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It turns out that Karen has cousins, in a place where she thought she didn't know anyone at all.

In mid-April, when the phone company had finally started delivering phone books her place, she'd been bored one night and did the thing she used to do when she was little, looking under the F listings in the white pages for her last name. Weirdly enough, she'd found some. And weirdly enough, she'd called. Don't ask why--it's just the kind of action you take when your Friday night plans consist of watching Friday Night Lights over the phone with your gay friend Brad, who'd just relocated to Savannah and didn't know anybody there either.

Ella and Adam Filippelli are her cousins. They're brother and sister who rent a house in the suburbs, fifteen minutes away from Karen's apartment. Ella is five years older and Adam is two years older than Karen, and from what Ella had told her, they're her dad's sister's kids.

"This is crazy. I didn't even know my aunt had kids," Karen had said.

"We didn't even know our mom had a brother," Ella had replied. "But, whatever. Want to come over tomorrow?"

And that's how Karen Filippelli made friends in Utica.

* * * * *

Memorial Day weekend sees the biggest barbecue Karen's ever been to, no exaggeration. Her cousins throw it in their backyard, and she shows up early, with grocery bags full of plastic utensils and a bowl of her guacamole dip, to help string paper lanterns and set out citronella candles and to laugh at Adam who gets a beer shower as he tries to tap the keg. Once the party starts, family begins to show up, which is a tiny bit awkward.

She gets to meet her aunt, who explains to her that it was nothing against her dad, but he'd never liked her uncle and they'd lost touch, blah blah family drama blah. It doesn't matter now, though. Karen has a job she's happy with, in a town that's growing on her, and cousins who are really pretty awesome. And she has a hot dog. Those are good too.

Adam's kind of a man whore, which Ella's always joking about, and it becomes more obviously true to Karen at the barbecue. As she sits sideways on a lounge chair and with a plate of sour cream and onion chips, she watches him with his arms around the waist of a girl with red hair, her laughing against his cheek. It's warm and comforting to Karen and she misses being close to someone, even if it's just a no-strings, alcohol-induced closeness. Sometimes that's the best kind, to be completely honest.

She doesn't dwell on it, because it's not like she's lonely or anything. She sees Ella's goddaughter, who's three, walking towards her with bare feet and a pink plastic sippy cup in her hand, stretching her arms out like she wants to be picked up. Karen does, puts her on her lap and sings the alphabet song until the little girl's mom comes and sits next to Karen on the lounge chair and they talk about gas prices, vacation plans, the best places to buy summer sandals.

Later on when it begins to get dark, Adam and his friend Joe light the chimenea that Joe had borrowed from his parents, and Karen stretches out in front of it on the ground, the clipped grass tickling her ankles, still warm from the day's sun. The little fireplace sets off a nice heat that blends in well with the breeze that's getting cooler as the sun goes down.

Adam sits cross-legged next to her after he's done poking around at the fire, and he looks like he's more than a little tipsy. He slings an arm around her.

"I'm glad we met," he says. "I'm glad you moved here."

She smiles. "Me too." And she means it, a lot.

A Sublime song comes up on Ella's iPod that's hooked up to speakers and Karen feels like she's 18 again, drinking beer outside at night out of a plastic cup, when it's almost summer and she has no grown up obligations until Tuesday.

All of a sudden Joe's next to her, with knees bent and his elbows resting against them. Joe's cute in a scruffy sort of way, with shaggy brown hair and a thin t-shirt, and from what she's heard, he does construction with Adam. He seems like a nice boy. Not that you can ever really tell, but if you could.

"So, how long are you up for?" Joe asks her. Karen looks at him, a little confused.

"Oh, no," she explains, and smiles. "I live here. Well, not here here, but here as in Utica here." She realizes she's said the word "here" about fifty times and she looks into her empty cup, feeling like a dork.

"Cool," is all Joe says, and then they're both quiet, in a comfortable sort of way.

Karen's starts to really relax as she sits and makes small talk with Joe, who has a soft voice and makes her laugh. She's well aware that there are cousins and aunts and uncles everywhere around her that she hasn't seen since she was a baby, and some she's never met at all, but she doesn't move from her spot and neither does Joe.

It's nice, up until Adam comes up behind them with a Super Soaker and drenches them with freezing cold water. But Karen's pleasantly buzzed, and it's fun, so she uses Joe's shoulder as leverage when she jumps up to chase after her cousin, grabbing two bottles of water from the coolers on the patio.

"That's for laughing like a jerk before, when the keg got lager all over me!" Adam calls out to her as he runs away.

"I'm gonna--" Karen cuts herself off, not wanting to curse in front of the twenty kids all over the yard. She chases Adam around one of the elm trees and when he tries to fake left to get by her, she shakes one of the bottles of water towards him, falling completely short and getting more water all over herself. "Shit," she says, fumbling to open the other bottle.

But then Joe's behind Adam with the little cooler they'd used for the condiments, and he dumps it over Adam's head, half-melted ice cubes sticking to his hair.

Karen laughs and laughs. And she's completely soaked. She tries to wring out her tank top but it's still uncomfortably wet and cold.

"Come on," Joe says, laughing and grabbing her hand. "Let's go in and get towels."

She lets him lead her into the house where it's dark and quiet, except for the sound of the living room TV that's set to the Phillies post-game show. She shivers, hugging herself to hide her clinging shirt in front of a guy she just met.

In the bathroom, Joe opens the linen cabinet and pulls out two towels, throwing one over his shoulder and unfolding the other, wrapping it around her. He doesn't let go of it though, and he looks at her in a way that makes Karen think he's going to kiss her, if that sort of stuff happened in real life. If real life were a Freddie Prinze, Jr. movie.

Of course, it generally isn't. And after he gives her a quick smile, he pats her shoulders and gets to work drying his hair with his own towel.

"Adam's a fucking douche," he says. "Especially when he's drunk. Are you sure you're related to him?"

Karen tries to sop up some of the water from her jeans. "Of course," she says. "My family's known for our particular variety of douchiness. It's been passed down for generations. From Italy."

After they go back outside, Ella notices Karen's wet clothes right away and ushers her back into the house and into her bedroom for some dry clothes.

"So. You and Joe," she says, rummaging through her dresser.

"What?" Karen asks. She peels off her tank top. "I don't understand the question." She's still a little drunk and she suddenly feels embarrassed for some reason, not that anything had happened with Joe anyway.

"Just, Joe kind of has this girlfriend, and he's not really that nice to her, and he works, like, fourteen hours a day. I'm just saying." She throws a t-shirt and a pair of gym shorts to Karen.

"We were just talking," Karen says, trying not to sound defensive. "He's not my type anyway, his hair's too long."

Ella sits on the bed while Karen changes clothes. "No, that's cool. But I know him, and he's just never really been a commitment sort of guy. Plus he hangs out with my brother all the time, and Adam's..."

"Exceptionally fond of the ladies?" Karen finishes, sitting next to her cousin. "Listen, don't worry about me. I'm not interested in dating right now. I have too much going on at work, and I'm not going to hook up with the first guy I talk to at a party."

* * * * *

She does, kind of, after everyone else leaves. She ends up in Ella and Adam's spare bedroom, Joe with his arms around her, combing her hair against the pillow with his fingers.

"I hear you're an ass," Karen says, suddenly remembering the conversation she'd had with Ella earlier. "And that you have a girlfriend." It's weird to her to be saying the things that she's saying and not really being prepared to take to heart whatever the answers are.

He doesn't reply at first, and she's ready to just get up and go home and chalk her bad judgment up to drunkenness, but he's big and warm and she's not really even that drunk anymore.

"Yes...and no," he finally says. It's vague, but it makes her comfortable enough to make out with him.

One thing leads to the next, and a few hours later Karen's trying to pull her t-shirt out from under Joe, who'd fallen asleep on top of it, so that she doesn't have to walk to the bathroom naked. She gives up when he starts to stir and grabs his shirt off of the floor instead, and as she makes her way out into the hallway, she realizes it smells like him and wonders exactly how weird it would be if she slept in it.

Too weird, she ultimately decides, before crawling back into bed and curling up against his chest.

He's gone the next morning when she wakes up, but when she stumbles into the kitchen for a glass of water, there's a note on the refrigerator that says: KAREN: WENT TO STORE FOR COFFEE + MORE BEER. GAVE JOE YOUR #, HOPE THAT'S OK -- A.

* * * * *

The first two weeks of June come and go, and she doesn't hear from Joe at all. Which is fine. She'd been warned that he's a dick with a probable girlfriend, and she sure as hell doesn't need any of that in her life. Things are finally looking up and she wants them to stay that way. Besides, if he'd wanted to get in touch with her, he would have given her his number in the first place. That's just how things worked.

Her cousins don't find out that she'd kind of sort of had sex with Joe the night of the Memorial Day party, or if they did find out they kept it to themselves. It's tactful, if not alarming, since Joe's supposedly this super-close friend of the family, and she's just this cousin who'd just called them out of the blue one day.

* * * * *

Putting stuff like that aside doesn't always work as well as you want it to, though. Even when you have a hundred distractions and reasons why you shouldn't even care. Sometimes a person just sticks with you even when go out of your way to make yourself resilient to them. It's kind of a bitch, really.

So Karen asks Adam about Joe one day, while she and Adam are in his basement playing ping pong. She tries to make it totally casual, not that it isn't.

"Nah," Adam says from under the table, where the ball rolled after Karen missed a shot. "Joe doesn't have a girlfriend."

"Ella said he does," Karen says. "And he hasn't, you know, called me or anything." She stares at her nails so she doesn't have to meet Adam's eyes.

Adam serves back to her. "There's girls, but none of them are girlfriends. And Ella's Mrs. Let's Get Married As Soon As We Meet. She doesn't believe that fucking around can be healthy, like I do."

Karen would ask exactly what he means by "healthy", but she doesn't want to get off topic. "So he's seeing people."

"More like doing people," Adam says, whipping the ball with his paddle, and it flies right past her into a stack of paint cans where she has to crawl around to find it.

"Okay, I'll accept that," she says.

"Look, cuz." Adam comes around to her side of the ping pong table. "Girls like Joey because he's the strong, silent type. And he works hard and he doesn't let bullshit get in the way of what he wants. Girls also hate him for the same reason. Just keep that in mind."

Karen lets that thought process. She guesses it makes sense. "Whatever," she shrugs. "I don't need his whole life story, I just want to make sure what happened in my last relationship doesn't happen again."

"Well, he asked for your number, so he likes you and he'll probably call you. It's not like it's been a whole month, or anything. Give it some time, shut the fuck up already, and ping."

Karen looks at Adam, confused. "Ping?"

"Or pong, whichever you city people prefer."

Karen bounces the ball on the table with her paddle a few times. "How about I serve? As in, your ass to you, on a silver platter?"

* * * * *

Work begins to take her mind off of personal things, though. At least, it allows her less time to think about certain construction workers during business hours.

Dunder Mifflin Utica's always been known for being the branch that runs itself, especially when there were branches like Albany and Camden and Scranton always being under the microscope. And now that Albany's getting back on its feet this many months after Jeff took over management, and Camden's been through an entire staff overhaul, Scranton's struggling. A lot.

The week before the Fourth of July, Karen is invited to a mandatory meeting at corporate for all management, set for the Tuesday after the holiday. They're expected to put together a report including the gross sales of each salesperson in their branch, commission percentages, number of accounts in order of oldest to newest account, number of new accounts per quarter, and on and on and on until Karen's almost up to Q in her Excel sheet. The report needs to be emailed back to David by the end of the week, and Karen has a pretty good idea what it's all about.

She suspects they're looking for a replacement for Ryan Howard, whose prison sentence had been splashed all over the newspapers: fifteen years maximum, plus twice the gross gain or loss caused by the offense. Karen feels a pang of nausea for Ryan when she reads the official press release.

But if Karen's being honest, she doesn't want the job this time. Okay, she wouldn't turn it down if they offer it to her, but the thought of moving and getting used to a city again just makes her feel tired. No, thanks.

* * * * *

July Fourth is spent at a party thrown by Ella's best friend. Adam doesn't even go, he and Joe and three other friends of theirs spend the weekend in the Finger Lakes with Joe's stepdad's boat. It's ridiculous. Is there anything Joe doesn't borrow from his fucking parents? And is he avoiding her? And oh God, what if Adam told him that she'd been asking about him that one day?
After the party, a few of them drive out to the park to see the fireworks. Karen lies down on the blanket they've spread on the grass, and stares up at the explosions of green and red. She thinks about Ryan being in jail and how he's missing summer and fireworks and ice cream and life. She thinks about how lucky she is to have found friends to do stuff with.

By the time the last boom echoes through the sky, Karen lets go of everything. Of Joe, his hands on her shoulders through a thick towel, the smell of his t-shirt. She's free; only people in prison should sit around all the time and think about the mistakes they've made.

* * * * *

On Monday night, Karen takes a train into Manhattan instead of driving, with gas prices the way they are. It's a five hour trip, but she figures she could use the time on the train anyway to beef up the presentation she's going to have to give on her branch's numbers, although she seriously doubts the meeting will be focused less on stuff like that and more on who Ryan's replacement's going to be.

When the train pulls into the Poughkeepsie station around 9:30, Karen's making her sweater into a ball so that she can nap for an hour or so before arriving in the city and having to find her hotel. But her phone rings before she even has a chance to close her eyes, and she groans. It's a 315 area code, but she doesn't recognize the rest of the number, and she figures it's probably Adam calling her from someone else's phone to see if she wants to go out, which he's done before.

She's tempted to just not answer because she's all the way in Poughkeepsie, but what if it's an emergency?

"Hello?" Karen says.

"Is this Karen?" The person on the other end is, well, it's Joe. Karen recognizes his voice right away.

"Yeah. Hey, Joe." She figures she'll be casual and pretend her heart isn't beating out of her chest.

She listens to him apologize for not calling sooner, and listens to his list of work projects that have been keeping him so busy, listens to how his sister had just had a baby and how he'd had an awful weekend in the Finger Lakes because all it did was rain, and by the time he's finally done with all of that, they're kind of talking like friends.

Karen tells him about what she did Fourth of July, how her brother is planning to visit in August and how Joe should meet him, they'd really like each other, and how she's on her way into the city for a meeting that would determine who her new boss would be. They talk for an hour and a half, and by the time Karen's train reaches the city, it's 11:00.

"Oh!" She says, as the train goes through a tunnel. "I have to go, I'm almost here."

"Okay," Joe says. "I hope you get an awesome boss."

Karen laughs. "Me too."

"And, you know, watch out for pickpockets, empty subway cars, give the mugger what he wants, all that shit."

"Thank you, McGruff the Crime Dog." She starts gathering her things with her free hand.

"And you should call me. When you're not too busy being important," Joe finally says.

Karen smiles, watching the green of the trees out the window trees transform into the gray of city.

"I will," she says.

* * * * *

The meeting is promptly at 9:00 the next morning, and you know it's serious when David Wallace is there before everyone else, because he's usually never on time for meetings.

Karen's the first one to arrive, and when she walks into the conference room with her work bag, she smiles at David and takes a bottle of water from the middle of the table.

They're talking about the past holiday and how David's started coaching Little League when his assistant comes in with a notebook, and slowly the chairs around the table become filled with Dan, Mark, and Jeff from the other branches. Then it's Diane from Nashua and Marcus from Camden.

Karen squeezes her eyes shut and braces for Michael's entrance which will probably include him walking in with a tape recorder hidden in his jacket that's playing "Hail To The Chief". Or worse.

But no. Instead, Jim Halpert shuffles in quietly, looking like he's not sure he's in the right room or something, until David says, "Jim. Come in and have a seat."

Jim gives a half-grimace, half-smile to everyone in the room, and when he gets to her, he just blinks. Unfortunately the only chair that's left is to the right of her, and he takes it. Whatever, it's a business meeting, not tenth grade study hall with Patrick Sartini who had cheated on her at the homecoming game.

David clears his throat and nods towards his assistant to let her know to begin taking notes.

"I want to start out by saying," he says, "that everyone needs to know that in the days following the arraignment of Ryan Howard, Dunder Mifflin is first and foremost a paper company. We still have customers to serve, and we'll continue to rebuild the integrity of this company in whatever way we need to. That being said, we had a position to fill."

Karen watches him shuffle through some of the papers in front of him, and give them a speech on how even though the company lost business due to Dunder Mifflin Infinity's failure, he can't deny that they're doing business in a changing industry and that they need to evolve. She wishes he would just get to the point.

"I'd like to officially announce Ryan Howard's replacement, Jim Halpert from the Scranton branch. Unfortunately, Michael Scott from Scranton declined invitation to this meeting, even though it wasn't optional."

It's all Karen can do to keep her jaw from dropping. She bites the inside of her cheek instead and applauds quietly and politely with everyone else. Seriously though, Jim? All personal issues with him aside, she wouldn't wish that job on her worst enemy. It obviously turns people into basketcases and criminals. And Halpert isn't exactly the most decisive or outspoken guy in town, for a job that's going to need a lot of clean up work. She doesn't know what his being in charge will mean for the company, to be completely honest.

He clears his throat and thanks David and goes immediately into what his plan of action is for the next year, continued damage control and a more grassroots approach to reaching out to new clients. And wow, he really hasn't changed at all. She can't help but notice that he looks tired and too skinny, kind of like when she'd first met him and he was a stray cat looking for someone to love him.

* * * * *

Karen calls Joe while she's on the train back to Utica that night. They talk until way past Albany, and they make dinner plans for that weekend.

* * * * *

"Don't say I didn't warn you," Ella is saying as she flips over the rack of ribs she's in the process of grilling.

Karen rolls her eyes. She drops the barbecue sauce and ketchup bottles down on the picnic table and crosses her arms. "Okay, I won't," she agrees.

"I mean it. My friend Jennifer hooked up with Joe once, and it was exactly what happened to you. He waited a month, called her, asked her out, they had a few good dates, and then it was on to the next girl. She was so upset, she cut all her hair off and got a tattoo of the lyrics to 'Fuck It.'" Ella's waving metal grilling tongs around, her other hand on her hip. "And I might be making up half of that story, but I just don't want you to get hurt."

"It's not even serious between us, and I'm being careful," Karen protests. "And stop pointing those tongs at me."

* * * * *

While it had been true that Karen was being careful, the "not serious" part wasn't entirely accurate. No, she hadn't been considering Joe as her boyfriend or anything yet, they'd just been hooking up and having fun and doing couple-y things. And he hadn't shown any more signs of wanting to commit to her any more than she had to him. But she likes him, likes him a lot. That's where things had become difficult.

They're sitting out by the pool of her apartment complex, dipping their legs in, and Joe asks her if she wants to go with him to visit his parents in Rochester the next weekend. It takes her by surprise, and not in an entirely good way.

"I..." she says, fumbling for words that won't be mean. "Um, I have a guy coming here to fix my AC, so I'm supposed to stick around," she lies. And then she feels bad. "But definitely next time."

But Joe just smiles and says it's okay and he's really just too good to be true sometimes.

* * * * *

It's a little surreal going to work these days and having Jim yelling at her over the phone. Or at least coming from Jim it's like yelling to Karen, who thinks maybe Jim's actually taking this leadership thing seriously, but she's not holding her breath.

"It's coming up the end of July, and you've had a month. You were supposed to have that position filled a week ago at the latest."

Karen pauses, not really sure if it's really the voice of her sloppy-haired ex-boyfriend--who lets his mom walk all over him--coming from her speaker phone.

"I told you last week, I've had three interviews fall through, because the people you guys are picking for me aren't suited for this position at this branch. You're choosing corporate types who are way overqualified, who won't be able to identify on a personal level with the small-scale businesses in this region. Now, if I were able to go through applications on my own and select my own applicants, then maybe I'd have better luck. It makes no sense having these things picked for me, as if I shouldn't have any say."

Jim sighs, sounding agitated, and Karen feels a 'Nam flashback coming on. Gosh, she thinks. Is it May of last year already?

"Okay," is all Jim says. "I'll be up there tomorrow with the stack of new applications and resumes. Some of them are four pages long, so. Be prepared to stay late."

They exchange terse goodbyes, and Karen slams the receiver of her phone to end the call. Then she slams it again because she's pissed off.

* * * * *

That night, Karen and Joe have sex in the shower, and after she comes, Joe tells her she's beautiful while pressing kisses against her jaw.

* * * * *

Jim looks worse the next morning than he did at the meeting in corporate a month ago, if that's even possible. He has bags under his eyes, his hair is a mess, and his pants are kind of wrinkly. He looks like he needs to be thrown in the dryer with a few damp towels. Come to think of it, he looks like a damp towel.

Karen gives him a tight smile when he walks into her office. "Welcome back to Utica," she says dryly. "Not that it's entirely necessary for you to be here." She knows she's pushing it, but she can't seem to stop herself.

Jim stays expressionless, and sits in the chair opposite Karen's desk.

"I was up late trying to narrow down a stack of applications the size of a phonebook to bring with me," he says, in a flat voice. "I'm tired, I just got done driving four hours to get here, and I have eighteen voicemails from Michael that consist of nothing but wailing and heavy breathing. So if there's any way we could narrow these twenty-eight applications down to five, in, like, the next eight hours, it would be seriously awesome."

"Oookay," Karen says, picking up her phone to call reception. "Rolando, can you bring Jim in some coffee, milk and three sugars, please?"

This, for whatever reason, earns her a half a smile. Dude, she thinks, it's just coffee.

They're still poring over applications at quarter after six that night, after everyone else in the office has left. Karen's about ready to call it quits, because they have to choose five of the eight final applicants they've picked, and it's impossible when after almost ten and a half hours, everyone sounds the same on paper.

"Look," Karen says, rubbing her eyes. "I'm ready to just call--" she picks up the closest application to her "--Bhudev Gupta, and tell him congratulations, he's got the job."

Jim doesn't look up from the resume he's shuffling through. "You wanted to do things the hard way."

She drops her hands against her desk and glares at him. "I wanted to do what was best for the branch," she says. "If it were up to Wallace, every new hire would be a male under the age of thirty with an MBA. Look at Ryan Howard. And look where the poor guy is now."

"I'm thinking this one's a definite," Jim says, putting the application he just finished reading into a new pile on Karen's cluttered desk. "Now, only four more, and we're done."

"Fine," Karen says, splitting the pile of seven applications in two and giving Jim three of them. "I'll take one for the team and--"

She's interrupted by her cell phone ringing, and she digs through her purse to find it. The caller ID says it's Joe, and she almost feels weird answering it, although she doesn't really know why.

"Hey," she says to Joe, "I'm so sorry I didn't call you. I'm almost done, I'm leaving here in, like, half an hour, and then we can meet up at the Hideaway and grab dinner."

Jim just keeps staring at resumes, as if he's pretending she's not even there, but he can do whatever he wants. He's her boss.

* * * * *

They end up hiring a woman named Elizabeth Ward from Pittsburgh. She's qualified but not too qualified, has plenty of experience in sales, and she's friendly. For the first time in months, Karen feels like she's really accomplished something of her very own at work. It's a pretty good feeling.

And while things are going well at work, things are only so-so in her personal life. Ella hadn't been kidding when she'd said that Joe works fourteen hours a day. Who knew there were that many houses being built in the greater Utica area? So Karen and Joe spend as much time together as they can, but it usually ends up being DVDs and Chinese food at eleven o'clock at night and then falling asleep on the couch before the guy gets the girl or the planet is saved from aliens or whatever.

Sometimes Joe will call her from a building site and say, "Hey, I think you should fake some kind of emergency, like hypoglycemic shock or something, so that I can say I have to leave. And it'll get me the hell out of here, and then we can go to the water park."

Karen always laughs, but inside she's pretty sure that nothing would really take Joe away from his job. It's fine, but...it's not easy.

The middle of August comes, and Karen prepares to be without a receptionist while Rolando leaves to prepare to do his fall internship for school, and to find a part time job that can accommodate his hours. Originally he would only have been gone eight weeks, but now it looks like he's not coming back at all.

After Rolando resigns, Karen creates a schedule composed of an equal amount of sales and accounting people to take over the phone for a couple of hours a day, every day. It's a lot more stressful than it sounds, because people are people and they complain. One of her QA people even threatens to quit, because he's "not getting paid to do a secretary's job."

Eventually she becomes so busy and then so tired at night, that she misses Joe's calls altogether. When she shows up at her cousins' house on the weekend, Adam jokes that the only 'holics' allowed in the house are alcoholics and sexaholics, and that Karen should leave all of her work shit at the door. It's just not as easy as he makes it sound, though.

* * * * *

Jim ends up in Utica again, when it's finally time to hire a new receptionist. This time, Karen welcomes the help, even if it's coming from him, because it's almost seven o'clock at night and she's exhausted and worked to death. She sips diet soda while Jim looks over the resume of one of the applicants she'd really liked. Jim looks just about as perky and alert as she does.

"She says she has fourteen years of experience at her last job, which was at a call center," Karen says. "That's pretty good."

"Yeah," Jim agrees. "But she'll be doing more than just answering phones. We need to find out if she can do everything else. It says she types 75 words per minute. Is that good?"

Karen shrugs. "It's not great." She picks at her blueberry muffin. "Pam typed pretty fast, is she looking to transfer?" She's joking, and it's a low blow, but still.

Jim puts the resume down and rubs the back of his neck.

"I was kidding, Jim. Don't have an aneurysm." She suddenly feels like she went too far, for some reason, but she's not really sure why. Maybe it's because she just now notices how deep the shadows under his eyes are, as if he hasn't slept in weeks.

"I wouldn't know," Jim says. "Pam is...officially no longer employed by Dunder Mifflin."

Oh.

He keeps talking. "She quit in the beginning of the month. She was supposed to come back after she finished art school, but she's not. She's staying in New York. So this is the second receptionist we've had to hire this summer, and Pam's replacement kind of sucks." He does that fake laugh thing, and Karen feels bad.

"Well. At least she'll be happier doing whatever it is she's doing?" Karen offers. She doesn't really know what to say.

"I wouldn't know that either," Jim says quietly. "We...we're not..."

Oh.

"Okay," Karen says. "Since talking about your ex-girlfriend to your ex-ex-girlfriend is super weird, let's just find a receptionist before my employees kill each other."

Two hours pass, and it's almost nine o'clock. Oddly enough, Karen's able to treat Jim like her boss now, because he acts like a boss. The new job suits him well, and Karen's pretty sure that Jim's been throwing himself into his work the same way she did when she first transferred to Utica. Because when you have nothing else, there's nothing else to do and nothing else to define you as a person. Sure, you may look like shit all the time, but you feel vaguely fulfilled.

At one point she rolls her chair over to the other side of the desk to point out something on one of the applications.

"This one says she's been convicted of a Class A misdemeanor arson," she says. "Is that serious? Or is it like the time Andy set his tie on fire back in Stamford trying to burn off a loose string?"

Jim laughs, and it sounds rusty like it hasn't been used in a while. "Or like the time Dwight declared the break room the scene of a crime and set flares all over it?"

"That's only because somebody claimed to have found a severed thumb wrapped in saran wrap in the freezer. And then proceeded to fashion one out of one of the leftover hot dogs from the beach, and it was the grossest thing I'd ever seen."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jim says, pretending to sound innocent. "Either way, I'm thinking we can't hire a pyro."

And, God. Karen doesn't know why, but talking and joking with him this way is making her all nostalgic for who he'd been when they'd first started dating, before he was Jim of Jim and Pam. Before he was Jim who broke her heart.

And she's so tired and hungry and she misses having someone who's known her for more than just a few months. It sucks that she's so weak against the feeling of familiarity, and how Jim smells the same and even though he's a shell of the shell that he used to be, he's still Jim inside, Jim who used to leave her funny voicemails and watch crappy teen TV shows that he hated and wait until she was inside her apartment before driving away. There had been a Jim like that once.

Karen realizes she's been staring at Jim's tie for the past minute, and she tries to snap out of it. But he's looking at her funny and she decides it's time to go.

"Hey," she says, getting up and moving her chair back. "I'm starving and I really need a beer. We could either finish this over the phone tomorrow, or..."

"Oh, yeah," Jim interrupts. "No, I'm staying at the Holiday Inn in New Hartford tonight. Or, at least I'm going to try, I don't think there's any way I'll be driving all the way back to the city tonight. So I'll come back tomorrow, we'll finish this up, and I'll be out of your hair." He gives her a quirky smile, and it makes her feel warm. Ugh, shut up, she tells herself.

She watches Jim gather his stuff and while she's shutting off her computer.

"Um," she says. "Why don't you go and try to get a room at that hotel, and then we can grab something to eat? I mean, it's late and we've been here forever. Nothing weird. Just...food."

Karen's kind of wishing he'll just say no, because he's her ex, but he says yes and before she knows it, she's following him in her car to New Hartford.

On the way, she tries calling Joe, even though she knows he normally falls asleep around nine these days. She gets his voicemail, which is what she'd been hoping for, because she's pretty sure there'd be something in her voice that would make him know she's on her way to go out for drinks with her ex-boyfriend. Then again, if Joe ever answered his phone, she might not be going in the first place.

She doesn't leave a message. "Why," she asks out loud, pulling into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn. "Why, why, why."

* * * * *

Karen takes Jim to a sports bar just outside of New Hartford, and they order mozzarella sticks and chicken tenders, because that's basically all they serve. She specifically takes him to a place where she knows she won't run into her cousins or any of their friends.

After they eat, Karen orders another round, and Jim gets up from his seat, unties his tie and picks up a handful of darts from under the dartboard against the wall.

"Wow," Karen says. "Since when do you play darts?" She sticks out her hand and Jim gives her half of the darts. When she and Jim used to go out, he liked to sit and talk. Forget playing pool or darts or touch machines, or anything that makes a bar a bar.

"I don't know," he says, tossing one towards the board. It lands on a 20, and he smiles at her. "I'm trying new things. Turning over a new leaf."

Karen eyes him suspiciously and throws a dart. "New things, huh? You haven't started doing coke now too, have you?"

"No, not yet," Jim says, taking his turn. "I'm thinking of starting out with milder stuff, like prescription painkillers, and then working my way up to the heavy stimulants."

Karen nods. "Good plan," she says, as her dart bounces off of the board and hits the floor.

After two more beers, they're sitting at a table again, talking.

"And I thought I was doing what we both wanted," Jim's saying, his hair falling across his forehead. "So when I gave her the ring and she said no, I was so fucking confused, you know? Like, here I'd planned this life for us, with each other, and it turns out she had something else in mind altogether. Nothing made sense after that."

"That's your problem," Karen says, because she's drunk enough to say to him what she wanted to say a year ago but never had the chance. "You don't think with your brain. And you loved her to the point where you lost perspective. You loved her so much that you didn't see her plans change right before your eyes."

"It wasn't right before my eyes," Jim says, rubbing his face. "It was in some apartment in the city, with an art major named Adrian or something equally fucking gay."

"Jim," Karen says sharply. "Per. Spec. Tive." She makes motions around her eyes like tunnel vision.

Jim just makes a moaning noise and drops his head into the crook of his elbow.

Two more beers, and it's Karen's turn to be honest.

"You were a dick to me," she says, lining up a little pile of those tiny straws they put in drinks. She always likes drinking out of those teeny, tiny straws. "I cried, a lot."

Jim puts his hand over hers. "I know," he says, looking deep into her eyes.

Karen laughs. "Don't do that," she says. She turns her head away from him and her bangs get into her eyes, and Jim pushes them away with his hand. He doesn't move it, it just stays there on the side of her face.

"And now I'm seeing this guy who's awesome and rad but he's never around and I don't know if he even likes me because my cousin says he likes to fuck around. And I don't want someone who's just fucking around, Jim." She pulls Jim's hand away and puts it in her lap, weaving her fingers through his.

"Yeah," Jim says, moving his thumb against her palm. "Fucking around sure seems like it would be awesome though, if I knew how."

Karen gets up to go to the bathroom. "You need lessons on how to be a dude," she says. She tries to walk away but she realizes Jim's still got her hand, and he's not letting go.

* * * * *

She doesn't remember calling a taxi, but apparently she did, because before she knows it, she and Jim are getting out of one in front of the Holiday Inn where Jim's car's parked. She hopes hers is still at the bar, and that no one she knows drives past and sees it. But, whatever.

Jim's leading her down the hallway into his room and neither of them bother turning the light on before she's working on the buttons of his shirt. He kisses her the way he always did, hands against her face and in her hair and gripping maybe a little too tight but it was something she'd always liked.

They fall on top of one of the beds and Jim's on top of her and it's weird and terrifying and familiar all at the same time, and while he's pushing down the straps of her bra she's simultaneously wishing she were home alone in her bed and that he'd hurry up and take her clothes off faster.

And having sex with Jim is just that. Sex. Nothing more, nothing less. It just happens, and then it's over.

As she waits for a cab the next morning at five a.m. while Jim's still asleep, she wonders if she should be feeling anything other than seriously hungover.

* * * * *

Jim ends up coming into the office that morning, and it's business as usual. He really did become more of a professional, and it's weird for Karen to see. She's thankful, because she really can't handle a whole lot of emotional stuff on top of a pounding headache. She pops two Aleve, and she and Jim decide to hire the lady who'd worked in the call center. For some reason, Karen doesn't care anymore who they hire. She puts in a request for a week's vacation for the second week in September. The weather's usually perfect then, and if she doesn't get some time off she's seriously going to lose it.

She gets an email later on in the week from Jim at her personal address, and it's totally awkward and apologetic and she doesn't even finish reading it, because Jim shouldn't be sorry any more than she should be sorry.

Even so, she feels like he deserves a response, so instead of replying she starts a new email and basically tells him that regardless of how weird things might have been, she'd had a good time and that she hopes everything works out for the best for him. You never know, she types. You and Pam might be meant for each other in the future. You've just always had a terrible sense of timing.

Because the truth is, she's done being mad at Jim. Okay, maybe not, but she is done setting herself up for failure because of him.

* * * * *

After the great hiring fiasco, Karen goes back to leaving work at five-thirty every day, and goes straight to Adam and Ella's afterwards to cook out and drink the leftover beer from the weekend before. She remembers what it's like to just have people in her life, and not just boyfriends and ex-boyfriends and never-were-boyfriends.

She spends Sundays at her apartment laying out by the pool, reading and trying to decide what she'll do with her upcoming vacation. She thinks she'll maybe drive east to see her family. Her mom's been telling her since January that her room's always open for whenever she wants to come back and visit. Although, she doesn't make any promises. With her new job position she was given tons more vacation time, and she's always liked New England better in the wintertime anyway.

Adam throws an end-of-summer party in the backyard the weekend before her vacation week, and Karen wears a sundress and a tan and relaxation. She drinks wine and takes pictures of the babies to show her mom, making sure to get some of her and Ella together so that her mom can see how they both have Grandma's nose.

She's bringing out a tray of cantaloupe when she notices Joe sitting sideways in a lounge chair and holding a bottle of Blue Moon. So she goes over to say hi, because she really hasn't talked to him since before the whole Jim mess. She hadn't even tried to, because her second parting with Jim had sucked out all of the try she'd had left.

Sitting opposite of him in another chair, she tucks her dress around her legs and smiles. He looks just as good as she remembers, with his t-shirt and five o'clock shadow. His hair's shorter, in the boy way where you can vaguely see tan lines around it.

"I was actually avoiding you," he says, pulling his chair closer, a tiny bit.

"Oh," Karen says. "I didn't know, or I wouldn't have come over."

"Well, the last time I sat next to you here, I got soaked," he explains, "so I thought it'd be a good idea to keep my distance."

"Oh, don't worry," Karen says. "I hid the Super Soakers before everyone got here. Adam would never think to check the dishwasher."

"That's a relief," Joe says, stretching back. "And good thinking."

"I'm just doing my part to keep everyone dry."

Joe's looking at her like he either wants her to apologize, or apologize to her, and Karen's pretty sure she's looking at him the same way. But she knows now that life's too short for that kind of stuff, and if you wait around too long, you might end up drunkenly sleeping with your ex-boyfriend.

So she gets to the point.

"Hey," she says. "So, I have this vacation coming up next week. And it's supposed to be, like, prime water park weather. And I have this blood sugar problem that just weirdly keeps acting up."

It's a long shot, and she really figures he's going to blow her off, which she'd be okay with. But he just laughs.

"I've never been able to say no to a girl who wants me to ditch work," he says, and sometimes it's just as easy as that.



69 cups of noodles is the author of 31 other stories.



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