.
He wasn’t sleeping last night. Two nights, two nights of no sleep. He was used to it though, only this time there were no models and no sketches, only his thoughts to keep him up. He was on his way to the bathroom when he saw her door open. He crept over and peeked inside. The room was dark and her blankets were thrown from the bed.
He went out into the hallway when he heard the bathroom door open and slam shut. He only caught a glimpse of her running back to the bathroom. He ran after her, and when he entered the bathroom he saw the tips of her feet hanging out from under the door. He thought about knocking and asking if she was alright, but clearly she wasn’t. So instead he slowly pushed the stall door open and kneeled next to her on the floor. He expected her to yell at him, to tell him to leave her alone, but she didn’t. She didn’t swat his hand away as he brushed the hair out of her face. She didn’t pull away when he rubbed her back. She leaned back on him when she was done.
She closed her eyes stopping the tears that had been streaming down her face. She wasn’t sure why she was crying right now. It wasn’t the violently crying she did in the shower, and not the silent sobs she cried at the door. These were just inexplicably there.
Jim’s hand reached up and he wiped them off her face.
“You done?” He asked.
She nodded her face against his and the stubble against her cheek lightly scraped her skin. He stood up placing his arms around her bringing her to her feet. She walked over to the sink and she splashed water on her face and drank from her hands.
She woke up in the morning with a splitting headache. Her mouth was dry. There was water on the dresser. It wasn’t her dresser. It wasn’t her room. The stomach under her head was Jim’s. The hand on her back was Jim’s. She lifted her head and the nausea came back. She put her head back down and she didn’t feel so sick anymore. She felt his fingers grasp at her skin and then his body stirred. She closed her eyes tightly. Maybe if she was asleep he would just let her lie there, he wouldn’t want to talk and they wouldn’t fight. It would be like things were normal.
He saw her eyes. The way her eyelids were scrunched together, she wasn’t sleeping. Her body was so hot. He was freezing, but he could go without blankets if it made her more comfortable.
Eventually the creases around her eyes softened and her breathing slowed and she really was sleeping again. He knew that he could go back to sleep too. The next time he woke she wasn’t sleeping. The blankets were pulled up to his neck and he wondered if he did that some time during the night or if she had covered him.
“How are you feeling?” He asked.
“Better.” She whispered.
It was a relief when she didn’t say fine. That she could almost admit that for awhile things weren’t okay. That maybe, just maybe, she would finally talk about this. Tell him that she was angry at him. Talk to him about how she felt about the possibility of there being a baby and the possibility that there wasn’t a baby anymore.
“Food poisoning?”
“No, the pills.”
“What do you mean?”
“On the box it said that they make some people sick. Funny that the thing that’s trying to keep you from having morning sickness essentially gives you morning sickness.” She laughed.
His faced dropped with her laugh. She still wasn’t going to talk about it, not honestly. Or maybe this was how she really felt about it; it wasn’t big deal, just a small speed bump that she took care of.
“You’re joking about it already?” There it was, that anger in his voice again, and she was quickly reminded why she spent yesterday avoiding him and crying.
“I think I’m going to go.” She crawled over him and he caught her hand.
“Please, can we talk about this?”
She shook her head and he let her hand slip through his.
“I think we really do need a break,” he said as her hand reached for the door.
There was no reaction this time. No yelling, no crying, just a quick okay and she left.
She went back to her room and slept for the rest of the day and for most of the next day. She wasn’t sure that it was possible to even sleep that much. It definitely wasn’t healthy. She missed all of her classes that day.
When she finally emerged from her room she ran straight into Jim. Avoiding him was going to be hard. He looked at her and she was embarrassed that she was still in the same clothes from when she left his room yesterday morning.
“Pam,” he started.
She gave him a weak smile before pushing past him.
She looked so sad and it killed him to know that he did that to her. That it was his words that made her avoid looking him in the eyes.
“You weren’t in class today.”
“Didn’t feel like going,” she said without looking back.
On Wednesday she was there. She deliberately got there early so she wouldn’t have to sit next to him. She saw him enter and go to the seat where he normally sat and he glanced back at her; catching her eyes only for a second as she looked down at her paper. By Friday he couldn’t take it any more, and when he came to class he was going to sit next to her.
There was some scrawny kid sitting next to her.
“Can you move? You’re in my seat.” He asked the guy. The guy sort of rolled his eyes and his head sort of pointed to all of the open seats in the front row. Jim just stood there waiting for him to move. It worked and the guy grabbed his bag and trudged off to the front.
His arm grazed against hers on the arm rest as he sat and she drew it back towards her body.
“Pam,” he whispered as the professor began speaking. “Don’t be like this.”
“Not now,” she said harshly.
“Then when?”
She sighed and ignored his last comment.
“I miss you,” he whispered.
“Don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“You’re the one that wanted the break, not me.”
She turned back to her notes and tried to catch up with what she had missed. She could feel his eyes on her instead of the board.
“Don’t put this all on me,” she whispered. She stood up abruptly grabbing her bag and her notebook. She squeezed past his legs and left.
She couldn’t even sit next to him for two minutes. He thought about going after her, but he knew they would just fight.
Pam walked out of the room without any real direction; she just knew she needed some space between her and Jim.
She walked until she was at this small coffee shop, but as soon as she went in there was Jan. Sipping her coffee and reading the travel section of the newspaper. Jan’s eyes looked up from the newspaper and she smiled at Pam. They weren’t normally too friendly and she doubted that she would have to talk to her. Just a wave should have sufficed. Pam got her coffee and she saw Jan motioning for her to join her.
“Hi Jan,” she said approaching the table.
“Pam. How’s it going?”
“OK. Just getting coffee.”
“Sit.”
Pam pulled out the chair and sat at the edge. She wasn’t sure that her body wanted to commit to sitting with Jan while she drank her coffee.
“So how have you been?” Since you got fired... she continued in her head.
“Things have been better, but I’m dealing with it, and Michael has really helped out. We get to live in his housing apartment for free.”
“Michael is a good guy,” Pam said not completely sure that it was the truth.
“He is,” Jan confirmed.
Pam thought she should have been more sincere with that last statement. Just because she was in a bad mood didn’t mean she had to call into question other people’s worth as a partner.
“I know Michael can be a little harsh, rough around the edges, politically incorrect. Most of the things that people are turned off by, but normally he means well.”
Pam nodded in agreement.
“I was married before I started dating Michael, and it was awful.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said softly.
“Things are really good with Michael though. He gets me.”
“Do you argue?” Pam wanted to know that the couple that she always thought was completely dysfunctional at least fought since they were so apparently perfect in Jan’s eyes.
“All people argue, Pam.”
“Right, of course.”
“You and Jim are practically perfect, but you must fight too, right?”
“No, we do.”
“You know what I mean then, that even with all of the fights your love doesn’t ever lessen. The fights are just tests.”
If this fight was a test then she was failing miserably. Pam took a big drink of her coffee.
“I should probably get going,” Jan said looking down at her watch and folding her newspaper.
“Yeah, see you later.”
Then it was like the universe was playing a cruel joke on her when she saw Karen walking out of the back room of the coffee shop. She took off her apron and threw it under the counter.
‘Please, don’t look over here,’ Pam repeated in her head.
But Karen saw her and walked over to the table.
“Pam!”
“Hey Karen.”
“How have you been? Still with Jim?”
She put on the best smile she had and nodded her head. Karen did not rank high on her list of people to spill her guts to. Jan actually ranked way higher than Karen.
“That’s great. You guys are really great.”
Pam nodded her head again.
“Sorry, that I was a kind of a bitch last year.”
“What? No, you were...” Karen cut her off.
“A bitch.”
“No, seriously it’s fine. No hard feelings.”
“Do you—Can I sit?”
“Sure.”
“I have a huge ego and Jim pretty much tore it to shreds.”
“Seriously, you don’t have to explain.”
“It needs to be said.”
Pam wondered who it was up in heaven that hated her.
“It was just... after I kissed him, he was very calm about the situation, he didn’t yell. He definitely didn’t kiss me back, in case you were wondering. He handled everything, just, right. Then you sent me that email, and you weren’t mad. I would have been mad if I were you.”
Pam wasn’t sure why she wasn’t mad either. It was like a personality disorder. She didn’t get mad when she should have, she just rolled over and all was forgiven. And she knew that’s why Jim was so angry with her right now.
“It was just so sickening how perfect you guys were.”
“Thanks Karen.”
“No, at the time it was sickening, but looking back it’s kind of admirable. You guys are good together. Don’t let that one go.”
But what if he was the one that let go? What should she do then?
“Yeah. So you’re working here?”
“Yeah, its okay, gives me some extra money for the weekends.”
“How’s graduate school?”
“Tougher than I thought, but I’ve always been one for a challenge. Do you know what you’re going to do after you’ve graduated?”
“No idea.”
“You should start thinking about it, that last semester will really fly by.” Karen shifted in her seat, not really sure what to talk about anymore. “Well, I have to get going to class, but thanks for hearing me out. Stop by soon and I’ll try to give you a free coffee.”
“Thanks Karen, it was really good to see you again.”
Pam finished her drink. What was with everyone reminding her how perfect she and Jim were? They didn’t know everything, what went on behind closed doors. That they weren’t exactly talking right now, and that they weren’t exactly together either. She just didn’t know what he wanted from her. Why was it so important to talk about everything?
She threw her empty cup into the trash and began the long walk home. She wanted to talk to someone. All of these years and she still didn’t have that one friend that she confide in. Well she did, but she couldn’t very well tell Jim about himself. She could tell Kelly, but Kelly could keep a secret like she could keep a plant alive; wasn’t going to happen. Pam went through her mental friend list. There was Dawn, but an international call seemed a little much, and an email just didn’t seem like the place where you would write ‘hey I thought I might be pregnant, so I took the morning after pill. How are you?’
Then she thought Angela. What a stupid idea. The idea of telling Angela anything about sex just seemed utterly baffling. But clearly Angela was having sex. Andy bragged about it enough, and she did ask Pam for advice once many years ago. It was settled, she was going to ask Angela for advice. It was Angela or Phyllis, and she could take Angela’s dirty looks, telling Phyllis would be like telling an aunt that she wasn’t really acquainted with.
She was nervous about doing this. What would she say? She knocked before she had a chance to change her mind.
She was surprised how easy it was, how Angela let her in the room. All she said was that she needed advice. She was sure that Angela had a flashback to that day in her room when she asked Pam for relationship advice.
“What was it that you needed help with?”
“I have a friend, let’s call her Jane.” ‘Pamela Jane Beesly,’ she thought. “And this friend is dating Matthew. And they’re in love. So Jane and Matthew were getting to know each other... in the biblical sense.”
Angela’s eyes went a little wide, but really she had no room to judge.
“And there was an accident. So Jane had to take emergency contraceptive.”
“She needs to repent,” Angela said nervously because she was evidently worried for this made up person’s soul.
“She will.” Angela looked a little skeptical. “I promise.”
“We can go to church on Sunday.”
“Oh, my friend might be busy.”
“Pam, I know you’re not busy. The office doesn’t open up until noon on Sundays.”
“Can I please just finish? Jim and I sort of broke up,” she blurted out.
“What do you need help with then?” Pam secretly loved that there was no sympathy in Angela’s voice.
“I need to figure out how to stop being mad at Jim when he’s still mad at me.”
“Why is Jim mad?”
“Because he wants to talk about everything and I... just... don’t.”
“You feel guilty about killing your baby.”
“No,” she said defensively. “There probably wasn’t even a baby.”
“Then why wouldn’t you want to talk about it?”
She hated Angela in this moment; her and her inquisitive tactics. No wonder Angela and Dwight got along so well.
“Make things right with Jim and I’ll help you make things right with God.”
“Fine, see you Sunday. And maybe you should take your own advice,” she said curtly.
“What?”
“Dwight.”
Even after all of the things she just shared with Angela, and all of the advice she had given her, it still felt good to put Angela in her place.
.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Pam gets advice from unlikely women.
Chapter End Notes:
Next chapter Jim gets some advice from someone too. Sorry I didn't answer back to any of the comments that were asking if the throwning up would affect the pills, but I knew I was going to discuss that in the chapter and I didn't want to ruin anything.
