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MAYBE TOMORROW

She really wished she had a couch.

At random times since she moved in, she reminded herself of the importance of a couch in the living room, but she hadn’t wanted to go shopping for one until she could get Jim to go with her to help her move it in.

And right now she’s thinking she just should have sprung an extra fifty bucks to have one delivered. Maybe then she’d feel more comfortable in this situation. Because sitting across from her boyfriend in metal folding chairs while they try to talk about the fact that he still had feelings for someone else was borderline ridiculous.

She absently noted that he was probably cold in his snow drenched pants, but she couldn’t bring herself to offer him something warm to drink.

“I…” he began, looking down at his hands. He chuckled mirthlessly as he ran a hand over his face. “I don’t even know what to say.”

She didn’t know what to say either. Somehow it felt like everything that really mattered had already been said.

“I want us to be okay,” he continued saying. “Which is why I wanted to be honest with you.”

He visibly swallowed and leaned forward a little bit but still wouldn’t look directly at her. “Meant what I said today. When you asked…about Pam. But I also meant what I’d told you before.”

He finally brought his eyes to meet hers, probably hoping that she could see his sincerity. She could. Only she wished she hadn’t seen something else in them that made her heart tighten.

“I’m really glad that you’re here. And I want us to be okay.”

Karen bit her bottom lip as she nodded a bit, doing her best to not let herself start to cry. Or scream at him.

“Okay,” she mumbled to herself, she voice thick but later she would be proud of herself for not letting it crack. “You’re going to have to define your meaning of ‘okay’ because I don’t think that telling your girlfriend that you still have feelings for another girl is not what jumps to my mind as ‘okay’.”

“Karen…”

“No, Jim, stop,” she interrupted him. “I know what you’re trying to say here and…I’m not ready.”

She was as surprised as he looked with her quiet admission.

“I’m in a different town, with a job I’m not sure if I really want right now, living in an apartment that doesn’t have real furniture,” she went on. “And I still haven’t made any real friends other than, ironically, Pam.”

“But you know what? I thought that maybe all that would get better, because you said it would. You’ve said a lot, Jim. And so far things haven’t been the way I’d imagined they’d be.”

Jim nodded and stared at hands again. “I know, and I’m sorry. I just want to know how to make it better.”

“Don’t apologize, please. It’s not really your fault. It just proves that I should have thought things through and gone off on some…romantic notion,” she said as she waved her hand vaguely in the air. “And I really think it’s time for me to start looking at where I am right now.”
He still wouldn’t look at her, and his head had lowered so far that she wouldn’t even see his face. She looked at his floppy brown hair and the slant of his shoulders under the coat he hadn’t even taken off. He looked so tired, and her heart went out to him.

She reached out her hand and closed it around his. He looked up at her, his face unsure, and she smiled softly at him.

“I’d like nothing more than for us to okay,” she said. “But right now, I’m not ready to decide whether or not I want to be the girl that you’re with because the girl that you’re in love with won’t love you back.”

“That’s not what’s going on at all,” Jim argued, but it was feeble and she knew it.

The look on her face made him sigh and just nod quietly. “I like being around you, Karen,” he told her. “And I don’t want to lose you.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere either,” she responded, that being the only thing she was sure of at that moment. “But right now, I don’t know if I’m ready to tell you what you want to hear.”

He looked absolutely defeated, so she backtracked quickly. “I’m just asking for some time. A few days to…figure it out on my own.”

He nodded in response and took at as his cue to stand up. “Yeah, you’re right. Listen, I’m sorry.”

Suddenly she grabbed his lapels and pulled him down towards her, stopping his apology with her lips. It was chaste kiss, but she felt him relax.

“Stop apologizing already, Halpert,” she ordered lightly and he smirked in response and it made her feel slightly lighter. “Maybe tomorrow…tomorrow you can call me.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Tomorrow.”

She gave him a small smile as she watched him walk to his car through the snow. When she closed the door, she leaned heavily against it and let out a deep sigh.

No, she was most definitely not ready for this at all. She could see the two metal chairs facing each other in her living room.

There was one thing she was absolutely sure of.

When she and Jim had their next conversation, she would have a couch.

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