She had always loved Christmas.
Halloween had always been her favorite holiday, pretending to be someone else, the momentary escapism appealed to her in almost every way. Christmas, however, was her second favorite, and this year she was going to reclaim it as her own. For years, the holiday had been dictated by the whims of his family, whatever the Andersons wanted, she was forced to submit to. It had been three years since she had been with her own sister and parents on Christmas Eve.
The formation and execution of the prank on Dwight had been the result of an exceptionally boring afternoon and the discovery of an errant post-it note stuck to the back of a red folder in her bottom drawer. ‘Hang in there, Beesly’ written in his familiar half-cursive, half-print made her stomach drop the way it did stepping off an unexpected step; the fleeting panic and rush of adrenaline had left her feeling flushed.
When he had come back to Scranton with her, she had purged her bottom drawer of all the little symbols of him she had kept: notes, receipts, Valentine’s Day cards; all the tangible evidence it wasn’t all in her head, that she once had a best friend who loved her. In an effort to cling to the remains of her dignity, she had trashed them all, a victory that, instead of propelling her forward, filled her with regret, and left her hollow. Tracing the letters with the tip of her finger, she unconsciously looked up at him. She watched as he leaned back in his chair, one hand on the phone, the other running his fingers mindlessly through his lengthy brown hair as he charmed the customer on the line. Just like that, he had pulled her under again, unwittingly giving her the fix she didn’t realize she was craving. The ever-revolving door of wanting him and wanting to hate him.
She flipped the red folder over and wrote ‘Classified’ in bold black letters and let herself imagine he was the one to tell her to do it, that it belonged to them.
Somewhere along the line, it had become their unwritten rule to exchange something at the Christmas party. It was their ritual, a talisman with far deeper meaning wrapped in the benign trading of an inexpensive gift. One of the many ways they skirted the lines of acceptable platonic boundaries.
All the holiday present she needed was the look on his face as he read through the folder she had handed him and for a flicker of a moment, they were there again, that sacred place she longed to be. She saw him recoil, mentally pull himself back under control, with a lame expression and even lamer excuse, as he put the space between them once again. She was a fool. The humiliation of allowing herself to be vulnerable again swelled in her stomach and she just wanted to run. He had shut the door on her, and the renunciation stung like the unshed tears in the back of her throat.
The tendency towards retaliation wasn’t a personality trait she was necessarily proud of but when she saw an opening to befriend the woman who now held the man she loved every night, and make Angela’s day a little bit worse than her own, she took it. The disconcerted look on his face at his current girlfriend and his -whatever she was to him- conspiring together for a common cause was just the icing on her revenge cake.
As much as she hated to admit it, she had fun with her. She almost forgot about the daily comparisons her mind drew unwillingly with her in almost every way. She was always so put together and well-spoken that it caused her to study the current object of his desire, wanting to somehow decode what it was she had that was missing from herself. It was hard not to be disarmed by her laid back personality, to laugh with her at the absurdity that surrounded them the way she used to do with him; the camaraderie that came with being the only two sane people in an insane office.
Roy was there, the irritating reminder of her mistakes years in the making. Charming and attentive, he was making an effort in ways he had never previously tried in all the years she had known him, and it pulled at her sense of empathy. He was pining after a woman that was long gone the same way she was longing after a man she had given up in a pathetic train of loneliness, and for that, she felt sorry for him. He was so completely obtuse to his own shortcomings and his knowledge of her so shallow that when he proudly gifted her a coffee table book she already owned, that had sat in their mutual living room for years, she just smiled and thanked him and when he went to hug her, she let him. After all, she was as much to blame for her circumstances as he was.
It felt like fresh betrayal to watch him mock her in exchanging a gift with Karen, after having refused her; the shallow paper cut of it stung deep along with all the others she had sustained, and she was beginning to think her optimism about Christmas was misplaced. She heard the mechanical whirl of the tightening focus of a camera lens and she suddenly needed to check to see if her car was locked, even though she knew it was.
All the ground she had gained with him felt lost and when he said goodnight to her, she glanced at him half expecting dismissive apathy, but instead he stopped and turned, the faint flickering of something neither one of them ever wanted to recognize in the softness of his eyes. The easy way he slipped once again into the dark corners of her soul, that she tried so damn hard to push him out of, had her instantly forgive the transgressions of earlier. His familiar banter and meaningful smile caused the backsliding resignation to overwhelm her resolve yet again.
There was no hesitation when he waited to walk her to her car after she locked up the building at the end of the night; the essence of who he was as a man, the parts of his character she cherished, had never left. The brush of his shoulder against hers in the elevator almost felt as rebellious and daring as it had all those years when she would allow herself the momentary slip into another life the eighty seconds alone with him in the small space afforded her.
He held open the glass door, and they both pressed into the winter air in separate directions to separate lives, when he pulled up and turned to her again. She briefly wondered if the gravity he held on her worked in both directions.
“Hey, uh, thanks for the gift, really.”
“Yeah, it was fun.” She braced herself for the inevitable resumption of their clearly defined roles and his desire that everything be put back into place.
“You understand, though, right? Why I have to have... boundaries?”
The anguished expression on his face made her want to give up everything for it to go away, even if that meant her. She hated that it seemed what she wanted so desperately only seemed to cause him pain. He took several impulsive steps in her direction before visibly stopping himself, his hand gripping the strap of his messenger bag tightly.
“Because if I don’t...” he shook his head ruefully, biting back the words precariously on his tongue.
The desperation in his eyes made her feel reckless, and she asked the question she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to but longed to hear anyway.
“What? You would what?”
She could see his breath coming heavier now, making delicate panes against the night air. She watched his shoulders set as a physical symbol of his internal war.
“I should go.” He closed his eyes, as one does when bracing for pain they know is coming. “I don’t want to go,” slipped out softly against his will, “but I need to go.”
She shook her head in agreement, watching as he turned and walked to his car in the far corner of the lot, his shape fading into the darkness and taking his light with it.
She exhaled, words and emotions held in along with the carbon dioxide, released into the chill that sank around her; seeing his taillights flicker on and hearing his engine begin churn to life, she slid into the cold cloth seats of her Prius. His brake lights in her rearview mirror didn’t move for several long minutes as they both sat idling in empty cars across an empty parking lot.
Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to begin the torturous slide into her imagination where he was sitting in his car debating on whether to come back to her; to change the trajectory of both their lives. She opened them again, logic reminding her he was only letting his car warm in the winter cold and she quietly slipped out of the gated lot as quietly as she had slipped in ten hours earlier. As she replayed the entire exchange in her mind like a skipping record on her drive home, a small smile formed from somewhere deep and forbidden.
She had always loved Christmas.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Nothing starts out the holiday season like a little Christmas cheer and unresolved sexual tension, right?
