He saw her in the rear view mirror, walking to her car and quickly got out of the conversation he was in. He was still trying to process what happened earlier, what it all meant. He’d spent so much time imagining what would happen, ever since he decided to come back to Scranton, but, of course, nothing had gone as planned. Did it ever, with her?
She couldn’t. So he left. Better for both of them really. What other alternatives were there? He’d tried to start over. He had. New apartment, new office, new co-workers, heck, a new type of sandwich. There was even a pretty girl. She wasn’t her but, then again, who else was? Still, she was fun, smart, attractive, though not in the way he usually thought of as ‘his type.’
When she didn’t call or email to let him know, he took that as the final sign. He’d given her space, gotten out of her way. Otherwise, it would have just been awkward and painful for both of them. But then, she left him, just a few days before the day. He heard about it the next day, from three different people, but never from her. So, that was it. Time to pick up the pieces, again, and try to move on.
He’d been doing rather well, actually, until the phone call. Awkward at first, and definitely painful, but not for long. They fell back into their old relationship so easily. He’d never been able to speak with anyone so easily, for so long. And, just as typically, it had ended in confusion, odd silences, half-words, and uncertainty. Different medium, same story.
They’d done their thing in person, then on the phone, so the text message shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did anyway. For some reason, maybe the hangover, maybe the vague memory of a kind ride home, it was easier to ignore it this time. The lack of any follow-up confirmed what he already knew. Time to pick up the pieces, again, and try to move on.
Now, here he was, dragged back by cruel fate (or the manipulations of a documentary director desperate for ratings gold) to lovely Dunder Mifflin Scranton. To this parking lot, where he had oh so many lovely memories.
The hug, he got. Wouldn’t expect anything less, especially with the cameras rolling, and it was really good to see her again. The coffee invitation had been a bit more troubling. What did that mean? Months with nothing but a random accidental phone call, which he’d initiated, and one mundane text message, then that?
And he hated how much he hoped. How could he ever get through this, get over this, when just a stupid invitation for coffee made his heart race, made his palms sweat, left him sifting over every inflection in his head for the rest of the day. This was ridiculous. He was kinda sorta seeing Karen now anyway. Sure, one date and a kiss at the door didn’t come close to what he’d shared with her… but actually, it did. One date (that she denied was a date,) one kiss in the office, well two, if you counted the Dundies (which he went back and forth on), and that was the extent of Jim’s relationship with Pam, officially. The years of fantasizing and planning and dreaming and wishing didn’t actually count.
He couldn’t just leave things like this, though. He had to know something more. Maybe they could just go back to their friendship. That friendship, though, was always colored by his unspoken feelings for her and for the feelings he’d let himself believe she might have for him. If those were gone, what was left? The pranks?
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It wasn’t fair of him. Jim knew that. Testing her was childish at best, cruel at worst, or it would have been, if she’d cared. He didn’t know why he said it. Correction. (God, now he was thinking like Dwight, after only one day back.) He knew why he said it, but he hadn’t planned to say it. Was it even true? Karen waited for his call, waited for him to join her for a drink. That counted as ‘seeing someone,’ he supposed. All this, in the instant after the words left his lips and he waited to see if she even cared. She didn’t. As he’d feared, suspected, known, she just wanted her friend back. Someone to help with the boredom, someone to help waste the tedious hours, that’s all. He couldn’t help himself. He hadn’t meant for her to hear him, to even speak it aloud. Even if he had meant to say it, he’d never have indulged the bitterness in his tone. Would he?
It just slipped out, but once it did, everything changed.
“Yeah, right, friends. Great.”
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She spun quickly and her eyes blazed in a way he’d rarely if ever seen, especially directed at him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean, Jim?”
“What?”
“’Yeah, right, friends, great,’” she mocked, “I mean it, Jim, what the hell?”
Anger? Really? She was going to be angry at him?!?
“I’m sorry, isn’t that what you just said to me,” he fired back. Had he ever lost his temper with her? When she was actually there with him? He didn’t know, but suddenly it felt kind of good. “’Friends, we’ll always be friends, just friends.’”
“I didn’t say that!”
“Didn’t you? ‘Cause that’s what I heard, Pam, and I think I’d know, since I’m kinda used to hearing that from you. Oh, I’m sorry, or am I ‘misinterpreting’ our friendship. I’m always going off and doing that. I don’t know what the hell you want from me, Pam, or what you expect me to do, but I’m not going back to that life.”
She didn’t speak though he could see a hundred replies flashing across her face.
“I won’t do it, Pam,” he went on, no longer yelling but still dripping bitterness, “not again. I can’t.” He almost smiled at the irony.
“You can’t be my friend?” she finally asked, in a hoarse whisper.
Jim sighed. He never had done “angry” well and it was especially difficult to do it at her. “I… I don’t think I can.”
“Because of her?”
“Who? Karen? It has nothing to do with her. Geez, Pam, for all that we were ‘best friends’ do you really not know me at all?”
Suddenly, her anger flared back to life, even as his was dissipating into misery.
“How the hell could I, Jim? Do you ever tell me anything? All that time you supposedly loved me, did you ever tell me? No, not until the very end. The day before you were planning to leave, you drop that on me out of nowhere and then run off before I can…”
“Don’t you dare tell me I didn’t love you!” he shouted back, temper returning. “I put everything I had out there, twice, and you shot me down, twice. You told me you were going to marry him! What did you expect, that I’d just say, ‘Ok, let’s pull a prank on Dwight when you get back from your honeymoon.’?”
“What do you want from me!?”
The words bounced against each other in the cool night air as they both shouted them simultaneously.
They stared at each other, breathing heavy, cheeks moist, fists clenched.
He saw it in her eyes first, though it came to him almost at the same time. At first, he tried to stay angry. He could see that she was doing the same. But, it was there.
He shook his head slightly.
Don’t.
The little spark grew, though she was trying to fight it.
He tried to keep the thought out. He tried to hold onto his rage, but the thought was there now. He could feel it, and worse, he knew she’d be able to see it there.
I’m warning you, Beesley. You can’t do this. Not here. Not now.
Then, her eyebrow arched just a fraction, a gesture he knew all too well. He couldn’t stop himself from smiling, just a little.
“Jinx,” she said tentatively. “You owe me a Coke.”
Her body sagged a bit as the anger flowed away into the ground, replaced by a new kind of nervous tension.
And there it was.
She waited. It was up to him now. He still wasn’t sure exactly what the options were, but he knew which option was no longer on the table.
Silently, he pulled a dollar out of his wallet and gestured back toward the building. She nodded and he set off for the door. He couldn’t be certain, but it almost sounded like, behind him, she was skipping.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Another "What-If", this time Jim mutters a little extra something after the parking lot conversation in "The Merger" and that conversation turns out much differently. Note: this does NOT pick up or relate to the first chapter: different "what-if" altogether!
