.
My Best Friend
Chapter 6
There are more than a thousand things that are one hundred percent amazing, fantastic, superb, just … so great about marrying my best friend. We do everything together, we go everywhere together, we think alike, we like the same things, we have the same sense of humor and we almost always never argue. A few times here and there we’ve had small spats over trivial things that don’t matter at the end of the day. There are a few that have bled into our work day – the cameras following our every move during one of our more extensive silent treatments. I hate those days, where all I want to do is vent to my best friend – but she’s not talking to me because I may have done or said the wrong thing.
We always manage to work through it, sometimes we don’t even have to say what we’re thinking, and I’ll just look at her and just keep staring until I get her to smile. She does the same thing to me. I can see everything she’s thinking before she even says it. All she has to do is look at me, move her head just the … this certain way that just says everything and nothing, and I know what she means.
The one … I wouldn’t say bad thing necessarily, but the one not so good thing about spending every waking and sleeping second with each other means that sometimes, on the rarest of occasions, our arguments spill over into our work day. It’s only really happened twice since we’ve been together, and one time the camera’s caught on to it and followed us around all day long. That was probably our worst fight. We had the silent treatment going on, any time I tried to sneak a look at her she would wave her hand in the air or ignore me.
It was so stupid too. Cece had woken up in the middle of the night – she was eleven months old at the time. I heard the baby, Pam was still sleeping, and instead of taking care of the kid myself, I woke Pam up and told her the baby was up. I just figured, if she’s hungry, Pam’s going to have to get up anyway.
My brilliance at three in the morning isn’t really my finest quality – all Cece needed was her binky and a diaper change, apparently she fell back to sleep on the changing table. Sometimes when Pam doesn’t get enough sleep, she can be a little passive aggressive, so we never really got a chance to get our fight started and done before we got in the car. She chose to unload on me the minute after we left Cece at daycare.
Here’s the thing about us though. We silently fought all day long, not even an IM went between us. And all it took for us to be good again was me swatting her rear to get her attention and telling her how much I love and adore her and how sorry I was and could she please forgive me, all said through my facial expression. It only took about ten seconds for her to smile, and the instant she bit her lip I knew we were good and I couldn’t wait to get home to make things up to her.
I think we both know that we’ve been through way worse, and that these spats and quarrels we have are just minor instances of insanity brought on by trying to raise children properly, maintain a house and keep our marriage alive and well. I have to give Pam all the credit in the world for making the latter a goal of hers. She does little things, like sometimes when no one’s looking at the office, she’ll kiss my cheek. She makes me a video once every few months just to tell me she loves me. This one video was just a few minutes of our kids playing together in the living room, and at the end they all say, “We love you, daddy.”
But we have been through worse. Back in the days when we weren’t together and with different people and things were messy, I never thought I would see the day where Pam and I would walk through the park with two other little one’s between us. If you had told me the night of our coworker Phyllis’ wedding that this is where I’d be – dancing in my living room with Pam in my arms, I would have told you to seek help. That’s what I told the cameras, in not so many words, when they asked me that night, “What would you do if you thought Pam was interested, hypothetically?”
See, I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about things like that before I went to Stamford. I cut myself off from letting those thoughts back in. And at that wedding when Pam left with Roy, I shut them out as fast as I could and went back to my next best thing – AKA Karen, who couldn’t be pried away from her BlackBerry for longer than a song or two. It was do or die, survival of the fittest.
Okay maybe I’m exaggerating, but yeah, back then, when all I really wanted to do was be with Pam the way we are now, nothing hurt more than trying to convince myself endlessly that it wasn’t going to happen. It’s funny how neither one of us wants to relive that night, and it should feel good to know that I can delete it from our TiVo. But I can’t delete it from my mind.
Because that was the point where I shut Pam out for the first time in my life so completely that I literally ate once a day to stay alive and forced myself to stay with Karen because she was nice and she was pretty and she was into me. It never became easier to do – pretend Pam was just a coworker and nothing more, concentrate on sales as Karen had suggested so I could become something more with the company than just a plain old salesman. I never wanted it but at that point, I was trying to change my life.
That meant a new job and a new person to try to love, to try to get rid of all of the ideas I had for things Pam and I could do together if we dated – got married – had kids – shared our lives with one another. I thought I had lost the love of my life. What other choice did I have other than jumping into work?
I really didn’t care what I did for a living – still sort of don’t as long as I make a paycheck every two weeks and my kids have clothes on their backs and food in their stomachs. All I want is this woman – my wife, Pam - in my arms. I want us to be happy, forever. If I can accomplish that for every day of every year that we’re still breathing, then I’ve done my job.
If every once in a while we can do things like this, things like dancing in our living room, things like taking an extra five minutes to get to work so we can have an adult conversation before we have to abide by PDA rules in the office and stay a respectable distance away from one another. If we can keep doing things like staring at one another with matching smiles that reach the corners of our eyes like they are right now as we slowly move with one another in a small circle on, the fibers of the carpet scratching at our feet, I’ll never have a single regret for as long as I live.
She pulls me closer to her, rests her head on my chest and let’s out a sigh, the sound filling the room over the lull in between songs. I can’t help but stop our movements and pull her into a tight hug, closing my eyes as I rest my head next to hers.
I expect her to tell me any second now that it’s late and we should go to bed and we should forget about finishing what’s left of the documentary. I’m so sure she’s going to say it that I have my response of protest ready to go, so I almost miss what she whispers to me.
“We should finish, before it gets too late,” she says, her voice muffled in my t-shirt.
I pause for a moment, shoving away the no I was going to say and instead bring her closer to me and let out a breath as I kiss her cheek. I don’t know if we really need to continue this, so I ask her, “Are you sure?”
She nods, lifts her head and grins, running her fingers through my hair, her palm resting on the crown of my head. I love when she does that. I don’t know why. I just do.
“Okay,” I agree quietly, tilting her face toward me as I lean down to kiss her lips. I never want this… I don’t know – this magnet inside of me that makes me need to kiss her all the time to stop being so powerful. Maybe it’s all the time we spend at work unable to act like we’re married.
Or maybe it’s to make up for all the times I wanted to do nothing more than hold her in my arms and kiss her senseless but was forced instead to watch her be treated like she really didn’t matter to her fiancé.
I shrug to myself and smile at her, amazed that she still wants to continue watching these moments of our life apart instead of going to get some much needed sleep.
I turn off our stereo and in less than a minute we’re back on the sofa, my arm slung over her shoulder and her head on mine as I pick up where we left off. The description reads so vague I don’t even understand it.
“Boss goes to business school,” I mutter as I select play. “When did that happen?”
“Michael gave a lecture at one of Ryan’s business classes,” she says.
I let out a scoffing laugh and fast forward through the beginning. As the screen quickly moves coworkers and our old boss Michael, I can’t really pin point this day right away. I keep going through Pam and Roy talking at reception, no protests from the person seated to my right, so I continue with the fast forward until I come on the screen.
“Press play, I want to see what you said,” she says, pointing at the television.
“Someone’s getting into this now,” I say playfully, moving my fingernails over her forearm.
My voice fills the room and by the look on my face on screen, I’m about as mad as I’ve ever been in my life. And that includes all the times my brothers tortured me when we were kids. I’d say by the looks on my face, I’m actually madder than I’d ever been right then as I state that Pam was with Roy and I was with Karen, something about Brangelina and Frangelina – not even sure where that came from.
“Who’s Frangelina,” Pam asks with a shake of her head.
“You know, I’m not even sure. I say weird stuff when I’m mad.”
“I know you do,” she agrees with a laugh. She snuggles closer to me as I fast forward most of that day.
“I still can’t believe there was a bat in the office. I was scared out of my mind.”
“Yeah. You seemed like you were,” she says sarcastically as the images on the screen of me messing with Dwight say otherwise.
“I really was. I mean, it’s a bat. I just did that … shtick to take my mind off of you being back with Roy. I…,” I say, stopping suddenly, unsure if I should continue.
“You what?”
“I was trying to prove to myself that I could have as much fun with Karen as I did with you.”
Pam nods and slings her arm across my waist and kisses my cheek. Not the response I thought I’d get, but I’ll take it. I want to ask her why she’s so unaffected by any of this, but I’ll assume it’s because she lived through it and I was oblivious to anything related to her. I don’t want to ask her because I don’t want to dredge up old hurtful feelings inside of her tonight – or ever.
I press play as soon as I see Pam on the screen chatting with someone about the pictures she created. If she didn’t look so sad in her purple turtleneck wither hair pulled to the side, I’d say she looked completely adorable.
And so sad and vulnerable. I can see why she clung on to Roy at that time. She explained it a while ago, but I can really see it here.
I don’t know much about art, but I’m not really sure why she’d call herself and her work impressionistic.
“Impressions,” I ask, tilting my head to the side, my cheek grazing her hair.
“Yeah,” she says, pressing the pause button when all of her pictures are displayed. It was … stuff that sort of reminded me of you. Our office building – where we met. The cup of coffee – all the times we went for coffee. The water color I did that won that art contest. The stapler – obviously. And the um … the flowers you got me for my birthday one year.”
“Wow,” is all I can say as I scratch my chin. These are good. But the things she makes now? They’re like a million times better. I do think saying that out loud would insult her, so I’ll keep that to myself. I love anything she does. Her art is like … a fine wine. It’s gotten better with age.
She does these little cartoon things sometimes now when she’s bored at work, and my coworkers and I make up captions for them. She calls them doodles. I call them art. I’ve said it a million times and I’ll keep saying it until I can’t speak anymore. She’s the most creative person I’ve ever met. Now, her art has more expression, more life, more feeling.
“Yeah. I think I’ve come a long way,” she says, almost reading my mind.
I don’t budge though as Roy enters the frame with his (dumb – I’m sorry, that’s mean of me… but true) brother.
“I can’t believe he’s bragging about being there,” I say aloud.
“Yep, that was him. Wait, it gets better,” she tells me, nodding toward the television.
I brace myself for whatever is about to come, wanting to go back in time just so I can punch the smug look off of his face. And also – grow a pair of balls and show up to her art show and support her as the friend I claimed to be. She did ask me to come.
We both gasp in horror at the sight of Dwight shoving a plastic bag over Meredith’s head, the bat flapping its wings wildly inside.
She turns to me with an amused expression and says, “Foaming, barking killer.”
“I miss those days sometimes,” I say with a laugh. “We did so much less work when Michael was our boss.”
My amusement is cut short as I feel my face turning into a scowl as Roy tells Pam he’s leaving without waiting. I let out an aggravated sigh and she takes a hold of my index finger with hers, wrapping it around tightly.
“He left? Why … what the hell,” I blurt out without thinking.
“He left,” she says with a nod. When Roy asks Pam to come back to his place, she’s immediately wagging a finger to the television. “I didn’t go back to his place that night.”
I really don’t know why she felt compelled to tell me that. Maybe it’s the same reason I cringe anytime I see Karen and I together on the screen. We don’t want the image of us being with our exes in one another’s heads – ever.
She suddenly presses stop on the remote the second Oscar and his boyfriend come on the screen at her art show and deletes the entire thing from the TiVo, and before I can register what she’s doing she’s selected the next one on the list.
“What’d you do that for?”
“Nah,” she says, shaking her head. “I … um. Oscar and Gil didn’t like my pictures, let’s leave it at that.”
I stare at her for a moment, wanting to tell her that the point of doing this was so I could see everything. Instead I narrow my eyes at her and she just shakes her head.
“It was nothing, don’t worry. I don’t need you saying something to Oscar. Plus, I’m tired of looking at my pathetic face, it wasn’t a good night at all. But,” she continues, “Michael showed up a few minutes before the show ended and that’s when he took the picture of the office building. I could have done better. I do better things now.”
“Whatever you do is great, Pam. Those reminded you of something, they meant something to you. You put your heart into it. Maybe not as much as you do now, but those reminded you of things that were personal to you. That makes them special.”
She looks at me warmly and wraps her arms around my shoulders, pulling me into a hug. Her lips are next to my ear when she says, “You don’t know how much it means to me that you said that.”
She pulls back a moment later and kisses me, and it says she knows why I couldn’t be there then. It says she loves me. It should make me feel better. I try to let it do that, but I’m trying to swat away the guilt like a mosquito that just won’t stop buzzing around me until it bites me, leaving a welt on my arm that itches like nothing else.
I don’t know if what I said makes up for missing her first art show. Nothing may ever make up for that. All I have is my genuine support to offer her and all she does. It’s always been that way. It’s never been forced or faked, even if I was stuck in this swirling vortex of self doubt, self preservation and selfishness.
I try to convince myself that it did make up for it. Pam is back to snuggling herself in my side with her head on my shoulder. I don’t know if I need more evidence than that.
I was selfish back then. I blamed it on being hurt, but now that I look at things, I never took her situation or her feelings into consideration. We talked about this a long time ago on our first date. I apologized for it – for not giving her a chance to get on the same page, for not realizing I was sending her mixed messages too. Selfish for expecting her to instantly abandon a relationship she had been in for nearly nine years, with whatever limited security that went along with it. Especially since all she saw was me dating other women and telling her I used to have a crush on her, that I miraculously got over.
I never could though. There’s no way to. I couldn’t even pretend to be over her.
I like myself, I think I’m a good person. I’d even go so far as to say I’m a great husband and father. My kids love me. I hate nights when I have a late sales call and can’t go directly home with Pam. But I love them too, because the millisecond I walk through the front door, both of my girls are running down the hallway toward me with their arms extended, smiles on their faces and their giggles filling the house. There’s only one thing that’s better than that. Waking up and falling asleep with Pam every day and night.
As much as I do think I’m a good person, I absolutely can’t stand the sight of me on the television screen, Karen and me at this really pointless cocktail party that David Wallace had. I tried to joke with Karen that it was a way for him to show off his house to people. She didn’t think it was funny.
As images come across the screen of the front of the house as Michael shouts that loves Jan, Pam lets out a laugh.
“What,” I say, peering down to her.
“What do you think the point of this was, other than to show off his fancy house?”
My laugh is instant and I shake my head and kiss the top of my head and mutter, “Thank you. I totally thought the same thing.”
She looks at me and smiles, raising an eyebrow. “Same brain.”
I let out another laugh as I say, “Yeah, more than you know.”
I pick up the remote to fast forward. I was bored at the cocktail party years ago. It’s just as boring now.
Suddenly Pam starts to fidget and tries to take the remote from my hand. “Let’s move on to the next one.”
“Nope,” I say, extending my arm to the side, completely out of her reach.
“Unfair advantage, bully,” she says, swatting my stomach. “I just think…”
She stops talking suddenly as the image of her and Roy come on the screen.
“We don’t have to watch this,” she says, sitting up straighter as I hit the play button.
“No,” I tell her as I watch a calm conversation between her and Roy suddenly out of no where grows in intensity. His eyes become wider as she explains that she kissed me.
Wait. “Y… I kissed you though,” I say.
It’s all happening too fast, he’s standing now and yelling at her when she asks him to listen and it makes me jump back in my seat.
“What the,” I shout louder than I probably should as I stand up and point to the television – images of Roy throwing glass after glass at the bar. “Pam what … why didn’t you … “
I can’t find the words, the only thing I can do is look between the television and my wife in horror. “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” she says instantly, her hands on my forearms. “No, he didn’t, Jim.”
I turn around to the television again as the image of Pam driving away in tears. It’s an image that will be burned in my brain for a while. I look back to Pam and her expression is full of concern, and I match that expression with my own, feeling the nerves and muscles in my forehead creasing.
“If I – I ever thought he…” I stutter, watching her shake her head.
“Jim, I swear. He never hurt me. Not physically.”
“If he ever hit you, I swear I’ll find him and I’ll …”
She takes my face in her hands, pressing her palms into my cheekbone and her eyes bore into mine as she says, “I’m not going to make excuses for my ex, but trust me when I tell you he never hit me. There were a few times when he got angry, but never like that. I’d never seen him throw anything, ever.”
I don’t know what to say, and I know anything more will insult her in some way. All I can do is pull her into a hug, bury my face in her neck and hold her tight and try to take back every ounce of pain I caused.
“I’m glad it happened,” she says.
“What?” I ask, pulling back.
“If that never happened, we wouldn’t be here.”
I almost ask her how she figures that, but I let it go, assume she’s right and hold her in my arms as tight as I can as I stare at our wedding photo that sits on an end table.
“We won’t watch anymore,” she says, rubbing her hand over my back.
“No. I want to finish,” I say without thinking. Am I really crazy? Maybe. Masochistic? Most definitely.
“Let’s go to bed now. We’ll finish tomorrow,” she says firmly, pulling me into a kiss before I can protest.
I love this woman. I love her more than anything on this green earth and if anyone ever hurts her again - my actions? They'll be justifiable.
She turns to me as we walk up the stairs, her hands on my shoulders and she whispers, "I love you."
I love that she couldn't wait until we got all the way up the stairs before she said it.
.
Chapter End Notes:
Okay, so it turns out I was wrong. I could not wrap this up with one more chapter, silly me! I am too long winded lol So... more soon! Hope this is still interesting and what not. Happy Friday all!
