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Life goes by pretty uneventfully (except on those days when she can't get out of bed, on those days where she just lays in her bed with her eyes open and she stares at the ceiling and she thinks that she might have done something in another life to deserve this, because this hurts, oh God, it hurts). She gets up, she goes to work, she goes home.
She had one date (and it went horribly. She forgot how to date. Or maybe she never knew how. She met Roy when she was sixteen, and dating in high school, it turns out, is much different than dating as an adult. When he dropped her back off at the end of the night he held tightly to the steering wheel and told her in a strained voice that he had had a nice night. He was polite, at least, even though he was lying). She decides that she's not ready to date yet.
She spent the summer making small talk and phone calls (she hadn't realized how many phone calls it took to call off a wedding. Her mother takes care of calling everyone to let them know that their presence will not be needed after all. Roy's mother calls constantly, asking her if she had changed her mind, begging her to reconsider, telling her that Roy is a mess without her, and please, please, please, please. And she can't, she just can't, and she stops answering her phone calls after a while, but she still sees Roy every day walking into work, and he gives her sad, crooked smile and a pathetic wave and the part of her heart that is still in love with him breaks). She jokes that she is single-handedly keeping AT&T in business.
Everyone is extra nice to her (and she knows that they talk about her behind her back. She knows because she walked in on a conversation between Phyllis and Oscar in the break room and she thought she heard her name and Jim's name and they stopped suddenly when she came in, and it was one of a hundred and three times recently that she thought about quitting. She can't handle the looks and the comments when they think she's not listening and she can't take Roy being there and she can't stand looking over at his desk and seeing Ryan instead, and she's going to have a nervous break down, she swears to God, and she thinks how easy it would be just to pack up and run away like he did. She starts looking on Craigslist for apartments and jobs in New York and in Philadelphia and even Pittsburgh because she doesn't care where she is at this point as long as it's not here). There are perks, like Phyllis bringing her homemade meals, and so it's pretty great, actually.
Her mother tells her that she should take a vacation (It's funny, in that way where it's not really funny, how her mother keeps calling her to make sure she hasn't done something drastic like stick her head in the oven, and dropping hints about places that she should go. She asks Toby one day, as they sat in the break room eating lunch. Somehow, lately, Toby has been the only one that she could stand, and she asks where he would go if he could go anywhere, and he gets this look on his face, kind of hopeful, kind of sad, and tells her that he would love to go to Costa Rica, and she looks up flights to Costa Rica, and then, because she's a masochist, she looks up flights to Australia, and even once, on one of the days she calls her Black Days, she looks up flights to Stamford. In the end, her sister talks her into going to New York for a couple of days. "Girls weekend!" Penny exclaims, and Pam knows that their mother put her up to this, but she needs to get away so badly that she doesn't care. She spends the nights crying when she thinks Penny is asleep and she thinks she was a fool for believing that if she left Scranton she could somehow leave behind being sad). She frames the picture of her and her sister wearing Statue of Liberty crowns and it makes her desk a little more crowded again.
When fall rolls around, she welcomes the cooler weather and the new season (it reminds her of when she was in school and the fall meant a new beginning, and she thinks that this could be a new beginning and she hoped, so hard, she hoped that things would get better. She hadn't even thought of him in a few days, and that had to mean progress. And she went shopping and bought new decorations for her new apartment and she's proud of herself for trying to fix it up, fix up her little apartment, fix up this new life. She starts to fill in the blanks, and it starts to feel a little more like home. They've moved on to new gossip at work, Oscar's out of the closet, and there are rumors that the branch is closing and it's enough to take the pressure off of her for a while. And Roy stopped bringing her lunch every day, chicken or fish for three months, and he doesn't wave anymore, but he gives her a nod of the head, and his mother stopped calling and it's starting to feel a little more normal. She hasn't had a Black Day in at least two weeks and it's okay, not great, but okay. And she doesn't feel that pressure on her chest and she can breathe). She's always loved fall.
She starts to think she is going to be okay (it's okay, she tells herself, everything's going to be okay).
Story Notes:
I know, it's been awhile. There are no excuses. I'm feeling angsty (thanks to the series finale of Lost) and I'm working mighty hard to find a cure for writer's block. This is post season two angst (because I've never done that before). I unearthed one of my writing books from the blink and you'll miss it time I was a fiction writing major, and this stream of consciousness exercise was calling to me. I answered. Hope you enjoy, maybe even a little. The song is by Josh Ritter. Love, love, love, love Josh Ritter.
bashert is the author of 37 other stories.
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