Pam slumped onto her elbows on the counter at the coffee shop where she worked. Blowing a stray strand of hair from her face, she flipped over the order pad in front of her and began mindlessly doodling. It had been an abnormally slow day at work. She had already cleaned the machines, the tables, the floor, and organized all the fridges and cupboards. She was just waiting for the bell on the door to signal a customer or for 3:00 to roll around so she could go home. She used to welcome the slow quietness. Now it just opened up her mind and brought thoughts of airports and gift shops and deep green eyes that actually saw her.
When she first got home from Denver earlier that week, she was able to keep busy enough to keep her mind off of the airport, for the most part. It felt like nothing short of a fever dream whenever she allowed herself to recall that day–how everything seemed straight out of one of her favorite rom-coms, right down to the minor detail about how she was engaged to someone else.
And had been engaged for three years.
In fact, that's how long she had worked at the coffee shop. Initially she got the job to earn a little extra money for the wedding. She was already working for Michael’s pet insurance company, but she had only sold policies for a turtle and a gecko in six months and quite honestly, knew the company probably wasn’t going to last long anyway. And she was right. After Michael’s company went under, she got another job as a receptionist at a printer sales company, but their branch ended up closing three months after she was hired. But not before she was able to introduce Michael to her HR representative, Holly.
After that, she picked up as many extra hours as she could at the coffee shop, but it didn't leave much room for saving. She told herself (and her fiance Roy told her too) that this was the reason for such a long engagement. But in the back of her mind, there was a nagging thought that if he (they, she told herself. They.) really wanted to get married, they would find a way.
The bell on the door rang, snapping her out of her thoughts.
****
"Yeah, Mom," Jim said into the phone as he brought a t-shirt to his nose, sniffed, and threw it into a duffle bag on his bed with a shrug. "I realize it's been a while since I've been home. That's why I'm taking the day off and coming down this weekend."
That was mostly true. Okay, only partly true. He had been meaning to visit his parents for the past few months but now there was a chance of potentially, maybe, possibly running into someone else in Scranton. He ended the call with his mom and habitually opened up Facebook. He tapped the search bar and as he did, a list of names he had previously searched dropped down. His thumb hovered over the name at the top.
Pam Beesly.
He had opened her profile no less than 30 times in the last six hours. Maybe it was to remind himself that he didn't make her up. In any case, he clicked on her profile picture–a photo of Pam and a girl he would bet money was her sister–and swiped through each one. Just like every other time he had done this, he stopped on the fourth picture in. He sat down and examined it, even though it made his stomach clench. It was Pam standing next to a man, probably about his height but much huskier. Her left hand was out, flashing a diamond ring to whoever was behind the camera.
He swiped back through the previous pictures. No wedding dress. He backed out and looked at her profile. "Engaged"
So, he thought, even though that picture was taken three years ago, it didn't appear she had gotten married. But he also knew for sure that the man he saw her with at the airport was the same one in the picture and it *definitely* wasn't her brother. He began scrolling again, when he was suddenly startled by the buzz of the dryer, making him nearly drop his phone. That was enough Facebook stalking for the day.
He tucked his phone in his pocket and zipped up his duffle bag. It felt wrong to message her if she was engaged, so he hadn't. But what if he happened upon her at the grocery store? No harm in that.
As he crossed the city lines into Scranton, a sudden nervous energy began humming through him. He began wondering if every car he passed could be hers. He understood that Scranton wasn't a tiny city but it also wasn't like New York. The chances of randomly coming across her here might be fairly slim, but they definitely weren't zero. And after all, he ended up on the same flight as her, who was to say he couldn't run into her on the streets of Scranton too?
He pulled into the driveway of his childhood home and turned off the engine of his car. A tiny wave of embarrassment came over him. Had he really driven all this way, fueled by the idea that he might randomly run into her? Then what? She was engaged, as far as he could tell. Was he supposed to swoop in and whisk her away from a relationship she had obviously been in for years? And that was only assuming he even found her. He didn't know where she lived, or worked, or hung out. All he had was her name and the absolute inability to stop thinking about her.
He sighed. Regardless, he owed his mom a visit, so he told himself he would at least stay the weekend.
****
Pam walked through the front door of her apartment, slipped off her shoes by the door, and flung her purse on the couch. Fridays used to be her favorite day but after working in the service industry, the luster of weekends had worn off. She still had to work the following two days. She checked her watch. 3:30. That meant she had roughly an hour until Roy was home from work. Until then, she had complete control of the TV, as well as the music she blasted while she cleaned, or painted, or just did…nothing.
It dawned on her that she was relishing the minutes she had alone rather than counting down the minutes until she got to see her fiance. But maybe that's just how it was when you had been together as long as they had been. Though, truthfully, that thought wasn't entirely comforting either.
She sat on the couch and tucked her legs up under her, grabbing the remote. After scrolling through Netflix for a few minutes, she sighed and switched off the TV. The apartment was clean for once, so there was nothing to do there. Painting, or even sketching for that matter, lacked its normal appeal as of late. So, she picked up her phone. She opened Facebook, clicked on her notifications, and furrowed her brow.
Jim Halpert liked your profile picture
Who was…
Then her heart skipped. It couldn't possibly be. She quickly tapped on his name and staring back at her was Jim. Denver Airport, Knock-Her-to-the-Floor, Gift Shop Jim. She brought her other hand to her mouth and looked around her apartment as if there was someone else there to marvel with her. She brought the phone closer to her face and zoomed in on his profile picture, trying desperately to quell the fluttering in her stomach but it was hopeless.
It was him. He had found her. He wanted to find her.
The night she had gotten home from her trip to Denver she had typed "Jim New York City" into Facebook, but obviously didn't get very far. She had instantly felt guilty as well, searching for him while she laid next to Roy. So from then on, she had refused to let herself try to find him and confined herself only to the thoughts of him that creeped in when she let her guard down. She assumed he was probably doing the same. Until now.
But why only the one single like on a picture from three years ago? He hadn’t messaged her (she checked) and it was just that one profile picture he had liked. Her mind was reeling. It wasn’t until she heard the door open that she realized she had been looking through Jim’s profile and pacing for the last 45 minutes and now Roy was home. She quickly turned off her phone and put on a smile.
“Roy! Hi!” she said with far too much forced enthusiasm. “How was work?”
“Same old,” he droned. He didn’t ask about her day. “Hey, is it cool if I play poker with the guys tonight?”
She frowned. “We were supposed to be going to dinner with my parents.”
He subtly rolled his eyes, but she caught it. “Can we just…cancel? This one time?”
It wasn’t “this one time.” It was the third time in four months.
“Roy…”
“C’mon, babe. They just grill us every time about setting a wedding date. I already told Darryl I could go.”
“And I already told my parents to make the reservation. Last week.” For whatever reason, she felt a surge of courage. “And what if we actually set a wedding date? Would that be so bad?”
He grumbled and rubbed his hands over his face. “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
“You never do,” she muttered, causing him to stop and look at her.
“What?”
She knew Roy would never hurt her, but she absolutely hated when he got angry. “Forget it,” she spat. “Go play poker.”
He breezed past her without a word and headed to their bedroom. Pam folded her arms tightly to her chest which was now filled with frustration. She pulled her phone out of her pocket to call her mom, trying to think of what excuse she would give her this time. When she unlocked the screen, Jim’s Facebook profile was still pulled up. Her eyes lingered on his picture one last time before exiting out of the app.
And for the first time in three years, she admitted to herself that she wished things were different.
****
“You really don’t have to come with me,” Betsy Halpert said as she sat at the kitchen table, jotting down a grocery list. “I’m sure you have better things to do with your afternoon!”
Jim scoffed playfully, taking a bite of a carrot. “Better things than hanging out with my beautiful mother at the grocery store? Never.”
She gave him a squinted smirk. “I don’t think you’ve gone grocery shopping with me since you were 12.”
“Listen, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you. Can’t a guy want to spend time with his mom?”
“Are you going to tell me what happened with Karen?” she asked, not looking up from her list.
“Okay, maybe I do have better things to do.”
Betsy chuckled. “You don’t have to tell me. It just seems so…sudden. I want to make sure you’re okay.”
Jim sighed. “I’ll promise to fill you in if you promise to buy a carton of rocky road. Deal?”
“Deal,” she smiled back.
Truthfully, he did want to spend time with his mom. His brothers always gave him crap growing up for being such a mama’s boy, but nobody had ever had his back the way Betsy did. But even more truthfully, he was looking for any excuse to go places around town on the off chance he ran into Pam. Realistically, he knew he could probably find out where she lived with a quick Google search but even that felt too forward. So he made the decision to come to Scranton for the weekend and let fate, whether he believed in it or not, take the lead.
He pushed the shopping cart for his mom as she pulled items off the shelf and marked them off her list. Jim glanced at the woman at the end of the aisle. Hair was too straight. The next woman was too tall. Then too blonde. He wished he could stop thinking she would be around every corner.
"So," Betsy said after setting two cans of black beans in the cart. "Karen."
He let out a big breath. "Karen."
She stopped walking and looked at him with the sincerity and empathy only a mother could have. "Are you okay?"
He gave a half smile and nodded. "Yeah, it was time."
They continued walking while Jim tried not to swivel his head every direction looking for someone who was most likely not there.
"You know," Betsy said. "Karen was a lovely girl. I really liked her a lot."
Jim felt a twinge of sadness realizing the breakup might have disappointed his mom, even though he knew it was best for him. She continued.
"But she wasn't the best for you, sweetheart."
"What–"
She cut him off. "Moms always know."
"I was with her for two years and you're telling me this now?"
"You're a grown man, son. Despite the fact that you just put Fruity Pebbles and grape soda in my shopping cart. You can make your own decisions, even if they will give you diabetes."
He laughed, but his thoughts immediately went back to the airplane when Pam teased him about his drink of choice. What would his mom think of her?
"All I'm saying is that toward the end of your relationship with her, it felt like you were always holding your breath around her."
It struck him how true that was. Maybe moms really did always know these things. "Yeah," he agreed. "I think we…I…figured out we weren't perfectly suited for each other anymore."
She smiled at him. "So, is there someone else?"
The question took him by surprise.
"No…" He didn't mean for it to sound like a question.
"If I buy you rocky road AND cookie dough, will you tell me?"
He hung his head with a laugh. "Moms really do know everything, don't they?"
She patted him on the back. "And don't you forget it."
Jim and Betsy sat at the kitchen table together, each of them dipping spoons into bowls of rocky road and cookie dough ice cream.
"Your father and I are heading to dinner in an hour, so I shouldn't be eating this but…"
"But it's so good."
"It really is," she laughed, taking another bite. "So tell me about this girl."
"Hmm," Jim mumbled through chocolate and marshmallow. "I feel like I may have given you the wrong impression. There is kind of a girl but it's…complicated. And won't ever happen."
She kept her eyes on him, waiting for more. When he didn't elaborate further she tapped the edge of his bowl with her spoon. "Don't make me get you another scoop."
Jim chuckled and shrugged. "I met her at the Denver Airport, okay? And we spent a few hours together and she was…" he couldn't help but smile. "Mom, she was funny, and kind, and beautiful, and…"
"And…?"
"Engaged."
"James Duncan Halpert," she scolded. "If you did something with an engaged woman while also in a relationship with Karen, I–"
"Mom, relax! Nothing happened."
Betsy's shoulders loosened. She looked across the table at her son, the smile still playing on his lips and he was obviously still replaying his day with this mystery woman. "Alright." She dropped another scoop of cookie dough ice cream in his bowl. "Start from the beginning."
*****
Pam picked at the garlic bread on her plate, trying to fake an appetite. Her parents sat across from her, equally as silent as they ate their food. She had made a last-minute decision not to cover for Roy when her parents had asked where he was after she had shown up unaccompanied at the restaurant. Honestly, she had grown so tired of making excuses for Roy, so she told them exactly where he was. Helene Beesly, who had known Roy since he was 16, was obviously unimpressed with the information, but Pam was too frustrated to care.
Normally, Pam would brush it off. She would enjoy dinner with her parents, go to bed early, and by the time morning rolled around she would convince herself it wasn’t a big deal. But for the last week, every little (or big) thing Roy did seemed to snowball. She couldn’t convince herself to let anything go, and now it was as if she was staring at a giant display of all of Roy’s shortcomings.
Pam and Roy had been high school sweethearts. It was the classic story of the jock falling for the quiet artsy girl. She wore his football jersey at school on game days and he hung her picture on his locker door. He wasn’t always the perfect boyfriend, but he tried. For every time he messed up, he made sure to sincerely make up for it afterward. But gradually, after being together for a few years, he began to ask for forgiveness less often and rather just expect it instead. But he was all she had known. There was comfort in familiarity and she wasn’t sure she knew how to be anything other than “Roy and Pam”. Their lives and histories were so intertwined. Their parents cruised together and his nephews all referred to her as Auntie Pam. They shared an apartment, a car. She could read his mood and calculate his actions without a thought. It was hard to imagine a life different from the life she was living.
Until now, that was. Now she couldn’t stop imagining it. And it scared her.
The Beeslys finished their meals (or at least tried to finish them), gathered their things, and walked to the front of the restaurant. Before getting too far, Pam realized she had left her to-go box of leftovers on the table. She knew Roy would be hungry at whatever ungodly hour he got home that night, so she said goodbye to her parents and went back to the table. As she passed back through the lobby of the restaurant, she caught sight of a woman sitting on a bench. Something about the woman caused Pam’s gaze to linger. There was something so familiar about her. She wondered if it was an old teacher, or maybe she was a regular at the coffee shop. It wasn’t until the woman met her eye and gave her a warm smile that it struck her. Her eyes were the perfect shade of green and Pam had pictured that smile regularly for the past week.
She looked just like Jim.
The resemblance was unmistakable. Pam’s pulse quickened as she frantically tried to talk herself out of the thought. There’s no way it was his mom. It would be too much of a coincidence. Her mind was playing cruel tricks on her now and she really just needed to go home and get a good night’s rest.
But as she opened the door and felt the crisp Pennsylvania air hit her, four words from the hostess stopped her dead in her tracks.
“Halpert, party of two!”
Her head whipped backward and she saw the woman and her husband stand and follow their waiter into the restaurant. She felt a chill run from her toes to her scalp and it wasn’t because of the below freezing temperatures outside. She felt like her heart was going to beat straight out of her chest as she watched them walk away. Those were his parents. She was feet away from Jim’s parents and she had no idea what to do next.
She had to talk to them. Fate brought her this far and now she had to do the rest. But just as she was about to follow them, her phone rang. Normally she would have ignored it, but she figured she could use the phone call to stall and work up the courage to actually talk to Jim’s parents.
“Hello?”
An automated voice was on the other end of the line.
“Hello. This is a collect call from the Scranton Police Department on behalf of the inmate Roy Anderson. Do you wish to accept the call?”
Author's Chapter Notes:
Finally found the motivation to come back to this lil guy. Hopefully the next chapters aren't too far behind. Thanks for sticking with me!
Chapter End Notes:
Okay bye!
