Author's Chapter Notes:
Standard disclaimer, I own absolutely nothing :)
Two weeks after Jim Halpert starts working at Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, he gets Pam-the-hot-receptionist’s phone number.
The eerily mischievous grins he gets from Kevin and Oscar and the fact his palms are actually sweating make Jim feel like he’s in high school again. But Pam isn’t his hot lab partner or the head cheerleader; she’s the funny, shy, pretty receptionist who becomes his best friend in the office mostly because of the strategic placement of their desks.
Anyway, it happens on a Friday in the break room, while they are comparing their own sanity to their co-workers. They’re flirting, that much is obvious, in low voices slightly above a whisper, but soft enough that they have to shift their chairs closer together. Somewhere in the conversation, Jim playfully mentions that with a desk-mate like Dwight, he may need some “saving” from time to time. And he’s thinking that God, he’s such a jerk, just for being this close to this cute girl who’s engaged as she twists the sparkling, tiny ring on her left hand.
And his emphasis on tiny still doesn’t ease his mind because no matter the size, it still has the same symbolism as any other engagement ring. But then she giggles, and shyly reminds him that jellybeans are the new wonder-drug, able to cure anything, and that her desk is always fully stocked, so he quits feeling bad and goes with it. They continue in this blushing banter, discussing in great detail Michael’s latest idea for an employee-family retreat, the 3-day 3-park Family Fun deal from Disney World, until an idea pops into Jim’s head.
“You know, I think we need to devise a prank,” he says, kind of rushed and the words strung together so he can backpedal if needed. Now Jim is leaning back in his chair, folding his arms across his broad chest. Pam’s eyes glaze over for a moment before she raises an eyebrow and her mouth stretch-slides up in a smirk. Jim’s fingertips tingle.
“On who? Michael or Dwight?”
“Both. Maybe Dwight first. You know, work our way up to the boss.” Jim rubs his long index finger along his jaw and Pam’s eyes follow its trail for a few seconds before she bows her head down towards the table, her throat overtaken by a fit of giggles.
“That’s what she said!” Pam whispers like a giddy six-year-old, and Jim finds it incredibly adorable.
“Oh, Beesly!” he says exasperatedly, throwing his head back with a groan, rubbing his eyes with his fists.
“Well, what do you have in mind, Mr. Halpert?” she says challengingly, resting her chin on her fist and leaning a few inches closer to him, kind of on purpose. Mirroring her pose and swallowing almost inaudibly, Jim rolls his eyes and replies noncommittally, “I haven’t decided yet. I’ll have to sleep on it. But I’ll let you know when my brilliant mind thinks of the perfect prank.”
Pam rolls her eyes and makes a scoffing kind of sound in the back of her throat, doesn’t lean away for a few more seconds, but then leans down and grabs her purse that was previously resting by her Ked-clad feet. She pulls out one of those cheap blue click-y pens and grabs Jim’s napkin, scribbling something in the top left-hand corner. She slides it back timidly with two fingers; he raises one eye brow as he picks it up and glances up at her quizzically.
“What is this?” Jim asks, his voice slightly smug but light.
“It’s my cell phone number,” she says innocently, leaning back in her chair and taking a swig of her room-temperature water bottle. “Usually I try to visit my parents on the weekends, or Roy and I go to the lake, but just because I’m out of town doesn’t mean you can exclude me from the pranking, Halpert.”
“Well it’s decided then,” Jim smiled lopsidedly, folding the napkin carefully and sticking it inside his pants pocket. “I’ll, um, call you later or something, so you’ll have my number too. I mean, this goes both ways, Pam. If you think of something brilliant I need to be accessible.” Pam giggles again as Stanley walks in. She and Jim crumple their trash, compile it in Jim’s brown paper bag, and throw it away. Later that night, during Roy’s poker game in the kitchen, Pam receives a call at around nine from an unfamiliar number. Usually she doesn’t answer but Law and Order: Criminal Intent is on a commercial and it’s one of the Detective Logan ones that are never as interesting as the Goren ones and Roy’s friends were getting particularly rowdy, so she takes the call as a quick cop out. Flipping open her phone with a cheerful greeting, the deep voice on the other line makes her heart flutter a little:
“Hey, Pam? It’s Jim. Listen, um, how do you feel about jello?”
-------------------------------------------------
Three weeks after their first phone call, Jim and Pam had begun talking almost every other night, usually when Roy was incapacitated after a long night of drinking and poker and “the game”. They weren’t flirty phone calls…at least, not deliberately anyway. No, the conversations held were ones carried over from lunch break, mostly about their co-workers and possible pranks they could play on them. It became part of each other’s nightly routine, and their conversations eventually strayed away from pranks and co-workers to musical preferences and Billy Crudup. Seamlessly they moved into each other’s lives, and even only a month after their first phone call neither could recall how they used to spend their nights.
Anyway, one Friday at lunch, Pam and Jim sit at their usual table in the break room, talking about their plans for the weekend ahead. Neither mentions anything overly specific, so its small talk that’s not awkward and silly giggling as Dwight uses a red crayon to take down potential client’s numbers. It’s boring, but it’s not a bad day.
Later that evening, Jim Halpert has what some people call, en epiphany. He sitting on the couch with a half-eaten, family sized bag of Doritos and some weird spicy hummus stuff that Mark’s girlfriend left in the refrigerator, watching Punk’d on TiVo and feeling extremely bachelor-esque. He glances over at the clock radio by the couch, 8:42. Definitely not to late to give Pam a call; she’d told him earlier that Roy was going to a car show with his brother in Allentown, so. It occurred to Jim that being friends with Pam meant he knew more about Roy and his life more than he ever cared to. He scoffed and tossed the nearly-empty bag on the table and dug his phone from under the couch cushion, pressing speed-dial four.
“Hello? Jim?” Pam’s voice was soft and wispy, like she’d stepped away from something. His chest tightened at the sound.
“Oh, uh, hey? Sorry, are you busy?” he cringed on the other side of the phone.
“Oh, no, no not really. I’m at my parents’ house actually. Um, we were just finishing dinner. Can I…call you in like, an hour?”
“Yeah, yeah, no problem, I just—yeah that’s fine!”
“Okay, bye Jim.” Pam hangs up the phone quietly and walks back into the dining room, where her parents sit at the table, talking congenially, Dad at the head and her mother on his right side.
“Who was that?” Pam mother questions, her eyebrows furrowed.
“Um, Jim? He’s…my friend from work. Just calling about work-related stuff, you know.” She says nonchalantly, sitting back down across from her mom.
“It’s Friday night.” Her Dad points out, grabbing an Oreo from the open package in front of them.
“Yup.” Pam nods, blushing a little, taking a cookie for herself.
“I haven’t heard you call anyone your ‘friend’ since college, honey. Since you started this job it’s just been Roy and his friends.”
“Jim…Jim is my best friend. He’s really, really great.”
“You’re blushing.” Her Dad monotones, and Pam ducks her head.
“Dad!”
“What? There’s nothing wrong with having a crush on someone. Is he a nice man? Not one of those crazies we’ve heard all about…Michael and Dwayne?”
“Oh, Michael and Dwight, yeah, we…we like to have some fun with them. Play jokes on them and stuff.” Pam giggles a little at the thought.
“Well, I suppose you need a little excitement in your day…he sounds like a keeper.” Mrs. Beesly gave her daughter a knowing smile, patting away crumbs from the sides of her mouth with a napkin.
“Mom.” Pam groans and her parents chuckle, and conversation strays away from Jim and back to articles her Dad read in Newsweek and e-mail forwards her Mom sent full of cats doing funny things, and Pam thinks it’s kind of goodto be home with just her parents. Later she calls Jim from her childhood bedroom, and it’s like talking to her best friend late at night during high school, except the way Jim’s voice makes her giggle and shiver in a way very much unlike Rachel Johnson’s. At one in the morning Roy calls, drunken and drowned out by rowdy background noise, and she can barely make out what he’s saying, except for a mumbled “I love you, babe!” and she returns the sentiment, proud that he remembered this time.
-------------------------------------------------
“So, which one is Jim?” Pam’s mom asks one day, many months later, after countless more weekends in which Jim calls and interrupts Oreo-eating.
“Mom!” Pam whispers, looking over at his desk and detecting a slight smile, which might as well be attributed to the expense reports he was filling out.
But probably not.
Chapter End Notes:
Let me know what you think! Reviews for me are like praise for Michael Scott!
flowersformybrain is the author of 3 other stories.
This story is a favorite of 3 members. Members who liked Which One is Jim? also liked 1911 other stories.
