Nice Guy:
Jim Halpert was a nice guy, he was the guy that other guys trusted with their girlfriends and the kind of guy who would do anything for a friend. He was reliable, Jim Halpert was a guy you could count on.
His first college girlfriend had broken up with him after two months because, ‘You’re just too nice a guy, there’s no excitement or mystery.’ She told him while sitting on his bed the day before they left for spring break, effectively sending him back to his house to mope and let his Mom pamper him for the week. She ended up dating a loser and for six months he got a lot of midnight drunk phone calls telling him she was stupid to let him go. It was then that nineteen year old Jim Halpert knew he would never understand women.
But he understood her, understood her to the point where the only thing that didn’t make sense to him was that she could marry that buffoon. But he was a nice a guy and never told her that Roy would make sure she had to stay in Scranton the rest of her life, that ‘Dunder-Mifflin, this Pam’ would be her life’s work. He understood that she loved the big man ape that was Roy so he never ever said anything.
Until of course that fateful night, when Jim stopped being the guy that you could trust you’re girlfriend with. Maybe it was because she just looked so beautiful, but that couldn’t be it, she always looked beautiful. Maybe it was because after all the awkwardness of her finding out he complained about her they were back to normal, Jim and Pam hi-jinks. Maybe it was the wink she had given him that morning when he moved the coat rack with his mind, in full view of Roy who had told him that he liked that Pam talked to Jim because it kept her quiet at home. But maybe it was because enough was enough and he was sick of being the nice guy and for once needed to try to save himself and her at the same time, instead of just saving her.
Even afterwards, after he had stepped back and looked into her eyes while she muttered about, ‘I can’t’ and something about ‘I’m sorry’ but all he really heard was, ‘You’re my best friend the nicest guy, I’ve ever known.’ She pushed herself away from him and left the office quietly, while Jim decided ‘nice’ was the dirtiest word in the English language.
But yet, he went back to being the nice guy, he said ‘hi’ to her when he walked in and ‘bye’ when he left. But that was their only communication during the day, he backed off completely. Because he liked being a nice guy, he liked being someone trustworthy. Despite how much it hurt, he liked that about himself. He wanted to not drastically change himself into the guy you couldn’t trust, because already he had lost his best friend. So he became Jim Halpert 2.0 an even ‘nicer’ version than the original, who was such a good friend he didn’t talk to his best friend.
Which is why when he found himself pounding on her mother’s door, in the pouring rain, at 6:30am, he was surprised. Surprised because he was supposed to be on his way to Philly International but had some how ended up skipping the exit and driving to Havertown. He didn’t even know why he would go to her mother’s with the box in his hand. But when Mrs. Beesly opened the door for him to come in, ‘Out of the cat and dog rain, or else he would die of pneumonia.’ He didn’t quite know what to do. They had never actually ever met, she had heard of him, but beyond that he was a stranger soaking her foyer carpet.
He put the box on her floor, the blue metallic yogurt lid peeking out. While her mother that he had never met went and got him a towel, he waited. Looking at pictures on the wall that told the story of Pam and Roy, from awkward Prom smiles to the most recent Fourth of July barbeques, Jim saw the happiness fade from her smile over the years. Well the smiles with Roy, he still could get her smile like the picture of her from a junior high art show. And for the first time in almost a month, he smiled like he meant it.
When she came back with the towel, he was already gone from the foyer, with a note on top of the box, the box filled with the things that made him think of Pam, yogurt lids and Christmas cards, pencil cups and poker chips. All the things he needed her Mom to give back to her, so he could let her go. But instead he took a picture off the wall and left a note for her Mom, apologizing in advance, because damnit he wasn’t going to give up, he was never going to give up.
He was a nice guy who liked to make sure everyone around him was happy, and as he drove the two hours back to Scranton with the picture of sixteen year old her after she won the ‘best in show’. He knew that even if he didn’t get her that he made her smile like that and she deserved to smile like that.
Maybe the nice guy would still finish last, but he couldn’t walk away from her because she rejected him once. He was the nicest guy she had ever known and her best friend, he deserved more than that. So if it was a fight that was needed he was ready to become a knight in shining armor.
Author's Chapter Notes:
This a drabble I just wrote, its kind of weird and the run on sentences were on purpose, for a kind of flow thing, I'm not sure it works. This is the first Office Fic I've posted anywhere.
Disclaimer: So incredibly not mine and trust me I'm not getting paid for this.
Disclaimer: So incredibly not mine and trust me I'm not getting paid for this.
tizzy is the author of 2 other stories.
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