He can’t wait, cannot wait, to get her home and start celebrating his big sale without the added sound effects from Andy and Kevin or the direction from Michael, but there is something else he really needs to do first.
So when she says she wants to go back to the job fair and talk to a guy from a graphic design company, he offers to go with her, but secretly hopes she says no.
“No, that’s fine,” she insists, reaching up to push the baseball cap off his head and running her fingers through his hideous case of hat hair. “I’ll meet you at home.”
There are still two homes between them, her choice, not his, but he knows that she means his place. When he’d brushed his teeth that morning, he’d noticed she’d left the toothbrush lying on the counter rather than standing in the cup. That, he knows, is her tell, the sure sign she plans to return.
Whether she knows she has a toothbrush tell, he doesn’t know and doesn’t ask. One day he’ll ask her; one day when home doesn’t mean my place or yours? but just home, just ours.
He bends to kiss her, longer than a simple “see you later” kiss needs to last, but well… and smoothes a stray piece of hair that has slipped out of her ponytail.
“I’m going to go see Mom and Dad,” he says, and it’s not exactly a lie.
“Oh, tell your mom I said thanks again for sending me that pecan pie recipe again,” she reminds him as he walks her to her car. She smiles when he opens the driver’s side door for her and waits until she’s settled before closing it. He leans to kiss her through the open window and watches her drive away, then heads to his own vehicle.
On his way out of town, he calls his mother to relay Pam’s gratitude for the pecan pie recipe.
His hair is an unholy mess and he thinks he should have cleaned up before coming here to do this. But he can hear footsteps from inside now and the front door being unlatched. He takes a deep breath as it opens.
“Jim!”
He tries to cover his nervousness with a smile. “Hi, Mrs. Beesly.”
Helene Beesly pushes a lock of gold-to-graying hair behind her ear and looks past the tall, nervous young man on her front stoop, her expression growing uneasy.
“Is something wrong, Jim?” She asks, seeing he is alone. “Is Pammy…?”
Her eyes are widening slightly and her voice is pitching up, and he feels awful, awful for scaring her. “Nice move, Halpert,” he scolds himself and reaches out to touch the older woman’s shoulder.
“No, no, Mrs. Beesly, Pam’s fine. Everything’s fine. She’s perfect. I just came here to talk to you and Mr. Beesly. I’m sorry. I should have called.” And now he’s babbling. “I didn’t even think that you would be worried if I just showed up here. But that’s a parent thing, right? That’s why I didn’t know it. It’s a parent thing. You have to be a parent to know parent things. But I’m not. Not anytime soon. I mean, it’s not like I don’t want to be, just, you know, when the time is right…”
“Jim!” Her voice is gentle, but firm, cutting him off. He snaps his mouth closed, feeling foolish.
“Yes ma’am?” Holy crap, he cannot believe how hard his heart is beating. Can she hear that?
Helene Beesly’s eyes are kind, like her daughter’s. “You wanted to talk to us about something?”
He nods. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And I’ve told you before, Jim,” she chides him as she motions for him to follow her inside the house. “Call me Helene.”
“Okay, Helene,” he replies, and they’ll do this dance again every time they meet for the next 8 months.
She gestures for him to sit on the sofa, but it kind of feels like he should be standing, so he moves toward the couch, but doesn’t sit yet.
“Will, Jim’s here,” Mrs. Beesly (he can’t think of her as Helene yet) calls upstairs.
“Where’s Pam?” Mr. Beesly (he is definitely not Will) calls as he makes his way down, and his wife explains that it’s just Jim, Pam’s fine, as she goes to the liquor cabinet and pours two bourbons, because she is an intuitive woman and because she has eyes. She knows why the nervous young man is standing in her living room, why he drove to their house alone when he’s never been here without Pam, and bless his heart, he doesn’t need to be nervous, but she’s actually grateful that he is. It shows how important this visit is to him.
“Take this, honey.” She pushes one of the glasses into her daughter’s boyfriend’s hand, which is not trembling, but is not entirely still either. He accepts it with a thanks, and starts to sit down, but only gets halfway to the couch before Pam’s father walks into the room, and he pops up again like a half-sprung jack-in-the-box.
“Mr. Beesly.” He’s always gotten along well with Pam’s father. Sure, they aren’t golf buddies or anything (Oh god, golf. Was he sweating? Does he stink?), but he thinks they’ve had a pretty cordial relationship from the start. After all, they have a priority in common.
“Jim.” William Beesly comes forward, extending his hand. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
The thing is, Mr. Beesly doesn’t exactly sound pleased per se. He doesn’t sound displeased, which is good, and he doesn’t really even sound particularly curious. But Will Beesly, while he may not have gone as far as he’d hoped to in life, is a smart man. There aren’t a lot of reasons why Jim would be here alone.
He’s glad the boy has come. He won’t show it, but he is.
“Sir.” Jim shakes the older man’s hand. He’s not really the type of guy who calls people “sir” or “ma’am,” but this must be the time for such formalities because they keep coming out of his mouth. And his mouth is really, really dry, but he doesn’t want to drink the bourbon because he doesn’t want them to think he needs a drink to get through the impending discussion, which is, by the way, not the most fun of this process.
“Jim came to speak to us,” Helene Beesly tells her husband, with a knowing look, and he returns with one of his own. But when they turn to the young man, they keep their expressions open, agreeing by the silent language that comes with 30 years of marriage, to keep their cards close to the vest, for now.
The three sit, two on the sofa, one on the arm chair. He sits at the edge of the chair and silently tells his knee to stop bouncing up and down.
“How’s business, Jim?” Mr. Beesly asks, and he honest to God is not sure if the man is trying to put him at ease or trying to kill him by delaying the speech he came here to make, not that he actually has a speech. Oh, God, he should have a speech. Now he really does need a drink, so he takes a small sip of the bourbon, being careful not to gulp and prays he’s not actually sweating as the older man continues talking. “Paper moving well these days?”
Thank every available higher power of all world religions that he actually has something positive to say.
“Doing well, sir, actually, really well.” There he went with that sir thing again, and he doesn’t notice Helene’s lips twitch slightly in amusement. “I actually landed a major client today, guy I’ve been trying to close the deal with for weeks.”
Mr. Beesly raises his glass in a silent toast of congratulations, but says nothing further on the matter.
“And that boss of yours, Michael?”
He smirks as if by instinct. “Michael? He’s uh…” (“Yeah, kiss her. Kiss her good.”) “…he’s one of a kind.”
His lips are dry. He tries to lick them without being obvious.
“Some of the stories Pammy’s told us over the years,” Helene pipes up. “They’re hard to believe.”
Jim chuckles. “One hundred percent true, every one of them,” he promises, and ordinarily he’d be thrilled to regale them with crazy Michael stories, but oh dear God this is getting to be painful.
It must show on his face, because when he catches Mrs. Beesly looking at him, he sees her face soften, and her voice is kind when she asks, “What can we do for you, Jim?”
He pretends not to notice the slightly annoyed look that flashes in Will’s eyes when his wife moves the conversation forward. Typically, he guesses, this sort of moment is a father’s domain, right? Not that it’s how he would see it. But this is their marriage, not his.
He needs another sip of the bourbon. His mouth is dry. He really, really wishes he had a speech planned.
Well, here goes nothing.
“I’ve, uh, I’ve always been a pretty content guy,” he begins. “But there’s a difference between content and happy. Pam, she, uh, she’s so amazing without even trying. And she makes me want to be better. Trust me, there are girls who try and they’re…they just don’t get it. Pam… she makes me happy.”
He pauses for breath and tries to gather himself.
“But you don’t really care about that, not really. The point is, I want to make her happy. I hope I already am. But I want to keep on doing it.”
Another breath, and he’s sure he’s babbling again, but holy crap, this is nerve wracking.
“I want to make a life with her. I want to make her happy always.”
He looks her parents directly in the eye, as much as one can look two people in the eye at one time, and says what he’s come to say.
“I want to marry her.”
Helene and William Beesly don’t say anything for a full, torturous 13 seconds, and Jim is one hundred percent certain he is going to drop dead on Mr. Beesly’s late mother’s Oriental rug.
They are not, he is unaware, upset by his question or even surprised by it. But even when this talk is expected, well, it takes a moment for it to sink in. He will learn this, in 34 years, five months, and eleven days. But today, 13 seconds is pure hell.
“Pam’s a grown woman,” Will Beesly says finally, not betraying any emotion. Helene is, he can see, fighting tears. “You don’t need to ask our permission.”
He sighs, hoping his next words are the right ones. “I know,” he replies, his voice steadier than his heartbeat. “But it seemed like the right thing to do. I wanted to.”
Another 1...2...3.…4...5...6.…7... And seriously, seriously, this is painful ….8.…9.…10.…11.…12.…13.…14.…
“I know you did,” Mr. Beesly informs him, and there’s something satisfied about the man’s tone. “That’s why I like you.“ He stands up and extends his hand. “You’re a good man, Jim.”
The rhinoceros off his head, Jim scrambles to his feet and shakes his future father-in-law’s hand.
“Thank you,” he gasps. “Thank you.”
Mrs. Beesly wipes her eyes and folds him into an embrace. “You do make her happy, sweetheart. You make her so happy.”
He wraps his arms around her and whispers “thank you” in her ear, feeling choked up.
There’s not reason to stay much longer, and there’s definitely a reason to leave, so 15 minutes later, he is back on the road, his foot bouncing with excitement against the gas, and he needs to hear her voice.
“You’ve reached Pam Beesly. Leave a message.”
“Hey babe,” he tells the machine. “I’ll be home in an hour. I love you. I can’t wait to see you.”
He hangs up and presses his foot down on the gas. He just wants to get home. He wonders if tonight is too soon.
Story Notes:
This story takes place immediately following "Job Fair." And if you think Jim is usually more at ease, seriously, think about the conversation he's going to have. You'd be nervous too.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Jim takes an impromptu road trip.
Chapter End Notes:
Your thoughts are, as always, so appreciated.
andtheivy is the author of 17 other stories.
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