The Real Deal

So much for make-up sex.

Their breathing had slowed to a life-sustaining rate; the sweat had almost dried; but nothing had really been resolved. Not that it hadn’t been great, because it had – moaning Jim’s name so loudly she dreaded seeing her neighbors in the lobby great. Still. She wasn’t even sure what they’d fought about in the first place.

They’d simply reached their saturation point with arguing and halfheartedly agreed to let it go. Skipped to the making-up part. It had worked well enough in the past, but those had been minor squabbles that evaporated in the instant elapsed between his hand reaching for her and their mouths colliding.

This had been different. The real deal. It had been ignited that morning with a misunderstanding involving baseball tickets and a clumsily scheduled art class. Done a slow burn with claims of less than equal consideration (his) and hypersensitivity (hers.)  Simmered through Angela’s sanctimonious announcement, upon seeing them arrive for work together, that she was praying for Pam’s imperiled hussy soul (he’d found it hilarious; her, not so much.) Bubbled to the surface with Michael’s belief that his imaginary role in uniting them granted license to quiz Jim about aspects of their sex life she’d be embarrassed to discuss with her gynecologist (did he really think Michael wouldn’t take his facetious answers seriously and spend the rest of the day spilling details to whomever would listen?)  Finally, it had fully boiled over with the aggravation of an insanely complicated new phone system, whose instruction manuals Dwight had declared accessible only ‘on a need-to-know basis.’  (Hello? She was the freaking receptionist.)  Further inflaming the whole mess was sheer exhaustion (the downside of too many late nights spent making up for lost time.)

Before the afternoon was over, it had devolved into full-on eye rolling, acid-edged snickers and barely audible whatevers. By the time they climbed back in the car at the end of the day, the malaise had metastasized far and wide. Everything that had been bright when they’d woken up that day had taken on a sickly pallor. And still, the thing itself had yet to be named. Whatever it was.

‘Why do you get the monopoly?’ she heard herself blurt, as he twisted the key in the ignition.

‘On what?’ he shot back.

‘On being in love,’ she continued, uncorked. ‘Like I couldn’t possibly feel it like you do.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ he grimaced, his voice and movements tightly clipped with irritation.

‘Really?’ she pressed. ‘How would you describe it then?’

‘I’d describe it as you needing to get over this crap about having to be worthy of me …like I expect that. It’s…you know what? Just forget it.’

‘No. Say it. Forget what?’

‘It’s total bullshit,’ he shook his head. ‘That’s all.’

‘Well, you obviously have pretty high standards…’

‘Pam…’ he threw her a warning look.

‘Seriously, Jim…maybe I’m just not awesome enough…’

‘I didn’t love her,’ he cut her off sharply. He abruptly turned on the radio, as if to shut down any further discussion veering in that direction.  

Staring straight ahead, so quietly she had to strain to hear him, he added, ‘It’s always been you.’ 

One look at his face and everything she’d said, even the things she’d actually meant, collapsed into regret. She turned away as her tenuous resolve disintegrated and the wet heat behind her eyes spilled over. 

Within seconds, she could feel him glancing over at her, craning his neck to see if she was crying. 

‘Hey…,’ he started to take her hand.

Somehow, the tenderness and apology in his voice only made it worse. Roy had always interpreted her tears as proof that whatever she’d said could simply be dismissed as emotionally – or, depending on the time of the month, hormonally - induced histrionics. As confirmation that her concerns related to him only in so far as he indulgently allowed her to vent them. She reminded herself that this was Jim, not Roy; this was an entirely different landscape to navigate. Old habits die hard, however, especially bad ones. She snatched back her hand.

‘Fine,’ he said, hurt and frustration written all over him.

‘Let’s just drop this,’ she muttered.

‘Whatever.’

He’d grasped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white, pointedly fixing his eyes on the road.  She’d glared out the window until he swung the car into the parking lot of her building, taking the turn so aggressively that she had to brace herself against the dashboard.

They silently rode up to her apartment at opposite sides of the elevator. As she fumbled with her uncooperative lock, she could hear him a few feet away, sighing in exasperation. When she sensed him inching closer, she half expected him to impatiently grab the key from her hand. Instead, she felt his breath at the back of her neck. Just a little too close. Close enough to subtly, but decidedly, shift the current. They both held very still for a long moment, as the icy hush hanging in the air between them began melting into something else. Everything became fuzzy except for one thought: she wanted him to touch her already. Make that day disappear. She leaned almost imperceptibly back towards him. When he snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her against him, she released the breath she didn’t even realize she’d been holding.

As if on cue, the door finally gave way and he quickly maneuvered her through it, kicking it closed and flipping her around in one rough motion. Her back hit the wall as his mouth crashed into hers, before moving hungrily over her neck, her breasts. She usually loved the feel of his late-day stubble against her skin, but it actually hurt a little as he pushed her shirt up and out of the way, not even bothering with the buttons. Her hands wrestled awkwardly with his belt buckle, until he edged them aside and undid it himself, groaning when she made shorter work of his zipper. There was an explosion of clothes and shoes leading to the bedroom and the next thing she knew, he was hovering over her, gasping Pam, Pam, please. She reached down and took hold of him, not very gently, and then at once, he was all around her, in her, deep and urgent. There’d been no more words after that, just grunting and panting and frenetic movement and oh, god, oh god, finally.

**************************

And now there they were, lying on their backs, side by side, staring at the ceiling. Her wrist, of all things, felt sore. She held it up above her face to inspect it.

‘Shit, did I do that?’ he asked, seeing the pink welt, livid in the glare of the late afternoon light. It was obviously a souvenir of her bracelet digging into her skin beneath his grip when he’d held her hands above her head in the thick of it. ‘I didn’t know I was hurting you.’

‘It’s okay. I wasn’t even aware of it while…I guess our minds were kind of elsewhere,’ she smiled almost sheepishly, looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

‘Yeah,’ he laughed, clearly mortified. ‘To put it mildly.’

He rolled onto his side and reached for her, his long fingers curling around her waist, just above her hip.

‘You okay?’ he asked softly.

‘I’m fine,’ she turned her face towards him. ‘You?’

 ‘Yeah, I’m just…so sorry. Not just about mangling your wrist. For all of it.’

‘What was it you did again?’

‘I thought it was something I didn’t do.’

‘Oh, right. 

‘We really should get out stories straight,’ he quipped, trying to appear more lighthearted than she knew he felt.

‘Well, I am too…sorry, I mean,’ she placed her hand over his and laced their fingers together.

‘You need to tell me when something’s bugging you. Before it gets to the kaboom stage.’

He paused and in the course of a second, she watched his expression darken with the worry of every bad memory they’d ever inflicted on one another.

‘I just…I want this to work,’ the words strained in his throat. ‘I fucking need this to work.’

‘It will,’ she said firmly, willing it to be so. ‘It is.’

As if to seal the deal, she leaned forward and pressed her lips the first spot she reached, just below his clavicle. She nuzzled her face into his chest. Inhaling him. He sighed and gathered her closer.

‘Pam?’ he whispered after a few minutes, pulling slightly away to see if she was awake.

‘Hmm?’

‘Can I kiss you for a little bit?’ his voice was low and raw.

She didn’t answer. She just slid her fingers up into his hair and drew him back to her. As his mouth found hers, she felt his eyelashes flutter closed against her cheek.

  ***********************  

She wasn’t sure how long they’d lied there, but the colors in the room were growing muted in the waning sunlight. She loved this part.  Face-to-face, her leg encircling his, his arms holding her flush against him. There was no hurry, though he was very hard again, pressed up snugly between her belly and his own, like a shared secret.

‘Hey, Jim?’

He lazily ran his hand from her thigh to her shoulder, stopping to trace the outer swell of her breast.

‘Do I tell you I love you enough?’

‘Mmm, yeah,’ he replied drowsily, his forehead resting against hers.

‘But, I mean, do I tell you enough when we’re not…like, in the middle of having sex?

‘Why, doesn’t it count then?’ he chuckled.

‘Of course, but…’

‘You tell me plenty of other times,’ he leaned in to kiss her, deep and slow. ‘But trust me, that’s not a bad time to say it. In fact, that used to be a regular…uh, thought, for like years. Especially late at night...’

‘Yeah, I get the picture,’ she laughed. ‘But, I’m serious…cause people say it all the time…hi, how are you… I love you… pass the gravy…and, just…you know I really mean it, right?

‘Yes, I do,’ he grazed his mouth along her jaw. ‘Same here.’

‘Okay then,’ she murmured.

‘But, Pam...just for the record?’ he raised his head to look at her as if he was about to say something very serious, ‘I really mean it when I ask you to pass the gravy too.’

She derailed him before he could continue by pressing her hips into him at just the right angle to reduce whatever he was about to say to a throaty moan.

 Without taking his lips from hers, he eased her onto her back and moved over her. Kissed a trail down, down, down and back again, ending by sliding into her in one long, solid push. The suddenness of it caught her a little off guard and when he dropped his head to her shoulder, rasping, ‘oh fuck… gimme a second…’ he wasn’t the only who needed a moment to catch his breath. 

She’d always considered this one aspect of her relationship with Roy that had worked; but not like this. Christ, not like this. When she’d first gotten together with Jim, she’d thought it was the newness of him, the fact that there was, well, more of him. But it wasn’t just that. There was something else, some variable in their equation that made him, this, feel so damn good. She wrapped her legs around his waist and enveloped him as deeply as she could.

‘God, I love you’ he sighed into the tender ache of it.

‘Jim?’

‘Huh?’ his eyes opened to meet hers, dark and unfocused.

‘Did that count?’

He grinned, holding her gaze as he started to move. Even when he buried his face in her neck, lost in it, she could still feel him smiling against her skin.

  ************************** 

The sun had completely gone down by the time Pam rolled away, disentangling herself. She turned on the night table lamp and looked at Jim.  He was sprawled on his back, loose limbed, wearing the hazy, loopy expression he only got at times like this. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was drunk.

‘I think round two should count as the official make up sex,’ she declared.

‘Let the record show.’

She scanned the room for any pieces of her clothing that had made it that far, as he sat up next to her and kissed her shoulder.

‘Let’s go take a shower,’ he suggested eagerly.

‘Nope... I know your tricks,’ she smirked. ‘I’m too hungry for any more making up until I refuel.’

‘Wimp,’ he swatted her as she got out of bed and headed toward the kitchen.

Giving up on locating her own clothes, she grabbed his discarded undershirt and pulled it over her head. He followed, stopping to step into the boxer shorts he found on the floor along the way.

They surveyed the contents of the refrigerator. She’d intended to stop by the market on her way home from work, so the pickings were slim. An almost full bottle of wine, some wilted lettuce, and the remnants of the mysterious concoction he’d whipped up for their dinner the previous night (which didn’t appear to have improved with age.) He began searching her cabinets.

‘M’okay… speaking of monopolies,’ he said, discovering eight boxes of spaghetti she’d recently bought on sale, four for a dollar. ‘What did you do, stage a hostile takeover of Ronzoni?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Impressive,’ he grabbed a box, continuing to poke around until he found a jar of sauce and held it up for her approval.

She nodded and put a pot of water on the stove to boil, while he poured the wine. A half hour and a couple of glasses later, they carried one big bowl of pasta and two forks back into the bedroom and settled down on the bed. Extracting the remote from the rumpled covers, he scatted through the channels until he found a movie on cable they actually wanted to watch.

She leaned back against Jim’s chest, the bowl in her lap, warm against her bare thighs. He reached around her, twirling ravenous bites around his fork. This was far from the most elaborate meal they’d made together. Just ordinary spaghetti, nothing fancy about it at all.

It was utterly delicious.