Strange Ride
Too many margaritas deep, Pam accepted a ride home from Chilis with Jim. He unlocked his Jeep door with the power-lock and helped her down the curb.
She hung on to him, white-knuckled, giggling about nothing.
.
A thrilled knot in his stomach, Jim slid the keys into the ignition. She smelt like tequila and a bit like lavender.
"Music?"
Drunk, Pam turned to him. "Hmm?"
He held out his iPod to her, plugged into a connector cable. "Pick a song?"
Pam stumbled with butterfingers and squinted hard at the screen. She scrolled without purpose, the silence of the car broken by her musings at his music.
Jim liked her looking through his iPod.
.
She picked Ain't It Strange by Dr Dog.
The lyrics filled the car. Pam stared straight ahead, fixated on the passing streetlights. Jim choked back the words of the song, watching Pam's drunk eyes glass over.
.
The Jeep pulled up at Pam and Roy's apartment by the end of the track. Pam hadn't said a word. Jim hadn't either, attributing her silence to one of two things: alcohol or Dr Dog.
The sensor light in front of Pam's building flashed on with the arrival of the vehicle. The light was cold and harsh and illuminated Pam's face.
Her blank face; a face that showed no reflection of her thoughts.
He cleared his throat to break the silence. "Well, here we are, the beautiful Sprucebank Villas of North East Scranton, actually built by Christopher Colombus himself when he colonized -"
"Jim I'm sorry for kissing you."
And his heart stopped.
What did he say to that?
Jim fumbled to say: "Oh, that's… hey, it's fine."
"No, it isn't fine." Her speech confirmed that she was, yes, still feeling the effects of the alcohol. "That's not fair to you."
Fair?
Jim's blood had to be frozen by this point. Fair? What did she mean?
He didn't say anything. He just looked at her, hard, trying to figure out what she meant. His lips were parted and his eyes bugged out. Words started to form on tongue, but none of them came out.
"I'm sorry." She shook her head, face in her palms, suddenly embarrassed. She tried to backtrack. "I just meant…" She left her sentence unfinished, gazing at him. A gaze, not a look.
Silence.
Her body language screamed panic. She shook her head, attempting to sort her thoughts. "Because of you and me, you know? And it's just… ahh." Her face was in her hands again, her cheeks flushed. She looked lost, totally unable to organize her thoughts in her inebriation. "Not you and me. I didn't mean you and me, like, you-and-me-you-and-me."
You and me?
Him and her?
Jim's throat nearly closed. He wanted to say something, to ease her flustered backtracking, but he wanted to hear… more. He wanted to hear the rest of her train of thought. He wanted to hear more about them.
Pam was silent, though, and started to fiddle around with her seatbelt.
Right.
Jim couldn't hear about him and her, whatever that was, in front of her apartment that she shared with her actual him.
"You kind of have to wiggle it a little." The seatbelt jammed constantly in the buckle. Jim reached across to Pam's seat and helped her, giving the buckle a good jar to get out. The metal was freezing cold.
His fingers touched her legs. Not in a graze, more in a slow, innocent retreat from the buckle around her waist, but they touched her stocking-wrapped leg none the less. Her legs were warm, her stockings silky.
Her eyes immediately went to his. His cheeks flushed, his heart raced. He was sixteen years old.
He had never felt her leg before.
You could feel him and her in the air. Their him and her.
They both swallowed loudly. Jim cleared his throat again and brought his hand back to his own seat. Had he left it there for that long? She didn't seem to be phased by it. She reached to the floor of the Jeep and gathered her purse and Dundie trophy. "Okay, well," she smiled, "Thank you for driving me home."
Jim still felt sixteen years old. He was in a car with a woman that he surely was in love with, unbelievably turned on by the mere touch of her silk leg, exchanging awkward goodbyes and avoiding the topic of the palpable sexual tension between them.
"No problem. Got everything?" was all he said, when he really wanted to pull her into him, close the few inches between them.
"Yup, I do." She held onto the door handle, reading to open. She lingered. "Okay, so, see you tomorrow?"
"Definitely, tomorrow."
"If I make it in tomorrow. Hangover, ahh." Her laugh was so cute.
"Right, drink water."
Her thumbs was a clear sign that yes, she was still a little drunk. She pushed the door open and turned her head over her shoulder. If she had meant to be coy, she had succeeded. "Goodnight, Jim."
The effect her saying his name had on him was profound sometimes. "Night, Pam."
Fin.