Pam is surprised by how loud the door clicking shut sounds in the empty stairwell. It spooks her up to her toes, and she twists to make sure there's certainly no one behind her. She swallows, before taking a hesitant step toward the rail, and tips over the edge to peek below.
Her breath stutters when she sees the top of Jim's head, and bashfully she wonders if he can hear her heartbeat from all the way down there.
Doubtful, but he's not deaf, so he definitely heard the door close, and Jim tilts his head back to catch her eye. Immediately, Pam can feel herself go pink all over, and okay, now she's sure he can hear the relentless thumpthumthumpthump.
Somehow she makes it down the steps and meets him halfway. He's so tall, but the way he's hunched over himself, you almost wouldn't know it. Any flare of anger or resentment Pam may have seen in him upstairs as diminished, and she's woefully reminded of that time he told her he loved her and she replied that she couldn't.
They're both silent, unable to meet the other's eye. She starts to feel a little silly, until Jim clears his throat. She glances up at him, and his eyes are hard on her; unreadable. Even more so with the ugly bruise marring his face, a horrible reminder of the other day.
"...Hey," she responds lamely to his unspoken greeting. "I uh-"
"Pam," he interjects. She doesn't think her name has ever sounded more solemn coming from him. Jim looks at her, and suddenly his walls crumble down and he's wide open and vulnerable.
Tears spring in her eyes, but Pam keeps them still, prays they don't fall.
"What… what happened?"
Pam shrugs a shoulder and looks down at her toes. "He saw us, he other night." She meets his gaze significantly with a raise of her brows. "At Poor Richard's. He was drunk when he showed up. He called me into the parking lot, told me what he saw that night, then followed me upstairs…"
Realization dawns on Jim and he leans his head back as far as his neck will allow.
"What, uh, about Karen?" Pam boldly inquires. His eyes close off her question, but he doesn't move to look at her. "All her stuff was gone today, and there was this memo-"
"Karen broke up with me," Jim flat-tones, and Pam wasn't sure what she was expecting, and maybe it was that a little bit, but it still surprises her to hear it. "I told her what happened. Aaaand for some reason, she left." He rights himself and sets his eyes on the door upstairs. "She said she wasn't going to be run off, but-"
"I'm sorry," she blurts. It's reflexive, but that doesn't mean she doesn't mean it.
"Don't be."
"No, Jim-"
"Pam, I told her I'm still in love with you," Jim talks over her, and Pam freezes mid-sentence. She just stares at him, her mouth hanging open, until she realizes he's waiting for her to say something, anything.
"I'm… I'm in love with you, too," the words finally, finally, finally tip off the edge of her tongue, and her heartbeat accelerates to unprecedented speed as Jim inches up another stair closer to her. He's only granted a couple of inches of height on her given the disparity between the steps between them, and his eyes are almost level with her own. The emotion she sees there in him; her secret thoughts break free and spill out, unbidden.
"I think I always have been. I knew it then, too." Pam urges herself to not turn away, to face him head on with the same courage he's always shown her. Courage that she has taken months - no, years, or her whole life up to this point - to cultivate. So she can say these very words to him, one day. "I should've told you, before. I ruined everything, and it could've been-"
"You didn't ruin anything." He sounds assured, and his hand comes out to coast over the outline of her shoulder. "Pam, I…" Jim is examining what feels like every inch of her from head to toe, before his eyes find hers. "Are, are you free for dinner tonight?"
Pam's heart catches in her throat. She's dumbfounded by the question, his proximity, and the confession between them. "Yes," comes her auto-pilot reply.
Jim smiles, just a bit, and his hand falls away to grip at the railing beside them. "Then… it's a date." His smile broadens to show his teeth, and he's actually blushing; has Pam ever seen anything so flattering? He doesn't spare her another second however, as he's rounding her back up the stairs, leaving her breathless and frozen in time.
She feels more than hears him pause at the top of the stairwell, and Pam looks up to find him staring at her with blatant affection. Her eyes sting with the promise of tears again, but it's borne from something else entirely, and her whole face feels on fire as her mouth splits into the biggest smile she's sure she's ever worn.
Elation unfurls in her chest just from looking at him, and she's positive he feels the same. Haven't they always, after all?
Mel Like Mellow is the author of 1 other stories.
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