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Summer 2006

JULY

It’s a sweltering Saturday night in July, and he’s stifling a yawn.

He sits in the restaurant and tries to focus, to pay attention.

You’re the one who asked her out after all. He reminds himself.

But as he’s sitting there, watching her, listening to her stories he knows that she just won’t do.

She’s laughing too loudly. She’s talking too fast. She’s not saying anything that matters, that makes a damn bit of sense.

It’s like he’s sitting across from Kelly, he thinks to his horror.

She’s from Stamford but wants to live in Greenwich. She thinks that she prefers the Yacht Club to the Tennis Club.

Jim knows one has to do with boats and the other with racquets but he’s pretty sure both of them are unattainable on a paper salesman’s salary.

He takes another sip of his beer, but doesn’t want to drink too much, doesn’t want a repeat of the first date he’d gone on when he’d moved here. He shivers as he remembers that drunken disaster when all he’d done was slur the night away lamenting about what he’d left behind.

Pam.

This girl across from him was perfectly nice. He remembers why he asked her out in the first place, because she was undeniably pretty and she’d smiled at his jokes and he knew if he didn’t he’d sit home once again and sift at a box full of yogurt lids and paperclips and watch Dazed and Confused on a continuous loop.

If only he could sit there and watch it with Pam…

Stop it. Focus. Move on, for chrissakes.

He gives the girl a smile, but it doesn’t meet his eyes. As he watches her it’s more and more obvious. She wasn’t like Pam. She didn’t laugh like Pam. Pam’s laugh…he thinks, was so genuine, so…spontaneous.

It’s not the girl’s fault. She’s probably just looking for someone too, to not be so lonely, to have a reason to get up in the morning. It’s obvious that she’s made an effort. Her hair is perfectly stick straight and shines like glass and it’s…lovely but he’s not interested in perfection.

He wants Pam.

With her unruly hair and her buttoned up blouse and her eyes that sparkle without the benefit of lustrous mascara.

He wants Pam.

With her quick wit and her easy smile and her delight in things like second drinks and solitaire and childhood games that she can’t seem to let go of.

He wants Pam.

Even though, when Michael held the door open for him on his last day, she simply sat at her desk and stared at him. She didn’t smile, she didn’t call out to him, and she didn’t make one move to stop him.

He can’t shake it. He keeps trying. He takes another deep breath and closes his eyes.

Forget her. Forget her, forget her, FORGET HER.

He repeats it to himself five times a minute, a hundred times an hour but it’s hopeless.

He sees her laughing, the girl across from him and he chuckles back. Even as he does he knows this isn’t going to work.

She’s not Pam.

But maybe, someday, he’ll find someone close.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

AUGUST

It’s two in the morning on a Thursday and the air-conditioner isn’t working.

Roy’s not home yet and she’s trying to work up enough emotion to be furious.

He said he would try and he did, for a while, but now he’s coming up short again.

And she’s tired of everything that's going wrong in her life. She just wants something that's right, for once.

Jim.

She’s tired of going to work and not having him there. Because she knows now that, ironically, he’s part of what made her able to stay with Roy so long.

He gave her some sort of hope, all those times when she almost lost it.

She’s tired of waking up every morning and missing him, tired of feeling like a piece of her heart is out there walking around without her.

She should have said something; she should have told him…something to let him know he wasn’t crazy.

Instead she’s spending her life, walking through this house, perpetually alone.

Overcome with the heat she takes a shower, turns the water on as cold as she can stand it. She towels off quickly and dresses in a loose fitting t-shirt.

She goes downstairs and gets a big glass of iced tea.

She moves to the bedroom and stands in front of a fan that makes too much noise and too little breeze. She gazes at the worthless air conditioning unit and sucks in a breath.

Just another thing he said he’d do but didn’t.

She’s so tired, of everything.

It’s not really his fault; Roy’s not a bad guy. He’s not. He’s just not the guy.

Not anymore.

He’s not Jim.

She desperately tries to keep from crying.

She wonders what he is doing, where he is, who he’s friends with now. She wonders if he ever thinks of her. She wonders if he could possibly think about her as often as she thinks of him.

Which, to her, seems like ten times a minute, two hundred times an hour.

She wants Jim.

With his generous laugh and his unfailing thoughtfullness. There's nothing he'd said he'd do that he didn't follow through on.

And that even included leaving her.

She wants Jim.

With his goofy grin and his elaborate schemes and the way he could just look at her and know what she’s thinking.

She wants Jim.

Who could both make her world calm and turn upside down in the span of a day.

The only problem is, she doesn’t have the faintest clue how to have him.

She knows where he’s working; she knows how to reach him but the thought of actually doing so terrifies her.

If he’s moved on, she’ll simply die. The thought fills her mind that if she stays here with Roy she’ll die anyway.

She stares at the ring on her hand and remembers how she felt when he first placed it there.

Hopeful, excited, incredibly giddy.

She looks at it now and sees broken promises and postponements and dreams that will never come true.

She lifts her damp hair off her shoulders and throws it up in a knot on the top of her head.

She slides her fingers over her ring, slipping it off and placing it carefully in the little dish on her dresser.

And as she does she knows, for the first time with all certainty, that no matter what happens she’ll never wear it again.

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