Friday morning, Jim folded Roy’s clean t-shirt and put it in his bag, grateful to be ridding himself of it. For a split second, he thought about keeping it—a ransom for Roy getting to marry the girl of his dreams. But he knew the only thing of Roy’s he’d ever want wasn’t his old t-shirt, so he clenched his teeth and shoved it further down into his bag.
He nearly brought in another muffin for her that morning, but was fairly certain she had figured out his little white lie from a few days ago and he didn’t want to be too forward. His life had become a trek across a tightrope—putting one foot in front of the other and not tipping the balance. If he couldn’t have her in the capacity he truly wanted, the least he could do was try to maintain their friendship.
When he arrived at the office, Pam wasn’t at her desk. She almost always beat him into work, so her absence sparked curiosity coated in a thin layer of concern. Brow furrowed, he sat down at his desk and turned his computer on, glancing periodically toward reception. He felt the need to distract himself, so he turned to his left.
“Hey Dwight, do you smell gas?”
Dwight continued typing without looking at Jim. “It’s probably just Kevin. He’s prone to flatulation.”
Jim took a few audible sniffs and leaned into Dwight. “No, I mean gasoline. And I think…” he sniffed again. “I think it’s you.”
Scoffing, Dwight continued typing away.
“No, Dwight, I’m serious. What if...no…”
Finally Dwight looked at him. “What if what?”
“Nah, it’s dumb. But I was just thinking maybe someone broke into your house and dunked your shirt in gasoline. Then it dried and they put it back and they plan to throw a match at you to set it in flames. Steal the beet farm. Take Mose out behind the shed.”
“Stop being an idiot.”
“Here, I have a way to find out.” He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a stud finder. He had it stashed in his desk for an emergency prank he hadn’t quite thought of yet. This would do. “I have a gasoline detector.”
He moved it toward Dwight, discreetly pushing the button on the side to make it beep longer and louder as it got closer to Dwight.
Dwight’s eyes widened and then he glared at Jim. “Let me see that,” he growled, snatching it out of Jim’s hand. He pressed the button a few times then held it up to Jim. “This is a stud finder, moron,” he said, chucking it back at him.
Sometimes even the pranks where he got caught immediately were worth it for the distraction.
As he bent down to put the stud finder back in his desk, he caught sight of Pam walking briskly to her desk. She threw her purse down beside her with a *thud* and sat down on her chair with almost as much force. Jim kept one eye on her, knowing she was obviously upset at something. She didn’t even do so much as look at him, which meant he couldn’t ask her what was wrong with the simple raise of his eyebrow. Just as he was about to push himself out of his chair to make a purposeful trip to her desk disguised as a jellybean run, his office phone rang.
During the entire call, Jim kept his eyes fixed on Pam. He could see the ripple in her jaw where she seemed to be continuously clenching it and her eyebrows were permanently knitted. Before he hung up, he opened his IM chat window.
JIM9334: Hey, you okay?
Receptionitis15: Yeah.
JIM9334: Very convincing. Spill it, Beesly.
Receptionitis15: It was just a stupid fight.
Receptionitis15: With Roy.
JIM9334: ...want to talk about it? I’m almost done with this call.
Receptionitis15: Not really. I’m trying not to smash things at the moment and would rather try and forget about it right now.
He could feel her eyes on him from her desk for the first time that morning. He met them and gave her a sympathetic shrug and smile. Feeling bold, he typed a message back.
JIM9334: What about drinks after work? My treat.
Receptionitis15: I’d like that. :) Heaven knows I could use one.
JIM9334: That bad, huh?
Receptionitis15: We’re not talking about it, remember?
JIM9334: Sorry.
JIM9334: And I’m sorry you’re upset.
Receptionitis15: It’s okay. Thanks though. :)
Next to the smile, she had left one tiny little red heart emoticon. A simple gesture of thanks, he was sure, but that didn’t stop his eyes from fixating on it while his heart migrated to his throat. He wanted it to mean so much more. He wished he could send it back, but sandwich it between “I” and “you” and let her know how she truly deserved to be treated...and holy crap she had turned him into such a hopeless sap.
He made good on his promise to not bring up Roy, which included keeping his borrowed shirt in his bag the entire day. He took pride in the way he could start picking apart her seams with jokes and pranks when she was tense or upset. One thread at a time, he could see her loosen and unravel, smiling more and sitting straighter.
Jim stopped at her desk when 5:00 rolled around, “So, you still want to go get drinks? You don’t seem quite as upset, but Dwight had ‘Carry on Wayward Son’ stuck in his head the entire day and now I need a drink.”
She laughed and grabbed her purse, agreeing that they could both use it. In the elevator, they stood next to each other, their shoulders inches from each other. Jim leaned forward and pressed the button to take them to the main floor, when quietly, but deliberately, Pam started humming “Carry On Wayward Son”.
“That’s it…” Jim groaned and started pushing all the floor buttons and the “door open” button furiously. “I’m taking the stairs.”
The doors pinged open on the third floor and Jim tried to bolt, but she grabbed his wrist with both of her hands, laughing loudly. “No, I’m sorry!!” He couldn’t help laughing himself, but he was also silently savoring every moment their skin was touching. Finally, he gave in and walked back inside the elevator. He gave her a warning look.
“Better watch yourself, Beesly.”
She looked up at him apologetically, a smile still lingering on her lips. Her hands hadn’t moved from his wrist and he wondered if she could feel his pulse under her fingers the way he could feel it in his chest.
“I’m sorry. I’ll behave.”
The way she was biting her bottom lip. The way she was biting her damn bottom lip. Talk about unraveling at the seams.
Much to his dismay, she removed her hands and they exited toward the parking lot, agreeing to meet at Poor Richards.
********
“Wait, why did you have a stud finder in your desk anyway?” she laughed, biting the end of her cocktail straw in a way that elicited a few impure thoughts in Jim’s head.
He took a sip of his beer. “I had to hang some shelves one day and figured it might come in handy with Dwight, so I stashed it in my desk.” He looked straight ahead and shrugged. “Wasn’t my best work, but I’ll take it.”
He was painfully aware of how close they were sitting. Her knee was pressed against his and he briefly let his mind wander, envisioning running his hand down her thigh, leaning in close to tell her something, anything, in her ear, then moving down her jaw and getting a secondhand taste of her vodka cranberry. Instead, he gripped the bottom of his glass a little too tightly to keep his hands from roaming.
Pam’s phone began vibrating on the bar and Jim saw her shoulders deflate. She looked over to him.
“It’s Roy, I should probably…” she pointed her thumb away from the bar.
“Yeah, no, go ahead.”
He watched as she walked toward the door, putting her phone to one ear while she plugged the other with her finger. He drummed his fingers on the bar and motioned the bartender over to order another beer. As hard as he tried not to turn around, he couldn’t seem to help it. Pam was right inside the door, talking into her phone, making large, staccato gestures with her hands.
And she was mad
He turned back toward the bartender and pointed at Pam’s half-empty vodka cranberry. “Yeah, better get her another one of those too.”
After about 10 minutes, and after Jim had basically pulled a muscle from straining so hard to hear any of her conversation, Pam stomped back to the bar. Wordlessly, she grabbed Jim’s beer and chugged the remainder of it without coming up for air. She slammed the glass on the bar with an big intake of air, wiped her mouth with her sleeve, and pointed at the newly refreshed vodka cranberry.
“This mine?”
Jim, partly amused, partly stunned, could only muster a wide-eyed, “Yup,” as she threw it back in three giant gulps.
“You...want to talk about it?”
“Nope!” She called the bartender back over. “We’re doing shots.”
He couldn’t help but chuckle. “Whoa, Beesly. I know for a fact you’re a lightweight. You maybe want to take it easy?”
“Nope!” she tipped her head back, the shot glass going from full to empty in an instant.
“Listen, I don’t want to leave both our cars here. I think I’ll pass on the shots and I guess give you a ride home when you’re...done?”
“Does that mean you aren’t drinking that?” she said, gesturing to the tequila in front of him.
“Uh...all yours.”
“Thank you, kind sir,” she sang, then tossed it back.
It didn’t take long (or many more shots) before Jim could see her alcohol consumption catching up to her. Suddenly she got really quiet and stared forward, not moving except for her body slowly tipping to the left.
“Um, Pam?” he urged, entertained by the fact that she had stopped talking mid-sentence. “You in there?”
She chewed on another cocktail straw lazily for a few more seconds. Eyes still fixed ahead, she slurred out a sentence. “One time Roy broke his arm figure skating and told everyone it was from football.”
Jim let out a surprised laugh. “Wow.”
She finally turned her head toward him. “Figure skating.”
“Yeah, I heard you. That’s...something.”
“I like figure skating. We should go ice skating, you and me. You and I. Me and I. You. Whatever.”
All he could do was stare at her with wild amusement spread on his face. “Yeah. We should. Probably not tonight, though.”
She shook her head. “No. Too wobbly.”
“Yeah, too wobbly.”
The mention of Roy made Jim remember that he still had his shirt in his bag. He pulled it out and handed it to her.
“Ew,” she scoffed. “Let’s burn it.”
“Beesly!” he laughed.
“BURN IT!”
He put his finger to his lips and looked around, still laughing. “Let’s not yell about burning things in a place full of flammable liquid, okay?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re no fun.”
He had seen her drunk like this only one time before. His lips tingled remembering that night, when she had briefly kissed him after winning the Whitest Sneakers dundie. But then the moment was thrown into the void by way of the alcoholic haze she was in that night, never to be remembered or spoken of again. By her, at least. It was basically on a constant loop in his head.
He also remembered that she fell off her barstool that night, so he suggested that he take her home before she injured herself. She agreed, after one last shot, and Jim helped guide her back to his car.
*******
“Why won’t it go in?! Pfffffftttt that’s what she said.”
Pam started drunkenly snickering while fumbling around with her keys at the door to her apartment. Jim stepped in and grabbed them from her hand.
“That’s your truck key, Bees.”
She stopped laughing abruptly. “Oh.”
Jim chuckled and unlocked the door for her, pushing it open so she could walk through before him. She stumbled inside laughing to herself. “Alright, drunky, we should probably get you to bed.”
“That’s what she said,” she mumbled, letting out a little burp between “she” and “said”.
“Okay, that needs to stop.”
She plopped her hand on Jim’s shoulder and looked at him through her droopy, drunken gaze. “Don’t tell me what to do, Halpert.”
He could kiss her right now. He could kiss her and she probably wouldn’t even remember, just like last time.
But then her eyes widened and she ran into the bathroom to begin her night of regretting her choices.
Jim stood at the kitchen sink, filling up a glass of water for her. He turned off the faucet and grabbed the bottle of Advil before turning back to her bedroom. Being in the room that she shared with Roy made him feel queasy, and he tried to actively shut off the part of his imagination about what transpired in the bed he had just sat down on next to Pam. He placed the water and the Advil on her nightstand as she pulled the covers up to her chin.
“Thank you,” she whispered. Her voice was still laced with the effects of the alcohol, but the goofiness seemed to have been flushed down the toilet with the contents of her stomach.
He stared at her for several minutes, watching her eyes begin to fade as she fought off sleep, knowing he would most likely never get this chance again, just to watch her. She looked beautiful—peaceful, almost. He fought the urge to move a curl from her face.
He saw her slightly shiver and she turned to him. “Hey, could you get me a blanket out of that closet?”
As he opened the closet, his brain nearly blew a fuse. In front of him, was an incredible painting. It was abstract, but he knew without a doubt that it was the two of them, outside the office building, listening to Travis. Swaying, but apparently not dancing.
“Jim?”
He snapped out of his daze and hastily grabbed a blanket, mind still reeling. Handing the blanket out to her, he wondered if he should bring it up, say something. For the first time in three years he felt a sense of hope—that maybe she didn’t just see him as a friend. Maybe, just maybe he was something more to her.
But then he remembered she was laying in a bed she shared with another man and once again he felt out of place, disjointed, and deflated. If she felt the same about him as he did about her, why did she have that ring on her finger?
He helped her spread the blanket on top of her, suddenly anxious to leave this place he would never get to share with her. She closed her eyes and let out a sigh. Quietly, almost inaudibly, she whispered to Jim.
“Roy kissed another girl.”
Almost instantaneously, white hot rage ran through him while his stomach dropped to his feet.
“You’re kidding. Oh, Pam…”
She sniffed, obviously attempting to fend off tears, and nodded slowly. “He and Kenny were at a bar and super drunk, and a girl came onto him. He said it was just one kiss and meant nothing and nothing else happened.”
Jim clenched his jaw. “And he told you this?”
“Sort of. I heard Kenny bragging about it in the background when I talked to Roy this morning before work and I pressed him about it until he told me. Then we fought about it again tonight.”
Jim calculated how long it would take to drive to North Carolina so he could punch Roy square in the jaw. Repeatedly.
“Pam…”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Today’s theme. Jim hesitated. “Okay.”
He watched as she started to doze off. He wanted to envelope her in a hug, let her know she’s worth more, deserves more.
But she wasn’t his.
“Goodnight, Pam,” he whispered as he walked through the bedroom door.
“Jim?”
“Hmm.”
“Can you stay?”
Author's Chapter Notes:
Happy NYE, y’all! Good riddance, 2020.
Chapter title from “Til Kingdom Come” by Coldplay
Chapter title from “Til Kingdom Come” by Coldplay
Chapter End Notes:
Sorry for the cliffhanger. Sort of.
