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Disclaimer: The Office does not belong to me. If I claimed that it did, I would get a bullet in the head, courtesy of Butch Cassidy. So I don't claim. (:


Sometimes, when trying to figure things out, she sketches. Just whatever comes to her mind or however she feels; a flower, a bumblebee, a heart, a hand. ‘Doodles’ would be the crude, blunt thing to call them. But she hates calling them that. Ideas. Decisions. That‘s what she would call them. And they help her sort out things when life gets confusing.

Usually, when she gets down to actually drawing, that dull ache in her chest that she’s been feeling ever since he entered her life and made things crazy sparks back to life. She remembered his first day vividly. He was smiling and new and so naïve to the insanity of the office that would haunt him forever after. Like a brand new, unsharpened pencil, ready to be dwindled down to nothing in a sharpener.

The selfish, irrational, impractical part of her tells her that it was her, it was her joking and her friendship that acted as the little container at the bottom of the sharpener that collects the shavings.

The foolish thing is that she should be so happy right now. She should be diving into wedding magazines and so ecstatic, but she’s not. The most prominent thing she remembers from that night was the way his eyes sparkled when he looked at her. This is what she draws. His face, those empty seconds that were filled with so much emotion. He wanted to say something, she was one-hundred percent sure. But she didn’t hold out, she got cold feet, literally, and went back inside. And so the biggest confession she got out of him that night was instigated by his girlfriend.

“Pam is…awesome. My best friend.”

She presses too hard on the paper and pokes a hole in it. Now she wonders what he’ll call her. ‘Pam’ would be the obvious choice, but she enjoyed the alternative so much more.

Beesley.

It was like, their thing. So much more personal and endearing. It’s what made them them. He had called her Beesley since his second week working at Dunder Mifflin, and she remembers, and feels, still, all the emotions she first felt when that name rolls around his mouth and escapes his lips. Like a secret. He smiles when he called her that. Always smiling, like he had a secret of his own; a little part that she didn’t know about. She’d smile back and pretend that she did. Her pencil tip breaks and she sharpens it again, the whirring noise jostles her out of hr trance and she stares at what she’s drawn. Messy hair, bright sparkling eyes and a lopsided smile are screaming at her to understand something, anything, but she just turns her pencil around and rubs is back and forth, hard and angrily on the paper. He hasn’t looked like that in awhile. She’s trying to capture the way he looked at her on the boat, on a freezing January night, and yet he looked so warm. And then she realizes, ever since that night, he doesn’t really call her ‘Beesley’ anymore.

It was more than a nickname, it was ever so comforting, like him. When she and Roy fought, she’d call him, of course, and he’d crack a joke; she could even hear him smile; and he’d ask, ever so cautiously “What’s wrong, Beesley?”

And he didn’t ever over use it, either. The way Roy always called her ‘Pammy’. During fights, conversations, and even during sex. She brushes the eraser shavings off and starts drawing again; paying careful attention to the eyes. Those beautiful, hazel eyes that had grown dark; forest; as he stared at her. She felt something click in the back her mind at the sight of his expression. His mouth and eyes frowning and creasing, looking sad and downtrodden like a lost puppy. She drew that face. Lately, she knew that. He doesn’t smile as much anymore.

She gasps as she stares down at the sketch she’s done; because before that moment, she had missed something in those browbeaten eyes. It was in the outer corners, and it was enough to send a jolt down her spine. She hadn’t seen it before, and yet she had. But she drew it, so she had to have known it was there, right? She must have been ignoring it, she realizes, and her breathe hitches.

She whispers his name in the darkness, just to feel it on her lips, and then blushes. But it’s not like Roy, or anyone else, is around to hear it.

She is alone, a desk lamp spilling over her paper and adding an eerie, faint glow to the room. She sighs and tears form in her eyes and she stares down into his. Even on paper they were so…expressive. She absorbs the emotions in them; Sadness. Rejection. Denial. Grief. And then…

Hope.

Faint, even with the lamp on. Barely there, even when drawn on paper. But it was there; a flicker, a sparkle, a glimmer. And it practically breaks her heart. She feels suddenly cold. Again.

Why was she so cold lately? Like the shiny metal around the eraser of the pencil. She fingers it lightly; shivers, before turning the pencil over and letting the tip glide over her paper again. This was so much easier. Like June 10th, it was the easy way out, to draw her feelings and emotions rather than say them out loud. To marry someone she dosn't love anymore But that's not what she's doing. Right?

Her brain shifts gears again, she falls back into her trance. What would happen after June 10th? What would he call her after she and Roy finally got married? 'Pam' would be the obvious choice. And he could still call her Beesley, maybe, but at the same time, as much as she loves hearing him say that, it would be almost like cheating. Like she wasn’t getting married. Almost as if she wasn’t in love with Roy.

But maybe he wouldn’t ask; he would just keep on calling her Beesley. The change in her actual last name wouldn't matter. Because somehow, the thought of him leaning over her desk, his eyes twinkling as he started to pitch an idea for a prank on Dwight, his long fingers dancing in the bowl of jellybeans, uttering the words

“Hey Anderson.” makes her want to scream.

She crumples the sketch in her shaking hands and tosses the pencil on the table top. It rolls around the desk for awhile and teeters silently on the edge for a few seconds before clattering to the floor.

Chapter End Notes:
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gamesetmatch is the author of 1 other stories.



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