Before leaving the hotel, he'd arranged and paid for a rental car to be brought to Karen. He had to get home.
It’s a long drive from New York City to Scranton. Many people, given that amount of silent contemplation time after making split-second, life-altering decisions have second thoughts or feelings of remorse.
Not Jim.
Instead, his former resolutions were reaffirmed as he thought of the years past. He thought of how a person controls their own fate, despite what Fate has to say in the matter.
His whole life, he realized, he could alter his situations. Pranks and jokes at work, school, and on friends were little ways of making things better or more bearable. He had the courage and the wherewithal to reach out for what he wanted. Like the night of the company casino party and how he had gone for a transfer, were all times, though belated, that he had tried to alter his life and make things better.
That night at the casino he had told her how he felt, an engaged woman, who hadn’t known the depth of his feelings. The repercussions of that night, his transfer, and then her calling off her wedding, had changed the dynamics again. He hadn’t even been in Scranton by that point but he acknowledged that he had been too wounded to react in any case. Fate had intervened later to send him back to Scranton, this time with a girlfriend in tow, and an admittedly injured pride to uphold.
He thought again of what she had said at the beach. What she had said about her wedding, her feelings, and their friendship. That had been what he needed, he realized, to take this step. How he had longed to respond in kind, but he was still trapped by his connection to Karen, the distance that had grown between them, and again his own pride.
Not now though, he thought as he gripped the wheel harder. The note and her personal ‘emblem’ along with the realization of the thin crossroads of fate that he was upon had focused his inner lens upon the wants of his heart.
His thoughts were simple.
He was free.
She was free.
It was their turn.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Jim's thoughts on the way home to Scranton.
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Chapter End Notes:
Coming next, an interruption for Pam.
