Author's note: Hey guys! for some reason my jkasdlf computer won't unbold this, so here we go. hahah. I feel like it's been a while since I updated (or even got on fanfiction..), so I'm sorry. BUT this chapter is like SUPER long so hopefully that makes up for it. There's also a LOT that goes on, so. Don't wanna miss it (: Love you guys tons.
"Nope, I don't have a card," Pam muttered, embarrassed. "But, I can do you one better. A little scrap of paper!" She tore the corner off one of Michael's flyers and wrote the company contact information down in the best handwriting she could muster. The man… Russell something? took the pathetic excuse for a business card and thanked her before walking off.
"Sure you don't want any pancakes?" Michael shouted after the man, but he didn't hear (or ignored) her boss. Pam sighed and unwrapped one more roll of paper towels as Michael spilled another batch of pancake batter onto the table beneath him.
"So, is that the fourth roll? Or the fifth?" Pam turned to find Ryan standing behind her, a teasing smirk playing on his lips.
"Shut up," she rolled her eyes and walked toward the trash cans in front of the office building. They had probably gone through 500 paper towels in the twenty minutes they had been outside. Just then, Creed and Meredith came bounding through the lobby doors.
"Hello, Paula," Creed greeted, and Meredith merely grunted as they headed for the pancake table.
"Meredith!" Pam called out, and the red-head groaned before making her way toward Pam once more. "Is, um… Is Jim coming?"
"I don't know, Miss Thing. Now, get out of my way. I need to go steal about thirty pancakes for my kid." Pam rolled her eyes and let her former coworker go. She began to walk back to undoubtedly clean up another one of Michael's messes, when the call of her name rang through the parking lot. She spun around, and delight instantly erupted on her face when she saw the person coming toward her.
"Hey," Jim said when he reached her. "Did'ja save me a pancake?"
"Of course," she giggled. "You know, Michael only made about a hundred. You're lucky you showed up when you did."
"Oh, thank God," he over-acted. "Wouldn't want to miss out on this." She smiled again, and Jim grabbed her hand as they walked toward her boss. "I needed a break from work anyway. Charles has me freaked out over this 'rundown' thing." She looked up, silently questioning him with her eyes. "He wants me to type up a rundown of my clients. What do you think that means?"
"Maybe a list?"
"Yeah, that's what I thought too. But then, why not just say 'list'? Why 'rundown'? Is he trying to make me go insane? It can't be just a list!"
"Well, I don't know then, Jim," she sighed, leaning away from him ever-so-slightly.
He seemed to notice the tension, and pulled her closer, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. "Sorry. I'm not taking this dumb job stuff out on you again. I'm sorry. It's just… I don't know why I keep messing up with Charles. Maybe it's because you aren't there," he joked, poking her in the ribs. She laughed and let a squeal of "Jim!" erupt from her lips, but quickly quieted down when she saw her coworker's face. Ryan was staring after her, subtle hurt tugging at his eyes. She may not have even noticed it if she wasn't so familiar with every single one of his emotions, but she was, and even the smallest of Ryan's pain seemed to cut through her like a knife. She opened her mouth to say something, but he dropped her gaze, and she cleared her throat before turning to Michael.
"So, Michael," he looked up from his cooking. "Jim wants to try one of your famous paper-shaped pancakes."
It was then that her boss seemed to notice Jim standing beside her, and his face exploded with pure excitement. "Oh! Well, of course! Only the best for my Jimbo," he enthused, attempting to flip a giant pancake on his tiny spatula. It fell onto their stack of bright yellow flyers (which doubled as business cards, apparently), sending tiny bits of greasy breakfast food spraying in every direction. "Aw man! Don't worry Jimothy. Another pancake coming right up!"
"Uh, don't strain yourself, Michael," Jim muttered before walking to join Pam at the other end of the table. She sighed and pulled the roll of paper towels from her brown paper shopping bag.
"And that's the end of roll four," Ryan snickered a few feet from her. She glanced over and smirked at him before wiping up everything she could from Michael's flyers. Jim peeked into the shopping bags and let out a low whistle.
"That's a lot of paper towels."
"Yeah," Pam breathed, turning her focus from her current coworker to her current fiancé. "Four rolls down, three to go. You should check out how full the garbage cans are."
"You bought seven rolls!?" he laughed with her. "Sounds like the perfect amount. I can imagine you standing in WalMart for hours, trying to calculate just how many paper towels would be needed for each Michael spill."
"Oh, right," she giggled. "It was so hard to figure out. You should have been there to help me."
His face turned somber, and she instantly wished she could take it back. Even though she was only teasing him, Jim obviously felt bad about ditching her earlier. She always knew that with Jim, she needed to choose her words carefully. Even when she was only joking with him, he took everything she said so seriously. "Yeah, I should have. I'm really sorry, Pam." She squirmed awkwardly, unsure of how to respond. "But," he began again, a more playful tone in his voice. "Looks like you did a pretty good job by yourself anyway."
She smiled. "Well, I didn't think we needed seven rolls. If we had only gotten two like I wanted, you would have walked out here to find us drowning in spilled pancake batter. I guess I'm lucky Ryan came with me." Over Jim's shoulder, she could see Ryan's face light up, ever-so-slightly, and the two locked eyes for a moment until Jim interrupted her.
"Wait, Ryan went with you?" his happy tone had left and was replaced with the one she had heard in the office earlier. That voice had appeared more times today than in the lifetime she had known Jim, and she didn't like it.
"Y-yeah. It was… fun," she stuttered. Ryan chuckled softly behind Jim.
"Fun? Pam, you hate that guy." Before she could respond, Pam heard Ryan's sullen sigh and barely caught his gaze before he turned away.
"I don't hate him, Jim."
"Yes you do," he growled, sounding desperate and jealous; two of the most unattractive qualities a man could wear. "Remember, when you were in New York? And you called and I told you that Ryan had taken over your reception job? And you said… 'I hate that guy.' Remember?"
"No!" she shouted, partly to Jim, but mostly to Ryan. If only she could get him to hear her explanation, then she wouldn't have to look into those heart-wrenching eyes. "I mean, yes, I remember. But… I didn't mean that I actually hated him. It's just like… an expression. Like," she searched her brain for anything that might make this all okay. "Like… Remember back when I was with Roy? And that one time you made me laugh so hard that I said 'I love you'? Obviously I didn't mean that either!"
Jim's eyes twisted into that mixture of pain and disappointment that she'd seen in Ryan's too many times before. "You don't love me?"
"No!" her eyes grew wide. "That's not what I meant." She put her head in her hands, leaning against the pancake table. "Jim," she breathed through her fingers. "Of course I do. I love you so much," she looked up. He was staring down at her, his eyes softening with each word. "That was a… stupid comment. A mistake. I'm sorry. I love you, okay?" He nodded, a small grin forming on his thin lips. "But I don't hate Ryan." The smile left his face.
"Then how do you feel about him?"
Any trace of air left her lungs and she collapsed onto the table beside her. She never thought that Jim would ask her that. "What?" she gasped, trying to regain control of the conversation.
"How," he asked again, his voice rising with each syllable. "Do you feel. About. Ryan?"Both Michael and Ryan looked up at this, and Pam glanced around frantically for a way out. She had no idea how to answer that question.
"I, uh…" she whispered, and her coworkers had the decency to turn away. Michael appeared to focus all of his attention on flipping his eight by eleven inch pancakes, while Ryan decided to walk to the other end of the parking lot. "I do-- I don't…"
"Do you love him?" She whipped up to look at him, an alarm ringing in her head so loudly that he must have heard it. He seemed to mistake her surprise for denial, and continued. "Look, I don't know what went on with you guys when I was in Connecticut, but--"
"Nothing!" she yelled, suddenly finding her voice. "Nothing happened! Jim, I love you!"
"Pam, I'm not stupid!" he shouted back, sounding just as hysterical as she had. "I see the way he looks at you! I can tell how tense and upset you get whenever somebody so much as mentions his name!" Pam buried her head in her hands again, tears springing to her eyes.
"No, no, no," she muttered, shaking her head. This is not happening.
"I never asked you about it, because I figured if it was something serious, you would have told me. But now, I ca-- I just, I… Pam, I deserve to know," he sighed, defeated. She looked up and found his tear-stained eyes staring back at her. "I have to know."
All she could manage to do was close her eyes and lower her head, praying for this to be over. Her mouth managed to form a sentence so quietly that had it not been eerily silent, Jim wouldn't have heard it. "I don't know."
She felt him angrily push away from her and his gruff voice rang loudly through her ears, even though he whispered it so softly that Michael couldn't possibly have picked it up from two feet away. "Call me when you figure it out."
She tried to call out to him, but her voice wouldn't produce any sound. She wanted to collapse onto the hard concrete below, so violently that it tore up her skin and left her life-ruining blood permanently etched into the gravel. But she couldn't even manage to fall. Her world remained dark and silent for what felt like hours, the only sound was Jim's feet constantly walking away from her, the only sight was his tear-stained face. Only when it felt like she couldn't possibly cry any more did the real world come crashing back around her.
She recognized the sound of sloshy liquid hitting the plastic table, and her boss's replying "Oh, come on!" Taking her first breath in what felt like forever, Pam turned around to find pancake batter dripping from Michael's apron onto the table below. She forcefully searched through the grocery bags for something to clean up the mess, again, but couldn't seem to find another roll of paper towels. Just as another batch of tears came flooding through her eyes, Pam felt a soft tap on her shoulder. She turned to see Ryan holding a freshly-opened roll, and without looking him in the eyes, she reached out and ripped a few squares before focusing on Michael's spill. "Pam," her boss whispered, and she took a moment to glance at his concerned face. "I'm sorry."
Somehow, her lips formed a thin, pained smile and she got back to work. She had broken down in front of Michael more times than she would have ever wanted over the years, and he had always been there to silently put the biggest pieces back together. Of course, he never knew how to finish. He always skipped over the pieces that were as tiny as a grain of sand, because he didn't know where to put them. Jim had gotten close, but he couldn't seem to figure out the puzzle. Only one person in her life managed to heal her completely, but she never got the chance to repay the favor. She didn't even realize just how much he had repaired her until it was too late. Until she shattered his heart.
"Alright, I think we're done here," Michael announced, flipping his last pancake. "I'd say it was a pretty successful first day! Wouldn't you? We met some new possible clients, got a visit from some of our old friends up at Dunder Mifflin, and, bonus! We have lunch for the next couple weeks!"
"Mmm, undercooked pancakes," Ryan muttered beside her. The corners of her mouth managed to rise. He hadn't seen that pathetic excuse for a smile since Jim left for Stamford two years ago.
"Okay, slaves. Get this mess cleaned up." Pam sighed at her boss's order and heartlessly scooped up a handful of used paper towels and ruined flyers before heading toward the plastic garbage can. Ryan met her there, and called out as she turned back for their pancake table.
"Uh, Pam?" She didn't have the strength to turn around. "I think I can finish up out here. Why don't you go inside? You know, prepare our closet for Michael's triumphant return." He probably expected a smile, but she could only nod before walking into the once-friendly lobby of the Scranton Business Park. However, the glass doors that had once warmly invited her in were cold, their metal shapes demanding her to turn away. She didn't think it was possible for those doors to slam shut, but they rang out loudly as she walked inside, almost as if they were trying to warn Jim that she had entered. Trying to tell him to duck away and hide, because his awful fiancée had come inside. She turned and headed for her new office, the only thing that didn't scream Jim's name, finally letting the tears fall down her cheeks.
She didn't know when Ryan and Michael joined her. All of a sudden it was two hours later, and she was still sitting in the same chair, head resting on her arms, tears occasionally falling onto the felt poker table below. Ryan was tapping away at the laptop, undoubtedly creating another pointless spreadsheet, while Michael bored the camera crew with an unusual story about his dream the night before. Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds later (she was counting), the phone rang, echoing loudly and remorselessly in their tiny closet of an office. She sniffled slightly and waited for Ryan or even Michael to make a move toward answering it. "Somebody get the phone," Michael called out. She glanced up at Ryan, but he was skillfully hiding behind his laptop screen. She groaned inwardly and reached for the receiver.
"Dunder Miff-- Michael Scott Paper Company, this is Pam." She cleared her throat and waited for the response. Probably a wrong number or Kevin prank-calling them from upstairs. For the twelfth time. She was surprised with the man's reply on the other end of her phone call. "Oh, hi Russell from the pancake luncheon, how are you?" Her eyes grew insanely wide as Michael perked up from his desk. Even too-cool-for-this-job Ryan glanced over with interest. "Well we'd like to do business with you too! How can I make that happen?"
"Keep going," Ryan whispered from the sidelines. She gave him her best "Thank you, Captain Obvious" look before turning her attention back to the phone conversation at hand. He shrugged before Michael interrupted yet again.
"Don't tell them we have free delivery." Both of her coworkers were now dangerously invading her personal space; shrinking closer by the second.
She covered up the mouthpiece before replying. "We already offered free delivery!"
"They don't know that!"
Ignoring her boss's demand, Pam put the receiver to her mouth once more. "Um, I can offer you free delivery on any order that you place today. Okay, twenty boxes? I can do… just a second." Grabbing the calculator from across the table and shoving Michael's hand away, she did some quick math before replying. "Twenty boxes at forty-three dollars a box. Okay, great!"
Ryan thrust a pad of paper in front of her nose. "Write it down." She hastily sketched out "20 $43/box" as Michael gave her more sound-proof sales advice.
"A guarantee of what?"
"Just say the word."
"And I," she began, unsure of where the sentence was headed. Ryan was still motioning for her to write more words on his sheet of paper, while Michael nudged her along with this "guarantee" nonsense. All she wanted to do was soak in a huge bathtub full of bubbles and bath salts and fruity-smelling shampoo. To wash away her confusions about Jim, and Ryan, and take away the stress of her lack of a career with her ex-whatever in their non-office, but instead she was being given brainless advice about a job she could perform blindfolded. With both hands tied behind her back. "I guarantee," she looked toward Michael for emphasis. He lit up like a Christmas tree. "that you will be satisfied! Cause your… satisfaction is our guarantee! We guarantee it… Well, we look forward to doing business with you too. Thank you, Russell."
The room was silent for what felt like hours before the two men beside her came alive. A chorus of yeses and oh my Gods and what just happeneds wrapped around her mind, like a surround sound system in her brain. Michael violently shook her shoulders, while Ryan's hand traced her own. "Pam!" Michael called into her ear. He was louder than she remembered. "We made a sale!"
Suddenly, everything that had gone wrong that morning seemed to melt away. Talk about your small victories. "We… we did it?"
"We did it!" he shouted in return, skipping around his desk in pure joy.
"No," Ryan's smooth voice cut through her silence. "You did it." His fingers brushed by hers again, and she softly took his hand in hers, squeezing slightly when he grinned in response.
"I did it."