When her pen hit the paper and she started to write the unfamiliar number combination cut with slashes, she felt the rush of a sigh because it felt so good to know that another month was over.
Every morning she puts on a smile and replies to his windblown hair and black corduroy jacket with “I’m fine, how are you?”, and he always responds, “I’m doing great.” She hates how she can tell he has either been crying or looks like he is going to. She hates how she knows he is only smiling to disguise his struggle with words as if they were shards against his tongue. She hates how she can smile back because that’s the only thing she knows how to do. But mostly, she hates how he puts on his mask, too.
Her fingers pluck at the staples seamed to the languid forms atop her desk. She exhales and checks the clock, her eyes drowsy from the lack of a laugh. An email that arrived in her inbox three weeks ago grows dusty as it approaches its doom in the Old Mail folder. She hates how she tells her friends that she is doing fine, because her vessels burn and her heart pangs with disapproval because she knows that they know, too.
Stabbing pulses are like knocks at the door in the middle of the night as she stares blankly at an assortment of bright paperclips that are scattered across her desk. She’s screaming inside as he stretches, his lean arms reaching toward the pale ceiling as he looks up because he is so sick of looking down. He sighs a tempestuous sighhh and his eyes flicker to meet hers, their glance fleeting and bashful with sweaty palms and gradient pulses.
“Ladies and gents,” Michael begins, barging through his office doors. “I have an announcement to make.”
“Does it have to do with the mold I found in the refrigerator this morning? Because to clarify, that mistake was taken care of. Kevin.” Dwight shoots a glare at Kevin as he mutters to himself with a smirk.
Michael sighs angrily, “No, Dwight. Look everybody, three people from this office need to go over to Chili’s.”
“I have no problem with that,” Stanley states.
“No, Stanley. Not you.”
“I got this covered, Michael,” Dwight retorts as he stands, his mustard colored shirt drastic against a deep brown.
“Why Chili’s?” Jim asks.
“It’s a long story,” Michael replies.
“It’s only three thirty. I think we have time.”
“You know what, Jim? Why don’t you just go so you can find out. I’m sure that waitress, oh what’s her name? Katrina?”
“I think its Kathleen,” adds Phyllis.
“Nope, it’s definitely Katie,” says Creed.
“Whatever!” Michael interjects, annoyed. “I’m sure Kathleen or Katie or whoever will like it much better if Jim was there rather than Dwight.”
“But Michael!”
“Want me to order you a fried chicken platter? Or maybe the soup of the day with a side of breadsticks…” Jim ponders, his sarcasm only noticed by Pam.
“Michael, what if I go? Katrina might not be in today and I’m sure Larry would like it if I were there,” Pam suggests.
“Pam, you’re brilliant! You and Jim go. Besides, three people could get messy,” Michael exclaims, relieved.
“That’s what she said,” adds Jim.
Pam snickers as she snatches her coat. Jim grins and suddenly looks devastatingly tempestuous as he pushes his hands into his coat pocket and they delightfully pace out through the office doors.
“So the plan is to ask the manager if Michael can rent out Chili’s for an all-night Movie Marathon birthday party?” Pam asks as they march toward Jim’s car.
“Complete with six waitresses, unlimited refills, and disco lights,” Jim laughs, his eyes bright as Pam’s laughter fills the frosty air around them.”
“Oh, definitely disco lights. No party is complete without the disco lights,” Pam giggles as they pull out of the parking lot and towards the office’s favorite restaurant.
Silence is uncommon during the eighteen and a half minute drive to Chili’s because Pam is so consumed with Jim’s voice, the way his eyes glow when she laughs, and how his voice crackles when he sings to the loopy songs on the radio that she continually bargains her way to new conversations, jokes, and karaoke tunes.
They complete their task with a big red X and head back to the office to tell Michael the unfortunate news. The idea of a Movie Marathon birthday party was dubbed “insane” by Katie the waitress as soon as the words “rent out” left Jim’s lips.
“So I never realized how well you know Katrina,” Pam jokes, concealing her jealousy with a forced laugh as they drove back to the office.
“Katie,” Jim replies, his smile also forced. “And yes, I know her pretty well. But not well enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know her favorite yogurt flavor.”
“Oh,” Pam whispers, her eyes wide.
“And I don’t know if she likes to pull pranks. Or if she is an amazing artist,” Jim explains, concealing the morose background to his words.
“Jim…”
“Or if she has a fiancée,” Jim breathes, his voice on the crest of becoming a whimper.
The rest of the drive home welcomes silence with open arms as snow begins to trickle through the white sky. “You Make My Dreams Come True” and “Passing Afternoon” seep from the radio, each minutes long enough to make them forget how they aren’t talking.
The return to work, the rest of the day pushing on their shoulders like a heavy cloud, threatening to burst with showers of sorry’s, tears, and it’s always going to be like this.
As the clock hits the relief of five, she waves goodbye to him after smuggling smiles as counterfeit. He waves back and the spirit in his eyes tells her that he’s begging for change, too.
She goes home after her adventure of ignoring her lust and curls up against plush pillows with a cool bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream and watches reruns of Sex and the City play on her too-small television screen. As she pretends to be relaxed she can’t help but think of when his hand unintentionally brushed against hers as they shared a laugh, or when they knocked knees under the lunch table as a prank on Dwight became a whisper, or even when they waved goodbye under the rising moon and above the gravel of the parking lot.
As she watches Carrie and her friends frolic throughout the bustling streets of New York City as their cliché lives unfold on the glass screen before her, she wonders if she would ever be the one to get broken up with. It’s never been that way for her. When she stumbled through her teenage years, she always felt guilty when she muffled cries against her pillow in the early morning because she never felt like she deserved to feel her throat tightening or her hands trembling underneath straggled sheets. She did not have many boyfriends – two and a half (oh, the truisms of kindergarten love) to be precise – and she hated how she could not realize how lucky she was to not feel the true twinge of an angry, love-stricken, two-week plunge into the depths of a merciless break-up aftermath.
The worst part is, she knows how hard it is for Jim to act smiley around her like he always manages to do, but she wants – and needs – him to feel worthless because she knows it is the closest she will get to feeling tortured and defeated, herself.
She flicks off Sex and the City, sick of the perfection that her life will never be, and lays in the darkness of her bedroom as she engulfs the loneliness that creeps against her skin. Moonlight trickles through the window pane and caresses her pansy-painted toes and she shivers as the digital clock flickers twelve sixteen.
She crawls into bed and flicks off her light and feels her throat constrict as she muffles “it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay” into the midnight bedroom air. The moon smiles outside her window, its dark affect creeping along her skin and through her nervous glances. Her fingertips glide to a clump of sheets and she tugs them closer and drags her legs against her chest.
The moon knocks on her window and screams for her to smile, too, but she knows smiling will only make the walls of her loneliness stronger.
Author's Chapter Notes:
With each breath she comes closer to realizing it will never change.
Chapter End Notes:
Comments/suggestions/anything else you want to say is greatly appreciated! Part IV. is in the process of creation and Part V. will come soon after that.
Dwangie is the author of 25 other stories.
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