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Story Notes:
A Christmas gift to my new friends on this site! No copyright infringement intended.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Pam listens to the mix tape Jim put in her Christmas teapot, and Jim receives his gift from Pam.

Christmas Morning

On Christmas morning, before Roy got up and they made the two-hour drive to her parents’ house for Christmas dinner, Pam went to the kitchen to make tea. Standing in her flannel pajamas and her fluffy robe, she put on the teakettle, and, opening the blinds, stared out at the foot of snow they’d gotten over night.  She winced, remembering how she’d had to drive them home from Roy’s parents’ house, where they’d spent Christmas Eve.  He’d been too drunk to drive, and she’d driven, white-knuckled, through the near white-out conditions, the rear of the truck fishtailing once or twice on the slick roads. Roy knew how much she hated to drive in bad weather, but he’d drunk too much anyway. Well, she’d leave it to him today to cuss and gripe all the way to Philly.

She sighed, catching the kettle just before it whistled so it wouldn’t wake up Roy.  She poured the hot water into her new teal blue teapot, and put in two bags of Christmas Blend to steep, then took the pot and her favorite mug into the living room. She’d brought Jim’s gift home with her to use over the holiday, and she was excited to be able to use it at her desk in the office, so she wouldn’t have to go back and forth to the kitchen so much.  She’d mentioned that desire to Jim some time ago, and she was inordinately pleased that he’d remembered.

 She turned on the Christmas tree lights and sat on the couch, propping her slippered feet up on the coffee table. Her eyes fell on the box her teapot had come in, where she’d set it under the tree, and on impulse, she got up to retrieve it.  She tried to ignore the package from Roy that she’d open later, how it was a sweater-size box from JC Penney. No iPod for her this year, she supposed wistfully. To be fair, there was nothing special about what she’d gotten Roy either:  new jumper cables and a gift card to a sporting goods store—but at least she’d gotten him something she knew he would like.  She didn’t have high hopes for the sweater.

She sat again with Jim’s box, where she’d carefully transferred the sentimental contents he’d so carefully placed in the teapot.  Her heart fluttered as she removed each item again—the mini golf pencil, the hot sauce packets, his yearbook picture, the Boggle timer.  Every little gift was a memory, a sweet reminder of fun or silly moments she’d shared with Jim. As she studied everything spread out on the coffee table, she was struck by a sudden thought: these mementos had been saved by a man whose feelings went beyond friendship. Why else would he have kept such items, saving them like a lovesick maiden in a Jane Austen novel?  The notion startled her at first, but then she let it settle over her like new-fallen snow.

Jim loves me.

She felt the warmth of the idea suffuse her, melt her heart, and her hands went to her flushed cheeks.

Unbidden, the memories surrounding each gift skated through her mind, how she’d felt alternately happy, frustrated, or amused in those moments.  But then, with a tremble, she allowed herself to go deeper, to remember how Jim had laughed or smiled at the time, how he’d looked at her with such obvious joy and affection.  She’d tried to block out what those looks had really meant over the years, because, for one thing, she was engaged, but also because admitting what he felt would mean she would have to admit what she felt too.  But she stopped short of pondering her own feelings toward Jim, stowing them away in the keepsake box in the back of her mind.  Acknowledging what Jim had told her through his looks and actions was one thing; putting a name to her own feelings was just too much on this Christmas morning.

With a wistful sigh, she pulled out the last item from the box: the cassette tape, which he’d carefully labeled Pam’s Mix, Vol. 1.  With a grin, she bent and rummaged through the small drawer in the coffee table, pulling out the Walkman cassette player she’d kept for fifteen years.  Guess Jim wasn’t the only one who was nostalgic.  Miraculously, the batteries still worked in the player, and she remembered not so miraculously that she’d put new ones in a few months back so she could listen to an old Hall and Oates tape she didn’t have on CD. Oh, well, she thought, if she couldn’t have an iPod, she could listen to what Jim had recorded for her.  He’d always had good taste in music.

She put the tape in, put the old-fashioned headphones on, and pressed play.       

She was surprised to hear Jim’s deep voice so full in her ears, and she ignored how her heart skipped a beat at its smoothness, it’s richness, its latent sexiness. He could make a good living narrating audio books.

“Hey, Beesly. Welcome to Volume 1 of your mix tape. Yes, I know it’s very old school, and probably a little corny, and while I don’t have a CD burner, I do still have a cassette recorder on my stereo. Coincidentally, each song on Side 1 corresponds to one of the gifts from your teapot; I’ll leave it to you to remember which is which.  Side 2 is self-explanatory, and since I’m betting you probably still have a Walkman somewhere, maybe you could use it until you get that new iPod you’ve been wanting. So, anyway…enjoy, and Merry Christmas!”

She laughed, then felt her eyes water.  He truly knew her even better than—

But then the first song began to play, and her laughter forestalled the tears: “Islands in the Stream.”  She knew immediately this song went with the yearbook picture, because Jim had sung it with Michael the night of his barbecue. That had been one of the kindest things she’d ever seen Jim do. She could still feel the tenderness she’d felt for him in that moment, and her vision grew blurry once more. Despite his frequent annoyance and frustration with Michael, she’d never seen him be unkind to him.

The next song was “Yeah,” by Usher, and at first that gave her pause. After a moment though, she knew that went with the pencil. She smiled. It had been blaring in the background that time he’d caught her cheating at mini-golf, when a bunch of them from the office had gone out on a Friday after work about three years before. It was in the early summer, she recalled. She remembered that Roy had chosen to go to Poor Richard’s with the warehouse guys instead, saying mini-golf was for kids. Anyway, when Jim wasn’t looking, she’d nudged her golf ball about a foot closer to the ninth hole. He’d realized it right away of course, and she’d vehemently and laughingly denied it. When he warned her not to give herself points for that hole, she’d thrown the pencil at him. Without the pencil, they’d stopped keeping score, racing through the rest of the course so they could go ride the go-carts. She could still remember how his long legs had barely fit inside the little car, how they’d strategically blocked Dwight from finishing first.  She’d hummed “Yeah” on and off the rest of the night just to annoy him, because Jim had said how much he hated that song.  She hadn’t realized he’d kept the pencil.

Likewise with the hot sauce packets, that had burned her mouth so badly she’d had to spit out a big bite of hot dog in a very unladylike manner, and she remembered it was the first time she’d ever cussed in front of Jim. That was the week the hot dog vendor had parked his food truck at the corner outside the office building, what was it—two years ago?  She’d gulped down her entire lemonade, coughing and sputtering, trying to get the burning sensation out of her mouth and throat. Who the hell has hot sauce at a hot dog truck, especially in packets resembling ketchup?  Jim being Jim, he’d brought her another hot dog and lemonade, (with mustard this time), and they’d sat on the curb and eaten, the vendor’s radio tuned to the Black-Eyed Peas song, “Let’s Get it Started.”

“He also sells tacos out of his truck on alternate weeks,” Jim had said, his eyes filled with barely contained laughter. “He’d put out the wrong box.”

“Well that’s no excuse,” she’d replied, the corners of her mouth still burning. “I should sue for pain and suffering.”

He’d grinned and stolen a Sun Chip from her bag.  “Your second hot dog was free,” Jim told her. “He felt really bad about it.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

They’d finished their lunch in companionable silence, enjoying the sunny spring day.

“Same time tomorrow?” Jim had asked on their way back up the elevator.

“Yep,” she’d said, but the truck had never returned. Jim still teased her that she’d scared him off with her loud cursing.

 

Then there was the Boggle timer, a tiny hourglass. Last fall, Pam had brought in the game after she’d gotten it for her birthday from her parents. Roy hated games, especially word games, so she’d challenged any takers in the office to play her in the breakroom at lunch. Jim, of course, had been the first volunteer. She’d won, and was challenged by Oscar, who then challenged Toby. By the second day, a tournament was organized, complete with a bracket Jim had drawn. By Friday, it was down to her and Jim, Oscar still fuming that she’d beaten him out. The winner of the tournament, Ryan cleverly suggested, could ask the loser to do whatever the winner wanted, but whatever it was had to take less than ninety seconds—the same time the sand allotted in the Boggle timer.

Jim had won.

After the applause and congratulations, everyone had begun making suggestions of Pam’s ninety second punishment, some of them very inappropriate or fraught with innuendo—especially from Kevin.  Jim, however, was not to be rushed.

“I’m gonna need to think about this,” he’d said, tapping his lower lip, his hazel eyes bright and mischievous. She’d felt her cheeks flushing at the implied threat there, and she found herself suddenly very nervous.

“Okay, well, uh…you let me know.”

“Yeah, Jim. Let us all know,” said Kevin suggestively.  “And if you need help deciding, I have lots of ideas.”

“Thanks, Kev.”

Jim had let her stew the rest of the day, and from time to time she’d see him looking at her thoughtfully from his desk, as if evaluating, gauging what she could handle. When he’d catch her eye, he’d smile his widest, most charming smile, that instead of making her heart squeeze a little, made her stomach fill with butterflies. She began thinking about things that took ninety seconds, felt her cheeks go pink at some of her ideas. A nice kiss could last for ninety seconds, for example, but she knew in her heart she could trust Jim not to do something that would make her genuinely uncomfortable. Would he?

And would she really mind so much if he did?

Five o’clock rolled around at last, and he stopped by Reception on his way out.

“Well?” she asked, raising a challenging eyebrow.

“Still thinking, Beesly.  Give me the weekend.”

“Seriously?”  She’d been so on edge that her exasperation came out sounding more like annoyance.

He frowned, backed away a step. “Hey, never mind, okay? It was only a game, Pam.   You don’t have to—”

She took a calming breath, forced a smile. “No, you won fair and square. I don’t renege on a bet.”

He was skeptical of her feelings, but he nodded. “Have a nice weekend.”

“You too.”

She’d taken the Boggle timer home, began timing herself doing normal things around the house that Jim could conceivably ask of her. She found she could make a ham sandwich, or clean the toilet, or recite the Preamble to the Constitution in well under the time limit.  She went outside and ran at a dead sprint for ninety seconds, found she could do that easily, barely breaking a sweat. She figured the stairs up to her apartment were about the same as the ones in the office, and she had no problem going up and down them in plenty of time. She even took her car to the carwash, found that she could do an adequate job of washing it in the allotted time.  She began measuring out her life in ninety second intervals, driving Roy mad in the process until he got tired of seeing the damn Boggle timer everywhere.

“Knowing Halpert, he’ll probably make you iron one of his pretty dresses,” he’d said meanly, stealing a cherry tomato from the salad she was making Saturday night.

“Well that’s homophobic,” she’d chastised automatically. She’d long since stopped trying to prove that Jim wasn’t gay, even though he’d met Jim’s girlfriend, Katie. It just wasn’t worth it anymore. 

He put his hands at her waist, moving his body against her back where she stood at the kitchen counter.

“I’d be happy to time you at a few other things,” he whispered, his breath stirring the hair near her ear. Still annoyed at his dress comment, she said snarkily: “I guess under ninety seconds is about right.”

He hadn’t found that amusing at all, and he’d abruptly dropped his hands, barely speaking to her the rest of the night. This was fine with Pam. More and more, the things he said and did were getting harder to overlook.

Monday morning, she couldn’t wait for Jim to come in the door to put her out of her misery.  When he did, she purposefully set the Boggle timer on the counter in front of him, turned it over so the sand began to slide out. “You have ninety seconds to come up with something or your forfeit the win.”

He grinned. “Well, good morning to you too. I thought you didn’t renege.”

“I don’t. But this is getting ridiculous.  It’s not rocket science.”

“Hmm…you sure you want to do this?”

She nodded toward the draining sand. “Time’s a-wasting, Halpert.”       

“Okay, attention everybody!” Jim called suddenly. Most everyone had arrived, and Michael had just walked in as Jim made his announcement. “As you know, Pam lost the Boggle tournament Friday, so her losing task is to perform an action of my choosing that must take ninety seconds or less.”

Kelly called Ryan and Toby in from the annex. Apparently, they just had to hear this.

“Yes!” said Kevin.  All the other men smirked.

“Well, I have decided what I want her to do.” He turned to Pam, who looked like a deer in headlights, frozen to her desk chair.  “Pam once bragged to me that she could sing ‘Modern Major General’ from The Pirates of Penzance faster than anyone she knew. She has never proven it…until now.”

Oscar and Toby grinned and clapped in appreciation.

“What?  Jim, that song is at least three minutes long!” Pam protested.

“Two minutes, fifty-five seconds. I checked.”

“Well, what if I can’t do it in ninety seconds? What if I forget the words? I haven’t sung it in a long time.”

“I have every faith in you.”

“If you take out the pauses and musical interludes, you could probably do it,” said Oscar helpfully. Toby nodded in agreement.

“Can I rehearse?” she asked desperately.

“Nope.”

“And if you can’t do it, she should buy you lunch,” Phyllis suggested.

“I’d accept that,” said Jim graciously.

“Could I just skip the song and go directly to lunch.”

“Nope.  You have to at least try.”

On her couch that Christmas morning, Pam listened to the Broadway recording of “Modern Major General” with a fond smile. Even though she’d screwed up the words a couple times, she’d managed to sing it just as the last grain of sand slid to the bottom of the timer. The smile of pride Jim had given her had been worth everything, and she’d basked in its warmth. 

Side 1 songs were finished, and she turned over the tape, rewinding it a minute to get to the beginning. With her new insight into Jim’s feelings, the otherwise innocuous songs she’d heard many times on the radio took on new meaning.  First up, was “Sing,” the song they’d swayed to the night of Michael’s script reading, the night Jim had called a date. She knew now why his labeling it that had so annoyed her. It hadn’t really been annoyance after all, she realized. It had been fear that he was right, just as his bringing up Roy’s leaving her at the hockey game had been out of his own jealousy.

The other songs on Side 2 had followed an obvious theme, so that by the end of the tape she was crying, her tears falling unchecked down her cheeks. 

“Here Without You.”

“You and Me.”

“The Reason.”

“Fix You.”

“I’ll Be”        

“Open Your Eyes.”

 

How could she interpret this playlist any other way but as a kind of…love letter? And why did it seem to come out of nowhere, somehow out of context, like something hadn’t been said, like something was…missing? As the last strains of Snow Patrol’s music faded away, she was startled to hear Roy moving around in the kitchen, groaning for coffee. Grabbing a tissue, she hastily wiped at her wet face, her runny nose, then tore off her head phones and went to the kitchen to make coffee for her hungover fiancé.

 

Xxxxxxxxxxxx

Across town, Jim awoke to a cold room. Damn Mark had forgotten to turn up the heat before he left to go to his parents’ house. In the winter, the agreement was, the first one up turned up the heat. He shook his head, wrapping his comforter around him so he could walk to the hallway thermostat. The bulky comforter had caught and dragged his messenger bag off his desk chair, and half the contents had spilled out onto the floor. When he got back to his room he cursed under his breath, blaming Mark again as he bent to pick up the spreadsheets and new leads he’d taken home to peruse over the holiday. What he hadn’t expected to see was the large white envelope, decorated at the corners with carefully drawn and colored holly and red ribbons. In the center on one side, in writing he would have recognized anywhere, was: For Jim.

He stared at it a moment before sitting slowly on his bed, wrapping the comforter around his sleep pants while freeing his hands to open the envelope. They shook a little in anticipation, his heart speeding up as he pulled out the picture she’d drawn for him. He smiled, recognizing the scene immediately, without even having read the caption, Closing Ceremonies. She had drawn only him, leaving out Michael and Dwight, but the origami doves she’d made seemed to take flight in the background, his yogurt lid prominently rested against his tie, his hand on his heart as if the National Anthem were still playing. He marveled at the detail she’d used to recreate each strand of his hair, each line of his face, of his smile, shading each wrinkle and crease in his shirt, in his slacks. She must have drawn this from memory, because he had no recollection of anyone besides the documentary crew preserving the silly moment for posterity.  Was this how she saw him? Surely she’d made him look much better than he actually had. The amount of care she’d put into this had to be attributed to the care she’d felt for her subject. For him.  Or was he reading too much into her deceptively simple gift?

All he knew for sure was that this had been one of his best days at the office in recent memory, sharing her Christmas teapot having surpassed it the other night. Her delight in the gifts inside the teapot had been even better than he’d hoped, and she’d given up an expensive iPod for it too, before she’d even known what he’d put inside. His heart had been so full in that moment, yet he’d totally chickened out and snuck back the card he’d written to her, afraid to ruin this perfect moment with the possibility of rejection.  He remembered that the card was still in his messenger bag, and his heart skipped a beat when he realized she might have discovered it by accident when she’d slipped her gift inside.  Suddenly desperate, he dug through the bag and discovered it, the seal still intact, and gave a great sigh of relief.

Another day, he thought, and he slipped the card into a desk drawer.

He was contemplating framing the picture she’d drawn, turning it idly over in his hand. On the back, she’d written an inscription:

Jim,

Don’t ever worry about dying of boredom, if a magical day like this is what comes of it.  (And by the way, you totally deserved the gold medal too, for what you did for Michael.)  

Love,

Pam

 

She’d signed it with love, he thought, staring at the word, trying not to overthink it. Women signed notes with love all the time. It didn’t necessarily mean anything.  But for Jim, so hungry for any crumb she might toss his way, he could live off Love, Pam for years.

At that moment, his phone chimed an incoming text.  Speak of the devil, he thought happily.

I listened to my new mix tape. I loved it. Thank you.  Merry Christmas!

There was that word again. He shook his head at himself. I’m so freakin’ pathetic, he thought. He texted a reply, opting for his usual humor to cover his true feelings.

And thank you for the drawing. I just found it actually. I can’t figure out who that gorgeous guy was in the picture though.

She could almost see her rolling her eyes. Well, when you figure it out, tell him I just draw what I see.

He was glad she couldn’t see the dopey smile on his face at the moment.  She found him gorgeous, did she?

Then, belatedly, it occurred to him what had been on Side 2 of that stupid mix tape he’d made. He scrolled down to see her first message.  She’d loved the tape, she’d said. He cringed as he remembered what he’d recorded. The songs had been so over-the-top romantic, but in the letter he hadn’t given to her, he’d explained that everything on the tape helped explain what he felt for her.  Without the letter, it must have been pretty jarring to hear such sappy, sentimental music coming from him, when he was the one who usually mocked such cheesy love songs. To help cover his embarrassment, he texted again.

Going to your folks today?

In an hour or two.  You?

Yeah.

Well, be careful on the roads. Have you looked outside yet?

He went to his bedroom window, peaked out onto a winter wonderland.

Wow. Definitely a white Christmas out there.

I love it when that happens.

Me too.

Merry Christmas, Pam. 

Yeah, you too. See you next year!

He grinned at the old joke. That never gets old, even after junior high school.

Suck it, Halpert.

That’s what she said.

LOL Talk about junior high…Goodbye Jim.

Bye Pam.

“I love you,” he whispered to his empty bedroom, his thumbs frozen above his phone’s keyboard. “I just wish I had the balls to say it to your face. Maybe next year, Beesly.”

His eyes widened when he realized that “next year” started a week from that day.  And just like that, Jim Halpert made his New Year’s resolution.


Chapter End Notes:
I've written a sequel to this, called "New Year's Eve," which takes a serious turn toward AU.  


Donnamour1969 is the author of 10 other stories.
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