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He wakes up to the phone ringing and he wonders who could be calling this late, and reaches his hand over and blindly searches for the phone hoping he can get to it before it wakes up Pam.
And then it hits him. Pam. Pam’s in Brooklyn.
Phone calls in the middle of the night are never good, and he shoots up, grabbing his phone and answering without glancing at the display.
“Hello?” He rubs his eyes and already has a plan to get out of the apartment and on the road in under three minutes if something’s happened and she needs him.
“Jim!” It’s Pam, and he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. It’s Pam, and she sounds funny. “Jiiiimmmm, I miss you.”
No, scratch that, not funny. Drunk. He can’t help the smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth. If there’s one thing he loves, it’s Drunk!Pam.
“I miss you too,” he responds settling back down on his pillow. His heart is returning to its normal rate, and he wishes he could somehow record this conversation because he knows it’s going to be good. “Where are you?”
“In a cab,” Pam answers. “We went out to celebrate.”
“What are you celebrating?”
“We’re halfway done, wooohooo!” He has to pull the phone away from his ear to stop his ear drum from shattering as the sound of Pam and her friends yelling fills the air. “Which means I’m halfway closer to being with you,” she replies without missing a beat. “And I miss you.” And he missed her. There weren’t even enough words to describe how much he missed her. He knew he would miss her, but he wasn’t aware of just how much. He had been without her before, but that had been before. Before he knew what her lips tasted like, and what she sounded like she sighed in her sleep, and how her body felt when it was curled up against his at night.
“Well congratulations,” he tells her. “How many drinks did you celebrate with?” Infamous Second Drink Pam, he knows, needs very few drinks to get herself good and drunk.
“Um, three Long Islands, because I’m in New York and it was a fromage to the city,” she answers seriously. He bites his lip to stop from laughing at her as she suddenly giggles. “That’s not right.” She giggles again and he loves her a little bit more.
“Pretty sure fromage is French for cheese,” he responds. “I’m thinking that the word you’re looking for there is homage.”
“Uh-huh, you speak French?” Pam barrels through the conversation. He thinks that if he stopped talking she would still be able to carry on the conversation.“Say something else in French! Please?” The truth is that Jim barely remembers anything from his four years of high school French, having spent a good part of those years staring at high school femme fatale Rachel Roman instead of the chalkboard. Not that he would admit that to Pam. Ever.
“Uh, je ne sais pas,” he says. That was about the only thing that he would say to Madame when she would raise an eyebrow and call on him. It was as if she had a sixth sense for when boys were staring at the girls instead of at her lessons. He had a secret theory that she was a sadist. Je ne sais pas became his standard answer. “I don’t know” pretty much summed up Jim Halpert’s high school existence.
Pam tries to repeat that back to him, stumbling over the pronunciation and Jim imagines the whole country of France cringing simultaneously.
“Or, how about je t’aime?”
“What does that mean?” Pam asks.
“I love you,” he tells her. He can practically hear her drunken, crooked smile across the phone line.
“Jiiiiimmmm,” she sighs. “I don’t deserve you. All the girls were complaining about their boyfriends and fiancés and husbands and I didn’t really have anything to complain about, which is crazy because with Roy I used to complain all the time. Even to you, which was awful of me. I’m awful, how do you stand me?”
“You’re not awful,” he insists. You’re Pam, he thinks, you’re beautiful. He doesn’t say it out loud, he instead listens as she stops the conversation mid-flow because they’ve gotten to her apartment and she’s giving her friend money and saying goodbye and stumbling with her keys and he wishes that he was there with her, helping her into the door and into a pair of pajamas and into bed. He knows that three Long Island Iced Teas are certainly going to spell doom for her in the morning and he wants to be there holding her hair back and getting her water and Advil.
He just wants to be with her. Always. It’s kind of that simple.
He hates this, hates being miles away from her.
“Jim?” She whispers.
“Yeah?” He’s not sure why she’s whispering but he figures it probably makes some sort of sense in her head.
“Je t’aime you too,” her mixture of French and English is one of the most adorable things he’s ever heard and it definitely makes his Pam Top Ten List. He used to have just a girlfriend Top Ten. The best things a girl has ever done or said to him, but when he met Pam she began to fill up spots 1-8, and it was only a matter of time before she conquered spots nine and ten too. At best Karen had only managed to rate the number fifteen spot and Katy hadn’t even made the top twenty.
It surprises him how wholly and completely he is hers. And how immediate that was. From the beginning he belonged to her.
“Ialld seashs yous thiask wekwhan?” he hears from Pam’s end.
“Come again?” He asks. He can practically see her, her head buried halfway in her pillow, the phone barely propped up by her ears. It’s ridiculous how much he loves her.
“I’ll seesh you thish weekwen?” It’s a little better, a little more clear, and he laughs a little.
“Absolutely.”
“Love you,” she mumbles and he knows that he losing her, she’s going to be nearly unconscious in seconds.
“Love you too,” he replies.
He listens to her breathing for a few minutes before hanging up.
When he falls asleep he dreams of a drunken, beautiful girl with a terrible French accent.
Story Notes:
I have absolutely no idea where this came from. It's a tiny, silly one-shot which popped into my head. I hope you like it! It's dedicated to my former French teacher, Madame Maser, who was definitely a sadist, and the good people of France.
Author's Chapter Notes:
The title is from the song by Guster. Love Guster. So much.
bashert is the author of 37 other stories.
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