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Jim had fallen onto his bed four hours ago and hadn't closed his eyes since. At least not in any attempts to fall asleep, more in frustration at his exhausting life.
It had been the third night like this. Friday after kissing her, Saturday after waiting for a call, and now Sunday after wishing all day. He had wished for a lot of things in the last hours when Sunday was fading. He prayed for things to be different, for the first real time since all of this had started with her years ago, he actually prayed that it would be over. That she would realize things, that some intervention would happen, because clearly his words did no good.
She was really marrying him. He had always seen her around him, in his life. She really was his best friend, and they'd spent time together outside of work, and of course while they worked. And he had always seen her as such a part of him, even his mother knew all about her. He couldn't understand why suddenly she didn't feel like that at all.
What was she thinking tonight? Was she pushing all of this aside while she enjoyed a weekend with her fiance?
He sat up to have a drink of water from the nighstand. He felt dizzy, just like he had all weekend. He was sick. It had always been such a cliche to actually get sick from emotions, from bad days; it had never happened to him before.
He was disgusted with that thought. He'd never been this guy and he was sick over her. Actually, physically sick.
His feet had barely touched the floor before he found himself throwing up an empty stomach into the toilet down the hall.
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She's really marrying him.
He thought about calling into work. Numerous times, and even after he had broken down sometime early this morning and made a call to Mark when it was still dark, he knew he couldn't.
He knew it would only make it worse, make it another day where he avoided her, and nothing was getting better.
Sick for sure, but as he looked in the mirror he saw a lot more. He hadn't seen himself in days, hadn't glanced for anything. He even had thick stubble framing his face from not shaving over the weekend. In the mirror he managed to look human, but he saw paleness and shadows under his eyes. He was sure she'd see it, among other people at the office.
As he threaded his tie around and through, he sighed at the thought of the desk, the office, and how everything took place right there a few days earlier. He groaned and shook his head, fighting the urge to flop back onto the bed, call in sick, and lie there for days.
It wasn't worth it. Pam would just end up answering the phone and he'd talk to her anyway, and she'd probably expect the call.
So he didn't call in, and instead got into his car and started it. He sat for five minutes, his hand pressed against his forehead. Bitterly, he turned off the radio -- he didn't want to hear any music, because whatever it was, it would remind him of this moment and these times for the rest of his life. Just like the sounds of the rain touching the windshield would, most likely, and the blur of dull sunshine ahead of him.
When he found his will, the drive all the way to the office was just a reminder of how lonely and desperate he felt. He'd wanted her for so long, he naively thought that it was bad before. Now he felt rejected, and even worse, he felt like it shouldn't have happened. He felt like Pam was wrong with Roy, and maybe she knew it now. She'd kissed him back. And still, they were apart.
He cursed at himself quietly for turning down the position in Stamford. He pulled next to her car, because it was the only space left, and made a note to himself to move it at lunch, so as to avoid awkward timing leaving work.
His body felt fuzzy as he walked all the way to the elevator, all the way down the hall, and felt the cold metal of the door handle on his fingers. It was ten minutes before the hour as he stood there, wondering why he hadn't showed up at the last second. Why did he want to spend an extra ten minutes here today?
When the door opened, and he almost forgot he had been the one to open it, Pam's chair was empty.
The miles in his mind were occupied with thoughts instantly. She'd called in sick? She was avoiding him? She was breaking up with Roy at that instant at the apartment they shared. She'd been in car accident. She quit.
He came back to himself, remembering her car in the lot.
Michael was in his office, but with the door shut, secluded from the rest of the room. Kelly waved to Jim as she made a quick copy and returned to the annex. Then he was alone in the room.
He thought about camping out in the bathroom for a few minutes, but he was sure that's where Pam was, if she wasn't at her desk. He decided against it.
Unenthusiastically, he began his routine for the workday. Removed his jacket, untangled from the strap of his bag, turned on the computer, and sat down to watch it start up. One hand numbly let fingers drum on the desk, the other supported his heavy head.
The door from Michael's office opened, but he didn't move. He thought maybe he was falling asleep with his eyes open until he heard their voices, with his gaze still fixed on the monitor.
"I need to fax corporate for most of the paperwork, Pam," Toby began, "and we can get it signed later, sound good?"
"Yeah, sounds good," Pam said quickly. As crazy as it sounded, he could almost smell her as she rushed past his desk, just the same as he could that night.
"Pam, I'm here if you, need anything," Michael said seriously, and awkwardly. "I am a great listener."
"Um, okay, thanks," Pam replied, just as awkwardly.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her sit at the desk and breathe out. Instantly her hands were working and she was shaking the hair out of her face.
A meeting in Michael's office before anyone else had showed up? He could see Michael calling Pam into his office alone, obviously, for a number of trivial tasks they'd later laugh about. But with Toby, other possibilities came to mind.
She was leaving, he thought suddenly. His palms were sweating. This couldn't happen, she had to stop ruining him.
Slowly, feet and familiar but far away bodies were making their ways into the office. Nobody was saying "good morning" today. It's like they knew and made the effort to be depressing. Maybe they'd just seen the rain and decided to be gloomy. Maybe their life was hell, like mine, thought.
He shook his head against his hand and thought to email her, see what was up. But their friendship was in no condition.
Friendship, he thought blankly. Even if they had one still, it's not what he wanted. He'd settle for it, always, if there was nothing else, but damn, it's not what he wanted.
I want to be more than that, he'd said in the dark that night.
She coughed. Two minutes later, she yawned. Maybe ten minutes after that, she got up to fax something. Michael made a joke. With each of these things, he'd reminded himself not to look at her.
His body felt deprived, though. All of the fibers that made him who he was, and were, before Friday night, living to see her smile everyday, waited to see her today. When she walked past his desk to the bathroom at 10:30, he let his gaze follow her. He wondered if anything about her had changed, but physically nothing hadn't. She wore a gray sweater, a black skirt, and her white Keds. Except her hair, it was down. It was red, and full of curls, and sat completely on her shoulders. He knew she was beautiful.
When she disappeared into the door away from the room, he stared at the space where she'd been. He hadn't noticed all of the sounds of the office before until he was zoning out now. Soft clicks of keys all around him, humming of some distant appliance -- maybe the air conditioner -- and the shuffle of paper somewhere.
He had stared until she returned and accidentally met her eyes. He knew he did it, but he looked at her anyway, and only looked away when she did suddenly. His heart sank again and groaned as Michael announced an impromptu meeting from the corporate office.
"Michael, we're busy, we have a lot of work to do," Oscar pleaded. "If you want to discuss Jan's memo, could we just do it here? It shouldn't take more than two seconds."
"It's Monday, we're swamped," Angela added. "And if we go into the conference room, we're not going to come out for at least an hour, I know it, this always happens--"
Michael insisted, waving his hand and making a loud remark. Jim felt a wave of annoyance silently wash over the room as he pulled himself out of the chair and wandered to the conference room. Kevin sat next to him, and pounded his fist, not noticing Jim's demeanor. Phyllis sat on his other side, and suggested he must have had a long weekend. Jim just nodded and forced a small smile.
"First," Michael said in a low voice, "I think we should all look at Pam. She has an announcement to--"
"No, Michael," Pam protested, looking at him with wide eyes. She shook her head, her and Jim's eyes met again briefly. She tore away and blinked. "No, Michael, I'm not going to... no, would you just..."
Michael looked at her expectantly, question all over his face.
"No, just please, the memo..."
"Okay," he said unsteadily. "Whenever you're ready, though, Pam."
Pam rolled her eyes, and from across the room, Jim felt the urge to ask her aloud what was going on. Although he was sure he could get it out of Michael with nothing more than a sandwich or made-up gossip, he wanted to hear it from Pam. Hell, maybe he didn't want to hear it at all. With that thought he shuddered at possibilities -- mostly of Pam being gone in some way. Maybe she was leaving after the wedding. Maybe she was just leaving to get away from him.
But she had kissed him back. It had only been three days ago. Was his mind playing tricks on him? He had wanted to remember everything about those moments he had with her, he remembered that much. He had made his hands remember hers.
Jim tried to sit back and think about that moment, knowing it wasn't helping, but when he was kissing her and she was kissing him back, she was his. He closed his eyes just for an instant, remembering this. He wanted to play it back over and over again.
But instead he had to sit through a forty-five minute meeting about a new policy on lunch breaks.
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His body was exhausted. Partially because his boredom wasn't satisfied by a chat with his best friend like every other day, but mostly because he had lost that friend all day. He had been losing her since Friday night, and it had rolled like a snowball. He felt like an idiot again.
Gathering all of his things from his desk, he noticed she was doing the same. He had planned to move his car away from hers, but there were no empty spaces in the lot at the time, so he had spent his lunch break in his car. His forehead had pressed against the steering wheel for thirty agonizing minutes, where he pictured them together again.
Please don't marry him, he said to her. It sounded so foreign, the words he thought to himself when they shared a joke before, or at night when he thought of her before he dreamed of her. But he said it to her, his mouth had opened and said it to her. She said nothing back.
He pretended to keep himself busy at his desk, giving her a head start. She made a few extra faxes, and while they went through, he quit his charade and swiftly left the room. He jammed one hand into his pocket and grabbed his phone with the other. He faked a phone call on the way to his car to avoid conversation with anybody. He said nothing but "Yeah... yeah... yeah, sounds good... sure... okay..." Then he was in his car and heading home.
He looked over to his right absently as he started his car and saw Pam stepping into her car beside his. Her left hand gripped the outside of the door while she stepped inside. She pulled the door shut, and the same hand reached up for the seat belt that she fastened before she drove away.
Jim sat in the parking lot for a few minutes after she'd left, trying hard to remember if he'd seen a ring or not.
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This is my first story with chapters, so I hope I'm leaving somebody out there in some small amount of suspense, haha. Let me know. =)
yanana is the author of 39 other stories.
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