A plastic bowl of fruit seems appropriate, because it is fake. Just like all the smiles and glares they give each other like nothing happened. Like he hadn’t come out and said he really loved her. Like she hadn’t said she was going to marry Roy anyway. Like she didn’t let go of his hands and he didn’t walked out the door.
She wants her friend back.
And if she has to put a bowl of fake fruit to fool her office mates to do it, so be it.
In the morning, Creed shines up a red apple and takes a bite.
He takes another three before he notices.
She almost got Dwight, but Angela interrupted him.
At lunch, she sat in the kitchen, staring at all the plastic fruit. The shiny orange, the elongated banana. Jim had always talked about doing this, and it seemed like the perfect bait.
She waited all hour. He didn’t come in to talk to her.
She waited at the end of the day, just playing with what was left of the fruit. Creed left the building with slightly larger pockets, so he probably was the culprit. Finally, Jim walks in with his messenger bag and a look on his face like he’s walking to his doom.
“Hi.” Pam slaps on a fake smile, feeling more phony than the bundle of grapes still in the bowl.
“Plastic fruit?” He asks, sitting down. He puts his messenger bag to the side, and sighs heavily. “You know, I saw Creed take like four bites out of an apple before he realized it was fake.”
“You saw that?” She asks, not having to fake the laughter. “It’s really lame, but it was an attempt to get you to talk to me.”
“What do you want me to say?” He says breathless.
“I don’t know.” She says meekly, looking down at the floor, to her engagement ring, then back at him. “That things aren’t going to be different with us.” He doesn’t speak for a little while, and she starts to feel very apprehensive.
“Pam, I have to tell you something.” He pauses, to make sure he’s got her full attention. And he does. “At the end of the week, I’m transferring to Stamford.”
“What?” The word flies out of her mouth before she has any control. The idea slowly sinks in: Jim, moving, gone.
“I got promoted. I’m leaving Scranton.”
She had no idea what to say. Everything seemed so insensible and specious. She couldn’t beg him to stay, or tell him the truth of how she felt. She can’t say anything.
So she gives him a hug.
It’s bittersweet, because she feels warm, and he still loves the feeling of being close to her. But she’s made her point drastically clear—they don’t have a chance as something more than that. She’s still going to marry him.
He says nothing as he gets up and walks out the kitchen. She just sits, in awe, as he walks away. She didn’t know it was possible to be this heartbroken when your best friend walks out the door. He just walks sullenly to the elevator and down to his car.
He doesn’t say much to her for the rest of the week, either.
She gives him the fruit as a going away present. She can’t look at it without thinking of him.
**********
The bowl of fruit assignment seemed like such a cliché, but the art teacher had assigned it, so Pam was forced to oblige. She had no fruit in her house, and didn’t have time to run to the store.
Her teacher lent her a set of plastic fruit.
She nearly broke down when she had the bowl of plastic fruit, exactly like the one she gave to Jim, sitting in her new apartment when she was all alone.
She painted furiously to get it done as soon as possible. It was a month after her wedding was supposed to happen and two months after Jim confessed. She was so alone, it hurt to even think about Jim, or anything associated with him.
The painting looked rushed. It felt rushed. Her teacher told her it was actually very good, very detailed. Her friends in class thought the same thing, that it showed some kind of emotion she hadn’t really displayed in her work before. But somehow it didn’t really matter. It was a painful memory that she just finished as soon as she could, and that was the end of it.
***
She has successfully pulled a prank with Jim on Andy. It feels nice to have that synchronization back. It’s comforting, knowing that things were starting to feel a little more normal between them. She craved normal.
She craved him.
He comes up to her at the end of the day, holding something in his pocket.
“You know, I was walking by Creed’s desk this morning, and I found this.” He pulls a red plastic apple, and Pam feels the laughter exude from her. He admits that he tried the plastic fruit up in Stamford, using the set he had gotten from her. She feels better knowing that he didn’t just forget about her while he was up in Stamford. Once he’s finished with the story, he beings to leave. “Have a good night, Pam.”
“You too.” She calls out, and realizes he’s put the apple on her desk.
The plastic fruit had worked. A little late, but it had worked nonetheless.
Suddenly the painting wasn’t as painful anymore.
Besides, it fit with her other paintings anyway.
Chapter End Notes:
And, your thoughts?
