At the sound of screeching tires, Jim spins around. His entire body tenses instantly when he sees a familiar pickup truck peel into his driveway. He has no idea what’s going on or why it’s happening tonight, but he knows it can’t be good.

He hears Karen ask, “Hey, doesn’t he work in the warehouse?” and he’s suddenly very aware that his girlfriend is standing next to him, and that can’t be good either. He turns to her and tries to muster as much urgency as he can.

“You should go inside,” he says, willing her to understand the seriousness of the situation. But she’s looking past him at the two figures piling out of the truck.

“But isn’t that Pam’s boyfriend?” she asks. She sounds a little anxious, but more confused than anything else.

Jim opens his mouth to tell her something, anything to get her attention back and direct her into the house, because it really can’t be good that Roy and the man with him are now lumbering away from the truck and toward him. But he doesn’t get any words out before Roy starts to shout.

“HALPERT!”

It sounds more like a roar, deep and animalistic. Jim doesn’t look at Roy. He pushes open the front door and turns back to Karen.

“Karen, get inside.” He doesn’t phrase it as a question.

“No! Just tell me what the hell is going on,” she pleads. She doesn’t look angry. She looks scared.

“I don’t know,” he says hastily, distracted by the fact that Roy has what appears to be a baseball bat in his hands.

“You came on t’her!” Roy hollers, his speech slurred. “You’re a dead man!”

The next thing Jim knows there is a loud smashing sound. Roy has swung the baseball bat in a terrific arch and landed its end right on Jim’s windshield. It doesn’t break completely, but splinters from top to bottom in expanding spider webs.

“What the hell, man!” Jim shouts. “What are you doing?!”

But Roy doesn’t seem to register anything that Jim said. He continues to march determinedly toward him. Jim tries to console himself with the fact that Roy has at least dropped the bat. It is very small consolation.

“Jim—” Karen starts to speak again, her voice at a higher register than Jim is used to hearing from her. He knows she’s going to ask more questions that he doesn’t have the answers to.

“Karen! I don’t know!” he says shortly. “Just—”

“Come in with me!” She tugs at his hand, but Jim is distracted by the fact that Roy is now mere feet away.

“I told you to look after her, you asshole!” Roy yells.

He takes two large steps towards Jim and pulls back a fist. Jim’s eyes widen and he ducks his head as quickly as he can. He can feel a gust of air brush his cheek and hair as Roy’s fist just misses. Panting rapidly, he holds up his hands and backs away.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa man! Back up! What are you talking about?” he says frantically, trying to put as much distance between himself and Roy as he can on the small stoop, while still keeping himself between Roy and Karen.

Roy missed by mere centimeters and the momentum of his swing has caused him to lose his balance. He clings to the railing on the front stoop for support.

“Oh, you don’t know? You just forgot the night that you came on to my fucking girlfriend?” he growls, shoving himself up from the railing.

Jim hears Karen say, “What?” behind him, but he is entirely focused on the fact the Roy is standing again.

“Okay, wait. You don’t know—” Jim begins.

“No! I do know! That’s the problem!” Roy roars.

Any further explanation on Jim’s part is cut off when Roy takes another powerful swing. It comes hard and fast, and this time it lands.

White hot pain explodes on the side of Jim’s face. He thinks that Roy must have shattered his cheekbone. He knows he heard a crack.

“Oh my God!” he hears Karen say in a panicked whisper. He feels her breath moving the hair by his ear.

He would have been on the ground if it hadn’t been for Karen standing behind him. He’s leaning completely against her, her arms around his waist. He has one hand up to shield himself from any new blows, and the other hand to his cheek, checking the damage. He feels wetness, and realizes that Roy split the skin on his cheek.

“I’m… Jesus… I’m fine,” Jim manages to stutter.

He presses against Karen and shakily gets to his feet. He’s wondering why Roy hasn’t hit him again yet, until he looks up and sees Roy is leaning heavily on the railing again. He’s clutching his right hand, and Jim realizes that the crack he heard must have been Roy’s hand breaking. He knows if he’s going to try to do anything to diffuse the situation he has to do it now.

“Roy, man, nothing happened,” Jim says. It hurts to speak. His entire face is throbbing but he keeps talking when Roy looks up at him. “She told me she chose you. I don’t know who told you—”

“Who do you think told me? Pam!” Roy snarls. His anger seems to motivate him enough to forget the pain in his hand, because he moves menacingly toward Jim again.

“You came on to Pam again?” Karen voice interjects. She has her hand on his arm and she’s searching his face. She looks wounded and not just a little angry.

“Wait, wait,” Jim says. He’s not sure who he’s addressing, Roy or Karen, but he needs a second to think. The side of his face is still pulsing with pain and sticky with blood, and chaos is pressing in from all sides.

“When was this?” Karen asks.

“Before!” Jim sputters. He feels like he can barely breathe. Too much is happening. “Before! God… This is just… This is…”

He can’t even form sentences. Roy is still looming but Jim’s attention is distracted by another loud crashing sound.

Jim cranes his neck around Roy to see that stranger with Roy has retrieved the mailbox from the middle of the front yard and is using it as a makeshift bat on the hood of Jim’s car. The hood has a deep V-bend in the center of it. Jim feels confusion and panic and anger bubble up and out of him.

“WHAT THE HELL?!” he shouts. “Who are you?!”

The man sways a little on his feet and whips the mailbox haphazardly across the yard before turning and pointing menacingly at Jim. A scream erupts from his lips.

“JET SKIS!”

He sways once more before collapsing into Jim’s car and promptly passing out.

Jim can’t figure out for the life of him what he has to do with jet skis, but then again nothing is making sense tonight. His entire head is one swirling vacuum of chaos.

“I’m gonna kill you, Halpert,” Roy growls again.

He roughly grabs Jim by the lapels of his jacket. Jim is ready this time, and braces himself against Roy, pushing his palms firmly against Roy’s chest and glaring back at him.

“Stop it! I’ll call the police!” Karen shouts warningly, but she pauses with one foot in the door and the other foot still on the stoop. She seems unable to tear herself away, and Jim can’t tell if it’s because she’s afraid that Roy will hit him again or if she doesn’t want to miss anything else that Roy might say.

“I trusted you, and you took my girlfriend,” Roy spits. He grits his teeth and moves his face so close to Jim that Jim can feel his breath hot against his injured cheek.

Jim feels the panic converting itself into rage. What right did Roy have to show up at his house and act like he was the victim in this situation? Like he was a model boyfriend and Jim had ruined his perfect future with Pam.

Jim fists the material of Roy’s shirt in his hands, squeezing hard. He isn’t going to apologize anymore.

“Fiancée,” Jim grits out.

Roy’s mouth tenses into a thin line and he pulls back a little.

“What?” he bites out.

“She was your fiancée, you fucking moron!” Jim snarls. “Not that you ever remembered it then either.”

“What?” Roy repeats dangerously. He gives Jim’s lapels and violent jerk, but Jim just clenches his fists tighter.

“When she left you, it wasn’t because of me,” Jim says in a low, heated voice. “It had nothing to do with me. You were a shitty fiancé. It was only a matter of time before she left your sorry ass.”

Jim is barely aware that Karen is speaking. He hears “She was engaged?” come from the general direction of the doorway, but Jim is entirely focused on Roy. He refuses to look away.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Halpert?!” Roy explodes. “You kissed her three weeks before our wedding day!”

And then he’s swinging wildly at Jim with his uninjured hand, but Jim is able to dodge the blow again. And this time when Roy’s momentum knocks him off balance, Jim gives him a brutal shove backwards, partly to stop Roy from coming at him again but mostly because he’s so worked up that he has to hit something and it might as well be Roy.

Roy seems dazed and unsure of what had just happened. It looks as though the pain in his hand, combined with his level of intoxication, have caught up with him all at once. His eyes flutter back in his skull and his eyelids slide slowly shut.

In the sudden silence Jim realizes that his breathing is deep and shaky. He squeezes his eyes shut for a second and takes a deep breath in. Then he tilts his head back and lets out a huge breath. He is vaguely aware that Karen is still standing half-in, half-out of the house, but he doesn’t look up at her.

“Jim.”

Her voice isn’t pleading or nervous anymore. It is impatient and irritated. It implies reproach and consequence.

She wants an explanation.

Jim feels frustration surge through him. He can’t deal with this right now.

“Karen,” he parrots in the same tone, mockingly.

“Don’t,” she hisses. “You never told me that she was engaged.”

Jim purses his lips and nods sharply.

“Face is fine, Karen. Thanks for asking,” he says.

“Fine,” she says angrily. “We can clean you up first, but we need to talk about—”

“I’m calling Pam,” he says brusquely, cutting her off.

Karen glares at him and shakes her head quickly, like he’s the one being unbelievable right now.

“Just call the police,” she says tersely.

But Jim isn’t listening anymore. He’s searching his pockets and trying to ignore the blood spattered on his shirt and tie.

“Where’s my damn cell phone?” he mutters.

He looks up at Karen and some unreadable emotion flashes quickly across her face. Realization, maybe. Or maybe guilt.

“You left it in the car,” she says. There is something wounded in her tone.

He knows that he should tell her that he’s just worked up, but he can’t muster the energy. It would be a lie. He’s irritated with her, and no discussion he enters into with her now can end well.

So he walks away and Karen stays on the stoop, half-in and half-out of the doorway.

***********

His phone is on the passenger seat, turned off. He must have powered it down without thinking because he can’t remember turning it off. When he powers it back up his phone alerts him that he has one missed call and one voicemail. He clears the alert messages. No time to worry about that right now.

He has to go into his contact list to find her number. He took her off his speed dial a week or so ago. The night of Phyllis’s wedding.

It rings just once and then he hears her voice.

“Are you okay?”

That throws him. How is that an acceptable way to answer the phone?

“What?” he asks dumbly.

“Are you okay?” she repeats.

And it hits him. She knew. She knew that Roy was coming. Nice.

“Aside from the gash on the side of my face, yeah,” he says bitterly.

“Oh my God. He came after you?” she asks.

“Who, Roy? Oh, yeah. He stopped by,” Jim says angrily.

“I’m so sorry. Are you—”

Jim cuts her off. No amount of pleading can make this okay.

“You know, you might have given me a little warning!”

There is a pause. When Pam speaks again she sounds hesitant and anxious.

“Didn’t you get my voicemail?”

Jim feels the wind leave his sails.

“Oh,” was all he said, because he couldn’t bring himself to apologize.

“I would have left a message on your home machine, but I don’t know your home number anymore.”

Another awkward pause overtakes them. Her statement strikes Jim as so incredibly depressing. He hadn’t moved back in with Mark and he never bothered to tell Pam his new number. Why would he? They weren’t… whatever they were before, they weren’t that anymore.

“It wouldn’t have done any good,” Jim began, trying to brush off those thoughts. “He came just as Karen and I were about to go inside.”

Pam takes a second to reply, and Jim wonders if she is processing the fact that Karen is with him.

“Is he still there?” she asks.

“Passed out in the front yard. Along with some other guy.”

“Kenny?”

“Well, we didn’t really exchange pleasantries, so I’m not sure on his name,” Jim retorts.

“Big guy, grayish hair?” Pam asks, ignoring his tone.

“Hard to tell. I was a little distracted when he tried to destroy my car with my mailbox and then started screaming about jet skis,” Jim responds irritably.

“Yup. That’s Kenny. Where do you live? I’ll take them home.”

Jim hesitates. He really doesn’t want to see her right now. He doesn’t want to think of the turmoil it will cause, not just with Roy, but with Karen as well. He relents in the end mainly because of his desire to get this entire night over with. Calling the cops would entail hours of waiting and giving statements and rehashing everything. Besides, he’s her boyfriend and if she wants to cart his drunk ass around tonight, that’s her prerogative.

“324 Brooke,” he says abruptly.

“Oh,” she says softly.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She pauses. “It’s just… You’re only like five minutes from my apartment.”

“Oh,” Jim finds himself repeating.

It feels strange to him to know that she was that close this whole time. It felt farther.

“I’m in starting up my car now,” Pam says. He can hear what sounds like the startup of an engine.

He knows that it’s time to hang up, but he can’t let this go. Not just yet. He needs to know some things, things that he won’t be able to ask once Pam arrives and Karen is listening to them.

“Why did you tell him?” he asks.

“Excuse me?” She sounds surprised.

“Why now? Why did you tell him now?”

She sighs into the phone.

“I… I just wanted to be honest,” she says finally. “I knew we didn’t have a chance if I wasn’t completely honest.”

Jim feels his heart skip a beat.

“We?” he asks.

“Me and Roy,” Pam clarifies without hesitation, like she didn’t even know what he was thinking.

Fantastic. He could have kicked himself for letting his heart jump like that. What is wrong with him? His girlfriend is standing twenty feet away. And he’s mad at Pam. Very mad, he tells himself.

“So, I’m guessing that went pretty well? Telling him?” Jim says sarcastically.

When Pam doesn’t answer, Jim frowns. It didn’t occur to him just how badly things might have gone until the question left his mouth. He feels panic surging in his chest.

“Pam, what happened?” he prods.

“I talk about it in the voicemail,” she says evasively.

“Just tell me,” he demands.

She sighs again. It takes a couple of seconds for her to reply, but for Jim it feels like hours. Every second that passes gives his mind time to create terrifying scenarios.

“Um, we were at Poor Richard’s when I told him. He just sort of… lost it,” she says quietly. “No, not sort of. He lost it,” she continues, more decisively.

Jim is about to interject and ask what the hell that means when she continues.

“I heard a lot of glass breaking when I left. I didn’t stick around to see how much damage he did. It was… scary.”

At her last word, Jim makes up his mind.

“I don’t want you coming here,” he says.

“What?”

“I don’t want him near you,” he replies. His tone is strong and resolute.

“He didn’t touch me,” she says defensively, although he didn’t ask.

“You didn’t see him a second ago, Pam,” Jim protests. “He’s really drunk and really angry.”

“I’ve seen him worse,” Pam says simply. “A lot worse.”

“Well that’s… fantastic.”

“He’s never hit me,” she says.

“What has he done?”

He thinks of the way Roy sometimes grabbed her arm and pulled her from the room when they fought at work. He wonders how far that treatment extended. How far has he gone without actually hitting her? Had there been nights when he came home drunk and yelling nonsensically and he found her a suitable target for his frustrations?

Horrible images of Roy pressing her against the door, or against the wall, or against a bed flash successively through his thoughts as he waits for her to respond.

“I’m like two minutes away,” is all she says.

He doesn’t want to know what her non-answer means. All he knows is that she is not coming here.

“So turn around and go back,” he says. “I’ll have the police take care of it.”

“No!” she replies firmly. “Jim, look… I know what he did was completely inexcusable, but it’s my fault too. I told him in public, I didn’t think he would be so mad. I don’t know why I thought that, I mean… I cheated on him.”

“Don’t,” Jim says dangerously. “Don’t do that. Don’t make excuses for him.”

“I’m not—that’s not what I’m doing. Just… Look, I’m just going to drop him off at his place. It’s over between us. We’re… it’s over.”

He doesn’t even let himself feel that swelling in his chest this time.

“Oh yeah? For how long this time?” he asks venomously.

“Excuse me?” She sounds as angry as he does.

“You heard me. Last time it was eight months. How long this time? Two? Three?” he continues. He can’t stop himself.

“I’m a block away,” she says tersely. “I’ll pick Roy and Kenny up and you can get back to your girlfriend.”

She emphasizes her last word. The message is clear. Jim tries to tell himself that his concern has nothing to do with the any feelings he may or may not have for her. That he knows Roy is an asshole and that is where his concern is rooted. But he knows that isn’t true.

“Pam, look—” he starts.

“No,” she snaps. “This conversation is over.”

He hears a click, and he squeezes his eyes shut, willing this whole night to just end already. He remains that way until he hears an approaching car. He sees Pam’s little car pulling into his driveway. And then he hears shouting and he realizes that Roy was awake again.

***********

Karen stands frozen, watching Jim root through his car for his phone. She realizes that she is still standing in the middle of the doorway like an idiot.

Such an idiot, she thinks.

An idiot to move all the way out here for a guy she barely knew, an idiot to stay with him just because she was willing to believe the lies that she pushed him into telling her over the course of five long nights, an idiot for thinking that they could share one night together, just the two of them, without her invading his thoughts.

Such an idiot.

She tries to make sense of the night in her head. Jim had told her that they kissed. She shouldn’t be upset about that. What he neglected to mention was the little fact that, oh yeah, she was engaged at the time. Three weeks before their wedding day? Jesus, it sounded like something out of a movie. Something out of a stupid chick flick where the guy saves the girl from marrying some oaf at the last minute and then the audience cheers and cries and leaves the theater feeling like they could find someone like that one day.

Karen hates chick flicks.

The thing that keeps coming back to her, haunting her, is the fact that Pam apparently didn’t marry Roy. And what does that mean? Why did the wedding never happen?

But she stops herself from thinking that, because that road leads to madness. She can explain this away, because hey, even though Pam didn’t marry Roy, she didn’t get together with Jim either. Right? So… Jim was probably right when he told Roy that Pam’s breaking the wedding off had nothing to do with him.

Yeah. Nothing.

And when Jim got angry and defensive it wasn’t about Pam at all. It was about the fact that this guy was destroying his car and throwing punches. Anyone would have been mad. And the fact that he’s currently leaning against his car with his back to her, talking to her… That doesn’t mean anything either.

“I’m gonna fucking kill him.”

Karen rolls her eyes and looks down at the collapsed man at her feet. He was awake again. Awesome.

“Take it easy,” she mutters.

“Fuck. Three weeks before our wedding…”

He continues to grumble. She occasionally hears words like “kill” and “whore” and “trusted” and she finds that he’s really getting on her nerves.

“Look, she was drunk when she did it,” she says edgily. Anything to get him to shut up.

“No she wasn’t,” he slurs.

She rolls her eyes again.

“Jim said you left early,” she starts, but Roy cuts her off.

“Yeah?” he sneers. “What else did Halpert say?”

Karen grits her teeth but continues.

“You left, she started drinking. A lot. So just… I don’t know. It should make you feel a little better. She probably didn’t even mean it.”

She feels a sinking feeling and finishes her sentence in her mind.

But he did.

He was sober. He meant every word. If anyone should be feeling like crap, it shouldn’t be Roy, she thinks bitterly.

“She said she had feelings for him,” Roy moans, rubbing his hands wearily over his face.

And the sinking feeling becomes a plummeting sensation.

“What?” she asks immediately.

But Roy is in his own head, and he’s moved on to feeling sorry for himself again.

“Jesus. She fucking cheated on me,” he mutters.

Karen barely hears him, because her stomach is doing somersaults. It just doesn’t make any sense. If she actually had feelings for him, then why didn’t they get together when she left Roy? What is missing from this picture?

And did Pam actually say “had”? Did she say she had feelings or that she has them? Because that one letter makes a world of difference. The memory of Pam’s response to the question, “Wait, you’re not still… interested in him?” flashes through her mind.

Oh, yeah.

She had said it with total certainty. Did she really just get confused by Karen’s phrasing?

Roy’s voice breaks through her thoughts again.

“I can’t… I can’t believe it. Fucking Casino night.”

“What?” Karen asks. What is he talking about now?

“They probably didn’t even wait for me to leave the parking lot. Just went at it right outside the warehouse,” he says. He’s talking to himself, not responding to Karen.

Karen squints at him. How drunk is he?

“It was a Chili’s,” she reminds him.

Finally he looks at her. His eyes are bloodshot and his mouth is hanging open and he’s squinting at her now.

“What?” he asks.

“They kissed in a Chili’s,” Karen repeats slowly. She’s getting really sick of him. It occurs to her that she should just go inside or, even better, go home to her own house, but she can’t bring herself to leave.

“He took her to a restaurant? Like they were on a fucking date?” Roy asks incredulously. Then his voice gets low and dangerous again. “Oh, I’m gonna kill him.”

Karen resists the urge to roll her eyes a third time.

“You’re drunk,” she says impatiently. “They were already at the Chili’s. You weren’t at the warehouse.”

“No. The casino was in the warehouse,” Roy maintains. He doesn’t sound as drunk as he did a few minutes ago, and Karen finds herself thinking that maybe he’s not the confused one.

“What casino? You gamble at the Dundies?” she asks, giving him the benefit of the doubt.

“Dundies? What?” he asks. He’s struggling to sit up now.

“Okay, Roy, you know what? You just need to close your eyes and—”

“WHAT?” Roy shouts. He’s almost on his feet and he looks positively murderous. “They kissed at the Dundies?”

“…Yeah,” Karen says hesitantly. What was going on? “Pam told you—”

“Pam told me they kissed on Casino night!” Roy hollers. He’s standing fully now.

“I… what? What’s Casino Night?” Karen asks helplessly. Nothing is making any sense.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!” Roy mutters to himself. Then he spins around and roars, “HALPERT!”

Karen looks past Jim’s confused expression to see Pam’s small car pulling into the driveway.