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A little square picture leaning against a mug on Jim's kitchen counter falls forward. The faint tap breaks his trance in the relative silence of his apartment, even over the hum of the refrigerator behind him, and he finally looks up from his lap. He scans the counter top and then slides a stray penny in front of the photo as he props it back up, glancing at his watch. It's a little after 1 AM. He's tired, but not quite tired enough. Slowly reaching into his back pocket, he pulls out the envelope. It was supposed to have been in a box with a teapot. Until now, it had instead been sitting at the bottom of a dresser drawer for months. Throwing it away didn't seem like an option, no matter how many times he imagined himself inevitably chickening out after the first attempt.
Jim runs his thumb gently over the name he'd written on the front, barely grazing it. He almost worries that somehow he'll smear the now long dried ink. One shaking breath...then two. He remembers the confidence coursing through his body the night he'd written it. The strength he'd felt and the hopefulness that it would bring her to him. The thought that, at that point, he had nothing to lose. He can't open it, and doesn't want to relive any of it. With another deep breath, he raises his elbows onto the counter and continues tracing her name with his thumb, resigned.
He can feel the tiny indentation of her name, where the pen had pressed into the paper. He sniffs, and is reminded of his stuffed up nose and the soreness in his face. His eyelids are heavy, but he's still not tired enough. No amount of tired will be enough.
"I miss you," he croaks out. His throat hurts so he clears it to speak again. "This was for you. Supposed to be."
He waves the envelope for a second between two fingers.
"I think if Roy ever saw it he'd kill me, so..."
His voice is coming back but it sounds too loud, even as he mumbles. He looks back up at the photo. It's the only one he has of just the two of them. Some office party...a birthday or maybe one of Michael's silly whatevers...he doesn't remember. Someone, maybe Kelly, was walking around with a Polaroid camera and snapping pictures. Both of them have a paper cup of some sort of drink, and there are purple streamers hanging sloppily on the wall behind them. They're both smiling, looking at the camera, but it's clear the shot was taken just a moment before they were fully prepared. It's a little overexposed, but it doesn't matter.
He steels himself. In the moment, he wishes he could see more details of her face, like the flecks in her irises, or individual eyelashes. He wants to see her face move and react to him - to see the smile form on her lips and catch a glimpse of her tongue as she laughs. The thought that he won't pulses through him, tugs from the last bit of energy he has from the day and warms his face. His words feel like they come straight out of his chest, yet he still can't get his voice to break past a murmur.
"I love you."
Nothing changes.
His vision goes blurry and he squeezes his eyes shut, wincing at the burning sensation it causes. He wipes the tears away, desperate to look at her, to talk to her. One hand can't keep up, so he lays the envelope flat on the counter to free the other. Furious that the tears are keeping him from seeing her, he presses the heels of his hands against his eyes and wipes, blinks, over and over until it's clear again.
"I need you," he breathes out. "So much, Pam." He slides the envelope safely away from himself, terrified of getting it wet. "I don't know how to- do this."
It's a losing battle, he knows it. Not the first lost and certainly not the last, so with that thought he let's go into a sob, every word strained and heavy with effort.
"I don't know how to do life without you. I don't know how to do this and the only person I want to talk to about it is you. And I can't. I'm so in love with you, Pam. So in love. I can't- and somehow I have to go back in and not see you. I won't hear you-"
He has to stop then, the breaths he'd normally take between words now replaced by anguished gasps. He reflects momentarily on how lucky he was to even get any bereavement leave at all, let alone the paltry company standard of three days. That's for family members. That's what Roy got.
The taste of salt coats his lips, the back of his throat, as he swallows and intakes another shaky breath as deep as he can.
"You were everything."
As soon as the words leave his mouth, he's tired enough that he thinks he could fall off the stool onto the kitchen floor. It wasn't the "I love you" after all. He'd admitted it more times in the past three and a half days than he has in the past three years. But this feels more like a confession than any of those. Somehow, it feels more raw.
She was life, his best friend, his home. She really was everything. It was true, and saying it felt like more of a weight off of his shoulders than anything. Even the "I love you" he let slip through tears after the burial ceremony - leaning down to place a kiss on her headstone in front of family and friends. They must've thought nothing of it. No one had said anything, and he thinks somehow that hurts more than if Roy would've beaten him senseless in the street. What if he'd said she was all of it? Everything? What else, really this time, could he lose by shouting it?
He raises a heavy arm and gently grabs the photo, cradles it like his last treasure, careful to keep his fingertips on the white edges. The bedroom is too far away and he opts for the couch. Afraid that he might clutch the picture too hard if he falls asleep with it, he places it flat on the coffee table, but it's absence begins to nag at him and he picks it back up less than a minute later. It's dumb - it's just a picture - but it feels like holding her. It feels like the only way - the closest he will ever get now to holding her. His body forces his eyes shut before he whispers to her again.
"You're my everything."