Pam woke up with a throbbing headache. She guessed it had something to do with half a wine bottle she downed after she got home from The Coffee Bean but maybe that was just her. She couldn’t believe she kissed Jim. Granted she just pecked him on the lips but it was still something you weren’t supposed to do, especially since he had a girlfriend. Oh god, she really didn’t want to face Karen today. Maybe she could just lie back in bed and forget all that happened yesterday. But something told her the problem wouldn’t just go away if she went back to sleep.
As she got up and glanced at the calendar she nearly tangled herself in the sheets and tripped. May 17th. Was today May 17th? Great, beyond her pulsating headache today was her birthday. She wouldn’t have minded it so much but she worked for Michael Scott so today was going to be a circus.
Her doorbell rang and she shuffled to the door. Before looking through the peep hole and realizing what a mess she was, seeing as how she just woke up, she threw open the door.
“Morning-- whoa. You look, not ok.”
Pam blinked a few times. “Jim? What’re you…?”
“Brought coffee.” She didn’t even see that he was holding up coffee cups in both of his hands. She just kept staring at his face, what the hell was he doing here?
Pam was about to ask him again when she leaned her head against the doorframe and groaned slightly. She closed her eyes as her lovely headache took a violent shove into overdrive.
“Are you…hung-over?” Jim asked pushing past her. She could literally hear the smile in his voice.
She shut the door and sat on a chair near where Jim had put the coffee down. She watched as he searched through her kitchen cabinets before pulling out a pill bottle. He shook the bottle and two pills fell out on the table and he handed her one of the coffees.
“Here take these.” He said putting the bottle back.
“Jim. What are you doing here?” She put the pills in her mouth and took a huge gulp of coffee.
“Right,” he said sarcastically. “like you could really hide this from me forever.”
Right, like everything was going to be different now? The only thing that changed was that Jim knew how she felt now. He couldn’t just hide from that forever. But something didn’t feel right. Although she was happy to see that he wasn’t mad at her, she thought he’d be at least a little upset.
“Pam, it’s you’re birthday. And I don’t care what you say; you are going into work today. You know how hard Michael and Dwight work to embarrass you, plus I even told them where you wanted your birthday celebration.”
She shook her head. “I hate you.”
Jim nodded and smiled. “I’m affectionate towards you too. Now get in the shower, the birthday festivities need to begin.”
Pam got up and trudged to her bathroom. She let out a sigh and went to turn the water on and felt the tap. Guess he couldn’t be upset with her if he just ignored what had happened.
~*~*~
When the bathroom door shut Jim let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. What the hell was he doing here? He kept hoping that he was drunk and he was just hallucinating about all this. Although the ringing headache in his ears told him he wasn’t. He was drunk enough last night to know the difference.
He was happy to know that Pam and him were on the same page about getting plastered after The Coffee Bean incident. He winced at his choice of words. Was that what it was now? Just a big mistake that should be ignored? Didn’t feel like any old accident when her lips had been on his. That had been the starting of his drinking spur last night; he could still taste her. He was hoping with enough alcohol the taste would just go away; that she would go away. But he had no such luck; it was proved by the fact that he could hear the shower running.
His cell phone chirped noisily in his pocket and before he answered he took a look at the caller ID. Karen blinked on the small screen as it rang and all he could do was look at it. The sickening pit in his stomach confirmed that he really shouldn’t have been there. Before he had left to get the coffees he left a note on her vanity mirror that said he just ran out for bagels and that he’d meet her at work.
He put the phone back in his pocket as it was on it’s final ring and tried to remember if he had even put I love you at the end of the note. He honestly couldn’t remember but the terrible sourness of his stomach told him a lot of things.
~*~*~*~
Pam walked into the office with Jim straying behind. She figured he hadn’t told Karen where he had been this morning. Hell, he probably didn’t even mention where he was after work yesterday. She sat down and watched Jim approach Karen’s desk and handed her a bagel.
She took it from him and looked almost surprised. Pam smiled; Jim was good at covering up his messes.
“Sorry I left early this morning.” She heard Jim say but she couldn’t hear the rest on the account of Dwight shredding papers behind her. She guessed it was something good because Karen was smiling after Jim left to sit back down at his desk. Suddenly the sickening of her stomach was not the half a bottle of red wine she had last night.
“Good morning Pam!” Michael came in and smacked his hands rudely on the counter.
“Hi Michael.” Why couldn’t her birthday be on a leap year?
“I hear its someone’s birthday! Do you know where were taking you today?”
She begged for him to tell her it was someplace with a working bar.
“Chuck E. Cheeses!” he replied using one of his obnoxious voices.
“Yes!” Dwight suddenly exclaimed in back of her.
Michael left to go into his office with Dwight behind him and yelled out. “We leave in twenty minutes!”
Everyone in the office groaned and Jim got up and approached the counter.
He took a few jelly beans from the dispenser. “Huh, I wonder who could have planned that.” He said nonchalantly and then smiled.
Pam smiled and shook her head. “I hate you.”
He nodded. “That may be true, but the big purplish rat named Chuck loves you. Who could ask for more?”
~*~*~*
When everyone piled into the designated birthday room at Chuck E. Cheeses, Jim tried to stay as near to Karen as humanly possible. All he would need was for her to get mad at him for another reason and it ruin Pam’s birthday. He watched as Dwight went up to the counter and ask for laser tag team uniforms and Pam rolled her eyes. Not that the people here couldn’t ruin her birthday already.
Michael stood up on a chair and started to announce something. “Alright, listen up! It is now 10:05, you have two hours to play games or play laser tag with Dwight—“
Dwight suddenly screamed red and blue team names and Michael rolled his eyes like everyone else.
“Not that anyone wants to play with Dwight. Anyways, two hours and then everyone report back here for the birthday cake! It’s mint chocolate chip, I expect everyone to be back here!”
“Up for a few rounds of laser tag with Dwight and his imaginary friends?” Karen asked smiling and taking his hand.
Jim couldn’t help but glance at Pam. She was now sitting near the ball pit and was watching all the kids jumping around in it. “Um… yeah, maybe in a few minutes? Why don’t you go set us up with Commander Dwight over there?”
She nodded and headed over to Dwight who was eagerly waiting for people to approach him.
Jim went over and sat next to Pam. “Who brings their kids to Chuck E. Cheeses at 10 in the morning?”
“The same people who drag there employees to Chuck E. Cheeses.” She replied.
“Mentally unstable people?” Jim asked cracking a smile.
She nodded letting out a giggle. Her smile faded for a moment and she turned to look at him. “Jim, when are we going to talk about it?”
“About what?” he asked. Shouldn’t have said that; he knew exactly what she was talking about.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
He almost smiled that she could read his mind like that. “Yeah I know, I just…I don’t know how I—” He shook his head and a question formed in his mouth. It slipped off his tongue before he could stop it. “Why did you do it?”
Pam’s eyes went wide for a moment. “Um, I thought the reason was pretty clear.”
“I mean everything was fine between us and you had to—” he let out a frustrated sigh. “Complicate it.”
“Jim look at us, since when has this ever been anything but complicated?”
Jim looked down and shrugged. “I…don’t know. Can we just—talk about this later?”
Pam nodded hastily and stood. “Sure, it’s not like it was a big deal or anything right? It was just a kiss.”
It wasn’t just a kiss to him and he figured she knew that. “You know that’s not true.”
Why was he doing this now? On her birthday of all days. She should have been happy on her birthday and he was just giving her a reason not to be.
“I don’t even think you know what’s true anymore Jim. It all sounds the same half the time.”
She shook her head and Jim watched her walk away. He suddenly wanted to play laser tag; he needed something to aim at.
~*~*~
Pam scrubbed underneath her eyes and put her hands under the warm water of the bathroom sink. She splashed the water on her face and took a paper towel; it felt like sandpaper on her hands. She wanted to go home and read the back of the wine bottle she’d downed last night. Was the extra side affects of alcohol to have sudden bursts of courage like that?
She swore she’d never said that much about her feelings like that before. Was this fancy new Beesley she’d been trying to create finally coming around? She shook her head and swallowed the last bit of courage she thought she had.
It wouldn’t do her any good.
As she came out of the bathroom she clipped her shoulder with Jim. They stood there for a moment and just looked at one another. This is what their friendship had boiled down to; blank stares and lies to cover up what was already known.
“Look Jim—” she stopped realizing she had cut him off. “Oh, go head.”
He shook his head. “No, you first.”
She nodded. “Look I’m sorry about what I said before. About…everything, I just don’t like being in a fight with you.”
He shook his head and let out a slight laugh. “Yeah, it wasn’t my favorite part either.”
“Where’s Karen?”
“She left and I’m just gonna meet her for dinner later. She’s not one for laser tag or overgrown rats named Chuck.”
“That’s too bad.” Pam mused. She knew she shouldn’t be feeling this way. She shouldn’t be happy that Karen left or that she basically had Jim all to herself, but she was. And she realized that if she was still like this after so much time, it wouldn’t change.
~*~*~
Jim walked through Chuck E. Cheeses with Pam, basically just observing everyone else. This is what he loved most about being with her; that they could just be in total silence and it wouldn’t be awkward. He knew they had to talk about what happened eventually but for now they were just walking around and enjoying time and Jim was all for avoiding that conversation again.
The game rooms were pretty crowded with parents and children running around every which way. Every so often Pam would hit into him because she was trying to avoid charging children running to a new game. At one point when she shifted to the side she tripped over the carpet and had to grab his hand for support. It was the longest thirty-seven seconds of his life. It felt eternities longer than the Booze Cruise silence and he hoped she was holding on longer than she had too.
“You ok?” he asked trying to make his voice sound normal and casual.
“Oh yeah, sorry.” And with that she dropped his hand.
He wished he would have just kept his mouth shut, maybe if he would have Pam would have kept holding his hand. It was unlikely but those thirty-seven seconds were way too long for anything to be meaningless.
“Hey how many tokens do you have left?” Jim asked her suddenly.
He waited until she fished them out of her pocket and handed them over to him.
Jim scoffed. “I’m disappointed in you Beesley. How do you still have all your tokens left?”
She gasped, “I was waiting in line to get a picture with Chuck E. Cheese that I totally forgot I had games to play!”
Jim grinned and indicated the air hockey table with his head. “Wanna play a few rounds?”
Now it was Pam’s turn to grin. “Sure, as long as you’re ok with losing.”
“You’re on.”
~*~*~*
Pam took her side of the hockey table and waited for Jim to put the coins in to start the game. She’d hadn’t played air hockey since she was twelve years old but she wasn’t about to tell Jim that. After all, she was hell bent on winning.
“If I win you have to buy me a bear with your tickets.”
Jim nodded. “Fine but if I win you’re going swimming in the ball pit.”
She grinned as she put the puck on the table. She gave it a firm push which seemed to surprise him and she scored. “If you let me win Halpert I’m pushing you in the ball pit.”
Jim leaned over the table and kept pushing the puck away from scoring again in the slot. “Yeah, right. Like you could ever get enough leverage to push me anywhere. And I’d never let you win.”
He gave a little head tilt which made her smile with distraction. He hurriedly pushed it into her own slot.
She made a face at him. “Stop distracting me! That’s cheating.” Although with Jim, it was always hard to concentrate.
Jim laughed. “I am not a distraction. Just admit you’re not as talented as I am and--”
As Jim was talking Pam made a shot at his slot and scored for the second time. Jim looked down confused and scoffed when he realized she’d just done it again.
He flipped the puck back on the table and shook his head.
“Not so cocky now are you Halpert?” Pam grinned.
“You’re only one point ahead of me, give it time. You’ll be swimming in that ball pit before you know it.”
But after ten minutes of playing Pam was up to 20 points and Jim had only made it to 10.
“Ok, I suck.” Jim admitted, grabbing the tickets and joining Pam to walk back to the party room.
“Yeah, by a whole ten points.” She smiled. “You owe me a bear!”
Before she realized what she was doing she grabbed his forearm and held it, dragging him to the prize counter. She kept wondering if it had any effect on him but she guessed it didn’t. Maybe he was immune to it by now; after all he was with Karen.
~*~*~
When she grabbed his arm all Jim could do was look at her pulling him. He didn’t know why there was so much electricity when she touched him. She wasn’t even directly touching his skin. But he could feel her blood pulsate through her body through his shirt and all the way to his bone when she touched him. The feeling was oddly amazing and it heated him to his core.
“I’ll take the blue one.” She said suddenly and it shook him out of his thoughts.
He handed the person who worked there the tickets and they handed him the bear. Before he could give it to her Dwight appeared before them and told them that it was now two hours past and they needed to report to the party room for cake.
Pam rolled her eyes and let go of his arm. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”
She completely forgot about her bear.
~*~*~
“Happy birthday dear Pamalaaaaa, happy birthday to you!” Michael sang. Well Pam wasn’t exactly sure if that was singing or not but at least he didn’t try to sing opera this time.
After the cake Pam got an assortment of gifts, although she could have done fine without the inappropriate Victoria Secrets gift card from Michael. She thanked Angela for the bath oils and Toby for the cute birthday drawing from his daughter.
As everyone got ready to leave, Pam headed out to her car and Jim caught her before she got in.
“Hey, don’t forget you’re bear.” He said handing it to her.
“Oh, right can’t forget about my victory bear.”
He rolled his eyes. “Just take the bear Pam before a rematch is stated.”
Pam took it from him and clutched it close to her chest. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
He smiled. “Yes you will, happy birthday.”
As he turned to leave Pam’s heart fell. She thought out of everyone she would have received a present from Jim. But she guessed after everything, they weren’t exactly where they had been before.
When she turned to get in her car she saw something sparkle on the back of the bear. She scrunched her eyebrows in confusion and pulled the bear away from her chest. There was a silver chain around its neck leading down to a heart pendant. She carefully pulled the necklace off the bear and played with it between her fingers.
Pam smiled as she turned the heart over to see an inscription.
“Sometimes it takes a while for the heart to realize what it’s wanted all along.”
Author's Chapter Notes:
love it? hate it? leave a comment about your opinion! i love hearing what you think! as always thanks for reading :D
Chapter End Notes:
:DDD
