I’m an ass.

I’m an ass because I’m too busy staring at that damn left ring finger, blinking to make sure that no, there is no ring, that I’ve forgotten it’s pouring and she’s soaked. She doesn’t wait for an actual invitation to come inside; I guess spending a whole day with someone entitles you to barge into their home, no questions asked.  Or being best friends for five years while suppressing unrequited – or maybe not so unrequited – love gave you the permission.

“Sorry I’m getting your carpet wet,” she says, flinging the excess water off of her hands.

“That’s, like, the least of my concerns right now.” But I go to the hall closet because I finally remember how to be polite and hand her a towel.

“Thanks.” She wrings out her hair, rubbing her hands along the fabric. “This is really soft. Where’s it from?”

“Umm, I don’t know, maybe my mom got it for me?”

She nods. “Cool.”

No, this is not cool. Talking about towels to avoid the other million things we have to talk about is definitely not cool. But I’m not going to bring it up. I know better than to scare her off with any sudden moves.

So I wait.

She goes to twist the absent ring and I can see that, wow, neither of us is used to it being gone yet. How could we? It hasn’t even been two hours since I dropped her off. Goldfinger is probably longer than that. Which reminds me that the movie’s still on, and I don’t really want to have whatever conversation is about to happen while there are gunshots in the background. I click the TV off and the absence of noise seems to remind her of the fact that she’s here and an explanation of some kind is needed.  

“Can you, um, not stand?” she asks. I sink into the couch behind me, my eyes never leaving her.

“Okay.” She starts pacing in front of the TV, and I brace myself. “So, I had this whole dramatic, Meg Ryan romantic comedy speech prepared. Seriously, I practiced it in the car and everything. But it doesn’t seem…I mean, now that I’m here, it doesn’t…I know owe you a really long, drawn out explanation. For everything. But that seems unnecessary because…”

Her eyes lock on mine. And the pause that follows is the longest of my life.

“I’m in love with you.”

Oh. “What?”

“It’s not good timing, I know, because you’re leaving for Stamford and—“

“Pam—“

“No, let me finish. You’re my friend and you have no idea how much that means to me, but I want…I need more than that. I just needed you to know before you leave because I’ve already wasted so much time.”

I get up wordlessly from the couch and close the five feet between us, her face in my hands.

“Hey. Can I interrupt this non-speech?”

She smiles, daring me.

“Go for it.”

So I do. With everything in me. A sigh breathes between our lips, the weight of this day and all the days before it lifting off and replaced with the greatest relief I have ever known.  We’ve kissed before, but not like this, with no phone call or engagement ring to interrupt our short-term happiness. There’s long-term behind this one, I can feel it.

The kiss is brief, but emphatic, and I love the feeling of being at home and at peace.

With her.

I pull away, sliding my hands across her hips to clasp hers.

“Sorry, I just—“

“No no, don’t apologize.” She’s beaming at me, expecting the response that I want so desperately to give her. But I’ve learned not to assume, and catch myself before I jump to conclusions.

“I’m guessing things are complicated.”

She gives a sad shrug.  “Yeah, though I feel like they don’t have to be. It was bad, but the hardest part is over.  I’ll stay at my parents and figure things out and…I don’t know, sell all my wedding stuff on eBay. There’s got to be someone else who has my same taste, right?”  

There’s a laugh, and then her lips are back on mine, and nothing is funny anymore. We fold into each other and as tired as I am, the very act of her kissing me this way sends hot energy through my body to my fingertips that graze her hips. She starts to fiddle with my belt loops and I know that as much as it’s going to kill me, logic has to take priority.

“Pam—wait—“ I mumble between kisses. She doesn’t hear me, or at least pretends not to, and it takes a bit of force to pull myself away from her enough to catch my breath. For a tiny person, she’s amazingly strong when she needs to be.

“Hold on a second…we should, you know, talk about stuff.”

“Don’t want to,” she states like it’s the end of the conversation and moves toward me again. I don’t know how to handle this particular Pam, mainly because I’ve never seen it before. I’ve spent years building defenses and strategies to deal with shy, nervous, passive-aggressive, engaged Pam. Single and plain ol’ aggressive Pam has a whole new set or rules that I’ve yet to learn. For all I know she’s making them up as she goes along. But I have to stop this.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this, Pam, seriously, but I need to know how you got here.”

She smiles playfully. “I drove.”

“You know what I mean.” I hate being harsh with her, especially in this particular moment when it’d be so easy to fall back on my couch and just let go. But I’ve gotten hopes up before when there wasn’t even physical attachment involved. It’s just too risky without knowing just how far into this she is.

“So?” I ask, my tone gentler than before. She sighs, taking a seat on the couch and running nervous hands across her thighs.

“It’s going to sound…too easy, I guess, but when I walked in, the first thing Roy said to me was ‘Hey babe, how was your day?’ Normal, right? And I thought about how to answer him for I don’t even know how long. Long enough that he had to ask again. And I was all ready to lie to him, make up some story about shopping and errands or something. But I was so exhausted, I didn’t have the energy to do it. Because to lie to him would be lying to you too, if that makes any sense. Today was…completely amazing. And to dismiss it like it was nothing, as meaningless as a workday would ruin it. So I told him the truth. Everything. The movie, the trip to Stamford, all the eating we did.”

Despite the seriousness of the moment, I can’t help but smile because, damn, did we eat a lot.

“He was quiet the whole time, if you can believe it. Sat there and listened and waited until I was all done. And the only thing he said? ‘Don’t ever do it again.’ That was it. I have to be honest, I wasn’t planning on leaving him. I figured if I just lay everything out there, we could finally have the first honest conversation in ten years. I should have known…”

She waved her hand in the air, dismissing something.

“Doesn’t matter. Anyway, he thought that was the end of it. He got up, grabbed a beer and turned the TV back on like nothing happened. That’s when I knew it was over. Something is obviously wrong if I spend a whole day with another man and all he does is wag a finger and tell me not to do it again. And I got to thinking that maybe one of the reasons I went off with you on this insane day is that I knew I would eventually tell him, and that maybe he’d get upset, and I’d be forced to confront this.”

She gestures between us and my heart kicks up to an unhealthy speed.

“ ‘This’ being?” I ask.

She sighs, in that defeated way she does when she feels hopeless, like after Michael asks her to spend the afternoon researching the difference between Diet Coke and Coke Zero.

“The e-mails, the instant messages, the trips to reception, the pranks, the fact that I let myself believe that my fiancé didn’t need to be my best friend because I already had you.”

That last one hits me hard. I’d always known that I was sort of a stand-in boyfriend at the office, but hearing her own up to it…wow.

“And I’m sorry for that. Because after today? I figured out that we—you deserve way more than just flirting for eight hours a day at a boring job. And I know that I messed up and there’s still a lot to figure out and that I made my speech anyway, but…”

I raise my eyebrows, waiting for her to finish.

“I had a really great day with you and, if you’re okay with it, I’d like to have a lot more.” She bites her lip in a fit of nervousness. “You want to?”

It’s a lot to process. I’m running on no sleep, I’ve eaten enough diner food to last me a lifetime, and my emotional stability is on the verge of completely dissolving. So I say the only thing that comes to mind.

“Hell yes.”

And just like that, we’re in each other’s arms again, fumbling awkwardly between laughs and kisses. Our mutual exhaustion makes us giddy and we finally collapse against the couch breathless.

“That was an ‘I love you, too’ in case that wasn’t clear.”

“Thank goodness, because for a minute there I was concerned.”

There’s still so much to talk about, and we both know it, resigned to days and weeks of logistics and inevitable awkwardness. But for the first time in years, we can set it all aside until later. For now, we let ourselves drift into the sleep we’ve earned; her head on my shoulder, and her hand in mine.

8:59 PM