It’s 6:36 on a Friday and Pam knows that she should probably be annoyed that she’s still at the office, but she can’t bring herself to press the unpleasant feeling from her gut to her heart and she kind of likes it that way. Because she can see Jim from her perched position at reception through the blinds into Michael’s office and she’s watching the flex of his back as he dips down to apply more paint on the roller and really, there’s just nothing unpleasant about that.
He’s caught her staring twice. It’s an odd feeling, knowing that for so many months (and then years before that) she couldn’t stare. She couldn’t walk into that office right now and press him flat against the wet walls until it made the sticky sound of honey when he moved and kiss him until he forgot where he was.
But she can now.
Even though she won’t, because it’s work and they’re trying to be inconspicuous, despite the fact that Michael left three hours ago after handing Jim the job of repainting his office from black back to green and slipped out with a half-hearted excuse. The others had followed soon after, except Dwight of course, grumbling about a lack of work-ethic, yet even he had left an hour ago.
The office is quiet without cameras. They’d left hesitantly yesterday afternoon, and Pam just knows it killed them to depart after that little exchange in the conference room, but they only had so much budget and well. She can’t say she’s sorry it was only the two of them on their date last night.
She traces the sound of the roller sweeping up and over for a full ten minutes, surprised by the airy way the normally drab and dusty office looks with the blinds raised all the way and the furniture gone and the window thrown open to the sunlight. Jim’s down to the last wall, primer already coating the far left and only a few roller tracks standing between them and freedom.
But Pam gets tired of just watching; she needs to speak to him, to have him look at her like he actually sees her and to know that this wasn’t all just a bored daydream.
“Hey.” She’s careful to rest on the door frame where there isn’t any wet paint. “How’s it coming Michelangelo.”
Jim pauses mid-roll and looks over his shoulder at her, smirking.
“Fine. I’m actually going to paint Monkeys giving knowledge to Michael just up there.” He gestures on a circular motion to the ceiling.
Pam loves that he knows who Michelangelo is. Roy would’ve just shrugged and pretended he knew what she was talking about. But she allows the brightness of her smile to light up her face as she watches the sun sink slow towards the horizon as if it’s melting wax. Summer is coming: she can smell it in the air and feel the thaw of it in her bones. But of course that might not be all about the season.
“Movie starts in a half hour.” She says suddenly, tearing her eyes away from the sprinkler across the street shimmying a horizontal hula. “We’ll have to break a few traffic laws to get there at this rate, slow poke.” She smirks and he shoots her a skeptical look.
“You try painting a whole room with no help in an hour.”
Jim adjusts his feet and the clear plastic crinkles under him.
“But see I’m a girl.” She marvels at how even his eyebrows can be sarcastic, as if they say gee really? I hadn’t noticed, “Girls don’t paint by themselves. It kind of falls in with the garbage-disposing, lawn-mowing crowd.”
Yet even as she says it, Pam picks up a brush from the strewn paint pan and tickles the corner. She can see him smiling in that ‘one side of his mouth quirked upwards’ way, but neither of them say anything. It’s nice to know that the silence is by choice now. They meet somewhere in the middle, the last peeks of white disappearing to the world and replaced with a tired shade of green. Pam peers over at Jim while he goes over one patch a last time.
“What’s so interesting?” Jim questions lightly, and Pam blushes a horribly clashing shade of red to know that he was aware of her observation.
“Just admiring the view.” And she likes the fact that after all these years she can still make his eyes pop and his jaw lose its tension. Or maybe it’s despite of them. That time hasn’t made the air between them rust red and grow mold.
“All finished.” Pam glances over at him as he grins, satisfied, at the bland wall.
But his hair makes her frown. It had matched his new (old) suit and the Italian (that used to be) the girl on his arm. Pam smoothes it to the side without even thinking, catching the ends between her fingers and feathering them out, smiling faintly at the way he swallows slowly and blinks heavy lids. She’s about to ask him to grow it out, then stops herself because do girlfriends that circa one day get to request those kinds of things? She’s only been in a relationship that new once and she’s a little out of practice, but then opens her mouth in a second attempt because she’s pretty sure they’ve been through enough to request a slight alteration of grooming. But then he’s kissing her and suddenly the thoughts lose their importance and drop from her tongue down into her stomach.
It’s different, she discovers, kissing him like casual and Sunday mornings and hi honey I’m home. With a slight lurch she realizes this is the only time she’s been this close to him, in every sense of the word, in the daytime. Last night had been hot and cold, awkward one moment and feverish the next. Kissing him with sunlight bleeding red through her eyelids and that steady hum in her belly is indescribably comfortable. New yet known, like summer; the slip of the seasons from frost to hazy is a worn path of circular motion but each year it seems like she’s never experienced it before. A tune branded on your mind, but unable to capture the notes without listening to it again.
This is time, she thinks, as Jim’s fingers tangle in the hairs at the base of her neck, sliding upwards to unclip her curls from her custom claw-like holder and letting them fall naturally around her face, this time she’ll trace the melody until she memorizes it. Every time Pam kisses him it’s like knowing a little bit more about herself.
Pam may get some paint on the back of her shirt, but she’s keeping her lips sealed.
