When Pam drove home, she was crying but she didn't know it. She'd left without telling Roy—the idea of stopping by the warehouse to see him seemed both absurd and impossible; someone, she was sure, would let him know she'd left early. She entered the house they'd shared for years now and walked directly into the bedroom, still wearing her coat and carrying her purse, to look in the mirror over the vanity.
"Roy," she began, but her voice sounded ridiculous in the empty house and she had to start over.
"Roy, I think we should see other people."
Oh no, no, that couldn't possibly have been more wrong. Try again!
She willed ferocity into her eyes, courage into her voice.
"Roy, I don't want to get married."
That's half of it, I guess. She looked around the room, vaguely wondering whether she should take out a suitcase and pack up a few things, if only to strengthen her conviction, to keep herself from forgetting what it was she needed to do. But the house was half hers—more than that, really, when she considered the fact that her aunt had left it to her.
And I don't want to leave. She paused. I'm not leaving.
She turned back to the mirror, focused on her face. In less than an hour now, Roy would probably be walking through the door—that is, if he didn't choose to go out with Darryl after work. Part of her hoped he would, and an entirely different part wanted him home as soon as possible.
A picture of them sat next to the mirror and she picked it up, turned it over in her hands. It was a photo from high school—some dance that she wasn't even sure of anymore, homecoming or something. Roy was grinning and holding her waist in that ridiculously awkward way that the photographers at high school events always insisted on, and she was beaming. She remembered for the first time in years that she'd taken her glasses off for the photo and couldn't see a thing, and that Roy had slicked his hair back because she'd asked him to…that it was so stiff under her hands and he was so sheepish about having done it ("Hairstyles and crap is for chicks," he'd said) that she'd laughed and laughed.
Look at you, she thought. Ten years is an awful long time to throw away for a guy you work with. Only it isn't really about Jim, is it? It's about me. It's about Pam Beesley.
And suddenly, it wasn't about Jim at all. It was about a little girl who wanted to grow up to be an artist and became a receptionist instead, a little girl who dreamed of traveling the world and had yet to leave the state more than twice. It was about a woman who'd been engaged for three years to a man who didn't look at her drawings and didn't listen to her ideas and who already spent entire weekends in an easy chair watching football games and asking her to get him more beer, please. He wasn't a terrible guy, but he was a guy who didn't want to leave Scranton, a guy who had peaked in high school and knew it and didn't really care. He'd seen what he needed to of the world…the rest of it didn't really interest him.
He could take care of her for the rest of her life, but he'd kill her in the process.
Jim just helped me to realize…what it is I need to do. She pounded her fist, once, on the vanity table with such verocity that it made her wince. Today.
"Roy," she said. "This isn't working out."
And then she heard him.
" What isn't working out?"