Roy hates being alone. He hates not knowing what went wrong. He comes home all by himself every night and it's dark and cold without her. She was always the spark, the one who moved him. Even back in high school, when the world was at his feet, he knew she was there, in the shadows, solid and safe and comfortable. She was the one who pushed him to go to the prom together, to try a new movie theatre, to try a new restaurant. Although he grumbled, he always enjoyed it later. He had come to rely on her to get him out of his rut. He felt at home with her. Now home is an empty apartment with unwashed dishes in the sink.
On their first Valentine's Day, he bought her a Hallmark card. It took him two hours to pick it out, because he kept checking around him to make sure nobody saw him at the card rack. And then, when it was time to check out, the clerk was Mrs. Hudson from his geology class, and he didn't want her to see him buying it. So he waited until she went off shift and some stranger came on the Wal-Mart cash register. Pam had hugged his neck and he felt ten feet tall.
Darryl and the guys think he misses the great sex--and yeah, he does--but he misses the warmth. He misses her hairs in the sink and the smell of her girly shampoo. He misses her solid presence in the bed, even when sex was not involved. He misses holding her during thunderstorms and scary movies. He misses teasing her, tickling her. She made him feel safe because he could make her feel safe.
When things went blooey, he tried to straighten up. Worked out, quit drinking (well, quit drinking as much), spruced up. Talked to his mom, tried to get a handle on what Pam could have wanted. It hurts that maybe she wanted something he could not give her. He wanted to give her everything, but apparently he didn't know what she wanted. He wonders if Halpert knew what she wanted. It makes Roy squirm to think about Pam discussing him with some other guy, but at least it would be easier to ask Halpert than some chick. But Halpert, as usual, is tied up with some stunning chick and is probably too busy to talk to a loser like him. Roy really doesn't understand how all the cute girls seem to just glom onto that skinny salesman. Dude probably couldn't bench press his own weight.
Roy remembers one Valentine's Day when he was sick, and she called in sick too and stayed home with him. She made him soup and snuggled with him under an afghan on the couch. He wanted to watch wrestling but he was too woozy to really take control of the remote, so she clicked over to some sappy women's channel and they watched a chick flick. He dozed on her lap and when he woke up she was crying and he wrapped himself around her and they slept on the couch that night. That weekend she came down with his cold; he wishes now he'd stayed home with her instead of going fishing with his brother. Sometimes he wonders if it was the chick flick that made her cry, or something else.
Roy thinks about how beautiful Pam looked at Phyllis Vance's wedding, and how they danced together again, and how she went home with him, and how he wished he hadn't pushed her for sex like that. She said okay, and for one sweet hour it was like their best times all over again, but afterward there were shadows in her eyes and she got dressed and left without a word, and he felt like shit. He doesn't think she enjoyed herself, and it embarrasses him that he could not pleasure her. He remembers, vividly, when he could, when they were teenagers and everything they did was wild and delicious and wonderful. He does not know where that went.
One Valentine's Day he took her to a fancy restaurant. They had just gotten engaged, and she was so proud of her shiny ring. He let her hold his hand, and he kind of said he loved her, and she talked and talked and talked about the wedding and where they would live after, and about kids, until his head ached. Or maybe it was the wine. Anyway, he had been rehearsing his move-in-with-me speech all week, but when he blurted it out to her over dessert, it didn't come out just as he wanted. She went very still, and then blushed, and then nodded and looked down. He thought she was shy, but maybe it was disappointment. He wonders now if maybe he should have set a date for the wedding, rather than postponing it by having her move in.
The Friday before Valentine's, Darryl corners him in the warehouse.
"Hey, Roy, my sister-in-law threw this lingerie party the other day? Chick selling lingerie is too hot to believe. I think she'd be just right for you. I got her number. You want it?"
"No, thanks," he says. Shifts his feet uncomfortably.
"Dude, seriously, you got to do something. You ain't had it in, how long? Since you and Pam broke up? Man, that's half a year! You're gonna do some serious damage."
Roy grins weakly, shrugs. "That's okay. I like to hunt my own game," he says. He can't tell Darryl that he had sex with Pam after Phyllis' wedding. Darryl would jeer at him for going back to a girl who dumped him, would call him pussy-whipped.
Darryl nods. "Yeah, well, I'm just sayin'. Even Michael is gettin' some these days. You shouldn't be left out."
The other guys, most of them married or living with someone, envy him his freedom. But he doesn't want this freedom. Now he sees all his friends married and with kids, and he sees his parents growing old happily together, and all he wants is home. Pam was his home, and now she's gone, and he doesn't know what to do. He hasn't dated anyone but her in ten years, doesn't know where to start with another woman, can't imagine home with any other woman.
The thing he can't admit to Darryl or the guys is that sometimes he's afraid without her. He's not sure who he is any more. Is he the lover, the fixer of cars, the guy who hooks up the cable box to the TV, the man of the house? Or just a lonely guy who hasn't dated another woman since he was sixteen? He doesn't know who he is any more, or where he belongs.
On Valentine's Day, he calls in sick because he knows if he doesn't, he'll be upstairs at Pam's desk every ten minutes to see if anyone has sent her flowers, and he doesn't want to be that pathetic. He orders flowers delivered to her three different times, and each time he cancels the order. He doesn't want to look like he's begging. But he can't spend the day in the warehouse loading trucks and wondering, every single minute, how he can get his life and his woman and his future back. He wants to spend the day with his parents, working in the garage with his dad's broken lawnmower, but his mom says they have dinner and dancing reservations at the Elks' Club. So in the end he goes home and sits in his dark apartment watching the sky threaten snow, hearing his neighbors' TV through the thin walls, clicking through the women's channels looking for a chick flick. Because that's as close as he can come to her now.
He feels homeless.
