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Disclaimer: The Office and its characters do not belong to me.

 

“I think Pam ran away because deep down she knew she wouldn’t make a good wife.”

The words slip out of her mouth before she knows they’re more than just a passing thought. Not that she’s some kind of shrinking violet, but it is Pam’s wedding day--probably--and she believes in happy endings.

Or she did, once.

It’s not that she doesn’t like Pam (though, to be honest, she kind of doesn’t--pam is the faux-unpopular pretty girl, the poseur, and you can’t say she’s had it hard because she was engaged to a pretty steady guy for years and then jumped to jim). And it’s not that she doesn’t like Jim (oh, she likes jim. not in the meredith way, with its vodka-flavored obviousness, but she likes him). She just doesn’t really like Jim and Pam, together. JimandPam.

She has her reasons.

Angela agrees too loudly with her sentiment and she wants to smack her, just once, hard across the face. The severe blonde didn’t see what she saw, didn’t hear what she heard, didn’t watch the tears and the tired and the burnt out as you tried to bail water out of a sinking boat while another woman poked more holes in the hull. She wasn’t there, not like Phyllis was.

In retrospect, she isn’t sure how she became the confidant, the one you turned to when you felt like you were trapped in a shrinking coffin called history, and she thinks it might be because she was the messenger. The one who broke the whole thing wide open. She feels guilty about that, sometimes, because she’s pretty sure that was the beginning of the end. The thing about Jim, she knows now, is that he doesn’t decide things, he just moves on. Sans resolution, so no revolution. If she’d known that then, she wouldn’t have said anything, would have let him forget like she so badly wanted him to. She did everything she could to help, even when it was a lost cause, even after the fire burned you without ever touching you.

You turned to her when you needed reassurance, whether that he really did look at you when you were buried in work (he did, he really did, and Phyllis thinks he loved you as much as he could have, considering) or that the lime-green lingerie would really drive him wild (oh, it did, you said proudly the next day, pulling down the collar of your shirt to show her the hickey). You got off to a rocky start, sure, but in time she came to adore you like she never had anyone else in the office.

Phyllis slipped a note into your file as the copier hacked up the sales reports, watching as Pam did the same to another file. She glared at Pam, that day, though she’s fairly certain the younger woman never noticed. She wonders if you saw it, if it helped at all.

Phyllis Vance: Proud Supporter of Team Karen



zippity_zoppity is the author of 5 other stories.



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