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It’s a feeling that he just can’t shake. Somehow he just can’t lose the fear of it all disappearing.
Of her disappearing.
It’s been a year. A year of dinners and kisses and Saturday night movies at her place or his. A year of “I love you’s” and lazy Sunday mornings. A year of “my place or yours?” and of her smile and her laugh and her touch.
And if he ever had to go back, if he ever had to lose that, lose her, he would lose his mind. He’s sure of that at least.
It was Pam who worried when she was about to leave for New York City for the summer. Worried about their relationship and what was going to happen. She would have felt better about the whole thing if she had a ring on her finger. If she had solid, tangible proof that they were stuck with one another for the rest of their lives.
It was Jim who pressed kisses to her warm body, who whispered in her ear that they would be okay, that assured her that it would suck, but it would be great, she would be great. Words spilled out of his mouth, but never the ones that she wanted. Will you marry me? Somehow, those last few days before she left, the words got caught in his throat, caught between his own fear and her worried face.
She went off to New York, with his assurances and his love, but not a ring on her finger.
June was okay. Weekends switched back and forth. Him driving up, her driving down. Train rides and meeting halfway and the feel of her after a long week.
June was hot, and when he thinks of those weekends he remembers sweaty hands and sweaty bodies. His air conditioning broke in his car, and he drove up to New York instead of getting it fixed, rolling the windows down and feeling the wind whip through the car and feeling happy and light and free.
Why had he worried, he thought in those first few weeks. This was fine, it wasn’t indefinite, it was only for a few months. And then she would be home and there would be a ring on her finger and plans, definite plans, for the future.
In her tiny sublet in Brooklyn, with a window air conditioner humming above them, they wrapped themselves up in each other and sometimes spent the whole weekend in her bed. When she had been out with some of her new friends they had stumbled upon an outdoor market and she bought an old portable record player and some old records, and they would listen to Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and call “Not it!” when the record needed turned over.
July came in a hurry, but his air conditioning was fixed, and instead of letting the wind whip through his hair, he rolled the windows up and counted the miles until he was closer to her.
July became harder to take. She was busy most weekends, and instead of spending the whole weekend paying attention only to each other, Pam spent some of the weekend in the studio while he waited for her, and wandered around her neighborhood alone. Then she began calling, apologetically, to tell him that she wouldn’t have any free time that weekend, and that there was probably no point in him wasting the gas and the time when she would only get to spend twenty minutes with him tops.
He agreed out loud that she was probably right, but he knew that it was worth the trip, worth the money in gas and tolls to see her, even if it was for twenty minutes. But he also knew that if he was there, she would feel guilty when she went to the studio, and she would rush through her projects so that she could spend more time with him, and she didn’t need that.
This summer was hers. And he wanted her to have it.
So he stayed home most weekends, talking to her on the phone when she had time. They had conversations in increments, shoved in when she had a few minutes free.
Loneliness began to settle over him, like waves, crashing over him and weighing him down. He knew it wasn’t her fault, knew that she missed him.
She said she missed him. She slipped it into every phone call, even the short ones.
“Just calling to check in, love you, and I miss you,” she would say.
But it was hard, hard to be away from her.
That’s when the fear snuck in. The fear of her drifting away from him. Of him turning around one day and finding an empty space where she had been. Of her deciding that she made a mistake with him; that she could do so much better. That Fancy New Beesly didn’t have time for either Roy or Jim.
He would lie alone in his bed at night, running his hand over where her body should be, and fought the urge to call and wake her up and have her reassure him that she loved him and that she wasn’t going anywhere. That after the summer, after her New York adventure, she was coming home, coming back to him.
Her phone calls were sparse in August. Weekend trips even sparser.
He made it up one weekend at the beginning, and she managed to have time for them to go out for one dinner, and after they made love Saturday night, she smiled apologetically and said she had to go to the studio for a little while to work. When he woke up Sunday he was alone and she called around ten in the morning to tell him that she was sorry and she had fallen asleep there. She ran home quickly and they took a fast shower together and he pressed tiny kisses to her face and her hands before taking the train home again.
It was getting harder and harder to do it. Harder to not see her, harder still not to talk to her. He was getting annoyed with the situation and with her and with himself for being annoyed with the situation and with her. This was hers, he reminded himself.
He spent the days of early August feeling selfish and silly and lonely.
He snapped at her, on the phone, when she said she didn’t have time to talk.
“Like that’s something new,” he said. “Like you ever have time for me.” He regretted it as soon as it came out of his mouth, heard her sharp intake of breath and wanted to take it back, but he was still feeling selfish and silly and lonely and he couldn’t take it back.
“Jim,” she said softly, and he could hear the pleading in her voice. “I’m sorry.” He ran a hand through his hair, and felt hot tears prick his eyes.
“Yeah,” he said. “You have to go.”
“Jim,” she said again, the desperation clear this time. “Please.”
“You have to go, I’ll talk to you later,” he said.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you too,” he parroted back, and they hung up and he began to cry. Because he was an idiot and an asshole and no better, really, than Roy. Because he wanted this for her, for her to be happy and not have to work at Dunder Mifflin anymore. He was proud of her, for being so brave and so talented.
But he was tired, and feeling a bit melancholy and knew, definitely knew, that he was a selfish son of a bitch. The same thing that had stopped him from calling her that summer when he found out that she had called off the wedding stopped him from calling her this summer.
She called again, later that night, but he let it go to voicemail.
“Jim, I don’t know what to say, this is hard. I’m so sorry, please call me back, I’m going to put some time aside this weekend and come down, I’ll just bring my work home with me. I’m sorry, please Jim, please pick up the phone. I love you. I miss you. Please don’t do this. Please.” He listened to the message about eighty times and counted how many times she said please. He listened to the way that her voice caught in her throat, and he knew she was crying.
Instead of calling her back, he went to the bars with Mark. After a few shots and a few beers he confessed that he was afraid of losing her.
“Well, you dumb fuck,” Mark said. “You’re going to lose her like this. Being a total douchebag. Call her back. She’s probably just as lonely and tired and cranky as you, only she’s like forty times more stressed out. The last thing she needs is you having a temper tantrum because she couldn’t talk to you, and you have to sleep by yourself. She’ll be home in like three weeks dude. Pull your head out of your fucking ass and stop being such a prick. ”
Mark drove him home where Jim threw a change of clothes in a bag and got a cab to the train station. Two hours later, he found himself standing outside of her apartment smelling like beer and stale cigarette smoke.
She answered the door after three knocks, and he noticed for the first time how exhausted she looked. Her eyes were rimmed red and her eyes widened in surprise when she saw him.
“I’m sorry,” she started and he held up a hand to stop her.
“No, don’t be. I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. An idiot, Pam. I just…it feels a lot like Stamford sometimes. The way I miss you and the way that I can’t think of anything but you. And I know that its not, it’s not like Stamford, and I don’t want to…I can’t get my thoughts in order.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Okay, I want you to know how proud of you I am. And that’s what I’m most sorry for. I’m sorry that I wasn’t supportive, even for a second. Because I’m so happy for you. And it was just, I just really fucking missed you.” And her arms were around him in seconds, her mouth pressed to his.
“It’s okay, I know,” she said, and he wonders if she has any idea of how amazing she is. “I’ll be home in three weeks. Three little weeks. And then you’ll see me so much that you’re going to want to get rid of me.”
“Never,” he whispered, wrapping his hands in her hair and resting his cheek against the top of her head. “I’m sorry I’m such a tool.” He noticed that she was crying, tears dripping down her cheeks and landing on her tank top, and he fiddled with the straps and kissed the salty path the tears were leaving. “I just had a little bit of a freak out, you know?”
“I know, and I’m going to be mad at you, later, but right now I’m just so happy to see you,” Pam said. “Let me just call my friend Sara and tell her that I won’t be meeting her at the studio and then you and I can spend the whole day together.”
“No,” Jim shook his head. “No. You have a ton of things you need to do. And Pam, I’m okay with coming up here on the weekends and only seeing you when you pop your head in for minutes or even seconds at a time. I don’t mind. I just want to be near you. So go to the studio and I’ll make some dinner and if you don’t have time to eat it, just give me a call and I’ll wrap it up and bring it down to you.” Pam smiled brightly, and nodded her head a few times; wrapping her arms around him and kissing the bottom of his ear and then his mouth, tugging on his bottom lip.
September snuck in, while they were moving Pam back to Scranton and spending their weekends with each other in his bed, circling ads for graphic designers in the paper and updating her resume and sending it out.
And somewhere, in between the sheets and the job ads and the tangled limbs and empty pizza boxes, Jim forgot to be afraid of losing her.
Story Notes:
I rated it M because of some dirty words. Sorry. The song is another one by Death Cab for Cutie. Because I love them, and because I can.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Yeah, I don't know what's up with me and all these post-season four fics, you're going to be sick of me soon! This one is slightly angstier than my last couple (is angstier a word? Hmm). Hopefully you aren't sick of the post-season four fics yet. I swear, I'll get the help I need and stop. Maybe.
bashert is the author of 37 other stories.
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