~~~~~
She has spent her Saturday morning on her couch, considering it. Despite all of her attempts to be either eloquent or precise, the word she keeps returning to is weird. Good weird, exciting weird, yes, but also simply, plainly weird. As prom, homecoming, and Friday nights packed into the biggest booth at Denny's don't count when you're over 20, she's never really dated anyone before - the word is definitely italicized when she thinks it, her face burning - and she doesn't have any idea what she's doing.
Clearly, she sighs, shifting from one end of the couch to the other, rearranging her bathrobe and her cup of tea to suit her new position. She turns on the TV and watches Ina Garten blithely drop three sticks of butter into the bowl of a stand mixer. Ina, with a round, pink smile, tells Pam not to worry - the recipe makes a lot of brownies.
Shortly before noon and after dessert has come out of a shining, perfect oven somewhere in the Hamptons, Pam manages to put a spin on her recollection of the previous evening that propels her, in disgust and embarrassment, from her living room, to her shower, her car, and, finally, the stairwell of Jim's apartment building. She slips through the front door behind one of his neighbors and takes the stairs to the second floor, losing her nerve en route approximately three times. Worried that Jim is going to hear her pacing in his hall, she retreats and sits down on the top step of the landing.
As she sits there, firmly telling herself that she is going to walk down that hall, she decides to give up her Sudoku habit in favor of doing crossword puzzles. She needs bigger, better, more complicated words; at the very least, she needs an accurate term for a guy who is, currently, simultaneously, her best friend and someone she hasn't spoken to for any amount of time in nearly a year; a coworker and the most important person in her life; this man that she's apparently dating and someone who, until two days ago, she had calmly, almost happily, cast to the fates.
She sighs, carefully smooths his tie over her knee, and tells herself that she has to knock on his door.
In a minute.
~~~~~
He had changed out of his suit and blunted the severity of his hairstyle by the time he picked her up on Thursday evening. She invited him in while she finished putting on her makeup and searched for a fugitive earring. When she stepped out of her bedroom, he was standing in the middle of the living room, hands in the pockets of his jeans. He turned on his heel and smiled at her, his expression concealing nothing. For a moment, all she could do was stand in the doorway and stare at him and he seemed content to let it happen. He licked his bottom lip and said, "I should have brought you flowers."
"It's okay. I wasn't expecting them."
He tilted his head. "Were you expecting any of this?"
"No. Not at all." She was clutching the straps of her purse with both hands, still standing at the end of the hall. "Were you?"
"Maybe not consciously," he said carefully.
They had Chinese food and she suggested that they go for a walk. As they talked and wandered through her neighborhood, Pam stole regular, sideways glances at Jim, sometimes catching him doing the same to her. He had gotten quiet and his eyes were lingering on her for longer and longer stretches of time. He seemed a little anxious, like he was barely keeping an admission she was sure to find disappointing at bay. Taking a guess, she said, "I'm sorry, was a walk a bad idea? You must be tired."
He slowed down, as if he had to check. "No, no. I'm not tired, actually. I suppose I should be." He gave her a small smile and stopped under a sugar maple tree. The streetlights had just come on, but it was dark under the dense canopy of leaves. "Maybe it was all of that tea at dinner? They give you those little cups, but if you drink ten of them..." he shrugged.
Pam smiled back, wanting to ask if "date" meant "dating," or if Karen was going to show up at her house with a baseball bat. Before he moved again, she put her arms around him and rested her forehead below his shoulder. He embraced her and the slide from platonic to something else altogether was palpable in the way his fingers splayed low on her back, the way his whole body relaxed into hers. She slowly ended the hug, pulling away gently without looking up at him. They started walking again and he took her hand a block later, lacing their fingers together.
As they stood on her doorstep and as Margaret casually slipped past her front window, Jim looked down at his hands and said, "So, I'd like to take you on a real date tomorrow night."
Margaret's living-room light lowered. Pam thought she saw the curtains move, but she didn't turn her head to check. Nothing was more compelling than the way Jim was blushing slightly and rocking up onto his toes on the rubber welcome mat abandoned by the last tenant. "Meaning -?"
"Wear something nice and I'll pretend to know how to read a wine list," he reached for her hand, the smile leaving his face. She was expecting another embrace, but he drew her closer and kissed her without any preamble. He let go of her fingers and rested his hand below her ear, grazing the fine hairs on her cheek with his thumb, raising goosebumps on her arms. He pressed to deepen the kiss. Pam opened her eyes for a bare second and saw his slightly furrowed brow and the delicate purple of his eyelids. The sight of him just as his tongue found hers made her draw a sharp breath and snap her eyes closed. He pulled away and touched her cheek while he studied her face. "Did you have fun?" he asked. His voice was different, like their kiss was hiding in his mouth.
She nodded, said "yeah," and wondered if this was where she was supposed to chastise him for speaking in the past tense.
"Call me tomorrow?"
"I will."
They let each other go and she unlocked her door. She was awake well past midnight. It wasn't the tea.
On Friday, because she insisted, Pam did the driving and he gave the directions. It was a real date, he was right, and, though she would never, ever admit it to Jim, it verged on being funny. It was either utterly unlike him, this man, again wearing Thursday's dark suit with a different tie, who half-stood when she got up to use the restroom and held doors for her, or it was just something that she hadn't considered before, that he would know how to do all of this. He was obviously more awake, more there, than he had been the night before, and she was happy to see him, even if it did feel like a game.
Pam had freshened the only black dress she owned by hanging it in the bathroom while she showered. Under the dress, she wore black lace and thigh-highs that had been hiding in the back of her drawer since she bought them six months earlier. It seemed like the first time she'd had a reason to even think about wearing them. She shook them out of their plastic sleeve and into her hand, wondering what she wanted to come of putting them on.
It took her five minutes to get the seams straight all the way up the backs of her legs. She dropped the dress over her head, stepped into her heels, and considered herself in the mirror. She thought she looked nice. When he opened his door, the word Jim used was "amazing." He kissed her eagerly, like it was easy.
They kissed goodnight in the same spot, four hours later, his hands hot through the back of her dress and the cardigan she had put on when the evening turned cool. It was a good kiss - well, series of kisses - tongue, five o'clock shadow, and the taste of the wine they drank with dinner in his mouth. When he suggested that she come in for a while, she pulled back far enough to look at him and his eyes widened. "Oh, I didn't mean, uh, like, in in," he said, stroking her hair. "I -," he was searching her face for the end of his sentence. Finally, with a small laugh that dictated the shape of the knot in her stomach, he said, "Did I?"
She laughed, too, shaking her head. "I don't know."
"Wanna find out?" he was smiling now and his hand had left her hair in favor of wrapping around her waist. He was holding her close, her chest pressing against his ribs, her feet between his. "If anything, we can watch Letterman and you can silently judge my interior decorating choices."
Fortunately, she could still find the rhythm of their jokes. "Oh, I was going to do that no matter what."
He kissed the smile off of her lips, grabbing the fleeting moment by the tail and drawing it back to them. She ran her hand up his chest, over the steady thump of his heart, and down his arm. He made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan and withdrew his mouth from hers. "Okay. Okay, okay. Seriously. Keys."
After two failed attempts, he unlocked the door and stepped aside to let her in first. As he dropped his keys on the table near the door and fished his wallet out of his pocket, she stepped close to him, resting her cheek on his back, and then got on her toes to kiss the back of his neck, drawing her nerve from the dark room. She hooked her finger in his shirt collar, revealing more skin, and did it again. Jim turned in her arms and his mouth descended on hers, demanding in a way that surprised her. His hands slid down her back, lower, and he bit her bottom lip lightly. He broke the kiss, breathless, and said, "I think I know what I meant now."
"Okay," she said, because it wasn't a yes or a no, and because her heart had sped up and it felt like something other than arousal. She had a quick flash of herself and Roy at seventeen and, though she wasn't collected enough to remember, she thought she had said "okay" then, too. As Jim guided her down the hall to his bedroom she wondered if it was a coincidence or a pattern.
He was so sweet with her that it made her chest ache; kissing her and slowly slipping her cardigan off her shoulders. And it felt wonderful, really, even though her heart was pounding. She took off his tie and started opening his shirt, stroking the skin she was revealing, trying to find the rhythm of this, too.
When she slid her hand around to his back, he ran his hand up her ribs, over her breast, and higher still, pushing the sleeve of her dress off her shoulder, using his thumb to take one of her bra straps with it. He kissed her exposed sternum, and ran his fingertips over her now bare breast, letting his mouth follow. Her back arched and her heart redoubled its efforts when she felt the soft, hot slip of his tongue. Before the air could cool the moisture on her skin, his mouth was back on hers and his hand was testing the weight of her breast, his thumb making a slow circle around her nipple. She turned her face away from his briefly, trying to focus on his caress. She thought about Roy, ten years earlier, asking again and again if what he was doing was okay. Jim wasn't asking; he was just doing, watching her closely, and it was all more than okay. Pam knew what this meant, of course, but she wanted to know how many and when and where and why her instead of those others and why, suddenly, now.
She kissed him. Her hand was clumsy as she moved to rest it on his hip, aiming too low and feeling him, unmistakable and hard, against her fingers. She jerked her hand away, muttered, "sorry," and he pulled his head back, trying to read her face in the dark.
There was a teasing, familiar note in his reply. "I'm really, really okay with you touching me there. Anywhere, actually." She drew a deep breath and covered her face with one hand. "Are you alright?" he whispered and she nodded, hard. "Are you sure? She hummed her agreement and he settled in at her side, resting his hand on her knee. After a moment, he slid his hand around to the side of her thigh, moving it upward and taking her skirt with it. He gasped his surprise into her mouth when he found the top of her thigh-high and the bare skin just above it. His fingertips glided quickly across the skin on the top of her thigh, and then more slowly as they slipped between her legs, brushing lightly against the lace of her underwear.
She sat up quickly, dislodging his hand. "I -" and she was going to say "can't," but that seemed like the worst possible thing to say, so she just shook her head, twisting around to find her sweater, readjusting her bra and dress. She found another sentence. "I should go."
"You don't have to. Really, Pam, I'm sorry. We can stop." he was half-off the bed, watching her search for her shoes.
"No. I mean," she felt as if she was trying to keep pace with her heartrate, "I shouldn't. I should just... I'll call you tomorrow, okay?"
"Okay," he said cautiously, in a tone that clearly indicated that it wasn't.
He followed her to his door and kissed her again, lightly this time, but she was desperate to go. She could see the worry in his eyes, but she shakily smiled past it and let herself into the hall.
Pam didn't stop moving until she was around the corner from his apartment, where she pulled over. As she sat there, her forehead resting on the steering wheel, she realized that, somehow, his tie had gotten jammed in the sleeve of her sweater. She awkwardly drew it out and tossed it into the passenger seat with a sigh.
~~~~~
Story Notes:
Again, this is for Blanca, the best possible reader I could hope for.
I know the collective tendency is to write end-of-S3 Pam as very confident and ready to enter into a relationship with Jim. It's what I chose to do in Week Days/Week's End and I think it's one very possible way to look at the start of their romantic relationship. I've been thinking about this a bit lately, though, in light of how much she's changed (IMO, for the better) this season, and it also seems likely to me that things could have been more complicated than that. The standard disclaimers, of course, apply.
I know the collective tendency is to write end-of-S3 Pam as very confident and ready to enter into a relationship with Jim. It's what I chose to do in Week Days/Week's End and I think it's one very possible way to look at the start of their romantic relationship. I've been thinking about this a bit lately, though, in light of how much she's changed (IMO, for the better) this season, and it also seems likely to me that things could have been more complicated than that. The standard disclaimers, of course, apply.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Etymology (from the Oxford English Dictionary): "The process of tracing out and describing the elements of a word with their modifications of form and sense."
Chapter End Notes:
Thank you for reading. I hope to have the next part posted within the week.
