He’s no longer trying not to notice her.
Not because it wouldn’t be a good idea; the woman sitting—no, simmering—beside him on the bus right now is still here, and she’s still the reason it would be a very good idea if he could manage to not notice Pam for at least a little bit. But he’s not going to do it. He’s hardly noticing Karen, actually. The mere fact that she’s even vaguely impinged on his consciousness right now is an indication of how simply volcanic her expression and her body language are, because if she were even merely angry—say, as angry as she was the night he told her he still had feelings for the woman who’s actually taking up his focus right now—he wouldn’t be aware of her at all. He’s only paying attention to Karen with his hippocampus, the little lizard fight or flight section of his brain that will tell him when it’s safe to move.
The rest of him is firmly focused several seats forward, on the back of a head covered not in straight black hair but curly hair whose exact color has defied his description for years: redder in some lights, blonder in others, a mousey brunette right now under the influence of darkness. Only he would never call it mousey.
He’s no longer trying to ignore her because he’s found that he can’t—that when he does, it hurts him, it hurts her, it even hurts people like Karen who might think otherwise, because it makes him less himself. He’s beginning to think it might make Pam more herself, given the display he just witnessed at the beach—or if not more herself, because the Pam he remembers is quieter and more passive than that, more the Pam she could and should be, the Pam he’s always seen in her, the Fancy New Beesly she has apparently embraced becoming.
At least one of their evolutions is for the better, he reflects.
He’s not really any happier with how things have been since his return than she is—that’s why, he thinks, her outburst struck him quite as hard as it did—but he’s still not quite ready to go back to how things were either. He notices that even on an endorphin high from the coal walk, even cloaked in righteous indignation (and deservedly so), even with all the momentum in the world behind her back, she never said she loved him. She never said she wanted to actually be with him. She never said any of the words he’d wanted to hear ever since Casino Night.
Well, that’s not true.
Because she did say “I called off my wedding because of you.” She did say “I didn’t care…until I met you.” So maybe he’s not giving her enough credit, because he sure as hell isn’t brave enough, coal walk or not, to announce to her that he misses her, that he’s disappointed that they aren’t together, that he wants more from her. So maybe he ought to give her a break for that little “I’m not” at the end of the rant. If only it didn’t remind him so much of “I can’t”—of the idea that she might not want Roy but she doesn’t want him either. She just wants him back as her friend.
And to be fair, he wants that too. He’s beginning to realize that he may never get over wanting to be more than that to her, but he can’t deny that not being her friend at all is worse. That being in her life (he still sees her in the reflection of his monitor every time it’s off) and not being in her life is worse than being “just” her best friend. What gives him the right to make both of them miserable just because she won’t date him, anyway? He owes them both more than that. And yes, that means he owes himself too, because all of this has been killing him. He’s been going intentionally numb in order to avoid feeling what he feels, and that’s just plain dangerous. He can’t and he won’t do it anymore.
What does that mean for him and Karen? For a start, probably another awful long conversation tonight, because she’s going to want to do that (fun!). Then…who knows. He can’t really think about that until after the interview for the job in New York—even though he know he really needs to think about it before, because Karen has been making loud repeated sounds (sometimes called “directly saying it”) about both of them moving up there if one of them gets the job. And in a Pamless universe, that would probably be a good idea, even though he also strongly suspects that in a Pamless universe they wouldn’t be having that conversation quite as urgently.
But he doesn’t live in a Pamless universe, and he doesn’t want to live in a Pamless universe. He lives in a universe where Pam Beesly works at the same office of Dunder Mifflin as he does, and where they are supposed to be best friends. And he’s been completely fucking it all up by pretending she doesn’t exist.
That would be a complete dick move even if she were still the same Pam he’d left in May—even if she were married to Roy (which God forbid—which he guesses, in a way, God did, via Dwight’s pepper spray…and Pam’s honesty. Never forget Pam’s honesty). If she were married to Roy he could plead self-defense, but it would still be a crime. But she’s not. She’s not even dating Roy. And she’s not the same Pam; she hasn’t stagnated, hasn’t backslid, hasn’t diminished herself. She’s stood proud and firm and walked forward into the future even though he abandoned her, and she’s chosen—chosen—to ask him to join her there. Maybe not as her boyfriend/lover/husband/everything like he has to admit he’d like to be, but as her best friend. As the man she thought he was—he thought he was—and not this asshole he’s been. She’s willing to look past it, to accept him. And he loves her for it.
Thinking about loving Pam makes him realize something else about her outburst tonight. His initial reaction—mostly in self-defense—was to get angry. To ask himself what right she had to stand up there and say those things and jeopardize his relationship with Karen and the whole office like that. To want to tell her off for it. Where did she get off bottling up those feelings, not telling him how or what or why she felt things and then dropping it all in his lap and going and sticking her feet in the water?
And then it hit him. This was what Casino Night was for her, except this was dropping a ream and Casino Night was a whole truckload of paper from the warehouse. Because he knew everything she was saying. He already felt guilty for not coming to the art show, for not being a better friend, for not doing everything she’d said. But he hadn’t faced it straight on until she said it. And then she walked away. Except where she was walking away to soak her burning calluses, and she’d be back (as she was back) on the bus home, he’d walked away to fucking Stamford, Connecticut without saying goodbye. He’d dropped a giant load of emotion in her lap—Pam Beesly’s, who took a full minute to react when he told her the mixed-berry yogurt she was about to eat was expired—and expected an instant reaction. How could he be so stupid? More importantly, how could he be so thoughtless? If he, Jim Halpert, who had already told Pam he loved her, already digested all that information, was debating how to react to her much more minor announcement (not that it was actually minor, or he didn’t care about it, just that it wasn’t “I’m in love with you”), how could he expect that much more out of her, completely unprepared?
He was an idiot, that’s how.
And Pam deserved a better response to her declaration than she’d given him—not least because he’d been more of an asshole to her than she’d ever been to him.
It just couldn’t really happen with Karen sitting next to him.
But he’ll think of something.
