Stockings full of coal

A few days before the Christmas party of 2005, a conversation with Pam somehow came around to a mention of Katy, and Pam didn’t so much ask, but the question was written all over her face.

“Oh, yeah, no, um… that just – that hasn’t really been happening lately. Uh, for a while. I don’t know, it just… fizzled, you know?”

“Right, yeah, I know. That happens sometimes, I guess.” Pam’s response was just as awkward as his explanation, and she quickly turned the conversation towards the topic of pros and cons of sticky tack versus double sided tape as a means of sticking all of the paperwork from Dwight’s desk to the wall.

It had clearly been the worst timing, ever, for that conversation – the Katy conversation, not the Dwight conversation – because apparently while the ‘fizzling’ had been obvious from Jim’s perspective, Katy hadn’t quite picked up on it, and a package arrived with his name on it a mere hour after he talked to Pam.

The card was one of those little ones that you just stick on and don’t close, so even though Pam wasn’t actively trying to invade his privacy, the little note of Merry Christmas, Love, Katy, was hard to miss when she was signing for it.

When he took it from her, he tried to explain, but he didn’t know exactly what he was explaining, and all that came out was, “Look, um, you know, this isn’t… what I said earlier…” before she cut him off with an equally awkward, “No, don’t… you don’t have to, um,” accompanied by a shrug and a shake of her head and a look that was a cross between a cringe and her smokescreen “everything is cool here” face.

She walked back to her desk and he wanted to follow her, to really explain, but he thought it would look even worse if he were obviously trying to cover this up when he technically had no reason to explain to the girl who was just his friend why he was receiving a gift from the girl he was maybe kind of seeing. He just couldn’t stand the thought that she would think that he’d been lying before, because what message would that be sending? I’m covering up the fact that I’m seeing someone because I’m so full of myself that I think you’d get jealous and I want to ‘protect’ you. Or maybe, I want to appear available if there’s even the slightest chance you’ll look my way, even though I’m technically still seeing this other girl, but hey, I can juggle! Obviously, he didn’t think Pam would really think he meant either of those things, but right now, he didn’t have the slightest clue what she was thinking.

In the end, he did nothing at all, and simply proceeded with opening his gift in awkward silence under Pam’s watchful, curious gaze. It was a designer shirt that was more suited to Brad Pitt than Jim Halpert, that he would never, ever choose to wear on his own.

But he had to call her to thank her, and in doing so wound up agreeing to see her that night. And now he had to find a gift for Katy before he saw her that evening. And he had to wear the shirt when he saw her too.

…and Pam thought he was a liar. Wonderful.

Stockings full of goodies

One year, Michael had gone a little crazy with the Christmas decorations – there was holly and tinsel everywhere, and they were up as early as Thanksgiving, but it really was having the desired effect of putting them all into the Christmas spirit, no matter how much they tried to remain immune.

He was in the kitchen talking to Pam about… well, honestly, he couldn’t remember even thirty seconds later what he’d been talking about, but he remembered thinking that it actually wasn’t particularly funny when she turned to him in the middle of his sentence and giggled.

She stepped towards him, so close he inhaled sharply, and then stopped breathing altogether when she placed her hands on both his shoulders and leaned up to press her lips gently to his left cheek. The whole motion had to have taken barely a second, but Jim felt as if the moment passed by in slow motion until she stepped back with a bright smile and his lungs seemed to remember how to push air in and out again.

“Mistletoe,” she explained, still grinning, and pointed to the foliage hanging above his head before practically skipping out of the kitchen and back towards reception.

Jim was tingling down to his toes for the entire remainder of his day and didn’t make a single sale.