Full of nervous anxiety and too excited to eat, she set about cleaning and tidying the apartment. It was pretty clean already, but she wanted it to look perfect. She dusted, swept and mopped floors (since it was too early for the vacuum cleaner); washed down the kitchen sink and counters; straightened cushions; put things away; and gave the bathroom a quick once-over. Last of all, she put clean sheets on the bed.
Having showered, tried on four outfits, and dried and curled her hair, she was still ready twenty minutes early. She was sitting at her drawing table, attempting to work on a drawing for one of her classes, but mostly staring at the nearest clock. So she was watching as, approximately three seconds after the second hand passed the twelve, the doorbell rang. She dropped her pencil and hurried for the door. She could have buzzed him in, but she decided to go down to the front hall and open the door herself. She pattered down the two flights quickly, her heart thudding. She could see him dimly through the frosted glass of the front door, and her stomach clenched with nervousness. She wrenched open the heavy old wooden door and there he stood, trying to look nonchalant and failing utterly.
“Hey,” she said, smiling up at him.
“Hey,” he said, beaming back. He brought out one hand from where it had been obscured by his body, and presented her with a bunch of spring flowers, in vibrant pinks and blues and whites.
“Wow!” she exclaimed, feeling her cheeks burning. “Thanks, they’re beautiful.” She sniffed them, taking a deep breath to calm herself. “Want to come upstairs for a minute so I can put them in water?”
“Sure,” he agreed, and followed her into the dim front hall. She led him up the wooden staircase to a smaller hall, painted in white, with a door directly across from the head of the stairs.
“I’m another flight up,” she explained, turning left into another door and starting up more steps.
He looked around curiously. There was a small window halfway up, with a stained-glass suncatcher, and he ducked as the underside of the roof sloped over his head. He emerged into an even smaller hall, with a shining hardwood floor and several open doorways leading off it.
“Come on in,” she invited. “Welcome to my humble abode.”
“Wow,” he said, looking around. “This place is amazing.”
“Thanks,” she said. “It’s small, but I love it.”
The rooms, tucked up under the roof of the big wood-frame house, had sloping ceilings and odd corners, but were full of sunlight and air. She hadn’t had much she wanted to take when she left Roy, and she had grown to like her space spare and uncluttered. She had used some of her newfound free time and drive to be independent to explore flea markets, finding things that she had learned to restore and refinish herself. Only the couch and armchair were new; nearly everything else was something that she had found and made her own, re-awakening her creativity from its long slumber and finding new little ways to be brave.
“Wow,” he repeated, wandering around and looking at things, “where did you get all this stuff? I didn’t know you had all this stuff.” He ran his finger along the edge of a cabinet that she had cleaned up and stenciled a design on.
“Oh, you know, yard sales, flea markets, that kind of thing,” she replied modestly, not wanting to boast.
He knew anyway. “I bet it didn’t look like this when you found it,” he guessed shrewdly, looking at her. “You’ve sure been busy while I’ve been away, Beesly.”
“Well, you know…a person can only watch so many reruns on TV Land,” she demurred.
“Well, I’m very impressed,” he replied. He wandered over to peer at a small painting hanging near the nearest doorway. It was tiny really, just a few inches on a side, a bright swirl of color. He looked at it carefully, then back at her. “Did you do this too?”
“Yes,” she admitted, coming to stand beside him. “It was really just supposed to be part of an exercise I was doing for a class, on using color, but I really liked it, so I touched it up and kept it where I could see it.” She paused. “It makes me feel like things are…possible.”
Their eyes locked for a long minute, then she blushed and indicated the small room next to the living room. “This is my ‘studio’,” she said, with a faint mocking accent. “Where the magic happens.”
He followed her in, looking at the sloping drawing table under one window, holding the sketch she had been working on when he arrived, then to the opposite corner, where a small bookcase stood on dropcloths, in the middle of being stripped and sanded, next to a cabinet neatly stocked with DIY supplies.
He shook his head at her, his eyes full of admiration. “Fancy new Beesly’s got skills,” he murmured. “What have I got that can compete with this?”
Now she shook her head. “Don’t—don’t put me on a pedestal, Jim,” she pleaded. “I had to do something—both to keep from going crazy and—so that I would have something that was mine. I had to figure out how to be me, you know? I had to figure out how to have some courage.”
“I know,” he replied seriously. “I know, Pam.”
“I couldn’t just go running from Roy to you,” she burst out. “As much as part of me wanted to. It wouldn’t have been fair to either of us. And I didn’t think it was fair to just assume you were waiting around, either, after everything.”
“I know,” he said again.
“I’m sorry for all the pain I’ve caused you,” she said earnestly. “But I can’t change it and I can’t make it up to you. All I can do is—go forward with you.”
“Hey, don’t beat yourself up too much, Pam,” he responded. “I inflicted plenty of pain myself the past few months, remember?” He took hold of her hands, which she was worrying the same way she had that night last year when—
“Let’s just focus on today,” he said softly. “I know it’s all there, and we can’t ignore it—but let’s just put it where it belongs, a little bit at a time. Okay?”
“Okay,” she answered, her face smoothing out.
“And remember the important thing—that we can do it together now.”
“Together,” she repeated, smiling. “Such a good word.”
He put one arm around her and pulled her close to him. He kissed her forehead. “C’mon—let’s go have our date.”
They stopped in front of an abstract sculpture that resembled a giant, mangled car engine.
“So—“ he indicated it “—explain.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“This. What does it mean? What does it say?”
“Well, I don’t know that it says one particular thing…” She looked at him. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely, Beesly. If this makes sense to you, I want to know.”
“Okay, well, I’ll tell you what I think, but you have to answer a question first.”
“Shoot.”
“What does it make you think about?”
“Hmmmm….” He frowned. “Chaos. Industrial wreckage. Man’s inhumanity to man.” He brightened. “Is that right?”
She laughed. “I don’t think there’s a right answer. I think it’s about the emotions that it evokes, and the difference between modern art and classical art is that modern artists aren’t trying so hard to get a particular, specific reaction. More of it is up to you.”
He nodded, then pointed to the card next to it. “What about that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t look at those so much. That’s just what the curator sees. I don’t have to agree. Besides, I’m trying to figure out what I like.”
“So do you feel any inclination to do this sort of thing?” he asked with a wave.
“Not at the moment,” she laughed. “But it helps me to think about what I do want to do.”
He pondered this. “That’s cool. And that’s what art is supposed to do, right? Make you think?”
“Stretch you,” she agreed.
“Speaking of stretching—“ suiting the action to the words “—hungry?”
She suddenly realized she was ravenous. “Yes!”
“Okay, let’s go stretch our stomachs around some lunch….What a terrible segue, really smooth, Halpert,” he muttered to himself, as they turned to leave.
“Not a hike,” he promised, looking at her sandal-clad feet. “Just a gentle stroll.”
He took her hand to help her over an uneven piece of ground, not long after they started. He didn’t let go.
“So…” Jim said casually, as he changed lanes to pass a slower car, “what do you think? Ready to call it a day?”
She glanced at him sideways, trying to gauge his tone, and then decided that this was a good time to try being brave. “Um…no?”
He gave her a sidelong glance, and the side of his mouth quirked up into a smile. “Cool. So what should we do now? Dinner? Dancing? The opera maybe?”
She pondered briefly. “I’ve got a Netflix movie at my place,” she suggested. “Maybe we could get takeout? I don’t really feel like going out anywhere…unless you want to,” she finished hurriedly.
He glanced over, smiling more widely. “Beesly, takeout and a movie at your place is, like, the best plan ever.”
“Okay, cool,” she agreed, grinning.
“Except—“ he frowned “—what’s the movie?”
“I’m not sure,” she said thoughtfully. “I think it might be Gaslight.”
“Hmmm—“ he wiggled his eyebrows “—so it’s not actually going to turn out to be, say, Godzilla, is it?”
“No!” she retorted. “How could I possibly get those two movies mixed up?”
“I don’t know,” he intoned. “But if you could mix up 28 Days and 28 Days Later, I figure anything is possible.”
“Shut it, Halpert!” she commanded, swatting him on the arm.
“Hey, I’m trying to drive here!” he protested, fending her off.
Jim seemed to pick up on her thoughts, because he turned to her and said, “How is it possible to be so comfortable and so uncomfortable at the same time?”
She looked up at him and said, “You’d think we’d be used to it by now.”
“You’d think,” he said, smiling his slow smile back at her.
She could feel her face flushing again, and scooched a little bit closer to him. He lifted his arm and put it around her shoulders, and she leaned into him, acutely conscious of the contact between their bodies and the solid warmth of him.
She stayed that way, huddling up against him as the movie got spookier. When it was over, it was almost eleven. She stretched, then put her feet on the floor and began gathering up the debris from dinner. He picked up what was left and followed her into the kitchen, rinsing out the empty bottles as she scraped leftovers into a plastic container.
“I’ll do the dishes too,” he offered. “Give me those. Where’s your recycling?”
“Over there,” she pointed towards the back corner. “I’m just going to run into the bathroom.”
She went back to the kitchen, where he was rinsing out the last of the recyclable containers. He put it in the dish rack to dry, shook his hands, and turned off the water.
“All set,” he said.
“Great, thanks,” she replied.
“Can I, um, use your bathroom?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said, gesturing in the general direction. She thought about saying, “Leave a quarter,” and decided against it. Instead, she wet a cloth and began wiping down the table and counters. She could feel her heart thumping. She realized she was wiping down one end of the table over and over, and forced herself to stop and take the cloth back to the sink. She rinsed her hands as Jim had, and as she turned to take a paper towel to wipe them she saw movement in the dimness of the hall. Wiping her hands, she moved towards the doorway. He walked towards her slowly, holding the toothbrush, his eyes fixed on her.
“Hey, Beesly…are you trying to tell me something?” he asked. He was trying to joke, but his voice sounded hollow and shaky.
She put down the paper towel and kept moving towards him, swallowing past the lump in her throat.
Brave.
“Yes,” she said.
She stopped in front of him. He was staring down at her, dumbstruck, still holding the toothbrush. She slid her arms around his waist and pressed herself up against the length of him and, reaching up, kissed his jaw. She felt him shudder as he inhaled and his arms came around her.
Then it was like the world exploded.
“So much for that business about taking things one step at a time,” he murmured.
Opening her mouth to shoot back a snappy retort, she surprised both of them by bursting into tears instead.
“Pam, Pam, what is it?” Jim whispered frantically, gathering her into his arms. He tried for another joke. “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”
She tried to respond, but choked on an enormous sob. “Don’t—don’t—“
“Okay, okay, I won’t joke, ssssshhh. What is it? Can you tell me?” he asked worriedly, cuddling her.
She tried to calm down and wondered. Could she tell him about the tangle of conflicting emotions? That she had been afraid that this was never going to happen and that, now that it had, she was afraid of having something that she wanted so badly? Afraid they’d mess it up somehow, hurt each other again? Or that even if they didn’t, it just wouldn’t be right, would fall flat somehow? That there were so many ways it could go wrong. That it was such a chance to take, such a big risk to feel this way about another person. That she was ecstatic and terrified at the same time.
She tried, still gasping with tears. “It’s been—a long—few—weeks. Like—an—emotional—roller—coaster. And—“
“I know,” he said, and he pulled her closer, so that their bodies were pressed together, and he held her, her face buried in his neck and his arms tightly around her.
“I’m scared,” she said, her voice muffled against his skin. “I’m so happy, but I’m so scared.”
“I know,” he said again, quietly. “I am, too. Getting something you want so much is really scary.”
They were silent for a bit. Then he said, “But being scared—like this—is so much better than being miserable. Hmm?”
She nodded against him, and felt another chuckle rumble deep in his chest. “You have to take a chance on something, sometime.”
This time, she managed a teary, hiccupy giggle.
