Disclaimer: Yadda Yadda, you know the drill.
Carlye: I appreciate your review, but I'm confused. What are you thinking about when you say "other stories"? I thought I was only writing one.
StrawberryPajamas: I'm trying and this update is proof of that. I liked that chap too, but this one is just as good.
Samuel Chang: Thanks, I'm glad you like Danielle. She's my favorite character I've created so far.
My reason for this update is that I just got accepted into college and I'm really excited for that. So I'm taking it out on you guys. Hope you like it!
By the way, I changed a few things in the previous chapter, it's no big deal, but you can check it out if you're curious.
Jim
I rang her doorbell nervously at 12:00 sharp. Danielle came walking down moments later.
I almost didn't recognize her because her hair was down. The ebony curly locks cascaded past her shoulders and down her back. I was expecting her to wear a more toned down version of what she wore to the office, but I was pleasantly surprised at her mall attire. She was wearing a red t-shirt with a very detailed picture of pirates pillaging a town and a boat sinking in the foreground. She was also wearing short black shorts that showed off her russet colored legs. A beige messenger bag was slung over her shoulder and Chuck Taylor's covered her feet. Her appearance was just too good to be true.
"Hey Jim. I'm glad to see you here because I vaguely remember our conversation in the car last night. I don't have your number so I just got ready and sat on my couch for a half hour hoping that you would ring the doorbell soon because I don't remember what time you said, but I had a feeling it was noonish." She blabbered as we walked to my car and I opened the door for her.
"Well you can get my number from my phone which is right here and please put your number in there too while you're at it." I handed it to her over the arm rest and she smiled warmly at me.
"Ok." She said as she took out her phone as well.
"You know, you're not acting like someone with a hangover." She shook her head as I started the ignition.
"No, it only lasted for a little while, nothing major. I took your advice last night and it worked. I don't drink often, so I was really grateful for the crafty aspirin trick. I never thought of taking it before I went to bed." I furrowed my eyebrows at her. She seemed clever enough to know that and have experienced more drunken nights. Maybe I was just stereotyping her because she was a pretty girl from New York.
"You're welcome. Just call me anytime for any more common household remedies." We smiled at each other and as expected, she played along.
"Do you know how to get rid of these ugly freckles? They're everywhere and I wouldn't mind if I had a few, but my mom cursed me with this clusterfuck on my face." I made a face at her negativity and her choice of words.
"Ok someone's a fan of Dane Cook." She laughed, but I waited for her to stop before continuing. "I happen to like your freckles, so I refuse to tell you how to get rid of them." She smiled at me and shoved my shoulder.
"Costas! Please! I'm trying to drive here!" She laughed at my joke and I felt content with flirting with her in the first two minutes of our drive.
Danielle
Jim was really hilarious during our one hour tour of Scranton. It was kind of sad that the small town could be viewed in such a short period of time. At the end of the hour, I found myself not being able to get over Jim's compliment from earlier.
"He thinks my freckles are cute! No guy I've ever dated has ever told me that. Ok, so he didn't exactly call them cute." I sighed and scratched my head. "I feel like I'm in high school again."
"Thank you for the tour. Now I won't have any trouble finding the movie theatre." We entered the rather small Steamtown Mall, (A/N: Holy shit that rhymed!) heading to the food court first.
"Oh you like movies?" I nodded my head vigorously. I would've said 'duh', but I didn't want to make the guy I like feel like an idiot around me.
"Of course. I minored in film in college." He gave me a look before speaking up.
"So why are you working in paper?" I gave a small smile as we hopped on the escalator. I was always fascinated by those things.
"I don't know. All my other siblings moved for their careers and I didn't want to leave my parents for Hollywood. And my sister lives there, but that's a story for another day. During college, I got hired as a saleswoman at Dunder Mifflin and when I graduated, they offered me a higher paying position in New York. I was already moving back, so why not? I know New York is America's second Hollywood, but I didn't want to go for it. I already had a job that I was getting paid a pretty penny for, so why give it up?" He nodded at my story, not really having anything to say.
"Just because I don't want to work in the business doesn't mean that I don't like movies." I mentally slapped myself for my lame attempt at trying to save the conversation.
"Oh really? What's your favorite movie?" I smiled at his curiosity.
"Forrest Gump, hands down." He laughed at my enthusiastic response as we reached the food court. We sat down at a table, not yet ready to end our conversation.
"That's a classic." I rapped my fingers on the table.
"I know right? I can never get tired of watching it. What's your favorite movie Halpert?" He tapped his chin as if he was actually thinking.
"The Shawshank Redemption." I squealed a little and clapped my hands.
"Best Stephen King novel adaptation ever." He nodded with me, still amused at my hyper behavior.
"Agreed."
We parted ways, Jim getting in line for Mexican food and me getting in line for Italian. I made it back to the table with my salad and pizza first because my line was shorter. He sat across from me as I unpapered my straw.
"You know, I had a feeling that you were a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy, it suits you." He looked down at the shirt he was wearing and smiled.
"Thanks. I really like your hair; I've never seen anyone with that kind of hair before." That was the second compliment today, but it was prompted by my compliment, so it wasn't a big deal. I still tried not to blush as I looked at him.
"Thank you, I get it from my grandpa."
"Well I get my fashion sense from the 15 year old boy inside of me named Jim Halpert." I giggled while taking a bite into my pepperoni and mushroom pizza.
"You know, we are in the mall, a place for teenagers. So why not gossip to fit in?" His eyebrows rose at the idea and I couldn't help, but swoon over the soft blue tint of his eyes.
"Good idea, who do you want to know about first?"
"Let's start with Erin." He did a faux wince thing.
"I don't know much about her, she just started working here."
"Ok then, Kelly."
"She is the most talkative and most girly person you will ever meet. I personally try to avoid conversations with her because they are usually one sided." I nodded, mentally storing the information.
"Ok, how about Ryan?"
"Ryan and Kelly started dating because one day, I decided to take my stupid pills instead of my smart pills and hooked them up." My mouth was open in shock. I've only been working at Dunder Mifflin Scranton for three days, but I've seen enough Ryan/Kelly PDA to last a lifetime. Jim created a monster.
"I know. I did a terrible thing." I scoffed at his choice in words.
"Damn right you did."
"Thanks for rubbing more salt in the wound." I waved my hand.
"No problem, please continue."
"Well Ryan started off as a temp, but then he got offered a job at corporate as the new CFO and he got power crazy and got arrested for fraud because he lied about the sales on his crappy website for Dunder Mifflin Infiniti. He and Kelly have been on and off constantly for the past couple of years and when he got out of jail, Michael hired him as a receptionist and then he went off to Thailand which was actually just Ft. Lauderdale. When he came back, he started working at a Bowling Alley. But he quit when Michael offered him a job at his own paper company." I held up my hand to pause his story.
"Wait what?" He put down his taco before further explaining.
"Corporate brought in a co-manager to Scranton to nullify all of Michael's power, so he got upset and quit, only to start his own paper company. He tried to get all of us to join him, but we didn't fall for it, especially not in this economy." I pushed my tray to the side, completely finished with my salad and pizza, now only left with my soda to sip.
"Was it called the Michael Scott Paper Company?" He nodded, confused by how I knew that. "It's Michael, come on."
"Touche. So Michael and Ryan started to sell paper really cheap and they were taking all of our customers. Corporate was freaking out, but they had no idea that Michael was broke and I did. I hated the new boss, so I tipped Michael not to let David Wallace know that his company was quickly going under. He listened to me for the first time in his life and Corporate bought out the company for $60,000, Ryan and Michael's old jobs back with full benefits and Michael had to be the only boss. They were willing to go with that, but they didn't want Ryan on Sales as he was at the Michael Scott Paper Company, and that's where you come in I guess. So Ryan got $20,000 and Michael got $40,000 and gave me $5,000 for playing both sides for him." I smirked at that. Jim was a smart guy, probably smarter than anyone in the office.
"Was the new boss Charles Miner?" He tried to read my curious expression before answering.
"Yeah…why?" I debated on telling him the truth or at least the semi-truth, but I reminded myself that Scranton was a fresh start and lying or giving the semi-truth was going to get me nowhere.
"We used to date, Charles and I."
He looked speechless and a bit cold as I confessed about my most recent ex.
"Don't judge me. Because we both know that we've dated people that we regret now."
Jim
I don't know if I necessarily regretted dating Pam. It took a long time for us to be together, but to me it was worth a try and because of how long it took for us to get to know each other, we were already comfortable as a couple. But Katy and Karen, I definitely regret dating them. They just weren't my type and it was a waste of time for everyone.
"No, no, I'm not judging you. I'm just trying to wrap my head around you dating a heartless robot like him." That got a smile out of her.
"Charles was a bit cold blooded wasn't he?" I nodded in a grave manner and she snickered before telling me the story of their relationship.
"Well I was dumb and new to the NYC branch. I worked under him and he was impressed with my sales record. We hit it off at one of the rare office parties and we started dating soon after. Our first kiss was during the song 'I wanna be your lover' by Prince." I cringed at that and she chuckled at my discomfort.
"I'm sorry, I promise I won't get that personal anymore." I sighed overdramatically and waited for her to continue.
"He knew all the basics about me, but it was like he didn't care to know me any deeper. I bet he doesn't know more about me than you do and we were dating for over seven months." I suppressed a grin at that.
"I was like a trophy girlfriend to him anyway, I don't hate him though. There were no hard feelings after we broke up and he was nice enough to get me a job here so we didn't have to see each other everyday. He told me that I would add a balance of a sound mind to this branch." She sounded like she wanted to say more, but stopped herself at the right spot.
"So, what about Andy?"
On the way out of the mall, we saw Dwight and Angela walking out of a lingerie store and into a baby store. The two of us laughed all the way down to the parking lot and only when we got into the car did we start to cool down.
"Hey Jim, do you have any plans for the next hour or so?" I tapped my fingertips against the steering wheel in a realm that I spend too much time in, what I like to call false thought.
"Yeah, actually I have an online Scrabble game scheduled with this guy from Sweden." She rolled her eyes as if she were actually bothered.
"I'll bake you cookies." That sounded delicious, so there was no way I could say no.
"I guess I'll cancel. Albin's gonna curse me out in Swedish next time I talk to him though." She put on a straight face as I headed to her place.
"It's the price you have to pay for a warm cookie."
She lived on the second floor and her apartment smelled like Cinnamon. It was small, only consisting of a bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, living room and a small dining room connected to the kitchen, but she made it work. The walls were a lavender color and there was a lot of fancy photography posted on the higher part of the walls in black frames.
"Did you take these?" She sheepishly nodded.
"Photography isn't much different than film." There were pictures of Subway stations, the New York skyline, Chinatown and various streets. One that threw me off was what looked like a European countryside.
"That is from when Charles and I vacationed to England for his birthday. I used to live in Chinatown, that's why those are up there. I lived upstairs of the best cheap Chinese restaurant in the world. They gave me free Crab Rangoon whenever I wanted it and they even taught me a little bit of Mandarin. They were really cool." Another one that caught my eye was one of an older blonde guy teaching a baby how to walk. I was confused because of the rest of the photos didn't depict people and this one was faded slightly by time. I looked at it a bit longer to realize that the blonde guy looked an awful lot like Andy Warhol.
"Oh my god. Is that a picture of Andy Warhol teaching you how to walk?" She looked even more embarrassed at that.
"Yeah, he was a family friend. He met my mom backstage after one of her Broadway performances and they hung out a lot. When my parents were too busy working, he took the liberty of babysitting us. My oldest memories are of him and the factory." I turned to her and voiced an honest question.
"Ok, so it's about 2:30 now, when will you cease to amaze me?" She shook her head at my joke and blushed a little bit. I grinned at her reaction and followed her into the kitchen.
We played Scrabble while eating chocolate chip cookies and I really enjoyed myself. Especially after I formed the name Dwight and she laughed for about three minutes over it. She was too busy trying to chew a cookie while laughing to know that forming a name was against the rules. After hanging out today, we were much more comfortable with each other and I looked forward to spending more time with her and crossing my fingers, hoping not to get stuck in the friend zone.
I'm done begging for reviews, but I do enjoy writing this story, more so than my other ones.
