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It had been almost a year since he’d left. A year since they stopped talking for reasons she wasn’t sure of at all. Maybe it was that she wasn’t in love with him, not like he was in love with her. Maybe it was her inability to do anything or say anything after he poured his heart out onto the pavement, after he kissed her and she kissed him back because she just wanted to know what it felt like to kiss someone besides Roy. Maybe it was the day after and how he didn’t come to work and she felt relieved almost to see his empty desk there when she walked in. Maybe it was the look on his face when he came back to get his stuff and put it all in a box to take to a new job, in a new city, with new people. She hadn’t been able to look at that face so she turned away and didn’t even say goodbye to the one person who completely understood her.

Abandonment hurt when you suddenly realized that without that person you really had no idea who you were.

She left her fiancé because she was feeling reckless now that he was gone. She packed all her clothes while he was at the bar and when he got home, she didn’t say a word to him. Even though she loved him so much, even though he was home to her. She just listened to him say her name and then he hung his head like he understood or saw it coming or almost wanted it to happen sooner rather than later.

She felt lost most days. And not lost in necessarily an emotional sense, but sometimes even in a directional sense, she was lost. She didn’t know where she was supposed to be going. She didn’t have hands and eyes to guide her now that he was gone. He would reassure her and tell her what she should do. So she just wandered from work and back to this apartment she was sharing with an old friend from college who she hadn’t really talked to in five years, but needed help with her rent.

And she did try to love him like he wanted her to. She tried so hard to feel what he felt, but it wasn’t there and she couldn’t explain it. He was her best friend, the greatest person she’d ever known, but she couldn’t say that she was in love with him or that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Sometimes she thought maybe she was just afraid of losing that element of their relationship, that friendship, that platonic bond that seemed so strong. She loved him in the purest way she knew how.

Her head spun in the mornings. She wanted him to be happy and she knew that being with her would make him happy and she knew that it was really almost completely up to her if he was happy or not, but she just- Maybe it was the thick shell of denial still covering her, because she couldn’t think of any real reason for her to not be in love with him. She couldn’t break through it, couldn’t understand anything that was inside of her.

Days, weeks, months went by and she still felt pressure building in her head when she thought about him.

Sometimes the phone would ring and it sounded different and she was so sure it would be him on the other end with answers and solutions and escape routes. It never was and sometimes during the phone call, she’d feel her eyes sting and her lips tremble, because she was thinking how he might do anything for her. She was thinking how he wrote her a letter after he left and she found it in her mailbox a week later. She was thinking how it said:

I’m trying to convince myself that all of this isn’t because of you, but it is. It really is. I’m also trying to decide if this is a positive thing or not. Because you’re the reason I’ve done anything in the past three years. And that used to be something good. Now, though-

I just wanted you to know that I’ll probably always love you. That’s not going to stop or go away, no matter how badly I want it to.

I don’t know if you’ll come around or not. If you’ll get married or not. If you’ll ever feel this for real or not. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

She was thinking how badly she wanted to come around.

Now, he was coming home.

He was coming home and she still felt slightly sick to her stomach at various times during the day when she’d remember his face and try to understand why it was she didn’t feel what she wanted to feel. He was coming home and she still needed answers, solutions, escape routes.

It had been almost a year and now he was coming back to her. She would feel like a real person again. She would know which direction to turn. She would be able to breathe without choking.

But, no, things would surely be different. He wouldn’t talk to her or look at her. He wouldn’t guide her. He wouldn’t be the other half of her like she always assumed he would be. He would be cold, distant. He would be farther away than he was when he was in Stamford. The chasm between them would give her vertigo when she looked down into it and she couldn’t just hold his hand to steady herself. She would still feel lost and she would still ache all over as if she were carrying boulders on her back.

She wasn’t ready. He was coming today and she wasn’t ready. She needed more time to prepare, to study up on the most effective ways to restart a friendship that has long since died. She needed some sort of defibrillator that would start her heart and his heart back up again, on the same page this time.

He walked through the door, wearing his gray overcoat with his beige shirt and a new tie. He was on his cell phone, laughing with his head tilted back and his eyes shining. He walked past her desk without any acknowledgement. It struck her then as he sat down at his old desk, still holding his phone to his ear, still smiling like he couldn’t stop: He was in love. Not with her, with someone else.

The first half of the work day felt interminable. She tried not to watch him as he scribbled furiously with his pencil. She tried not to listen in on his sales calls just to hear the easy familiarity of his voice. She tried not to think that it had been ten months since she’d even seen him and it was like she didn’t even exist to him. She tried not to cry, but she did when Dwight said something ridiculous about ninjas and he didn’t give her that look. She hurried to the bathroom, crying harder when she had to walk by his desk chair where he was leaning back with his hands behind his head.

She missed him even more now that he was here. She sat in the bathroom stall, wishing that she could close her eyes and just vanish as if she’d never been born. Never did whatever she did to make him feel something for her, never rejected him because she didn’t know-, never went all of those months without him.

She came back out and when she sat down at her desk, he looked at her for the first time. She felt her entire body go weak for a second and she barely managed to turn her head to meet his gaze. He looked blank, numb, not sure what to feel. She tried to smile, but ended up frowning.

In her mind, she was rubbing those paddles together and saying, “Clear!” But her heart didn’t start up again and she didn’t think his did either because he turned back to his desk with a soft shake of his head.

The day ended and she lingered for a while, hoping to maybe just walk beside him as they went out the door. He used to walk her to her car and open the door for her, saying, “Have a good night.” She liked that he never said goodnight, like it was maybe too final for him, too much like goodbye.

He was on his phone again as he started to get ready to leave. He didn’t look at her when he made his way to the door. She stood there dumbly, watching him and hearing him say as he pushed open the door, “Yeah, I miss you, too.”

He should have been saying it to her, is what she thought. She wanted so badly to hear it directed at her. She tried the defibrillator again, but her heart flatlined and the continuous beep of the heart monitor rang in her ears.

She put on her coat and left, not wanting to ever come back here, knowing that she had to.

She didn’t sleep that night, because she held the phone to her chest and thought about calling him. Every five minutes or so she would dial his number without pressing the talk button and she would wait and wait and wait until the phone hung itself up and she could breathe a sigh of relief. She didn’t know what she would say if she actually did call him. She wanted to hear his voice, needed to hear it. Didn’t he know that she really needed him right now? Hadn’t he heard about how she was alone now and how she’d never been alone and couldn’t understand how people slept without someone else beside them? Hadn’t he heard how mornings confused her because wasn’t someone supposed to kiss her as the sun flooded the room?

Morning came and she slowly rolled out of bed. Her eyes felt dry from being open all night, watching the ceiling, the light cast onto it from the window, the shadows when a car drove by. Her mouth felt dry from so much that wasn’t being said or expressed. Her limbs were heavy and the drive to the office felt endless and slow as her stomach twisted itself into a complicated knot.

Ten months and everything had changed so drastically that she panicked for a minute, not sure that she could remember anything about him or their friendship.

(No, he liked mayonnaise on both sides of his sandwich. He liked songs with slide guitar. He ironically watched bad reality shows, but he secretly really enjoyed them. He only drank imported beer. He had this one pair of jeans that he wore over and over, sometimes going weeks without washing them. He didn’t get along with his father and then he died from a heart attack two years ago and he had cried that day when he leaned across her desk and it scared her. He loved his niece and nephew as if they were his own children. He watched cartoons on Saturday mornings still. He had tasted like gin.)

He was there when she got there. She sat down at her desk and didn’t even look, didn’t want to see his eyes not greeting her.

She waited until he took his break. This finally happened around 11:30. She called his phone with a shaky hand and waited to be redirected to his voicemail. She took in a breath and said, “I’m sorry. I miss you. Can we have lunch together?” It wasn’t enough. Immediately after she hung up she realized she hadn’t said even half of what needed to be said, but she wanted to say those things to his face.

When he came back from his break, she tried not to watch him check his voicemail. But when she heard the sound of the receiver being taken from its cradle, she looked up. His mouth twisted as he listened and he held the phone to his ear long after the message had surely ended. Then he sighed and hung up, only to quickly pick the phone back up.

Her phone rang and she picked it up maybe too eagerly, “Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam.” Like she wasn’t fully aware of who was calling her.

“Yes,” and then he hung up, leaving her to listen to the dial tone for a second before she put the phone back in its place and closed her eyes.

She got to the kitchen early, because she was nervous. He swung open the door and wordlessly opened the fridge and took out his lunch. He sat across from her with her yogurt and salad meticulously positioned. He didn’t move, just placed his hands flat on the table and looked at her.

She laughed. “Jim, there’s so much that I-”

“I’m happy now,” he said with so much force that she had to stop breathing.

He was happy. Without her, he was happy. They couldn’t ever be friends, because he was happy and she couldn’t be a part of him anymore. That’s what she heard. He was happy. Happier.

Her voice came out broken when she said, “Well, I’m not.”

He shook his head. “Pam, look, I don’t know what you expect. I was willing to give you everything and you just- I can’t do it again. Okay?”

She wasn’t ready for this.

“I’m sorry if it hurts, but it can’t be half as bad as what I felt when you said you didn’t-”

“I never said that I didn’t,” she said and she feels stable for a second.

“You said-”

“I said that I couldn’t. I don’t know how. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. You’re- I should love you, but I’m too scared or I’m in denial still or something. I really wish I understood why I feel like I can’t be in love with you when it's really all I want.”

He was quiet then. She was studying the lettuce in her salad.

“I’m seeing someone.”

“I know.”

She was trying hard not to cry, but then she saw a tear fall into her salad, landing on a cherry tomato.

Maybe he didn’t need her to be happy, but she needed him. She really, really needed him.


She felt his hand on hers, warm and smooth. He said, “Pam?” She was crying hard, but silently now.

She shook her head and when he stood up, she did the same. He was quick to put his arms around her waist, pulling her against him. She had been holding onto the memory of what that felt like since the last time. How his hands pressed against the small of her back gently. Her hands were on his shoulder blades and she was sure there would be a wet imprint of her face on his shirt.

She said, “I really missed you.”

He ran a hand along her hair and didn’t say anything in response. And it was strange that even now with him so close to her, he still felt so far away.

She said in a small voice while her fingers played with his collar, “I‘m sorry. Can we- I need you to be my friend again.”

He pulled back so he could look at her eyes. His hands were on either side of her face when he did this and he said, “Okay.” And then he’d sighed and muttered to himself as he pulled her back against him, “This is not a good idea.”

She smiled against his heart.

He was coming home.



unfold is the author of 102 other stories.
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