1. Pam met Roy in tenth grade; she was fifteen, had never been on a real date. She'd gone to a dance with a boy, Danny, the year before, and they'd kissed, but it was gross and he tried to shove his tongue down her mouth and she'd pretended she really had to pee, and waited in the bathroom for a long time before coming back out. Roy was already sixteen, and had his own truck, and played football. Pam wasn't popular -- she wasn't unpopular, either; she was mostly just there. She was in art club, and National Honor Society, but nothing else. Roy was actually popular, and had dated a cheerleader all last year. She wasn't sure why he wanted to ask her out, but there he was, leaning against the locker next hers, the one that belonged to Maura Jones, asking her if she wanted to go to a hockey game. Pam actually liked hockey: her dad was a big Flyers fan, and he had taken her to a few games when she was little; once it had been her eighth birthday, and they flashed "Happy Birthday Pam" across the Jumbotron. So she said yes, because she liked hockey and Roy was cute and looked good in a football uniform.
Everyone knows how the date turned out; the story's worn thin at family gatherings. It's not really a joke, unless she thinks about the event and not about Roy; when she tells everyone at work, she mentally pretends it's a story about someone else, someone she hasn't been engaged to for three years. It's just easier that way.
2. When Jim tells her he loves her, with the little shake of his head, like this is what he needs to clear his head, after he walks away, after he only says, "Yeah," when she says, "I can't," like he doesn't really mean it, because they both know perfectly well she can, she thinks of that first date, of that moment when she realized Roy and his brother had gone, and she had wondered if it was a joke -- the hot, sick feeling of panic, the way her stomach swooped out of her body through her throat, wondered how she would laugh this one off when all the popular kids came out of hiding to laugh at her. She stood frozen outside of the bathroom and felt like she was being watched.
This time, she is being watched, and she forgets all about it, focusing on keeping the world from spinning too fast.
3. The documentary crew takes the summer off, like they did last time. It's weirder this time because they'd been around all year; last year, just a few weeks before summer. So it's weird, to just... do your job and not be followed around by three guys in black jeans carrying extension cords. This is what everyone else's life is like.
Jim is gone, too, to Stamford, and that's weird too. When Pam gets nervous -- and she's nervous a lot these days -- she reaches for the ring on her left hand, and there's still a little shock when it isn't there. She broke it off a month ago, and her hand still feels too light. It was expensive, to break off a decade-long relationship: she had to pay for the wedding that didn't happen, pay the deposit on a new apartment, buy some new furniture since Roy got half of what they had. But she's drawing again, and she bought curtains with flowers on them, and she feels good. Scared, but good. Her dad takes her to a hockey game, and she only thinks about Roy for a minute; she's too busy enjoying the game. For the first time in a long time, she doesn't know what's going to happen. She had forgotten what freedom felt like.
4. Roy remembers what color the roses he gave her at prom were, though he thinks she doesn't remember; he doesn't know those were the flowers for their wedding. He got drunk at prom and his vomit barely missed her new shoes. She stayed at the dance with her friends while he drank cheap vodka out of his brother's flask behind the gym, and that was still the time Pam couldn't even look at Ricky without blaming him for that terrible first date. Roy felt bad about it -- he'd apologized, several times -- but Ricky still thought it was funny; he was the only one who ever brought it up, and not even Roy's warning look could shut him up. It had been nearly two years now, but it still wasn't funny to Pam, and she still didn't like Ricky. He was a bad influence; even her mom said so.
That was the night they had sex for the first time, and it kind of hurt, and Roy banged his head against the back window of his pickup, because the bed wasn't long enough for him to stretch out on, and afterwards, when they went to the afterparty at Roy's friend's house, Ricky howled like a wolf when they walked in the door, and led the whole room in clapping. Roy grinned and took a bow, but Pam flushed crimson and bolted, and remembered how much she hated Roy's stupid brother.
5. Her first date with Jim -- the first real date, where they both know ahead of time that it's a date, and agree on that fact -- he makes her dinner and they watch White Chicks on cable and make fun of it. It's just grilled cheese and beer, and Jim's apartment is painfully boy (Pam accidentally sits on a PSP controller, hidden under a blanket; the remote control's in the microwave; there's no toilet paper in the bathroom but there is a Victoria's Secret catalog stuffed in the toilet paper holder), but his imitation of the Wayan brothers' dancing is priceless, and his grilled cheese sandwiches are actually really good.
He kisses her softly, after Pam's been mentally willing him to for thirty minutes -- more like five years, really -- and then he smiles at her like he couldn't stop if he wanted to. It's a good first date, the best Pam's ever been on, but she's not even thinking about that.
Story Notes:
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sundancekid is the author of 12 other stories.
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