Life could not get much worse than it is right now.

Chucking my purse beneath my desk, I let out a frustrated breath that could be--and was--easily picked up by at least desk clump number one. Both Ryan and Dwight snapped their heads in my direction. But they both knew better by now. No sooner did they realize that it was me making that noise than I saw Ryan’s head snap right back to his computer with his stupid deer in headlights gaze, and Dwight’s head swung back and forth a few times like one of his stupid bobbleheads as he tried to play it cool and avoid another lecture where I told him to start minding his own goddamn business. 

I was glad they were both smart enough to not ask me questions anymore. Dwight and Ryan had learned pretty early on that I didn’t put up with interrogations when it came to my personal life. And besides. It wasn’t like the entire office hadn’t been present for last night’s incident anyhow. 

Yesterday. When I had told Roy that if he wanted to try again, really try again, that he would come to happy hour with the rest of the office. And, on my new string of taking life by the balls and finally standing up for what I wanted, I laid it all out for him. That I was taking art classes and they weren’t going away. That over the next couple of months, I would be taking the graphic design corporate internship in New York, whether he liked it or not. That Danny Cordrey and I had kind of dated or something during the time that Roy and I were separated.

Because we were. 

Separated. 

It wasn’t a Ross and Rachel Fake Break type of bullshit. It was a clean, this is what I mean and there is no more discussion break.

After our work casino night, I had made it pretty clear that I needed to be away from him for a while. We needed a legitimate break, a breather before we suffocated each other anymore--him with his overbearingness and the way he was constantly trying to tell me what to do around every corner; me with the constant nagging that I was dangerously beginning to actually see as the pettiness that he claimed. I needed out. The way he had told me the morning of the casino night that I “wasn’t allowed” to take any “damn arts and crafts classes in New York” was one of the straws that broke the camel’s back. The other was the fact that I’d caught him with his hands up Cathy’s dress and all over her ass as she tossed her head back and moaned. Leaned up against my goddamn desk, mind you. 

I had been up in the office to phone my mom when I caught them together. I had been so frustrated with Roy that day, after spending our lunch break and more arguing about the design program, that I actually considered skipping the casino thing altogether. But if we didn’t make an appearance, people would talk, and I didn’t need people talking anymore. I’d stolen Ryan’s desk phone, and let my mother talk me down and remind me that I was an independent woman who made my own decisions.

“Are you going to take the internship then, Pammy?”

“Yeah, I think I am.” I had the phone cord twisted around my finger, a freaking metaphor of my entire twisted existence as of late as I wondered how I’d ever let my life get this complicated. But as my mom was beginning her next pep talk, a strange little speech about both the caliber of my talent and the ability I surely had somewhere within me to tell Roy Anderson that he didn’t have my balls in his pocket, I heard them crashing through the doorway.

“Mom, I have to go.”

It was a wonder I got the cord untangled in time to slam the phone to the receiver and shift to hide behind Dwight’s desk.

In all reality, I could’ve stopped them immediately. As soon as they crashed drunkenly up against my desk, I could’ve coughed. Kicked Dwight’s chair. Yelled out, “Hey fuckers! I’m here, too! You know. The fiance?” But I was too stunned, and honestly, more curious than anything. I wanted to see what he’d do. 

“You are so sexy out of that warehouse uniform.”

Barf. Cathy, the office mattress, was a fucking idiot, but I didn’t think she was this shallow. 

I looked on silently. She ran her hands up and down his chest. One of his gripped her hip while the other cradled a red Solo cup that I knew instinctively was filled halfway with Fleischmann’s and Monster. He nuzzled her throat, and the way that she threw her head back and made this annoying cat-like sound reminded me way too much of the pornos that Roy AirPlayed to our Apple TV when I asked him if he wanted to “try something different in the bedroom for a change.”

May that’s why I’m a dog person?

“Baby, you know I’ve got a woman already.”

He said this, of course, all while his nose skirted her collarbone, following the line down to her plunging, pushed up cleavage.

“Has that stopped us before?”

She said all of that while giggling and winding her grabby hands around his waist to his back, slipping her hands to where he would have pockets if I hadn’t insisted that he wear real dress pants tonight.

“I’m engaged though,” he chuckled, still squeezing her ass. Still sticking his face and his “I love doing things I’m not supposed to be doing” smile into her tits. Honestly, I should’ve had a bigger reaction. But at that point, all I could do was roll my eyes.

“Were engaged.” I stepped out from behind Dwight’s desk with my arms crossed and my eyes rolled back in my head. I vaguely observed that they both tensed. I watched Cathy freeze in her place but clutch onto my fiance in the same moment. Please. As if he would have saved her from anything after that little show. Roy’s big, meaty hand crushed the Solo cup, exploding it all over the both of them. It was my consolation prize, because after flicking his shitty cubic zirconia engagement ring so that it bounced off of his nose and right into the broken cup, I took his truck with me and effectively locked him out of the house that night. The big fight, my grand finale, would have to wait until the next day.

The big kicker was that I didn’t even sleep at home that night. I stayed with Isabel while he pounded drunkenly on our front door and had the cops called on him. 

Consolation prize number two.

But anyway. It was a break. After that little show, I told him we were done, for a while at least, after his crying and groveling pulled at my heartstrings enough. A three month separation where I screwed my head back on straight for the first time in almost a decade. And yeah, Danny and I had some fun breaking in my new apartment. And his. And the backseat of his car those few times I followed him on his traveling sales calls. It didn’t take much convincing for Michael to believe that he needed a traveling assistant, after all.

But Danny was the downfall of attempt number two with Roy, which would effectively be my last attempt with Roy Anderson. Because apparently that was the trigger that broke him last night. The one where, as a single woman, I had chosen to engage with another man in a little bit of meaningless fun. Not to mention that he had been screwing around with the office psycho/slut while we were engaged. No. That was allowed. But me and Danny were apparently so out of whack that it encouraged the entire demolition of Poor Richard’s. I left after he had tossed everything on the bar in front us at the wall. I saw him lift a bar stool out of the corner of my as I pushed my way out the door.

There was really no reason for me to be at work today.

I’d spent my night at the police station until two in the morning. Apparently, I was Roy’s one phone call (only because his brother Kenny had also been booked). I had to give statements. I had to prove beyond shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t abusing me physically (which he never did, but good on the female investigator for being insistent and thorough). Dwight, who had insisted on following me from the bar to “help with the investigation” had called Michael, too. Toby, who had been at the bar with us, also tagged along. For whatever ungodly reason, they had decided that wrapping up the internal investigation for the office was necessary at three in the morning.

At least I knew going into work this morning that Roy had been terminated effective immediately. A restraining order was placed. His last check would be mailed. Mrs. Anderson had bailed the dimwit brothers out, so unfortunately, he hadn’t spent a full night in prison orange, but the sight of him behind bars for that fleeting moment of identifying the perpetrator was high on my memory trophy shelf. 

My four-thirty bedtime was punishment enough. Michael told me time and time again that there was no reason for me to come into work, but that would be letting him win. Curling up on my couch, wallowing in self-pity all day, would prove that I hadn’t grown at all. That I wasn’t separating myself from Roy Anderson. That he was still controlling me from beyond the ankle monitor.

And he wasn’t allowed to do that anymore.

So, at 9 AM on the dot, fueled by the largest cup of coffee that Dunkin’ had to offer with triple espresso pumps, I stormed into the office, ready to steamroll anyone who dared to send an interrogative glance in my direction. I wasn’t looking for questions or advice or a shoulder to lean on or pity--especially not pity. I was looking for Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam, how may I direct your call? Faxes, memos, taking notes in meetings. For Dwight to be as annoying as possible so that this day could be at least some semblance of normal.

Of course, my entire morning was all eggshells. Reception was like lava and the entire office staff avoided it at all costs. No one asked me to make copies. I heard Angela ask a client to wait until twelve-fifteen to send over a fax, because I take my lunch at noon everyday. The phone was dead all morning, and I had to wonder if people were secretly emailing their personal extensions to clients for the day. If that was the case, I was about to be emotionally drained and out of a job by the end of the week. 

By the time lunch rolled around, I was steamingly annoyed and ready to eat my feelings. But I couldn’t talk to a Cheeto bag therapist when most of my co-workers were peering around their own lunches to stare at me like a caged animal in the zoo. It was fucking invasive, and I debated eating my lunch at my desk until I realized I would probably be cornered by Michael. Honestly, there wasn’t a lesser of two evils in this situation. But I was getting fed up to the point of bursting, and I didn’t feel like verbally exploding over the break room like Roy had done at the bar last night.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” I mumbled, hunkering down further in my chair as I focused on my peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of the now room full of inquisitive eyes and ears. The tension was palpable, and once the silence stretched on for more than a minute, I realized that my invasive coworkers were all giving me Okay, you’ve sulked enough, we want details eyes, and as I huffed out a mix of annoyed and defeated breath, I rolled my eyes and sunk into my chair.

“What do you want?” I huffed. “You were all there last night. You watched him destroy a bar.”

I folded my arms over my chest and glanced from person to person, waiting for one of them to open their embarrassed, guilty mouths and say something.

“Are you...okay?” Phyllis shifted nervously, lacing her fingers together. I was taken aback slightly, enough to tilt my head, but that lasted about as long as it took for me to remember that everyone else was staring at me with a pity I didn’t want or need.

“I’m fine. I’ll...get over it,” I insisted, shifting in my seat. “He was fired last night--or, this morning, I guess. I have a restraining order,” I promised. But for some reason, there was a thick cloud of doubt hanging over the room. 

“Sweetie, we all just want to make sure you’re--”

“I just said that I’m okay.” I scoffed, feeling the defensiveness creeping into my bones. “I’m a big girl. I can handle this. It’s not like anyone is surprised. He’s done shit like this before.”

Suddenly, I was drowning in the warning signs. All of the times that Roy had snapped, had acted like a fool in public, had gotten a little too verbal or a little too close to the edge where I’d actually flinched away. 

“He’s...he just needs to be on his own. He needs to realize that I’m--that women--aren’t going to be at his beck and call, and that his behavior is just...if he wants to have a wife and a family some day, he has to change his attitude about a lot of things.”

I shook my head, staring down at my lunch garbage.

“And, you know, I need it too. To not be with him. He’s shaped so much of who I am but it’s like, I don’t like the way he’s taken me like a fucking ball of Play-Doh and made me into this hermit. I kind of hate it, actually.” I breathed a laugh. “I need to...remold myself, or...whatever. I don’t want to sound like a stereotypical art student, but that’s what I feel like I need to do. I don’t know, maybe I should just...get out of here. Start somewhere else. Far away from all of this...shit.”

It took me a minute to realize that I’d been thinking out loud. Unfortunately, no amount of willingness made the heat in my body subside, so I ducked my head, willing everyone to look away from the red in my cheeks as I swiftly packed my lunch and darted out of the break room. I breathed a sigh, tipping my head back as I closed my eyes and pretended I was on a beach somewhere. But of course, the shrill ring of my desk phone popped that bubble before I could even sip on my fictional margarita. 

I groaned inwardly, rolling my head around to crack the bones before I reached forward and answered it.

“Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam.”

“Hi, Pam. Jan Levinson here. I was calling to check in with you about the situation that happened last night and to see if there is anything else that we can be doing here on our end for you. We are so sorry that you had to go through something like this. If there’s anything else that we can do--more time off, maybe--please don’t hesitate to ask.”

I hated the corporate stiffness of her likely mandated phone call. But at the same time, she wasn’t dripping with sympathy like the rest of the world, which was a nice change of pace.

“Um, yeah, thanks Jan, I appreciate the call. I’m doing about as well as can be expected, but thanks for asking.”

I turned slowly back and forth in my chair, suddenly feeling like a little girl who needed to fidget. 

“I think time off would actually make me go a little nuts though,” I chuckled nervously. “Sitting at home...I was actually just telling everyone here that getting out of town for a while might be nice but…”

Where would I go? Honestly. I could take myself on a vacation--corporate would pay me out for sure, the same way they’d done for Oscar when Michael had outed him a couple of months back. It would be stupid easy. But could I really cart myself out to the west coast for a week without calling it “running away from my problems?” I didn’t want to appear like a scared little girl who needed to take time to heal. I didn’t need to heal. I needed to start over. Build myself from the ground up. Running scared would only make me look weak. And I was anything but weak. Hell, after all I’d been through, I was the opposite of weak. I needed to prove that. If nothing else, for myself.

“Actually Pam, I hope this isn’t intrusive, but I did have another reason for making this call myself, and it might actually turn out to be beneficial for the both of us.” I furrowed my brows, letting my trashed Keds stop the swaying of my desk chair. “I was calling to ask if you’d given any more thought to the graphic design program.”

Was it a little ill-mannered of her to be asking about the internship less than twenty-four hours after my ex-fiance/boyfriend had trashed a bar and been arrested because he was upset with me? Eh. Maybe. But the answer to the question I’d been asking myself not a minute ago was suddenly lit up in Times Square flashing lights.

“Yes,” I breathed. “I am. I am definitely still interested.” It all came out in one breath, and I sounded so desperate that I had to close my eyes to steady myself. I breathed in deeply, laying my palm flat along my heart as I willed the rapid beating to settle down before it scared Jan away. 

“Perfect. As you know, it is a three month summer internship beginning in June. Since we’re only a couple of weeks out, I’ll fax over the paperwork for you to get started and then you should be all set!”

“What about housing?”

“Ahh. I should’ve expected you to be on the ball about all of this.” Jan was laughing a little nervously now, which was out of character. I frowned, pivoting off the tip of my toe to sway back and forth on the wheels of my chair. “Listen, Pam, would you mind moving the call into the conference room? There are some more private things I’d like to discuss.”

“Sure.”

I forwarded the call and stepped quietly across the office, going entirely unnoticed as I clicked the lock to the conference room door closed and picked up again with Jan. 

“So, listen, Pam I’m going to cut right to the chase here. We’re super excited to have you enrolled in our graphic design program. Ideally, we would be able to transition you right into a corporate position. But as we were getting everything set up on our end, another...opportunity...became available. And, well Pam, you might just be the perfect fit.”

I muttered Okay, sitting on pins and needles as I awaited whatever curveball she had set behind her back.

“You see, our new VP of Northeastern Sales is...well, to put it frankly, he’s kind of going off the deep end a little bit. He’s a young hot shot making it big in New York City, and we think that the lifestyle as a whole is...well, it’s getting to his head a little. He’s great at his job, however. Fantastic, actually. It’s the poor press that he’s generating with his personal life and choices, however, that we would like to curb. We’ve had several meetings with him, and this will be the last straw.”

I cocked my head, bunching my brows together as I tried to process what exactly she was asking me here.

“Okay, so where exactly do I fit into all of this?”

“Well, we’d like for you to be his...we’d like for you to sort keep him in line. To give you a glimpse into his sordid history as of late, he’s becoming way too promiscuous and partying way too much. It’s getting out of control, honestly. We’d use you sort of as his...publicist.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you would accompany him places outside of work. Kind of be his wrangler for us when he’s at company events, and then when he’s off company time as well. It would bode well not only for his image, but for ours. He’s beginning to paint the company into a corner with all of the negative headlines that have generated over the past sixty days,” she chuckled

My cheeks burned with sudden realization, and I swallowed as I let Jan fill in the blanks.

“I don’t want to give the title of ‘babysitter’ because while it may appear that way, we’ll be asking you to...well...it will be more than that.”

My throat tightened as my eyes fluttered closed, and I absentmindedly fingered the charm around my neck. 

“So, let me get this straight. You’re asking me to move to New York, and when I’m not taking graphic design classes, I’m supposed to...pretend to date this guy? In order to keep him in line? For the good of the company?”

“I know it sounds like a lot. And it is. What we’re asking from you is extremely unconventional, which is why I’m not at all anticipating an answer now. Yes, we would essentially be asking you to pose as his girlfriend. It’s all part of the contract, which we would go over with you thoroughly before we asked you to commit to anything. There would be requirements when it comes to company and corporate events, and other expectations about his personal nights out. We want a close eye kept on him, but again, we don’t want to slap him with a company babysitter and make that obvious. So, we brainstormed this idea in a meeting a few weeks ago, and honestly Pam, you kind of fell into our laps at the perfect time. I mean you just said so yourself: you’re looking to get out and make a fresh start. I know that spending the year under a corporate contract might not seem like the perfect fresh start, but it’s on the company’s dime in one of the greatest cities in the world--we’d be paying you quite nicely. I’m sure the contract spells out the benefits way better than I can in a fifteen-minute phone call, so, just think about it, and if this sounds like something you’d be interested in having further conversations about, we can move forward.”

As I absorbed everything Jan had just unloaded, my eyes wandered out the windows of the conference room. I scanned over the office that had been both my home and prison over the past five years. When Roy had gotten the warehouse job, he met me at my parent’s place with an application for the newly posted receptionist job, and it wasn’t long after that we’d moved in together. That was five years ago. And though I could run down a detailed list of each of my co-worker’s personal histories as my eyes wandered over them--Stanley was on his fourth affair since I’d started here; Phyllis was finally in a happy relationship with the refrigerator guy across the hall; Dwight and Angela were definitely hooking up but honestly it was just weird enough to be believable; Ryan, who had definitely tried to get me drunk a few times and was uber desperate, did not belong in Scranton, Pennsylvania--I wasn’t attached to any of them. Aside from Roy, there hadn’t ever really been anything tying me down to this town. It was kind of sad, actually, to realize that I had been putting my entire life in the hands of someone so mediocre. 

Now though, as I glanced out over a sea of people who I wouldn’t miss, and who wouldn’t miss me, I was beginning to realize that I deserved better.

“You know what? Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do it. Or I guess I’ll take the meeting first.”

“Excellent!” She sounded genuinely thrilled, like she didn’t think I’d go for it. “Excellent news, Pam. Listen, let me get the paperwork started on our end for the internship, and then I’ll have to talk to the rest of the board to get the ball rolling on the...other operation. But I’ll give you a call in a couple of weeks to--”

“Actually, Jan, if you don’t mind I’d like to get out of here as soon as possible. You know, with everything…”

“Sure. Absolutely. Why don’t I start getting the list of company apartments sorted and sent to you by tonight, and we’ll see if you and Mr. Halpert can agree on one by the end of next week?”

“That works,” I nodded, visions of the Manhattan skyline suddenly dancing in my head. It would be nice to paint from my corporate-dime view. I was already mentally packing up the apartment I’d not so long ago moved into, adding Rent a U-Haul and Get oil change onto the sticky note pad that had my new running checklist. “And uh, just out of curiosity--since I’ll be fake dating the guy and all--what is Mr. Halpert’s name?”

“Jim. His name is Jim Halpert. Although I wouldn’t suggest doing any research on him just yet. We’ll interoffice you all of the information that you need initially, and we’ll have several briefing meetings before we get everything rolling.”

“Sounds great,” I replied, adding Facebook stalk Jim Halpert to my sticky note. 

As I hung up the phone and stood from the conference table, I felt like a weight was lifted. A ten ton boulder, really. Time slipped by like melting butter, as did the faces of my coworkers. There was a large chance that I would never see these people again after the end of next week. But I let the bittersweet feeling melt away too, replacing it with images of a new life in a new city, only temporarily clouded by babysitting some entitled brat. I told myself that, if I actually decided to agree, it was just a job anyhow. Helping me to further my art career. To start over on my own two feet.