Mark and Heather go out to get food and a couple of last-minute decorations, and they send Jim out to get the booze. He waits on line with people in suits, and feels stupid and immature when he dumps tequila and Malibu, four bottles of the cheapest vodka he could find, and two cases of Natty Light onto the conveyer belt (there’s already a whole lot more cheap beer at home). He offers quick, twisted little smiles at the other people on line, all couples in winter peacoats buying not-cheap champagnes. Some of the couples look like they could be thirty. He’s not all that much younger than that.
Jim packs away the alcohol and climbs into the car, jumping a little when his cell phone hums twice in the cupholder before he has time to start his car. He checks out who’s calling him, and picks the phone up with a smile, imagining Katy in yoga pants and a tank top, pausing before her mirror to examine herself, making amateur model poses and jutting her elbows out as she chats with him. Maybe she's streaking on blush, makeup remover precariously placed beside her.
“Hey, you.” He groans inwardly once he says that, because it feels – feminine is the first word that strikes his mind, but it’s not quite right. Fake might be. Then again, actively trying to falsify his emotions has been his goal for a while now.
“Hey.” Her voice slips to a huskier register as she awkwardly stretches the word into a few syllables; Jim grins and can’t help but scratch his thigh. “You excited? I am!” They both blather mindlessly for a few minutes about how exciting tonight’s going to be, not that a mindless state of existing is all that bad; it lets him forget the thoughts that constantly ricochet within his skull. When he drives back, he hums along to an inexistent song as the windshield wipers scrape the flakes of snow that lazily drift from the sky, gray and concentrated. It’s going to be a good night, he thinks. Hopes.
*
Mark and Heather are talking on the porch when Jim gets back. She is standing with a hand on her hip, the other jauntily holding a red cup, even though it's not quite night yet. Whatever, Jim figures, It’s New Year’s. Her body is entirely inclined toward Mark, until she turns her head toward the front of the house, nodding to Jim and calling out, “Oh, hey. Did you get the stuff?” Sometimes she talks like she’s still a freshman calling her over-21 friends to smuggle alcohol into her dorm. Then Jim remembers the Natty Light in his trunk, and thinks maybe she’s not all that far off.
Heather’s fine. Jim was a little surprised out the first time he woke up on a Sunday morning to find her perched on a stool in the kitchen, wearing one of Mark’s UPenn sweatshirts and a pair of his boxers, sipping coffee; she’d burned the beans, because it stunk in the kitchen. She smiled at him uncomfortably, the flat upturn of her lips stating, Yeah, I had sex with your housemate, and you know, and I know you know, but I’m not gonna say anything about it. “I’m Heather,” was what she said in its place.
Jim really didn’t find it all that awkward. It made him more wistful than anything else; he couldn’t help but imagine another girl with a mane of curly red hair sitting there so comfortably in his kitchen some day. “I’ve been dating that girl forever,” Mark laughed too often. Mark met Heather in early 2003; Jim joined Dunder-Mifflin in July 2002, and spent his first lunch in the break room with the pretty receptionist at another table, as he laughed and felt something heavy in his gut.
Jim, Mark, and Heather bullshit on the porch for a while, until a zippy silver car pulls up in front. “Oh my God, I love your house! It’s so cute!” Katy cries out as she cranks down the window. Her smile stretches so wide it freaks Jim out for a split second, until he realizes that she looks great doing it, as she does with nearly everything.
She swings the door of her car open, slams it shut, and then dashes to the porch with a titanic grin; he’s not sure he merits this enthusiasm, exactly. Jim’s similarly uncertain if he should kiss her or not, but when she hugs him, she tugs on his shoulders hard to pull him down to her level, and then her lips are on his. She pulls away, and just the tips of her lips are perked up. Behind Katy’s back, where Jim can see him but she can’t, Mark’s eyebrows are raised high, and Jim has to bite back his laughter.
“Hiii!” Katy trills to Mark and Heather. “I’m Katy, Jim’s friend!”
“Mark.”
“Heather.” Jim often assumes, based on absolutely nothing, that Heather thinks of him as Mark’s way-dorkier friend, this shiftless slacker who can’t really hold down a girlfriend and who hates his job, and that now, she must be wondering, how the hell did he wind up with her?
If Heather did actually ask that question, Jim would have to answer something like, Funny story, that. His New Year’s Resolution, unknown to anyone but him (when asked, he told people, lamely, that he was going to try to bulk up), was, of course, to get over Pam; his resolution had been the same for 2003, 2004, and 2005, a depressing march of years. Feeling like an ass because he hadn’t called her since early November, Jim had called Katy a week ago and invited her to the party, and she’d squealed and way-too-eagerly turned down plans at her friend's to hang out with him at some party where she knew no one save him. It was kind of awesome that she did that, but mostly just intimidating.
So, there they were. Katy’s talking, almost too excitedly, about how great Walk the Line was and how Joaquin Phoenix was so super dreamy in it (while, of course, talking about how much she loves Reese Witherspoon), when she suddenly puts her hand on Jim’s arm. It’s subtle, but enough to make him shudder – in a good way. He grins, because it’s been too long since the last time he felt that. “Wanna go inside? We can... talk,” she offers.
“Yeah.” Jim unlocks the door, and shoots a shit-eating smirk at Mark and Heather for just a second, well over the line of flirting with cockiness but really, he can’t help it then and there. Once inside, the door clicks, and Katy does some awkward but endearing little move, twirling around twice in space. She moves like a dancer, like a model, like every girl he thought he wanted. Those girls were in his dreams as faceless ideas, not women. That was a long time ago.
“I like your house,” she comments, in her ebullient voice that fills the whole room. “I’m really glad you called.”
“I’m glad I called too.” He might not be anywhere near in love with her, but her enthusiasm and energy is incredibly infectious, and he can’t help but keep smiling. “Sorry that I didn’t for –”
“It’s no big deal.” She moves next to his body, nudging him with her hip. “Jim, I want you. Like – tonight.”
“Really.”
“Now?” Her eyes plead, and Jim has to chuckle, awkwardly. Of course, he wants her, too, but it's not that easy, though it should be. He hadn’t slept with her, and Mark kept telling him what an idiot he was, but Mark didn’t know the whole story.
“I’ll get really tired,” he offers up as an excuse, and then he thinks, I might as well have told her I have a headache, for fuck’s sake. He slips his hand into hers, his thick fingers splitting the spaces between her far daintier ones. “Later tonight, though, I promise.” It’s surreal to be having this conversation, that a stunning girl like Katy could beg to sleep with him and he could feel little more than ambivalence. He won’t let his face reveal his emotion, though, as he locks his arm around her shoulder and squeezes her against his side, hoping his smile isn’t too tight.
*
The night goes by too fast. Jim does too many shots and talks to too many people he doesn’t know from where Heather goes to grad school or whatever and presses Katy up against a wall in the kitchen, surprised by how aggressive they both are as their tongues wind their way around each other, slippery and awkward and made even more so by the fact that he’s almost sloppy drunk. He ignores the cat-calls. If he can ignore, then he can forget, or make himself forget.
2005 is leaving too quickly. Jim feels like he should do something to memorialize it; after all, it’s not exactly every year that a camera crew barges into his work life, which is really a depressingly large chunk of his time. And, try as he might, he can’t forget the way Pam’s cloud of hair fell against his shoulder, the way her eyes shone as she cradled a teal teapot, and yeah, the way her lips felt against his, the way he strained his neck forward for just a millisecond more contact, the way he couldn’t quite get the smile off his face as he watched the car she was in grow smaller and smaller in the distance. That’s what the year was to him.
11:59 and twenty seconds and Katy’s nowhere to be found. He stupidly left her in the kitchen ten minutes earlier, where she was excitedly talking to some girl that knew her in high school but hadn’t seen since then. Jim pushes himself off the sofa, where a few of Mark’s friends from college who ended up in Scranton are counting down giddily, now down to thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight.
A few feet away, Heather is pressed up against the wall by Mark, one hand splayed on the wall, eyes locked on hers, and Jim’s stomach jolts at how their body language openly simmers. It’s so fucking weird to think of his roommate like that, though God knows he’s heard it enough times. Heather’s face is bright red and she seems to be buckling at the knees, and Jim knows she’s drunk off her ass. She laughs too loud, and the noise arcs through the air evenly. “Hey,” Jim mutters, a little embarrassed to interrupt as Mark turns to him, “Have you seen Katy?”
His answer is more like a mutter. “Not recently.” Mark whips his head back in Heather’s direction as the voices all around them pick up, fists rising and falling through the air with every new number: five! Four! Three! Two! One! Zero... Strangers all around him tear open packages of confetti that someone left around, and the obnoxious screams of kazoos echo through the air. Jim stands alone at midnight on New Years, without someone to kiss, with no one even leaning over to give him a quick hug and usher in 2006. New Years is really the only time anyone ever celebrates the passage of one day into another, Jim thinks; even on Christmas as a kid, he had to wait until the morning to open his presents. It's weird.
Jim turns back to Mark to say something snarky, but all he can think when he turns back to them is thank God I’m drunk, because Mark and Heather are pushed so close it’s like they’ve become one organism. She’s reaching up behind his shoulders, forearms skimming his neck and fingers twisting through his hair, forcing his head forward. Mark isn’t hiding the fact that his hands are up under her tank top, and Jim can see the way his thumb curves around the area near her nipple, but never lands on it. Really, really glad he’s drunk.
Heather briefly detaches from Mark, who begins kissing his way her jawline, her neck. Jim can only see, from his angle, some dark-haired guy nipping his way down a redhead’s body, and he’s very much trying to keep himself from pretending the two of them are different people right now. Heather whispers something in Mark’s ear, who grins wide, nods, and slides his hands out from under her shirt, resting his fingers on her belt instead. She then takes those fingers in her own, and leads him upstairs, her stride too confident but made wobbly from her drinks. Neither of them say goodbye to Jim, but he can remember the way he ignored Mark once Pam showed up at his barbeque.
Nevertheless, he is alone, feeling like he always did at college parties, like he didn’t quite belong, and if anyone saw him looking so awkward, he’d never be invited to a party again. It was illogical and stemmed from insecurity but, well, there you go. He should know better now, should be an adult who doesn’t get piss-drunk at parties, but he really doesn’t, and most of the time, it feels like he isn’t. He wonders if this all ties into why he feels so strange when Katy talks to him, still, and why he can’t sit down with Pam and just tell her something, tell her anything.
At 12:02, his phone buzzes in his pocket, startling him. He picks it up, the light on its front illuminating the space in front of him, and can’t help but grin wildly when he sees the three letters spelling out the caller’s name. “Happy New Year, Beesly!”
“Heyyy, happy 2006, Halpert!” She’s not definitely wasted but she’s got that looseness to her voice that indicates she’s more than a few along. The only thing he can see in his mind is Pam, more than tipsy and giggly, eyes wild and mouth quick to laugh, hunched over like a comma, thinking of nothing but I’ve got to call Jim. It’s a nice image.
Jim quickly looks around, sees no one he knows, then heads upstairs to his room. He closes the door, willingly creating his own sanctuary, though it’s not perfect, because he still hears the incessant buzz of music and chatter downstairs. At one point, there’s a lull in the conversation, and he can hear her breathing; she must be too drunk to realize she’s so loud, practically huffing. He’s poignantly aware that there’s not such a large distance between their two mouths, after all.
“I snuck away to my laundry room to talk to you,” she giggles, finally cutting the silence, a brook over smooth stones. He wants to do nothing other than run away to her house, shatter windows and climb in, grab her hand and steal away with her, running down the streets, her laughter pealing through the air as they hear people in their houses counting down. At midnight, he could kiss her like he’s always wanted to, cradling her face between his hands and feeling her lips and body warm against him. Her curls would whip against his fingers, and when he withdrew her smile would be like its own person.
“No way, I’m in my laundry room too.” He chuckles. Pam apparently has nothing to say again, and he opens his mouth just to fill the space with bullshit, when there’s a soft but distinct tap on his door.
“Ah, shoot,” he yelps, maybe a little too quick. “Someone found me, so... I’ll see you soon enough, huh?”
“Yeah, don’t remind me.” She lets out one of those adorable drunk laughs he heard so many times at Chili’s, with his elbows hurting because he was leaning toward her so hard. “I miss you, though.”
“Me too.” You don’t know how much, how I actually want to get back to that place just so I can see you on a regular basis. “Bye,” he finally almost whispers, after too many beats, and snaps his phone shut, shoving it too quickly back into the pocket of his jeans. “Come in,” he yells out, finally.
Katy sneaks in, cheeks flushed completely red, giant grin on her face, stumbling a little as she too-obviously locks the door, then half-sits, half-collapses next to Jim on his bed. Her hair is messy now, with one big chunk hanging unflatteringly down her forehead. She still looks amazing. “Why’d you leave?”
“My, uh, mom called.”
“Really?” She giggles. “That’s kinda lame.”
“I guess. Family tradition.”
She seems to ignore what he said. “But you’re not.” With that, she pushes him onto his back, straddling his midsection, her hands creeping up under his shirt. It feels like spiders crawling on his stomach; it’s not an unpleasant feeling until he actually thinks about it. “You’re so hot, Jim...”
“Yeah, definitely drunk,” he tries to say, when she tweaks his nipple and the last word comes out shuddery, vulnerable. She pushes his shirt up over his shoulders and he reaches up a little awkwardly to tug it off as she lowers her lips to his chest, not quite kissing or sucking or biting but doing something that feels really fucking good anyway. Jim’s navy polo drops onto the floor with a sound like a corn husk, like an animal shedding its skin (but fall’s gone and spring seems so far away).
He gasps when she slides down, tugs and pulls and unzips, taking him in her mouth. It says a lot that he's already half-hard as he's this drunk, but it's not exactly Katy's face that has that affect on him. He's a phony, but she doesn't have to know. It's so much easier that way. With his head resting on his bed, if he closes his eyes, he can almost hear rattling laundry machines.
*
Jim wakes up the next morning and it’s early, still almost totally dark out, though a hazy gray is starting to break through the deep navy sky. The glowing green numbers on his clock read 6:58. At some point during the night, he must have thrown the covers off of himself, and he’s been sleeping naked save his socks, his body curved gently, like a swan’s neck.
Katy, on the other hand, has dragged the sheets of Jim’s bed over her entire body, up to her neck. Her lips pout and her hair is nearly perfectly in place, even in oblivious sleep. He contemplates waking her up to repeat the night before, but it’s so early and he’s still sluggish in sleep, plus his mouth feels disgusting. He, as quietly as possible, slides open a dresser drawer and pulls on pajama pants and some Rendell for Governor shirt. He stops in the bathroom to gargle a quick gulp of mouthwash, and watches it splatter in the sink after he spits it out.
The house is quiet as he walks through the living room, which as always after their parties looks like a hurricane hit it; then, he remembers relatively recent news, and feels like an asshole for making that connection. He’d seen too many images this year (the past year, he amends) of New Orleans after Katrina, stiff bodies floating like planks of wood, face-down in the endless waters. Scranton may have been boring, but, well, thank God nothing like that ever happened here.
It doesn’t change the fact that the living room is full of wet confetti that will stain the carpet with awkward red and green spikes for weeks, and the stench of cheap beer is so thick it practically forms a body. The snow from the night before is still falling, the thin flakes dancing through the air on slight drifts of wind, the moonlight reflected through the snow looking otherworldly.
Nobody crashed at the house after the party was over, which means that at least Jim isn’t stuck with the unenviable goal of waking up some stranger draped awkwardly across a sofa. It’s easy to be thankful for that. He turns on the television, and clicks the channel up button over and over, mindlessly, until he finds Andrew Lincoln’s way-too-eager face gazing at him on one of the movie channels, which are obviously desperately clinging to the Christmas spirit despite the fact that most people abandoned that on the 26th.
But for now, let me say, without hope or agenda, the actor’s placards read, in simple, imperfectly-written black-and-white, Just because it’s Christmas – and at Christmas you tell the truth, to me, you are perfect, and my wasted heart will love you... He tells his dream girl, “Merry Christmas,” and after he walks away, she runs after him and kisses him once, soft, perfect. Right after, their shared smiles are small, but significant and understood by only them.
Jim gnaws on the inside of his cheek, then clicks off the television. He sinks back in the sofa and closes his eyes, trying to think of nothing, but his mind on too much instead. It’s only seven-and-a-quarter hours since 2006 began, but his New Year’s resolution already lies in pieces, all around him.
Story Notes:
I always wondered what happened for Jim and Pam between "Christmas Party" and "Booze Cruise." This is my attempt to explain at least part of the story - New Year's.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Thank you to some last-minute inspiration from Love Actually and When Hally Met Sally. I don't own either of those movies, or The Office.
Chapter End Notes:
Pam's side is coming up next.
