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The food that I'm eating
Is suddenly tasteless
He drove over to her apartment. He had only been there once before, once when Roy wasn’t working, but had taken the truck and she needed a ride home.
If he was being completely honest, he had been to her apartment only once, but he had driven by more times than he wanted to admit.
He wasn’t sure if Roy was home, but his car was filled with boxes, and his heart was being held together by scotch tape, and he needed to see her one more time before he left.
She answered the door after a few seconds, and her eyes registered the surprise as seeing him on her front porch.
“Jim,” her voice was confused. “What are you…I mean, are you…” She tilted her head slightly and then shook it a little.
“I came to say goodbye,” he said, and she immediately burst into tears.
“I’m going to miss you,” he sighed, running a hand over his face. “I think I would have missed you even if we had never met.” He believed that he was meant to love her and only her. He believed that he had belonged to her before he had ever actually laid eyes on her.
“Please,” she whispered. Her hair fell in a curtain in front of her face, and he saw her shoulders move up and down. He wasn’t sure what she was asking for.
“Tell me to stay,” he said softly. “Tell me to stay and I will. Tell me that you aren’t going to marry him. Tell me that it’s me you love and I will stay, I swear to God, I will quit my job, I will stay.” She finally looked up at him before her face crumbled again, and she covered her face with her hands.
“You are my best friend,” she said. “I don’t…please…” And she stood, her hands to her face as she sobbed, and Jim shoved his hands into his pockets and looked everywhere but her face and he felt the bottom fall out, fall away.
“Tell me to stay,” he whispered one more time. Pam sobbed, but didn’t say anything, and Jim knew it was time to go. “I have to…” He trailed off and gestured to his car. “Bye Pam.” He waited for her to say something, anything.
It was time to go. He couldn’t stay there and let her break little pieces of his heart off. He had to salvage what he could. And that meant leaving.
Leaving Scranton. Leaving her. Taking what he could and getting out before there was nothing left.
I know I'm alone now
I know what that tastes like
She called him. She would hear him pick up and the words would get stuck in her throat and she wanted to tell him to come back, to come back to her, that she would call off her wedding, she would leave Roy. Tell him that she should have asked him to stay.
When she closes her eyes she can see him standing in front of her apartment door, hands shoved in his pockets, car behind him packed up, can hear his words. Asking her to ask him to stay, telling her that he would. For her, he would stay.
For him, though, she would let him go. Because she wasn’t sure of very many things, but she was pretty certain that she was a mess, and he deserved someone with so much less baggage than her.
And for all of his flaws, she did truly love Roy. Maybe she wasn’t in love with him, but he was a good provider, and he would be a good father, and he loved her. And that was good enough for her.
Or had been good enough for her, until Jim Halpert swept in and made her heart beat fast and her hands sweat and made her think that maybe marrying Roy was settling, and damn it, she couldn’t think like that because deposits were non-refundable and the guests were coming and the honeymoon was booked and she had worked too hard to build this life for Jim to ruin it with words and sentences like, “I’m in love with you” and “I want to be more than that.”
She wasn’t the kind of girl who called off her wedding, and she wasn’t the kind of girl who threw away a ten year relationship on a man who claimed he loved her but took off running in the opposite direction.
But when she closed her eyes at night, she could see Jim standing in the harsh parking lot lights, she saw him in the dim light of the abandoned office, she could see him standing in the yellow light outside her apartment, and she could see his face fall. It skipped like a record in her head. Almost as if she could see the moment that she ripped the floor out from under him.
Three times. Three times she broke his heart, and she kind of hated him for making her do that, making her hate herself.
Sometimes she was so angry with him that her hands shook. What business did he have coming to her apartment and asking her to ask him to stay? Why couldn’t he have packed up his bags and just left? She could have pretended that he had caught her off guard, pretended that she didn’t have time to think about leaving Roy and think about Jim and what being in a relationship with him would have been like.
But he showed up at her damn apartment and he had asked her to tell him to stay, and he had placed all this power in her hands, and she hadn’t wanted it, she hadn’t asked for it, and it was unfair. And she hated him a little bit.
But not nearly as much as she hated herself.
So break me to small parts
Let go in small doses
Jim knew that it was her when he got the phone calls. He pretended that he didn’t hear her soft breathing or the way that a sob caught in her throat. He pretended that that didn’t mean anything, didn’t change anything. Pretended that he could still get over her.
He wished that he would learn to stop picking up the phone. He tried, three times, he tried. He gave her a few days of space and some time to think about what she wanted, and she still chose Roy.
He heard that she went through with the wedding. Michael sent out an email with pictures and he hated himself just enough to look through the pictures.
She looked happy and sad, and he knew that was exactly what she was.
She had made her choice, and she had to live with it.
He wanted to stop picking up the phone, stopping thinking about her and her new husband, wanted to stop loving her.
But instead he let her call him, he picked up the phone, let her stay silent on the other end, he let her pretend that she didn’t do this to both of them, that this wasn’t her choice, her fault.
He knew it was unhealthy, for both of them, and certainly unhealthy for her marriage, but he didn’t know how to cut her out of his life, even though he had tried, and so he let it continue.
About three months after he had left, she finally spoke up.
“Why did you come by my apartment?” She asked.
“What?”
“That day you left for Stamford, why did you stop by?”
“I came to say goodbye,” he replied.
“You came because you wanted me to tell you to stay,” Pam said. “You came to make the whole thing harder. As if Casino Night wasn’t hard enough, it wasn’t bad enough that I had to watch your heart break that night, you had to come a few days later and make me do it again.”
“Hey!” Jim replied angrily. “I came to give you one last chance. I came to see if there was a chance that you wanted me, I wanted to make sure before I left that there was no chance for us. I came to say goodbye. You’re forgetting that I was the one whose heart was broken. You don’t get to blame me, that’s not fair, Pam.”
“You weren’t the only one who got their heart broken, Jim,” Pam sobbed. “What was I supposed to do? My wedding was a week away. What was I supposed to do?” And his stomach clenched at the sound of her sobs, traveling the distance through the phone lines and through his body and it hurt, it hurt to hear her cry.
“You should stop calling,” he finally said. “You should go back to your husband.”
“I left him,” Pam said softly. “A week ago, I left him. I left him with a note and with my rings and I…I shouldn’t have married him. I shouldn’t have…” Her voice dissolved into tears, and Jim didn’t know what to do. “I should have asked you to stay. I should have…I should have told you that I love you, because I did, I do.”
“Pam…”
“I shouldn’t have bothered you,” she said after a pause. “I’ve been nothing but unfair and cruel and I shouldn’t have…I’m a horrible person, Jim. Horrible.” Jim couldn’t stand anyone saying anything bad about Pam, especially her, and he jumped to her defense immediately.
“No, Pam, you were confused, I caught you off guard, it was a week before your wedding, and you were with him for ten years,” his voice trailed off and Pam was silent on the other end except for the occasional sniffle.
“Jim, I’m sorry. That was what I wanted to tell you, that’s what I wanted to say. I’m sorry. Sorrier than you can ever know. I didn’t mean to hurt you, I thought you would be better…I thought it would be better…I’m,” she let out a shuddering breath. “I’m just sorry.”
And he heard the phone click and the line go dead, and he wondered what he must have done in a previous life to so thoroughly piss off the Universe.
But spare some for spare parts
There might be some good ones
Pam quit her job at Dunder Mifflin after her failed marriage. She couldn’t stand to be in the same place where Roy was, where Jim used to be.
Her parents were upset, about the divorce, about her quitting her job, and but her mother suggested that she move back in with them until she has things figured out, but she decided that she needed to try things on her own.
She decided to go west, because it seemed appropriate. Manifest Destiny always sounded so romantic to her.
Her new, little car was packed with boxes and her gas tank was full and her brother had made her music mixes that reminded her of Jim, and somehow between a Death Cab for Cutie song and some Elliot Smith she turned her car and drove towards Stamford.
Jim answered the door after thirty seven seconds, and she shoved her hands in her jean pockets and couldn’t help but marvel at the irony of the situation.
“Pam?” He asked when the door opened and she gave him a half smile. “What are you doing here?” He hadn’t heard from her since their train wreck of a phone call three weeks before and he kind of missed the silent phone calls from her.
“I came to say goodbye,” she replied.
“Where are you going?” He asked. Pam shrugged.
“San Diego, I think, I don’t know. I really don’t have a plan. I just can’t be in Scranton anymore.”
“I know the feeling,” Jim muttered.
“Look, I made a mistake. And I’m not asking you to forgive me or to…whatever, I just wanted to come and tell you that I made a mistake and I shouldn’t have kept calling you and I shouldn’t have gotten married, and I shouldn’t have done a lot of things that I did. And you, you didn’t deserve any of it, and I didn’t deserve you. And this is going to be my fresh start, and I’m pretty excited about it. About starting again. But I needed to see you, I just needed to see you one more time.” She leaned up and placed a kiss on his cheek and then cupped his cheek in her palm. “Be happy, Jim.” And she turned and was almost to her car when she felt his hand on her arm.
“What if I…” Jim shook his head. “What if I came with you? What if we started again, together?” And Pam looked uncertain, and Jim’s heart skipped a few beats until she launched herself into his arms and pressed a kiss to his lips.
“I’d really like that a lot.”
Story Notes:
So I'm having some serious writer's block, but I heard this song by Regina Spektor, and I thought how beautiful and angsty and fic-worthy it was. So I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I figured it might help get me back into the writing flow of things.
Author's Chapter Notes:
The song is, of course, by Regina Spektor. And she's amazing. Super, super, super amazing.
bashert is the author of 37 other stories.
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