Alrighty, folks. You know the drill. Read, review, and eat Jam and bread for breakfast. Reviews will be rewarded with cookies. I do not own any of this, NBC does. Though I'll sell my soul for Jim. Anyway…
He's worked here for a little over three months now, and it's nowhere near as bad as he'd expected. He doesn't have Michael and Dwight to entertain him anymore, let alone Pa—but anyway, there's Call of Duty, and Andy's always good for a laugh.
"Dwight used to love Call of Duty," he says absently, watching as his character dies yet again.
Andy continues staring at his screen. "One of your Scranton buddies?"
Jim snorts and shakes his head. "Well...sort of," he says, holding back a laugh. "Dwight K. Schrute is a special kind of man. Really in a league of his own." And he can't believe he hasn't mentioned Dwight before this, but he really hasn't been thinking about Scranton lately. Well, not too much.
Andy pumps his fist as he blasts a British soldier to the ground, then resumes running across the screen. "What's the 'K' stand for?" he asks.
Jim blinks, surprised. "Well," he says, "Actually the 'K' stands for...it's, um...wow, you know, I don't remember."
Andy shrugs. "Whatever, Big Tuna," he says dismissively, "Now, get your mind back on the game."
And he, does, sort of. But at the same time he's thinking of Scranton, and all the names he knows that start with K. There's Kellan and Keith and Ken...but nothing that belongs after Dwight.
This is bothering him way more than it should.
He thinks about calling and asking, but that would mean talking to Pam, and he knows he can't do that. He cannot do it.
He thinks about emailing Dwight, but that would be silly. It's just the middle name of a man who wasn't even really his friend.
He's enormously relieved when, an hour before closing time, he remembers. It's Kurt.
And once he's gone through that, he begins to remember others as well. Michael Gary Scott, Kelly Pandita Kapoor, Ryan Louis Howard, and Toby Michael Gregory.
But he doesn't know her middle name. It's not something he used to know and forgot, like with Dwight. Because he remembers everything about her so much that it hurts. He couldn't forget her if he wanted to. He does want to.
He wants to know her middle name.
But it's too late now, because they haven't spoken in months and he's missed his chance. It's one more thing he'll never know about her, like what it is to wake up beside her in the morning, and how she looks right before she falls to sleep. It's one more thing he'll never hear her say, along with "I love you," and "I forgive you," and "I trust you."
He can't let himself know.
So...
He swivels around in his chair and examines the woman sitting behind him—Karen. She is pretty, in a way, but he can't imagine her painting something beautiful or tending to flowers on a terrace or making him laugh so hard soda comes out of his nose, and then joining in and doing the same thing.
He can't picture her anywhere but this desk, behind him, hunched over a keyboard.
He doesn't want to picture himself alone.
He turns around and smiles. "Hey," he says, "What's your middle name?"
She tilts her head. "That's a strange question," she says, "Why do you ask?"
"So that when I finally beat you in Call of Duty, I can gloat to a greater extent," he invents wildly.
She finally smiles. It's a nice smile. It's not...his favorite, but she's friendly, and her eyes are laughing. "Amy," she says.
He smirks. "Alright then, Karen Amy. You know you're going to regret that, don't you?"
She laughs, finally. "I'm sure I will," she says.
And his breath catches, because he thinks he can picture her a little better now. And he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to picture anybody but Pam.
But he's starting to forget. Just a little.
