Things with Jim have been weird.

After he came back from New York and blew the doors of my world wide open--quite literally, when he interrupted my talking head--we went out on a dinner date that night. It was really nice to catch up with my best friend. It was nice to get to take our little night out on the beach and extend that into more, into blaming ourselves and then telling one another to stop blaming ourselves, and then circling back around to lots of giggles, a thorough debate about whether Oprah or Dwayne The Rock Johnson would make a better president, and capping the night with the best way to convince Dwight that Kevin was actually a spy from corporate and was hiding all of his mission logs in that giant jar of M&M’s. A kiss on the cheek on my doorstep. A gentle squeeze of my hand that was supposed to be reassuring, but really just made me want to drag him inside and handcuff him to my bedside table. Because that’s where things ended, really. Mainly because of Karen.

I get it. Really, I do. They're officially broken up, but he wants things to end right way. And she still works in our building, so I completely understand his want to protect her feelings rather than making things awkward. He has a big heart, Jim Halpert does.

But it doesn’t mean that I have to like it.

Instead of soaking up the bliss of finally getting to just be with him, I get to sit in my apartment while things Cool off because Karen doesn’t deserve to have our breakup aired out in front of all of our coworkers and blah blah blah blah blah. 

I get that he’s been pining for me for years now, and that if anyone is having to be patient here, it’s him, but like...I just want to be with him already. I have a conscious, and I feel for Karen, I really do, but it’s been two weeks, and my whining is not getting better. It’s getting worse. And when I woke up today--our second Saturday of being in a Relationship: Status Pending--without him in my bed or blowing up my voicemail or texting me with good morning smiley faces, I wake up stomping my feet like a three year old.

Because all of this not having Jim bullcrap has me thinking a lot about having Jim. Which means that my subconscious has been doing some pretty ridiculously unfair things as of late.

Like, for example, the dream I just woke up from, where Jim Halpert had me pinned up against my kitchen wall with his kneecap rubbing slow circles against me as he unpinned me from a pair of overalls, and then a flash-forward to the top of his head between my knees with those same overalls dangling from the leg that was hoisted over his shoulder.

Just to spite my subconscious, I dress in the very same outfit after my temper tantrum is finished. I snap the closures on my striped bodysuit, the one that I thought was super artsy when I found it at Forever 21 on a shopping trip that Kelly promised would, “Make you forget about Roy, Pam. You need to live a little!” The short overalls that I snap over the top are dotted with paint splatters, but it fits my mood today to channel my energy into something that isn’t Laying on the couch with my vibrator while wondering how much Real Life Jim will measure up to the things that Dream Jim has been doing. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. It probably isn’t healthy.

At eleven o’clock AM, I decide that a glass of wine with my painting is fine, because it’s Saturday and I am a grown ass woman who makes her own decisions. As the lines on my canvas blend together in shadows of dark blues and light browns, so too do the lines in my vision with the addition of, well, the rest of my bottle of Pinot. 

It’s a pretty little beach scene. The stars twinkle just above our shadows as we stand on the edge of the water, on the edge of our future, really. I think I’ll hang it above my sofa.

But as I fumble around my junk drawer and find two photo hangers and a hammer, I snort at the objects in my hands.

I shouldn’t be allowed to use a hammer sober. And yet, here I am, willing to sacrifice my fingers and my security deposit all so that I can have a shadow of Jim Halpert hanging above me while I watch television.

I won’t even be able to see him, for God’s sake.

Roy used to handle all of the heavy labor. I’d pick everything out at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and then he would grumble while he put it all together.

I don’t have a Roy to do this now--not that I’m complaining in the slightest. But I want shadow Jim up on the wall. At least I’ll have him somewhere in my apartment. 

I find the step ladder hidden between my washer and dryer, and manage to only stumble twice on the way to the living room. It’s the fact that I have stepped on the hammer, dropped three nails, and stubbed my big toe on the corner of the step ladder that has me fishing my cell out of my overalls pocket. 

He’s on speed dial, which is dangerous.

I’m on drunk dial, which is also dangerous, considering I’m holding the phone upside down when he answers.

“...am? Hey, are you there? Is everything okay?”

“Ha,” I snort. “Sorry. Phone was the wrong way.”

“Okay…” He trails off while I’m still laughing.

“Watcha doin’?”

“Umm...not much. Just got out of the shower. I went to the Y this afternoon to play a little pick-up.”

“Oooo. How was your shower?” 

I giggle, which is probably what confirms to Jim what he already suspected when I called him upside down.

“It was good. Pam are you...drunk?”

He sounds warm over the top of his worry, and I want to wrap him around me like a blanket even though it’s a warm June afternoon. I sit on the couch with the hammer underneath my thigh pressing cooly into my skin as I settle my eyes closed and try to picture him with his hair still damp.

“Only a little,” I brush off easily, my voice sliding into a timbre I haven’t heard since I spent those two weeks between breaking up with Roy and finding out that Jim was dating Karen trying to pick up guys at Poor Richard’s. 

“Okay. So. Can I ask why?”

He’s hesitant, and I can almost picture him walking on the eggshells of his own words, which has me giggling more because Jim has big feet, so he would definitely break the eggshells.

“Can’t a girl enjoy a glass or four of wine on a Saturday?” I try my best to not laugh. It doesn’t work too well.

“I guess she can.” 

He laughs now, and it sounds like chocolate, and I’d really like to taste it. The snaps to my bodysuit are particularly placed in this seated position, and I bite my lip as I squirm a little. 

“Hey. Do you want to help me hang up a painting?”

“What?”

My eyes pop open, needing to not get lost in the combination of Jim’s voice against my ear and the seam of my clothing rubbing against me.

“That’s why I called you. I need help hanging up a painting. Roy used to do it but--”

“I can be over in a bit.”

I can’t decide if he cut me off because I mentioned Roy, or because he just really wants to see me. I don’t really care either way, because after another sixty seconds, the call ends and Jim said he’ll be over in less than twenty minutes.

For some reason, this thought sobers me up enough to tidy my art supplies: I haphazardly fold my drop cloth, throw the dirty brushes into a suds-filled sink, and close up the caps so my expensive paints don’t dry out. I take my empty wine bottle and hide it in the recycling bin for no reason other than that I’m a little embarrassed. Jim already knows that I’m drunk, so it really doesn’t matter. 

But oddly enough, it doesn’t cross my mind to check my appearance. When the buzzer echoes loudly in my kitchen, I catch sight of myself in the hall mirror. My hair is frizzy and mussed, I have a blue smear across my cheek, and my pupils are wide. I’m futzing with my hair when he knocks, startling me into a sobering shock.

Not sober enough to hold back the gasp when I see him standing in my doorway though. He’s so freaking tall, with his shoulder dented against the wood. The ends of his hair are still damp, and I wish so badly that Karen hadn’t made him cut it, because I want to see the little flippy parts at the end in all of their curling stages.

I must look like a stunned idiot as I basically eye fuck him with my mouth open. He hangs his head, staring at the floor as he breathes out a laugh that I want to kiss off of his stupid mouth. When he rubs at the back of his neck, I’m hoping it’s to steady his hands from touching me like I know he wants to.

Goddamnit, Karen Filippeli.

I shove my hands into my pockets instead of weaving them through his hair and invite him in with wide eyes and the cock of my head. His cheeks are red, and his hands are still fidgeting.

“So, Beesly. Drunk arts and crafts on a Saturday afternoon? You should patent that. It sounds like something women would go bonkers for.”

“Hmm, maybe I will,” I ponder, more to have something to do with my mouth that isn’t attacking his face or the smooth column of his throat.

He is in my space for the first time, because I met him outside the night of our date, and he dropped me outside after the kiss on the cheek that fueled my dreams way more than a simple cheek peck really should have. He takes up so much of it, too. He’s tall, and his shoulders are broad in his plain black t-shirt. When he drags his fingers behind his neck again, I can see his muscles pull the cotton fabric, and I have to bite my lip, because he’s in my kitchen, and at least four of my fantasies and two of my recent dreams have taken place on several of these surfaces.

He asks where my painting is, and I lead him to the living room where he smirks as he picks up the hammer and nails.

“I don’t think I’d trust you with this stuff sober,” he admits in this charming way that almost sounds like a come-on that I have to shake away. 

It takes him all of two minutes to push the step ladder away and tack two nails into my wall and balance the canvas atop them. In those two minutes, I have memorized the lines on his hands as well as the lines of concentration between his eyebrows. I wonder if those same lines show up when he’s going dow--

“Is this us?”

He’s standing in front of my painting, his eyes stoic in the most handsome and heartbreaking way that almost makes me cry, because he’s tracing his fingers softly over our bodies and I have to close my eyes while he does it.

“Mhm,” is all I can manage, nodding my head probably way too many times as I clasp my hands together and twist them around. Now I’m embarrassed. He’s still looking at the painting and not saying anything.

“I wanted to remember the moment that we...you know...finally started being honest with each other again. I thought it was important.”

I’m showing way too much of my sadness now, because my lip is stuck out into a pout, and my eyes are glassy. I just want him to be mine. I don’t want to go back to the time in the painting, where he was still Karen and my heart was still broken. I know that he never really stopped loving me. But the fact that I can’t love him back right now is breaking my heart almost as much as the look on his face when he finally moves his eyes from my newly adorned wall.

His fingers burn my skin when he tucks them under my chin so that I can look into his eyes.

“Hey.” It’s so soft and quiet that I whimper. “The paperwork went through. Karen will be out of the office on Tuesday afternoon.”

This is news to me, and I’m almost furious that he didn’t share earlier when he says, “She called me this morning to tell me. Among a few other choice things... I was actually going to call you when my phone rang. You have impeccable timing.”

The smile on his face is a little bit wistful and a little bit sly, so when I bite my lip this time, it’s to stop me from grinning like a massive fool.

I close my eyes and push a breath through my nostrils.

“I get it, Jim. I know that you want to respect Karen. It just sucks having to wait.”

His eyebrows tent as he grins like a goof.

“You aren’t the only one that thinks it sucks,” he says matter-of-factly. “You don’t think I spend every night wishing I was with you?”

He shakes his head as if I should have known this information already. I mean, I suspected, but I didn’t want to get ahead of myself. I shrug.

“Pam, like 98% of my reasoning for playing basketball today was so that I wouldn’t sit at home thinking about you.”

“Oh.”

It’s so quiet, I barely feel the syllable roll off my own tongue. But I do register him moving closer to me, and I know that the room is brighter because my eyes are widening.

The look in his eyes has gone from wistful to dangerous; the way he’s licking his lips is the ignition to my flame. My palm is flat against his chest as I guide him around the corner, back into the kitchen where his back hits the wall and his head thumps at the same moment that his lips part and his eyes close.

I stretch my fingers over his chest, memorizing the feel of his breath coming in hot pants on my forehead.

“You know…” I start, wetting my lips before I finally look him in the eye. “This top is a bodysuit.”

It’s really the stupidest thing I can think of, but when he’s saying, “What does that mean?” and his eyebrow is quirked in sexy inquisition, I just let the stupid continue to fly.

With one hand, I unhook the strap of my overalls, and with the other, and take his hand in mine and guide it through the front until his fingers are pressing to the snaps that are secured against my aching skin. I push the backs of his fingers and hold them there, quirking my own eyebrow in challenge.

I watch his chest bow with a sharp intake of breath as his eyes flutter closed and his fingers press against me.

“Jesus, Pam, this thing is...soaked. Are you...you’re not wearing anything under here, are you?” he breathes as he rubs the sodden material a few times between his fingers before resuming the too-gentle pressure.

The pressing is enough to move the snaps just so against me, but it really isn’t enough. I look him dead in the eyes as I breathe, “Nope. Didn't think it was necessary,” close enough to paint the skin of his neck, and suddenly our positions are switched.

He keeps his fingers pressed against me as he flips me so that my back is against the wall, and I let out a gasp at the contact of his fingers still against me and my back hitting the kitchen wall and his breath hot and ragged against my cheek.

“Does this have snaps?” he asks, as his nose paints my cheek and I start to slide down the wall towards his touch. My fingers have moved to grip his wrist as he runs the pads of his fingers along the three metal snaps to answer his own question.

“For the love of God, undo them,” I breathe against his neck.

Instead of complying, he presses his thumb against each of the three, testing its position and my reaction, because now I have no control over the way that I’m sinking down and pushing against his fingers and whining when he is so fucking close to my clit that I want to cry.

“I didn’t know you were so demanding. I kind of like it.”

He is towering over me, his eyes menacing in the best way as his fingers slide under the first button. When the snap releases, his pointer finger immediately slides against my outer lip that he’s just exposed.

“Jeeeeeesus.”

His forehead hits mine and he shakes his head against me, letting his finger paint against my skin.

“You are fucking dripping.”

He isn’t wrong, and I can’t say that I wasn’t thinking about him the entire time I was painting, which is more than likely the cause. 

I moan, biting the inside of my lip as my eyes flutter closed. He undoes the snap on the other end, leaving only the one in the middle still secured as his first two fingers paint identical paths back and forth on the lips of my pussy. I can’t say that the gasp in my throat is at all feminine, but it does something to him, because all of a sudden his lips are wet against my ear.

“Why are you so soaked, Beesly?”

His tongue barely touches my skin as he utters my nickname, and I momentarily realize that he hasn’t kissed me yet.

“What have you been thinking about today to get you this worked up?”

His fingers continue their tantalizing back and forth, and I feel my eyes roll back under my drooping lids as I dig my fingernails into his wrist. My other hand is clutching the skin of his t-shirt in an attempt to keep him as close as possible.

“You. With your mouth on my pussy. And your tongue in me.”

It’s enough, apparently, to shift his touch to the middle clasp, and as soon as he rubs it against my clit, I fear I’ll end this moment right now.

“Oh, fuck yes,” hits the ceiling because I throw my head back as I sink down onto him. 

“This is what you’ve been thinking about all day?” he continues with his nose skirting behind my ear. “My hands on you like this? Thinking about me made your panties all wet?”

“Bodysuit,” I manage to choke out, and he actually stills his fingers to chuckle this thick, sexy sound that I want to suck right off his tongue.

“Huh. Right. Bodysuit. It has snaps.” As if to emphasize that, he flutters the tip of his finger against the still closed snap and pulls forward to look at me.

“One left,” I manage, my eyes clouded over with a later of foggy lust as I squeeze his wrist for emphasis.

As soon as I do, he pulls both of our arms out of my overalls and pins my hand above my head. We are nose to nose as he does a bait and switch. When his left hand pulls the snap apart and slides along my slit, I cry out in pure bliss because Dream Jim didn’t feel a damn thing as good as Real Life Jim is making me feel right now. 

His first two fingers are quickly slipping inside of me, and I really can’t tell whose moans are more desperate as his body weight is leaning against me, as if he now needs to be held up.

“I can’t believe you’ve been thinking about this all day,” he says against my lips. “I’ve been thinking about this all day. About how you’d feel. How you’d taste on my tongue.”

Finally, fucking finally, his tongue snakes between us against my parted lips, and mine darts out of its own accord to meet his as his fingers continue to pump steadily in and out of me.

“I had to go to the gym because I wasn’t sure that touching myself while thinking about you all day was a respectable way to spend my Saturday.”

The thought of his hand wrapped around his cock while he pictured me behind closed eyes causes my body to bow into his touch as his lips resume their exploration of mine. When he leans against me, I can feel him rock hard against my thigh. I picture myself sliding down the wall and kissing the denim that has his cock trapped, but I’m currently being held up by two plunging fingers, and my body would no doubt protest if I tried to move in any direction that wasn’t towards him.

When I try to push my free hand between us, because I want to fucking touch him, he shakes his hand, mutters, “Uh uh,” and now both of my wrists are trapped between his one large hand while the other fills me way too well.

When he pulls his fingers out of me, I jut my hips towards him. At the same time, his fingers, that are dripping with me, sneak between his lips. His eyes roll back as he sucks my juices off of his fingers, and he moans at the same time that he presses his erection against my hip.

“I had a dream like this the other night,” he confesses, stroking my cheek with the back of his fingertips; we are nose to nose again, and I can see the desire blown in his eyes. I’m so transfixed that I don’t even notice that he’s undone the clasps on my overalls until the thud of the buckles hits the floor.

“Can I…”

He’s on his knees lifting one of my legs out, peering up at me as I nod my head and lick my lips. He pushes my thigh up onto his shoulder with the rest of my leg thudding against his back and uses his thumbs to spread me wide open before his tongue touches my clit and my entire world goes black.

All of my senses are focused in on wherever his tongue travels. He’s licking insistently from the start, exploring up and down my slit, barely dipping inside as if he’s sampling every part of me before he decides what he wants the most.

When he touches my clit, my hands fall to the top of his head and grip the hair that’s too short for this activity, and I suddenly have one more reason to be annoyed with Karen Filippeli.

“Oh my god,” I cry as he starts flicking more rapidly. “Right there, fuck.”

“You like that?” he grins against me, and I grunt in protest, slipping a little further down the wall. It opens me wider to him as my thigh goes higher above my center, and his tongue is working quickly back and forth as his thumbs pinch and pull against my lips.

“God, you taste so fucking good, Pam,” he moans against me. “So, so good.”

And then, his tongue plunges inside me, all the way without warning. My hand fists the back of his head and pushes a little less than gently, and I think he says something along the lines of, “That’s it, baby, hold me right here” as his tongue fucks in and out of me while his lips suction around the rest of me.

I rock unabashedly against his face as his hands move to hold my hips, helping to control my motions as his tongue moves to lightly circle my entrance instead.

“I wanna make you come,” he breathes, his voice raw around the edges in a way that makes me groan. “I want you to come all over my tongue, Pam.” 

“Yes, god, please.” 

I’m whining, but I don’t think he minds.

“Do you want my mouth or my hands?” he asks, as if it really makes a difference. He ducks his head to pucker his lips around my clit, and I squeal then, grabbing his hand from where it rests on my hips.

“Both. Fuck, Jim, I’m so close.”

His fingers sink back into me, stretching the skin to capacity as he twists inside me, rubs against the front wall, and sucks my clit between his lips.

“Gah! Fuck,” I yell, pumping my hips against his lips, meeting him thrust for thrust as he moans against my clit and I explode around his fingers.

I’m sinking, sliding further down the wall, but he holds me up, because apparently he isn’t finished with me. He laps at my pussy, drinking me up like he’s licking me clean. Finally, I fall against his knees, my entire body spent and only being held up by him, which is an incredible metaphor for my entire life. 

I feel his cock hard under my thigh, and as soon as I can feel anything that isn’t my skin tingling, I’m going to return the favor.

But suddenly, his forehead is pressing into mine, our noses squished in the middle. I can smell me on his tongue, and the taste is there as soon as he pushes our lips together chastely. I slip my tongue past my lips but to no avail, because he’s pulling away. And that makes no sense.

He tucks my errant hair behind my ears and strokes my cheeks again with the backs of his fingertips. I think I’m becoming addicted to that touch. It’s gone too soon because he’s standing; his erection is clearly straining against his jeans as the last of his touch finally leaves my body cold and somehow still throbbing.

He smiles that Jim smile, the one that’s up the side of his face. Like he hadn’t just ruined me against my own damn kitchen wall.

I can’t form words at the moment, so the tenting of my eyebrows will have to do. 

All he says in response is, “God, Beesly, I can’t wait for Tuesday.”

And then he’s out the door, leaving me in the middle of my kitchen floor in an unclasped bodysuit.