He’s been baking her a cupcake on her birthday for the past four years. Just one, because it’s for her and not for anyone else. A strawberry cupcake with vanilla frosting and a candle stuck in its center. He does it despite the remarks from Mark when he comes home to find Jim in the kitchen, licking the extra batter from the spoon. And, sure, he could buy her a cupcake from the store, but she’d asked him that first time if he’d made it himself and when he said, “Yeah,” sheepishly and looked down at the table, she’d giggled, saying, “You are so adorable sometimes.”
He isn’t sure exactly why it started, but he remembers her first birthday at Dunder Mifflin and how tired she looked at the end of the day, how he was the only one who seemed to realize it was her birthday. (That might’ve been for the best, considering Michael’s almost suffocating response to birthdays.) So he’d made her a cupcake that night, because he didn’t know what else to do for her. She’d clapped her hands, smiled up at him, licked icing from the tip of her index finger and it became a tradition.
This year, her birthday comes and he stands in the cake aisle of the grocery store for a good five minutes trying to make up his mind. He twists the rubber on his basket’s handle between his thumb and forefinger, back and forth and back. He finally grabs the box for strawberry cake mix and drops it quickly into the basket, walks down the aisle without looking back. On the way, he grabs sprinkles and candles too. Just in case, he tells himself. It doesn’t mean he’s actually going to do it.
Karen’s over for dinner a couple nights later and as she’s looking through his cabinets to find his wine glasses, she sees the cake mix and pulls it from the shelf, looking at him curiously. “Strawberry cake mix, Jim? What are you? A ten year old girl?” She laughs and he does too, because it’s funny really, ridiculous even that he’s 28 years old and he makes a cupcake for the girl he likes on her birthday. Still, he takes it from her hands and puts it back on the shelf, closing the cabinet door firmly.
“Maybe,” he says, grinning, turning it into a reason to wiggle his eyebrows and kiss her.
The night before her birthday, he’s cracking open an egg and trying not to think about the seven months or so when they weren’t friends, weren’t anything because he didn’t want to be anything if they couldn’t be everything. It was selfish and it hurt not to be anything at all to her.
He watches the batter drip slowly into the single, solitary cupcake liner. He’s still using up the package he bought that first time, the ones with the little balloons floating around on them, the ones that exclaim, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” He lets it fill all the way to the very top and then stops.
He slides the cupcake into the oven, sets the timer, and then waits. He leans back against the counter, his hands gripping the edge. He listens the clock on the walk tick the seconds by. He left the TV on in the living room and he watches it from the kitchen, not sure why he feels the need to stay there by the oven, but he leans against the entryway and watches a rerun of Scrubs, feeling sort of sad that JD and Elliot never end up together, that they were best friends and they couldn’t make a real relationship work, but it’s just TV and he shrugs to himself, turning back to watch the oven when a commercial comes on.
There are still five minutes left and the phone rings then. “Hello?”
“Hey,” and he thinks it’s weird to be hearing her voice on the phone and watching a cupcake bake for another girl so he turns away and leans with his elbows on the kitchen counter.
“Hi.”
“What are you doing?”
He hears music on her end of the phone and she sounds like she’s chewing something. “Nothing. What are you doing?”
“Eating dinner. Alone. Because someone had better things to do, but now I call and find out he’s doing nothing.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry about that. I just had some things I had to do around the house and I was pretty tired so…”
He’s good at this, making up excuses for when he’s really just too busy being in love with someone else.
“It’s fine, Halpert. I don’t expect you to spend every minute of your life with me.”
He laughs, but really he feels the strongest sense of relief at this. “Good, you wouldn’t want to seem desperate now, would you?”
“You mean it didn’t seem desperate when I moved across two states for you?”
Her voice is quiet and sort of serious, but he doesn’t know what to say in response to that, because they’ve never really talked about that little fact of this relationship. He’s never asked her if she really came here because of him. But now when she says it, it sounds like a plea. Like she’s begging for some sign that it was the right decision.
It wasn’t, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it out loud, just stays silent until she laughs and turns it back into a joke. “Oh, so you really think you’re that charming, huh?”
“The ladies seem to think so,” he says, thankful that the tension is gone.
The timer on the oven goes off then and he fumbles to turn it off before the questions can start. But it’s too late and she’s asking, “Jim Halpert, are you cooking dinner for another woman?”
“No. I was just, uh, reheating some lasagna I found in the fridge.” He’s always been too good at thinking on his feet.
“Alright. I’ll believe it this time.”
“I’m so glad you’ve deemed me trustworthy.”
He holds the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he bends down to take the cupcake from the oven.
As he’s setting the tray on the counter, she says, “Should I? Trust you, I mean.”
He shakes his head, “Yeah, why would you-”
“You’re different here,” she says softly. “Different than you were in Stamford. Like you’re hiding something or- I don’t know. I’m being stupid. I just heard this rumor that you had a thing for Pam before you transferred and, well, I was just wondering if…”
He’s staring down at the cupcake now, his hands on either side of it on the counter and he’s trying to think of something to say that isn’t either a lie or something horrible that is sure to hurt her. But it’s one or the other at this point.
“I did- Uh, yeah, Pam and I had…But, listen, it was-”
She takes in a long, slow breath and then says calmly, “If you can honestly say right now, that it’s done and you‘re over it, then okay. But if you can’t say that, then…”
He closes his eyes and chews on the inside of his cheek.
“Bye, Jim.”
The dial tone sounds like a weight being lifted from him and he hates himself for a second. It’s okay, he tells himself, it’s only the third or fourth person to be hurt like this in his quest to move on from Pam.
He puts the phone back in its cradle and stops for a second with his hand still hovering like maybe he’ll call her back and say, “Yes, it’s done. I’m over her completely,” but he’s tired of being a liar, tired of faking his way through relationships, forcing himself to fit where he didn’t.
He breathes and reaches for the fresh can of vanilla frosting and a knife.
She’s turning 29 which means 29 sprinkles, those circular pastel colored sort of sprinkles because she likes to pick them off one at a time and eat them before she eats the rest of the cupcake. He counts carefully just to be sure there are exactly 29. He uses his fingertips to press them gently into the icing so they’ll stick.
He doesn’t think about Karen.
At lunch the next day, he leans, actually leans with his elbows on the surface and his head bending down towards her, over her desk for the first time since last may. She looks up at him, grinning.
“I hear you’re turning forty today?” He cocks his head to the side a little, laughter in his voice.
She glares at him, “Twenty-nine isn’t that old.”
“Almost thirty.”
She sighs heavily and drops her head into her hands. “I’m old, Jim.”
He shakes his head, “Well, I still think you’re pretty.”
Color fills her cheeks and she looks back up, “Thank you. I’m so glad my old age hasn’t affected my looks.”
“Yet,” he finishes for her with his eyebrows raised. His face softens and he says, “C’mon, I have something for you,” with his head nodding in the direction of the kitchen.
When she smiles, it’s wide enough for him to fall in.
He doesn’t look at Karen as they walk by even though he can feel her watching them. And he doesn’t stop himself from putting his hand on the small of her back as they go through the door.
The candle stuck in the center is blue with white stripes. He grabs a matchbook from one of the drawers in the kitchen and strikes it, lighting the candle as she sits down at the table. He sits across from her and starts to sing his off key version of Happy Birthday, feeling like an idiot but then he sees her smile as the flame’s light flickers on her skin and he isn’t sure he’s ever been happier.
He finishes the song and she just sits there, staring at him. Her smile replaced with something else, something soft and sad. He sees that thin layer of water on her eyes and gently nudges the cupcake towards her.
“Blow it out, Beesly.”
She hesitates for a second, but then closes her eyes and blows, her mouth in a little O, her cheeks slightly flushed.
She pulls back and opens her eyes as the smoke winds its way through the air. He pulls the candle from the cupcake and places it on the paper plate.
“So what did you wish for?”
She gives him a sly smile. “If I tell you, it won’t come true.”
“Fine.”
She reaches across the table and takes his hand, looking at it instead of his face as she runs her thumb back and forth on his palm. Her bottom lip gets pulled between her teeth and she says, “I’m really sorry that this year’s been…I mean, I made such a mess of things and I just wish-”
He holds up his free hand, “It won’t come true if you tell me, remember?”
She smiles at him and he pushes his fingers in between hers. She eats the cupcake with her other hand, getting the wrapper off being difficult with just one hand, but he helps her and she eats all the sprinkles (counting them as she goes) and soon the entire thing is nothing but a few crumbs left on the plate.
“Thanks,” she says. “For this. For still doing this even though- It wouldn’t have been my birthday without it.”
She leans across the table and kisses him and she tastes like artificial strawberry and vanilla frosting. He smiles against her mouth, but doesn’t pull away, just murmurs, “Happy birthday,” before pressing his mouth firmly against hers again.
Story Notes:
Took the idea from something I wrote in Five Times Jim Secretly Kissed Pam At Work, because Jim + cupcakes = cuteness.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
unfold is the author of 102 other stories.
This story is a favorite of 18 members. Members who liked Cupcakes also liked 2668 other stories.
