Jim was at his desk, working hard (or hardly working? It was hard to tell some days), when an alert popped up that he had a new email. From Karen. Jim caught himself before he groaned, he knew Karen was looking at him; he just wanted to ignore her right now – okay, always.

            you want to do dinner tonight? my place i’ll cook and then maybe a movie and a little dessert?

            How could Jim reply to that? Say, “No thanks, I would rather be off in dreamland, imagining myself with another woman who has made it pretty clear she doesn’t want me, but I find it impossible to get over her?” He knew that wasn’t going to help. It would just invite more long, sleepless nights of talking. Dammit. Karen seemed so desperate to make this relationship work. He was sure any normal woman would have long since left his pathetic ass, quit, and moved back to Stamford. But not Karen. She was like a Pam Patch, trying to wean him off of Pam slowly. Jim had news for her – it wasn’t working.

            can’t. already made plans. mark and i are going to hang out and play his new wii. just a good guys night in.

            Okay, so that wasn’t a total lie. He did have plans; they just didn’t involve Mark or playing video games. But hopefully she would buy that, and with the last sentence, not invite herself along.

            Jim looked up, and watched Karen’s face fall when she read the email. She looked over at Jim, sad and curious, as if not quite wanting to believe that he was ditching her for a video game. Jim just shrugged, and went back to work.

            The rest of the day, Jim just tried to avoid looking at Karen. When lunch rolled around, he pointed to the stack of papers on his desk, and said he was just going to eat at his desk and work through lunch. “Damn, what is it going to take to drive this woman away?” he thought. She glared at him as she left to eat lunch in the kitchen.

            Karen ate lunch in silence in the kitchen. Of course, no one really noticed her silence, since Kelly was in there chattering about some celebrity or another. Karen actually laughed when she noticed that Ryan had an earbud in, and was nodding along to the music, not to whatever Kelly was talking about. Good to know she wasn’t in the only dysfunctional relationship in that office. What was up with Jim? She had long since given up on thinking about why he could even be attracted to someone like Pam. Pam was meek and mousy. In her head, Karen had taken to referring to her as M&M. Once she had accidentally mumbled it out loud, and had to quickly recover by saying something about Kevin.

            Karen had always thought, and it had been repeatedly proved, that she was basically every guy’s dream. She was smart, beautiful, and exotic looking. She loved video games, was competitive, and liked action movies more than chick flicks. She was always the one that ended relationships. But with Jim, it was different. She had to find a new plan of attack. “Gah! Stop it Karen, stop thinking of dating Jim as an attack.” She liked him, and didn’t want to lose him. She was really working on this relationship, something he didn’t seem to want to do. Hanging out with Mark, shesh. He knew that she had wanted to try out the new Wii, but with her salary, she just couldn’t afford it. He had been hanging out with Mark a lot recently. It seemed like nearly every couple of days he was seeing Mark. It was practically like they were roommates again. Couldn’t she come over just once and play video games, hang out like one of the guys? “Apparently not.” Karen sighed as she got up and threw away her trash.

            Jim spent the rest of the afternoon acting like he was working. He had actually gotten a lot of work done in the morning. “Hum, avoidance as a good working strategy. I am on to something…” thought Jim. Now he was just clicking around on his computer, trying to act busy, and waste time. Thankfully, Michael had decided that everyone needed a morale booster, and had brought in a mint chocolate chip ice cream cake around 3, and after that, the afternoon was a waste. He tried to be the polite boyfriend around Karen, but it was near impossible. She didn’t seem to be in the mood to talk either – “Probably pissed about Mark.”

            Jim slipped out after four, mumbling a quick goodbye and apology to Karen. She just glared and asked him to call her later that night.