I don't own these characters or their stories, I'm just playing around with them a little. What's going through Jim's mind as the two women in his life start becoming friends. One-timer.
Boy they sure seem chummy together, Jim thought to himself as he looked over from his desk across the office at his current girlfriend and his former crush chatting away at God knows what. It was not a possibility that he had considered before, that they might become friends. But why not? It made sense, in fact. They were both very cool a very friendly. Neither of them was afflicted with that very common womanly need to be catty toward other women. In Karen's case it was because she was supremely confident in herself, as she had a right to be. She was intelligent, beautiful and funny. She did not need to compete with other women, but if she did she'd win hands down 99 times out of 100. In Pam's case, it wasn't so much confidence, because Jim always sensed that she could use more of that. But she had an innate kindness about her – it was what had attracted him to her early on, he had decided once – and she just didn't have it in her to be cold to someone, not for very long anyway.
So there they were, laughing at Karen's desk. Pam leaning against it, her back to him, Karen looking up at her like Pam was saying the most amazingly witty and insightful thing ever said. Jim wanted to throw up. This was definitely not a good thing, his gut told him. He had spent the last six months trying to put distance between himself and that night with Pam. First it was physical distance, and the 300 miles between Stamford and Scranton might as well have been 3,000 because it felt that way to him and he could tell from the very first time he'd ended up on the phone with her that time that it felt that way to her too. She even thought they were in different time zones.
When the branches had merged, he'd been ready to quit altogether. It would have been a panic move, he knew, to throw away his second raise and his second promotion in six months just to avoid going back. Even now it didn't sound like that bad an idea, not when he let himself think about what he was going back to, to think about that night and how much it hurt. So he'd looked for a shield, a defense against the inevitable pain of being exposed to someone he'd loved and poured out his heart to only to be rejected. He couldn't blame Pam for not loving him back. You can't choose who you love. But who wanted to be reminded of the embarrassment of their worst rejection day after day after day. But when Karen had told him she was seriously considering the transfer, it presented an opportunity, one he wasn't proud to admit he took. At first he advised her to go to New York, that someone like her didn't belong in a hick town like Scranton, Pa., when the Big Apple waited just 45 minutes down the road. But he reconsidered as soon as he realized the signals she was sending him about how she felt about him and how much better it would be to go back to his old digs at with her on his arm. Well, she wouldn't be on his arm literally, but figuratively it seemed like the best way to defuse any of the pitying stares from his coworkers who may or may not know how badly he had been dumped by the redhead at reception. As for the redhead herself, he felt no anger, no animosity. He didn't know what he felt. That was the honest truth. But if he could understand what was going on deep inside him when it came to Pam, he'd realize he felt exactly the same as he did about her on Casino Night. Those feelings were just buried beneath a ton of good and bad memories and his determination to move on and reinvent himself as a hardworking career guy who doesn't spend his days playing practical jokes and pining after unattainable women.
But he didn't realize any of that. What he did realize was that Karen was incredibly attractive. They had connected, too. She was fun to be with, and she was nice to him. She gave him a ride home when he was too drunk to pedal his bicycle straight – what was he thinking that night? – and he had shown her that he was no corporate suck-up by spending a day on the trail of some hard-to-find potato chips when she was struggling with her sales figures. If Pam had never happened, he told himself, he and Karen would be a perfect fit. That nagging doubt in the back of his head told him there was no way to imagine if Pam had never happened. He had gotten pretty good at ignoring nagging doubts in the last six months, though. And things were going well. He and Karen were happy together.
Pam seemed to have moved on with life after Roy. She looked good, great actually, he thought. She was taking those art classes and she was styling her hair and dressing nicer than ever. Jim was happy for her. Even if she didn't have the same feelings for him as he used to have for her, he was glad his old friend's life was looking up. He felt like they could peacefully coexist in the same office now that they'd put so much distance between themselves and that night. But he hadn't counted on the two of them becoming friends. What if Pam told Karen about Casino Night? What if Karen told Pam that Jim had never mentioned any of it?
"Hey stranger, when you wake up maybe you want to join me in the break room for a ham sandwich and a can of Crystal cola?" Karen said to him.
He was staring right at her, or actually, right past her. He had zoned out and didn't even realize she had walked right up to him. He started to blush with embarrassment.
"I, uh, yeah, that sounds great," he said, fumbling to regain his bearings. "I just have to make a sale calls. It won't take long."
"Well, Pam and I are going to start without you," she said. "We're both starving, and you know the way there. It's the door over there."
He laughed at her little sarcasm and watched her walk past his desk to reception behind him where Pam was shredding some papers. The two of them exchanged some under-their-breath comments that prompted Pam to chuckle and Karen to shake her head. Jim watched their banter out of the corner of his eye and wondered whether it would be possible for him to dig a hole under his desk and bury himself inside it.
Lunch with Pam and Karen. It did not sound good. Sure, they had all eaten together several times since the merger, but it was never a deliberate thing where the three of them had sat down together. It was usually Jim and Karen going into the break room together and finding Pam there with Kevin or Kelly. He hung up the phone on the sales call he didn't really have to make and pulled open his desk drawer. A tuna on white bread sat there, and all he could think was that he would really rather have a ham and cheese sandwich today. He wasn't even sure he liked tuna all that much anymore.
"It's pretty hot the way your girlfriends are hitting it off," Kevin said.
Jim looked up to see the big guy standing over his desk, smirking in the general direction of the break room where Pam and Karen were engrossed in conversation.
"Yeah, Kevin, that is pretty hot," Jim deadpanned. "But Pam's not my girlfriend."
"She almost was," Kevin said. "You should see if they're, you know, into each other."
"Yeah, I'll have to check that out, big guy," Jim said, grabbing his sandwich.
He shook his head as he walked over to have lunch with the one he was with and the one that got away from him. This couldn't end well, he thought to himself. It was his fault for not thinking things through, he knew. He could hear them laughing and gabbing before he even got halfway to the door. Here goes nothing, he thought.