In the end it all comes down to a suit tie.

Jim’s were bland, small town, grandfatherly. A thin sliver of fabric that spelled out, as if it was a tarot card, that they were doomed and autumn quickly turns to winter and maybe he never really loved her at all.

After he’d come to see her on the premise of an accident in a mustache and a girl’s uniform, Ryan stops by for the quarterly report and Karen looks at him for the first time as more than a scared kid with something to prove. His tie is sleek and has a label that means more than something to itch at his throat and she takes it as a sign.

“Are you free for dinner?”

***

Karen almost doesn’t think it’s fair. She’s sitting here, wine glass raised and knees crossed under the table, the silk of her little black dress catching the light in what she knows is all her best angles… and then there’s Ryan. He’s trying so hard to look like he’s confident, nonchalant, comfortable in that suit with that hairstyle, and he thinks she doesn’t know it’s all an act. She almost wants to tell him that he’s not fooling anyone so he’ll drop that smug tone in favor of the pleasantly cocky one he’d had in Scranton. Somewhere between Pennsylvania and New York and he’d flung his personality out the window.

She wonders if she’d be able to see through the façade if she hadn’t known what he was before and she likes to think she would. But in a way that’s who Jim was; pretending to play some shiny role with suits and seriousness and in the end it was all just smoke and mirrors. Maybe she has that edge now when she hadn’t before.

Ryan’s saying something about competent management and cutting down on waste like work is her life and not just what she does from 9-5, so she places a steady hand over his and looks him right in the eye. Someone has to tell him that impressing a girl isn’t all about the big talk and simply because it’s the best thing he’s got on the conference table it doesn’t mean he should lay it all out there on the dinner table too. 

“Can we not talk about paper? I know you’re pretty much superman at Dunder-Mifflin headquarters right now, but I’m not really a company girl. Why don’t you tell me about your family?”

Ryan sighs like there’s been a visible weight lifted and she sees a little bit of the old him return, from the way he quirks his eyebrows like he’s not above finding something funny instead of belittling, and the faint hint of a smile on his lips. Thatta boy.

There’s promise in the single bill left on the table in the form of payment (because executives don’t have to worry about silly things like change), in the steady press of his lips against hers next to her car (because this particular confidence isn’t faked), in the warm rush in the pit of her stomach.

I can make this work, she says to herself as the silver of his car speeds away, the license plate something ridiculously ego-centric in the most charming of ways. He’s got the drive to succeed in the way Jim didn’t and she’s got the patience to coax him there. Karen doesn’t think it’s exactly manipulative to mold him to iron if that’s really what he wants too.

***

Ryan calls after a week, which is okay because she’d been expecting him to wait two. He seems like the type to leave a girl hanging just because he can, so she makes sure to sound busy when she answers and promise to call back in a few minutes, but actually waits two days. She knew he was still trained to avoid peppery constant calls and suffocating demands and that waiting to call was okay because the same amount of drama would be included in that eventual confrontation anyway. It was that girl, the bubbly one he dated back in Scranton, and Karen’s not about to weather the damage and pay in nail-biting for the problems from his last relationship. Not again.

***

It’s the pauses that say it. The quiet at 4am when the city sleeps and her apartment is still, cold, longing in the most hopeless of ways. The breaths between words that she hadn’t meant to take (I don’t… care. I don’t care about him anymore). The silence she hears all around when she’s walking alone to the corner bakery late at night because she can’t sleep and no amount of bad TV will satisfy her. The beat between thunder and lightening when she realizes there’s no one there to care about her childhood fear of rain storms. It’s the pauses that tell her she’s not happy. But there’s always another phone call, another kiss, another visit from the big boss man because he wants “to check her progress” and see how far up her skirt his hand can travel before she stops him. There’s always that next bend in the road and surely the next one will yield something.

“Do you think you could make the drive up here tonight? I could really use a drink.”

“Lonely without me, Fillipelli?”

“Not if you get your ass over here I won’t be.”

“Interesting point. I’ll see you at nine. Be ready.”

“Have I ever left you waiting, Howard?”

Karen learns not to pause anymore than she has to.

***

“So I see you’ve got your own lapdog. He’s new, right?”

Karen rolls her eyes at her friends while they laugh into their drinks and rest their manicured nails on the pant legs of their suits. She places her phone down on the bar after hanging up on Ryan, making plans with him for dinner. After driving into the city for a meeting at corporate she could literally feel his phone call coming before it buzzed in her purse.

“It’s not like that.” They nod their head like of course not, you big fat liar. “Really, it’s not. He’s… I don’t know, he’s whatever.”

“Well that’s a promising description.” Janine had always been the most down to earth of all of them, right out of college, and if there’s any one of these bitches’ opinions that Karen actually wanted, it was hers. But Debora chimes in, unwelcome but not caring.

“Look, we get it. He’s the type of guy that only wants to think he’s in charge but really on the side he needs someone to tell him exactly what to do. And that’s just fine. He gets a mommy to hold his hand to cross the street and he gets to think that he’s a big strong man, and you get a pretty face to take to dinner parties and tug on his puppet strings. Call it a compromise.”

Karen squishes her face up in distaste because dear god she really hopes that’s not what this is. She likes to think that maybe their dynamic of business partners and lovers and part-time friends worked for them, that all three could weave into a strong netting of togetherness because they had the same career goals. Maybe it would be okay that he was commitment-phobic if she didn’t ask too much of him. That someday they’d fall into a rhythm. It wouldn’t matter that one of them was staying late at work because the other would be too. Or that they didn’t have time for kids because being with each other was enough.

She makes a deal with herself to pay closer attention.

***

The rain is tap tapping on the window like Italian leather on pavement and Karen watches a steady drip cast its shadow on Ryan’s palm, readjusting so his arm fits snugly under her neck.

“So how do you feel about picnics?”

Ryan glances over at her, surprised and slightly amused.

“As in checkered blankets and fending off ants?” Karen nods lightly but he can feel the gesture if not see it. “Sure, they’re alright. I’m not a big fan of finger-sandwiches though.”

“No, it’s just that…” She swallows, hoping to force down that lump in her throat that’s currently inhibiting her speech. “My mother. She’s having a picnic with the extended family this Saturday and she wanted me to bring you.”

“Why does she want me to come?” And she hated that she can’t tell whether he’s baiting her or just being cautious.

“Because she hates it when I don’t let her meet my boyfriends. Says that if I’m too ashamed to let them meet her for inspection then I have no business dating them in the first place.”

“Boyfriend? Is that what we are?”

She pauses and gauges his reaction from the rise of his chest in measures of breaths and his pace hasn’t changed so she continues.

“I think so.”

Ryan shifts and for a moment she panics and thinks he’s moving away, but his tugs her waist closer instead.

“Me too.”

Karen’s glad he can’t see her face because if he could, he’d laugh at the dream-swept look in her eyes that they always make fun of in public. “So by extended family you mean…”

“I’m Italian, what do you think? Aunts, uncles, second cousins, the works. Just give ‘em food and they could be your own army.”

Ryan chuckles in her ear and she takes that as a good sign.

***

The second interview at corporate goes significantly better than the first and they celebrate with a bottle of champagne at a restaurant where you have to know people to get in. There’s a memo to the Utica branch and a promotion to manager for one of her salesmen and a cardboard box on her desk and she finally thinks yes, this is how it was supposed to be all along.

Her office has a view of the city and she wonder what it means that looking down on it all doesn’t make her feel more powerful, but significantly smaller in the world. Karen decides she doesn’t care.

***

“It just makes more sense. You’ll never be able to find an apartment in the city at this time of year.”

Karen tries not to linger on the just in his sentence, instead spitting it out on the pavement in front of his apartment, as Ryan unloads another unit of her stuff from the truck. At the end of the day they prop their feet up on the cardboard boxes, cracking open a pair of beers and watching the game on his leather sofa in hi-def.

***

They begin to combine things like power couples would because they don’t have enough hours in the day, like lunch-date meetings or schmoozing a client at a restaurant while getting handsy under the table. Karen had always envied those couples because it was just so clear that they’d found that synchronicity everyone wanted.

And maybe this is enough, she thinks, silently, as they have a fencing match with their chopsticks while the CEO is in the restaurant bathroom and his wife looks away.

***

Karen doesn’t think she’s ever been more impatient for spring to blossom, to explode its tiny green buds all over the trees, trip the spill of blue into the sky, dip its tongue into its arsenal of colors to paint pastel over the ground cover. But all she’s got is slush in her shoe and dirty snow that’s been traced over a thousand times by the tires of city truckers and waking up to a noisy boyfriend that can’t stand to sleep in. It’s these seconds when she lets herself reminisce about Scranton and small towns with their perfectly pure snow.

There’s Saturday mornings in coffee shops glaring at anyone who dares to open the door and allow the draft to sneak its way in through subterfuge, wrapping scarves tightly around her neck in defiance, calls in the middle of the day because she gives in and just wants to hear his voice. But she wants picnics in Central Park and hazy nights on fire escapes and throwing the covers off of them instead of bundling inside.

She’s well aware she can be as petulant as a five year old with a gravitationally-challenged ice cream cone when she doesn’t get her way, so she fumes as she listens to Ryan turn on the shower in the next room, the pipes springing to life, pretending the gust from the air vent is a summer breeze.

***

She spends a lot of time daydreaming these days.

She’d never been the girl with her head shoved up into the clouds, too busy remarking at the stars to notice that life sucks and pretending it doesn’t never changed anything, but lately she can’t seem to resist the gentle slip into maybe.

Karen thinks that maybe she’ll quit. Just storm out (not fired, no, never like Jan, all scatter-brained and out of control) and live on an island in the south Pacific for a while. Or that she’ll keep this steady climb up the ladder until she’ll run the whole show. Ryan is in some of these fantasies, but often times he’s left out, but she can’t figure out if it’s from indifference or comfort (of course he’d be there). Sometimes, in these little scenes, Jim will come crawling back and she chuckles wickedly at the chance to say nope, sorry, you can’t have what you want today, not now, not ever. Sometimes she pictures herself in a white veil with irises in her hand and a thousand guests filling the pews… but she stops herself because there are some things that just aren’t healthy to dream about.

***

“You think her sugar daddy paid for those?”

“That’s her boyfriend? I thought that was her father.”

“Possibly. But on the bright side at least she won’t ever drown with those two floatation devices attached to her chest.”

“ ‘Ladies and gentlemen you should prepare for a crash landing, so hug the nearest bimbo and brace yourself.’ Over.”

“Roger that.”

Ryan smirks and picks up their drinks from the open bar (a must at corporate parties like this), drawing the length of his index finger along her bare arm after he hands her the martini glass of something clear and cold and speared with an olive. Karen gestures inconspicuously at the couple by the bar.

“Ten bucks says he’s fucking that receptionist that keeps shooting him ‘take me from behind’ looks from the piano.”

“Twenty says his wife smacks him by the end of the night.”

“Oh, you are so on.”

They can only take their jobs seriously to a certain point, can only stand the plastic smiles and nodding when people introduce themselves like they’ll actually remember their names by the time the next corporate event rolls around until their cheeks start to ache. Impress the higher ups that hand out the raises and the promotions and the pay checks; no one cares about the rest.

“So do you ever think we’ll be like them?”

Karen manages to hold in the impulse to spit her drink back into her glass.

“Huh?”

“You know; I’ll have some hot mistress that everyone knows about and I’ll work too much, and you’ll spend too much money on Prada and resent me for the rest of our miserable existences.”

Karen chuckles. “Of course. It’s one of my life’s dreams.”

“Good. Because I already have my sights set on you murdering me in my sleep with a hatchet.”

“Does it have to be a hatchet?” Karen whines, fingering the rim of her glass and leaning in closer, her merlot red lips barely grazing his earlobe. “Hatchets are so… lumberjack. Can I have a serrated blade instead?” She whispers into the space behind his ear and it’s probably sick to be doing it with these words on her tongue but she knows that it makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up and his eyes go all unfocused and she just can’t help herself. Ryan catches her eyes and she can just see it now. I’ll go call a cab. You get your purse and meet me by the entrance. Quickly.

There’s a commotion and they both glance away from each other, momentarily distracted by the wife from the couple they had been mocking earlier shoving her husband into the caterer and swinging her shawl huffily over her shoulder while the pretty blonde slipped out the kitchen door without attracting any attention.

“Doesn’t count. You said smack and that was clearly a shove.”

“Whatever, Fillipelli. You’re just a sore loser.”

“You are going to pay for that.”

They stepped around the executive apologizing to the man he’d fallen on top of and cleaning salmon mousse of his lapel, Ryan sighing.

“I am so going home and canceling my insurance policy.”

***

Karen figures out that Ryan is in love with her .5 seconds before he actually says it out loud, and within the next few seconds she realizes three things.

One: Her and Ryan have two separate lives, two different personalities; the one here, in ratty t-shirts and beer from cans and fingers sliding through hair, and the one at work, where her words are stern and his are clipped and the walls are too white and nobody smiles.

Two: She isn’t sure which side of her is the right one, even though she knows in theory it should be the latter.

Three: She hasn’t thought about Scranton or anyone who lives there in three months.

And her mouth hangs open like she’s trying to catch flies, swallowing and letting something watery and weak like “me too” tumble thoughtlessly from her lips. But Ryan doesn’t seem to mind, nodding satisfactorily and asking her to pass him another slice of pizza.

She’ll tell him after he falls asleep that night.

***

She decides that she’s happy on a Saturday in March about a week before the world shifts rotation and she knows that it just figures. The universe has had a grudge against her since she dumped Matt Croydon at senior prom even though she knew he was in love with her because she was moving to New York for school and she didn’t want to be bogged down by some high school boy. She never ended up leaving Connecticut because she got waitlisted and Matt married rich. Figured.

The invitation comes in the mail, a Trojan horse between their electric bill and a sweepstakes prize piece of junk mail and she almost throws it away. Almost. Thisclose. But she doesn’t because the gold edging catches her eye (damn her automatic attention to shiny things!) and then the floor drops out. She thinks it’s odd because the structural integrity of New York City apartments are usually so sound, but then she reminds herself it’s only in her head and she’s speaking figuratively here. Karen thanks the Lord that they both have nicknames, because Pamela and James is significantly easier to swallow than Jim and Pam, especially when followed by the word marriage and not died in a fiery car wreck that left no survivors. There’s some comfort in the fact that her name doesn’t stand alone on the wedding invitation, that Ryan Howard and that one small and is there to keep it company, because when being invited to your ex-boyfriend’s wedding to the girl he left you for, you need all the reinforcements you can get. She finds herself wishing that she had some polite excuse to decline, to check that little ‘not attending’ box that feels so tempting and mail that sucker right back where it came from.

But she can’t.

Because while Karen might still hate the both of them (at least a little, healthy bit) and she might be happy keeping Scranton’s people in Scranton and New York’s people (gratefully) in New York, there’s a line here, a precedent for wishing exes and exes’ non-exes well, even if they’re wiping your spittle of their face and you’re laughing in your head. So Karen checks that ‘attending’ box with as much flourish as she can muster and verifies that Ryan owns a black bow tie.

At least there’s always the chance that she’ll leave him at the altar and she can be there to laugh her ass off.  

***

She’d intended on getting lost on the way, which is why she’d insisted on driving, but somewhere between the five boroughs and dirt roads she’d sprouted resolve or a conscience or something. 

So somehow they’d ended up back here, under a canopy with Michael and champagne and a justice of the peace and she really doesn’t feel like celebrating. It’s a spring wedding so she’d bought a knee-length pastel dress in a pretty pattern (because sophisticated women know these types of things) and they get there ten minutes early with a gift (she’d bought a toaster because she already knew they’d had one and no, she tells herself, that doesn’t make her spiteful) and she congratulates the bride and groom as if it was perfectly okay that once upon a time she’d pictured herself in that white dress instead of in this one with a flower on the waist and a clutch purse under her arm when she’d never really liked floral prints to begin with. She pretended not to roll her eyes when they were pronounced Mr. and Mrs. Halpert, so she thinks that should count for something.

She manages to avoid everyone she knows, instead striking up a conversation with one of Jim’s aunts that she’s pretty sure is senile and deaf in one ear, but she doesn’t have to hear remember when… or whatcha been up to? so she’s content.

She’s scanning the reception area, a white tent on some old property either the bride or the groom’s family had owned for a hundred years, giving Pam credit at least for her taste, when she spots Ryan by the bar. It takes her about three seconds before recognition kicks in and Karen crumbles her napkin in her hand.

Because he’s talking to her. That trashy clown-painted bubble gum whore that she’s had to hear about for a year, to worry that maybe she’s holding him a little too tight at night or that maybe she shouldn’t say I love you because it will make her seem desperate. She’s got that traitorous little hand of hers on Ryan’s arm and he’s laughing like he’s just come up for air and for a second Karen is just so done.

Then she breathes, reminds herself that dumping a guy because he can still stand to be around his ex may be a bit harsh. She’s been in that pointy love triangle triage mess before and one laugh is nothing to smack a bitch over.

But instead of ignoring it like she had before with Jim, she holds it somewhere dank in her heart in a python’s grip and hopes it will suffocate there, turning her eyes away from the Indian slut and taking another bite of cake.

She’s just managed to get herself in check when she hears a timid “Hey,” from behind her.

Karen turns around and there’s Pam, white dress and flushed face and hair twirled in little perfect pin-curls and she really just wants to die, right here.

“You mind if I…?” Pam gestures to the seat beside her and Karen nods politely before she can think of an excuse not to. “It’s a nice day. I can’t tell you how scared I was that we’d get halfway through the vows and, whoosh, torrential rain.”

Karen isn’t sure if it’s because Pam’s not prying or because she’s just as uncomfortable as she is, but she finds herself leaning back.

“Yeah, that would suck.”

Pam nods and there’s silence filled only with chatter and baby crickets just coming out into the twilight.

“I’m glad you came.” Karen glances at the other woman but there’s nothing but earnestness there, written in plain English or whatever language facial expressions speak to each other. “Really. And Ryan too. You guys… you look good together.”

“Thanks,” then, “You too. You and Jim,” because if Pam’s decided to go all honest and fluffy on her then it would be rude not to return the gesture.

Pam smiles, sighs contentedly, and Karen’s glad they don’t need to talk to say everything they need to say. She crosses her legs under her billowy dress and the satin of the wedding dress brushes up against Karen’s leg, bringing her back to the present.

Karen watches Pam’s profile. She’s found Jim in the crowd and she follows her line of sight. He’s twirling the flower girl on the dance floor, letting her tip-toe on his feet and it’s so cute that Karen thinks she might just throw up. But she notices the corners of Pam’s mouth turn up, her eyes misting in what could only be assumed are happy tears of joy, and it would probably be a shame to ruin such a beautiful moment with vomit all over the floor. So she manages to refrain. Instead she does something that surprises even her.

“You know despite appearances, I’m happy that he’s happy.”

“Thank you.” And Pam doesn’t rehash why they’re having this conversation or how many ways she should probably be smashing glassware right now, so neither does she.

But then there’s a bridesmaid beckoning Pam over and she’s rising to leave.

“Congratulations… or best wishes. I can never remember which one you’re supposed to say to the bride.”

Pam shrugs good naturedly, giving a little wave and a final smile and then she’s already absorbed in this particular issue, which appears to involve the salad and the bent prongs of a fork. Jim comes up behind her, sliding a hand along her hip and placing a kiss to her temple, pulling her closer, and Karen looks away because she may be acting all noble and big but that doesn’t make her a masochist.

Ryan places his palm in the small of his back as she stares down into the cake and whispers a “let’s go”, because she just knows his professional courtesy of putting up with his old colleagues only goes so far.

Karen throws a smile over her shoulder at the sickeningly happy couple because she’s feeling generous and lets Ryan drive her home.

“Have a good talk with Kelly?”

She can practically hear him blanch, even though her eyes are closed and she’s turned toward the window, tracing the headlights of passing cars against her eyelids.

“I remember why I broke up with her in the first place. She’s fucking nuts.”

And he maybe lying, to her to stave off a fight, or to himself because… well for the same reason she remembers every Jim-involved memory with the tangy taste of poison, but she’s okay with that because they’re human and she knows it couldn’t have been easy to see her worked up into a tizzy for the last week over some guy that dumped her once. It’s a balancing act and she’s okay with giving a little in one direction if he’s willing to shift them back.

Ryan finds her knee in the cool breezy darkness of the car as they shift into third gear, winding around the bend into the quiet reverence of night.