Hi bit of a longer one this time.
Pam's yesterday had been one exponentially arduous battle between not working, staring at Jim, and staring at Karen.
Her capacity for distraction had always been one she secretly indulged in, identified with, even. But this was a level of impatience and amotivation she had previously frowned upon when it was featured in others. She had standards.
Not yesterday though, apparently.
Today marked two days since her first date with Jim. The Euphoria was passionate, but not unmitigated. The mood swings she had experienced in the last 48 hours alone were enough to satisfy the next twelve months of psychological activity, she thought. It was just this aching doubt, dragged down by weights of guilt, pity, and an indecisive seesaw of whether or not she felt regretful. It was true, what she had told the crew and the rest of the office, that she was confident in her new found verity. Everything felt so much easier. She did not regret what she'd said on the beach. She didn't. But the curtain of false indifference that Karen had tugged behind her to work the day before elicited a feeling so akin to watching an accident on the freeway you had narrowly avoided being the cause of. No, She didn't regret anything. But how could anyone be as heartless as to feel no empathy at all?
So averting her eyes from that freeway accident was simply not an option.
She couldn't tell if Karen noticed her. She couldn't tell if Karen noticed anything. But she must, right? How could she not? She still looked so normal.
Pam began to think near the end of the workday that she could draw her face from memory, like she could do Jim's. But maybe that was what everyone could do after a sum of maybe four and a half hours of staring at a person. She had always admired Karen's freckles, in the way that she remembered the freckles she had had as a kid, and wondered if it would make Karen like her more if she had them again. But now she knew Karen wouldn't care about her freckles because they wouldn't be friends, which gave Pam an unexpected pang of grief. No more committee for planning parties.
She and Jim had interacted little outside of lunch. If she herself felt guilty, she could only guess at how much worse he was dealing with it, based mostly on the fact of his hunched reluctance to look up from his screen. She thought maybe he would have expected Karen not to come in that day, and Pam did admit to him that night, it would have made things a lot simpler if she left Scranton.
But today was Saturday, and that was yesterday. And she was cradled in Jim's lanky arms on her couch in the glimmer of the afternoon sun from the skylight above them and she could almost forget about anything that happened between the very second of today and when Jim left for Stanford.
A headache and the sweat of oversleeping woke Karen at 2:00pm on the Sunday a week and two days after her first day without Jim. Her Blackberry had died halfway through the night, sitting dark and unresponsive on the bedside table as a reminder of how many hours she had replayed the sound of Jim's voice to fall asleep to for the eighth night in a row.
Before she could close her eyes again, the landline by her head rang unforgivingly. She turned over and let it go to voicemail but following the tone arrived, distant and broken, the second to last voice she wanted to hear.
"Hi, Karen. I just called to- I just wanted to call and ask- or say that...sorry. Sorry. I shouldn't have called. I'm sorry. Forget this. Bye, sorry."
She sat up and opened her eyes, leaning over the table to stare at the machine groggily. It was something she had maybe expected. She wasn't hurt, but that feeling -that sickly sweet, pitiful smell was in her nose and in her stomach again.
Over the last week the impression of a performance in coming to work had relented gradually. Within the first few days, the rest of the office stopped gawking as she came in and out of the room, then Jim had come up to her as she got in her car, saying that he was sorry if she felt like he was ignoring her, he just didn't know how to act or how much space he should be giving her, but he wanted to let her know that if she ever wanted to talk, he would listen...because he wanted to stay friends. It was very well put and she could tell he was sincere, but it made her feel more shitty. Because it also meant that he had expected her to leave. On the third day, she had braved the break room with Pam and told her that she could see her staring. "I don't like being pitied, and I wish you wouldn't. I'm fine." It had felt harsh and cold, but Pam knew her. She knew how good Karen was at confrontation. Knowing Pam would expect Karen to say something about how they were acting didn't make the guilty, puppy dog look on Pam's face any less painful.
She listened to the message again in self-commiseration. It was toothachingly Pam.
She rolled over and brought the duvet over her head, bringing her knees to her chest.
She had barely cried since the night of the breakup. She thought maybe it was because of all the crying she had done while they were still together towards the end.
Crying after it ended felt weak, because she had known the whole time.
She wasn't weak and she wasn't crying.
The next morning Karen lightly slowed her pace as she entered the office and passed reception. She was rewarded for her suspicions when Pam looked up and beckoned her in with an "Oh," for a whispered apology; "I'm really sorry about that call yesterday. I've been...I haven't known how to say that I miss our friendship, but that's a really selfish thing to want, and- and its' too soon, and it was kind of insensitive of me, so, I'm really sorry about that." Karen could hear the anxiety and uncertainty in Pam's voice as she rambled, and it made her want to apologize herself, which made her feel stupid. She gave her a nod, and soft 'It's okay." which she hoped would be medium enough that it wouldn't be a full testament of amicability, but she didn't want Pam to feel uncomfortable.
Jim looked up and smiled for the first time as she passed his desk and it hurt but it was a less wrenching pain than when he didn't.
That day went eerily well. There was a semblance of comfort somewhere in the air, and Karen subconsciously attributed it to her introduction into the morning.
Pam's words were stuck in her head for hours, and Karen diligently deliberated on whether or not to say something to either of them on her way out. A bcc email from Jim to the office (sans Micheal, obviously) with a call to adjourn at Poor Richards after work resolved this issue. It was a Monday, but Karen learned from the break room that Micheal had purchased another pair of those jeans he felt so good in and had confided in Dwight that he would be wearing them the next day. This obviously meant that everyone would be able to wiggle in an extra hour of sleep the next morning.
At the end of the day she stopped at Jim's desk on her way out to her car as he finished up, to joke about this ridiculous paradox. He quipped back, and it made her laugh a little, for what she realized was the first time since their dissolution.
When they arrived, she sat next to Phyllis and across from Oscar, who was next to Jim and Pam. She pointed to something new and awful sounding on the blackboard above the bar. "That sounds like the worst thing for my body and I'm getting it." She guessed Jim heard her, because after Phyllis looked at her in apprehension and near horror, he called out "Bourbon Blue Raspberry Lemonade Darquiris for everyone! On the house!" eliciting half cheers, half grumbles.
She was hesitant to drink too much at first, but soon everyone was much more drunk than she was, and weary of feeling left out and danced around, she ultimately gave in heartily to the longing that had eaten at her all week for getting trashed.
They played the usual table games and she found herself experiencing an impression akin to fun. It was impossible not to stay pretty distant from Jim and Pam. It was almost like falling asleep with someone else in the room; even when you're at your deepest slumbers, the awareness of someone's presence keeps you from sleepwalking or talking about something embarrassing in your sleep. It was a constant, and interactions from her end were kept at a minimum...Until around 12:45 when everyone began to leave. And she was the definitively the most blasted.