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Happily Ever After
She knew the exact moment it happened. Very rarely could she look back on her life and pinpoint the exact moment when she let another possibility slip by. It had been right there in front of her, the perfect moment for happily ever after and she had destroyed it.
They were in the kitchen and he knew. She didn’t need to tell him, but he knew that she wasn’t going to do it. And when she had mentioned Roy, she had seen it, the flash of anger that always appeared in his eyes when she said his name.
“Roy said that?” The way he said Roy’s name, it was as if he had not expected anything less from him. Not only that, he seemed to have expected that Pam would only cave on the internship because of Roy.
“What, you have something you want to say?”
She knew he did. His lips were pressed tightly together, his cheeks hollow, as if he were biting the inside of them to stop himself. It wasn’t the Jim who usually struggled to find the words that he wanted to say to her, this was the Jim who was doing everything in his power to stop the words from coming out.
She wanted him to say it. To say that Roy was wrong for her, that Scranton was wrong for her, that she deserved so much better. She wanted him to tell her she did not have to give up her dreams, that she was strong enough to go out on her own. Maybe if Jim said it, she would be able to believe it.
He looked away a moment before speaking. “You gotta take a chance on something, sometime, Pam. I mean, do you want to be a receptionist here, always?”
Why did he make it sound like it was her fault? Didn’t he understand how hard it was to change? She had been with Roy for ten years, that is not something you can just brush aside, something you can forget. She could see the pain in his eyes, but didn’t he see the pain in her own? It wasn’t as easy as it sounded. She wasn’t strong, she couldn’t break free from the world she was in. She was supposed to be rescued by a knight in shining armour, who would take her away from all of this and she would go along with it, because how could she not? He was the knight and she was the damsel in distress and that was how it was supposed to happen. Happily ever after.
Just like on the Booze Cruise. The moment on the deck with Jim, staring at him as he struggled to find the right thing to say. If he had kissed her then, she wouldn’t have stopped him. She would have moved into his embrace, clutching his coat in her hands, tracing her tongue across his lips. Instead he had said nothing, done nothing and she had left disappointed.
If he had kissed her, she wouldn’t be marrying Roy. If he had kissed her then, she wouldn’t be seeing her dreams crumble around her. If he had been her knight in shining armour on that boat, she wouldn’t be feeling this overwhelming suffocation as she saw the future before her. She became irrationally angry at him as she thought about this.
“Oh, excuse me, I’m fine with my choices.”
They were no longer talking about the design internship and they both knew it. His fists were clenched in frustration and she couldn’t tell if he was trying to stop himself from screaming at her or crying. She had hurt him and she admitted to herself that she had intended to hurt him, just as he had hurt her by not saying anything on the boat.
“You are?”
His voice was so sad. Her anger dissolved as he looked directly into her eyes. She had always had a difficult time reading Jim’s eyes but today they were clear as a summer sky. He would never ask her to leave Roy, he would not kiss her and he would not show up at her wedding to whisk her off to happily ever after. It was up to her. If she wanted things to change, she had to tell him now. He would not rescue her, she had to rescue herself. Didn’t he understand that this was the one thing she couldn’t bring herself to do?
“Yeah.”
She watched his face fall at her unconvincing answer. He knew that she was lying, but he didn’t call her on it. It had been her decision to make and she had made it. He said nothing more and exited the kitchen, leaving her alone with her thoughts and her tears.
That had been the moment. Everything had changed after that. Jim was no longer the same with her. No more wandering over to her desk, sending her teasing e-mails and sharing his lunch with her. He barely looked at her anymore, instead she found herself constantly looking at him, to find him completely unaware of her presence. On Valentine’s Day he hadn’t given her a gift. It had been the first year that he had not given her anything and her advice to Dwight that day stuck out in her mind.
“It’s about doing something, so that the person knows that you really care about her, that you remember her.”
He had cared before their argument in the kitchen. He had remembered her when others didn’t. At least she had thought that until the end of “Take your Daughter to Work” day. They had been laughing at Michael’s singing and she had looked away for a split second and when she looked back, he was gone. He had always been there to listen to her, to conspire with her, to mock their co-workers.
Now he was leaving her to be with another woman and she was stuck here alone. This wouldn’t have happened before their argument. Everything had been fine until that moment. She had known what he had been really asking, the one question he had never been able to ask: “Will you leave him to be with me?” She had known it then, just as she knows it now.
She wants to tell him that she will do it. She’ll leave Roy, she’ll take the internship, whatever it takes to get her Jim back. She wants him here with her, laughing, his beautiful eyes shining down on her. Without Jim, this place is unbearable, as if all the light and the warmth were sucked out of the room.
As she grabs her coat to leave the office, she stops in her tracks as she realises something. The pain in her heart, as if it were breaking, this is how Jim felt. For three years as he watched her in the office, this is how he had felt. When he watched her kiss Roy or run off to meet him downstairs or talk about the wedding, this was how Jim felt, as if his heart was shattering into tiny bits.
As she walked out into the dim parking lot, she knew that she deserved this. It served her right for being too scared. If she had been strong, if she had spoke with her heart, there would be no mistake. She would have said the right things to Jim, she would have told him her real feelings, the ones that she buried in the secret place in her heart. It was too late for that now. He had moved on and the moment for happily ever after had passed her by.
Author's Chapter Notes:
This was something I wrote during the hiatus last spring between "Take Your Daughter To Work Day" and "Michael's Birthday". I spent that time rewatching episodes and I realised I could pinpoint the exact moment that Jim pulled back from Pam. This is Pam's POV of that moment.
