They end up going to Farley's for dinner, but Jim's the only one who eats because Katy says she doesn't ever eat past six o'clock, and it's ten minutes to six by the time they get to the restaurant. He gets an order of crab legs and she looks away while he eats them, sipping her wine, and he sees her glance at him every few minutes. She's quieter now than she had been on the way over.

* * * * *

"So, Michael's not always that bad. Really," Jim says. He drinks from his beer bottle, wiping his wet palm on the leg of his pants. She flips her red hair with her hand and he begins to shake his knee underneath the table. This is new, and he kind of likes it.

"Oh." She giggles. "Yeah. I mean, he was pretty annoying, but I guess after a while you probably get used to him, right?"

"Something like that," Jim answers.

The fact of the matter is that Katy has boobs. He knows it shouldn't matter so much to him that their conversation has been about nothing but Michael for the past hour. It shouldn't matter, because she's pretty and...well, she's that. Roy had thought so, too. Roy had thought so, to the point where he had said it out loud, right in front of his fiance, and he'd asked if Jim was gay.  So now, Jim's out with Katy, Roy's home with Pam, nobody's gay, and everybody wins. 

"Hey, so, let's not talk about Michael anymore," he says, pushing his coaster around on the tabletop. He finds it more draining talking about his boss to someone who's only had to put up with him for a few hours, and he's on this date for a reason and the discussion has been killing him.

Katy giggles again. She does that a lot. It's cute. "Okay. So what do you want to talk about?"

Jim takes a handful of cocktail peanuts from the bowl in the middle of their table. "Let's talk about you. What do you like to do besides selling purses?"

She drains the rest of her Zinfandel, and pushes her two empty wine glasses aside. "Well," she says, folding her hands, "I like going out. I try to keep it to less than four nights a week, but it depends on what's going on. The good thing about working for myself is that I get to make my own hours, so if I get really drunk I don't have to worry about waking up early the next day."

"That's, um, always a plus," Jim says, nodding. Which, it is. What else is he supposed to say? That's super awesome for you? Thank God you sell purses, otherwise you'd have to wake up before ten a.m.?

"I know, right?" She drums her fingertips on the table. "Let's see. What else...oh!" She shakes her head slightly, her curly hair bouncing against her shoulders. "I also like to read."

Jim looks up at her. "Really?"

"Really."

"Well, what do you like?"

"Um," she presses a finger into her cheek. "Candace Bushnell."

Jim purses his lips, and shakes his head. "Doesn't ring a bell."

"Are you kidding? You've never heard of Candace Bushnell?"

"Should I have?" He sees their waitress standing next to an older man with a baseball cap on the other side of the bar, and he leans to try to get her attention.

"She wrote Sex in the City. I thought everybody knew that."

"Well, I am a guy, Katy. In case you forgot. I mean, I know my build is astonishingly feminine, but don't be deceived by that."

Katy laughs again. "Oh, my God," she says, catching her breath. "I had no idea you were this funny. When your boss brought me around to introduce me to everyone, I thought you'd be a total jerk."

"Thank you." Jim bows his head. "I'm glad to know I look like a total jerk."

"No, I mean, it's just that he was introducing me to so many people and some of them were so-I don't know. I didn't know what to think of you, I guess."

"Well, you definitely did a good job of winning Michael over. On Pam's first week, he made us wear labels with our extension numbers written in black marker. You know. Not our names, our extension numbers. The last time we had a female visitor it was the lady that comes to maintain our copy machine, and Michael bet us that she wouldn't be able to fix anything. We told him that the machine wasn't actually broken, and he jammed a pair of scissors into the paper feed. So we can all say that he's not the best with women. Or, people, in general."

She doesn't laugh this time, and it makes him nervous. He watches her, and she's looking down, tracing the stem of her glass with her finger. "Well, what about you?" she asks. "Did I do a good job of winning you over?"

She's pretty in the soft light of the restaurant, and he likes the way her eyes crinkle up when she smiles. If that's all it takes, then maybe she has. But instead of saying maybe, he says, "yeah."

* * * * *

Later on, it doesn't matter that she reads chick-lit or that she'd told him that sometimes she files her nails while driving with her knees. She makes him forget, for a night, and he makes her his, for now. 




Prompts were:  a pair of scissors, two wine glasses, cocktail peanuts, a label written in black magic marker, and a baseball cap.  Started at 5:20 pm, and finished at 7:24 pm.