The sun disappeared right before my eyes
My heart turned and walked away
I gave you the keys to an open door
And you threw them right back at me
Once again I'm alone with a pain in my chest
So sad, so sad, so alone
The clouds start to gather, here comes the rain
You meant more than you could know
It had been two weeks. Two weeks since she had talked to Jim, two weeks since he’d confessed his love to her, two weeks since he kissed her and made her rethink everything she’d been so sure of. And for two weeks, it had felt like she was tiptoeing around her own house, worried that everything around her would shatter if she looked Roy in the eye.
He had gone out for a drink with his friends from the warehouse, something he’d been doing more often lately. She was used to sitting home alone at night, prepared to pull out her over-watched copy of Love Actually and curl up on her couch, but instead she was sitting on the edge of the cushions, fumbling with her engagement ring.
She had thought about telling him. Thought about what he would say, the possible scenarios whirling their way around her brain. The best case scenario ended with him understanding, but that was something she knew would never find its place in reality. He would yell, she knew. He would ask her why she had kissed Jim back, how she could betray him like that. He’d probably storm out, headed directly for the direction of Jim’s house intent on beating the living daylights out of him. And that wasn’t a fight she was willing to have, not a risk she was willing to take.
She wondered if Jim had gone to Australia. What possessed her to pick up the phone she didn’t know, but she realized she was dialing and could hear it ringing before she could stop herself.
“Hello?”
A groggy voice on the other line, still familiar after the two weeks they’d been apart.
“Hey.”
He didn’t answer for a while, as if thinking about whether he actually wanted to speak to her.
“Hey.”
“How…how are you?”
It sounded lame and not at all what she wanted to say, but it was all she could think to ask.
“I’m okay. How are you?”
“I’m…” she thought about it for a moment, wanting to answer honestly, and ended up with, “I’m tired.”
She didn’t know if he knew what she meant, but it really didn’t matter. She was exhausted, of course, spending most of her nights lying awake wondering what she was doing with the man snoring loudly next to her. But more than that, she was tired of waiting. Tired of wondering whether Roy would ever want to marry her, tired of trying to convince herself that they were the same people they were in high school, tired of wanting so badly to say the things she needed to say and holding herself back.
“So you didn’t go to Australia, then.”
“No, I didn’t.”
There was a long silence, and she was reminded of that day on the booze cruise when they stood out on the deck.
“Listen, Jim, I have so much to say to you, and I know you probably don’t want to hear it, but there’s something I have to do first. I…I’ll call you back.”
“You gotta take a chance on something sometime, Pam. I mean, do you want to be a receptionist here, always?
“Oh, excuse me, I’m fine with my choices.”
“You are?”
How could she be happy with her choices? How could she, when they’d lead her here, sitting alone in the dark?
I can't say I miss you
You're always around
I can't say I love you
'Cause you'll cut me down
I'm wounded and hurt
And that's my fault
But I made my decision with my back to the wall
And I gotta move on from here
I've done all that I can do
Yeah I gotta move on from here
I've been swimming upstream for you
Roy stumbled in around eleven, and she was still sitting on the couch, the living room dim and the apartment quiet.
“Hey, Pammy.”
She flinched. When had he even started calling her that? Far too long ago, she knew, long enough ago that she hadn’t minded it. When had so many things that she had liked about him became nuisances?
“Roy, I…we need to talk.”
“Can it wait until the morning? I’m wiped, the guys kept me out pretty late and-“
“Roy, no. We have to talk now.”
She had to do this now. Now, before she talked herself out of it.
“We’re not the same people we were in high school. And I think that we never had as much in common as we thought. Things…they haven’t been right with us for a long time, and I know you must have felt it, too.”
“Pam, why are you saying this now?”
“So you’re not doing it.”
“How did you know?”
“Why not?”
“No big reason, just…a bunch of little reasons.”
“I don’t think, deep down, that you really want to marry me. We’ve postponed and postponed and I’ve felt so lonely for so long that I never realized I could have more. We deserve more, Roy, we both do. We deserve more than sitting in different rooms of this house and talking because we feel obligated to. I think we both know this has been over for a long time.”
“But Pam,” he protested, reaching for her hand, “I love you!”
She pulled away, shaking her head. “Roy, I loved you once, I really think I did. But if you really loved me, if you really believed we could be happy together, you’d want to marry me.”
He didn’t reply, and she knew it was the truth.
“I can’t fight you anymore, Roy. There’s so much more. For both of us.”
She slid her engagement ring off her finger, and her hand felt empty. Empty, but free. She was shaking when she dropped it into his hand, closing hers over it and giving him one last look, trying to push past the pain that was in his eyes. She vaguely registered grabbing her purse and coat, and she didn’t realize she’d walked out the door until she felt the cold air around her outside.
She took a deep breath, running over what had just happened in her head. She replayed the conversation three times before she moved from the front steps, finding her way to her car. She realized, as the engine roared to life, that it hadn’t been about Jim.
Except that it had. But her reasoning to Roy had nothing to do with Jim, nothing to do with the kiss they shared on casino night. Breaking off her marriage hadn’t been about being unfaithful or wanting more than anything to repeat Jim’s words back to him, no matter how true those things were. It had been about Roy, and about herself, and about the fact that things had been wrong long before she fell in love with Jim Halpert. She had been part of Pam and Roy for so long that she’d lost sight of just Pam, and as she pulled out of the driveway, she felt released, done fighting so hard to make their relationship feel like it had at the start.
She looked at her phone. Tempted to call Jim back as she’d promised and confess everything, able to hide behind the fact that he couldn’t actually see her face, it wasn’t fair. He’d put it all on the line right in front of her, allowing her to reject him or say the words back (and how she’d wished she could have said something other than “I can’t.”). But now she could. She could say those things, and it was her turn to wait, to let him do with her words what he would, even if that meant getting her heart broken.
She turned left, towards Jim’s house, and rolled the window down, letting the cool, fresh air fill her lungs.
And I gotta move on from here, I’ve done all that I can do,
Yeah, I’ve gotta move on from here, I’ve been swimming upstream for you…
Story Notes:
Disclaimer: All characters are the property of The Office and NBC. Lyrics to "Swimming Upstream" are property of Ra, and lyrics to "The Scientist" are property of Coldplay. No copyright infrigement intended.
Chapter End Notes:
I originally intended this as a one shot, but if there are requests for a continuation, I would be happy to write Pam's visit to Jim following this piece.
