As the morning sun pinched his eyes, Jim heard a frustrated groan emerge from the kitchen. The alarm clock read 7:52, a time rarely seen in the Halpert-Beesly household on a Saturday. Jim sat up slowly, stirring Hope from her place at the foot of their bed. She looked at him with the same misery he himself felt at the early hour.
“So I take it that wasn’t you?” Jim smirked as the dog plopped over onto her side, effectively ignoring him. As much as he wished he could do the same, Jim knew there was only one other person the sound had stemmed from, and he had no intention of leaving her to face whatever it was that was troubling her alone.
He stumbled into the kitchen, scratching the stubble on his chin as he found Pam perched on a kitchen stool with arms folded in front of her. Her lack of sleep was evident in her frazzled hair sticking up every which way and the hint of purple starting to appear under her eyes. Eyes that were focused so sternly on the canvas in front of her while a paintbrush was tossed with abandon onto the newspaper-covered dining room table.
“I can’t draw,” she murmured, not looking away from the canvas.
Jim shook his head. “False.”
“It’s true. I’ve been wasting my time with these classes. I could have saved all that money and we would have been able to afford that other house…the one with the garden in the front?”
“Pam, I’m pretty sure dogs make frequent stops at that garden on their walks, so I think that might not have been a big loss for us.” Jim tried to joke, but the creases in Pam’s forehead stayed firmly in place.
“Okay, too early for humor, point taken,” he said, stifling back a yawn. He moved to her, squeezing her shoulders before wrapping his arms around her tiny, hunched-over frame.
“So what are we working on this morning?” Jim asked, kissing the top of her head.
Pam sighed. “It’s a fairly easy assignment. We have to express what we consider ‘heaven’, only in the abstract.” She pulled at a torn corner of the canvas, shaking her head. “And I’ve been staring at this all morning, trying to think of something and I just…can’t.”
Her voice was defeated and small, and enough to shake the last bit of grogginess out of Jim.
“Tell you what. Whip us up some French toast and I’ll come up with a way to help you out of this. Sound fair?”
Pam eyed him suspiciously. “Alright. But I’m not making eggs.”
“I would never ask you to do that.” Jim placed one more kiss on her head and grabbed his cell phone, wagging his eyebrows as he walked out the front door.
xxx
Pam had been banished from the house all day, instructed to relax, have fun, and to pick up chips and salsa before she came back. As she shuffled through the door, balancing grocery bags in her hands, she stopped short at the sight of a giant pad of white paper sitting on an easel in the living room. A plastic bowl filled with slips of paper adorned the coffee table, black markers strewn about.
“Jim?” she called out, hoping to find some answer for the state of the living room.
He poked his head out from the kitchen, the side of his mouth quirked up in a look of mischief. “Did you get mild salsa?”
“What’s going on?”
“I hope you did. I’m not sure how well he handles spicy food.”
“He?” Pam was growing more concerned by the second, wondering how their normally quiet Saturday night was quickly swerving out of routine.
Jim bit his lip. “Don’t get mad.”
“That’s never a good way to start,” Pam shook her head, moving to set the grocery bags on the counter.
“I invited a couple people over for a game night,” Jim’s voice reached a new height in pitch, sounding more like a question than an explanation.
“Game night?” she whipped around to face him, mouth agape in horrified surprise.
Jim beamed. “Pictionary.”
She wanted to be annoyed. She wanted to be stubborn and refuse. But his playful smile, the hopeful anticipation for approval in his eyes only made her laugh as pulled him into a hug.
“How do you come up with this stuff?” she asked into the threads of his sweater.
“Computer chip. Been there since birth. Weird, right?”
Pam’s smile suddenly dove into a frown. “But who did you invite?”
“Okay, that’s where you might get mad.”
xxx
“You guys are going DOWN!” Michael bellowed, dramatically pointing his fingers to the carpet to emphasize his point. Jan smiled politely, clutching her wine glass so tightly Pam was sure it would break.
“So who’s going first?” Jan asked, flinching at the sound of Michael cracking his knuckles in preparation.
“Pam, how about you start us off?” Jim offered, smiling proudly as he handed a marker to her. She reluctantly took it and dug through the bowl of prompts before pulling one out at random.
“Okay, your time starts now!” Michael announced, flipping over the minute timer.
Pam thought briefly and then proceeded to make sweeping lines over the large parchment, a little figurine of a man appearing in between the lines with his arms splayed out over his head.
It didn’t take Jim long to figure out exactly what she was drawing and with great pride he shouted: “Gone with the Wind!”
“Yes!” Pam cheered as Jim held out his hand for a high-five.
“Well done, Beesly. Well done.”
Michael pouted from his seat. “What does that even mean? Is that a band?”
Jan pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “How about you go next, Michael?”
“Very well, m’lady. Let me just pick one here—“
“You’re not really supposed to look when you choose one,” Pam began timidly.
“God, you guys. Too many rules, how are we supposed to keep up? Fine, fine, have it your way. See? Got one. Oh, this is good. I don’t think any of the others even compare. That’s what she—“
“Just. Draw. Please,” Jan begged, finishing off her second glass of wine.
Jim flipped over the timer and Michael went straight to work, giggling wildly as he drew. After a moment or two, when his drawing started to take a recognizable shape, Jan frowned in confusion.
“What the hell is that?”
“You’re supposed to guess!” Michael groaned in frustration.
Jim’s eyes went wide as he realized what he was drawing.
“Umm, that’s really graphic.”
Jan grabbed Michael’s prompt and put a hand to her head as she read.
“Michael, Big Ben is a clock tower in London.”
“Not according to that movie I got in Vegas.” Michael defended, the corners of his mouth twitching from a suppressed smile.
The night carried on in much of the same way, Jim and Pam beating Michael and Jan by quite a large margin, even with Jim’s kindergarten like cartoons. Pam loved that they knew each other so well that they knew exactly what the other was trying to convey from just a few strokes on a piece of paper.
Jim and Pam collapsed on the couch once the evening had ended, quietly reveling in their victory.
“Well I have to say,” Pam murmured into the crook of his arm. “I never expected that I would play Pictionary with Michael and Jan, and I definitely never expected that I would actually have fun doing it.”
“So I did okay?” Jim asked, wrapping a single curl of her hair around his finger.
Pam rested her head on his stomach and grinned up at him. “You did great. Thank you.” She leaned up and kissed him gently, running her hands across the stubble of his cheeks and sighing in contentment.
“So,” Jim began as they broke apart. “Back to the drawing board?”
Pam yawned and slowly nodded her head. “In the morning.”
They fell asleep right there on the couch, Jim’s arm around her waist and her head rising and falling on his stomach as he breathed. When Pam awoke and felt his arm still warm around her and the peaceful look of contentment on his face as he slept, the assignment she faced no longer scared her. She knew exactly what heaven was like.
Cliche by Wendy Blue
Author's Chapter Notes:
I'm soooooo sorry for taking this long to update. I had quite a frustrating bout of writer's block and was two seconds away from chucking my laptop out the window. However, thanks to the constant encouragement of Becky215 and Cousin Mose, I give you another chapter :) Enjoy!
Chapter End Notes:
Reviews make me happier than seeing John K pictures in GQ (well, almost).
