He just does it for the sake of doing it. No. He’s deluding himself. He’s trying to put a veil of fog over the events that haunt his nights, that blanket of sadness is heavy and exhausting in the small hours. Defeated, he closes his eyes and pretends to sleep. Let’s the darkness envelop every inch of his vision.
He just does it to forget her. Yes. He’s stating the truth, accepting it, which seems a vast improvement already. He just lets his fingers slip through the keyboard and allows the sound to break the silence. Those notes are like daggers in this desolate house of him. A place that can’t be called home because his shelter has the shape of a beautiful, young woman who refused to opt for the choice he was suggesting her.
So, he just does it to wash it all away, to hollow him out, to fade the memories of her. It’s too much. A little bit too much. He tried to have her and he lost. And so he encapsulates and molds this bitter sorrow into the compositions he plays.
They are long, dark wordless songs. Or maybe they are short, gloomy ones. Not that he’s paying attention. Not that he really cares. He lowers his vision and weeps really silently and his tears slip from his eyes and fall into the black and white keys, moisturizing them.
* * *
He just does it so as to not break the habit, really. Time happens and passes by and doesn’t happen anything. He’s not as emo and he’s not in pain, or that’s what he thinks. The truth is that time happens and passes by and you gain some perspective and you learn to live with what ate your insides and left the void.
You don’t get over it, but you resign yourself to face the situation, control it.
So, yeah, he does it as a homage to what once she meant to him. To make a toast to her, to drink the wine and kill the bottles. He wanders his hands through the instrument, the little electronic organ his father bought when he was young and remembers the conversation.
“You play the piano?!”
He looks down, smiles and blushes, all at the same time. “Yeah.”
He thinks she will make fun of him, or that she’ll go to tell Kelly about it, but when he looks at her and she looks at him they realize the only people who they gossip with are each other
“Play it.” The excitement in her eyes it’s noticeable. And yet he can sense something else behind her green eyes. The assurance that she’s hiding something, like he is, and is about to explode.
“What?” The question takes him by surprise.
“Do it. Play a song. With the organ.”
His laugh echoes in the room and melts her heart a little.
“No way, Pam. Imagine the embarrassment.” And because she’s not planning to leave the room with her request being ignored she crosses it, his bedroom and smiles and it’s so bright and white and her lips are so round and pink and beautiful and inviting he does nothing but oblige.
And so he plays it. The song he composed to her (although she doesn’t know it). Because she’s Pam, and he knows, now, he will find the strength some time to declare his love for her and set the butterflies in his stomach free.
He finds amusing that exact part of their life and every little moment they shared is still burned in his memory.
Even though everything is foggier and duller now, even though she’s probably with Roy, and he’s probably about to vomit because there’s no way he will be able to stomach the ten glasses of wine he drank the last hour. Even though this is the fate there was planned for him. He’ll try to accept it.
He does it because she’s not with him, even though she is, in every vision.
* * *
He does not do it, because he got sick of it.
He prefers to watch TV now. It’s been 6 months since the debacle and the stitches have dissapeared. He’s restored now. No need to play that bloody piano.
He does not do it because which is the point, actually?
It all changes when someone suddenly knocks his door. He looks at his watch only to confirm the thought: that it’s really really late and that he will probably find some trouble behind that door.
But when he does it, when he opens it and she appears, like an angel, she is released from the back of his mind like a spring and all the thoughts he had suppressed over the last few weeks come flooding back to him, so unexpectedly he has open his mouth and just stare at her, like an idiot.
They don’t say anything to each other because what are you supposed to say, actually?
Maybe you are not supposed to say anything, or maybe…
“I love you.”
Her voice is clear, vivid with emotions he recognizes as his own. And just because he can’t believe this is actually happening, and she’s here, with him and not going anywhere he formulates the question.
“What?”
He sighs and he prepares because the tide is sure coming back at him, violently.
“I love you.”
But he’s not sure.
“What about R-?
And she interrupts, just lets her words flow, naturally now.
“I love you.”
And it’s the only thing he needs to hear. Then the notion sinks in. The feelings emerge. His ship starts sailing again and as a start he says it, states the thing he knows now he’s been maddeningly waiting to proclaim.
“And I love you.”
And he holds her close, and kisses her, and she’s cold, but he still embraces her, just like that, in his arms. And she’s wet because the weather is awful outside and his clothes are saturated in rainwater but he doesn’t care.
At all.
* * *
He does it because he wants to. He plays it because life is good.
To have an excuse to look at her naked body wrapped up in his sheets that are now theirs. He does it to wake her up. And as the happy tune bounces the walls she stirs and stretches, opens her eyes to a world of warmth and caring.
There are still a lot of questions that haven’t been answered, a lot of enigmas ready to be unraveled.
But she is there, in his life and not running away.
So he kisses her softly and her breath is minty-fresh and sweet and satisfying; her smile is blinding they lean away.
And to dissipate the doubts, the anxitety, she starts doing the talking.
“I’m not going anywhere. I broke up with-“
He doesn’t let her finish the sentence, ruin the moment, he just presses his lips against hers once more and she traces his back with her delicate fingers, making him shiver.
The storm is over, the sun is high, all the distress buried in the ground and she’s holding his hand.
It’s more than what he asked for and just what he deserves.
Story Notes:
This is my first attempt at writing Jim/Pam so feedback/constructive criticism is really appreciated.
Sea Legs is the author of 2 other stories.
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