- Text Size +
Story Notes:
Written to fulfill darjeelingandcoke's Secret Santa recipe! So sorry for the delay, I was not originally participating but NLM had to call in the subs. I hope you enjoy!
The clock had just barely ticked past 9:30 when Michael called her into his office. It was the first day back after being closed for Christmas and New Year’s, and Pam had hoped to get a few more Michael-free hours. Luck wasn’t on her side.

She expected it, though. He sent her on the same errand on their first day back every year, insistent that she be the one to browse through discounted Christmas decorations and the overstock inventory that was unloaded onto a off-price department store a few towns over. It was becoming a tradition she could set her watch by. “You have the best eye for the good deals!” and “This company needs me, I can’t be away from my desk for that long!” and “If you do this for me, I’ll buy you lunch tomorrow!” were his bargaining chips. The last one always got her, that not-really-free free lunch.

But the side salad and personal pizza (pepperoni and green bell pepper, three Parmesan packets) from Alfredo’s would have to wait. “My car is in the shop. Something with the alternator, I think? I don’t know, it’s broken.” It was unclear what was really wrong, and it was kind of a white lie that it was in the shop at all: it was really sitting in Kenny’s driveway. He was a hobby mechanic on the occasional weekend and Roy promised her that his brother would get her car fixed up right as rain. And they were saving money for a wedding later this year, right babe, so doesn’t it make good financial sense to just let him do it? Nevermind that she’d been without a vehicle for nearly a month.

She shifted in her kitten heels, anxious about turning Michael down. Yes, definitely anxious about Michael and not at all embarrassed about not having a decent car. But to be honest, Michael’s moods after the holidays were always a bit weird. She theorized that it had something to do with whether or not he could find a date for New Year’s Eve. Hopefully her lack of reliable transportation to his favorite bargain basement store wouldn’t tip him over the edge.

Michael just rolled his eyes at her. “If your car isn’t working, then how did you get to work?”

“Roy drove us.” She left off the sarcastic obviously that tingled on her tongue.

“So take his car.”

The toe of her scuffed pump dug into the faded Berber carpet. “He, um, he doesn’t like other people to drive it.”

Michael’s thick eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “Aren’t you guys, like, going steady or something?”

Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment. “We’re engaged. He’s just particular with his truck.”

Michael dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “Well, whatever. This is important, Pam, so find somebody to drive you.”

Her protests fell on deaf ears and she reluctantly slumped out into the bullpen, pulling Michael’s door closed behind her. Immediately her eyes went to Jim, as they so often did, but she quickly looked away. He would be the most fun and the person she would most like to go with (it never even crossed her mind to go downstairs and ask Darryl if Roy could go instead), but would it be appropriate?

But then again, why wouldn’t it be? Still, it felt kind of dangerous and exciting, the idea of being alone with him all day.

Roy wouldn’t like it.

Or would Roy even care?

She went and asked Meredith instead.

“I would love to get out of the office and go bar hopping—”

“—shopping—”

“Whatever. But I can’t, I gotta meet my lawyer at lunch time and who knows how long that’ll take. They charge by the hour and keep you there for way longer than you need to. If I didn’t hate my soon to be ex-husband so much, I’d say forget it.”

“Oh, I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“Nah, it’s alright. I should have known, you know?”

“I...I guess?”

“Like, he never paid attention to me. Never wanted to do the things I wanted to do.” Meredith sighed and took a swig of her Big Gulp. “I always thought that once we got married he’d come around some, but that sure didn’t happen. It was comfortable, though, and then I got knocked up and I was stuck. Not anymore, baby. I’m getting outta there.” Pam’s stomach felt like a lead weight plummeting towards her toes. Meredith’s failed marriage sounded a lot like her relationship with Roy.

As soon as she had that thought she chastised herself. She wasn’t Meredith, for crying out loud, and Roy wasn’t Meredith’s ex. Not that she even knew Meredith’s ex, but still. And anyway, comfortable was good, and the fact that Pam had been counting on their marriage to be the turning point as far as Roy’s interest in her hobbies and ideas and the things she said was nothing but a coincidence. Two people could have the same thought and different outcomes.

Right?

Right.

She went back to her desk and called her mom at home.

“Hey, would you or dad be willing to come pick me up and take me to run a few errands for my boss? Kenny is still working on my car.”

“Oh we can’t, honey. We’re going to look at a house today. In fact, we’re just scooting out the door now.”

Pam rolled her eyes. “Mom. You have to talk to him.” Her dad was having a midlife crisis, it seemed, and had it in his head that the thing he needed was a new house, a lot of land, and multiple ATVs to ride around on it. None of the Beesly women liked the idea, but her dad (and Roy) both were highly in favor. Her mom had been tiptoeing around telling her dad how she felt about it, even as he talked to realtors and started packing things away. “He’ll never know how you feel if you don’t. You’ll be miserable if you move.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I just keep thinking that if he realizes how far out he wants to move he’ll decide it’s best to just stay in Scranton.”

“But why can’t you have a say? It’s your life, too! Dad doesn’t have to dictate everything.” She pushed away the voice inside her head that said and neither does Roy.

“His heart seems set on it.”

“Is yours?”

“I guess. We’ll see. Anyway, I’ve got to go, dear. I hope you find a ride.” Her mother hung up before Pam had a chance to say anything else. It took everything in her to set her handset in the cradle gently and not slam it down in frustration.

As though he could sense her stress, Jim was there insanely. He propped his forearms on the top of her desk and idly fiddled with the jellybean dispenser. After a moment he quietly asked her if everything was okay.

She sighed, a sound that was more of a harrumph than anything. “Yeah. Just my mom. Know how my dad wants to move but she doesn’t?”

Jim deftly fished out a red and a white jellybean—cherry and coconut, his two favorites—and chewed on them thoughtfully. “Yeah. She still hasn’t told him?”

“Nope. At this rate, they’ll move hours away and I’ll never see them. Plus my mom will hate it.”

Jim hummed contemplatively. “What if you talked to your dad? Would that help?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably not. It’s just…bleh.”

“I’m sorry, Pam. That really sucks.”

It was nice to have someone listen to her, even just for a minute. That happened so rarely. “It really does.” She smiled up at him, so thankful for the way he always put her at ease. Why shouldn’t she ask him to accompany her on her shopping trip? It would be great to get out of the office for a while, especially with the person that was rapidly becoming her best friend. If anything, it would take her mind off of the thousand things that were running through it constantly: her car, the fact that they were ‘saving money’ for a wedding that they hadn’t even set a date for, Michael, her parents, the things that Meredith said. Jim had a way of lifting those burdens off her shoulders for a while, either by listening or making her laugh or just being there.

“Hey, so like...I kind of need a ride out to that discount store Michael likes. He makes me go every year. My car is getting fixed, so you’d have to drive me. I don’t know, it might be fun. Get out of the office for a while.” It felt spontaneous, really asking him, and she got sort of nervous.

He extracted another jellybean, green this time. Lime? She didn’t know for sure, she wasn’t a huge jellybean fan. She mostly kept them stocked because Jim liked them so much. “Pam, as much fun as goofing around with you all day sounds, I am an extremely busy and dedicated salesman. I simply cannot leave my desk.” His face stayed neutral but she could see his eyes shining. He was teasing her. She really hoped so, anyway.

“That’s too bad. But hey, I heard that Dwight brought liver and onions for lunch. Maybe he’ll share.”

Jim’s face wrinkled in disgust and she laughed at the adorable ridiculousness of his expression. “You know what, I’m suddenly remembering that I actually have nothing on my plate today and would love to go with you. Let me set my email to out-of-office and turn on my voicemail and then I’ll be ready.”

Pam beamed. Suddenly, browsing through ripped wrapping paper packages and stale gingerbread house kits sounded like a great way to spend the day. She pulled her scarf and puffy coat from the coatrack and practically skipped towards Michael’s office. “Found a ride,” she called through his closed door, “so I’ll be leaving soon. Anything in particular you want me to look for?”

The door whipped open like Michael had been standing just on the other side of it. He pressed his credit card into her hand. “Surprise me. But keep it under a hundred bucks, okay? Actually, one fifty. No, okay, let’s do three.”

Pam nodded and slipped the credit card into her coat pocket. She turned around to find Jim at his desk, his fingers clacking at the keyboard as he composed an email. He didn’t even turn around to check that she was there, he just seemed to know somehow. “Are we going to that place out past Wilkes-Barre?”

“Yeah, mainly. There’s a few other little stores here and there. It sometimes is an all day thing.”

He did look over his shoulder then, a wide grin on his face. It was infectious, causing a smile of her own and a blush blooming over her cheeks. “Sounds perfect. And hey, I actually do have some work to do, but just a little. Would you mind stopping by a new client’s office so I can drop these contracts off?”

“No, not at all. Anything to keep us out of here longer.”

“Pam, you’re reading my mind.” It wasn’t the first time he’d said something like that, but got a little thrill at it anyway. It was fun how close they were becoming, how they could share a look and know exactly what the other was thinking. She’d never had that before. She liked it.

Jim smiled up at her and she smiled back and then suddenly he was clearing his throat and twisting around so that he could dig in his messenger bag. “Hey, here are my car keys. Want to go get it warmed up? I just need to finish this email and print those contracts, then I’ll be ready to go.”

After forwarding the reception phone to Kelly’s desk she bounced down the stairs, too excited about the direction her day was taking to wait on the elevator. If most of her other coworkers had given her their keys, she would have been hard-pressed to match them to the right vehicle, but she knew which one was Jim’s. They usually arrived to work at the same time, or nearly enough. He was almost always stepping out of his car as she was pulling into her parking spot and he always waited on her so that they could walk into the building together. They’d started to call it their “Emergency Preparedness Meeting,” a jokey reference to the way they each had to pump each other up before they faced their coworkers. She realized with a start that they hadn’t had one since before the holiday break; since her car went into ‘the shop’ and Roy had started driving her to work. She missed them.

To her surprise, Roy himself was in the downstairs hallway when she pushed open the door from the stairs. Her heart seized a little--would he be mad?--but then he was walking towards her and she had to smile at him so that her face wasn’t frozen with anxiety.

“Hey, babe. Came up here to use the can.” He took in her scarf and coat and raised his eyebrows in confusion. “Going somewhere?”

“Yeah, Michael is having me do his post-Christmas shopping today.”

“That jerk still makes you do that?”

“I don’t mind it,” she said back, her voice slightly clipped. She felt a sudden and inexplicable need to defend her weird ‘tradition’ with Michael, even though she herself had been looking for a way out of it mere minutes ago. “At least it gets me out of answering phones.”

“Well I need the truck. We have a light schedule down here so we’re thinking about sneaking out and taking a long lunch somewhere with a pitcher special.”

Pam barely suppressed her eye roll. A long lunch with a pitcher special would likely turn into happy hour after work and then drinks on someone’s back porch and weren’t they trying to save money for a wedding and didn’t he tell her the other day that every little bit counted? But that wasn’t an argument to have in the lobby of Dunder Mifflin. It also apparently wasn’t an argument to have at home, since she’d tried to more than once, but whatever. She was looking forward to today and wasn’t going to let a disagreement with Roy ruin it. “I have a ride. I guess I’ll see you later, then.”

“Cool. See ya.” He called his farewell over his shoulder, having already turned away from her and back towards the door to the warehouse stairs. She headed out into the parking lot with a huff, annoyed that her excitement had been tarnished a little.

But by the time Jim slid into the driver’s seat of his little maroon Carolla, she was fully absorbed in flipping through his CD binder and not thinking about Roy at all. She grinned up at him, unable to stop herself from poking fun at the amount of Britney Spears CDs he had.

“You can’t tell me you’re not invested in the story of a girl named Lucky, Pam.”

She giggled. That was her favorite song on that album. “I just figured you were more of a Christina girl.”

“I have been known to get a little Dirrty,” he joked, pulling one hand off the steering wheel to make air-quotes around the song title.

“I can see that. Would you go as far to say that it’s about time for your arrival?”

Jim laughed, a rich sound that filled the tiny cab of the car in a way that brought more heat to Pam’s cheeks than the warm air blowing from the vents did. She truly loved making Jim laugh, really laugh, like he’d been caught off guard by something she did or said and got really tickled by it. He was so funny himself, so it pleased her that he seemed to think the same about her, even if her joke was just a song lyric.

“I might actually have that CD, too, though,” he told her as he pulled onto the highway, his voice still bright with amusement.

“Nah, I’m not in the mood for Xtina. I am interested in some of these unlabeled mixes, however.” She pulled one at random from the binder, a burned CD with nothing but Jim’s Music Vol. 1 scrawled on the front in Sharpie.

“No, lets not do Volume 1. It’s embarrassing. Get volume four. Or six.”

Six was the first one she came across, so she slid it out and pushed it into the car’s CD player. A Sting track was the first song, something she’d heard on the radio a few times about ‘fields of gold.’ She turned the volume to background noise level, incredibly aware of how close her hand was to Jim’s forearm and the way his lanky body seemed to fill up the entirety of the tiny cab of his car. Had he always been so big? She knew he was tall, but suddenly here were his shoulders and arms and slightly spread thighs and one elbow on the center console and his voice filled up the car just as much as the rest of him did--

Oh, his voice. He was talking to her.

“I’m sorry, I zoned out for a second. What’d you just say?”

“Did you have a nice break?”

“Oh! Yes, it was good. Just the usual holiday stuff. Dinner with my parents, lunch with Roy’s parents.” She shifted at the sound of Roy’s name and used it as an excuse to struggle out of her puffy coat. It was too warm inside the car to keep it on. “How about you? Good Christmas?”

“It was a Chanukah year for me, actually, but yeah. It was good!”

The mention of Chanukah took her by surprise. “I didn’t know you were Jewish.”

“Well, more Jew-ish than anything. But yeah! We call it a Chanukah year when we go see my bubbe in upstate New York. That’s my dad’s mom,” he clarified. “She was devastated when my dad didn’t settle down with a nice Jewish girl and married my protestant mom instead. I think it was rough for them for a while, but they figured out a system that works.”

“Oh? What’s that?” Pam asked, fascinated with this peek into Jim’s life outside of Dunder Mifflin. She realized that she knew so little at the same time that she realized that she wanted to know so much more.

“What’s a bubbe? It means grandmother in Yiddish.”

“No, I got that. I meant, what’s their system?”

“Oh, duh. We essentially alternate years. This year we’ll see my mom’s side of the family for Christmas, next year we’ll spend the break with my bubbe. We don’t really do Chanukah since my sister is still in school and none of us are off for the actual holiday. But we go see her and eat latkes and rugelach and beef brisket and she fusses over us and asks my brothers and I if we’ve found a good Jewish wife yet. My brother Tom is the favorite right now, because he actually did find a Jewish wife. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so proud. She gave Pete and I hell for days about that.”

Pam giggled. “She sounds like a character.”

“Yeah, to put it mildly,” he grinned back. “Anyway, their faiths are important to my mom and dad both, so we kind of got a little bit of everything. Baptisms and bar mitzvahs, if you will.” Pam got lost in a second at the mental image of a gangly teenaged Jim in a yarmulke. It was adorable. “I think they got a lot of pushback for raising three interfaith kids, but it’s worked out pretty well, I’d say. They found a good balance and recognized that to make things work, they needed to find a way to compromise.”

Pam sat silently, absorbing this new wealth of knowledge about Jim’s family and his parent’s relationship. It seemed so at odds with her own parents--how they pushed and pulled and didn’t communicate--and a little bit her and Roy, although she didn’t want to think about that. When the CD switched over to a song she didn’t know, something with a haunting piano melody, she broke her contemplation. “I think that sounds lovely. Why didn’t you tell me before? We could have put out some Chaunkah decorations.”

Jim chuckled. “It’s not a big deal. I don’t really know where I fall on that spectrum yet. Somewhere in the middle, I guess. But I might take you up on that next year, mostly because I think it would really piss Angela off.”

That earned him a hearty laugh and launched them into a discussion about their coworkers that lasted all the way to Wilkes-Barre and the first stop on their discount holiday decor tour. They spent longer there than Pam usually did by herself, making sure to go down every aisle and laugh at the ridiculous things that people threw Santa hats on just so they could make a few bucks at Christmas time. They found a series of those annoying motion-activated novelty toys that sang a holiday-themed song parody and probably drove the entire store crazy by making them all sing at each other. Pam chose a few for Michael (a polar bear that sang ‘Ice Ice Baby’ and an alligator in camouflage that sang some song about Christmas in the bayou), despite Jim reminding her that they’d likely have to listen to them sing all year round because there was no way that Michael would take them home.

As they browsed, they laughed and joked and talked about everything from favorite books to Pam’s parents to amazement at the fact that each had a story about ripping their pants in elementary school and being absolutely mortified: Jim caught his on some old wooden playground equipment while Pam’s was the fault of a ratty old chair. Jim assured her that he would have been a chivalrous second-grader and given her his windbreaker to tie around her waist had they gone through that together.

When they finally left, their cart loaded down with dancing animals and several strings of lights that could be programmed to blink, chase, or remain static, Pam’s stomach was growling with hunger. She hadn’t planned on spending that much time away, but Jim just made it so easy. The hours flew by with him, and she realized as they got back into the car that she hadn’t spent a second worrying about her mom or her car or Roy.

“Hey, I’m starving. Want to stop for lunch, or are you just dying to get back to answering phones?”

She cut him a look that made him grin. “I think you know the answer to that, Jim.”

They found a roadside diner that boasted the world’s best burger, so they of course had to stop. It turned out to be pretty amazing. Maybe Wilkes-Barre did do a burger better than anywhere else. They got huge Cokes in soda-fountain glass cups and toasted to clearance Christmas, Jim’s amusement at her mispronunciation of “l’chaim” making her laugh, too.

In the second store, they found a new tie to add to Michael’s Christmas collection. Jim even bought one for himself, snowflakes falling against a blue background with a cute little snowman at the bottom. “It’s more winter themed than anything else,” he said. “I could wear it anywhere.” The third store was a dud, but it happened to be right next to a Dollar Store that apparently had all of Pennsylvania’s leftover stock of Christmas candy and stocking stuffers.

They shopped and laughed and talked and it was the best day Pam had had in a long time. It was so great to have a best friend that she could be so comfortable with. That she could tell anything to. That she could count on to listen and sympathize and joke and be everything she needed. When they got back into Jim’s car, late enough in the day that they’d be turning around to leave for home almost as soon as they got back to Dunder Mifflin, she was a little heartbroken that she couldn’t come up with a good enough excuse to prolong their time together.

Jim felt the same way, maybe. He was quiet on the drive home, anyway. But it was a comfortable, agreeable quiet. She wanted to snuggle into it and fall asleep, so safe did she feel inside of it.

But all good things come to an end.

“Thank you for giving me a ride today,” she said softly, worried that if she spoke too loudly she might break the fragile thing that seemed to have built up in the car on their ride home. She wasn’t sure what it was or what it meant, but she wanted to protect it. It made her feel at peace.

“No problem at all. I had a lot of fun.” He leaned his head against the headrest and turned to look at her, one corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. It felt intimate and it put a pit in her stomach--or maybe they were butterflies? It felt good but scary and again, she didn’t know what it meant. She cast her mind around for something to say and hit on the one errand Jim himself had had to run today, the thing they didn’t get done.

“Oh, Jim! Those sales contracts!”

“Don’t worry about it. I can just fax them over in the morning.”

She didn’t have time to unpack the way she immediately wondered if he only mentioned the sales contracts as an excuse to go with her because Michael was barreling out the doors and then they had to unload bags from one car to the other, and then there was Roy rounding the corner of the building and suddenly she had to go. She waved goodbye to Jim who waved goodbye back and she almost kind of wanted to cry a little.

When she got home, after Roy changed out of his work shirt and went right back out to meet Kenny at Poor Richard’s, she settled onto the couch and pulled out the one thing she’d purchased that day that wasn’t meant for Michael.

It was a wooden dreidel. She’d seen it while he was an aisle over, stocking up on jellybeans. She’d picked it up without a second thought--the deep blue color it was painted reminded her of him--and she meant to walk around the corner and give it to him then and there, but something held her back. Embarrassment, maybe. Propriety. She didn’t really know. She’d bought it anyway then snuck it into her purse, unsure of when she’d feel up to giving it to him.

Maybe next year.


BigTuna is the author of 24 other stories.

This story is part of the series, Secret Santa Fic Exchange 2020. The previous story in the series is our savior. The next story in the series is Six Times Pam Gets Proposed To and One Time She Proposes.

You must login (register) to review or leave jellybeans