I. I sat beside you and became myself.
It takes her three more months before she can say it out loud. When she does, they’re in his kitchen and the sun is setting early because it’s winter and for a minute he’s focused on the way the pinkish orange sun looks behind bare branches. She’s standing behind him and then she comes up and puts a hand between his shoulder blades and says it without looking at him. “I love you.” And he closes his eyes and feels her face where her hand was.
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II. Glad that you can forgive, only hoping as time goes you can forget.
She apologizes. Again. Over the phone. Her voice thin like wisps of smoke hanging in the air. This is the twenty-third apology. The eleventh done over the phone. The third to start with his name drawn out long and low, “Roy.” But the first that he’s heard someone else in the background. His fingers turn cold around the phone and he says, “Is, uh, is he there? With you? Right now?”
There’s a breath and then, “Yeah.”
“Oh.”
He laughs because ten years have turned into single syllables over the phone. And he doesn’t really know who she is anymore. Who he is, really. He isn’t sure what any of this actually is now. He just knows that he sleeps alone and wakes up alone and drives to work alone and has to make his own breakfast and has to wash his own clothes.
Sometimes he just stops, freezes, because he doesn’t know how to do anything without her.
“Don’t- I mean- God, Roy, this wasn’t because of-”
Yeah, yeah. No. “I know.” It wasn’t because she’s been in love with someone else for, Christ, years now. All three of those years that she’s been working there. It wasn’t because he’s so goddamn tall and smiles at her all the time and talks to her about whatever it is she likes to talk to him about. None of that had any role in this.
“It just wasn’t right.”
And- Fuck. He doesn’t know what that means. And it hurts and he thinks that if it was so wrong, then why does he feel like he’s going to die any day now? Why is it so hard to even get out of bed anymore?
“Yeah, okay. I just- Pam.” He’s wasted her life. Neglected her. Suppressed her. He’s been nothing but horrible to her. He was so, so, so wrong for her. Such a horrible match for her. It didn’t make sense. She shouldn’t have stayed with him for so long. That’s what her apology is saying to him. That all of this has been such a huge waste of her time and energy and love and now she’s starting over. A new life. A better life.
“It’s hard for me, too, you know? It’s not easy to just let ten years go. But you have to believe that this is for the best, okay?”
It’s not hard for her. She’s got this new (or not so new) guy there. She isn’t alone every day. She’s already found her new life. Her new love. Her new everything. She’s starting over. She was starting over before they’d even ended.
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III. A change like that is just so hard to do.
After I kiss her three maybe four more times, she throws up. Puts a hand to her mouth and stands there for a second before lurching forward and pushing me out of her way. I stand outside the bathroom and listen for a while until she’s just crying and when she comes out, she asks me, “How long have you known?” And I shrug and reach into the far corners of my brain and try to remember when I found out and I can remember being drunk a couple of weeks after she started working here and telling Mark how her hair reminded me of the springs of a mattress and he’d said, “Man. She’s it, then?”
I end up saying, “Maybe always,” and this makes her throw up again.
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IV. Now, you’re swinging like a funeral march, yeah, but nobody died.
Pam keeps sitting next to him during meetings. He feels weird when she does it, like there’s something expected of him. She smiles and laughs and looks at him and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do so he just smiles sadly back at her until her face changes and he knows exactly what’s expected of him.
He walks into the break room one day while she’s eating lunch. She said fish today when Roy came up and he can tell that she regrets that decision, because she’s pushing it around with a plastic fork and she’s only eaten the rice.
He slips quarters into the machine and the soda can falls down with a thud that causes her to look up. And right there, he hates Jim or maybe he hates her for whatever it is that she did that made Jim leave. Because he’s sure it had something to do with their whole thing. Their whole twisted, fucked up thing they had going on that the rest of the people in the office could only sit and watch and hope to God turned out at least sort of alright.
She looks vacant and he sits down next to her.
“I can’t be Jim,” he says as he pulls back the tab of the soda can and lets it slowly crack open.
She’s watching his hands and she nods sort of and says, “He would always, uh, sort of clean the top of the can off with his tie before he opened it.”
Like he died and he’s gone forever.
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V. Every time I move, I’m hurting you.
Karen’s heel click off towards the wine and she appears in front of him, clutching a box of Special K to her chest. His fingers are starting to go numb from the cold chicken breast he’s holding in his hands when she asks him if he’s doing it on purpose. He drops it into the cart and brings his eyebrows together, about to ask, “Am I doing what on purpose?” when Karen comes back, holding out her wine choice for him to approve, smiling warmly at Pam.
But he knows what she meant and when he says, “Yeah,” he isn’t sure who he’s responding to.
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VI. Didn’t mean to leave you hanging on, didn’t mean to leave you all alone. I didn’t know what to say. Merry Christmas, baby.
It doesn’t snow on Christmas Eve and she shows up at his door to talk to him about the buzzing. The cold, thin stillness of winter air and how the thin layer of frost on the grass sometimes shimmers like broken glass when she’s walking alone across a dark parking lot with the sound her shoes echoing all around her. And how all of this makes her skin hum with the desire to feel the palms of his hands or the scratchy wool of his coat or just the simple warmth of his body.
He’s dressed up because he just got back from going to church with his parents and he says, “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
Later, when they’re stretched out on his couch, watching A Christmas Story for the third time, she kisses him and he tastes like hot chocolate and something settles warm and deep in her belly. She pulls back and murmurs, “Merry Christmas, Jim,” against his lips before kissing him again as Ralphie comes down the stairs dressed as a pink bunny.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Titles are from various songs which are credited at the end.
Chapter End Notes:
Songs:
I. Today by Joshua Radin
II. The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot by Brand New
III. Turn On Me by the Shins
IV. Funeral Marching by Ryan Adams
V. Bad Best Friend by Nada Surf
VI. 12.23.95 by Jimmy Eat World
