What the hell was he thinking?

No, not Roy. She knew what he’d been thinking, or rather which parts of himself he’d been thinking with. Not the brain. Not even (she thought, after talking to him in the diner) the part of him that she sometimes worried was the only such part on any man she’d ever actually get a chance to see, and that she somehow sometimes simultaneously worried was relatively small and larger than the brain-parts he wasn’t using. No, he’d been thinking with his gut, with the part of him that usually made decisions, the instinctive, reactive, traditional part of him that didn’t like to see things change and thought that his physical strength and size were what really counted. That was the part of him that had charged Jim, that had recoiled in horror when Dwight pepper-sprayed him, and that had finally given over to the brain after that, when he’d apologized and urged her to go after Jim.

Jim. The guy who she used to be able to read like a book (specifically like one of those choose your own adventure books where she steadfastly searched for a page that didn’t say she died and then retroactively made her choices to make sure she got there: one where she’d known what she could read and what she wouldn’t read before she actually started the story). The guy she used to trust to read her like a book (one of those little fantasy novels by Terry Pratchett she knew he stuffed into his shoulder bag when he thought no one in the office was looking and read avidly, cover to cover, in as little time as she’d ever seen someone devour a book, only to have another magically make its appearance in the bag tomorrow or the next week). The guy she loved.

That was the guy whose thoughts she just could not understand today.

“I’m sure you’ll find your way back to each other?” What the hell was that?

Brushing off her apology she could almost understand. She’d hurt him, she knew she had, even if he was the one hurting her now and would probably deny it if anyone (say, a tall brunette someone named Karen) asked. And her apology had been, well, she had to admit it had been a little half-assed. Well, not in the sense that she hadn’t meant it. She’d meant it with every fiber of her being, meant it and a lot of other things she couldn’t actually say. But it had come out of her mouth entirely lame. She was, to a certain extent, amazed it had come out at all. She’d expected it to stick in her throat like the end of “I can’t,” or to come out entirely wrong like “we’ll always be friends.” She’d expected to let him walk out of there kicking herself for her stupidity like she had—well, most evenings, but most specifically the time he’d accepted her gift of a prank on Dwight and she’d wanted to offer to hang out with him and watch the result and her mouth had just. Stopped. Working. She’d ended up saying something inane like “oh!” and laughing and then he was gone.

This time she’d at least gotten words out. Though she wasn’t entirely sure “sorry I almost got you killed” counted. And when she remembered the look in his eyes, she was pretty sure it didn’t—just like “it’s probably my fault” had been so many months ago.

Only the reaction in his eyes was like a terrible opposite of that night. On that night his eyes had been luminous, like nebulas or distant galaxies, a tiny glow in vast darkness promising infinite possibilities. She’d felt lost in them, drawn to him, unable to speak precisely because of how much she was feeling and how unprepared she was to articulate any of it. She’d gasped and stuttered and utterly failed because his eyes had been speaking to her even more than his words had, and they invited her to fall in.

Now his eyes weren’t even trained on her, as if whatever it was he had in his hands was infinitely more interesting than her. What she could see of them was hard and flat, like a newly-strung canvas but without that canvas’s potential to be turned into something greater. He was avoiding her eyes, and her inarticulate inability to communicate was a result of his total indifference, not his total absorption of her attention.

It struck her then: it wasn’t actually indifference.

It was active hostility.

Did she deserve that? It wasn’t her who tried to punch him in the face. It definitely wasn’t her who hadn’t told Karen…whatever it was he clearly hadn’t told her, given the way she had been acting in the aftermath of “the incident,” which is all she could label it in the privacy of her head. Or “Roy’s idiocy.” Well, technically she hadn’t told Karen, but it wasn’t her place to—and it was putting some interesting ideas in her head about what he had told her if she was surprised to see Roy barrel in like that.

Though of course Jim himself had been surprised. And so had she, although less so the more she thought about it—and she was pretty sure Jim’s surprise wasn’t about what she’d told Roy, but when.

God, she just wished he’d talk to her. Why wouldn’t he talk to her? She’d even take the old kind of talking, the joking and the friendship and the light conversation they used to have—she didn’t even need the deeper stuff, the talking about their lives and their hopes and dreams and loves that she really wanted (and that, if she was honest, they’d also used to have—but maybe it was naïve or unfair to expect that of Jim after she’d left things the way she had…even if he had ignored her email and her text, or maybe especially because of that). She wanted, well, what had he called it, more than that. But she’d take that. And she wasn’t getting anything.

She was getting hurtful comments about how she and Roy would get together again, and “never say never” and stupid frustrating things like that. She was done with Roy. It hadn’t gone how she’d imagined, not even how she’d imagined when she…well, when she rebounded with him from Jim, if she was honest with herself, for all that she and Jim had never actually dated. But it was over, and it was done, and if Jim couldn’t see that his eyes were wrong.

And while she really wanted to show him how wrong he was, she wasn’t sure it was worth it. Because he was being an absolute ass, and it showed in his eyes.

She’d never before thought of his eyes being brown because he was full of shit, but here they were.