Note: fourth in the Explosions in the Sky series. And I guess these are all related, even though they're out of chronological order. As always, the title is from a song by the band Explosions in the Sky and this particular one is one of the best and most moving pieces of music I've ever heard, so I highly recommend it (also as usual). This one was a lot of fun to write and I really enjoy it and I hope you do too. I hope it's not too hard to understand, because I don't draft things. I just get a vague idea and start writing and let the story go from there. Also, I apologize for any spelling/grammatical errors. Again, I hope you like it. And reviews aren't necessary, but they most definitely are appreciated. Enjoy!
He generally regards the day that Pam, along with the rest of the office, discovered his relationship with Angela as probably the worst day of his entire life. Of course, he allowed room for future events with the caveat of "up to the present". Yet he imagined that it would hold it's position for a long time. And it had started off so simply.
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The ringing of the alarm clock abruptly woke Jim up at his usual time Monday morning and, as was his custom first thing upon waking, he went to his bedroom window and moved the curtains aside. The sun was rising and tinged the surrounding sky a blistering and beautiful pink-red hue. It looked like the day would be cold, but was moving ever closer towards spring and he could most likely expect temperatures a decent cut above those he'd experienced the duration of the too-long winter.
Habits die hard and this is a universal truth applicable to everyone. Accordingly, he did everything he normally did. A routine so commonplace, so rehearsed that he was confident that if someone picked his house up while he was asleep and transported it to the surface of the moon, he wouldn't notice until he completed his routine and stepped out his front door. He pictured this scenario as he set his cereal bowl in the sink and began peeling his orange. After a few moments of thinking about what exactly would happen once the front door was opened, he settled on explosive decompression of the house (assuming it had remained both airtight and supplied with oxygen after being placed on the moon) which, he reasoned, would lead to either death by suffocation or freezing to death in the void. He wasn't sure which one would occur faster, but figured they'd both probably be slower than he'd like.
These are the thoughts I have on Mondays.
Once he had dressed, gathered his things, and put on his coat, he headed through the living room towards the front door. This was the exact moment that sealed his fate. He would later go over it in his head and conclude that maybe if he had been either a few minutes earlier or a few minutes later, the entire day could have gone differently. Maybe the little microcosmic experiment of causality and chaos theory could have been avoided. As it was, he would in retrospect conclude that he had to go about his exact routine, and leave at exactly the same time he always did, in order for his day to happen.
As he passed through the living room on his way out the front door, he saw the pale pink cardigan that Angela had forgotten when she left the other day to head back to her place. Jim saw it and just didn't stop to think. The only thing he did think was that he should pick it up, fold it sloppily, and carefuly put it into his bag so he could return it to her at work. Thinking about it later, he could have just waited to take it to her place later that night. He knew that they were having dinner and sleeping there that night, but he just acted automatically. And of course he forgot about the cardigan during the brief drive to work. It sat in his bag, on the floor alongside his desk, until it was time to fulfill it's cataclysmic duty.
One of the benefits of being an employee of a midsized paper supplier that was slowly but steadily losing business in an ever-increasing digital world was that you finished your work pretty quickly. After just under three hours of diligent work, Jim had finished his initial workload and was fully prepared to spend the rest of the day checking sports scores online (baseball had just started back up) interspersed with doing whatever tasks came his way. But before he started on all that important business, he rolled his chair far enough towards Andy's desk so that he could see Angela. Occasionally, he would watch her fingers as they flew across her keyboard faster than he could ever hope to type. He'd sit and watch her scold Kevin or answer a phone call or just watch her scroll through spreadsheets on her monitor. No matter what she was doing, he couldn't look away because the breathless, falling-in-a-good-way feeling she set off in him was just too good to pass up.
He failed to notice three important things while he was looking at Angela with an easy, small smile on his face. First, he failed to notice that Pam was looking at him as he looked at Angela. Second, he failed to notice that when he moved his chair to get a better view of her, he had knocked his open bag over, shifting the contents enough to allow her cardigan to fall out just enough to be visible. And lastly and most disastrously of all, Dwight had noticed the cardigan. Once he had noticed, Dwight instigated the following train wreck:
"Why do you have Angela's cardigan in your bag?" Jim was snapped out of his peaceful observation and thrown quickly back into reality, at which point he had two thoughts in between his initial reentry into his workplace and the rise of all-consuming panic. One, the office was so quiet that Dwight's voice sounded like a goddamn nuclear explosion. His second thought was How does he know it's her cardigan, which he immediately answered for himself when he recalled Angela telling him that she had been seeing Dwight until the incident in the supply closet with Jim, at which point she immediately (and to Dwight, mysteriously) broke off the relationship. She never offered any details and Jim thought that was the first moment he realized he was definitely slowly falling in love with her: when she mercifully left out any details of intimacy, which Jim neither wanted nor needed to hear. None of it mattered anyway.
"What are you doing with her cardigan, Jim?" Dwight repeated. At this point, every single pair of eyes were on him. He first looked to Angela, whom he was surprised to see wasn't as worried as he thought she'd be. She looked...hesitant about the whole situation, and she was wringing her hands slightly as Kevin and Oscar looked between her and Jim, but her face didn't reflect the panic or blankness that he was sure was plastered across his own. He looked around the room and yes, indeed, all eyes were on him. Jim also saw that Pam's eyes were wide and she looked pale, almost as if something was becoming clearer. He figured that was inevitable. He and Angela were discrete, but eventually people noticed anything and everything out of the ordinary.
Pam had noticed the extra time Jim spent over at accounting and how Angela sat closer to Jim (and thus Pam herself) in the conference room during Michael's stupid meetings. She had even noticed Angela smirking very slightly whenever Jim made a joke during those meetings. It was very slight, but it had belied the light in her eyes that the restrained smirk couldn't mask. She sat transfixed and waited for Jim's response, butterflies in her stomach.
Jim had no idea what to say. He was struck mute by the implications Dwight's discovery, and the subsequent and inevitable explanation he would have to eventually give, meant. It meant that everyone would know they were together. Jim didn't care, but he knew that Angela was a very private and guarded person and she had expressed her wish to keep their relationship quiet for as long as they possibly could. He had agreed, of course, knowing it was a good idea, but it seemed that their agreement had just been forcibly ended. By Dwight.
Everyone was staring at him expectantly and it felt like they had been doing so for a few hours. He heard Michael's door open and briefly hoped Michael was going to maybe show them how he "learned" to juggle fire. The resulting structure fire would either provide him an escape from giving an explanation or kill them all, making an explanation unnecessary. More of those Monday thoughts I keep having. He cleared his throat.
"She...uh...left it...uh," Jim was just happy that he made it that far and figured he'd leave it at that. In any other situation, when she wasn't already suspicious of his recent and slight changes in behavior, Pam might have made a joke. He knew this and looked over at her and saw the same pale, wide-eyed face he saw sixteen seconds ago. Scanning the room, he saw that everyone was now looking at him.
Tell them, the voice in his head argued. Tell them all. Tell them everything: she left it at your house over the weekend and she was at your house because she was sleeping there and she was sleeping there because you're together. A couple. Totally going out. Tell them about the sex and the fact that you are more than just probably falling in love with Angela. Tell Pam this is already shaping up to be bigger than what he felt for her. But not, you know, in a mean way. Just for emphasis. He immediately knew none of that was wise or acceptable and supposed that by thinking it, he was either trying to make himself laugh or buy himself some time. He tried a different tactic.
"I mean...I stole it," was the best thing he could come up with.
"Oh, for the love of God," Angela sounded exasperated. She rolled her eyes and walked across the office towards him. As she came towards him, Jim saw her smile a giddy, nervous smile that was gone in a flash. She stood next to him and faced their coworkers. Angela paused for just a second, during which Jim figured out what she was going to do and vowed to have flowers for her every birthday, anniversary, whatever. She was saving him in the biggest way he could think of at the moment.
She cleared her throat and Jim looked down where her fingers had entwined themselves smoothly with his. Her skin was soft and warm and the sensation calmed him down immediately. Not all the way, but enough so that he could focus on what she said next.
"Jim and I are in a relationship. Even though some of you aren't, Jim and I are adults and we can be with whoever we choose to be with. This is our official announcement to you and anything else doesn't concern you, so you should respect our privacy," she spoke loudly and clearly to a stunned and silent room.
"Please..." Jim coaxed.
"Yes," she added,"Please."
"Jim, you're having sex with Angela. With Angela," Kevin spoke slowly as if trying to get through to Jim and drive this point home.
"Uh, thanks, Kev, I hadn't noticed," and then when Angela elbowed him in the ribs while still keeping their hands clasped, "Uh, what I meant to say..."
"What he meant to say is it's none of your business. So let's all just get back to work," She had her nose tipped up, a gesture Jim had come to know as her dignified, I-am-above-this posture. He consistently found it cute. She let go of his hand and took three quick steps back towards her own desk and then stopped herself and, in a rush, walked back to Jim, stood on her tip toes, and kissed him quickly on the lips. Angela turned just as fast and returned to her desk. Michael offered a stupid and clumsy congratulations, somehow taking credit for them meeting and starting down this "road of love", as he called it. Then Michael went back into his office while everyone else slowly returned to their work. They were all mumbling amongst themselves, but Jim could specifically hear Oscar telling Kevin why they should have seen this coming with Kevin repeating denials the entire time. Angela did an admirable job at ignoring him. They deserved some time, after all, to process what just happened.
For the most part, things were back to normal. Except Dwight was looking at him with a mixture of disgust, disbelief, and anger.
And Pam remained pale and looked like someone had punched her in the stomach. Jim sighed. He'd have to talk to them both, but that could wait until later. One day at a time and today was more than enough.
-----
That night, in Angela's apartment, they'd lie in bed together, enjoying the closeness of feeling the other's skin slide against their own, and Jim would tell her that her hand in his had given him strength. He thanked her for that and she was quiet for a little bit before replying.
"And your hand in mine gave me strength."