Pam hugged her knees and wrapped her cardigan closer to her body. She wanted to scream. Scream with frustration, scream with joy, scream with anticipation. They had been so close! When she left Roy, she had no real clue how Jim felt about her. But just now, when she had looked into his eyes, she knew there was something there. It was what she had thought about for a year—first casually imagining it, then fighting it, and now working for it.
Her joy was tempered when the cell phone in her purse began to vibrate. She sighed and looked at the caller ID. Roy. He had called nine times since she left Scranton, and she knew he would keep on calling. Knowing that Jim would be gone for a few more minutes, she decided this was the best time to bite the bullet and pick up the phone.
“Hey.”
“Hmm. Wasn’t expecting you to answer the phone.”
“Then why did you call?”
“’Dunno. Just wanted to hear your voice.”
Pam sighed. This was so goddamn hard.
“I’m sorry Roy, but I just can’t talk. Why don’t we meet for coffee next week?”
“Coffee? Coffee? I gave you ten years and you can give me fucking coffee?”
Pam’s eyes stung with tears at the hurt in his voice. What could she say that hadn’t been said before? They had been going through this for two months. As soon as Pam had been honest with herself about her feelings for Jim, she told Roy that they had to postpone the wedding. Roy exploded. He couldn’t understand why she had begged him for so long to set a date, and then a month before their wedding, she “wasn’t ready.” Pam wasn’t completely honest with him. She simply told him that she was having doubts.
After Roy calmed down, he realized the severity of the situation. He loved her. He would do anything for her. And Pam loved Roy, too. She had scared herself, and she wanted nothing more than to be happy with Roy. So they set aside some time for their relationship. Pam told Roy that she needed him to be more attentive and supportive. She wanted to grow, but she needed his encouragement. Roy agreed, and asked Pam to try to take more of an interest in his friends, and at least try to have fun when they all got together.
They did this for two months. Pam knew that, if she had any chance of repairing things with Roy, she couldn’t be comparing him to Jim. So she shut Jim out of her life, completely. She tried simply ignoring him, but it was so hard. When he first found out about the wedding, he tried to comfort her. But when she refused to talk about it, he seemed to understand that she needed her space. That made it even harder. How did he know her so well? When did that happen?
His small smiles and funny emails just made her angry at him. What right did he have screwing up her life? He was going through his life, a carefree, happy-go-lucky kind of guy, going on dates, having fun, while her heart was being torn in two.
Her anger helped, though. It helped her push him out of her life so that she could try to make things work with Roy. When he came over to her desk to report that he had heard Dwight registering for a class at the University of Scranton entitled, “Fun with Frodo: Screenwriting for Sci-Fi Fans,” he looked at her with those laughing eyes, and leaned over her desk so close that she could smell his soap. At that moment, she hated him.
She looked right into his eyes, and clinging to that anger like a life vest, responded, “At least he has some goals and dreams. Maybe he won’t end up a paper salesman his whole life.”
With that, she got up and went to the restroom, hoping he wouldn’t notice her shaking. She knew him well, too, and she knew how to hurt him.
She spent half of her days in the bathroom, alternating between crying and working up enough anger to be able to face him again. He had gotten the hint, and stopped his hourly visits. He began having lunch with Ryan, and no longer looked at her with an incredulous look every time Michael said something inane. Her plan to eliminate him from her day-to-day life had worked, but unfortunately, she couldn’t wipe him from her heart. If anything, it made her more miserable, because she had pushed her best friend out of her life.
It wasn’t any big event that caused the end of Pam and Roy. Maybe it would’ve been easier if there was. She just realized that she and Roy were both working so hard for something that, if they achieved, would just make them miserable. Roy didn’t want Pam to change. He wanted to raise a family near his friends and family, and was content with his choices in life. Pam was suffocating in Scranton. She couldn’t stomach the thought of living the life Roy had planned for them.
She told him it was over on Tuesday. There was a lot of yelling and accusations. Roy couldn’t understand what more she wanted from him. He had done everything she had asked. Pam couldn’t explain that it wasn’t enough, it would never be enough. When Roy brought up Jim’s name, Pam felt like she had been slapped. She told him she had never cheated on him, but she said nothing when he asked her if she loved Jim. The silence hung in the air for what seemed like hours, until Roy grabbed his keys from the table, and drove off. She hadn’t seen him since.
The thought of the scene brought fresh tears to her eyes. “I’m sorry.” It was all she could say.
“Are you staying with him?”
“Yes, I’m staying with him.” She tried to sound calm. She wouldn’t lie.
“I can’t believe you think that prick’s going to make you happy. Darryl told me he cheated on Katy with that Brenda-chick.”
“He would never cheat on anyone.” Her voice shook a little. How dare he accuse Jim of something like that?
“Whatever. You know, I’m going out with Allison Thorpe tomorrow night.”
“I don’t care if you go out with her.” It was true. The thought of him dating someone else was more bizarre than upsetting.
“Don’t you love me anymore?”
How do you answer that question when the love you feel for someone just exists as an imprint of what was once there? “Yes. I…I’ll always love you, but…” A wave crashed in front of her, and the sea foam grazed her feet. She got up and started walking towards her left to avoid the surf. “I’m not in love with you. I can’t be with you. You know that. We’ve been through this. Nothing will change. I’m sorry.”
With that, she hung up her phone; sorry she had ever picked it up. She tried to push the conversation out of her brain, and remember the joy she had felt just a few minutes earlier, when Jim had put his hand on her cheek. She couldn’t let herself feel guilty about the pain Roy was in. If they didn’t go through this now, they would be going through it in ten years, when it would be even more excruciating. With that, she picked her head up, rubbed her eyes dry, and sat down to wait for Jim.
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Jim didn’t know if he had ever truly felt heartbreak until this moment. When he first found out Pam was engaged, he had been disappointed, but it hasn’t that big of a deal. He liked her, but wasn’t in love with her. Yet. The closest he had come was when Roy announced their wedding date. But by that point, he had so little hope left in him, that, when the shock wore off, he found that very little had changed.
But this? This was something new. He was actually in physical pain. The difference was that this time, he had had let himself have hope. He had come so close to his dream that he could practically taste her…and now? What had just happened?
His knees were weak, and he knelt down on the sand, his head in his hands, her words repeating in his brain. I’m staying with him. He would never cheat on anyone. He would never cheat on anyone? I don’t care if you go out with her? Who is “her”?
It all made sense now—the break-up that she didn’t want to talk about, the sudden interest in him after ignoring him for two months. Roy had cheated on her, and she was trying to get back at him. She was trying to make Roy jealous. And Jim was just the stupid, naïve, love-sick idiot who had jumped at the first chance to be with her.
And the fucking kicker—“I’ll always love you.” He had been so delusional that he actually thought she might say those words to him, maybe even tonight. But no. She said them to Roy. He couldn't hear anything she said after that. He didn't need to. How could he have been so wrong? All of her glances, her laughter, her flirting—it had all been a lie. A fucking lie.
He looked at her, thirty feet in front of him. She was gazing out into the ocean, probably thinking about Roy. He didn't know what to do. Five minutes ago, he had dropped off his nephew with Nick, winking and telling his brother not to wait up for them. Now he was sitting in the sand, wondering how she could ever do this to him.
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© 2006-2023 More Than That | Skin created by Kali
© 2006-2023 More Than That | Skin created by Kali