She notices Roy more now that they’re broken up.
It’s not just the chicken-or-fish every day for lunch (and why oh why couldn’t he get off his butt and do the one thing he said he’d do in cancelling their wedding? She moved out. She left him the stuff. She called their families—yes, even his. She undid the venue, the cake, the guests. He’d agreed to do one thing: the catering. And he’d somehow failed to do that. She understands its hard, being broken up with. But after she had to talk to his mother for him…it’s really just one thing). It’s not just the guilt, which pushes hard against her ribcage and flushes her face whenever she lets it. It’s not even just her desperate need to look anywhere, notice anything, other than Jim’s empty desk—or then, worse, Ryan-at-Jim’s-desk—every day.
It’s that he’s actually more visible, more present in her life, now that they’re broken up.
Because he doesn’t get it. He talks a good game about how he understands that it wasn’t working, how he knows he wasn’t really putting in effort, how he sees how she felt distant from him, but he doesn’t realize that that doesn’t mean she wants those things from him now. It’s like he’s stared at the broken edges of a plate he dropped on the ground, and then just decided to keep carrying the plate around like it had never broken in the first place, because that was how he was supposed to keep it unbroken. Maybe that’s why he “forgot” about the caterer: because to him, all of this is just prelude to her deciding he’s done enough to get back with him.
There isn’t such a thing. She’s done. OK, she can see, maybe, a world in which she backslides, one in which she gives into the pain in her ribs and the flush in her face and the pathetic puppydogness of him and gives him another chance. But she can’t see it working—and she tries, so hard, to make him see it.
And he keeps nodding along until right at the part where she reminds him that they’re not getting back together. Suddenly the man who couldn’t be bothered to stay home with her has infinite free time to ask her out. The guy whose brother dragged him to the lake every weekend and whose buddies took him for poker every night is always hovering at her desk (almost like someone else used to do). And she can’t quite bring herself to shove him away quite as hard as she should. Not because she still wants to be with him, or because she sees a future there, but because once you’ve already kicked a puppy you really don’t feel comfortable coming at it with a 2x4. Every time she has a flash of frustration with Roy she sees the memory of Casino Night—not Jim’s kiss or his confession which, hurtful as they are to remember, hurt good, like a muscle stretching, but the fight she and Roy had that night when she told him she couldn’t do it anymore—of his face falling when it finally got through that this wasn’t like other nights (she’s briefly reminded of her friend Izzy’s Seder the one time she stayed with them over spring break, when her mom and dad were out of town, and the ritual question they asked with such reverence: why is this night different from all other nights?). When he finally realized that she was not just angry with him but breaking up with him.
When he finally started to cry.
She just can’t do that to him again, and so every time she pushes him away she knows she’s not doing it quite far enough. It’s like when she’d put things away in the house they used to share, actually: her arms just aren’t as long as his, so sometimes he’d complain that she didn’t get things far enough into the cupboards. Only now it’s pushing him away that isn’t quite far enough, and he’s quite happy to use his longer arms to pull back at her when she thinks she’s done her utmost. And unlike the cans in the cupboard, she can’t quite bring herself to fling him off with all her strength, because really, isn’t it enough that she’s pushed him? Can’t he get the hint? Why is it that all it took for Jim was two hands on his chest and a little nod, and Roy can’t understand shouted words?
It’s endlessly frustrating, but it also means that Roy’s always on her mind. She can’t avoid him, and he seems to be aware of this because he’s always coming up to the main office on little errands for Darryl. She wants to tell him that it’s just proof that the excuses he gave for not doing that when they were together were so much bullshit, but she doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she’s noticed. It’s still annoying though, and the worst part is that he (and everyone else upstairs, except, oddly , for Michael) seems to think that it’s going to work: that it’s adorable, and she ought to take him back. Ugh. If only they knew how every time he pays attention to her now is just a reminder that he didn’t do it back when it might have mattered.
If only he knew it too. If only he’d listen. Because even now he won’t actually hear her tell it to him. He thinks he’s being considerate and attentive, but he’s really just being an attention hog. And she hates it. Almost as much as she hates not being able to look over and roll her eyes with Jim whenever it happens. But…not quite.
