Since Beach Games is really all about Fancy New Beesly, this chap is entirely in Pam's POV. Enjoy...
~
She doesn’t know what she’s doing.
She thinks she might be sulking. She’s actually upset to be left out of this stupid Survivor game. She was honestly looking forward to this trip. She can’t remember why. She thinks none of them deserve their thumbs up, or their gold stars or whatever points scheme Michael ends up using next. She’s definitely sulking. Beyond that she doesn’t know.
It’s a quiet moment, in between note taking sessions, with her hand throbbing, when she realizes she knows perfectly well what she’s doing.
She’s doing exactly the sort of things she’s been doing for months: she’s ignoring the dull ache that seems to tighten around her heart whenever Jim does for Karen the sort of thing he used to do for her.
She’s doing exactly the sort of thing she’s been doing for years: she’s indulging another ridiculous scheme of Michael’s. She’s waiting in the wings for someone in the office to remember she exists.
She heats up eight hundred hotdogs and hears Michael lie to her colleagues about them, in front of her face.
The teams pass by her during one of the pointless challenges. No-one meets her eye. No-one smiles.
She thinks about how she never used to care that no-one really knew her, because Jim knew her enough for all of them. If things were different, she lets herself imagine, he wouldn’t have left her on the sidelines. She would have been on his team. Vice-captain probably, or some complicated title they’d invented to annoy Dwight. They would have come in last in every game, too concerned with having fun to care about winning anything. He would have liked that, before.
She stands on the fringe, wondering if she’ll always be taking notes, watching other people live.
She knows exactly what she’s been doing. She just can’t remember why anymore.
The excuses she’s invented for them aren’t good enough. It’s not alright that they missed her art show.
She left her fiancé of ten years for her best friend and he deserves to know it.
She misses the man he was more than anything and that man’s not going to come back to her if she’s sitting off to the side, taking notes.
She is in love with a man she can’t even look in the eye anymore and it’s not alright.
She can’t understand how she ever let herself think it was.
It feels as though she’s just stood back to admire the finished puzzle of her life and found some of the pieces in the wrong places. She wants to rip it apart, keeping the parts she’s finally gotten in order, and try again with the rest.
Michael brushes her attempt at the coal walk aside and something snaps.
It feels sudden, as though the clarity out of the confusion came from nowhere.
She discards her note pad in the sand and heads for the coal walk.
She decides it’s been coming on a while, that it’s a process that began when she handed back a tiny, old engagement ring and a house key. It’s been building for months, nurtured by new experiences: by art classes and signing her lease, by changing her first light bulb and her first tire.
She thinks she’ll make it across the coal walk. She’s been standing on her own two feet long enough to earn the scar tissue.
It burns, of course it burns, but she makes it. It burns enough to remind her she’s alive.
She runs to them, to him, fearless for the first time in her life.
“I did the coal walk.”
There’s an edge of hysteria to her voice and she finds she quite likes it.
“Why didn’t any of you come to my art show? I invited all of you. That really sucked. It’s like sometimes some of you act like I don’t even exist.”
She can’t imagine why she ever thought the truth could be worse than the lies she’s been telling herself.
She sounds crazy, and her feet hurt more with every passing second, but she can look him in the eye now.
She thinks about last May and how it was terrible timing, and inconvenient and unfair and a parking lot.
And for the first time, she realizes why.
It wasn’t about bravery, or hope, or selfishness, or any of the things she’s let herself think it was.
It was desperation.
It was the point when it had to go one way or the other because nothing could be more agony than watching her with another, knowing he’d kept the truth to himself.
It was his last roll of the dice, no expectations, no hope, just the desire to be honest, to be free, at last.
She understands, finally.
She faces him, finally.
“Jim, I called off my wedding because of you. And now we're not even friends. And things are just, like, weird between us..and that sucks. And I miss you. You were my best friend before you went to Stamford and I really miss you.”
She hopes her meaning is clear. It’s dark but she thinks she sees a flicker of guilt, a blush of shame creeping onto his cheeks. She holds his gaze and wills him to hear her.
He’s changed and it’s not for the better. She misses him. The way he used to be. The way he’s meant to be.
“I shouldn't have been with Roy. And there were a lot of reasons to call off my wedding, but the truth is I didn’t care about any of those reasons until I met you.” (Hello)
It’s easy. She’s surprised.
She’s not exactly where he was. It killed him to tell her the truth, she remembers. No matter how much she was hurting him, he still had something to lose. He still had friendship and trips to her desk and lunch times. He sacrificed it all, shattered the status quo, lost her, if nothing else, to stop her making a terrible mistake.
She’s already lost him. Nothing can be worse than that.
“And now you’re with someone else and that’s fine ...it’s whatever that’s not what I’m, I’m not ... Ok my feet really hurt. The thing that I’m just trying to say to you, Jim, and to everyone else in the circle I guess, is that I miss having fun with you. Just you, not everyone in the circle.”
She doesn’t mean to upset Karen, it’s never been her intent. She wonders if he understands. Karen isn’t the issue here.
The new version of him is with Karen. That doesn’t matter. She doesn’t love the new him.
She’s asking him to be the way he used to be. If he does that, Karen won’t matter. The old him is hers, always has been.
“I’m going to go walk in the water now.”
She waits.
He approaches.
It’s more liberating than the coal walk to face him, unashamed, unafraid.
“The real reason that I went to Stamford was because I wanted to be ... not here.”
She nods. She holds her breath. She prays he understood.
“And even though I came back, I just feel like I’ve never really come back.”
She almost smiles because he knows. He heard every word she said. He read every line of subtext that none of their audience could have seen. He understands. She knows he’s living a lie. She doesn’t want to be friends with the man he is now. She wants the man he was. The man that’s hers, always has been. The man who laughs and jokes and eats jellybeans all through the workday. The man that makes her want to be better than she is. The man that would have insisted she was on his team to join in every last ‘funtivity’ of Beach Day.
She wants the man that ran away to Stamford and never really came back. The man she loves.
“Well I wish you would.” (Hello)
~
Author's Chapter Notes:
"I called off my wedding because of you." (Hello)
Chapter End Notes:
At last, the angst is over. The final chap is, of course, The Job ....
Your comments and reviews continue to make my day. Thanks to everyone who's stuck with this so far. The end is in sight :)
Your comments and reviews continue to make my day. Thanks to everyone who's stuck with this so far. The end is in sight :)
