.
She waited till she knew he was sleeping and she slipped out of bed. She quietly opened his laptop and searched for schools in San Francisco. She figured it was her time to give up something. She left for Rome and he didn’t say anything, just told her that she needed to do it and he’d see her when she got back. San Francisco was his Rome, but things were different now. They were about to graduate and nothing was really holding her here. She could just go with him.
She clicked on a few links. She wasn’t sure what to look for. The schools she had applied to had taken months of consideration. Now she was just randomly clicking on schools in California that had a Master of Fine Art programs.
“What are you doing?” She jumped at the sound of Jim’s voice.
She looked back over her shoulder to see Jim sitting up in bed watching her.
“I was, um, just looking stuff up.”
“What kind of stuff?” He asked playfully.
She bit at her lip not sure if she should tell him. “I was just looking at schools,” she said spinning around only to avoid looking at him in the eye.
“Schools?”
“Yeah... I was... I’m looking at schools in San Francisco.” She winced with embarrassment.
He sat up further in the bed. He gave her a lopsided frown that just made Pam feel exponentially more self conscious about her actions.
“Hey,” he said softly and the frown dissolved. “I’m not taking it. You don’t have to look for a different school.”
“I know you want to though.” She paused to let him began to protest like she knew he would.
He licked his lip and shook his head and she wondered if he knew how utterly unconvincing he looked.
“Just tell me that you want it, and then we can figure this out.”
“I don’t want it.”
“You want it.”
He stood up and strolled over to her. “I don’t.” He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.
She caught his shoulders before he moved away and she kissed him on the mouth. He pulled her up and wrapped his arms around her. “Please just say it,” she murmured against his lips.
He kissed her again, running his hand down the side of her face.
“Please,” she said breaking the kiss to look at him in the eye.
“Okay. I want it.”
She rested her head against his chest and he set his chin on top of her head.
“But I don’t want it if you it means that I can’t be with you.”
************************************************************************
He was in the studio finally getting his project done. He felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of him. He told the truth and now they could talk about it. He knew it was selfish, but he wanted her to go with him. He caught her looking at schools so she had obviously thought the same thing. It was just a huge step in their relationship. Yeah, they were planning on living together, but asking one person to give up their plans to move across country for the other one to pursue their dreams was another story. He had just accepted the job, and his parents weren’t too excited about him moving that far away. He wasn’t excited about moving that far, but he could do it with Pam.
He would be leaving before the end of May, which didn’t leave a whole lot of time to plan anything. He had been thinking about how he would officially ask Pam to move with him. He wasn’t sure if this was the type of thing that required a ring. He had made a few trips to jewelry stores, each time getting a little more courageous when the jeweler asked him if he needed help. He started off with just a wave and mouthing “I’m just looking.” Then the next time he nervously said that he was looking for an engagement ring. The jeweler showed him different ring settings and asked him what type of rings his girlfriend liked. By the last visit he was slipping a ring onto his finger until it hit his knuckle and imagining how much smaller it should be. He kept the ring in his top drawer tucked under some socks. He wasn’t sure what he’d say to Pam if she found it before he asked. He tried to act normal when she was in his room. He tried to keep his eyes from wandering towards the dresser, but he was sure that his body was giving her signs that it was there.
When his phone rang and he saw Pam’s name illuminate the screen his heart stopped for a moment thinking that she had found it. But then he took a moment to think and realized there was no way that she could have even been in his room to find it.
“Hey, what’s going?” He asked while holding the phone between his cheek and his shoulder.
“Come down and let me in.”
“What?” He dropped the piece of aluminum that he had been molding into zigzags.
“I’m downstairs.”
“It’s like 3 in the morning.”
“I know and it’s colder out here than I thought it would be.”
He walked through the hallway and down the stairs and there she was. She was standing there bouncing on her feet peeking through the little window on the door. She smiled widely when she saw him coming down the stairs. He pushed the door open and held it until she slipped past him.
“What are you doing here?”
“I just wanted to come see you.” She rubbed her arms together trying to heat them up.
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“Do you want me to go? You’re probably busy. I should have called before I left.”
“No, stay. I haven’t taken a break in a few hours.”
“Good, I was hoping that you hadn’t.” She lifted her eyebrows at him.
He finally looked at her, noticed that she was oddly dressed for 3AM.
“Are you wearing shorts?” He pulled at the collar of her jacket until she was standing next to him. “And why are wearing a coat? If you would have just put some pants on I bet you wouldn’t be so cold.”
She laughed nervously. “And now I feel like an idiot.” She waited for the confusion to hit him. “I, uh, wow. I just...”
She pulled her coat open briefly and watched Jim’s eyes nearly pop out of his head.
“Definitely not wearing shorts,” he stammered.
She wrapped her arms around her waist. “I just thought you could use a break and I thought maybe... I’m not sure what I thought.”
“Did you really want to...” he waved a finger at her coat, “do that here?”
“I don’t know. It’s the last week and I guess I’m not really thinking clearly.”
He exhaled while nodding at the words she said, but wasn’t really able to comprehend any of the words she was saying.
“I think I’m just going to go. Call me when you’re on your way back.”
“Do you want to see what I’ve been building?” He just needed any excuse to keep her here.
She looked down at her coat now rethinking just wearing a coat over her underwear. She hadn’t really thought it through. She had momentary lapse in judgment. It was like she forgot that Jim wasn’t the only person in the building. She had been here enough times to know that this time of night happened to be one of the busiest times too.
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Hey,” he said taking a few steps forward. “You don’t have to leave.”
“I’m in my underwear, Jim.”
“That’s okay.” He smirked at her. One smirk could still melt her like that first time she met him.
“I’m sorry, I should have thought about this more before coming over.”
“There’s a lounge on the sixth floor that no one uses.”
“What?”
“Oh, don’t act all surprised now. You’re the one that came dressed like that.”
“And we’ve decided that I clearly wasn’t thinking when I came over here.”
“I’m gonna be honest. If this is you not thinking then I’m okay with it.” He reached out and took a hold of her hand and started walking up the stairs. “I don’t know if you know this, but it’s secretly every architect students’ goal to have sex in this building.”
“Really Jim? Every architect?”
“Okay, I just made that up, but it’s definitely mine.”
She got nervous when they reached the landing on the sixth floor and paused in the doorway.
“What if we get caught?”
“Pam, graduation is in 5 days. What are they going to do to us? Not let us register for classes next semester?”
“What if they hold our diplomas? Then we have to explain to our parents why we didn’t graduate.”
“Okay, wow. You really did not think about this at all before you came over here. We don’t have to do this now if you don’t want to.”
“Do you want to?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Stupid question. Alright, let’s do this, I guess. But if someone walks in I’m running.”
“You really think running would be the best idea?”
He wasn’t sure what came over her and why she had even thought this was a good idea, but it didn’t matter because he thought it was by far the coolest thing she had done for him during finals.
When he had her pushed up against the wall of the lounge and her legs were tightly wrapped around his waist he whispered in her ear, “Stay with me.” She didn’t answer back; she just kept her arms clinging to his back.
“Pam.”
She met his gaze.
“Stay with me...” Shit, what was he doing? Now was not the time to pop that question. “This summer. Stay with me this summer,” he backtracked.
Her lips met his and she nodded her head.
That wasn’t how he wanted that to go, but she agreed, or at least seemed to agree at the moment to live with him for the summer. Jim walked her back to Dunder Hall, and asked again if she wanted to stay with him in San Francisco. He just needed to hear her say that this was what she wanted, not something she just agreed to in a moment of passion.
She wasn’t sure if she should be ecstatic that he asked her to stay with him or disappointed that he only asked her to stay for the summer. It was a start though. And telling her parents that she was moving to California for 3 months would probably go over better than telling them that she was moving there for the unforeseeable future.
Her parents took it better than expected. They seemed to welcome the idea of the two of them taking a major step.
************************************************************************
Graduation had finally come, and it was hard not to reminisce on the last four years.
Pam thought about Roy and she was thankful that things happened the way they did. She remembered seeing Jim walking down the stairs next to Dwight and thinking that there was something about him that she was just drawn to. She remembered that first drunken kiss and then the first real kiss on his bed. The summers that they spent together. She remembered the fights and the make ups that followed. She remembered cursing God when she met Kelly, and then her time in Rome. She was this quiet girl from Scranton that had experienced more in the last four years than she had ever dreamt about.
She took Jim’s hand as they strolled across the grass on the quad towards their seats. She scanned the crowd for her parents and she knew there was no way that she would see them.
“We made it,” she said as they worked their way through the crowd.
“Yeah, thank God.”
Jim thought back to that first day when he walked into Dunder Hall, not realizing that he would commit himself to staying there until the end. He thought about all of the things that he had done to Dwight over the years and he was sure that he had somehow made up for all of them by helping Dwight get Angela back. It was a disturbing thought that his roommate had become an actual friend. He remembered catching a glimpse of the curls on Pam’s head while she was tying her shoe in the stairwell. The way he felt when she looked up at him and walked through that door. She was the one and he was surprised that he didn’t know that when he first saw her.
“I love you.”
“I love you too,” she said as she let his hand slip through his finger so she could take her seat several rows in front of him.
He tried to listen to the speech that the Dean of their school gave and then to the guest speakers, but he instead gazed around the crowd looking for people he knew, staring at the back of Pam’s head waiting for her to turn around. He was sure that he had just missed some profound message taken from some lyric of a popular song that he would never actually be able to apply to his life.
Walking across the stage this time was different. In high school when he reached the other end of the stage it was a relief knowing that he was done with this chapter of his life and he would still have four more years before he had be out on his own. Today was the beginning of the rest of his life and it scared the crap out of him.
Jim made his way towards the seats behind him and began looking for his family. He saw Jon first. He waved across the way until he got their attention.
“Congratulations little brother.”
“Thanks man.”
“Nammy and I had a bet going that you would trip. I won.”
Jim looked over at Nammy, who was shaking her head at Jon.
His dad hugged him and then his mom came over and it felt like she would never let him go.
“Where’s Pam at?” His dad raised himself on his tiptoes and looked behind Jim like Pam would be hiding behind him.
“I told her that we would just meet back at the hall.”
“No. Go find her. We haven’t taken any pictures yet.” He could see that his mom was on the verge of tears, just like she always was at things like this.
Jim looked back through the crowd before shooting his parents a pleading look.
“Go. We’ll wait here.” His mom began digging through her purse for her camera like Jim would magically return in two seconds with Pam.
He pulled out his phone because that was the only way he would actually find Pam in this mess.
“Where are you at?” He covered his ear with his hand.
“We’re closer to the library. Where are you?”
“I’m walking in front of the Humanities building. My mom wants photos.”
“Mine too.”
“Alright, I’ll stand here in front of the building.”
He saw Mr. Beesly first. Pam was standing a foot behind him directing them even though Mr. Beesly had already spotted Jim.
“We’re so proud of you,” Mr. Beesly said while shaking Jim’s hand.
“Thank you. My parents are waiting over there if you want to meet them.”
They had been dating for two years and this was the first time that their parents would meet. Jim’s parents and his grandma greeted Pam with hugs and congratulations. His mom stood awkwardly in front of the Beeslys until her mom broke the silence.
“Pat Beesly.” She extended her hand. “This is my husband Joe. It’s really great to meet you. Jim’s just amazing.”
“You raised a good boy,” her dad added while shaking hands.
“Thank you. Pam is wonderful too. Not sure what she sees in Jim though,” his dad joked.
“Oh, don’t be fooled, Pam’s no gem herself.”
They watched the banter going on between the four of them for awhile until Jim reminded them that they needed to get going. At lunch the conversations continued and it was almost surreal how perfectly they all got along.
“So how are you guys dealing with Jim getting ready to leave?” Pam’s dad asked.
“It’s kind of sudden, and I think when Jim actually moves it’ll hit us. He’s flying out next week to go look at places. It’s weird though, knowing that he’ll be that far.” His dad put a hand on his shoulder as he finished. “What about you guys, ready to let Pam leave for the summer?”
“Yeah. I actually thought she was going to say that she would be moving out there with him.”
“Dad? I’m sitting right here.”
Jim glanced down at his food trying to avoid getting sucked into this conversation. He hated that they were all suggesting exactly what he wanted to ask but couldn’t. Pam took Jim’s hand under the table and it took all of his strength to not lean over right now and ask Pam to live with him and marry him.
.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Graduation... and just a few things before then.
Chapter End Notes:
Two more chapters to go, kind of sad. Next chapter they move out of Dunder hall and are off to California.
