Seriously, what the hell had gotten into Roy?

Pam wondered this more often than she liked to admit, although she usually knew the answer: alcohol, more alcohol, and buffalo wings. But today he’d been at work. She was pretty sure Darryl didn’t let them drink on company time, and even if he had, she’d mostly been around him because of the silly basketball game.

Maybe that was it. She knew Roy got competitive—she’d even warned Jim about it—and so maybe it was just that. He hated losing, and hated even more losing and feeling like he was responsible for it. If the Eagles lost, he’d sulk around but eventually cheer up. If his fantasy football team lost, he’d throw his beer can at the wall (fortunately he had learned not to throw the bottled beer, but only by experience). So maybe the trash talk and the elbow and the little digs at Jim were just that side of him coming out in public.

She didn’t like that side of him coming out in public.

She didn’t love it in private, either, but at least he didn’t have an audience. There was something about Roy with an audience that just egged him on. That was probably why he’d thrown the elbow into Jim’s face: he was just that little bit more amped up with people watching. It had made him a great high school football player. It was a little less endearing now that he was her fiancé and worked in a warehouse. And now that he was elbowing her friend in the face.

She had a sneaking suspicion that this was actually more typical for Roy than she’d like to admit. That she was getting used to excusing bad behavior and passing over minor things like trash talk and macho posturing because they were the background noise of her life with Roy. If she thought about it too much, she might be able to convince herself that the only reason she really minded it so much right now was because it had been directed at Jim, her one real friend in the office. If Roy had elbowed Michael…well, actually, if he’d elbowed Michael she’d have had to do deal with injured Michael, one of her least favorite Michaels, so she wouldn’t have been OK with it. But if he’d elbowed Kevin…she would have thought it was over the top, but she wouldn’t have cared that much, she had to admit. She certainly wouldn’t have connected it to the trash talk before the game, or the little dig after the game. She’d just have thought “that’s Roy,” apologized for him, and moved on.

Of course, she hadn’t apologized to Jim. But just as she didn’t really let herself think about how she’d have felt if it had been someone else Roy had pushed around, she didn’t consider why she’d defused Roy instead of Jim. Usually if Roy was a dick she let him be, and talked to the other person. Today she’d gone the other way, with that little comment about getting him in a tub, in order to keep him moving and get him out the door.

Now he was soaking in the tub—fortunately for her sanity right now, the tub was almost too small for him, let alone them both, so she’d been spared being asked to join him on a day she really didn’t feel like it—and she was downstairs cooking. Or rather, not cooking. She’d pulled out a pot, but then realized that she hadn’t gone grocery shopping yet this week, and Roy of course hadn’t done so, and so there was really not much left in the cupboards. She’d planned to do the shopping this afternoon, but then she had had to take care of Roy and it hadn’t actually happened. She put the pot down, then paused and put it back where it came from. She picked up the phone and put in an order for wings (Roy) and a calzone (her). They’d be there in thirty  minutes, they said, and she listened to the sound of Roy splashing upstairs and went to get her paintbrush.

In half an hour, she could probably get some watercolors done.