A/N: Okay, get this. I'm starting another one of these, but I actually have all of the chapters written out again -- just like I did with New York. Patience happens sometimes, I guess. This came into my head last night and I've been writing it for most of the day. It's going to be quite a few chapters, it looks like, but they aren't longer like my usual ones. But they just seemed like appropriate places to break. Really, though, this is the last WIP I'm started. Swear. It all happened so fast! Hope you like.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything here.
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She wonders if he knows that she's the one who gets the message. Well, he has to know. She takes all the call-ins. Listening to the messages on her phone is the first thing she does each morning when she gets to the office, which always kind of makes her feel somewhat out of place. When Jim or Dwight or Angela or even Creed or anyone else answers their messages each morning, it's because somebody called them. Needed to talk to them. And it's always much more important than the messages she gets.
She listens to people looking for Jim or Dwight or Angela or even Creed or anyone else, the caller simply not knowing their extension (because that's her job, connecting calls). She hears messages from people who want to do business with them -- and they always know they're talking to the receptionist first because they're friendly when they ask for an opportunity to talk with a salesperson. But again, she's merely the link. Or, there are wrong numbers. Or politicians or telemarketers with a voice message that's being left on answering machines all around the city, the kind with the first half second clipped off for some reason.
Or, an employee calls in. Which actually doesn't happen too often. Maybe a bit of a surprise if others could see how their staff behaved (or didn't) most of the time.
And in the time she's been here, long years by now, she's only heard Jim's voice on this machine twice. Once for his grandpa's funeral, whom he was pretty close to (in the days after that, when they'd been friends for a while, it was the first and only time she'd ever seen him cry; just a tear on his face, a smile soon after). The other time was this really bad snowstorm in a really funny coincidence. Something like, the plumbing was terrible at his place so he went to stay with his parents the night before, and they don't plow the roads for a few days, so he couldn't come in. Thinking back, she's not sure what was so funny, but it had brought on the first time she ever laughed so hard with him that she cried. It happened, somehow.
His voice is so strained, quiet and hard that she gets a chill and the urge to check over her shoulder. See if he's there. He explains that he has a fever and just doesn't feel... great, and that he doesn't think he'll be in today.
She's first in the office after Michael today. No one would ever guess, but Michael is remarkably quiet when it's just the two of them in the morning. He's just too tired and he makes the coffee as soon as he gets in, shuts himself in the office, and presumably drinks the coffee with a metric ton of sugar right before everyone else arrives. She made sure to try and switch his coffee with decaf a long time ago, thinking this could easily be the problem. Jim had been impressed with her clever thinking. She'd been completely wrong; Michael had been just the same.
Michael sighs as he clicks the mouse, the rate of each noise few and far between. Checking his email, or online shopping, perhaps.
She slumps her shoulders, still in her coat. It's just not warm enough in here yet. She balls her fists, brings one of them up under her chin, resting on the heel of her upturned hand. She looks out at his desk, the one that doesn't face her anymore. All day she has to watch the back of his neck, watch it dip down so she can see the curls more clearly, or turn to the side, so she can see his profile perfectly. Because he doesn't really turn around to see her anymore, not like he used to. And as much as she hates that, when he came back with someone else, she couldn't decide if it was better not having him around and assuming he was detached, or having him ten feet away and seeing him with her.
She sucks her bottom lip into her mouth. She just misses him, she thinks. And then Karen, Oscar, Angela, and Dwight all arrive. The early ones.
So. Solitaire, phone calls, and faxes.
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I promise they won't all be so boring. Bear with me.
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© 2006-2023 More Than That | Skin created by Kali