Pam waited until she saw Jim’s car pull out of the parking lot before she finally allowed the tears to fall. She leaned her head in her hands and finally let the emotions of the day spill out. Less than 12 hours ago she had been practically skipping around her apartment. She had painstakingly laid out her outfit the night before and spent over an hour carefully curling her hair and even applying new makeup that she had bought. She had been on cloud nine since she found out that he had been coming back to Scranton. She was so anxious that she found herself unable to sit still for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Finally it was time for her to leave for work. She sat at her desk, glancing towards the door every few seconds to see if he was there. She had planned out this day in her head and how she was not going to let anymore time go to waste. She was lost in thought when the door opened and there he was. She felt as if her stomach had leapt into her chest. He looked great and she was amazed at how much he hadn’t changed. The same shaggy brown hair falling across his forehead, the smile that she had missed so much, the familiar way he walked. She couldn’t stand it anymore. The minute his eyes met hers she was out of her desk and running towards him. She flung her arms around his neck, pulling him close. Her heart began to race as she felt his arms wrap tightly around her. He was finally here and she felt that everything was going to be okay. Unfortunately, it only took about fifteen minutes for Pam to realize that this day probably wasn’t going to play out the way she had hoped. He brushed her off in the break room, but she tried to ignore it, telling herself that it would just take a little bit of time to get things back to normal.
Her attempts to catch his eye were repeatedly unsuccessful and she couldn’t tell if it was just because of his new seating arrangement or if he was purposely trying not to look at her. Her fears were confirmed when she saw the hand on his back, the smile on his face that wasn’t meant for her. She felt that she had been punched in stomach and the lump that had formed in her throat made her feel like she couldn’t breathe. She just outside, frozen in place long after everyone else had returned to the office.
She spent the rest of the day in a haze. There was no shared looks, no trips to her desk for a jellybean. Her heart was breaking and all she could think was that she deserved it. Why had she been stupid enough to think he was actually coming back to her? With 5:00 approaching Pam forwarded the phones and hurried into the break room, so that she wouldn’t have to see him leave…with her. She could feel the absence of his eyes on her as she passed him and it made her already aching heart hurt even more. She had lost him. He had offered her everything and she had thrown in away like it didn’t matter. She had broken him when he was most fragile.
She waited until 5:25, when she was sure the office was empty before she made her way out of the break room and headed down to her car. His voice, gently cutting through parking lot, startled her. For a moment her hopes soared, wondering if maybe he was going to give her another chance, but they quickly came crashing back down when he apologized for any weirdness and then told her the piece of information that she had so desperately hoped wasn’t true. She didn’t even know what she was saying back to him, her mouth was moving, but the words that were coming out were not the words that were screaming from her heart. She was almost 100% certain that she had seen a flash of disappointment in his eyes and she instantly knew that she had made another mistake. He had taken a chance, put it on the line again and she was so petrified of the inevitable rejection that she didn’t recognize this final chance he had given her before it was too late. Then he was gone and she was alone again, standing in the dark parking lot, facing the incessant black emptiness that she had hoped was finally going to go away.
Now here she was, sitting in her car, body wracked with silent sobs of regret and loneliness and of love lost. She sat in the parking lot for over an hour, feeling as though at least if she were here she would be somewhere that reminded her of him. She sat there staring out the window, the silence engulfing her making her feel more alone than she ever thought was possible. Eventually, she was unable to cry anymore and she felt weak and exhausted. She started the car and slowly pulled out of the parking lot. She unlocked the door to her apartment and walked inside, dropping her keys and purse on the floor as she walked down the hall to her bedroom. She curled up in a ball on the bed, not even bothering to take off her coat. She lay there, unmoving in the darkness, a nauseous feeling washing over her as she thought about what he might be doing at that moment.
It was at that moment, that Pam realized that something was going to have to change in her life if she was going to be able to get out of bed ever again. She had lost him, the fault was entirely her own and now she had to move on. She didn’t blame him, how could she? She knew that she was lucky that he had talked to her at all. He deserved better than her and even if it wasn’t going to be with her, she wanted him to be happy. She wondered briefly, before slipping into a restless sleep, if she was ever going to be happy again. The uncertainty of it all was daunting, but she knew that somehow she was going to have to try.
