. I’m sure I’ve got something for you.”
Pam caught herself speeding three times on the way to Sadie and Jonathon’s house. She didn’t know why she was so anxious, so eager. She didn’t know why she wasn’t more nervous. She just wanted to get there.
Sadie answered the door in sweatpants and an old t-shirt.
“Like my outfit?” she said. “I’m going for shabby chic, or something. Come on in.”
Sadie disappeared through a doorway as Pam gawked at the streamers and disco ball. She’d never been here before, but she was pretty sure that this living room didn’t normally look like a roller rink.
“Did you do all this by yourself?” she said.
Sadie came back into the room with a couple of bottles of water. “Yeah,” she said. “I have all this extra energy today. Okay. Let’s go find you some clothes.”
Sadie’s closet was full and messy, and Pam was thrilled by it. Sadie pulled a few shirts down from a shelf, then handed Pam a couple of skirts.
“These are so short,” Pam said, holding them in front of her. They barely hit the middle of her thighs.
“That’s the point,” Sadie said. She handed Pam a red halter top. “Go change.”
“I can’t wear this,” Pam said.
“Um, wrong. You have to wear this. Go. Change.”
Sadie pushed Pam into the bathroom and then disappeared again, leaving Pam to stare at the outfit in her hands. It took her several full minutes to get undressed—she kept unbuttoning her shirt and then buttoning it again as her mind fought a tiny war with itself.
When Sadie knocked on the door a few minutes later, Pam was staring at herself in the mirror.
“Holy shit.” Sadie stood behind Pam and shook her head. “You can keep those. I’m never going to be able to wear them again knowing how much better they look on you.”
“I really, really can’t wear this,” Pam said.
“Too late. You’re wearing it.” Sadie picked up the jeans and blouse that Pam had left folded on the side of the bathtub. “I’m taking your clothes hostage.”
“Sadie, come on.” But Pam found herself laughing, letting herself breath a little more deeply. Hey, she thought. I have really nice shoulders.
“Let me do your hair. Oh! And your make-up!”
Before Pam could say anything else, Sadie had forced her to sit down on the side of the tub and was attacking her head with a hair brush. Pam decided that this was going to be fun.
Twenty minutes later, Pam’s hair was feathered and her eyes were outlined with dark eyeliner. She almost didn’t recognize herself. Sadie handed her a pair of heels and said, “Okay. Get out of my bathroom. I have to get dressed.”
Pam wandered out into the hallway, trying to get used to the heels and forcing herself not to fidget too much. She stopped in front of a row of picture frames. There were pictures of Sadie and a guy who looked too much like Jim not to be Jonathon, smiling and laughing. There were some pictures of their wedding—Sadie looking petite next to her tall husband, Jim in a tux, looking awkward with his hair slicked down. There were pictures of Jim and Jonathon with their parents, pictures of Jim and Jonathon when they were little boys, pictures of Sadie and Jonathon and Jim standing together on graduation day. She found herself smiling, running her finger down the frames, staring at this Jim who existed before she knew him.
“How do I look?” Sadie asked, and Pam jumped at the sound of her voice. She was wearing bell bottoms and a tie-dyed shirt.
“You look great. Comfortable.” Pam gestured at her own outfit and said, “Unlike some people.”
“Stop whining,” Sadie said. “You look hot. I promise you. Now, let’s go set out the food.”
“On those hot pink plates?” Pam said. “Who’s going to want to eat off those?”
“Holy. Crap.”
His jaw had dropped—literally, it just hung open, like a cartoon character. Pam hadn’t known what reaction to expect, but she hadn’t expected that. She started to wrap her arms around herself, but she stopped. This was a great shirt. This shirt looked great on her. Stop trying to cover up, Pam Beesly, she thought.
“You look…” He shook his head. She shrugged and tried to laugh, although the sound wasn’t quite right.
“Thanks, I guess.”
“Oh, no,” Jim said. “I was going to say you looked like a hussy.”
She punched him playfully on the arm.
“No, seriously, Pam. You look….”
“You don’t have to finish that sentence if it’s going to be such a struggle.” She felt a little dizzy, a little dangerous. She felt like flirting. “And you are totally not dressed for this.”
“I brought something to change into,” he said, giving her a sly look.
“Oh, please let it be the white suit,” she said, crossing her fingers and closing her eyes.
“You’ll just have to wait and see.”
Sadie came up and pulled Pam away, and Pam watched as Jim slipped out the front door of the house.
“So,” Sadie said, grabbing Pam’s arm and grinning. “That looked promising.”
Pam smiled and let herself be led into a small circle of people. She usually hated parties where she didn’t know anyone, but something about Sadie’s encouraging voice and the fact that she was dressed like a different person made Pam feel like she could handle meeting new people right now.
“Everybody, this is Pam,” Sadie announced. Pam found herself in the middle of the circle, being talked at from all sides. It was almost overwhelming, but in a great way. She felt interesting and pretty and happy.
“Oh, the famous Pam,” Jonathon said.
“I don’t know about famous,” she said.
“Trust me. Around here, you’re a superstar.”
She blushed, happily, and said, “Happy birthday. Were you surprised?”
“Totally. Jim had me going. He took me to this paintball place—”
“God, I thought he was joking about that!”
“And I got to meet the infamous Dwight. Man, that’s guy is…something.”
“I think Dwight’s probably a lot of things,” Pam said. “Did you get to shoot him with a paintball?”
“Two.” Jonathon laughed and held up his hand for a high five. Pam was a little taken aback for a moment, realizing how much Jonathon and Jim had in common—the same tall, lanky frame, the same hair (although Jonathon’s was shorter and tamer), the same goofy grin. But there was a different feeling to their laidback stance; Jonathon wasn’t as slouchy, wasn’t as wrinkled, wasn’t quite as quick to smile or laugh. Watching him with Sadie, as he threw a relaxed arm around her shoulder and left a lingering kiss on her forehead, Pam had to wonder what Sadie had seen in Jonathon that had convinced her that she was going to marry him.
Just as Pam had that thought, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned around to see Jim grinning at her. Laughing, she took in the whole crazy look: afro wig, purple sunglasses, gold chains and gaudy medallions.
“The white suit!” she squealed, clapping her hands in front of her.
“The very same,” Jim said. “Like it?”
“Are you kidding? Sadie was going to show me pictures, but this is so much better.”
“Let’s get something to drink,” Jim said, nodding his head toward the back of the room. He took hold of her arm and she let him guide her through the crowd, aware of almost nothing but the feeling of his hand on her skin. Standing in front of the table of drinks, Pam felt him put his hand on the small of her back and almost gasped.
“What’ll you have?” Jim asked, surveying the options. He reached out and grabbed a beer for himself.
“Um, I think I’ll stick with water for now,” Pam said. She knew suddenly that she needed to stay sober for awhile longer—she could save the drinking for later.
She fiddled with the bottle of water Jim put in her hands for a few minutes, watching him pop the top off of his beer and take a couple of long drinks.
“Can we—” she began, just as someone turned up the stereo. Suddenly, she was blasted with “Stayin’ Alive.” Leaning in towards Jim, she yelled in the direction of his ear, “Can we go outside and talk for a minute?”
Jim raised his eyebrows but nodded, then grabbed her hand to show her the way outside. This time, Pam forced herself to stop thinking about the fact that he was holding her hand and concentrated instead on what she knew she had to say.
Pam wished she had thought to bring a jacket outside with her. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.
“Here, take my jacket,” Jim said, but she stopped him before he could take it off.
“No, I’ll be okay.” She didn’t want to get warm. The cold would force her to stop being such a big baby and just tell him already.
“Okay, but you’re freezing. Let me do something,” he said, running his hands up and down her arms to warm them.
She couldn’t speak for a moment, and he took her silence as a reason to stop touching her. He stepped back and put his hands in his pockets.
This wasn’t working. She didn’t want him to get that look on his face—that guarded, worried look—and she didn’t want him to avoid meeting her eyes. She chewed the inside of her lip for a moment, then finally burst out, “Could you take off the wig? And the glasses? I can’t talk to you when you look like a BeeGee.”
He smiled then, just a little, and took off the wig. He slipped the glasses off and held them in his hands, pretending to study them intently.
“Jim,” she said, a little too slowly. Come on, come on. Say it. “When you left last year, I felt like the worst person in the world. I felt like I had ruined the best thing in my life.” For a moment, she thought he was going to try to interrupt her, but he just drew his lips into a thin line and waited. “And that’s the kind of thing that you’re supposed to talk about with your best friend. They’re supposed to help you figure out how to fix things. But I couldn’t go to my best friend, because you were gone.”
She was surprised at herself. She had thought that she’d be crying by now.
“I know that I should have said this sooner,” she went on. “But I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I never wanted you to be hurt like that. I never wanted to be someone who could hurt you.”
He nodded, but his expression didn’t change.
“So I need to know that you forgive me.”
“Pam, are you kidding?” he said softly.
She shook her head, never looking away from him.
“Yeah. Yes. I mean—God, you don’t think I actually stayed mad at you, do you?”
“You had every reason to be mad at me.”
“Trust me, I know. But, come on, Beesly. You should know me better than that. Do I seem like I’m still mad at you?”
“No, but things still aren’t right with us. I mean, it feels like maybe we really are friends again, and that’s good. But I want—I don’t know, I just want….”
She waited, hoping that maybe she wouldn’t have to finish the sentence. Sometimes it seemed like Jim knew what she was thinking before she said it. Maybe that trick didn’t work if even she didn’t know what she was thinking.
“I want to be more than that.”
Both of them let her words hang in the air for a few seconds. They stared at each other, and Pam wondered how either of them could possibly be as calm as they seemed.
Then, Jim took two long steps and was next to her, hugging her. She pushed him away, just slightly, so she could see his face. One thing she had known all along—very clearly—was that this time, she wanted to kiss him first.
“To disco parties and white suits,” Pam said, holding up her beer.
“To Charlie’s Angels hair and miniskirts,” said Jim. He clinked his bottle against hers. “Here’s to you, Beesly.”
“And to you, Halpert.”
They kissed softly, a beer-flavored kiss that made both of them laugh. They made their way back into the crowd, and Jim stood with his arms around Pam’s waist as they carried on nonsensical conversations with people they didn’t know. They danced to bad disco music, holding each other close. They huddled together in the corner and talked in whispers, although later, Pam would have no idea what they had whispered about. And the whole time, they both smiled, smiled, smiled.
At some point—Pam had no idea how much time had passed—Sadie came up next to them and whispered in Pam’s ear, “What did I tell you?” She smiled slyly, then disappeared into the kitchen without another word.
“What did she tell you?” Jim asked.
Pam turned and put her hands in Jim’s. She took a deep breath, put on a serious expression, and said, “She told me that you are a nosy pain in the ass.”
“Yeah, but you knew that already.”
“Well, Sadie has a knack for telling me things I should already know.”
She knew she wasn’t drunk, but she let Jim drive her home anyway. This feeling—this jump-out-of-your-skin feeling—made her think she might be a little too jumpy and distracted to drive. She settled into Jim’s passenger seat and turned her head to watch him drive, enjoying the feel of the seat against her cheek and the warm blast of the heater on her bare legs. Every time they passed under a streetlight, she watched the light dance over his face.
He knew she was watching; she could tell by the way he self-consciously kept the corners of his mouth from turning up and the way that his eyes would occasionally sneak over to glance at her.
“I think it may be time to get you to bed,” Jim said.
“Dirty!” Pam said. “I may be dressed like a hussy, but I don’t put out unless the guy buys me a really good dinner first.”
This time, he turned his head to look at her as he laughed. She couldn’t stop watching him, couldn’t resist touching his cheek with her fingertips, couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to draw him the way he looked right now.
When they reached her apartment, Jim politely walked Pam to her front door.
“Well, thank you for a very nice evening,” Pam said. She held out her hand for Jim to shake. No one else would get this joke, she thought to herself. Any other guy would wonder what the hell was wrong with her. Jim just took her hand in his, nodded formally, and said, “Yes, we really should do this again sometime.”
They stared at each other, each daring the other one not to laugh. Jim just kept shaking Pam’s hand, and she finally broke down, giggling and letting Jim draw her into a hug.
“Hey,” he said quietly into her ear. “This was a really good night.”
“The best night,” she agreed.
He leaned in to kiss her. The rest of the night, all of those hours since he had first seen her in this outfit and first put his hand on her arm and first stared at her, understanding that she was ready, finally—all of that seemed like a dream now. It wasn’t until she leaned her whole body against his as his arms tightened around her that she felt herself finally let go of the deep breath she felt like she’d been holding since last May. Her whole body suddenly felt lighter.
She didn’t invite him in, and he didn’t look disappointed. He just stepped back and smiled as she let herself into her apartment and turned to say, “Goodnight, Jim.”
“Goodnight, Pam.”
She closed the door softly behind her and glanced around her apartment as though she were seeing it for the first time. She stepped out of the borrowed heels and enjoyed the feeling of the carpet under her feet. She poured herself a glass of apple juice and stood in her kitchen, sipping it slowly and sighing every once in awhile. She changed from the clothes Sadie had lent her into an old t-shirt and flannel pants, slipped into bed, and smiled at the ceiling. And when she woke up the next morning, she thought she had never slept so well before in her life.
Sadie called the next day.
“Hey, I have your car,” she said. “Want to do lunch?”
“How are those two things related, exactly?”
“Um, if you don’t eat lunch with me, you don’t get your car back.”
“And I thought Jim drove a hard bargain.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Pam was surprised by how excited she felt, and by how much she wanted to tell Sadie everything that had happened the night before. She restrained herself, though, and Sadie let Pam keep the conversation on less important topics all the way to the restaurant. It wasn’t until they were sitting with their menus in front of them that Pam blurted out, “I told Jim.”
“I know,” Sadie said, looking amused. “We noticed that you guys weren’t exactly avoiding each other last night.”
“And you were right, he said he had already forgiven me,” Pam said. “Sadie, it was just—I wish—” Pam couldn’t think of a way to finish the sentence that would even begin to explain to Sadie how she was feeling, so she just stopped and grinned.
“I’m really glad,” Sadie said. They ate slowly, talking about Jim and Pam and halter tops and disco balls. Pam loved this feeling of being able to gush—about Jim, finally, out loud to another person—and know that Sadie could understand where she was coming from. She had missed out on so many conversations like this growing up. She had never really gushed to anyone about Roy, and by the time they had gotten engaged, she really didn’t have anyone to gush to.
“Thanks again for...everything,” Pam said as she was dropping Sadie off at her house. “If you hadn’t pushed me….”
“I know,” Sadie said, taking off her seatbelt. “You can thank Jim, too, the next time you see him. This was his idea.”
“What?”
“Dropping in on you at the office, planning the surprise party—all Jim. He’s pretty cunning, too,” Sadie said. She stepped out of the car, leaned her head back in and said, “Have a good day at work tomorrow, Pam.”