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A/N – Thank you so much, Callisto. This chapter wouldn’t be here if not for you. Thank you a million times. Thanks also to Klutzy Girl for the idea and all of my cheerleaders.
My Best Friend
Chapter 7
Usually I can find the bright spot in every situation. I’m an optimist, what can I say. It’s probably why I kept hope alive years ago that I could get the girl. Watching the past unfold the past few nights, seeing all the hurt I never wanted to see, it’s starting to get to me. Or, more truthfully, it’s gotten me good. I woke up this morning with my thoughts jumbled as I tried to analyze things. Eight hours of nose to the grindstone selling definitely did nothing to help, since I’m standing in the elevator with my wife, on our way home, and instead of kissing her like I usually do when the doors close and we’re alone for the ten second drop to the lobby, I can’t move my eyes from this smudge on the door. It has no apparent symbolism and I’m not that far gone in my thoughts to delve into if it means something or not.
I hear the shuffling of her feet and look down to her, forcing a weak smile.
“Busy day,” Pam says, nudging me with her elbow.
“Oh, yeah,” I agree, trying to snap myself out of my self induced whatever this is. Stupor? Maybe.
She reaches for my hand and instead of taking her hand in mine I take my keys out of my pocket and fiddle with the remote door opener thing.
“Okay, out with it,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest, stepping in front of me when the doors open. “You’re mad at me for something.”
I scoff, shake my head and walk toward the lobby door, holding it for her. “What makes you think I’m mad?”
She looks at me sideways, lips pursed, head tilted and eyes serious as they stare up at me. Turns out, I’m not good at hiding anything from Pam. I used to be. Or not. That is up for debate.
“Really,” she says dryly. “Because I’m pretty sure you just sold a year’s worth of paper today, you barely spoke to me at all and you didn’t want to go out for lunch with me. So you’re either mad or someone’s taken over your body.”
I know she tried to throw a joke in there at the end, but the will to laugh refuses to show up. Only the will to shrug, open her car door for her and say, “I’m fine,” as normally as I can.
“Would you just tell me what the deal is,” she says with sincerity that almost annoys me. I’m not sure why it does, but it does.
I want to be able to get over whatever I’m thinking on my own. But the more she stares at me expectantly, the faster I lose the fight against whatever I am about to say.
I let out a breath, and I don’t mean it to sound as frustrated as I end up sounding. It’s not her fault I let my imagination run wild like caged zoo animals set loose.
“It can’t be that big a deal. What, did you lose a sale or something?”
“Why’d you tell him you wanted your relationship with him to work out,” I blurt out.
“What?” A hundred emotions from hurt to confusion crossed her face as she backed away ever so slightly from me. “Who? I barely spoke to anybody today.” She stares at me as if she’s trying to divide seventy by thirty.
“Did you think he magically changed over night?”
“Who and what are you talking about?”
“Roy. Did you think he changed?”
I know I caught her off guard by the way she gapes at me. I wait for her to say something, but the only sound I hear is her car door closing with a little extra force than normal.
“You know what, never mind,” I mumble, walking toward the driver’s side. I tug on the seatbelt and buckle in, waiting for her to say something as I drive to pick up the kids from daycare.
But she’s silent, and with each passing second I’m kicking myself for bringing it up at all. I try to rationalize with myself that she was persistent, that she made me say it. How very mature. Blame someone else – my wife, no less, for my own inability to get a grip. When she ignores me while we gather the kids’ things and get them in the car, I know I should have put up a stronger fight to hold it all in.
I wait for her to say something during dinner. Instead, I listen to her ask the kids how their day was at school, what they learned, what they did. Then, she’s outlining a plan for the weekend, not once glancing at me. Apparently we’re going pumpkin picking on Saturday afternoon and then visiting my parents at night. I’m sure that’s something Pam would have told me about on the ride home.
I try to apologize while she rinses the dinner plates, but she waves her hand, shooing me away, and I end up in the living room with the kids, watching them play for the few minutes before they go to bed. They’re really well behaved most of the time, tonight included, which I’m thankful for. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to referee tonight.
“Come on, bed time,” Pam says as she stands in the entryway, dishtowel in hand. “Say goodnight to daddy.”
I look at her and she shakes her head. Apparently my fatherly duties end with a quick hug to the kids before she brings them upstairs. Usually we both read to them and get them settled. Instead of fighting her, I hug the kids, tell them I love them and try to make eye contact with Pam. She’s looking everywhere but at me – her feet, the wall, the kids, anywhere but at me. The silence of their footsteps walking away from me and up the steps is deafening. I flip on the television to drown it out and stare blankly at some ESPN breakdown of the Eagles defense. I’m sure it’s well thought out. It always is.
I try to pay attention to the commentators, attempt to shove aside the questions - what if this and what if that, why did she do it that way. I know it doesn’t matter now. Before I can delve too far into what life would be like if things had gone another way, Pam walks into the living room, hands on her hips and her eyes wide, looking at me expectedly and I’m wondering if where a half hour just went.
“Hey,” she whispers as she inches into the living room.
“Hey,” I say somewhat defensively as I turn the TiVo on. I’m sure here’s where I should start apologizing, but instead I’m pressing buttons on the remote control.
“No,” she says instantly. “We’re not watching anymore of that documentary if this is how you’re going to act now.”
“I’m just trying to figure things out,” I say simply as I start the next one on the list.
“What are you trying to figure out? If I loved you enough back then? Because believe me, I did,” she says calmly, sitting next to me.
My focus is split between Pam, on our sofa next to me with her hand pressing on my shoulder, and the television, showing Karen trying to convince me to go out with her. She always won those battles. If I could recoup all the money that I spent on dinners we didn’t need to go out to, I’d add it to the commission I made today and buy a new house with a terrace for my wife. Maybe one day I will. Right now though, I know what’s about to be shown on the documentary, and instead of acknowledging what Pam just asked, I can’t tear my eyes away from the screen.
“You could’ve told me he had a bad reaction to the news, or something,” I say as Roy bursts through the office door and shouts my name.
“I didn’t know he’d do that. I really didn’t. And also, I didn’t think you really wanted to be involved in anything I did anyway.”
“Right, well,” I reply, rubbing my chin. I press fast forward, choosing to skip watching myself almost have my ass handed to me. The room fills with our breathing and the ticking clock on the mantle as the images whiz by. I press play the instant I see Pam and me in the break room.
Her apology resonates through the speaker and I can’t help but let out a small laugh. “You made a joke out of saying you were sorry,” I say as I watch my onscreen self walk out of the break room like I’d been hit in the face with a shoe. “Your goon of an ex tried to rearrange my face and you thought it was funny.” Yes, I’m justifying my anger from before. No, I’m not dumb enough to tell her that right now.
“I didn’t make a joke. I didn’t think it was funny. I was seriously sorry.”
I shake my head and let out a breath. "There was the whole weekend between the throw down and your apology."
"Don't start being petty."
"What did you do that weekend?"
She looks at me like I’m either crazy or I’ve just made her as mad as anyone has ever made her. "You really want to know?”
I nod. “I don’t know why, but yes.”
“I spent most of it crying on Isabel's couch. Not about Roy. I thought I lost you for good. It wasn't pretty. At one point she wanted to call you just so I could talk to you but then I cried even more because I deleted your cell number from my phone that night you told me you were dating Karen."
"Oh.” I’m taken aback. “I had no idea you did that."
“I thought you forgave me for this already,” she frowns, her eyebrows creased. “I thought we were done with all of this back and forth you did I did stuff and moved past it a long time ago.”
“I did.” My posture softens instantly at her sad tone. “I just don’t understand why you told him we kissed right then. Or at all.”
“Part of me still felt guilty about kissing you and wanting you. I just thought he needed to know. You told Karen,” she says pointedly. “Remember? It was no big deal?”
“Yeah, I didn’t mean that.”
“Well,” she says with a smirk. “Whether you meant it or not at that time, it still hurt me. It just kept getting worse. Haven’t you been watching? I mean, before you went to that cocktail party you acted like you were my boss, telling me not to leave too early. It was like you were talking down to me.”
“I really didn’t mean for it to sound like that,” I say, wondering how I wound up on the defensive when I’m the one who asked the question.
“Whatever. It happened, and that’s how I heard it, that I was just your coworker. And the more time I spent thinking about it and the way you were treating me, the more I started doubting you ever really cared about me,” she says, calmer than I think she should be.
“I …” I sigh. “I was being a jerk.”
She widens her eyes and nods. “You were being a jerk and Roy had been doing anything and everything to win me back. You were pushing me away. He was starting to treat me better than he had in nine years. I thought he changed. And honestly, I was tired of sitting at home almost every night wondering what life could be like with you. Yeah, maybe it wasn’t the best decision of my life, but I don’t know how to make it not happen. I can’t undo something like that.”
“What would you have done if he didn’t react the way he did and said instead, okay I forgive you, no big deal?”
“Does it matter now?”
“No, not in the grand scheme of things,” I say honestly. “I just want to know.”
“I know you never saw what I did in him. He was a good person, a decent hard working guy who had his faults. One of them happened to be taking me for granted a lot of the times. And yeah, I mean, I don’t know, if things were different and he didn’t freak out, I would have been with him and married him and probably divorced him already. Because for all of the good in him, there was still that lackadaisical guy who only half paid attention to me and held me back all the time. You’d be in New York or somewhere with Karen or someone else. I would never have gone to art school. I would never have had my dream wedding. I would have never become a sales person or office administrator. Your parents would have sold their house to strangers and our kids wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be your wife. I wouldn’t be me, married to my best friend. But I would have settled for all of that because you didn’t want to know anything about me back then. And honestly, at the time, I was a little happy that he almost punched you. Because there were times when I really wanted to just slug you."
The laugh I let out is real and I finally turn toward her, finding her eyes shining a little. "I didn't mean to upset you."
"It is what it is. I wasn't innocent there, I know that. I did some stupid things, I didn't do things I should have, but it doesn’t change the fact that I loved you then. And I love you now.”
"I love you," I say, looking directly into her eyes as some stranger who looks like me on the television is complaining to his ex girlfriend about a co worker not accepting a gift.
Her chin dimples and she swats at a tear. "Please don't ever ask me what if things were different questions anymore? No more what ifs. Unless it's what if we have another baby or what if we upgrade the Subaru."
I pull her toward me and hold her, the palm of my hand pressed lightly on the back of her head. She sniffles slightly and I whisper, "I promise."
A few moments pass of just holding one another and my brain being my brain needs to lighten the mood, so I pull back and kiss her and brush her hair from her eyes. "What's wrong with the Subaru?"
She laughs instantly, tongue between her teeth and her eyes squeezed closed. She shakes her head and wraps her arms around me again.
"I'm sorry I ever made you think I wanted nothing to do with you," I say.
She nods and presses a kiss to my neck. "Can we be done watching this now?"
"No. I still need a replay of that stuff you said at the beach. And I need to see Dwight being manager."
"Because him being acting manager wasn't scary enough for you?"
"Nope," I say with a smile. “I promise no more over analyzing.”
"I'll go get the popcorn," she says, lifting her eyebrows and grinning as she walks toward the kitchen.
I sit back a little bit, stretch my neck and take a deep breath as I focus on the television. For me, there’s nothing of interest crossing the screen. I leave it on fast forward until I see Roy and Pam at the café she told me they went to. She told me about how he went his way, she went hers and everything was fine and settled between them.
But hearing their conversation, how sullen she sounds, it makes me immediately regret anything I said and everything I thought earlier today.
How she looks when Roy says she called off their wedding for ‘that guy,’ the way she corrects him and says there were a lot of reasons, and the way she says, “He has a girlfriend,” all of it makes me shake my head and wish for a time machine so we could go back and do it again the right way this time. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her standing next to the entry way, leaning her arm on the wall, a bowl full of popcorn in her hand.
“That simple,” I say, and she nods as she steps closer to me.
“Pretty much. Like I said, I didn’t do some of the right things either. But yeah, if Karen wasn’t there, who knows,” she shrugs, sets the bowl on the end table and folds herself into my lap.
“Is that the good kind,” I ask, pointing to the yellow bowl.
“Yep, white cheddar.”
I smile and kiss her cheek. “My favorite.”
“I know,” she says with an exaggerated tone. “Okay, this is it. Let’s finish this and be done.”
I nod in agreement and press play for the next one. It’s funny how I can remember different things about a day than others do. As I fast forward through this, I know it’s the day that Michael decided to pretend he was depressed – for attention. It’s why he did most things, for the glory of the spotlight. What I remember though is the betting the rest of us did on the side. It was a fun distraction from thinking about the woman who currently has her head on my shoulder.
“You really confused me that day,” she says almost too low for me to hear her. “One minute you were so distant and the next we were almost us again.”
“I confused myself a lot, too.”
“Yeah,” she replies, pressing a light kiss to my cheek. “Must have been Michael making us come together for a day something.”
“Let me know if you want me to press play. Otherwise I’ll keep going forward,” I say against her hair, planting a kiss on top of her head.
She nods and settles further into me. My legs are going a little numb from her sitting on them, but I don’t really care.
Without a request to slow the images in front of us, the end comes pretty quickly. I shrug as I press delete and start up the next one, fast forwarding as soon as it starts showing me dressed as Dwight.
“That’s an image I’ll never get out of my head,” she laughs between bites of popcorn. “You look good as Dwight.”
“Yeah, that was pretty fun,” I say, remembering that I didn’t share that prank with her. “Long overdue.”
“We need to do something soon again,” she says with a laugh.
She’s such a good cohort. I run my hand over her arm and hug her close to me as the images move by, showing the day they recalled a ton of paper because of an obscene watermark.
“I don’t remember talking to you at all that day,” I admit. “I do remember wishing I didn’t know Andy, but that’s a different story for a different day.”
She laughs as I press stop and delete. It’s getting late, and besides Pam looking really pretty that day, there isn’t much else to see.
“Oh, this sounds promising.” I read the description aloud, “Michael takes the women shopping.”
She shakes her head and waves her hand. “Skip it. I can summarize it for you. My boss takes me and my female coworkers to the mall and offers to buy us one thing at Victoria’s Secret. I bought a robe. Karen bought herself a little something special for you,” she says with a lot of sarcasm. “I’ve only recently been able to un-see it. Don’t make me watch it again.”
I wouldn’t dare. I won’t even reply, though I want to tell her that I wish her jealous streak would’ve shown up years ago. But I’ll keep that to myself. I delete it without watching and move on to the next.
“Employee games at the beach,” I read aloud again. “Okay,” I say, pressing play. But the instant I press fast forward, Pam stops me.
“Don’t. I want you to watch all of this,” she says.
“Sounds like someone’s seen this before?”
“Only the one time I lived through it,” she replies. “There’s something I want you to see.”
“What,” I ask, genuinely. I have no idea what she’s talking about.
“Fine, here,” she holds her hand out. “I’ll show you.”
Her actions don’t mirror her tone. Her actions are telling me that she’s about to reveal something super important and I better be paying attention or she’ll kill me somehow in my sleep. But her tone is light, gentle and a little tired.
We’re quiet for a few minutes. I can only hear the sound of us munching on our popcorn and the thoughts in my head.
“Mm,” she mumbles. “Here,” she points to the television as the images slow down, revealing Karen throwing an egg at me by the water’s edge as Pam looked on. “Were you doing this in my face on purpose?”
“No,” I say instantly.
The way she tilts her head and looks at me with her eyes narrowed says she doesn’t believe me.
“I didn’t do it intentionally on purpose,” I give. “It just sort of happened that way.”
“Yeah, because you didn’t even see me sitting there on the sand as you told her specifically where to walk,” she says dryly, shaking her head.
My lungs deflate and I lick my lips, wishing I could find somewhere to crawl and disappear. “I did it on purpose.”
She nods and the guilt I feel is automatic.
“It shouldn’t matter now,” I say, and the way my voice sounds so small shocks me.
“Yeah, that’s what I said before. It doesn’t matter. But can you just see how, to me back then, it was really impossible to actually believe you really meant that you were in love with me?”
I nod and press my nose into her hair. “When I say I love you, I always mean it,” I whisper. “I am so sorry I ever made you think that I wasn’t serious.”
She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to tell me that this happened a long time ago, that she’s just trying to prove a point from the argument I started earlier today. And as she fast forwards some more, I’m left feeling like I need to do something to make this all up to her. We’ve been married and parents for years. But I need to do something. I know the reason why I did it. I think we’re strong enough to handle the truth.
“I did it on purpose because I was trying to push you,” I say. “I wanted to see your reaction. I wanted to make you mad enough to do something.”
“Then why did you still go through with the job interview. I mean,” she says, appropriately stopping the documentary at the moment where she runs through fire. “It just doesn’t make any sense. I told you I missed you and you still wanted to leave me.”
“You never said what I wanted to hear,” I say, pointing out that fact as her words from years ago fill the room. “I miss our friendship is a lot different than I’m in love with you.”
“You’re right. It is. Still. You always knew what I was talking about.”
“You know I’m dense,” I say, nudging her arm, making her look at me. “For what it’s worth, I was still really proud of you for saying something.”
“I know. And I get that you were with Karen. I can’t fault you for taking time to think. That’s what I did when you told me you loved me, I needed time to think. Change is scary,” she says evenly.
“I get it now,” I say, linking our fingers together. “We’re so alike it’s a little scary.”
She lets out a laugh and smiles at me. “That’s why we get along so well.”
As we go through the last one, that last day we were apart, a full day before the first night we became us, we don’t say anything. I laugh at Dwight crying when Michael makes him manager. My smile is cut short though and I almost say something when Karen says Pam is “kind of a bitch,” but my wife holds her finger over my lips. I try not to make eye contact with Pam as we watch me ask Michael if Karen and I can go to the city early and he implies that we’re going to have sex. We did, but a gunman would have to threaten the life of my children for me to admit it out loud.
Then Kevin approaches me and asks me who’s hotter, Pam or Karen, I open my mouth and whisper, “You,” in my wife’s ear. “You’re the hottest woman in the world.”
She smiles ruefully at me before turning back toward the television.
When she yawns I decide to move things along, skipping a chunk of activity from Jan coming back with a boob job to Dwight telling me he’s my new boss. It was all funny back then, but once was enough.
Things move along, and I stop when I get to Pam’s interview. By now I know her well enough to know that she meant nothing of what she said.
She lets out a laugh and says, “Yeah, like I was going to sit there and tell them, I’m not happy for him. I don’t want him to take the job; I hope he doesn’t get it. I want him to be happy with me; I want him to come back to me. That’s what I meant to say.”
“I know, sweetie,” I say. “I know.”
I move forward again, going through the weirdest, most awkward conversation with Karen. I know she was trying to joke about her getting the job. But something about the way she spoke sort of… was odd. I don’t know. It was like she was forcing herself to say it.
“Wait, stop,” Pam says, pointing to the television. “I want to see you in New York.”
“I’d ask why, but I started this, didn’t I,” I say wryly.
“Yeah, you did,” she says, studying the documentary.
She watches quietly as we see snippets of Karen and me in the city at night, brief snippets that they are, I kind of wish they would have not caught the conversation that’s now resonating through my televisions speakers. Karen asks what’s going to happen when she gets the job.
I watch Pam’s face fall as Karen says she’d move to the city with me, that there’s no room for us in Scranton.
“In my defense,” I say quickly. “I never actually agreed to it.”
“And there I was, thinking if Karen got the job, you two would end things,” she says evenly, letting out a slow breath. “It makes sense that you would though. I get why. I hate it, but I get it. You moved on, you grew up. You thought you were doing what you had to do.”
I appreciate that she understands what I was going through, but I shake my head. “I think we both did the same thing. A little different, but mostly the same.”
She nods. We move forward quietly as the clock ticks away at the time quickly.
I stop when Dwight’s meeting comes along, and I can’t stop a barking laugh as I point to the screen. “Oh my god, Phyllis is sleeping. That’s amazing.”
She laughs and moves her hand for me to keep going as she gives another yawn. I don’t really need to hear what’s passing by on screen to know that Dwight as manager the first time was just as successful as him as manager the second time. Minus the gun firing thing. That was a bonus.
I press play when Michael enters the office again, and he’s announcing that he’s never going anywhere, ordering Ryan to get him coffee. And there’s Pam asking if Karen got the job in the saddest way I’ve ever heard her speak. It makes me kiss her cheek as our eyes remain glued to the screen like we don’t know what’s about to happen.
I’m getting a kick out of her playing along with Dwight, saluting him as he thanks her for being his secret assistant to the regional manager.
“You’re good,” I whisper, giving her another kiss.
“Thank you,” she says airily as another interview with her alone comes up. This time talking about the future.
“I know what your future holds,” I say as I reply to her onscreen ramblings. “You get married while you’re pregnant, twice in one day, the first time on a boat. This is ironic since you didn’t want to marry Roy on that booze cruise, but you were okay with marrying me on a boat, though I’m not complaining. You have two kids, me as your husband, an art studio in the garage.”
“Pretty fricken great if you ask me,” she says with a grin.
I kiss her lips, and it turns into one of those kisses that last a while, pulling each other closer to one another. We let the television play on, sinking into one another. She moves herself from my lap, readjusting herself so her legs are on either side of mine and we continue to make out.
The next time I open my eyes, a younger version of me is on the screen with shorter hair asking Pam if she’s free for dinner.
The beauty of her smile, the tears in her eyes let me know that whatever we went through made us stronger. That I’ll never have to worry or wonder what if she doesn’t love me the way I love her. Not that I’ve ever questioned it. I know she does.
There are a few things I want to see, like that rabies walk we did and the time we had dinner at Michael’s place, and the night I almost proposed but Andy killed my moment. But that can wait. I know tomorrow night is dinner out with the kids. And obviously, there’s the pumpkin picking on Saturday. And I think maybe I’ll see if my parents want to keep the kids overnight on Saturday so I can go on a date with my best friend.
.
Chapter End Notes:
Thanks for reading :)
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