.
My Best Friend
Chapter 5
I should follow her, take her hand, the one that gives me goose bumps every time I touch it, look into her eyes – the eyes that stole my entire life, the eyes that she shares with our children, the color and shape identical in all three. I should say something to take away the hurt that I know I put back in them, the hurt that I took away, and the pain that watching this part of our lives brought back into them, even if she never showed me it was back before she walked out of the room. This room, where we share holidays and our children’s birthdays and quiet Saturday nights watching silly child friendly DVD’s while both of our girls are sound asleep, breathing on our shoulders, safe and sound in our arms.
The burning in my nostrils won’t go away and the hand I have on my forehead presses too deep into my temples as I sit motionless, staring at the paused image of my face on screen. Admittance hurt me once, cost me sleepless nights going over points that my ex-girlfriend needed to address – five nights in a row, talking over the same points over and over again. I never in a million years thought that that instance, that moment where I came clean with Karen and told her that I still did have feelings for Pam, I never thought it would come back into my life and cause my wife to have the same exact reaction. Her facial expression all her own, but the action of leaving the room was very much exactly the same as the one that happened years ago with the wrong woman.
I know this shouldn’t be a big deal. The clanging in the kitchen tells me differently. By the sounds of it, I can hear Pam making herself a cup of tea. I know she’s reaching for the strawberry flavored decaffeinated tea we found at this little Farmer’s Market a few weeks ago. The scent of it fills the kitchen and hangs around the air for a day. She loves it so much, in fact, that I’ve gone on my own to buy more boxes, saving them for part of her Christmas gift in a few months.
For our anniversary this year, I made her a Popsicle picture frame with our baby’s names on it. It sounds cheesy, dorky even, but when she saw the photo of the four of us in there from the few days we spent in New York during Labor Day weekend, standing in front of the MoMA, she started to tear up. She was more thankful for that simple gift than she was when I bought her a diamond bracelet and her heart pendent.
This is who we are. We’re simple people living a simple, extraordinary life in a small town of Pennsylvania. I never wanted anything more than this. Children that look like my wife, a modest house, a decent paying job and a life with the only person I absolutely can not live without.
I am a funny person. I hate serious moments a lot of the times. I mean, okay sometimes you have to be serious. I’m in my mid thirties and have a family to take care of. But this is me. I make jokes a lot, sometimes maybe too much according to Pam. But she accepts it, and she’s actually even funnier than I am in her own special dorky little way. She – she’s … one day last month I saw this commercial on TV, market your own ideas or something like that. When I told her about it, she was like instantly instantly excited about it. I mean, we spent half a work day sharing lists of things we should invent.
It’s one of the reasons why I knew from the get go that she was it for me. She plays along with me, she laughs with me, she does silly things like that thing we did with Andy’s phone, and all the times I messed with Dwight. She is always my accomplice and always in my corner. Even when I sometimes make a slight fool of myself, she’s always there with an encouraging word.
Karen wasn’t. She didn’t get those little things. She saw what I could be, potential, she would always say it. I had so much potential. But Pam accepts me for who I am. That’s part of the reason why on our first date we were able to air it all out. I know I over simplify it and there were moments that night when I really thought we weren’t going to be okay and weren’t going to get back on track.
The one that stands out right now is when she asked me why it took a week for me to get what she was saying. After the long pause and a shake of my head, I just said I didn’t know what she really meant. I wanted to keep things simple. We never touched on it again, she accepted what I had told her at face value and we moved on.
That was the glaring difference between Pam and Karen - Karen would have pushed me and pushed me to talk for hours on end until I blurted out things I didn’t necessarily mean, I just said them to get her to leave me alone. It’s like she had this crazy mantra towards the end – when you’re mad at him, just keep talking. Karen would point out my flaws and try to get me to work on them. It was all about my potential with her.
Pam accepts me for who I am. Not what I’ll be. From that first date of ours onward, she takes me for all of my flaws and quirks and she loves me anyway, in spite of them.
I know that my wife is in the kitchen right now, wondering what kind of person tells the woman they’re dating that they have feelings for someone else, and still continues to date that other completely wrong for them person. How am I supposed to explain that to her when I don’t even know the right answer, other than the fact that Karen was a safety net that I just hung on to for all of the wrong reasons?
I’m probably choosing wrong right now by staying here in the living room, choosing to play the next portion instead of walking into the kitchen to talk to Pam. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell her other than I love her and I was stupid and that she’s right, none of this matters and we should just delete it all and never watch any of it every again.
That I’m pressing play right now and digging my elbows into my thighs as I lean forward on the sofa may not be the right path to go with right now may not be the best decision I ever made. I know when I walk into the kitchen - because obviously I’m going to do that eventually, I’ll get a smirk from her and a comment of some kind that will be tongue in cheek.
I fast forward through this – what can only be described as completely bizarre – portion right in the beginning. Michael talking to his video camera, Dwight in a bra… I can’t stop myself from rolling my eyes and letting out a sigh. I keep going forward, passing by things I absolutely recall. It was some time near Phyllis’ wedding, and for some reason Michael had to have a shower for her and a shower for the guys. Thanks to his buddy – whom I still can’t stand – Todd Packer, we had strippers in the office. Well, only one – the real stripper.
Michael left me in charge of getting the male stripper. Instead, I did a search on Google for speakers in Pennsylvania and I hired a Ben Franklin impersonator – mainly because I thought it would be something Pam would laugh about with me. And a little bit because I wasn’t going to get myself in trouble.
I was so, so wrong about that. For all the times she went along with one of my jokes, this one was an … epic fail I guess is the best phrase to use.
This was also right around the time when I had just about had it with Karen and her nightly talks, most of the details are just not in my head anymore. I just remember feeling so incredibly tired.
I’m passing through most of this men shower and women shower business - the utter ridiculousness of that entire day was just beyond… anything sane people do. Or normal managers in productive offices do. I’m still surprised that we’re actually still in business right now given the way things ran when Michael was still around. I mean, it is pretty funny in a bizarre, do I really work with these people kind of way, to watch Michael and Dwight smack their butts on television.
I see Pam and I come on screen and hit play instantly. This was by far the most awkward conversation we’ve ever had. And that includes the time I had to tell her my most horrifying experience with a girl – she forced it out of me – I’ve since stricken it from memory. There was the conversation we had after I failed to propose to her on our one year anniversary – thank you Andy for stealing my thunder. And the tension filled ten minutes during our first date when I asked her why she waited so long to call off her wedding when she said that stuff at the beach about not caring about any of the reasons she shouldn’t have been with Roy until she met me. She said it was because I was always dating someone and she didn’t know with me. She knew that despite Roy’s flaws, he was safe.
My eyes focus on her face, the way it looks so pained as she talks to me about sleep and getting enough of it. I remember I specifically made a point to say Karen and I had late nights because we were up talking. Even during that time when we were on this weird seesaw ride, I didn’t want to give her an image she didn’t need. She had one thing right though. Sleep is important.
I wish I got more of it back then, because our toddler manages to wake up in the middle of the night at least three nights a week for reasons we still haven’t figured out. By the time we get back to sleep it’s time to wake up and go to work.
I have to laugh at the television as she goes on to say how different she is when she gets six hours of sleep compared to eight hours. Boy do I know the difference there. I know it well. I can’t help but smile at that for some reason. It was awkward back then, and now, knowing how serious she was about her sleeping pattern… it’s pretty amazing actually. It’s really funny to wake her up before she’s ready. Some mornings I would let my lips wake her up, and other mornings I would scare her awake.
Until she became pregnant with Cece, then the fun ended. She had two valid points. One – scaring her awake could hurt the baby (I doubted it, but try arguing with a pregnant woman). And the most valid reason – we were on track to be woken up every four hours once the baby arrived. It’s ironic how right she was about it, and even more ironic that she actually said at that time, “Don’t fall asleep at your desk.”
We did that once, we actually fell asleep at work not too long ago when Cece was a baby. It was the beginnings of Cece’s ‘reverse cycling,’ which really only means she’s up and in hysterics while mommy and daddy are trying to sleep at night.
Yep, Pam was definitely not joking when she said we would never sleep a full night’s sleep for a very long time. Even still, I wouldn’t pass up being woken up by Cece now, her running into our room on weekend mornings, taking it upon herself to jump into bed with Pam and me. Soon our little one will follow along once she’s grown out of her crib.
I can’t wait for that. I always wondered what it would be like to have that with Pam – a lazy Sunday morning snuggling in bed with our kids. That doesn’t sound very manly but I don’t care.
I hit the fast forward button again, trying to get through this quickly but also within enough time for Pam to calm down so we can actually talk. Maybe I’m supposed to be preparing some responses to her inevitable questions.
I hear the faint sound of fingernails on a mug coming from the kitchen and let out a sigh, pausing the TiVo – and in that exact second I see Pam and Karen come on the screen. I shake my head and can feel the lines on my face define themselves as I press play again.
The quick exchange about Ben Franklin almost fools me, but my eyes stay glued to the screen as I hear Karen say, loud and clear, that I had told her about Pam and I kissing. She’s making it all nonchalant but that was nothing like that conversation between Karen and I went.
”Did you kiss her?”
“It’s really … look it’s not a big deal, please just drop it? Yes, I liked her, yes, I kissed her. Just let it go. You and I are together now. The past shouldn’t matter.”
“Fine. I’m sure if it was me and my ex-boyfriend was hanging around, you’d feel differently.”
“Pam is not my ex. Look, it’s really late. I have an early sales call. It’s no big deal, okay?”
“Okay. We’ll talk about it more tomorrow.”
I have so many questions. But my train of thought gets cut short again as I hear Karen ask Pam if she still has feelings for me.
She said yes. Well, it’s more like, “Oh, yeah.” But it’s there. Before my brain can really process that, Pam is already deflecting, saying she misunderstood Karen’s phrasing.
It’s amazing how something so simple can get so far beyond messed up in just a few misunderstandings. Misinterpretations. For years, all we did was misinterpret each other.
I scratch my fingers through my hair and stop the TiVo, taking a deep breath as I stand and walk into our kitchen. I love how Pam decorated it. Yellow walls, white cabinets, a mess of our children’s art covers the refrigerator doors, a bunch of her framed art work lining the walls and a few figurines here and there. It feels like home to her this way.
I step behind the chair she’s sitting in, press my hands into her shoulders and kiss the top of her head. She leans back into my chest and when my arms envelop her she puts her hand over my forearm and lets out a sigh. She smells like strawberry tea and baby lotion and I have to close my eyes to stop the dizzying feeling. Something about watching what happened in the past is messing with my mind, bringing the pain of that time back in with a force I wasn’t prepared for.
“I don’t know how I got through it,” she starts to speak.
“Me either,” I breathe out, pressing my nose into her cheek.
“I used to dream about this. I’d have really vivid dreams about us, being together. And every day we grew further apart,” she says, her cheek pressing into my arm. “Every day we grew apart, the dreams became more real feeling – like I could really touch you, I could really feel your lips kissing me. And now, to know that you admitted you still had feelings for me back then and still stayed with her. I’m not annoyed, because I made the same mistakes too, but… still,” she trails off with a shrug.
“I don’t know why I stayed with her, other than the fact that I was weak and scared and lonely. It’s the same reason why I dated all of the other women I dated. They weren’t you, but I needed to feel close to someone,” I admit, tugging her hand for her to stand, wrapping my arms around her and kissing her cheek as she lets me hold her. She looks up at me, craning her neck and I take the invitation and kiss my wife’s lips.
When she fidgets on her feet and we both walk toward the living room, folding her into my lap, she runs her thumb over my wrist in some pattern. She stays quiet for a while, and as the silence lingers I start to try and fill in more blanks.
I can’t come up with anything to say other than this. So I go with it. “I think part of me thought that she would help us get together. I had no idea she was a clingy, manipulative person.”
“Manipulative?”
“Yeah, well judging by the conversation she had with you in the kitchen and our conversations that she and I had where she wouldn’t say exactly how she knew, but kept telling me you weren’t interested. I was just … too weak. I heard what I wanted to hear.”
I must look like I’m desperate for her to understand or something, because her eyebrows crease in the middle and she covers my mouth with her hand. I pucker my lips and close my eyes, kissing her palm.
“It’s okay. We did things we shouldn’t have and didn’t do things we should have,” she says calmly. “Maybe we need a break from watching this.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” I say, ready to go rest my head next to hers.
“How many are left,” she says, running her eyes over the list. “Ugh,” she sighs out. “That damn wedding.”
“Delete it.”
“Can we?”
“Yes,” I say. “Delete it.”
“Done. I don’t want to remember anything from that day,” she says.
“Yeah, the only thing I really do remember is that I owe you a dance,” I say, hoping it didn’t sound as cheesy as I think it did.
She grins and kisses me. Turning off the television, she walks toward our stereo and places the CD our wedding band made us of the songs they played at our wedding.
‘Amazed’ by Lonestar – the first song we danced to as husband and wife - plays low through the speakers as I take her in my arms, press my cheek against her temple and hold her hand close to my heart.
I look into her eyes as the lyrics sound through my ears, and I sing along, whispering so she’s the only one that can hear.
“I wanna spend the rest of my life, with you by my side,” I say into her ear. Her response is placing her hand more strongly around me and grinning wider as she looks at me, silently saying the same thing.
I’m pretty sure the rest of the things we’ll watch when we get to it will probably bring up more questions. But right now as I move slowly in a circle with my wife in my arms, I feel like I’m falling in love with her all over again.
.
Chapter End Notes:
Thanks, Sally for the nudge to get this written. One more chapter to go.
