Ryan is never truly interested in what she had to say. This is something Kelly Kapoor knows perfectly well, but everyone has one classic downfall and for her it's having too much faith in people. And so- in a move passed off as stupid and self-centered and completely unsurprising- Kelly dates the one person nobody really wants her to be with, including Ryan himself. She sends him cute emails and goes to dinner with him. She frequents bars with him and sits on dirty stools, hands nursing the same drink as his glass drains and his tab builds. It’s one of the quirky things about their relationship, the fact that Ryan drinks more than she does. Sometimes she'll have one or two fruity things with pink umbrellas, but more often than not she'll order a Sprite and watch Ryan wash down the bitterness his life in Scranton has lodged permanently in his throat. He never gives the impression of being an alcoholic, only a man with reasons to drink that moved beyond social situations. Kelly knows she’s one of those reasons.
She knows that Ryan is nearly incapable of loving her, but she still makes him try. And maybe it’s a sort of atonement that she drives him and his friends home at some ungodly hour of the morning, quietly listening to the voices from the dark back seat telling Ryan that he’s a lucky man to have her. They hit on her and they say things about her body that she cannot believe, and Ryan doesn’t say a fucking thing. He never says a fucking thing. And she knows, somewhere in her bones, that this is not love in the way it’s supposed to be.
These are the constants of their relationship- Ryan is the pessimist, Kelly is the optimist. Ryan is guarded, Kelly is vulnerable. Ryan is introverted, Kelly is extroverted. Ryan is the quiet one, Kelly is the talker. Kelly is always the talker. This isn’t really a shock to anyone, but it’s more prominent in her relationship with Ryan than anywhere else in her life. She talks just to hear herself talk, just to hear anyone talk, just to fill the void of Ryan's silence in her own heart. There is only one constant that she and Ryan share: he has big dreams for himself, and she has big dreams for him. She knows that some days, that is the only thing keeping them together.
She isn’t truly surprised when they broke up. Of course, there is the initial shock, the panic, the denial. But all of those things come and go, and Kelly is not surprised to see Ryan go with them. She had always known that she wasn't first on his list of priorities, and if she had known he was going to get the job she would have broken up with him beforehand. But he didn't tell her- he even made some excuse for why he'd be gone to the interview, a haircut or lunch with his mom, she doesn’t remember- and so Kelly didn't know. She didn't know that he was going to get everything he had wanted, and she was going to lose him in the process. She would have gone with him to the interview. She would have sent flowers, written a card like Pam told her she did for Jim (a secret Kelly's never told to another soul, because Pam made her promise and for once Kelly felt like a part of something) and when he got the job she would have screamed and cried and been so, so happy for him. She would have, because Kelly loved Ryan with a ferocity that she could never explain. Even now, she cannot explain.
After he leaves, people develop an awkwardness around her that she never anticipated. They give her this look somewhere between pity and distaste, and they speak to her like she’s completely airheaded and she hates it and she hates them. She hates Pam and Jim and the stupid shit they pull on Dwight and the way they parade their relationship like it’s the best fucking thing in the world (and what she hates more is that she knows it probably is); she hates Dwight and Angela and Andy because it really rips her to know that some unattractive woman with a permanent stick up her ass could be chased around by two equally unattractive men at all times; she hates Phyllis nearly as much as she hates Vance Refrigeration; she hates Michael and Jan and their dysfunctional relationship and she hates that she recognizes that dysfunctionality because it’s living inside her and somewhere in New York and she cannot rip it out no matter how hard she tries. The only person she does not hate is Toby, because she understands what it means to be misunderstood and what it means to be left for someone (something) better. So she sits in silence with him and she pulls at the memories, hoping to break them to pieces, but all they do is stretch. They cover her and she is lost, so lost, so lost.
When Ryan comes in the door of the office that afternoon- when he finally steps in, after all the weeks of her worrying and crying and dieting and hoping- she cannot breathe. She sees the stubble on his face and his blue eyes and his hair, so carefully styled into this casual disarray look that’s so 2003 Brad Pitt, and she does exactly what she promised herself she would not do. Kelly falls back in love with Ryan all over again, and every beautiful memory she has of him bubbles to the surface, memories of his body warm against hers, of late-night conversations about business school and dreams, of the moments they shared when Kelly knew that he was really listening. All of these things attack her, and they fill her senses with smell and sight and touch and all at once Ryan is looking at her in the strangest way and she cannot breathe.
She knows he’s fucked up. It doesn’t take her long to figure out, and once she does it’s like the whole world comes apart, because she isn’t “with” him but she loves him and that means keeping him safe. And Darryl says something to her about going back to the warehouse but she doesn’t respond and he doesn’t really care and neither does she because she is looking at the man she loves and he is broken. He is broken and she cannot fix him and she does not know where to start, and the worst part is that he is trying to function as if he’s working perfectly. He tries to maintain some façade of normalcy, and it’s so masochistic but it’s so Ryan that she sees it coming and she’s not surprised. She’s sick and she’s not surprised.
She doesn’t hesitate. She drags Ryan out of the office and she confronts him, she finds the shit in his fucking car in the parking lot and she screams and cries and he screams, too and he gets that shine of anger in his eyes that she’s so familiar with and it’s a little bit like tears. And somewhere between him yelling at her and him kissing her goodnight after taking her out to dinner (they sit in a dark corner and he talks and she listens, and neither of them points out how unusual that is), she understands. She comes to terms with the fact that love is sometimes the same as sacrifice, and if this- this relationship- is the sacrifice Ryan wants her to make, then she will make it. No questions asked. It’s for that reason that when he asks if he can come inside after dinner she tells him no. The smile on his lips fades- she's never rejected him before- and he turns his back to leave. But right before he goes, she does something big and crazy and rare, something she's been afraid to do all along, she just tells him the truth, raw and ugly as it is. She calls after him- "If New York ever gets lonely... I'll be here." He pauses, turns his head, keeps walking. She swears she sees a revelation playing across his face.
The next morning, there's a note on her desk.
"Every place without you is lonely."
Another constant.
Author's Chapter Notes:
i love the dynamic of ryan and kelly-- it's so dark and sad and beautiful. enjoy! also, i do not own the office, seeing as how i am not that talented :P
josephine is the author of 3 other stories.
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