My Everything

Chapter 4

Sunlight streamed in from the bedroom window, hitting Pam square in the face. She squinted one eye open ever so slightly and was immediately met with a strong throbbing ache at her temples and forehead. Uttering a raspy groan from deep in her throat, she snapped her eye shut and cupped her face with the palm of her hand, trying to make sense of anything through the heavy cotton weight that was currently her brain.

Groaning again, she slowly pulled away the bed covers and pushed herself upright, feeling the heaviness in her head move with her as if it were a giant jug of molasses being tipped to one side. Squinting an eye open, she stood up with great effort and shuffled over to the window, reaching out for the string to yank the blinds shut all at once. She winced as they clattered down on top of each other, wishing that she was still asleep.

Dropping her arm limply to the side, she shuffled backwards and flopped onto the bed again with relief, dragging the covers over her body as she crawled back onto the mattress and mercifully shut her eyes, falling fast asleep in the newly created darkness.

She awoke a few hours later to the smell of fresh coffee and pancakes wafting into her bedroom from down the hall. Opening her eyes with hesitation, she found she could actually stand the dim light of the room now without wanting to hurl. She blinked a couple times and cleared her throat, slowly stretching her body from head to toe as the grogginess of sleep eventually left her. She tried to remember what happened last night and why she was so hungover.

There was the bar, and Oscar in an orange party hat. Roy sitting with his friends, and she remembered sitting beside Jim. Roy had been drinking...and she did too, obviously. She raised an eyebrow as she remembered the big hug she'd given Oscar when he'd come over to say hello to her. I was definitely drunk. What else happened?

Pam pulled herself out of bed gradually, the throbbing ache at her temples downgraded to a dull hum but still making itself known to her. She briefly looked down at herself, seeing she still wore the blouse and jeans she had on yesterday. She tugged off the blouse, unhooked her bra and tossed it to the floor, then wiggled out of her underwear and tight jeans that had taken her five minutes just to get into. Now completely free of the wrinkled clothing she'd slept in, she headed over to the other side of the room near the closet her and Roy shared. She opened it and stared inside blankly, taking in her neatly hung outfits and Roy's mountain of clothes practically spilling out of the shelving.

She wished she lived somewhere with more storage space. But this condo had been a steal; her and Roy bought it at just the right time when the buyer's market had been hot. Still, she'd wished they'd taken the time to at least look around at the other options first instead of jumping at the first thing they saw. Pulling out a well-worn nightshirt, she slipped it over her head and threw on some shorts underneath. Her eyes felt itchy and she went to rub at them, her fingers coming away with faded smears of black. I didn't even take my makeup off? Man, was I ever loaded.

She made her way across the hallway into the lone bathroom of the condo and turned on the light, leaning over the sink to look at herself in the mirror. Her mascara was smeared into black smudges around her eyes, and her soft berry lipstick was pushed outside the bounds of her lips. Her hair was still pulled back in its usual hair clip but it was heavily mussed and a few strands were sticking up around her face. She sighed quietly and cleaned it all off, splashing cool water on her face to wake herself up as she did. The last time she'd been this drunk was her high school graduation night. Roy and a bunch of his friends had gotten their hands on some cases of beer and she had thrown caution to the wind, probably too much-she ended up puking in the bushes next to the bonfire uncontrollably. They had been having fun until Roy noticed how out of it she was and took her home. "You ruined our night, Pam. Now I gotta babysit you instead of hanging out with everyone else. "

She splashed some more water on her face to erase the sour memory and went to go find him, realizing he hadn't been sleeping in the bed next to her when she'd awoken. She stepped to the kitchen, where she found Roy bent over some plates on the counter by the stovetop, sliding a fresh pancake onto one of them with a pancake flipper. Two mugs of hot coffee sat ready to go on their small dining table, along with bottle of syrup in the middle. The sunlight shining through their living room windows made everything look like an oil painting- soft and warm.

"Someone's finally up," Roy greeted her with a wink as he took up both plates of pancakes, setting them down on the dining table. He stopped to kiss her forehead gently as he passed her to grab the coffee pot and she barely reacted; her brain was still trying to wrap itself around what she was seeing. Roy never cooked. Ever.

"Umm...yeah. Morning," she murmured and sat down before one of the pancake stacks. She eyed everything again, looking up at him in wonderment. "What's all this for?"

"Well, we both hit the sauce pretty hard last night…. I figured we'd both be hungry." He sat down across from her, still in his boxers and socks that he usually slept in. She could never understand how a person could wear socks to bed. It drove her insane.

"You're not hungover?"

"Eh, it's nothing I can't handle." He winked at her again and took a sip of his coffee.

"Well…..thank you." Pam still was having a hard time digesting that Roy had not only made coffee, but actual food to go with it all. And he served it up for her, too. She carved out a bite of pancake with the side of her fork and stuffed it into her mouth. And it actually tastes good!

"No problem, babe." He had already plowed through half his plate. "And I figured we could sit down and talk about the wedding and all that stuff like you wanted when we're done."

She almost choked on the pancake in her mouth. Is this...a joke? Or something? What's going on, here?

"Really?" She managed to force out between mouthfuls of pancake. Finally, she sat down her fork and looked at him straight on. "Roy...what's all this about? It's not my birthday."

He chuckled and scooped up his empty plate, heading into the kitchen to heap on a few more pancakes. "You're funny, Pam. You act like I never do anything like this for you."

Well, you don't. She shook her head. "I don't know it's just...making me think something's up."

He sat back down, smearing the pancakes with a heavily loaded butter knife. "Yeah well, I think we both know why you acted like you did last night. I got the message." He grabbed up the syrup and drizzled it across his plate casually.

Pam sat up straighter in her chair and she got a funny feeling in her stomach. "Acted out?"

"Yeah, you know. Got drunk, caused a scene. I know it's because I haven't been spending enough time with you. And I haven't been helping you with the wedding and you were mad about that so you lost control on yourself . It's okay, I get it." He took a big bite of pancake and she felt like a lead weight had been dropped on her.

Roy continued. "So, we'll do all that wedding planning stuff this afternoon. Get it out of the way. Then maybe we can go out, grab something to eat. I need to stop in town and grab a part for my-" The rest of his sentence was lost on her as the meaning of his words sunk in. She gritted her teeth and the heaviness in her stomach tugged down so hard she thought she was going to throw up right then and there. Who did Roy think she was? A spoiled little child who was throwing a temper tantrum just to get noticed? How could he think that her getting drunk last night had anything to do with him?

The sunny, well-lit kitchen suddenly made her feel nauseous. Now that they were actually going to plan their wedding, she should have felt over the moon; she'd been waiting for this exact moment for years. But now, as she sat there listening to him prattle on about how his truck needed a new set of headlights, she could think of a million things she would rather be doing than planning her wedding to Roy.

OOOOOOOOOOOO

Pam sat before the large conference room table in solitude, enjoying the break from her usual post at the reception desk. Earlier that afternoon, Michael had appeared at her desk and shoved a heavy crate in her direction that was full of loose papers— customer complaints and comments that he wanted sorted into logical folders, alphabetized and dated correctly by the end of the day and with a smile. It was a big job and undoubtedly monotonous but she didn't mind. Sometimes office tasks like this made the day go by even faster than it would have done if she were stuck behind her desk answering phones and making copies.

She leaned over and heaved an armful of papers out from the crate beside her, spreading them in a fan-like presentation across the tabletop. She'd decided to make a pile for each office member so the complaints would be easier to locate later. Briefly, she wondered whether or not anyone would actually read these after she'd spent the time to sort them and decided it was pretty unlikely. Oh, well. Re-adjusting herself in her chair, she began to work.

The first complaint she pulled concerned Dwight. Apparently, a customer he'd dealt with a few months ago wrote that he had been " extremely condescending " towards her and implied that she had below average intelligence. Fair enough. Pam created a pile for him, dropping the paper off to one side. She picked up the next complaint, another one for Dwight. This time he had simply been "rude and abrupt . " She let the paper flutter on top of the previous one, grabbing another with her other hand.

In the span of fifteen minutes, her "Dwight" stack had grown significantly, with only a single sheet of paper to a few other of her co-workers in the same amount of time. She was starting to see a trend here. Tilting her head, she was somewhat surprised about this development. Sure, Dwight's social composure wasn't exactly polished, but he was rarely rude to his customers outright. Actually, when she heard him talk on the phone at his desk, she could almost feel the fake sweetness dripping off his words as he spoke into the receiver. It was almost borderline patronizing. I guess the customers felt it, too—especially the female ones. She shrugged her shoulders, moving on to the next complaint.

A soft knock interrupted her thoughts and her eyes lifted to the conference room door, hoping it wasn't Michael with another pointless errand to distract her from this one. Her face lit up when she saw Jim's tall frame occupying the doorway instead.

"Is this your new office?" He indicated the room with his finger, leaning his weight against the doorknob with his other hand.

"Yes, didn't you know? I got promoted to Head of Everything." She gave him her best haughty expression and waved her hand dismissively. "Now close the door."

"Yes, ma'am. " He mocked her with a salute and closed it behind him, taking a look at the papers strewn about the tabletop as he came closer. "Wow, Michael's really got you working on something, huh?"

"Yeah, I'm surprised too." She glanced down at her work again. "I'm supposed to sort through all these complaints. A few have actually been compliments, though."

He bent down to inspect the name on top of the largest pile, his tie hanging down away from his middle. "Whose pile is this?" A knowing smile dawned on him as soon as the words left his mouth. "Ah, I should have guessed."

She nodded. "You should sit and help me. Some of these are pretty entertaining. Plus, there's way more than I thought. I'll have to pick up the pace if I'm going to get all this done today."

He plopped down on the chair beside her, sliding it closer to hers so he could get a good view of the piles she already had going. "Okay, Beesly. I'll help you. But I get a cut of your next paycheck."

She wrinkled up her nose. "Or...you just help me because you're a decent human being?"

"I've never claimed to be one of those." He reached across her to grab up a handful of complaints and started thumbing through them in his lap, hunting for the juiciest ones. He stopped at the third one he read, a chuckle escaping him as he read it aloud.

"The boss of this particular branch seems to be a half-brained monkey who in no way is fit to lead any group of people to accomplish anything at all." He made a low whistle through his teeth and Pam snatched it out of his hand.

"I'm hiding all the ones about Michael. I think we'd all be better off if his colossal ego stayed intact." She shared a knowing glance with him. "Remember when he broke up with Jan..."

Jim quickly nodded his agreement. "Yeah, that's probably for the best." His attention went back to the papers in his hand and his eyes widened as he skimmed one halfway through his pile.

"This one says Kelly told the customer that virginity "just wasn't in style right now. " That can't be right..."

Pam spurted out a giggle, suddenly finding she was enjoying her work much more now that Jim was here to help her. "Can you imagine how their conversation had to have gone to even get close to that topic?" She placed a paper onto someone else's pile, trying to picture how Kelly could veer onto a topic so far off from paper products.

Jim lifted up his eyebrows as he skimmed the rest of the page. "Paper and sex. Those totally go together, Pam." His voice dripped with sarcasm.

"Maybe...if you're perverted." She slapped down another paper onto Dwight's pile with a smirk.

He held up a hand as a show of mock indifference. "Hey, I'm not here to judge. Whatever you do in the privacy of your own home is between you and the paper."

"You have no idea what I do in the privacy of my own home, Halpert." Her voice was starting to purr the words out, as if she were talking to someone she had a crush on, and she felt a blush starting to creep into her face.

She recognized the tone of voice that she was using right now. It was the one she used to flirt with. The only person she had really ever flirted with was Roy, and she hadn't done that in ages; he wasn't exactly the type for any kind of foreplay. Whenever they had sex, it usually started when they were both lying in bed on the weekend and he would just roll over to face her with a certain look in his eye and say "You wanna?" There was no build-up to it.

Jim's eyes were trained on her now. "Well...maybe you should tell me?" He leaned back in his chair a bit and she swallowed, biting her inner lip.

"Nothing exciting." She darted her eyes back to the table, trying to break away from whatever suggestive undertones this conversation had suddenly picked up. Ever since she'd gotten drunk at Poor Richard's that one night, she'd felt a certain degree of awkward embarrassment whenever she was around Jim alone. They had only discussed that night briefly a few days afterward- she asked what had happened that night and he'd told her. She had apologized for making him responsible for her and he'd reassured her multiple times that it hadn't been a big deal.

Still, she wasn't exactly thrilled that he'd seen her like that. She did appreciate the pork chop joke he'd told her about, though.

Pam looked down at the paper she was holding-yet another complaint. Her eyes did a double take when she read the name of the person the complaint was referring to.

Jim saw her body tense up a bit out of the corner of his eye and turned his head towards her. "What's up?"

"Oh, it's not-...it's nothing." She turned the paper over and silently set it off to one side, picking up another as she kept her eyes averted from him.

"What?" His eyebrows furrowed and he stood up to grab the page. Her hand launched out to stop him but he easily beat her to it.

He sat down again as he read it. "Someone complained about you?" He questioned aloud with a raised eyebrow as he continued reading.

"They said I sounded fake on the phone. And that I was unhelpful and...stupid." Her tone was neutral.

"Mmhmm, I see that." He frowned and leaned over to sift through the pile of folders, found the one with her name on it and slid the paper inside. He went to grab another complaint but stopped when he saw her still sitting there, unmoving.

"You don't... believe them, do you?" Jim leaned forward, looking at her in concern.

She shifted in her chair and sighed softly. "No."

Jim eyed her, unconvinced. "Pam...they clearly don't know what they're talking about. It's probably from one of those people who complains about everything just for the sake of complaining. You know how people are."

She bobbed her head up and down, staring off at the wall. "Yeah, I know. It's just...I've just never...gotten a complaint before." She swiped at a strand of hair that had fallen in her face. "It's not that I really care, or anything."

He gave a small sigh of his own and laid a hand on the table. "I'm sure everyone in this office has gotten one. I know I have." Pam looked up at him then, trying not to seem too surprised. "Really?"

"Yup. It was last year. Some lady called me "useless" because I wasn't able to help her find the type of paper she was looking for. To this day I still don't know what the hell she wanted. She explained it to me a million times and I still have no idea." He shook his head at the memory and Pam was reminded of a dog who'd been hit in the nose with a newspaper. She'd always thought in the secret corners of her mind that Jim was adorable, even when he looked a bit downcast as he did now.

"But, I didn't let her bother me. Who the hell is she, right? She's not entitled to drag me down just because I couldn't help her. If you're doing your job, that's all you can do." He rubbed a thumb across the table as he thought. "It's not like this is my dream job or anything. I don't expect much from it. So, I don't really put much stock into people's opinions."

Pam nodded, his words making her feel better. She had never taken criticism well. She found it hard not to take things so personally; a mean comment or back-handed joke often stayed with her for many years. But here Jim was, telling her she could let it roll off her body like a raindrop off a duck's back. It hadn't really occurred to her that she had a choice not to let things bother her. She could just let it go.

"And anyway...anyone who thinks your voice is anything but warm and welcoming is just plain insane." The side of his mouth cocked up and she felt herself blush again.

"Thanks." She couldn't think of anything else to say. All she could think about was how close he was to her, how he was looking at her. His light brown hair fell across his forehead and her fingers itched to brush it back. Swallowing again, she turned away once more and faced the piles of paper on the desk.

"We should get back to this." She kept her voice steady. "I don't want to spend my weekend in here."