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Author's Chapter Notes:
Pam triages art.

Step one-C-little-Roman-numeral-iii was finished: that is to say, Pam had repainted her walls.

All right, technically it was Step one-C-little-Roman-numeral-iv, because step one-C-little-Roman-numeral-iii had been finding the spackle her dad had stored in the garage for some reason all his own and fixing all the little holes in her walls. But whatever number it had received, it was done.

She’d spent the night in Penny’s bed (her sister having cheerfully texted her permission because she wasn’t coming home anyway, something about a concert down in Philadelphia—Pam was doing her best not to concentrate on the fact that her little sister was much cooler and more put together than her, which should not have been simultaneously possible) and now she was finally on to step actual two.

Figure out what the hell she was going to put on the newly repainted walls.

She toyed for a moment with not putting anything up at all, and just basking in the fact that she had actually painted her walls herself this time around. That lasted long enough for her to sit on her bed and stare at the blank walls for five minutes while trying to pretend she wasn’t depressed by them. Then she moved on.

No, she needed real things on the walls. She wasn’t going to go whole hogwild here—she’d taken the point that if she wanted to move forward and back out of her parents’ place, she couldn’t have invested too much in decorating what would no longer be her space again—but she did need it to feel like her space and not a slightly-too-personalized hotel room or a terrifying miasma of past memories.

So.

Step two-A was to go through all the stuff that had been on the walls, currently piled up in the hallway, and figure out what to keep. Which things did she actually still want on her walls? Which things didn’t belong on the wall anymore but were worth saving? Which things weren’t even worth saving, despite the fact that until yesterday she’d been perfectly willing to let them continue to occupy valuable real estate on her walls and in her head?

The things she’d only acquired because of Roy went in the last category: the poster for Wrestlemania that he’d given her when she’d said she liked Hulk Hogan’s sense of style in yellow, which she’d put up because he’d asked where it was one time even though he’d actually gone to it and she hadn’t been able to; the tickets to their prom that she’d had framed for him and had somehow ended up in her room instead of his; the sketch she’d put up because it was the first one he’d ever complimented unprompted (even if the compliment was just ‘hey, whatchya doing? Looking good, Beesly, now, are you going to go to Jimmie’s with me or not?’).

Yeah, she’d considered whether it was good enough to keep anyway and…no. Roy’s taste had been terrible in everything, except for her.

That was what she kept telling herself anyway, because she knew it was true in everything else.

He’d even liked Natty Bo more than Yuengling.

Anyway.

The insipid painting of a sunset went away, just like the others.

She did keep some things she’d done because of Roy, including the watercolor of his childhood home, which she’d caught at the golden hour and looked breathtaking, if she did say so herself. She was intensely grateful she’d been in a phase when she’d painted it when she’d been incredibly insecure about her figure painting, especially feet, so she hadn’t actually included Roy or his family. And she’d actually gotten a little carried away and added a terrace to the second floor because she thought it looked pretty, which was why she hadn’t ever given it to Roy. As a result, it didn’t look exactly like his family house, and it didn’t have him in it, and she was proud of it. So it stayed.

Also staying was their class photo from high school. Yes, if you squinted you could see Roy with his arm around her, and that wasn’t the best thing to wake up to in the world, but she had other friends back then, and she liked remembering them.

Besides, this was her childhood bedroom. It deserved to keep some childhood memories on the walls.

But most of the stuff went out, and only a little of it went in the pile to store.

Which left her a gigantic amount of white space to fill—even if her graphic design profs had insisted that you needed some white space to make contrast, she felt this was a bit too much—and not nearly enough stuff to fill it.

Which led to step two-B: if you don’t have the art, make it.

For this, though, she was going to need something to fortify herself.

Maybe some tea.

And maybe not at home.

Chapter End Notes:
And back to the coffeeshop next chapter! Thanks for reading!

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