Karen stepped out into the spring air, breathing in deeply. The minimal amount of sweat that had formed on her arms, her forehead dried in the slight briskness of the Pennsylvania breeze. ‘Good,’ she thought, taking a sip from her bottled water. ‘I hate it when I sweat all over the interior of my car’.

She had made the choice not to shower at the gym for several reasons, one of them being her unwillingness to stand naked in a bare cement shower stall surrounded by strangers. Karen had actually never been one to flaunt nudity, even back in Stamford when she would work out with her girlfriends. It was just something she’d never been comfortable with. Back in high school, super skinny and straight as a stick, she’d been overly self-conscious about her body image. And so, when faced with the option, Karen chose to go home, where she could stand under the hot spray for twenty minutes, singing at the top of her lungs. She was going through a retro Pretenders phase currently, crooning as she would shampoo her hair.

Flipping open her cell phone as she settled into her car, she hit speed dial three. It rang three times before he answered, with a quiet “hey”.

“Hey,” she answered, pulling out of her parking spot and making her way out onto the street. “I’m just leaving the fabulous Scranton Uno Fitness Incorporated. What are you doing?”

She heard a door close on his end, and then he answered, still somewhat softly, “Oh, not much. Did some laundry…” He stopped talking.

“What’s wrong?” She asked cautiously. She knew Jim wasn’t a big talker, but something in his tone told her he was upset.

“Nothing, I’m just tired I guess.” And he sounded tired, defeated even.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she replied, stopping at a red light. “It was all that wild partying we did last night,” she cracked, hoping to get him back into normal Jim territory, humor.

“Yeah,” was all he said.

“Jim, what’s wrong?” she asked again, this time firmer in her tone. Jim knew by now that when she used this voice, what he jokingly referred to as her ‘mom voice’, she meant business.

He was silent for a moment, then he sighed. “It’s not a big deal, I just have a headache and you kind of woke me up.” Something about the way he answered made him sound almost defensive.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Last night you just told me to call you today when I got done working out.” He was cranky today. She silently prayed he hadn’t partaken in Michael’s potato salad last night. It had been too…shiny.

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” he immediately responded. “I guess spending last night in Michael and Dwight’s company just made me crazier than usual.”

“And that is saying something,” she cracked without missing a beat. Now this, this she could handle.

She had only known Jim for nine months, but as far as she could tell, he had a split personality. There was the affable, nice, sweet guy who was constantly trying to get her to smile. That guy was the one she’d followed to Scranton. He was the only one she’d ever met prior to moving here. But once she got here, she’d seen another side of him. Quiet, sad, constantly introspective. She would look up from her desk and see him simply staring off into space, eyes glazed over.

“Yeah,” was all he answered.

“Well, where are you? Are you at home?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah. Why?” He asked, sounding almost startled.

“I was just gonna stop over, dork,” she chided him, chuckling. “I could bring you some soup, give you aspirin, play a little Florence Nightingale.”

“Do you have a naughty nurse uniform, Fillipelli?” He asked, his voice going up in register. “I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me!”

“Rubber shoes and all,” she giggled back, pulling into her driveway. “So, I’m gonna stop over, okay?”

“Oh, hey. Why don’t you give me a few minutes, okay? Put my face on?”

Something was definitely wrong. Whenever Karen asked (or told) him about stopping at his place, his answer was always ‘Yeah, the door’s open. I’ll be here.’

“Jim, what’s going on?” It came out more accusatorial than she meant it to.

“I just, just give me a couple minutes, okay?” He asked. “It will give you a chance to clean up.”

Now, on the one of two occasions she’d gone straight to his place from the gym on Saturdays, he had not seemed to have any problem with her showering there, even joining her. As much as Karen hated showering in front of strangers, she didn’t mind showering with the tall paper salesman at all. She’d felt completely comfortable with him, sexually from the start. He had a slowness, a reverence in the way he worked that made her tingle.

Instead of making another obvious sexual overtone, she simply dropped it. “Okay, whatever.” Maybe she actually had been showering with a stranger all this time. “Why don’t you come over when you’re done doing whatever secretive thing it is you’re doing, okay?”

She hit the ‘end’ button on her cell phone and tossed it into the side pocket on her duffel bag, striding into her house.

As she threw her bag down in her foyer and walked purposefully into her bathroom, one nagging feeling wouldn’t leave her subconscious. This was about Pam.

She knew the receptionist was a huge part of Jim’s life, bigger than either of them would ever acknowledge. After he’d told her at the gay accountant’s fiesta that he still cared about her, Karen had been quite proud of the amount of resilience and pluck she’d exhibited. Hearing your steady is still pining after someone else is not the greatest thing in the world, after all. In the ensuing conversations they’d had about it, fueled by her own morbid curiosity, she’d learned that Pam was engaged to a loser and Jim mostly just felt bad for her having a life she didn’t want. He had formed a crush on her and, upon telling her, Pam had apparently told him she wanted nothing to do with him. And so, because he didn’t want it to be awkward for her, he transferred to Stamford. It had taken five nights to get this small amount of information, and about half of it was inferred by Karen herself. No, he was definitely not a talker.

Even so, it was only when Pam wasn’t in his vicinity that she appeared to be the problem. Thinking back to the day of that fiesta, Jim had been gleeful to share a joke with the redhead, completely unabashedly giggling with her about the downfall of Andy. It was the Jim she’d known in Stamford, the one she thought was hers. It was only later, when he was alone with Karen, that he’d seemed heartbroken once again.

Karen started the water, testing it with her hand before stepping under the spray. It was always in those moments of his undoing that he would either shut her out completely or turn a one-eighty and come to her, wanting her, even voracious on occasion, always making her feel beautiful.

“The powers that be that force us to live like we do,” Karen sang loudly to no one. She heard a noise come from the living room and sighed. He had let himself in with the key she’d given him over a month ago, right around Valentine’s Day. It was right around that time that things really seemed to start clicking with them. After Phyllis’s wedding, he’d seemed attentive, happy. Karen could not figure out what the sudden change between last night and this afternoon could be.

She didn’t call to him, didn’t really want to talk to him at all. If he wanted to start this surly immature cycle al over again, he could, but she wasn’t going to join in this time.

He quietly opened the bathroom door and entered. “Hey,” he said, his tone an apology in and of itself.

“Hi,” she answered, careful to keep her voice cool. She continued to rinse the suds out of her hair in silence. Then, she heard the sound of a zipper, followed by the soft thud as his clothes hit the floor of her bathroom. Karen bit her lip, adding conditioner to her scalp. The sound of the shower curtain being opened turned her attention to him.

There he stood, completely naked. But his nudity was the furthest thing from her mind. Covering his left eye was a large purple bruise, encompassing practically half his face.

“What the hell happened?” Karen asked, forgetting the anger she had felt toward him a moment ago.

“I got into a fist fight with the mailman,” he answered without missing a beat. Karen narrowed her eyes at him warningly. “Don’t make any wise cracks about their shorts, let me tell you.”

“Jim.”

“Can we talk about it later, please?” he asked, leaning in to kiss her slowly. She allowed him to, cupping his face gingerly as he stepped into her tub and wrapped his arms around her naked body.

‘Maybe none of it really matters’, Karen thought as she ran her lips along his jaw line. ‘Maybe all that really matters is he wants me. If he really wanted her, he would be with her, right?’

And then his lips moved down her torso, hands whispering across her ribcage, and she forgot why she was mad at him in the first place.