Her silk dress bunched up as she slid in her car, much to her annoyance. The smooth brown material hadn’t worked the miracles she’d conjured in the dressing room a month ago, but Pam figured you couldn’t remedy a situation this twisted with a couple of yards of cheap silk and a pretty hair do.

He’d noticed though, she told herself. The way his eyes traveled down her body on more than one occasion tonight had reminded her of a different time where she had taken these little displays of lust and longing for granted. When they were dancing his thumbs ran little circles on her hips and he tightened his hold on her just the slightest when they had talking about Toby’s crush. The hungry glances and not-so-innocent touches had all but stopped as he dug himself deeper in his relationship with a woman that Pam didn’t dislike as much as she figured she ought to.

Any other night, the hollow shell of her car and the songs of devotion playing on the easy listening channel would have driven her to the safe confines of her apartment and bad reality television. Tonight though, called for an escape of another kind, the kind found in a bottle.

She debated just stopping at the liquor store and picking up something for home, but she’d had enough of getting drunk alone this summer. She pulled into the parking lot of Poor Richard’s with a resolve she hadn’t felt in a long time. Tonight she was going to get drunk, and she was going to enjoy herself, damnit.

As she entered the bar, the musty scent and raucous laughter greeted her like an obligatory ‘hello’ to an old friend that you didn’t really even like that much. She hoped she could lose herself in the mess of sports fanatics and lonely drunks.

She saddled up to the bar, ordered a Miller Lite, and tried her damndest to identify the sports team playing on the screen. It wasn’t long, though that she lost interest in the TV and glanced around at her bar mates. Her first impulse was, always, to sketch anyone particularly interesting looking. The quiet older couple in the corner sitting close on the same side of the booth leaning towards each other would make for a wonderful charcoal, and the man passed out near the door with his head resting on the table top would be stunning with oil on canvas. But, tonight was for the other Pam inside of her, and quietly sketching the bar goers for scenes she would never lift from the napkin was just a little to “Dunder Mifflin this is Pam” for her current liking.

It wasn’t long before she noticed that the majority of the noise was coming from a large group of twenty-some things who appeared to be playing some sort of drinking game. They were all around her age, but the angle was wrong for her to spot anyone she knew.

Her little phone buzzed in her pocket.

Text message from her sister, Lisa, who had an achingly perfect marriage which showed when she used words like “love connection” not ironically. She just hadn’t been in the dating pool since about 1989.

Yes, actually! I found true love with a man, Mr. Miller Lite and Michael met his soul mate, Phyllis’s uncle Al.  

How very Jim-like of her to deflect with humor. Really, couldn’t she just suck it up and talk about it?

A few swigs and half-hearted glances at the screen later, her phone vibrated again,

 Sounds Hot. You scored on that one, hun. But, seriously, I’m not interrupting something with Mr. Halpert am I?

Did I not mention, Jim and I are making sweet sweet love in a broom closet at Phyllis’s wedding. Must have slipped my mind. Pam smiled a little to herself as she sent that off. If only, she thought.

Before another sarcastic comment could cause her phone to go into a frenzy, someone joiner her little corner of the bar.

“Hi. This isn’t taken is it?” A man stood next to her wearing what her sister would have called “college professor chic”. Corduroy slacks, slightly wrinkled blue button down, and a tweed blazer. With elbow patches. Above all though, Pam noticed something else. He was handsome. No, hot. He was hot. Dark olive skin with chocolate brown hair and a nice smile made up the image in front of her.

“No. No. Go ahead.” She gestured towards the bar stool next to her. Between Tall Dark and Handsome and Chubby Stinking and Passed out, she’d take the former.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but your pretty dressed up for Poor Richard’s on a Saturday night.” He smiled shyly.

“Yea, I must look pretty odd. A co-worker of mine got married, and there was just enough love and devotion in that situation to drive me to drinking.”

“No love connection?”

Pam spit out the gulp of beer in her mouth. The dark stranger’s eyes widened, and Pam realized she must look like a freak, spitting everywhere.

“No, no,” she started as she felt the blush filling her face rapidly, “My sister just said something like that…” His eyes widened playfully, painfully reminding her of someone she was determined to forget tonight.

“Well, I guess it’s expected at weddings.” He stated, gracefully ignoring the cheap beer he was showered in.

They talked for at least an hour before she noticed how drunk she really was. Champagne from the wedding, a few lite beers, and some expensive shots the stranger, Adam, had ordered for her worked to make her cheeks rosy and her inhibitions low. The problem, though, is that she is a flirty drunk.

It’s nice, she thought, to talk to someone who had no preconceived notions as to who she was. There was something freeing about the way he looked at her as if she were the answer to some ancient math problem, but that could just be the fact that  he’d had a couple of the shots himself.

She could do it, she realized. Sleeping with him would be so easy. She’d turn up the flirting, lean towards him and then invite him over. He’d accept, she thought, a little cocky. They wouldn’t even get to the bed, just end up going at it on her couch, like nervous teenagers. It would feel okay. Good, even.

But after an orgasm or two, dream-filled sleep, and the sun peeking through her curtains, she’d be back where she started.

In love and alone.

So, kept the flirting to a minimum and their conversation turned to the subject of work and family.

“Are you a teacher?” she asked, not thinking, after telling him the complete history of her time at Dunder Mifflin (omitting the juicy parts, of course).

“Yea. Well, sort of. I’m a student teacher.” He looked down at his empty beer bottle, suddenly shy, “I was a journalist, but last summer I figured out that I would much rather be lecturing a bunch of bored teenagers about punctuation and tenses.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“About as exciting as being a receptionist.” He raised his eyebrows playfully as he took a jab at her.

“Ouch.” She clutched at her chest in mock pain. After a moment of silence, she stated “Well, its not that bad sometimes. The people I work with are…” she trailed off as the group of people  in the corner gave a loud cheer, and started chanting unintelligibly.

She started again, this time louder, “Some of the people I work with are complete freaks.” The chanting grew louder, “Like, there this one guy who sleeps in the office every night, and he steals…everything.” She made a sweeping gesture, but her hand stopped midair as the sound of the rowdy drinkers escalated.

“Good lord,” Adam said as he looked over his shoulder, “Some people and there drinks, right?”

“Yea…” Pam stared at the group of men for a while before being goaded back into conversation by Adam.

“So, you were telling me about your work. The Freaks.”

“Oh Yeah. And, my boss, completely delusional. He thinks he’s Jim Carrey’s and David Blaine’s love child or something.” Ok, that didn’t even make since, Pam thought. Sounded good though.

“But, there’s gotta be someone normal in your office, someone you can connect to, right?”

            “No. Yea. I mean there’s Phyllis. And Kelly. And Karen.” She finished lamely, too scared to say the name she wanted. The name that her brain was screaming at her.

Then Pam heard it, “Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim…” It was like listening to a radio while you’re sleeping, the voices or music weaving into your dream, making themselves comfortable. The voice in her head wasn’t in her head. It was coming from the crowd of twenty-whatevers from the corner tables. “Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim…”

It was a chorus of the last thing and the first thing she wanted to her, in her inebriated state with the half-drunken stranger about to take her home and fuck her. She smiled lightly to herself as she thought of telling him about being drunk and hitting on random guys in a bar. He’d call them “poor unsuspecting victims” and she’d say something along the lines of “You’re right, I should warn them before I make a complete fools of myself and…wink my self into a frenzy.” Then he’d make a comment about how he didn’t appreciate sexual innuendo’s in the office and-.

Okay. She couldn’t do this anymore. Script conversations her head, like some crazed fan. It was just a little to Michael with “Threat Level Midnight” for her tastes.

So, she sufficed with watching a random bunch of strangers who had now ceased to sing his name.

Infact, they were clearing out, saying goodbyes. She watched as three or four of them gathered their unused jackets and called for taxi’s or loved ones for rides home.

“Pam?” Adam said quietly. She glanced at him for a quick moment, and found him with a concerned expression screwing up his good looks.

Shit, she thought. He’s probably been trying to talk to me.  “You okay?”

Just as she was about to reply that she was fine, she cast her eyes back to the corner.

The eyes that she had so often felt on her behind reception now stared openly at her from across an empty bar, completely nonchalantly. Like she was just some girl that he happened to find mildly attractive at a pub at one thirty in the morning.  He stood leaning against a table with his suit jacket no where insight and his shirt untucked fro his slacks.

She did the only thing she could think to do, she stared back, like some visualization of their entire relationship. Two people with so much space in between them, able to feel so close without actually doing any thing about it. Only instead of a half a dozen tables, crumpled napkins and empty beer bottles filling the gap, they had half a dozen missed chances, crumpled relationships, and empty words residing in the ever-widening space.

By refusing to move anywhere, they were saying that all of that was to messy to deal with, that it was too much. They, who considered themselves to be in love.

Really, they were cowards, Pam thought, not even registering Adam calling her name as she slid off of her stool and took her first step towards him.

New Guy

Shyness

Katy

Roy

I’m sorry I misinterpreted our friendship.

Pam, Jim transferred.

Merger

Karen

Distance

Obstacles were being pushed, cleaned, scooted, merged, as she slowly but surely closed the distance between them.

His flushed, stubbly face registered amused curiosity as she stared up at him with eyes full of conviction. 

Years later, both would claim they were the first one to close the final 6 inches between them. There would be playful arguments and made up details, but all of that was to come.

Now they were two people with lips desperately pressing against each other and hands clasped in hair and behind waists.

Neither one could remember it being this good last time, because, god damnit, they would have remembered.

There weren’t fireworks or lightening, but there was one thing. A long sigh of finally.

When air became an issue, they pulled away reluctantly with glazed eyes.

Pam was the first to speak, “Wish I wasn’t drunk.”

He laughed, “Kissing’s better when you’re drunk.”

“We would know. It seems to work for us.”

“I think we need to work harder.”

“As always.” She said, leaning in for another kiss, not even registering the fact that tat didn’t even make that much sense.

After a cab was called, drinks paid for, and the Karen issue settled (“We’re over. I want to kiss you like that, even when we aren’t drunk.”), they spent the rest of the night passed out on her couch promising to talk about things in the morning.

            They’d talk about it after aspirins and waters, but for now they were just comfortable to lay close and sleep.