1. "He just left, Mom," and Pam can't stop sobbing. Her mom makes soothing shhing noises, rubs Pam's back while she cries, which Pam likes, even if it makes her feel like a five-year-old. "He brought his BROTHER on our DATE and then they LEFT ME THERE. What am I going to do?"
"Well, honey, it doesn't sound like he's a very respectful boy," her mom points out, and Pam knows she's right, but she wants to date Roy so bad. Through her tears, Pam contemplates what Roy will have to do for her to agree to go out with him again. In the next fifteen seconds, she successively lowers the bar.
"If it's like this now" -- because her mom could always read her thoughts -- "what's it going to be like later? A man should never take you for granted."
Pam cries herself to sleep and it feels like the world has ended, like a hole should just open up underneath her and swallow her so she doesn't have to go to school Monday because no way can she handle that. Saturday morning her mom brings her pancakes in bed, a copy of the latest Sassy, and a new pack of colored pencils.
When he calls, three days later, Pam thinks, Grrlpower, Pamela, and tells her dad, "Tell him I'm not here," and keeps sketching.
2. She's just started work at Dunder Mifflin, and the job mostly sucks. Her boss is really, really weird, so much so that when she tells her mom about him, she says, "Oh, Pammy! Don't exaggerate. He can't be that bad." But oh, he really can. And the blonde from accounting keeps looking at her like she's dirty, and Dwight, the sales guy; she doesn't even know how to begin to describe Dwight. The first day of work, he asks her, point blank, if she has any infectious diseases he should be worried about; he has an amazing immune system, he tells her, but still, best not to take chances.
She knows she shouldn't, but she winks and says, "Only if we get a lot friendlier." Jim snorts, and Dwight huffs off.
Jim. Jim is the best part of her new job. He's not weird, unlike everyone one else in the office, and is actually nice to her. He pranks Dwight all the time, and after a few days, has her helping him. She hadn't intended to be so completely disregarding of her actual job in the first week, but clearly that sort of thing doesn't matter here.
Roy gets pissed about how close she and Jim are; he's tired, he says, of coming up to see her and she's sitting on Jim's desk, laughing. "I think he likes you, likes you likes you," Roy says. "Why else would he be hanging out with you so much?"
Pam wants to point out that maybe he just liked her as a friend, except she already knows that isn't true, and it would be lying to say she isn't pleased with the thought. And whatever else, whatever faults she may have, Pam has never outright lied to Roy. Lies of omission are not the same.
Darryl tells Roy about how Pam went to lunch with Jim at Cugino's, and Roy gets pissed again. "I don't think you should hang out with him," he says.
"Oh yeah?" Pam rolls her eyes. "How am I supposed to accomplish that? We work together."
But Roy is serious, and the next day, sitting at her desk at work, facing away from the rest of the office, she thinks about how she didn't even want to take this stupid job, but Roy said they needed money for the wedding and a down payment for a house, and then she decides that's bullshit.
She turns her computer around, so it faces out toward everything, and decides, screw Roy.
3. She ends up calling it off when he buys a new TV -- a big one, HD flat screen. He'd said they had to postpone the wedding to save for a mortgage, but she realizes, finally, it's that he wants different things.
4. They're dancing on the porch of the VA, and they can hear Kevin's band doing a pretty decent rendition of "You Were Meant for Me," especially considering they're guys, and a Police cover band. They danced to this at their prom -- that's why it's their song -- but it's really fitting, right now. And this is how it could have been, had they gotten married. Same song, same place.
Roy smells good, better than usual. Or better than he used to. This might be usual, now. And Pam feels a pang, that she doesn't know what's usual for Roy, even though she's known him half her life. Pam hardly remembers the time before she met Roy, and now she doesn't even know what he smells like every day. This makes her feel terribly sad, all the sudden. She's been lonely a lot, these past few months, but this is the first time in a while she's thought Roy could cure that loneliness.
He looks good, lately; he hasn't been this slim since high school and though she never used to like it when he quit shaving and grew a beard, it does look good on him. His hand still fits around hers just right, like time has eroded the edges of their bodies until they join perfectly. He's so big and warm and this is how it was always supposed to be. Pam can't remember what was so bad about it in the first place.
"You wanna get out of here?" he asks, and the gentleness in his voice, the careful casualness, is just like the first time he asked her that question. They were at a party, and they'd slipped out to sit on the swing in the backyard. They were looking up at the stars and then Roy had interrupted her rant about her geometry teacher to kiss her. It was clumsy, and wet, and their teeth had knocked together, but Roy had smiled and asked her to go to a hockey game with him that weekend, and Pam had wanted that kiss for ages.
But she still says no. She's not sure it's the right choice, anymore, but it's her choice.
5. Pam remembers the few times she and Roy stayed out all night and she had to sneak back home at dawn, bright-eyed and grimy. Her hair was flat and oily, her makeup worn off in places and caked on in others, and she would try not to giggle with tiredness and rebellion as she eased the key into the lock, opened and closed the door as quietly as she could, and tiptoed up to her room, remembering to stay to the sides of the stairs so they wouldn't creak.
But this is different. She's not sixteen anymore, and her parents won't ground her for breaking curfew. And she's not sneaking home at dawn, now, she's walking through the front door at the crack of noon. She didn't get to sleep until late.
Roy is standing in the kitchen. "Where were you?" he asks. "You never came home from that stupid casino thing."
Pam falters, just a little. "I... I was with Jim."
Roy doesn't say anything, and Pam knows she knocked the wind out of him. "I'm sorry," she says, "but it's been over for a long time."
She packs her bags, just enough to get her through the next few days, and still Roy doesn't say anything; he just stays in the kitchen. After she closes the door, as she walks down the sidewalk to her car, she hears glass break, like a bottle thrown against the wall.
Story Notes:
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Chapter End Notes:
I SWEAR I wrote that final ending before "Cocktails." Like, in January.
