the old year
"Hi, you've reached Pam Beesley. Please leave - "
"Hi, you've reached Dunder Mifflin Scra - "
"Hi, you've reached Pa - "
"Hi, you've re - "
He rolls off the couch and cracks his head on the floor. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Two AM and it's a new year. Yes, Jim knows he shouldn't be calling her. Yes, he knows she's either asleep or out at some party, and won't answer her phone. Yes, he knows that his semi-wasted girlfriend is passed out on his bed in the other room. By this point, Jim is too tired to care. Not tired in the sense that he's physically tired (although, now that he thinks about it, he is), but he's just tired.
It's been seven or eight months since he left this town for good, maybe even nine, and about five or six since he came back on accident. The specifics have escaped his scruffy head by this point - he blames it on Karen and alcohol. When was it that he left the country to get her out of his head? Why was it that he came back, only to try to ignore her every day? Why couldn't everything be okay?
"Hi, you've reached Pam Beesley. Please leave your name and number, and I'll get back to you. Thanks."
"You sound so ssssad," he slurs, mashing his face into the carpet a little deeper. "Pammmm. Pam. God, Pam."
He hangs up. I want to die.
Every time she says his name, it's like a door opening slightly. Every time she looks into his eyes, a window opens. Every time she smiles, it's like a goddamn zephyr of fresh air; books of poetry with pages ruffling in the wind, sunsets on the beach, washing the dog on Sundays -
"Fuck me," he chokes out roughly. "I dunno why I'm here." The bottle of red wine he mostly emptied has fallen off the table and stained the rug draped across the wood floor. "I'm... God, I'm... drunk. Yes. Drunk." He throws a tanned arm over the top of the couch, trying to find some leverage to hoist himself up, but his hand meets nothing but blankets and cushions. Jim lets his hand fall, hard, onto the carpet above his head.
"Hi, you've reached Pam Beesley. Please leave your name and number, and I'll get back to you. Thanks."
"Do you remember that one night, Beesley, we sat on the roof and I - I made you dinner? Or that one time with the Scrabble, or the time with my house, with the yearbook, and you ssssat on my bed? Do you remember, Pam? Pam? Cos I remember. I rememberrr. Oh, Pam... oh, Pam... God, I can't stop thinking about you, and it's, you know, it's sort of killing me, I want to - I want to die. It's been, it's been hell trying to, to do things with out you, with Kare - her, and it's just... I'm still sort of really in love with you. And I can't do anything about it. Another - another year without you? January fucking first, three hundred and sixty four more days with you but without you, you know? I don't... I don't love her, I can't... I want to, I love her too, but not the same, and I have to go now, it's very - it's very late, and I need to go think about... about last year, and the year before, because the year before last was better, because you weren't married, and now you aren't but I've been gone and I need to - I need to get over you. Goodnight, you woman, you, you gorgeous amaz - "
He cuts himself off by hanging up and crying himself to sleep in a drunken haze. Karen sleeps in the other room, unaware.
--
Pam listens to the messages and cries into her soup, lonely in her apartment, with only chick flicks and the promise of a job at a dead-end paper industry for company.
--
On Monday, everything is normal.
"Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam."
They don't talk about it. There's nothing to talk about.
citrus_scented is the author of 3 other stories.
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