“Pam, you can come sit over here by me!” Kelly waves Pam over from where she’s standing in the doorway of the breakroom. Quite honestly, Pam doesn’t really feel like a lunch that she knows will include non-stop conversation, but Kelly is sweet and it’s better than eating in the kitchen with Creed and his weird smelly fermented soybeans. So she tucks her chin to her chest and smiles a little and takes an empty seat at Kelly’s table.
“Thanks, Kelly. How was your Christmas?” She panics internally for a minute because she’s not totally sure that Kelly even celebrates Christmas and she feels horrible for nevertaking the time to find out for sure.
“Oh, it was great!” Pam breathes a sigh of relief that goes unnoticed by Kelly as the other woman launches into an blow-by-blow account of her holiday. Pam nods at the appropriate times and makes interested sounding noises when Kelly takes a breath and gets most of her lunch eaten before Kelly asks her a direct question. “So, what did Roy get you for Christmas? I bet it was something really romantic. You guys are so in love.”
Pam laughs a little, because Roy’s gifts to her were decidedly unromantic. She appreciates the gifts, of course, but she just...she just can’t help but compare what she’d gotten from Roy to the teapot that she’d gotten from Jim. Not that Roy’s gifts weren’t nice, because they were: an mp3 player (not a video iPod like he said but still), a sweater (that had a lower neckline than she was generally comfortable wearing), and a coffee table book on Baroque art (nevermind that she generally found Baroque art a little too dark and busy for her tastes). But it’s the thought that counts, right?
She’s been trying hard to not dwell on the amount of thought that Jim put in versus the amount of thought that Roy put in.
“Oh, he got me a few things. An art book and a sweater and a, um, PrismDuro Sport?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s like an iPod.” Kelly nods her approval but Pam suspects that she’s not as impressed as she would have been had it been name brand. Pam nibbles on her turkey sandwich and listens to Kelly break down which gifts she’s going to return for store credit and which gifts are worthy of keeping and out of the corner of her eye she sees Jim come into the breakroom.
“Ooh, Jim, come sit with us! I wanna hear about your Christmas!”
Jim meets Pam’s eye and smiles a little awkwardly. She thinks about the conversation she overheard on inventory day, the soft way that he talked with Katy and asked her to call again when she got to wherever it was she was headed, the way he laughed at something she said. How overhearing that conversation made her feel is something else that she’s tried not to dwell on over the holiday, mostly because she isn’t able to put her finger on it.
That’s not true, and she admits it to herself in a moment of complete honesty. She’s surprised that Jim would date someone he admitted to being “not his type.” She’s a little hurt that her best friend didn’t tell her about his love life when she was so open with him about pretty much everything. She’s...she’s a little jealous, because Katy gets to see a part of Jim that she never will. That’s what she’s been trying to not dwell on while she’s been away, because she doesn’t know what to do with it, other than explain it away by deciding that she just feels a little possessive of her best friend and that’s totally normal. Right?
Right.
Jim’s listening to Kelly give the exact same description of her holiday that she gave to Pam, almost as though she has it memorized. Jim nods in the same places that Pam did, smiles and laughs and makes eye contact with Pam over his ham and cheese. He presses his lips into a line and his cheeks puff out as he exhales through his nose and he raises his eyebrows and she stifles a giggle that Kelly thankfully doesn’t notice.
“So, Jim, what did you do for Christmas? Did you see Katy? Ugh, she’s so gorgeous.”
Jim’s eyes dart to Pam’s face for a split second, so fast that she immediately second guesses even seeing it. He clears his throat and drops his gaze to container of baby carrots on the table. “Uh, yeah. I saw her some. She was out of town for a lot of it, a tiny town called Trout Run.”
“Trout Run? That’s on the way to Liberty, where my parents moved a couple of years ago? Right outside it, actually.”
“Oh, yeah? She said the whole area is pretty dinky. It’s where her grandma lives.”
Pam feels a rush of anger because yeah, okay, maybe Trout Run and Liberty both are tiny towns, but they’re not dinky. They’re charming and sweet and beautiful with the river and the old houses and the mountains. Her face is hot and her words are clipped when she says “it’s not a dinky area. It’s actually really nice.”
Jim looks surprised. “Uh, no, yeah. I bet it’s um, really relaxing.” He picks up a baby carrot and twirls it around in his fingers, doesn’t look at her. Pam feels shame swoop in her stomach and she’s embarrassed of her little outburst. She coughs and takes a sip of her soda to smooth the the sudden lump in her throat.
“Yeah. It’s...relaxing is a good word. You should go visit sometime. You know, um, that is, if Katy goes back to see her grandma.”
Jim nods and she thinks it looks a little stiff. “Yeah, maybe. So, how was your Christmas? Spend time at your parents place?”
“Yeah. In Liberty. Just a day, though.”
“Just one day? Didn’t stay the night?”
“Wait, that’s a few hours away, right? You drove up and drove back down? Wasn’t it like, super snowy up there?” Jim’s eyebrows are knit together in confusion and concern.
Pam fidgets in her chair. “Yeah. Roy wanted...Roy had to get back, so…” She trails off, not wanting to tell him that Roy didn’t want to stay so that he could meet up with Kenny and try out Kenny’s new snowmobiles.
“Wow. I’m sorry you didn’t get to spend more time with your family, Pam. That sucks.” The look on Jim’s face tells her that he has a pretty good idea of what she didn’t say. He’s always been good at reading between the lines that she so carefully draws.
“Oh, um, it’s okay. I’ll see them soon, I’m sure.” It wasn’t okay, actually, because she was still hurt that Roy had flat out refused to stay even one night and that Pam hadn’t really gotten to see her sister or her grandmother at all and that they’d fought the entire way home about why didn’t Roy want to spend time with her family and they were her family not his and it’s boring up in Liberty anyway and she can stay if she wants if someone can get her back home again because he’d rather hang out with his brother and she’s feeling more and more like she just doesn’t get Roy any longer and the lump in her throat is there in full force now. She takes another sip of soda in an attempt to swallow it and chances a look at Jim. He’s looking at her with a soft expression, not like pity, but like...something different. Like he sees her sadness and is sad, too. He’s opening his mouth to say something, but in between them Kelly gasps and slaps her hands on the table.
“Oh my god, you guys. Did you get that weird email last week from Michael? The one that said something about a toothbrush and a swimsuit, or whatever? For the camaraderie event? I bought a new swim suit, it’s so hot. It has a strappy part and some gold parts, and I even got it on sale because it’s the off season.”
Kelly keeps talking but Pam doesn’t pay attention to what she’s saying because Jim is still looking at her. It’s doing something to her, making the lump lodge a little more firmly in her throat and a fluttery feeling take residence in her stomach, like she’s nervous. Or could puke. She can’t decide if it’s altogether a good thing or a bad thing that a look from Jim makes her feel that way.
Suddenly, she can’t be there anymore. She get up from the table so quickly that she bumps it and the whole thing shakes. Jim has to grab his grape soda can so that it doesn’t topple to the floor and she shoots him what she hopes is an apologetic look. “I should get back, I have a lot of faxes to get out.”
“See ya, Pam!” As she turns away, she can hear Jim start to say something but Kelly talks over him. “Michaels memo made it sound like we could bring dates. Should I bring a date, Jim? Oooh, are you going to bring Katy?”
Pam hurries to leave the break room so that she can’t hear what Jim has to say, but she hears him anyway. He’s quiet as he says “yeah, she was there when I got the email. She’s coming.”
The walk back to her desk feels ten miles long. Or maybe it’s just that her body suddenly feels so heavy, so tired. There are a thousand thoughts battling for dominance in her mind and she doesn’t want to think about any of them so she tries to push them all away. It doesn’t work, like at all, so fragmented phrases flash across her consciousness: don’t want to share my best friend why can’t my family be Roy’s too teapot teapot teapot Roy could be more thoughtful I hate that sweater should I cut my losses “that mixed berry yogurt you’re about to eat has expired” she’s not good enough for him why can’t Roy be more like—
The phone rings and for once she’s thankful for it. The customer keeps her occupied with questions that would normally annoy her, if she felt normal.
But she doesn’t.
Instead, she feels like she’s on the cusp of something, maybe.
Like something big is about to happen. Maybe.
Like...maybe her whole life is going to change. Soon.
