Pam had enough. She was fine seeing Jim and Karen sitting next to each other at the church. She was ok with them eating together at her table at the reception. But she was pushed over the edge when Karen asked Jim -- in front of her! -- to dance. And frankly, it wasn't so much the question as it was the quick glance Karen gave Pam as they got up.
That was when Pam grabbed her purse and walked out the door. She stopped somewhere in the lobby to take a deep breath and calm herself down. This was Phyllis's wedding and she wanted to be there. It didn't matter who was in there or what they were doing. It wasn't about them. It wasn't about Jim or Karen or Roy. Tonight was supposed to be about Phyllis, she kept reminding herself.
Despite that, Pam wasn't totally ready to go back in there with Jim and Karen still together on the dance floor so instead she sat down on some stairs nearby to clear her head. She just needed to calm herself down, take a few deep breaths, try and suppress the choking feeling in her throat. She was not going to do this, at least not now and not here.
And just when she felt good enough to go back, she heard his voice. "Hey." She looked up to see Jim walking out the bathroom door towards her, a casual look on his face turning to concern as he got closer to her. "Pam, are you ok?"
"Yeah, fine...I'm fine," she stammered.
"Um...ok. You sure?"
That choking sensation in Pam's throat changed from one of sadness to one of her trying to swallow the anger bubbling up inside her. "Am I sure? Yeah, I'm sure, Jim."
Jim gave her a skeptical look. "Really? You just seem a little upset. What's going on?"
That was the last straw. Pam's strength to stay calm was gone. "What's going on? I don't know, Jim. Why don't you tell me?"
"Tell you what?" Jim asked her quizzically.
"Why don't you start with what you told Karen. You know, all those late nights when you had to 'talk' to her."
"Well, I really don't think..."
Pam was on her feet now. "'You really don't think' what, Jim? That it's any of my business? Because it seems to me like you made it my business when you started telling her about us."
Pam could tell she hit a nerve with that one. "Us? Pam, there is no us."
"Well, that's just great," Pam said before walking briskly over to the coat check as she violently dug through her purse for her claim ticket.
She could hear Jim's dress shoes clinking behind her as he crossed the marble floor. "Pam, what is going on with you?"
She turned around, eyes ablaze. "Nothing, Jim," she said, shoving her arms in her coat sleeves. "Obviously, I have nothing going on. So I'm just going to go home and do nothing by myself."
She turned on her bright red three-inch heels she had worn that night, specifically thinking they could have had some magic in them -- just something to make Jim forget about Karen. She realized now that she was just kidding herself about the shoes among other things.
Pam made it as far as the first row of cars in the parking lot before she felt a firm hand on her arm. She whipped around to see who was holding her up and saw Jim staring back at her. "Pam, really, you need to tell me what I did to upset you."
"What you did? Well, for starters, you told Karen about our kiss. You know, the kiss you and I shared last year?" she added sarcastically.
"I remember the kiss, Pam," he answered a bit bitterly.
"That was our kiss. It had nothing to do with her!" she yelled back at him. She yanked her arm out of his hand and turned to keep walking to her car, but stopped again to face him. "And you know what's worse, Jim? You know what's worse about you telling her about that? You told her it was 'just a kiss.' Is that what you really thought that was?"
Jim's voice started to rise. "Well, I don't know, Pam. I kissed you and you said you were going to marry someone else."
"And I didn't!" Pam immediately spat back at him. "I didn't marry Roy because that wasn't just a kiss, Jim. It was so much more than that and you -- more than anyone else, Jim -- you should have understood that and not said anything to anyone about it." She could start to feel the sting of tears in her eyes, but she was doing everything to hold back and not let Jim see them. "I never told Roy about that, Jim. Never," she said, her voice darker and more bitter. "And you just throw that information around to some girl you've been dating for two months, acting like that night was no big deal. I think that's what hurts the most, Jim, because it was a big deal to me," she said, pointing hard at the part of her chest where it ached the most.
That was all she could take of the conversation. She turned and ran to her car, each step burning the ball of her foot after four hours in those stupid shoes. She threw her purse in the passenger seat, slammed her door way too hard, and put the thing in reverse as fast as she could. Just before putting it in drive, she looked into her rear view mirror to see Jim standing where she had left him, his head down and his hands in his pockets. And when she got to the parking lot exit, she checked the mirror again. He hadn't moved.
Story Notes:
This is going to be a few more chapters so here's the first! Thanks for the beta, Peski!
And I only wish these characters belonged to me. Sadly, they have their own minds.
