Michael calls them into the conference room first thing Friday morning. He's moved the table out and arranged the chairs in rows, all facing the TV. The color changing DVD symbol is bouncing around the screen and Pam wishes that they could watch that all day instead of whatever likely homemade video Michael has queued up.
Pam is one of the first ones in the conference room and takes a seat in the back of the room. Her coworkers file in behind her and she tries to catch Jim's eye so he can sit in the empty seat next to her, but he doesn't look at her. He sits a few rows ahead of her and she tries to not take it personally, but that's how the things have been since the Christmas party a week prior.
She worries that he's angry or upset with her about the whole teapot/iPod/White Christmas situation, but she doesn't know how to ask him. It all seemed fine by the end of the party, when she'd shown him that she'd traded with Dwight, but afterwards, at Poor Richard's, he'd gotten distant. Like he'd been avoiding her. She thought, at the time, that maybe it was just because she'd been so busy with Roy (trying to convince him that no, he doesn't need another round) and he'd been chatting with Kevin and Toby. It had felt weird that night, but she knew that come Monday morning, things would be back to normal.
But Monday morning has come and gone, and so has Tuesday...all the way to Friday. Pam wants to ask him straight out if he's mad at her or something, but she doesn't know how. She's never been good at confrontation of any kind, even if it's asking her best friend if there's something wrong between them. She's not good at being honest with her emotions, so she usually just doesn't say anything. Instead, she's sat at her desk all week and wondered why he wasn't joking around with her, why he hasn't eaten lunch with her, why he all of a sudden seems to have a distaste for jellybeans.
So when he doesn't sit next to her, it stings. She wants to kick herself for ever giving away his Secret Santa gift, because that's the only thing that she can think that would have caused him to feel any different towards her. It was so stupid. Yeah, she'd gotten it back, but that didn't make up for initially choosing the iPod and throwing his heartfelt gift in his face. If the roles had been reversed, she'd have been devastated. So she doesn't blame him if he is upset. It just sucks. It's been the longest week Pam's had at Dunder Mifflin since...since she can remember.
There's a sound next to Pam and she's jerked from her thoughts to see that Angela is sitting next to her and is looking at her with one eyebrow arched rather severely. Angela looks pointedly towards the front of the room and Pam follows her gaze to the back of Jim's head. She realizes that she's been staring at Jim as she thinks about their relationship and the weird turn it's taken over the last week. It's a blessing that the camera crew has already left for the year, because she just knows that they'd have been watching her watching him. They seem to almost always have a camera trained on her, for whatever reason. She can't figure it out.
At the front of the room, Michael is explaining why he's called them all in for a meeting on their last day before the holidays. "I've spent the last week working tirelessly for you. For my family. So that I can give you the best Christmas you can possibly have." He presses the play button and keeps talking. "And also because we have to come in tomorrow morning and do inventory--" he raises his voices over the sounds of noises of extreme indignation and powers through in a way that would be remarkable if it wasn't for the circumstances. "Don't, okay, just--look, gang, we have to do it, and I've worked really hard on this video that will hopefully reinventotutionalize the entire inventory taking process, okay, so let's just--just shut it, and watch the video."
The video turns out to be probably the best "Michael Scott Joint" she's ever seen. Well, "best" relative to all the others...but definitely the most entertaining. It's a remake of Home Alone filmed in the warehouse. Pam has a sneaking suspicion that it was filmed without Darryl's permission, because there's no way that Darryl would have allowed for industrial sized rolls of bubble wrap to be pushed down the stairs or for reams of paper to be tied from the railing and thrown at the shelving. The Michael on the video tried to marry together the themes of "beloved classic Christmas movie" and "end of the year inventory" with puns and jokes that the Michael in the conference room was very obviously proud of.
"If we don't get the inventory forms completed and sent to corporate on time, they might get lost in New York," video Michael says. Conference room Michael looks around the room with hopeful eyes and Pam laughs, a little bit out of pity but mostly because the joke was goofy enough to be just a little bit funny. Two rows ahead of her, she hears the unmistakable sound of Jim attempting (and failing) to stifle his own laughter. Michael is beaming, though, and Pam starts beaming too when she sees Jim turn his head and look at her over his shoulder. He's smiling. At her.
It's the first smile that she's seen from Jim in a week. It's brief and slight but it's something and it isn't until she sees it that she realizes just how much she's missed it. And seeing it means that maybe that there isn't anything wrong, that maybe he's just had an off week or been really busy or not felt well or something. She feels relieved, feels like they'll really and truly be back to normal now. She sure hopes so, because a week without her best friend is something that she absolutely does not want to go through again.
The video is over and Michael ushers them out of the conference room with a proud smile on his face. Pam doesn't yet feel like answering phones so she heads to the break room. 10:30 AM sounds like the perfect time for french onion chips and a Coke, so she selects both and makes herself comfortable at one of the tables. She's just gotten the bag open when Jim walks in.
"Hey," she says. She hears the hesitation in her voice, because sometimes a smile is just a smile and not a guarantee that things will be fixed--if they were ever even broken in the first place? She doesn't know, so she doesn't say anything else. Just waits.
"Oh, uh, hey." He offers her another little smile and she's unable to stop herself from returning it. That makes two in one day and that makes her happy, hopeful. "Didn't mean to interrupt your break."
"No no! It's fine. You can--you can join me, if you want." She pushes out a chair with her foot and it bumps against his side. He laughs softly, makes his selection, and turns to face her.
"Sure. I could use a break after that video, anyway." He sits down next to her but doesn't look at her, so she's able to study his face without fear of him seeing her do so. About fifty different emotions play out across his it and she tries to place them all: happiness, sadness, fear, anger...something that looks like resignation? She wants to analyze it but he chooses that moment to look up at her. Her bag of chips suddenly becomes very interesting.
"Um, yeah, right? I have to say, though, it was pretty good. Maybe his best."
"I'm partial to The Scranton Witch Project, myself."
Pam throws her head back and laughs. She can't believe that she's forgotten about The Scranton Witch Project. "Oh my god, that's the one from your first day, right?"
Jim looks at her then, really looks at her. It takes a minute (a few seconds, really, but it feels like much longer) but a real smile spreads across his face, all wide and crooked, and Pam has to stop herself from literally breathing a sigh of relief. He laughs, looks at his hands, then speaks: "Yep. My very first day. I should have turned and ran."
"Well, I'm glad you didn't. It would suck here without you."
What looks like fifty more emotions race across Jim's face, but this time she can't place any of them. The atmosphere in the room has suddenly changed; it feels heavy, tense. Pam feels a little bit like she's suffocating, like the air in the break room has gotten thick and it's pressing down on her, forcing her to do something or say something but what, she doesn't know.
Jim says it for her. "Thanks, Beesly. It would suck here without you, too." She doesn't know why, but hearing him say that makes a lump form in her throat. Probably just because he's been her best friend for years and she's felt all week that suddenly he wasn't anymore.
It's the thought of him no longer being her friend that pushes her to ask. "Um, are we...are you mad at me? Or upset or something?" The words are small and soft and she hopes for a second that he hasn't heard her and that he'll ask her to repeat herself and she can come up with a convincing lie, because it's scary, opening herself up and asking something like that. Giving a hint as to how she's feeling. She doesn't do that often.
"No. I'm not mad at you. I've had--it's been a weird week for me, personally. I'm sorry that I've been distant."
"It's okay." She twists her engagement ring around her finger without realizing that she's doing it. His eyes are trained on it, though, and she notices after a moment, so she stops. "Um, anything you wanna talk about?"
He looks at her and he's smiling but she sees that his eyes seem sad. "Nah. It's no big deal. But hey, we better get back." He pushes away from the table and she follows suit. "What do you think the odds are that Michael made more than one of those inventory videos?"
"They're probably all Christmas themed. Like, An Inventory Story."
"Nice. How about Santa Claus is Coming to Inventory?"
"Eh. Miracle on 34th Sheet of Paper."
"Wow. What's it like in there, inside your mind?"
She doesn't answer, just laughs. He laughs back. The prospect of getting up early on a Saturday to come into work and count packages of pens and legal pads suddenly doesn't seem so bad.
Not when's got her best friend there with her.
