Author's Chapter Notes:
It's been forever between updates -- sorry about that, peeps! Granted, there are only a few of you actually interested in this story, but I still feel bad. Anyway, here's a bit more from Pam's perspective.
I realize that this may be even harder to swallow, given all that we've seen of Jim and Pam lately, but take yourself back to season 3 and all of that angst and miscommunication, all of Pam trying to find herself. Get yourself in that state of mind...
I realize that this may be even harder to swallow, given all that we've seen of Jim and Pam lately, but take yourself back to season 3 and all of that angst and miscommunication, all of Pam trying to find herself. Get yourself in that state of mind...
In August, my friend Samantha and I were sitting in our favorite coffee shop, sharing a scone and laughing about one of our professor’s awful combover.
“He just wraps it around his whole head.” Samantha mimed coiling hair on top of her head, almost spilling her coffee as she gestured.
“Like a hair turban,” I gasped between laughing fits.
We giggled – yes, giggled – and I felt young and funny and free.
“So. What are you going to do after this?” she asked when our laughter died down.
“Hmmm?” I looked up, thinking she was talking about what I was doing later, after coffee. “I’ll probably go to the computer lab and work on that stupid ….”
“No, I mean after the program. Are you going back to Scranton? Are you gonna look for a new job?”
“Oh!” I felt my palms get damp while the scone in my mouth suddenly felt incredibly dry. My feeling of youth scattered like the crumbs I brushed off the table into my palm. “Um, yeah.” I swallowed and took a stalling sip from my mug. “I mean, yeah, Jim’s there. So I’ll probably look for a new job in Scranton.”
The Pam voice inside me cleared her throat, mumbled out a really?. It was getting harder and harder to shut her up lately.
Samantha nodded and sipped her coffee. “It’s nice in Scranton? You like it there?”
Before I could stop her, inner Pam blurted out, “Not really.” Not only could I no longer shut up inner Pam, but apparently she was now speaking out loud for me, too.
Samantha looked surprised.
“I mean, Scranton is … fine. It’s … whatever. But that’s where Jim’s is, so….”
“You don’t think he’d move?”
I didn’t answer right away, though I knew he’d move. He’d probably do whatever I asked him to do without complaint. He’d already come back to Scranton once for me. Twice, actually. He’d given up a job in New York for me. Of course he’d leave Scranton to follow me wherever I wanted to go. And that was good, right? The fact that he loved me that much was good.
Right?
“He’d move,” I answered, trying to sound proud rather than put out that my boyfriend would follow me wherever I went.
“Then you guys should move to New York! Wouldn’t that be awesome?”
I nodded, trying to picture Jim in New York. I’d always thought Jim was a little more cool than me back in Scranton – his music, his friends, his taste in beer. But in New York he seemed a little overwhelmed. Big fish, little pond concept, I guess. On his visits he seemed to enjoy it, liked trying new food and seeing new places. But kind of like a tourist enjoys it: curious but not comfortable. Glad he was visiting, not living in such a noisy, chaotic place. But for me, if he thought it would make me happy, he’d probably move.
And for the first time since I’d gotten to New York, I felt sort of claustrophobic. I didn’t want that kind of pressure anymore, the pressure of making someone happy, the pressure of someone needing ME to be happy.
~*~
Time seemed to be going by so fast. Instead of it dragging between visits from Jim, it sort of flew by. I was still glad to see him, still excited to be together again, but every visit marked another week closer to the end of my time in New York. I was no longer crossing off the days in anticipation, but more with a slight sense of … not dread, no … but melancholy. I wanted to be with Jim, I did. But I also wanted this life for a little while longer. I was frustrated that it took being with Jim to build up my confidence enough to go to Pratt in the first place, but if I had gone sooner, I would have been less in a hurry to get back to Scranton.
One day, not too long after my conversation with Samantha, a guy flirted with me after class. Just a guy—I think his name was Brad—no one I was interested in, of course. I truly wasn’t interested in anyone but Jim. But I think it was the first time anyone had flirted with me since Jim. Hell, he was probably only the third guy to EVER flirt with me (if you didn’t count Michael, Kevin, and Todd Packer, I definitely didn’t count them as guys. They barely counted as people, sometimes.) Anyway, Brad flirted with me, said he liked my t-shirt. It was a black t-shirt with white garden gnomes on it and it said “Chillin’ with my gnomies” – something I never would have worn in Scranton because it just seemed too gangsta for me. But here, in New York, with my art school friends … I was cooler. I could pull it off. So he complimented my shirt, and we laughed a little bit, and then he asked me out for coffee and I froze. I literally froze and felt unfaithful just for him asking. I got red and flustered and told him I couldn’t, spat out awkwardly that I had a boyfriend. But he just shrugged and smiled and said, “Oh. Well, that’s too bad.” And even though I didn’t really want to go out with him, even though I was entirely happy with Jim, I was a little bummed that my dating days were over before they had really begun. I went from Roy to Jim with barely a breath in between (if you don’t count Mr. Freedom Fries … and I definitely don’t count him). I was almost 30, and I’d never really dated. And it made me a little sad.
That weekend I wore a little Victoria’s Secret number for Jim, all see through black lace. He seemed to really like it, but there was a moment when I was on top of him, when his hands were resting lightly on my hips instead of grabbing them tightly like I kind of wanted him to do, that he looked up at me and asked, “Who are you?” He sounded kind of awed and maybe even a little freaked out, and I felt powerful but also sort of … resentful. Resentful he didn’t see me like that – all black-lace-sexy, the girl who gets what she wants. I wondered if a guy who hadn’t known me while I was with Roy would see me like that.
Chapter End Notes:
Hopefully I'll have a little bit more farily soon. Thanks for reading, guys! And, as always, reviews are most welcome! They light a little fire under me...
