Looking back on it, Pam really had to admit that she’d intended, originally, to make up with Roy. She really had. Oh, she’d let her sister think that she was just going back to get a longer overnight bag, with more clothes in it, but she’d really had everything she’d needed already. She’d been going back, like she usually did, to make everything OK with Roy again, which would mean a little bit of groveling, a lot of telling him he was right, and then a comfortable, simple return to routine. They’d drive into work together, he’d wave at her as he slipped down the stairs to the warehouse, and everything would be back to normal. Calm. Stable. Ideal. Normal.
But that wasn’t what happened—not through any fault of her own.
Because what Pam hadn’t realized, or perhaps more accurately hadn’t let herself realize, was that her plan relied on Roy reacting to this problem, this argument, this fight the same way he reacted to all the other tiffs, disagreements, feuds, debates, and so on that they’d had over the years. It relied on him blowing up at her, sure, but ultimately calming down and accepting that things were going to go on much as they always did, in the perpetual stasis of relationship.
But this time, Roy thought he was the wronged party, and that made all the difference. Pam didn’t realize it at the time—Penny did, but Pam was just as determined not to listen to her about it as she was to go back to Roy—but in every other argument they’d had, Roy had been aware that he’d done something wrong. Oh, he certainly hadn’t always dmitted it—there was a reason their traditional two-step involved Pam groveling and not him, though there were exceptions to even that rule—but he’d known, somewhere deep inside, that he had contributed to the situation. Maybe Pammy had been a little too judge-y of where his eyes had wandered, but the eyes that wandered had been his; or she’d been too opinionated about his having the guys over once too often without telling her ahead of time even though she’d begged him to just give her a quick heads up, but hey, he had to admit she had said something about that if he really tried to remember; or maybe she’d gained a little too much weight and hey, all he’d been saying was that she should try to drop it off for her own sake, but yeah, even he knew that a guy couldn’t really get away with saying that sort of thing even to a longterm girlfriend. Maybe especially to a longterm girlfriend. So somewhere, deep underneath it all, Roy had always known he was at least a little bit in the wrong.
Not this time, though. This time Roy was entirely, 100%, supremely convinced that he was in the right. Pammy had been making eyes at Halpert, and she’d been at the bar with him, and that just wasn’t right. If anything, this hangover logic was reinforced by the fact that she wasn’t there when he woke up for his 4am piss, and it was, illogical as it might seem, only strengthened by the memory of the fact that he’d headed to the bar with Halpert without her. After all, that made Halpert his guy to hang out with, so Pammy was doubly in the wrong. She shouldn’t be sniffing around any other guys, and she definitely shouldn’t be horning in on his social world.
The idea that this might be a problem in a longterm relationship occurred to him, but not because husbands and wives tended to move in the same social circles. No, when Roy was waiting for her in the living room, steaming, it was because, he snapped, he couldn’t trust her. Where the hell have you been was followed by I fucking bet and Why don’t I just call Penny. He didn’t seem deterred when she told him he could do what he wanted, because she had been at Penny’s, and the invective only escalated from there, not entirely on his side. Because Roy wasn’t interested in the traditional two-step, not this morning, not when he was so certain he bore no blame, no shred of culpability for the situation he found himself in. Groveling wouldn’t be enough; there needed to be consequences. He was quite fuzzy as to what those consequences might be, but that didn’t mean he was interested in hearing any of Pam’s ideas on the subject.
And that was why Pam found herself calling Penny again for a ride to work almost two hours late, eyes puffy and bag no more packed than she’d started with, instead of making up with Roy and going in with him. She wasn’t entirely sure whether they were broken up, but the sound of breaking pottery as she’d closed the door behind herself didn’t bode well.
She still went into work, though. She was Pam Beesly, not Bridget Jones, and her personal drama was no justification for slacking off while Dwight Schrute was still in the office. And although she wasn’t anywhere near admitting it to herself, the possibility of being cheered up by a lanky, surprisingly effective salesman was clearly also on her mind, as witnessed by the sheer disappointment that shot through her when she noticed the desk across from Dwight was empty. Where the hell was Jim?
She sat down at her desk and organized her pencils, and still no Jim. She sorted cardstock and paper stock and even the rarely-sold cardboard in the supply closet, and still no Jim. There was, to her relief, also no Michael, so she began to realize that the two of them must be out even though there was no sales call on the timesheet, but that realization did nothing to calm her nerves, especially when she saw Roy’s pickup slam into the parking lot on two wheels at about 11:45. She braced herself for feet on the stairs, only for none to materialize, and the tension began driving her mad—a fact she admitted to herself only when she voluntarily went looking for Kelly’s company in the annex.
It was there that Angela found her with a sniff to tell her that her boyfriend was bleeding in the parking lot, turned on her heel, and was gone before she could object that Roy wasn’t her boyfriend, he was her fiancé.
