What happens is this:
Her parents' anniversary is days away and she can avoid the smooshy card aisle no longer. She girds herself, preparing for this battle. Instead of chain mail, bladed weapons and a loyal steed, she wears the jeans that make her butt look "awesome" and pushes a shopping cart containing shimmer lip gloss, a bag - pretty, beaded and so small it's essentially nonfunctional, and the key weapon in the lonely and confused woman's arsenal - new shoes, open-toed and too high. But all the preparation is for naught when the fourth card she picks up slashes through meringue defense and plunges true.
"Love is friendship held up to the light"
She feels the little color she possesses pool around her feet. The card shakes in now-numb fingers and sweat prickles her hairline. Seriously? How can she be expected to survive that? It's too...well, too.
So she tells the cashier she's getting over the flu and pays for the accessories that didn't protect and the card that means she won't be eating this evening either.
The shoes and bag accompany her to the anniversary dinner. Her parents hold hands; the shoes pinch.
It comes to her that she's very unhappy. Unhappier than ever. And this is how she finds herself staring at his door from the sidewalk in shoes that hurt with a bag that holds shimmery lip gloss, driver's license, emergency $20 and keys.
Karen answers his door with an uneasy smile. Pam thinks she should feel guiltier than she does, but remembers a dark room, stolen kisses and a fiancé who was none the wiser and knows that her guilt bar is among the clouds.
He joins her on the porch when she asks, because she may not feel as guilty as she should, but she won't say this while his girlfriend loiters in the next room. She's willing to be the other woman, but she won't poison the space they (occasionally) share.
She stumbles through what she needs him to hear - because practicing the speech never works - her arms cross her abdomen and hands grasp her sides. The porch light halos his hair; she's thankful he's backlit, because the shuttered expression hurts and seeing it fully would end her.
She doesn't want him to say anything when she's done and she tells him so. It's been her experience that responding to this kind of information requires thought and if you don't give it...well, you regret it.
On impulse, before she has time to talk herself out of it, she lifts his hand and presses a kiss to the palm. He won't look at her, but just before she lets go, his hand tightens on hers and his thumb brushes across her wrist.
She ends with, "I'm yours. All you need to do is let me know if you want to try. The answer will be yes."
In her car, the shoes get tossed in the back, and she drives home barefoot.
The End
