It was almost midnight when they pulled in front of the small, yellow cottage, five blocks from the beach. “Beasley, hey,” he whispered, “we’re here, sleepy.” She lifted her head from the window, and looked at him with half-closed eyes. He remembered the time he had seen that look before, during their day of diversity training. The memory brought a small smile to his face. “I thought your job was to keep me awake, Ms. Ideal Passenger.”
She yawned and shrugged. “What can I say? I’m not perfect. Let’s get to bed.”
With that she opened the door. Jim was sure that in her state of half-sleep, she wasn’t paying attention to the way her last sentence sounded, but just hearing it made his heart pound.
They unpacked the car quickly, and Jim gave her a quick tour of the place. It didn’t take long. “Here’s the outdoor shower. Trust me, its going to be the best shower you’ll ever take. Here’s the kitchen slash living room,” he said, “and the blue room. You can sleep here. It’s got the best bed.” He turned on the light in a large room with three windows, painted sky blue. “I’ll get you some clean sheets.” He opened her windows, trying to get a nice ocean breeze for Pam. The room smelled a little musty.
The tour continued with the yellow room, which was actually painted lavender. Evidently Jim’s cousin had a gotten bored one night and painted it purple, but its previous name had stuck. Next, Jim showed Pam the sunroom—a long, narrow room with windows all along the side. It was crowded with three bookshelves filled with paperbacks and photo albums, a set of bunk beds, and an old recliner.
“Well, that’s about it. Bathroom’s next to your room. So . . .um, that’s about it.” He looked around at the mismatched furniture and wondered what she thought of the place. The screened-in porch was filled with old rocking chairs found at garage sales over the years. The stove and the fridge were older than he was. The couch was lumpy, having survived years of various cousins and friends crashing on it. But despite its drawbacks, the cottage was like a second home to him. He had spent his summers here as a kid, playing at the beach everyday, and worked at the ice cream shop on the boardwalk during his teenage years. He had his first kiss on this porch, and the last time he had seen his grandfather, he had taught Jim how to install the new water heater.
As soon as he looked at her, though, leaning over one of the bookshelves, smiling to herself and thumbing through an old issue of Life magazine, he knew that she could care less about lumpy couches and chipped plates.
After the tour, Pam stifled another yawn, and headed to the bathroom to get ready. Jim put his bag in the yellow room, and changed into a pair of flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt. He heard a soft knock on his bedroom door. When he opened the door, he had to smile. He had never seen her in glasses before. He had always had a thing for girls with glasses. She was wearing an old Penn State t-shirt and a pair of gray shorts. “Well, that’s a new look,” he said, with a laugh.
“Shut it.” She threw him a smile. “I just wanted to thank you again for inviting me. I really appreciate it. This is just what I needed.”
“Of course.” She started to turn away. “Pam.” She looked back at him. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, to kiss her, to invite her into the yellow room with him. But he still had no idea where they stood. “Goodnight.”
She smiled, and headed off to bed. He knew it would not be easy to fall asleep that night.
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The next morning, Pam was up early. Jim was right, the outdoor shower was amazing. It was attached to the side of the house, with an open top to let the sunshine in. It was freeing to feel the sun and breeze on her body. She felt amazingly refreshed. She wondered around the cottage, taking in all of the small details of the place. One whole wall was covered with pictures of Jim’s family, some of them old and yellowed with age.
One of the first pictures was of six rambunctious children on the bunk beds in the sunroom—three boys on the top bunk, three girls on the bottom. The boys were probably three or four years old and all looked alike. She tried to figure out which one was Jim. She decided he was probably the one in the Superman pajamas, lying on his belly with his legs dangling off the bed, trying to fly.
Next, she saw a picture of a young boy she recognized immediately as Jim, standing with a man she guessed was his grandfather, in front of the cottage. Jim was probably seven years old, with two missing front teeth, and a thick mop of unruly hair. He was on a ladder, holding a paint brush dripping with blue paint. Jim’s grandfather was standing on the ground, holding a can of house paint. They were laughing, and Jim’s grandfather had a large streak of blue paint going all the way down his chest. “Even then, he was a character,” she thought to herself.
“Hey.” His voice behind her made her jump.
“Oh, hey. Morning.” She regained her composure. “Cute picture.”
Jim smiled. “Yeah, that was one of my best. I was helping him paint the house, and I lost my balance. Luckily, he was a good sport.”
“Its amazing how much history is in this house. You can really tell how much love there is here.”
Jim gave her a look she couldn’t read, so she just changed the subject. “I made coffee. Want a bagel?” He quickly agreed to a cup of coffee, and rubbed his eyes. His hair was sticking up in eight different directions, and when he yawned and stretched his arms above his head, his shirt rode up an inch and revealed his stomach.
Pam blushed. The combination of his tousled hair, his sleepy eyes, and a fleeting glance at his stomach made her heart skip a beat. Over the past year, she had gotten used to that feeling. The first time she felt it was when she and Jim had found the discarded signs Dwight had made for the conference room he was using while picking the office’s health care plan. They had just been sitting outside in the cold, laughing at Dwight’s inanity. It had been nothing. Jim was reading some ridiculous sign to the camera, and she looked at him and suddenly thought about what her life would be like if they were together. It was just a brief thought, one that she suppressed immediately, but she couldn’t deny that the idea of it made her heart tighten a bit.
Those moments happened more and more over the months. She burned with jealousy every time Katy was around, and thought about what it would be like to lie in Jim’s bed when she went to a party at his house. She even thought about what it would be like to do the simplest things together—like grocery shopping and laundry. Every time she let her mind wonder, it seemed to settle on Jim.
She had convinced herself that it was nothing, and that she was meant to be with Roy. That theory came to a screeching halt a few months ago. Pam and Jim had been joking around, and each did an impression of Stanley at the same time. Pam got her jinx in first, and Jim was forced to spend the rest of the day silent. At first, it had been fun. She loved teasing him, and seeing him get out of tough situations was hilarious. As the day wore on, though, she began to feel anxious. There was so much she wanted to share with him, and she couldn’t stand him not talking to her. When he finally broke the jinx, and said hello to her, Pam felt her entire stomach drop. It was as if her whole day was empty without him, and having him back replaced all the emptiness with joy. And then she realized that her whole life was like that—empty—until Jim walked into the office every morning. At that moment, she knew she was in trouble.
Trying to refocus herself, she started to toast a bagel. “I hope I didn’t wake you up too early. I guess I was just excited to get to the beach.”
“No, that’s a good idea. Damn tourists crowd the beach up quickly on a holiday weekend.”
“Um, aren’t we ‘damn tourists’ as well?”
Jim took a bite of a bagel and mixed some sugar into his coffee. “Beasley—don’t insult me.” He said, pulling a small plastic card out of the kitchen drawer. “We have a library card. We are not tourists. My family was here before the hotels were built and the condos took over. We have the right to grumble about everyone else.”
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They packed their bags, and Jim found two old beach chairs stored in the shed. Pam hadn’t seen the town the night before, so they took the long route. The cottage was two blocks from the Route 1, a large four-lane road that went all the way down the shore. On the other side was town—3 blocks long, 3 blocks wide, full of ice cream parlors, mini golf, and bathing suit shops. They stopped at Jim’s favorite store, an old Five and Dime, where Jim bought some sunblock and an issue of Us Weekly. “What, did you think I’m going to be reading ‘War and Peace’?”
Pam laughed, and bought an InTouch. “We can do a page-by-page comparison, and determine, once and for all, which is the best celebrity rag.”
Even though it was still early, they had to weave their way through hundreds of towels, blankets, and beach umbrellas on the beach. Finding a suitable spot, Pam laid out her towel and set up both of their chairs. Jim was laying his towel next to Pam’s when he looked up and realized she was taking her shirt off.
“Relax buddy, relax.” He told himself, willing himself to not look in her direction. Eventually, he couldn’t pretend to fiddle with his towel anymore, so he sat down and glanced over to her. She was wearing a simple navy blue bathing suit, one-piece, but with a neckline cut much lower than Jim would’ve expected. She was just sitting on her towel, getting their magazines out of her bag, but he had never seen her look so beautiful.
She handed him the UsWeekly with a smile that made his heart ache. “First one to spot a picture of an Olsen twin drinking a coffee from Starbucks gets a free ice cream cone, courtesy of the loser,” she challenged.
“Deal.”
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Pam turned over onto her stomach. She was getting hot. Her hair was piled in a bun on the top of her head, but her neck was still sweating. She glanced over at Jim, lying on his back, just a foot away from her. “This is what it feels like to lie next to him.” She thought. Her immediate reaction was to push the thought aside, but she had to remind herself to just let it be. “It’s okay. You’re not with Roy anymore. It’s not cheating. Let it go.” With that thought, she allowed herself to have an extra glace at Jim. He was wearing a pair of green swimming trunks. He had nice legs—muscular. She had a thing for calves. Roy’s calves had looked like tree trunks. She blushed when she realized that her eyes had moved up, and were now focused on his stomach, and the small line of hair leading from his bellybutton down to his shorts to…who knows? She smiled a little, and turned her head away from him, afraid that he would see.
A few minutes later, she decided that sun was too much. It was time to get in the water. “Hey, Halpert, are you asleep?” She whispered.
“Yes.”
“Are you hot?”
“The ladies seem to think so.”
She had to laugh. “This lady agrees. That’s why we should jump in the water and cool off.”
Jim lifted his sunglasses and gave her a curious look. “I never saw you as a jumper-inner. I thought of you as more of a dip-a-toe-in-and-squeal-kinda-girl.”
“I’ve got some surprises up my sleeve. If you don’t just go for it, you’ll never get all the way in.” Even while she was saying this, Pam knew she had always eased her way into cold water, and usually chickened out before it got to her waist. But it was time to make some changes in her attitude.
“Okay, you’re on,” Jim answered, accepting her challenge.
They walked to the edge of the water. “Ready?” Pam asked, perhaps to herself more than to Jim. Before Jim could answer, she ran in, splashing several small children on her way. When she got waist deep, she dove right into a large wave that was about to crash over her head. Jim looked impressed.
She surfaced on the other side of the crest. “Come on Halpert. Afraid of a little water?”
Not one to get bested by his favorite receptionist, he ran into the wave. Unlike Pam, his timing was off, and he managed to get hit directly in the face by the breaking water. He came up sputtering and spitting water, greeted by Pam’s laughing face.
“So, Barbara, I guess this means you’re more of a squeal-and-run-away-kind-of-girl?” She said, doing her best Dr. Cox impression.
“You’re dead Beasley.” He grabbed her shoulders and gave her an affectionate dunk. She was slippery underneath him, and he lost his grip. He wasn’t sure where his hand grazed her, but he was pretty sure it was somewhere inappropriate. Pam came up laughing, and Jim gave her a sheepish grin.
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© 2006-2023 More Than That | Skin created by Kali
© 2006-2023 More Than That | Skin created by Kali