It wasn’t until I was halfway through my lasagna that I felt like I didn’t have a choice.
He’d been quiet for the whole meal. Distracted. Thought-heavy and distant. And I found it was really difficult to make jokes, or be funny at all for that matter, without him as a sort of straight-man side-kick. I’d asked him on the way to his car how long he thought it would be before we’d have to pull a prank on Dwight, now that he seemed much more himself and much less this zombie of a guy he’d been about four hours before. And Jim had said nothing, jangling his keys in his hand and keeping his lips pressed together like he was afraid to open his mouth at all, even to breathe. I had frowned, but stayed silent because in times like this I was too afraid that he would get angry, too afraid that somewhere, somehow, the things that my great aunt Sheryl said were true and all men were alike… I was too afraid that he would morph into something less like Jim and more like Roy and tell me I was nagging…or just bothering him… I think I was afraid he would ask me to leave him alone. And that would…I think that would‘ve been really bad. So I made a few more attempts at light-hearted conversation, remarked how my raspberry vinaigrette reminded me of pressed beets and Mose, asked if he wanted me to call Michael and see if he and Jan might like to join us, and he simply lifted one side of his mouth in a lazy half smile and shook his head at me, his gaze flitting from mine as he stared mostly down at his plate of tomato and mozzarella salad…then stared mostly down at his plate of chicken parmesan.
It wasn’t until I was halfway through my lasagna that I felt like I didn’t have a choice.
Something wasn’t right and I didn’t have a choice. I would have to just deal with my fears like an adult and push through them, mow them over with the blades of my concern and sincerity. I had learned that fears could be dealt with like this. That sometimes they were as unsubstantial as clouds or bubbles or Shrute Bucks. Sometimes they were just unnecessary and all they did was hold me back from the things I wanted. I mean obviously some fears were totally necessary, though…like a fear of tigers or something. But this particular fear, I thought, was just another way for me to keep myself from him. So I took a deep breath and set down my fork.
“Do you think we should ask for the check?” I asked him simply, not accusing or reprimanding, just easily wondering if maybe this wasn’t going that well. He jerked his head up and looked at me, panicked. But I didn‘t waver. “Something’s wrong, Jim,” I assessed. He shook his head at me.
“Nothing’s wrong, I just…” And his gaze drifted from mine again, as it had made a habit of doing, and I realized that this wasn’t the kind of thing that could be solved simply by asking. We would have to talk about it, whatever it was. He sucked in a noisy breath and seemed to ponder his own mood…seemed to consider something and make a decision, and he met my gaze again adamantly like he could convince me he was being honest just with his stare. I thought maybe he could. “Nothing’s wrong,” he promised. My brow furrowed and I nodded quietly.
“Ok,” I told him genuinely, accepting what he said because I didn’t have much of a choice. And we went back to eating in silence, my eyes taking in the concentration on his face and the way that he ate his chicken with a blind kind of determination. Something wasn’t right. When the waiter cleared our plates and asked if we’d like to see the dessert menu I glanced at Jim and took in the way that his hands were propped on the table and his eyes were fixed on them like they might solve his problems. I looked back at the waiter and shook my head, silently asking for the check.
***
The clock said it was 12:30 AM and I had a hard time believing that his side of the bed was still empty. I must have drifted off to sleep waiting for him to finish his emails and crawl between the sheets, because the hour and a half I’d been waiting had stretched itself out long and I hadn’t slept much the night before. But now I sat up and readjusted my pink t-shirt, tucking my hair behind my ears and listening hard for the sound of typing in the other room, or maybe the sound of ESPN or the hum of the open refrigerator. But the rooms were silent and I was suddenly worried that maybe he’d gone home without saying anything, maybe he’d just seen that I was sleeping and decided he would lock the door on his way out. Nervousness fluttered in my stomach as I slid out of bed and pulled on a sweater, the hems of my pajama pants swishing softly against the hard wood floors. As I left the bedroom I realized that I had my arms crossed tightly against my chest, like that could ward of the strange feeling in my gut, like it could keep me from being afraid of this. I frowned. Just as I had thought, the living room and kitchen were pitch black and painfully empty, and I approached the front door with curiosity, peering out the window to see if his car was gone.
It wasn’t.
He was sitting on the front steps of the house I was living in, his elbows braced on his knees and his head hanging low between his shoulders. He was still in his work clothes, his oxford shirt a little wrinkled and his pants sitting low around his hips. I pressed my fingers against the butterfly hanging at my neck and wondered how many nights he had done this without my noticing. Pulling the door open, I stepped onto the porch and gingerly sat down beside him, my shoulders hunched and my arms still wrapped around my body to ward off the chill in the air. He didn’t move except a jerk of his eyebrows in a fast and honest frown. I didn’t speak, content to simply sit there with him, happy to let my presence speak for itself. It took him a while, but eventually his voice filled the silence.
“I feel really bad for Dwight,” he told me softly. I nodded because I, too, felt a tug on my heart strings every time I looked up and Dwight was staring at nothing, his face twisted into a uniquely-Dwight type frown. Jim sighed beside me and shook his head and I felt like maybe he was just overly tired…too tired even to sleep, and that’s all that this was about. The thought calmed me for a moment, but it didn’t take long for me to realize the silliness of it, and the butterflies in my stomach returned. “I don’t want to ruin anything, Pam,” he went on, his voice cracking a little on my name, and the butterflies doubled their efforts, their wings beating against my muscles and bones so that I hunched over a bit more to try to still them. “But I think I have to tell you this.” I swallowed and wrapped my hands around my knees. It sometimes amazed me, in moments like this, how much we were still afraid of each other.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, my voice giving away my unease. He cleared his throat.
“When you were with Roy,” he forced out, “before Stamford and everything, I used to think about you a lot. I mean about us and just what if things were different, you know?” he muttered, and I sensed that the implied question was rhetorical. I knew. Of course I knew. “And I would wonder about, like, a lot of different uh…” he chuckled at himself quietly and I smiled a soft smile because sometimes he was a little boy and that was always so appealing to me. “But then it was like every time,” he went on, the chuckle vanishing in the seriousness of his words, “I would suddenly just realize…” he drifted off and frowned down at his cuticles, “I could never have you. Ever. And my life would seem so…just…really bad. Long, I mean. And earlier I was telling Dwight that it was weird like…I couldn’t taste anything and I would just go home from work and lay in my room and stare at the ceiling, and like I could feel how long my life was going to be. And I started to think that maybe if I just…” he cleared his throat again and shook his head and I got the distinct impression that he was holding back a heavy, earthy kind of emotion. I wanted so badly to wrap my arms around him but felt like if I did he would retreat, go still and quiet, and that was not what I wanted. So I just sat there and watched him struggle to get this confession out, acting as priest for his tortured soul. “I started to think that maybe if I could just tell you one time…if I could just feel you, really feel you, once…that it would make the rest of my life seem less…pointless,” he finished on a near whisper and I licked my lips because I felt my mouth pulling into that certain kind of frown that almost always meant I was about to cry. “And I thought once I had that, I could move away and forget that you had married Roy and pretend that you were just this girl I knew for a second…”
“Jim,” I interrupted, unable to keep myself from wanting this to be over. I hated reliving our past because it was worse than painful…worse than awful…I had guilt and anger and confusion swimming in the depths of those memories and I had no desire to let them float up and to the top of my consciousness. But if he needed to speak this, I owed it to him to listen. He turned his face toward me for the first time since dinner and there was a spark of accusation in his eyes that made me want to turn and run. I held his gaze and sat still because sometimes fear was just unnecessary.
“I need to know if this is real for you,” he forced out. I licked my lips again and nodded. “I mean I feel like it is, and you smile so much and we…you told the camera crew we’re dating, and I feel like that means something. But I can’t help thinking that I…just, I shouldn’t still be analyzing every word you say and every look you give me, wondering how you feel and if you’re…” He looked back at his hands and swallowed. “You’ll never be just this girl I knew and had a thing with, Pam, and I guess I’m…I don’t know…insecure or something, because I can’t tell if I’m just a guy to you, and sometimes I think I know it’s more than that, and then other times I just…see myself ending up exactly where I was last year.” His eyebrows dipped low against his lashes and his mouth twisted silently. “Because it would be so easy for you to just…” he shook his head for what seemed like the thousandth time and I wondered if it was possible for the air to get sucked out of the atmosphere.
“Jim, don’t…” I mumbled, and I wasn’t sure how I meant for that sentence to end. Don’t what? Don’t torture yourself? Don’t torture me? Don’t even suggest something so… He interrupted my thoughts with a gush of air and water clogged words that made my heart stop beating and made my blood run cold.
“I have to, Pam. I…just…” his hands slid up to cover his forehead and his fingers laced themselves through his hair, “I’m so in love with you it’s like…you could have all of the right reasons, it could be something totally beyond your control and we could‘ve been together like this for years, and losing you would still destroy me.” I nodded even as my eyes filled with tears, and, even though I knew he wasn’t watching me, I fought to keep them in check. “It would be so easy…” he repeated and I was unable to keep myself from unfolding and reaching out to him, from wrapping sweater-covered arms around his neck and pressing my lips against his skin. It took him a moment that felt like forever, but he finally turned toward me and snaked his strong arms around my waist, holding me to him like if he let go, if he relaxed for even an instant, I might vanish into thin air. I wondered if this was what it had been like for him since he got back from New York…if he’d been living in constant fear that I might change my mind or just get erased from existence like we were in some kind of science fiction movie. I closed my eyes tightly and he sniffed against my shoulder, his hands flat against my back, pressing my body firmly to his. The ferocity of his embrace reminded me of the way he had kissed me that afternoon, and I thought that this all must have been simmering inside of him for months…waiting to get out…waiting to have a voice. I ran my fingers through the hair at the base of his skull and pressed a kiss against the skin just below his ear.
“I’m in love with you,” I whispered against him, and the sudden slope of his shoulders told me that he was relieved. “I love you,” I repeated quietly, adamantly, finding that certain honest tone that had become my newest fall back. Instead of my voice pinching with accusation or self-defense, it smoothed out into this easy sound of self-assuredness and conviction. “I do, but you have to trust me more than this, Jim,” I told him. He nodded against my shoulder and I kissed him again. “You need to trust me. Because I don‘t ever want to hurt you,” I promised, “and I will do whatever I can.”
And the sudden slope of his shoulders told me that he believed me. And just that was enough to push my doubts away until all I had left was the butterfly around my neck and the man in my arms. And I thought that was good. And I wasn’t afraid.
