When Pam was little her mom used to yell at her for using the word “hate.” She wasn’t allowed to hate anything. It was just too intense an emotion for anyone to feel until they’d had a tidge more life experience. When Pam was in high school she thought maybe she hated geometry, but then she realized how much it fed into her drawing class and maybe her mom was kind of right. For the three semesters she was in college Pam was pretty sure she hated everything about the experience. It was nice to get away from home, sort of, but really she just wasn’t built for it.
When she got her first grown-up job Pam was almost certain she hated her boss. But then he would cry or ask her for advice or show up at her art show and really kind of get it and Mrs. Beesly was right back in Pam’s head smirking and crossing her arms.
Today, though, today her mother will not infiltrate her thoughts. She will not shake her finger or scold or trivialize how Pam feels about this entire debacle because she HATES today and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Honestly, she shouldn’t be so upset right now. They’ve only been together for a year and her brother Tom didn’t propose to his high school sweetheart until he was 26 and SHE didn’t throw a fit. But Pam can’t let things be good, it seems. It feels like since the beginning of this she’s just been waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s too perfect. He’s too funny, and caring, and interested and not… Roy… and now she feels bad. The blame falls to the giant jug of Sangria sitting on the floor next to the coffee table.
Because this is not a One Glass night.
Pam’s really starting to dip into the melancholy, even letting herself think about things like the night Roy set the date and the way Jim looked at her out on the deck of the boat, when the soft knock on her front door pulls her back. He actually knocked before he came in. It hurts in that really stupid girly way, like it does when he sits in the armchair instead of on the couch with her when she puts on a movie, but she really can’t blame him for it right now. She’s pushed him to this state of caution in the last eighteen days with her awkward silences and extra space in the bed and general apathy about almost everything.
Pam’s feet make a winding path to the front door as she tugs a little at the hair sticking out of her messy bun, wine glass perched precariously in her left hand. She’s at that point of intoxication Jim likes to call “pleasantly inebriated.” Except there is nothing pleasant about this. Nothing pleasant about the way she yanks the door open without looking at him. How she sits on the couch and refills her glass, not even faking their usual easy coexistence. She hears him tossing his shoes against the wall by the door and hanging his coat in the closet and decides right there, in that very minute, to just get this over with. She got into art school. She painted her bathroom magenta. She bought regular sour cream instead of fat free. Sometimes little old Pam Beesly could be bold.
When she stands and turns to him, he’s shifting from foot to foot, hands shoved deep in his pockets and she gets just the tiniest bit of satisfaction from the fact that he has no idea what’s coming. He can read her so well that sometimes she just wants to scream for no reason, throw him off his game a little bit.
Scream, Pam.
“Why haven’t you asked me yet?” His head shoots up and she swears to God his eyes bug out for a second like that lady who used to go on Letterman. She’s glad, though, that’s he’s not going to play dumb; he’s already reaching into his pocket and pulling out the ring box.
“I was going to. At Toby’s goodbye… thing. And stupid Andy, just, yeah. It was gonna happen. And then it just… didn’t.” He walks forward and puts the box on top of the couch, backing away and shrugging his shoulders the tiniest bit. Something about the way he seems to have just resigned himself to the situation irks her. Wine glass abandoned, she makes her way around the couch to face him, picking up the offending piece of jewelry on the way. She moves the box from hand to hand but doesn’t open it. She doesn’t know why.
“Jim… it’s been over two weeks…”
“I wanted it to be perfect, I…” He interrupts but loses his momentum.
“Why did it need to be perfect?” Pam’s whispering now, not sure why but feeling like things may have just taken a turn she didn’t see coming.
“Because for so long things for us were such, just… shit… and I wanted you to have something big and great and so unapologetically cheesy and romantic you wouldn’t need to second guess.” There’s something in his eyes she can’t place, something almost panicked, but not quite. He’s leaning forward now, his left hand squeezing his right arm just above the elbow, the muscles in his fingers taut and pressing into himself. “But then the moment passed and… God you just… you shut me out and then I think I shut out that you were shutting me out, and then neither of us wanted to say anything and I didn’t know where I stood or who should make the first move…” He looks at her, head tilted just to the left, a question, maybe asking her to be the one to do it.
“You have to do the things, Jim. You… I’m not good at making the first move. I don’t know how all this works, this… equal thing. It’s on you.” Pam knows she sounds horribly selfish, but right now all she wants to do is be honest. Completely open. It’s the one bit of bravery she can offer him.
“What if… what if I can’t do that anymore?” She sighs and looks up at him, arms crossed over her stomach, engagement ring held loosely in her fingers. And suddenly she’s very tired. Exhausted. As if the enormity of everything floating around the room has somehow manifested itself into some sort of actual force, they’re both propelled back to seats on the couch, sinking and slumping under the weight of their own uncertainty. Neither one says anything or looks over at the other, they just drink it all in.
“I still don’t really believe it yet, I think.” Pam leans forward and lets the ring rest on the coffee table, still unopened. She sits back and pulls her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around herself and pulling as tight as she can. Maybe if every part of her body is touching she can gather enough courage to really just say it. His eyes aren’t on her, she knows, but his mind is right there with her. Scream, Pam. “I don’t know if I believe that we’re supposed to end up together.”
Jims head drops the tiniest bit, his arms sliding forward to rest on his knees, hands clasped in front of him. He sighs as if every doubt and worry he’s ever had have banded together in one puff of air. Pam wonders if it’s the sound of his heart breaking or of relief that she has felt it too, the tiniest little glitch. The one that’s nagged both of them since the very beginning. The one that maybe made them work extra hard to be happy and perfect because they KNEW it was supposed to be like this. They just knew.
“Pam…” His voice is rough, heavy.
“I love you. I do, I know that. It’s one of, like, eight things I’m completely sure of in my life, right up there with the fact that ketchup doesn’t belong on hot dogs. It’s just…” She looks over at him for the first time since sitting down, and their eyes meet. His are defeated. She wonders if he can see the energy that seems to be building up inside her, this caged animal feeling and burning need for the truth. “Jim for two weeks I’ve been a complete brat and just… stupid… and you never called me out on it. You’ve always, ALWAYS pushed me to be completely honest with myself and not settle and you just… didn’t this time. You let me stew and pout and be a total bitch and you just took it. I don’t know if you were afraid I’d turn you down if you pushed me or what, but… that passion, that… thing that’s always been there, pushing us forward wasn’t there. You didn’t make the move. And now the number nine thing I am absolutely certain about in my life is that… I have absolutely no idea where to go from here. And I think you feel it, too.” Pam deflates back into the cushions, watching Jim carefully as he rubs his hands over his knees.
“I still want to marry you, Pam. I really do believe that we’re it for each other, I do. I don’t know…” Jim looks up at her, the tiniest shreds of hope still clinging to his face as he cautiously puts a hand on her thigh. “What do you want to do? I… what do you want?”
“I want to love you for as long as I possibly can and for you to keep that pressure on me because I know that if you don’t I’m going to slide right back into the shell of a person I was and we both know that Pam can’t love you the way you should be loved. And I want that to be enough for you.”
“Okay, Pam. Okay.” Jim leans back and settles his arm on the top of the couch, not quite around her shoulders but close enough to twist one of her curls around his finger. The silence stretches ahead of them, highlighting the fact that not a single thing has been resolved. They’re left exactly where they started, but with new wounds and doubts and questions added onto the hefty bill they’ve been running up for years.
“So where does that put us now?” Pam looks over at Jim and scoots a little closer to him on the sofa, needing that extra little bit of warmth as the rooms seems somewhat colder now.
“Tuesday,” is all she gets.
“Bleh. I hate Tuesdays.”
Story Notes:
A/N Not my usual fluff, but this wouldn’t leave me alone. Unfortunately. Takes place eighteen days post-Goodbye Toby, so spoilers for all that business. Sorry about the hanging ending, but it felt… right.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
