November 13. New York.
"Hey, you guys wait out here while I drop this off, then I can go celebrate and you can film me getting drunk off my ass, okay?" Pam instructed the camera crew on the deadline day for her Flash assignment. Finally. This final assignment had been kicking her ass for a week. A whole week! Last time she struggled so mightily with a task... okay, she couldn't remember. It probably had something to do with Michael. Gah! She was supposed to be the world authority on Michael Scott, for chrissakes. Now all that she could coherently think about were motion tweens, bitmap to vector conversions, and Cheetos (which she'd gone through more than she would like to admit).
Either way, various factors had conspired to turn her brain into mush and she was glad that this one at least was over with and she wouldn't have to worry about school anymore.
It was a good thing that she had caught the curriculum change that swapped the software they were using, or else she would have practiced Quark instead of Adobe and she'd be even more screwed. But now, with her completed masterwork(-ish... thing) in hand, she was just a few minutes away from surviving the course. And by that she meant 'not failing', which one week ago had been a very real possibility. She was reluctant to admit that the main reason for that was probably all the partying that she had been doing with the gang. Her body just wasn't used to that sort of punishment (most notably, her poor, poor liver). As she sauntered happily through the hallways, she briefly thought about what they should do to celebrate the successful completion of the assignment from Hell... probably a round of prairie fires. Poor liver.
"Hey Pam!"
"Hey Kay," she replied, waving. "Hey guys," she added, noticing that Kay was standing with Alex and Stacey, blocking half the hallway to gab and thus causing the massive congestion that the traffic in the building was experiencing. "Everyone survive?"
"No," stated Stacey, apathetically. "Doomed. Sucked monkey balls. Getting shitfaced in one hour, fourteen minutes," he explained, counting down the time until it was afternoon and thus appropriate to start drinking.
"Maybe you should have taken a different course," she teased. "I really enjoyed my course on expressive typography in new media. It was informative. Really. Take it. You'll see for yourself."
"Shut up and come drink."
"I'll meet you guys at the dorm," Pam said. "Just wait up a few minutes. I got my appointment with Zimmer and then I'm off to hand in my assignment on my 96% empty CD. If you guys leave without me I'll be super pissed and put Vaseline on all your doorknobs and you'll all be too drunk to remember that I warned you that I was going to put Vaseline on all your doorknobs so when you come back you'll get Vaseline all over yourself and you'll think, 'gee, I should have been nicer to Pam.'"
Kay, Stacey, and Alex stared at her silently in bewilderment. "... Uh... Are you okay?"
Pam rolled her eyes. "Yes. Go. The longer you distract me the longer it is until we can get drunk. Now move."
And Kay and Stacey did indeed move, muttering something about 'authority figure'. But Alex, as was his habit, stayed where Pam was. "Classroom. Come on," he said, instructing her to follow him into a nearby empty room.
The moment she stepped inside the classroom she found herself up against the wall being kissed.
After kissing back for just a brief second, she pushed Alex away, forcefully. "What are you doing?" she asked. She worried that she already knew the answer.
"I know... you said that you didn't want to do this again. But I'm not - you're going to be leaving at the end of the week." He held her arms firmly and Pam noticed an intensity in his eyes that she'd never seen in him before but that she had seen at least once in someone else. "And I'm not going to get another chance to say this."
"Don't make me do this, Alex. Please," she pleaded, hopelessly.
"Listen... I... I know that we've only known each other for a couple of months. But I'm - I've fallen for you, Pam. Hard." He gulped, then gulped again, before exclaiming far too quickly, "PamIloveyou."
No. No, no, no, no. She closed her eyes, tried to pretend that this wasn't happening. Again. That she wasn't destined to meet kind hearted, goofy, tender men who would fall in love with her while her fiancé wasn't fulfilling his end of the relationship duties.
"Alex, this is a mistake. This whole thing was a mistake. Yes, it was fun and I do like you. A lot. But I'm with Jim and I'm going home in a week. Nothing is going to change that. And this is ruining our friendship and I hate that."
"It's not a mistake. We..." Alex was struggling with his words and she felt for him. And she felt for herself because most women don't even have to go through this even once. "Stay here in New York, Pam. You have friends here. They're all expecting you to come around eventually. You have a diploma. You, there's nothing stopping you now."
She shook her head 'no'. "Alex, I'm engaged. I have a job in Scranton. Other friends and family there. I can't uproot my life and move here. I can't leave Jim. Maybe we'll move later on - I mean, there's no reason why we can't. We haven't bought a house or anything. But I can't be with you. I can't have you around me. Not like this."
"You're not going to be happy there, Pam," he stated, but she wouldn't acknowledge the nagging suspicion that he might be correct. "Here. This is the life you wanted. It's not in Scranton. It's here. What I said last week. Did you have a chance to think about it?"
"I did, and I want my home and my family and my dysfunctional coworkers and I want my fiancé."
"Do you really? Or are you saying that because you're scared?" Her silence seemed to be answer enough for him. "I would be too. It's terrifying to take risks... to choose chance when you have the safe option that feels so comfortable."
"I don't know what you're talking about," she bluffed.
He would have none of it. "Yes you do. And so do I. Which is the only reason why I'm here. Talking to you about this right now."
"You don't know me as well as you think you do. Leave me alone!" she yelled, shoving him as hard as she could out of the way.
God, how could she have been so foolish? This whole thing had turned into a giant clusterfuck and it was her fault and she didn't know what to do, or even where to begin. Everything was ruined. And then there was Jim. How could she possibly make this up to him or even talk to him again?
Rushing to escape from Alex and any other of his revelations, needing to remove herself from affairs of the heart, she stupidly actually went to her advisor meeting. Her logic had told her that this would be a good way to get her mind off her shitty life. It seemed like the could make nothing but mistakes these days.
"Hi Pam," Mr. Zimmer greeted her as soon as she popped in the door. "How are you? I hope you did well on that assignment. You're really on the bubble in your graphic design course and I'm worried about you're progress."
Pam sat down across from the middle-aged administrator. "I don't know," she said. About a great many things.
Mr. Zimmer adopted his serious face. "Pam, you need to get a good grade on this assignment or else you're failing this course."
Staring at her feet, her body permeated with hopelessness, she lied. "No. I can't do this. I... don't understand the software."
"That's really unfortunate," he said, disappointed. "I had high hopes for you, Pam. You have good natural ability but if you can't use the software properly then you'll have to retake the course. I'm sorry."
When she exited Zimmer's office, Alex was still there, waiting a little ways down the hall. With her first tears falling, she took the CD with her completed Adobe Acrobat assignment into both hands and snapped it in half, then threw the pieces into the garbage with Alex watching. When she turned and walked the other way, he didn't follow.
Part of her wished that he had.
"I can't believe this," she muttered to herself as she walked, dejectedly, down the steps outside the building, through the throng of happy people. She sighed and flipped open her phone.
"Jim," she said. "I fucked up..."
----
December. Scranton.
It has been a tough day on Pam. She's still very pissed off at Jim's brothers, but today, since it is Christmastime, everyone thought it would be a great idea to have a family get together. And one of his brothers, whom she wants to keep calling Jon even though his name is Tom, he... he... well, she's just going to have to murder him in his sleep the next time she has the opportunity. And Jim thinks it was funny. She's beginning to think that the ability to piss people off is a Halpert family trait. After all, Jim had tried to give her favorite Snoopy mug to Andy. Andy.
And, of course, he's always able to get to sleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, no matter how upset she is and how much she wants to talk and/or bitch about it. She watches him, sleeping like a baby. A big, overgrown, shaggy haired baby. Does he even begin to suspect... anything? Does he have any dreams or aspirations of his own? Whenever she asks, he always makes some stupid joke, usually involving Kevin for some unfathomable reason. She's beginning to think that he really doesn't. And that bothers her because that means that he can't understand. Has no hope.
"Jim, I cheated on you," she says to his hibernating carcass. "And I hate the house, and this life is killing me." He only continues to slumber there, snoring gently in the darkness.
What if - no, not 'what if' - there was more to life than what Jim and Scranton could provide, and she wasn't going to get to experience any of it. But dreams of running away with Alex and being awesome in New York and never going back to sucky Jim and lameass Scranton were nothing but the most sordid of fantasies.
Right?
Author's Chapter Notes:
Trying to find out more about the Pratt Institute's programs and faculty, I visited their website. For a school that has an entire department devoted to this sort of thing, their website is extremely cumbersome. How ironic.
