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A/N – Here I go again. Haven’t written a season 3 fic in a long time.


DISCLAIMER – I don’t own anything related to the Office. Title from the song By Your Side by Tenth Avenue North.



By Your Side



“How are you going to cook every meal of the day in one kitchen?”

“Hah,” she laughed, “it’s simple. I buy breakfast, order a salad for lunch and then stick a frozen thing in the microwave for dinner.”

“Frozen thing. Sounds delicious, really, Beesly.”

“They are. Easy clean up. No leftovers. Oh, hey, guess what?”

“Hmm, Ryan made a sale.”

“Nothing that crazy,” she mused sarcastically. “But it does have to do with him. Dwight took him on a sales call.”

“Dead in a ditch. You owe me thirty dollars. I only accept cash or traveler’s checks.”

“Nuh-uh. I win. He just came back into the office, alive and well.”

“You’re lying. I need photographic evidence of his continued existence.”

“You’ll have to wait until tomorrow. He came in really quickly, took something off of your… uh, his desk and then left again.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah,” her voice trailed, their two hour conversation hitting a lull. She searched for something to say, for anything to add, but nothing else came.

What she wanted to say, ask, admit - it all wedged itself in her chest, lodged and dry and aching to move past her lungs and out into the open.

“Um,” his voice broke the silence, bringing her back from her panicked state. “The uh, cleaning people just came in here, so I should probably go. Before they spray me down with Windex or something.”

“Oh, right,” she frowned into the receiver. “I um, should go too.”

“Hey,” he said with a cracked voice. “I … I’ll um...”

“Yeah,” she gave; wishing every word she’d ever known hadn’t been dissolved into the pit of her stomach, churning. She pounded her fist on her desk and closed her eyes. “Maybe … I can um, I - I’ll call you when I get home? We can have dinner together.”

“Okay. I’ll race you,” he agreed. “N-nothing’s changed, so… yeah. When you get in give me a call.”

She closed her eyes again and smiled, swallowing dry air as she nodded. “Okay. I’ll catch you in twenty.”

“You got it, Beesly.”

From the second that she hung the receiver back in its cradle to the moment she stepped into her apartment, she felt like her breath had been taken away. The months that they hadn’t communicated, the times she held her phone in her hand and wanted to call him, only to dissuade herself from doing it. The time she took to get her life back in order after it exploded into small fragments in June when she canceled her wedding and broke about twenty hearts in the process. All of it because she fell asleep every night since the day Jim walked away from her wishing she could turn back time and stop herself from nodding.

She wanted to replace that one action with words, something that was never her strong suit – saying what she wanted to say instead of what was expected of her. Every night since May she wished she could fall asleep in his arms. Every night since that night, all she wanted was to hear him laugh, hear him say her name, hear him tell her those words again. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t wished for it every single day and tried to bury it deep down into the bottom of a box that held the memories they had created together.

If she weren’t as nerve wracked as she had been, standing in front of her refrigerator with her cell phone in one hand and the door handle in the other, she would pat herself on the back for saying something this time instead of letting it all slip away again. Both sides of her mind battled between it being a good thing that he agreed to continue their conversation and that this was all meaningless. That he was just being polite, being the good friend he always had been to her.

She stared at her phone as she placed her frozen dinner inside the microwave, the beeping of the numbers she pressed her finger into echoing off of the cabinets and bare white walls.

She wasn’t allowed to hang anything on the walls. It was in the lease. She wondered how much time it would take to pack up her things and move. She never really liked the apartment. It never bothered her until that moment, as the plastic plate spun around.

Tapping her foot on the linoleum floor, she flipped her phone open, her finger hovering over the send button as she stared at his name on the screen.



*
In the five months that he had lived in Stamford, he had never driven back to his apartment so quickly and with such a positive feeling inside of him. Yes, sure the phone call was an inadvertent error on his part, assuming she had been gone for the night. But now, as he sat on his couch with a half eaten container of fried rice that tasted like cardboard and nothing more, he felt hopeful. Cautiously optimistically hopeful, but hopeful nonetheless.

What it all meant that she wanted to continue their conversation, what the point of it all was, what would come out of it – he tried not to think about it. Tried to focus his eyes on the television screen, watching people smarter than he answering questions in the form of questions for money they probably didn’t need.

As he waited for his phone to ring, he wondered how quickly he could move back to Scranton, immediately admonishing himself for thinking such a thought – she hadn’t even hinted at anything other than wanting to continue this conversation. He let out a breath; causing particles of old fried rice sputtering around the couch. With a dismissive shrug he continued half heartedly to shovel his food in his mouth, his eyes willing his phone to ring.

When it did, the rest of the contents in the container fell to the floor, his hands seemingly forgetting how to hold onto objects. He let out another hard breath as he lifted the phone open, clearing his throat before he answered in a cracked voice he barely recognized.

“Hey, so which one did you pick?” were his first words, attempting to continue the string of topic from earlier.

“Macaroni and Cheese.”

“Oh, Pam. That must taste…”

“Absolutely disgusting? Yes, that would be what this tastes like. So…”

“So, uh. How – how was your drive home?”

“The usual. Red light, green light, turn here, turn there. You?”

“Same,” he nodded, leaning back on the sofa. He kicked up his feet on the coffee table, ignoring the mess of fried rice that lay on the floor.

“How’s your dinner?”

“Uh, mostly on the floor, actually. I dropped it.”

“Oh my God,” she laughed. “W-you didn’t pick it up?”

“Eh, I’ll get to it later.”

“Nice,” she erupted into another fit of giggles.

He couldn’t help but smile at the sound of her laughter. He had no idea what he should say next, what he was supposed to do now that what he had been hoping would happen actually had occurred. He bit his lip and listened to her breathing on the other end, and before he could stop himself, he whispered, “I miss you.”

The pause that followed was only quick enough to make him start to think the call failed, until he heard her sniffle and reply, “I miss you, too.”

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Chapter End Notes:
Hope you like it so far. More on the way. Any comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated. :)

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