David Wallace is not in any way elitist, so he stops by all the branches to say hi to everyone a little while after his cocktail party. Unfortunately, he comes to Scranton at the worst possible time. Roy just got fired the week before, so there’s a weird mood in the office and bad blood all around. Actually, if Pam is being honest, there isn’t really bad blood all around, so to say. There’s just bad blood in her general direction. And it’s kind of only from one person, but Pam’s had to face up to the fact that that one person is becoming her whole world. It scares her.
She sits behind her desk almost all day now. Sure, she’ll scurry away from behind it to go to the bathroom or grab her lunch, but she just can’t face the risk of wandering into the break room to find Jim and Karen together. It’s not so much them, but the fact that they make Pam face the one utter failure of her life. Every time she saw them, she felt her dreams explode and fizzle away like fireworks, like that night they spent on the roof together, long-gone times. The smoke was still in the air; she couldn’t escape it. Sentences she could say to Jim died in her throat, because Fancy New Beesly was totally and utterly defeated that night when Roy destroyed both the bar and her ambitions at honesty.
So, Pam’s behind her desk, of course, when David walks in. She recognizes his face from the Corporate newsletters. “Hello, Mr. Wallace,” she says, summoning the biggest smile she can. It’s not very big.
“Please, Pam, it’s David,” he responds, covertly glancing at her nameplate.
“Oh. Well, David.” She makes herself laugh a little, hoping it will get the slightest response from the neck she sneaks glances at all day. It doesn’t. “The Party-Planning Committee has been waiting all day for your arrival!” She thinks over how stupid that must sound. Mr. Corporate won’t care about the goddamn Party-Planning Committee. “I’ll show you to the conference room.”
As she walks with David to the conference room, where Angela awaits with cakes and streamers, she thinks about how she used to be able to feel Jim’s eyes trailing her – not in a creepy way, but in a way that flushed warmth throughout her body that she refused to acknowledge. Now, she feels nothing. She doesn’t know that he breathes in sharply and grips his mouse tightly until his knuckles go white in his attempt not to react.
Forty-five minutes later or so, the party is in full swing. Pam sits in one of the four chairs along the wall in the middle of the room. No one else sits in the other three. It works for her, because she doesn’t have to immerse herself in pointless conversation, but yet nobody can accuse her of being antisocial. David is in the middle of talking to Michael, who keeps screaming as he laughs. Pam knows her boss is just trying to impress the CFO, but who wouldn’t want to? He seems, by all accounts, incredibly kind and intelligent. He’d gotten the company out of many very bad situations with utter grace. He’s charismatic. And, Pam has to admit, watching him half-smile at Michael’s ridiculousness, he’s very handsome. The glasses suit him.
All these observations about David, though, seem so hollow and desperate. When Pam was engaged, she thought about men that weren’t her fiancé way more than she’d like to admit. After a while, it was really just one man. Now that she was single, she couldn’t stop thinking about only that one man; she’s way more mentally faithful to him than she’d ever been to Roy. The only problem was, she’d had her chance with that man and she’d blown it badly. He was totally out of love with her. She focused on Jim, in the corner, laughing with Kevin. Karen was unsubtly eyeing Jim. Pam wanted, so badly, just to talk to him.
“How are you holding up, Pam?” a deep male voice said from next to her. Pam had been so preoccupied by her own thoughts that she hadn’t even noticed the freaking CFO had sat next to her.
“I’m...” Pam thinks of saying great, but it’s a blatant lie. “I’m okay. I’m holding up.” David doesn’t ask why she’s only okay. They talk, but he gives her distance, on instinct. She finds herself smiling, really smiling, for the first time in which seems like months. She may be hopelessly in love with Jim, but that doesn’t mean she can’t appreciate talking with another man, especially one so charismatic and good-looking as David Wallace.
Six Dunder-Mifflin Men Pam Finds Attractive at Inappropriate Times (and one she doesn't) by bigtunette
Author's Chapter Notes:
Okay, there might be timeline issues, but I like to think the Roy-related events in "The Negotiation" got filmed the day after "Cocktails," and just got aired in April.
Chapter End Notes:
David Wallace = hottest office man that's not Jim = yes/yes?
One more!
One more!
bigtunette is the author of 7 other stories.
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