”Of course I loved your mother,” Jim remarked after a moment. He adjusted his glasses and ran a hand along his daughter’s hair. “Why would you ever think I didn’t love her?”
Claire bit her lip, “Because I saw how you looked at Pam, you didn’t look at Mom like that…ever.”
Jim furrowed his eyebrows, was he that obvious? “I loved your Mother,” he said quickly, almost spitting the words out of his mouth before thinking about it. That was the truth though; he did love Sarah, with all of his heart. She was the mother of his child, and the woman that helped him get through everything with Pam.
“If you loved her than why are we on this wild goose chase to find Pam?”
Jim cursed himself for bringing up such an intuitive daughter, she got that from her mother. “I told you we were just going-“
“Dad, I know we’re going to Philadelphia to see Pam. She told us at dinner the other night that’s where she lived. It’s not the Philly’s season…we just had cheesesteaks a few weekends ago, there’s not a reason in the world to go there,” she rolled her eyes and started walking to the car.
“Claire, wait. You don’t understand the half of this,” Jim grabbed onto her shoulder as she spun around.
“It hasn’t even been a year yet, Dad! I get it, you want to move on from Mom, you want to be happy again—so do I, but that doesn’t mean you should just run off with some woman who you don’t even—“ his telephone rang in the middle of their conversation. He tried to ignore it, but Claire huffed and got into the car slamming the door.
“Hello?” He pulled the phone close to his ear, leaning against the trunk of his car. “Oh.” He raised his eyebrows and got into the car, “Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can…bye.” He slipped his cell phone back into his pocket and got into the car.
“We’re going home,” he mumbled and started the engine, backing up out of the spot.
“Why?” Claire spat.
“Pam’s not in Philly…” he looked over to her, waiting for some sort of response. “She’s um…we’ll she’s actually back in Stamford,”
“Let’s just go,” she remarked and placed her headphones into her ears drowning him out.
Pam changed lanes on the interstate driving at least seventy-five miles an hour trying to reach Stamford by one. Emma had called her a few hours earlier telling her “to get her ass up here immediately” because she’d landed the job and needed to find an apartment. Pam had agreed only in desperation after the conversation she’d had with her mother earlier that day. The truth was, her bank account was dwindling and she barely had enough money for rent for the next month, never mind food. So her mother had suggested going and talking to Daniel about a possible job at his art gallery. It was completely out on a whim, and Pam was almost 100% sure nothing would come from it, but it was an opportunity right? And Emma lived there too and…
She whipped her phone out of the glove box and searched for his number dialing it. She was getting annoyed when it had rung five or six times before he answered it,
“Hello?” finally…his voice. It sounded frustrated, and rushed, and at the same time Pam couldn’t be more ecstatic to hear it on the other line.
“Listen, I’m not calling to apologize, so get that out of your head right now,” she waited to see if he’d respond and when he didn’t, she continued, “But, I’m coming to Stamford, apparently your school gave Emma the job and she needs to find an apartment…but I think we need to talk.” Again, it was silent.
“Okay?” She asked.
Telling her he would be back in Stamford eased the knot in her stomach. She’d feared she’d catch him on a day he was out of town, or that he wouldn’t want to talk to her. This was a day entirely of taking chances, and Jim was the biggest chance of all. Here she was trying to run after a job that probably didn’t exist with a man who no doubt had forgotten her name, and praying on a relationship with a man who’d just lost his wife. A man that she’d know before children, before paying rent; a jokester, the only person who could make her smile at her worst moments.
“Get it together Beesly,” she whispered, taking the exit for Stamford; her heartbeat pulsed against her neck.
Jim sat at the kitchen table alone. He’d brought Claire to a friend’s house for the afternoon, trying to make a peace treaty. She’d willingly accepted and promised to be home before nine. So there he was, sipping at a warm soda can trying not to wait for the telephone to ring. Pam was in town, probably looking at apartments with Emma, maybe even talking about him; he felt entirely pathetic.
When the phone rang and it was just his mother he had to stop himself from being angry with her on the phone. He’d promised to send the school pictures of Claire to her ‘straight-away’ and then got her off the phone. What would he even say to Pam? The last time he’d tried to make conversation with her it had just turned into a “why did you do this/that?” argument and he certainly wasn’t in the mood for another one of those.
Biting a nail he thought back to what her lips tasted like, what she smelled like all those years ago before her hair hung in loose curls, before she dressed in blazers and suits, the days when her priorities were filling a candy dish and making yogurt cap Olympic medals. He jumped from the kitchen table and bolted upstairs rummaging through his top drawer; he knew that he still had it somewhere in there. His hands filtered to the end of the draw, fingers curling around the object that was tangled around old receipts and socks. He pulled it out, the paperclips curled together and stared at it for a moment. Resisting the urge to smell the cap he slipped it into his pocket.
Pam and Jim both agreed that maybe another visit to his house wasn’t the greatest idea…at least not now, so when she sat in the coffee shop that she’d visited just a few weeks prior-Abel’s Brew- she couldn’t help but think about Daniel, and his smile and that accent. Who knows, maybe it wouldn’t be a complete waste to check out his gallery, see if he needed someone to run it.
When the chimes to the door rang twice and Jim Halpert walked in, a satchel around his shoulder, she couldn’t help but smile to herself at how young he still looked. Maybe what everyone said is right, men get more handsome as they get older and women look their best when they’re young. She crossed her arms over her chest suddenly feeling self conscious, and then remembered that signals you’re not open to other people. She fidgeted for a moment before resting them on her lap.
“Hi,” he hesitated before pulling out a chair. She gave him a nod and he took a seat pulling the other coffee towards him. “Thanks,” he smiled.
“Look, I’m sorry for the other night—“
“No, it’s me that should have been sorry,” Jim shook his head, “I should have told you Sarah had passed and that Claire was still having a hard time with it and—“
Pam laughed and Jim stopped talking, his face falling into a line.
“What’s so funny?” his eyebrows raised as she shook her head trying to contain herself.
“Nothing, we’re just always apologizing…all the time, nothing’s changed,” she smiled, composing herself and leaning into him.
Jim’s brain tried to remember back to college psychology, when body language represented someone’s emotions, her coming toward him had to be good, right?
He smiled at her, reaching his hand out and cautiously setting it on her thigh. She looked down, the wedding band was gone, and it was replaced by a thin strip of white skin, skin that hadn’t seen the sun in some time.
“Listen, Jim, I…I’m here to find an—“ he stopped her, reaching out and pressing his lips to hers so quickly she wasn’t sure it even happened. He pulled away, his face close to hers, waiting.
“You’re not seeing any—“
“No,” she pulled his face back to hers, her hands catching in his unruly hair behind his ear. Her lips touched his again, this time lingering there a moment, taking her time finding every coordinate of his lips. She breathed into him, and then remembered this was a coffee shop, in the middle of Stamford—this is definitely not what she should be doing. He pulled away, a smile on his face.
“Wow,” He shook his head in disbelief. “About that apartment…”
She laughed, always appreciating his comedic timing. “Yeah, about that,” she cocked her head to the side, smiling, taking him in. Maybe there were some good things about Stamford.
