“So, what are you up to this weekend?” she asks, almost playfully, as he leans on her desk and pokes around in her candy jar. She is probing for any sign of emotion; her favorites, or the ones she wants to see in him the most, have become regret, remorse, or complete acquiescence to what he is doing to her. She follows his eyes as they dance across her face and back to her candy jar and changes her mind: she’d rather see him smile than anything else because his smile alone would give her a reason to smile, too.
“The usual: avoiding any thoughts of Dwight or Michael or Dunder Mifflin in general,” he smiles, and leans on her desk. Admittedly, she is hurt by this statement: she does not want to hear that he will not be thinking about the office, because then he won’t be thinking about her. She considers this unfair, because she knows most of her time will be spent thinking of him. There should be some sort of trade-off, she thinks.
“Me too, probably,” she throws in the probably to keep him guessing and smiles inside.
“Yeah, well, have a nice one,” he says back, taps his fingers on the counter between them, and sits back at his desk.
She wants to call back, “you too” but doesn’t. She knows he will have a nice one because he has someone to love – he has a reason to be happy – and she doesn’t want to remind herself, and him, of this fact. He has Karen, her current secret worst-enemy at this point, and she has a bed full of pillows, a half a dozen of romance movies and peanut butter, and she doesn’t have to convince herself that having someone is the better of the scenarios.
Instead, she turns to her computer, opens up a few word documents, and pretends to be busy but really just wonders what they would be doing, together, during the weekend. How crazy his hair must look when he wakes up on Saturday morning. How his fingers will feel when mingle with hers under the table during breakfast. How she will feel oh so complete as he tells her what she’s been dying to hear under the nighttime stars. But mostly, she wonders about how he would remind her how to be herself again.
- - - - -
“Do anything good this weekend?” he asks her when he walks in, Karen in tow. Karen smiles, but he knows that she hates it when he talks to her (“Can’t you just move on? Seriously Jim, what are you, twelve? It was just a crush!” she told him one night after he “looked at her for too long”).
“No, unless you consider watching The Notebook twice something exceptional,” she smiles, but he understands what she is saying. He knows all too well what it is like to wish the world away by living someone else’s life through a movie.
“Best movie I’ve ever seen,” he laughs, because she knows he’s joking (admittedly, he enjoyed the film, but he had seen it at a particularly bad time in his relationship with Pam).
“Yeah, it was good. Except for the fact that I was alone,” her smile dissipates and her eyes lose their shimmer and his do too. Pam is throwing him a bone and he wants more than anything to bring it back to her. Karen is starring daggers into his back but he chooses to ignore her because he is sick of ignoring Pam.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Pam,” he turns his head to see Karen in his peripheral vision, as if to clue Pam in on what he is about to say, “I wish I could have been there with you.”
With this he walks away, his heart beating, the palms of his hands damp. It has been what feels like years since he has confessed his feelings to Pam. But he had to, he just had to. She needed to know that he still thinks of her like that.
For the rest of the day, he does not make eye contact with her. He does not say a word to her or about her and he does everything in his power to keep his attention away from inevitable falling toward her, as it usually does. Instead, he tries to imagine his life without the constant pang of their lost chances that claw into him, and pictures himself, happy, with another woman and another life.
- - - - -
They ignore each other because they can and somewhere inside of them, they know it’s wrong. They know that the right thing to do is acknowledge each other and take the risk to tell each other that they want more than what they have – much, much more. But they hold themselves back, positioned in the lives that are neatly constructed around them, and take each day slowly, avoiding all possible contact with the shattering realization that what they have and what they don’t have are completely, utterly, and terribly mistaken.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Once again, I wish they were mine, but they aren't, to the most unfortunate degree.
Chapter End Notes:
More on the way!
Dwangie is the author of 25 other stories.
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