Rushed, for which I apologise, but I wanted to get this up before I fly home.
~
She’s trapped.
However she looks at it, there’s no way out.
She tried being his friend. She’s not sure how but she ended up making Karen’s life easier and making herself cry.
She tried Art School. She ended up hugging Michael. She ended up finding out her biggest problem from a stranger.
She tried to go back.
She tried to change the man she left behind. She ended up realizing he could never change enough for her. He could never be the man she wanted.
She tried telling herself that didn’t matter.
She tried honesty.
She ended up with a light beer, as ordered. She ended up humiliated in front of her colleagues, crying into her steering wheel and all the way home to her tiny apartment.
She’s back to square one. Worse than square one. If such a square as minus one existed, she thinks, she’d be right there.
Trapped.
She can’t decide what else to try when all she can think of is whether Roy’s going to come through the door today and do something stupid.
She tries to distract herself. She answers the phones. She takes the messages. She sends the faxes. She lives without thinking these days, habit and memory moving her limbs more than conscious thought. She ghosts through life, mindless task after mindless task, telling herself tomorrow will be different.
Tomorrow is never different.
She thought she knew the worst feeling in the world. She thought she felt it when he let go of her hands. She thought she felt it when he let go of their friendship for a new suit and a girl that knew what she wanted. She was wrong.
This is the worst feeling in the world.
She has no expectations. No hope. She realizes she has nothing to look forward to.
And worse, she knows she’s the one who can change it.
But she doesn’t know which way to go this time.
She’s trapped.
Roy comes in and she rethinks her definition of the worst feeling in the world.
It’s all a blur long before the pepper spray hits her eyes.
~
“Sorry I almost got you killed.”
It’s not what she wants to say. It never is when it comes to him.
She wants to say she’s sorry about a lot of things. She’s sorry she used the word misinterpret when really he’d fitted all the puzzle pieces together years before her. She’s sorry she said, ‘I can’t’ instead of, ‘Not yet’.
She’s sorry she can’t bring herself to like the way he is now as much as she loves the way he was.
She remembers how honesty ended with Roy.
She picks the safe option.
“He could have broken your nose or something.”
She chances a look at him. He looks different and it’s not the suit or the long sleeves or the bottle of water in his hand. She looks at him and a fraction of a second is all she needs to see the truth. He’s exhausted. He’s tired of pretending to be someone he’s not. He might just miss her, miss the old him, enough to give it all another try.
She thinks he might just be the direction she hasn’t really tried yet.
“It's just so stupid. I mean, getting back with Roy and everything. I mean, what was I thinking, right?”
She waits.
“No, I mean you guys seems to have a really strong connection.”
She sighs. She takes another look at him. She tries again.
“Not anymore. It’s ... it’s completely over now.” (Hello)
She thinks she knows which is the right way to go. She wishes he’d give her a little nudge in his direction. A little nudge, she thinks, is all it’d take.
“We’ll see. I’m sure you guys will find your way back to one another someday.” (Goodbye)
It’s not a nudge. It’s a shove.
It’s exactly what she needed.
She watches him walk away and wonders if he’ll ever be tired enough of being someone he’s not to risk being the someone he was again.
She thinks he might try if she told him to.
She knows her way now.
She might be trapped but he’s heading in entirely the wrong direction.
She needs to mix art school and independence and being his friend and real, hard, honest, truth.
There’s a lot she needs to say. There’s a lot he needs to hear.
She needs courage.
Until she finds it, she’s still trapped.
~
It’s almost effortless now, being with Karen.
It’s almost easy now, treating Pam like an acquaintance and nothing more.
It’s habit, at the very least, to walk by her desk and not stop to chat.
It’s less like a facade, being the new person he’s created.
It feels less like pretending when he tells himself he doesn’t need to tell her a story, or a joke, or go to her art show.
He almost recognizes his face in the mirror again. He wonders if he’s just gotten used to the difference.
If he can just ignore the second guessing, the stubborn voice in his head, it might yet feel real.
If he can just ignore the urge to say, just once in a while, what he’s really feeling, he might yet make this work.
If he can just bring himself to throw away the flyer about her art show and with it, his guilt, he might yet convince himself it’s not all a lie.
He wishes succeeding in his post-Stamford life didn’t mean losing so much. He'd like to play pranks and really enjoy them. He misses laughing like he used to, like a kid without a care in the world. He misses being silly and juvenile sometimes. He thinks about revealing to Karen just how little he cares about selling paper.
He wishes all those things weren’t so inexorably tied up with loving her so he could have held onto them.
Sometimes he wishes losing her hadn’t meant losing himself along the way.
When he thinks that, he thinks about her being friendly to Karen, or going home with Roy, or breaking his heart in a parking lot and it’s easy to be the new him all over again.
The new him doesn’t burn as bright as the old him. He tells himself that’s careful. The new him will last.
“Hey, Halpert!”
He pushes Karen aside, ready to take the punch. He doesn’t know how Roy knows, but he knows he deserves what's coming.
In the confusion of the aftermath, he ignores the knowledge that in that moment, facing Roy, braced for attack, he felt more alive than he has in months. For a second, life was a firecracker again, liable to shoot off in any direction.
He ignores the knowledge that any moment with Pam, even the bad ones, feels more real than a thousand moments with Karen.
He needs to ignore her, ignore all the signs he thinks she’s giving him. He can’t bear to misinterpret things again.
He focuses on something else, anything else. He finds the sudden need to find a way to thank Dwight for intervening.
“Sorry I almost got you killed.”
He knew he couldn’t avoid her forever. He thinks he’ll be alright. He hasn’t been thinking of all the things she might have told Roy and all the things it might mean. It’s really important that he thank Dwight.
“It's just so stupid. I mean, getting back with Roy and everything. I mean, what was I thinking, right?”
The honest answer dances on the tip of his tongue, as always. He pushes it away. Habit.
“No, I mean you guys seems to have a really strong connection.”
It stings more than the pepper spray to hear himself say it. He tells himself it’s better to feel the sting than to burnt out like he did last May.
“Not anymore. It’s ... it’s completely over now.” (Hello)
There’s a lot of things he likes about the new him. He’s earning more. He doesn’t feel like a failure, or at least, he feels like a different kind of failure. He’s trying to be more cultured. He's trying to try new things. Karen makes him laugh.
He just wishes the new him didn’t have to be such a terrible friend.
“We’ll see. I’m sure you guys will find your way back to one another someday.” (Goodbye)
He thinks of all the things he’s left behind. He wishes he hadn’t picked up a cruel streak along the way.
He just wishes the new him didn’t have to hurt her.
He watches her leave with Roy.
He ignores the fact that he’d rather be cruel and wrong and without her than be proved right and have to see her find her way back to a man she doesn’t belong with.
He’s got a lot to ignore these days.
He wonders if one day he’ll run out of distractions and let himself see what he thinks is in front of him.
He wonders if one day he won’t need a distraction.
Living is less like a facade, after all.
Yet it still doesn’t feel like living used to.
He has to ignore the lure of the fireworks. He tries to remember how his life blew up in his face back then but all he can think of is how bright it shone, if only for a moment.
He’s really got to find a way to thank Dwight.
~
Author's Chapter Notes:
The Negotiation
“Not anymore. It’s ... it’s completely over now.” (Hello)
“We’ll see. I’m sure you guys will find your way back to one another someday.” (Goodbye)
“Not anymore. It’s ... it’s completely over now.” (Hello)
“We’ll see. I’m sure you guys will find your way back to one another someday.” (Goodbye)
Chapter End Notes:
I promise I'm done being depressing now....Beach Games/The Job is next and that's it for this story :)
