FIC: Wear You Down (Karen/Andy)
Title: Wear You Down
Fandom: The Office (US)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Karen/Andy
Length: 9700 words
Summary: Post-"The Job". Karen's having a bad summer, and Andy's there.
AN: Thanks to kyrafic for the read through! I wrote this for the nothing_hip challenge Santa Monica (by Everclear).
**
Karen doesn't hear about Jim and Pam until she comes back in to work on the Tuesday after the interview. She'd stayed in New York all weekend, letting her friends play Dumped Therapists, and called in sick Monday when she couldn't face the office. She spent practically the whole day on her couch in her pajamas, watching The Price Is Right and eating pie for breakfast. What? It has fruit.
But by Tuesday she figures she has to go in, and she's barely been there an hour before the crew drags her into the conference room to do an interview.
The thing about the documentary is, they have to take the all-over chaos of real life and organize every week into an A-plot and a B-plot, nice linear narratives, all sewn up. And a lot of times you can tell what they're wrangling into a plot by the kinds of questions they ask when they interview you. So that ends up being how she finds out that Jim asked Pam out - Ben from the crew asks her about thirty questions about her and Jim, and what she thinks of Pam, and what she thinks of Jim and Pam, and finally Karen says, "Did something happen I should know about?" Ben at least has the grace to look embarrassed.
Finding out your ex hooked up with another coworker via documentary film crew? Is not an appropriate venue for that information. Karen feels the same way she did when she found out her high school boyfriend was gay via Facebook. Can no one sack up and give her important information to her face? God. And to top it all off, Ryan the ex-temp got the job at corporate. Unbelievable.
She is having a really bad week. When Jim broke up with her, she thought at least maybe she'd get the job and be able to move away. But now what? She logs into the web banking for her checking account and keeps hitting refresh like the amount's going to get bigger magically, going to be enough for her to afford to break her lease and put down a deposit on a new place. But there's no way she could afford to move somewhere like New York - on her budget, she can't even afford to move to Philadelphia. Plus, she's still paying her parents back for the deposit on her apartment in Stamford. Doomed. She's doomed. She should've made a savings account for emergency break-up related moving expenses.
Her lease isn't up until January. Oh God. She keeps refreshing the New York craigslist roommate listings, but they're all expensive or sketchy or in Queens, and it gets too depressing after about half an hour.
What's more depressing is that from her desk she can see Jim effing Halpert, who, in the course of the morning, gets up to visit Pam's desk eight and a half times. She feels sort of sick. During visit seven, Andy comes by her desk to drop off some paperwork.
"Hey Karen," he says, and turns to follow her eye line to Pam's desk. "Sorry to hear about you and Big Haircut."
"Yeah," Karen says, looking away and taking the paperwork out of his hand. "Thanks."
"I've been unlucky in love myself lately," Andy says. "So I can sympathize. If you ever need somebody to talk to...."
"Oh," Karen says, moving fast to cut him off. "I don't really want to talk about it, Andy, but thank you."
Andy looks a little taken aback, but says, "All right, well, if you change your mind, you've still got my cell number, right?"
"Sure," Karen says, even though she doesn't, and he finally goes away. She can still see Jim and Pam laughing together out of the corner of her eye.
During visit eight, Karen finally gets fed up with the situation and does the one thing she can do, which is asking Michael if she can take Ryan's old desk in the back.
**
She had really liked Jim, is the thing - liked him more than she'd liked anybody in years. She had all these stupid fantasies about moving to New York together, about him coming along on family vacations and playing basketball with her brothers, about what they'd do next year and the year after that. But it turns out that he never really liked her that much after all - or maybe it's more like, never really thought about her that much, and realizing that is not a great feeling.
On top of how she misses him, on top of the rejection and heartbreak and all that crap, she just feels like an idiot, and the whole thing is on camera for posterity. She can't think why she ever signed a waiver for the documentary to film her in the first place. Which they're always doing now - when Jim and Pam flirt over the copy machine, the camera swivels to Karen for a reaction shot. When Michael makes inappropriate comments about Jim and Pam making out in the supply closet, ditto.
Karen's kind of friends with one of the documentary crew, Chris, and one day she's hanging out with him in the editing room they have down the hall from Dunder Mifflin's office. It's a drab, windowless room with dingy beige walls and equipment and wires all over the place, actually even more depressing than the Dunder Mifflin office. But the crew always has good snacks, so it's not unusual for the documentary subjects to be down there stealing their pretzels.
Chris is telling her how filming's going, talking about Jan throwing all of Michael's clothes out of an upstairs window of the condo, and how their producer, Danny, was practically jumping up and down with glee. "He was almost as excited," Chris says, "as when Jim actually asked Pam out on camera. I thought he was going to wet himself." He must see Karen's face, then, though, because he winces and says, "Sorry."
Karen shrugs and pretends it doesn't matter. "Whatever," she says, grabbing a handful of M&Ms. "He was that excited over Jim and Pam? It's not that big a deal, is it?"
"Nah," Chris says, slowly, clearly trying to think how to change the subject. "It's just been going on for so long. Or whatever. Danny gets over-excited about things anyway."
Karen's stomach is slowly sinking, bad news coming. Like a boyfriend telling you that you need to talk. "So wait, how long has it been going on?" she says, doing her best to sound normal. She's cool, it's cool, why would she care?
Chris rubs his forehead and shrugs. "Since before we started filming, I guess. Hey, did you see Toby's face when he read Dwight's latest memo? That was pretty funny, huh?"
Karen is undistracted. "Since before you started filming...?" she says, trailing off as it hits her. "I mean, he said he had had a crush on her but... they're not, like, some major plot point, are they? I didn't wander into some kind of idiotic Mulder-Scully unresolved sexual tension storyline, right?"
"Um," Chris says again. "Well...." He trails off and doesn't seem to know what to say. Crap. Crap.
"Oh my God," Karen says, sitting down heavily into a chair. "I'm Agent Doggett."
"No," Chris says quickly and extremely unconvincingly. When Karen looks at him, he shrugs helplessly and rubs the back of his neck. "Well, I always liked Agent Doggett," he offers.
God, the day the documentary airs is going to be the worst day of her life.
**
Karen dreads the mandatory company picnic for the whole week before, and when she gets there it pretty much lives up to her expectations. As she gets her plate, full of Jell-O and potato salad, and looks around pathetically for someone to sit with, she might as well be in the 9th grade cafeteria again. Jim and Pam are sitting so close they're practically on top of each other, leaning in and laughing, and she just feels sad, sad and rejected and dumped and alone. Not good enough, as usual; the dork with braces and glasses and bangs she couldn't manage, the one nobody liked. She's totally going to die alone.
She finally spots Toby, her fellow annex buddy, sitting on a red plaid picnic blanket over by the kids' soccer goal, and goes to join him with a feeling of relief.
Toby's a nice guy, but after they've talked about work, and his kid, and last night's episode of Friday Night Lights, they are apparently completely out of subject matter. It's actually a relief when Andy comes up to ask her to be his egg-toss partner.
"Stamford egg-toss all-time champ-amundos!" Andy says, and holds up his hand for a high five. She obliges. They actually have won almost every year since she was hired - Karen played softball in high school, and Andy is more athletic than you'd think.
They're competing against Team Jim and Pam, Team Kelly and Toby, Team Dwight and Michael, and Team Kevin and Oscar. Jim and Pam drop out first, Pam with egg splattered all over herself. Karen feels sort of darkly triumphant over beating them and has to roll her eyes at herself - yeah, winning the egg toss. That'll show them.
Andy's bouncing lightly on his toes, excited, as Karen lobs him the egg. Easy. They each take a step back. Karen can hear Andy singing, "We Are the Champions" under his breath, and there's a light breeze ruffling his hair up. Beside them, Kelly gets distracted and misses a catch, so she and Toby are out too.
By the time the toss is down to two teams, Karen and Andy are ridiculously far apart, and only Kevin and Oscar are still in. Andy's doing a little dance every time he and Karen make a successful catch.
"Andy," she says. "Stop it."
"You gotta loosen up, Fillipelli," Andy says, and does some footwork that makes him look like an idiot. Karen rolls her eyes, and throws the egg underhanded. His dance must've distracted her, though, because as soon as she lets it fly she can tell she severely miscalculated, and the egg goes flying over Andy's head, white against the bright blue sky.
"I've got it!" Andy yells, and takes off running, looking over his shoulder to try to get under the egg.
He's heading right for the edge of the parking lot, though, and Karen just has time to shout, "Look ou-" before he trips over the curb at the edge and goes sprawling across the concrete. There's a collective inhale from everybody watching, and the egg splatters across the pavement five feet beyond him.
When Karen gets up to Andy, he's just managed to sit up, looking pale and a little shaken. His khakis are ripped and his knees are bleeding underneath, and both hands look pretty torn up too. Karen sucks in breath through her teeth. "Are you okay?" she says.
"Um, ouch," Andy says. He's breathing heavily through his nose like he's either in a lot of pain or he's counting slowly backwards from 10 in an attempt to keep his temper. A crowd of coworkers is gathering around as Karen helps him up.
"Where's the first-aid kit?" Karen asks, and when Pam points towards the food, Karen helps Andy limp out of the crowd and over to the picnic tables. He sits down gingerly and Karen faces him, straddling the bench.
"Nice throw," Andy says dryly, as Karen opens up the first-aid kit and starts getting out band-aids and rubbing alcohol. His tone's a little aggressive, but she can tell that he's not really mad anymore. The counting to ten thing must've worked, and it's so weird these days to watch him trying so hard to be normal. "Really excellent," Andy continues. Everyone else has dispersed, mostly to where Michael is giving Kevin and Oscar the egg toss award.
"Yeah, that was my bad," Karen says. "Way to sacrifice your body for the play, though. Even if it was kind of pointless. Let's see your hands."
Andy holds them out palms up, and Karen uses some alcohol wipes to try to clean the little bits of gravel out of his scrapes. "Ow!" Andy says. "Jesus!"
"Don't be such a baby," Karen says, holding his wrist to keep his hand still. She can feel his pulse with her thumb, fast under the skin, and she tries to dab at the cuts as gently as she can.
When she glances up, Andy's watching her. He gets a little red in the face when she catches him, and looks away fast. "So," he says, clearing his throat. "It's a nice day for a picnic, huh?"
"Yeah," Karen says, suddenly self-conscious. Even though it's just Andy. She gets out the Neosporin and starts smearing it on his left hand.
"Hey, do you remember that one picnic, back at Stamford?" Andy says. "The one where Josh wore his bike clothes the whole day?"
Karen had almost forgotten about that, and she laughs. "He looked incredibly ridiculous," she says. She starts applying band-aids to his now disinfected and antibioticized hands. "Why did he find all that Lycra necessary?"
"No idea," Andy says, shaking his head.
"That picnic," Karen says, "was like two weeks after I got hired."
"I remember," Andy says. His voice is a little low, almost an undertone. It's the tone of voice he uses when he's remembering the order-form consolidation the week after that picnic, the one where she drank Andy's tequila and they ended up making out for a little while against the wall outside the women's restroom. She hates when he uses that tone - it's embarrassing, reminding her of all the bad decisions she persists in making.
"Yeah, um," she says, losing her train of thought for a second. She should've learned her lesson that time - never hook up with a coworker, because five years later, you'll still have to see them every day. But stupid Jim Halpert came walking in with his scruffy hair and his messenger bag and his entourage of cameras, and she forgot all about it. God. Moron.
She shakes her head a little bit. "Um, anyway, I think seeing Josh in that outfit was the first time I really thought, 'What have I gotten myself into?', you know?"
Remembering it, she feels like she was so young back then, practically an entirely different person. It's weird that Andy even remembers her like that, straight out of college, still uncomfortable in professional clothes with no idea what she was doing. They've really known each other for a long time. Sometimes Karen forgets that, surrounded by all these Scranton people.
"Yeah," Andy says.
"Here," Karen says. "Put your leg up so I can fix your knees."
"Yes, m' lady," Andy says.
"Don't call me that," Karen says, more out of habit than anything, because this is maybe the twenty zillionth time they've had this exchange over the past five years. Andy must be thinking that too, because after a second they both laugh. When she looks up from his bloody knee, he's smiling at her with that doofus smile he has and she's struck by a strange rush of affection for him. Dumb old Andy.
**
Karen gets her lunch out of the refrigerator, but when she goes to eat it in the break room, Jim and Pam are already in there, kissing. She immediately turns around and heads back into the kitchen.
"That was a fast turnaround," Andy says from where he's rinsing out his coffee mug at the sink. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing," Karen says.
"You mean, Jim and Pam," Andy says, in a surprising burst of insight.
"Er, yeah, actually," Karen says.
Andy looks at her, then turns off the water and puts his mug in the drying rack. "You wanna get out of here? Go out to lunch?" he says.
Karen shrugs. Why not? "Okay," she says.
Andy insists on taking his X-Terra, and on the way they talk about Scranton bars versus Stamford bars, and how neither of them has finished unpacking. It's okay, just regular. But then at a stoplight, Andy reaches over and puts his hand on top of Karen's, where it's resting on her knee.
She jerks her hand away. "What are you doing?"
"What?" Andy says.
"Andy," she says, trying to be patient. "We've been through this." She thought he'd given up on putting the moves on her three years ago, but she should've remembered Andy never gives up.
"Huh?" Andy says. "Geez, Fillipelli, I was just reaching for the glove compartment. Don't have a cow."
"Uh huh," Karen says. "What do you want out of the glove compartment?"
"Um," Andy says. "... Gloves."
"It's like 100 degrees out," Karen says. June is apparently a bitch in Scranton. She misses the beach and the ocean a lot on days like this.
"I know," Andy says, and takes some leather ones out of the glove compartment. "The steering wheel's burning my hands, okay?" He pulls the gloves on one by one and sets his hands back on the wheel. Gloves with his short-sleeved dress shirt look completely ludicrous.
Karen tries not to laugh. "Okay," she says.
"Okay," Andy says, and he wears them the rest of the way to the restaurant.
**
Weekdays are depressing, but weekends are worse. It turns out the only friends she had in Scranton were Jim's friends, so now her time outside of work is filled with nobody at all. On Friday night the fourth weekend after the breakup, she gets home at 5:30 and feels restless and at loose ends. How're you supposed to meet people as an adult, anyway? Take night classes? Join clubs? Maybe she should ask Toby.
She heats up a frozen organic pizza and sits alone in her kitchen to eat it, looking vaguely at the empty white walls and flipping through an old issue of Jane she's already read. When she's done she puts her dish in the dishwasher and wanders into the living room, where there are still a couple of boxes of books she needs to unpack. But she only puts three on the bookshelf before she starts feeling depressed and has to sit on the couch.
No stamina anymore, she thinks, and checks her phone to see if anyone's called. They haven't. She thinks about deleting Jim's number out of her phone's address book, but then thinks if he calls her, she wants it to come up on the caller ID so she can avoid answering.
It's a long quiet night. She has three DVDs out from Netflix, so she figures she might as well get her money's worth by watching them. Her marathon continues into Saturday - she wakes up feeling groggy and lethargic and sort of sad, and figures she deserves a day of lying on her couch watching the first season of The O.C.
In the end, that was probably a bad decision, because she just feels more disgusting after a whole afternoon sitting on her ass, and by 7 pm she feels so terrible she has to take a break. Calls her parents but they're not home, and she doesn't leave a message. It's depressing when your parents have plans on Saturday night and you don't.
Her stomach rumbles and she starts thinking about dinner, which is the point when she realizes there's no food in the house and she hasn't eaten since having some toast when she woke up at 11. Way to be an adult, Fillipelli.
She doesn't know why everything feels like so much effort these days. Just the thought of finding her shoes and getting her purse and walking out to the car makes her tired. She slumps on the couch, and it's finally only the memory of that stupid "Where does depression hurt?" commercial with the sad dog nobody will play with that makes her get up.
"I don't even have a dog," she mutters to herself as she unearths some flip-flops from a pile of clothes in her room. She's not depressed, anyway. She's just tired and has no friends and everything is so much work.
The supermarket is pretty empty on a Saturday night, vacant aisles and white tile stretching under buzzing fluorescent lights. She throws things in her basket, barely thinking about them. Chicken breasts. Special K. Coffee filters. Brownie mix. Whole wheat bread. In the fruits and vegetables section, she wants to get either broccoli or green beans, but some guy is standing right in front of them both, his slumped shoulders blocking the way. She feels irrationally angry - a whole empty store, and he has to stand right where she wants to go, the idiot.
She walks up right beside him and says, "Excuse me," as she leans over to get a head of broccoli.
"No problem," the guy says in a quiet voice, moving over, and when she glances at him, it's Andy. For the first second, before he realizes it's her, he seems kind of subdued. But then he beams and she sees him putting his bravado back on with a little effort, like a heavy coat. "Karen!" he says. "Fancy meeting you here."
"Hey Andy," she says, and tries to smooth her hair behind her ears. Obviously she'd run into someone she knows when she's dressed in her grubbiest clothes and hasn't showered. Stupid depressed Saturday.
Andy's wearing a grass-green t-shirt that says, "Ithaca Is Gorges," and it might actually be the first time she's seen him in a t-shirt instead of a polo or something. It looks strange.
"Getting a little vegetation?" Andy says as she puts the broccoli in the thin plastic bag.
"Yup," Karen says. "Realized I didn't have anything for dinner. You?"
"Yeah," Andy says. "I mean, it's Saturday, so I had a hot date, but it got cancelled at the last minute."
Karen is 90% sure this is a lie, but she's too tired to press him on it. And who cares, anyway? It's just Andy being Andy.
"Hey," Andy says, his tone like something's dawning on him. "Why don't you come over for dinner? I'm a mean hand with the ol' grill. We can fire up some steaks, it'll be mucho deliciouso."
"Oh," Karen says. "Thanks, Andy, but I don't think so."
But he won't let it go, and keeps pressing her until finally it seems like less effort just to go over there already. He can be like a tank sometimes, the way he keeps going the way he wants to go, bearing down on you until you either go under or get out of the way.
Andy's apartment is nicer than Karen would've expected, some framed pictures on the walls, a comfortable looking couch. He has a giant TV, like most single guys she knows, and apparently subscribes to GQ, so basically no surprises there. It just seems more like a home than Karen would've expected, more inviting. There are even curtains, which makes her suspect that maybe his mom did the decorating. In the kitchen, there are dirty dishes in his sink, and he gets her a glass of iced tea.
He has a little backyard, just a few square yards of dying grass and a tiny brick patio with a big grill and a small outdoor table. There are a couple of plastic lawn chairs, one of them a chaise lounge, and Andy insists that Karen sit in it while he grills. The plastic's hot from sitting out all day, but the sun's sinking down behind the one maple tree so the air's cooling off pleasantly, orange sunlight moving through the leaves. Andy lights the charcoal like he knows what he's doing.
"Have you been watching So You Think You Can Dance?" Andy asks her as he puts the steaks on the grill. The corn on the cob he leaves on the table to do a little later - Karen didn't think Andy could cook, but he seems pretty on top of things. Full of surprises, this guy. This is the first time Karen's been over to his house in years.
"No," Karen says. "Is it good?"
"It's awesome," Andy says, and starts telling her about all the different contestants, a running monologue he's clearly pretty enthused about. Karen's relieved she doesn't have to talk and lets herself zone out, watch the sun setting. She can hear a lawn mower going a few yards over, a low buzzing in the summer heat, and the steaks are starting to smell really good. It feels like the cook-outs her parents used to have when she was a kid, the heavy warm air and the fireflies starting to come out and the low murmur of voices. She misses being little, when she didn't have to worry about if anybody loved her, because everyone who mattered did.
Ridiculously, that thought makes some tears prickle up, and she tries to wipe them away surreptitiously. She is so unbelievably pathetic she can't even stand it. Get yourself together, Fillipelli, and stop letting stupid Halpert throw you for this stupid loop.
"You okay?" Andy asks.
"Oh," she says, and tries to laugh. "Yeah, sorry. I think something blew in my eye. What were you saying?" She rubs her eye like she's trying to get something out of it, and after a second Andy goes back to talking about summer television. But as he walks around the grill to get the corn, he puts his hand on her shoulder for a second, big and warm and reassuring. She should shake him off, but she doesn't.
She leans her head back against the chair and closes her eyes. When Andy pauses in his monologue she says, "Uh huh," and lets his voice wash over her, not paying attention to what exactly he's saying. The steaks sizzle and smell delicious, and the glass of iced tea in her hand is sweating condensation, cold on her palm. Somehow she's starting to feel better, just being out of the house doing something summer-y and normal with somebody who likes her. When her mom asks her how her weekend was, she can tell her she was out grilling with friends, and maybe her parents will stop worrying about her like she knows they do. The setting sun feels good against her face, and the cut grass smells nice, and it's good to be outside.
"Steaks are ready," Andy says finally, and starts putting the food onto plates, dishing out the pre-made potato salad. When she opens her eyes it's getting dusky, shadows falling long across his lawn.
"It smells amazing," Karen says, because it does.
Andy blinks and smiles a little shyly, that muted expression on his face like he had in the grocery store before he realized she was there. "Good," he says. "It's nothing fancy."
Karen pulls up a chair at the table and sets her iced tea down in front of her. There's a few minutes of silence as they start to eat. Andy's cutting his steak very carefully, and for once he doesn't seem to know what to say.
"Did you ever watch the first season of The O.C.?" Karen asks.
"Yes!" Andy says, which isn't very surprising, but as they talk it actually seems like he enjoys it in the same semi-ironic-but-not-really way she does, which is. The conversation carries them pretty much all the way through the meal, until they're sitting there with empty plates, still going.
"Oh my God," Andy says, still holding his fork in one hand and gesturing with it. "I totally forgot about Luke and Julie Cooper."
"I know, right?" Karen says. "It's so insane. And awesome. Insanely awesome."
Andy laughs. It's almost completely dark by now, and the moon's bright as it's rising over his house. The air's cooled off so it's just really pleasant, that perfect temperature of a humid summer night, and Karen's surprised by how much she's enjoying herself. Crickets are chirping, and she can hear a sprinkler going next door.
A firefly blinks in the air between them, just over the remains of their meal, and then settles on the index finger of Andy's right hand. It lights up again, and Andy goes still and stares at it like he doesn't know quite what to do.
"Hey," Karen says quietly, trying not to startle it. Do bugs even get startled? "Look at that."
"Huh," Andy says. The firefly flashes, a cool summer-y light on his hand.
"You should get a jar with holes in the lid, and put it in there with some sticks and stuff," Karen says.
Andy laughs a little. "Nah," he says, and smiles. "Lightning bugs should be free." They watch it blink one more time, and then Andy blows on the firefly gently until it flies off towards the trees, a tiny light in the darkness.
**
The week after, Andy starts calling her almost every night, just to talk. She should've known he'd do this - at the slightest encouragement, he gets clingy. That first year, after she made out with him she had to stop speaking to him for four months to get him back to normal.
She knows she should stop taking his calls but, well, no one else is calling her. And it's nice to have somebody who really wants to talk to you, even if it is Andy. She lets him talk about Lost and Heroes while she makes dinner, or they watch TV together. Karen's older brother gave her his old, tiny TV, which she put in her bedroom so she can watch as she's falling asleep. And these days more often than not, she's talking to Andy while she does. She guesses neither of them really have other people to talk to.
"Ooh," she says, throwing back the covers and climbing into bed. "Turn to channel 64, they're doing cataract surgery."
She hears the background noise on his end change and then Andy makes a pleased, disgusted noise. "That is revolting," he says.
"I know, right?" Karen says. They watch it for ten minutes before Andy tells her to switch to the Friends rerun on channel 10.
It's Rachel's birthday, and the friends are throwing her two simultaneous surprise parties to keep her divorcing parents away from each other. It's a really old episode, one Karen hasn't seen in forever.
"Wow, Ross and Rachel," Andy says. "I almost forgot about those guys. Is this from before they were on a break?"
"I guess," Karen says. "Everybody looks really young." Her eyes are starting to drift shut and she shifts against the pillows. The room's dark, the only light from the flickering of the TV, and the phone's cool against her ear.
Ross is wearing Rachel's dad's glasses when Karen blinks her eyes open again, and Andy's saying something about Ross annoying him.
"I know," Karen says sleepily. "I hated that dumb Ross and Rachel stuff."
"Booooring," Andy agrees. Now Rachel's dad's yelling at Ross. Karen's eyes close again and she yawns. "Are you falling asleep?" Andy asks, in a slightly wistful voice. "You want to hang up?"
"Oh," Karen says. "No, that's okay. If you don't mind." She sort of likes having Andy on the phone with her. After the break-up with Jim, but before Andy started calling, a lot of times she'd stay up way too late for no reason, just because going to bed seemed kind of lonely, her apartment way too quiet. This is better.
"I don't mind," Andy says, and she eventually falls asleep still holding the phone, listening to him talk quietly about Chandler and Monica.
**
Karen's trying to get some work done at her desk in the back while simultaneously carrying on a distracted conversation with Kelly about Forever 21. It's a skill she's been cultivating over the past few weeks, and when her IM window flashes she barely breaks concentration.
"Uh huh," she says to Kelly, as she clicks over.
howdy, pardner, Andy has just typed. He's been on a cowboy kick lately, Karen doesn't know why.
what's up? Karen types back. "Yeah," she says to Kelly. "I got 4 tank tops there last week for like $12, it was ridiculous."
lunchtime? im starved, Andy sends.
"Ridiculously awesome," Kelly says.
sure, me too, Karen types, then says, "They'll probably fall apart in two weeks, but whatever."
Two minutes later, Andy sticks his head into their cube, holding two brown paper bags. "I grabbed your lunch out of the fridge," he says.
"Oh, thanks," Karen says vaguely, as she saves the spreadsheet she was working on. When she gets up, she notices that Kelly's looking at her like she's gone crazy. "What?" Karen says.
Kelly looks between her and Andy for a second. "Nothing," she says finally.
In the breakroom, Karen and Andy grab the farthest table and start getting their lunches out. Karen packed hers last night to be all healthy and whatever, which means that now she has basically no interest in eating her lunch at all. She looks at her tupperware full of salad with distaste.
When she looks up, Andy's pulling a sandwich out of his lunch bag and looking at it kind of the same way.
"What have you got?" Karen says.
"Egg salad on rye," Andy says. "You wanna trade?"
"Definitely," Karen says, and passes her salad and fork over. Food always tastes better when somebody else makes it, anyway. And Andy makes kickass egg salad.
**
Since the branches merged, their office covers a lot more territory, and Karen and Andy both still have a lot of clients in the Stamford area. By July, some of those accounts are coming up again, and Michael thinks that they better go and talk to them in person. He's right, but she's not enthused about driving all the way up there. Plus, they'll have to spend the night, since some of the places are more than three hours away and they have appointments on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. At least it means missing two days at the office, she guesses.
Tuesday morning she dreams about Jim, him kissing her and holding her hand, and she wakes up to an empty bed on a dark rainy morning. On top of that, she has a killer headache that even Advil and coffee don't fix. Sucks when you've been awake for ten minutes and are already having a terrible day.
The rain's let up by the time she leaves for the Dunder Mifflin parking lot, just before nine, but it's still a foggy morning, gray and misty, oppressive. The clouds are so dark it's hard to even fully wake up, and the whole atmosphere isn't doing wonders for Karen's mood. When she gets to the building, Andy's leaning against his car wearing one of his ugliest ties, a duffel bag on the ground next to him.
"I'm driving," Karen says as she gets out of her car, and Andy's eyebrows go up behind his sunglasses. She must've said it a little more aggressively than she meant to.
"Whooooa, hokay," he says. "Little Miss Crankypants."
She has the feeling it's going to be a long couple of days. At the other end of the parking lot, Jim's getting out of his car, and when he sees her looking, he waves. She's about to wave back, but then sees Pam getting out of the passenger side and her stomach takes a nose dive.
"Here," she says to Andy, turning away and going to open the trunk of her car. "Let's get out of here already." He slings his duffel bag in, and she can see him following her look to Jim and Pam.
"Forget them," he says in an undertone. It almost makes it worse he's being sympathetic, though, like she's some person you should pity.
"Yeah," she says, and she can hear her voice coming out irritable. She tries to soften it. "I mean," she says, more nicely. "Sorry. Let's just go, okay?"
"Sure," Andy says, and gets in the car.
They actually used to go on sales calls together like this all the time, which at least makes it easier, having a routine. She only has to tell him no a cappella twice, and at a gas station on the way up he buys her the kind of chips she likes. Oh, Andy. Creepily never forgetting a thing.
It's a long day, driving and selling paper and going over figures and being nice to people she doesn't like much. By 8 that night, she's made three mid-size sales that'll be a really nice chunk of commission, but she didn't make the last big one that she was counting on. It's frustrating, trying to compete with Staples's prices. So she's discouraged and exhausted and feeling like nothing's going right for her. No boyfriend, no sale, just a loser living in Scranton, Pennsylvania who nobody cares about. And even Andy's dragging a little bit.
"You wanna get dinner?" Andy says. "I've had it."
"Me too," Karen says. "But let's find a hotel first."
Andy shrugs and they pull off at a Holiday Inn at the next exit. But when they ask for two rooms at the front desk, the clerk tells them they're all booked up. "Nothing at all?" Karen says. Fabulous. When she looks at Andy, he makes a face. "Okay, well, thank you," Karen says.
Andy spots a line of payphones with phone books as they leave, and nods towards them. "Why don't we call around and find a place with a vacancy?" he says.
So they start calling, but every hotel is completely booked. By the time Andy's talking to the fifth one, he finally asks what on earth is going on.
"State youth soccer tournament," he says to Karen as he hangs up his cell. "And some kind of giant golf course manager convention. Everywhere around here is full."
"Oh God," she says. "Fantastic. What now? Go way out of town?"
"I don't know," Andy says. "I have that meeting with the public library at 8:30 in the morning, I don't want to be too far away."
Karen slumps against the wall. "I know."
"Hey," Andy says, and actually snaps his fingers. "I know. We can stay with my mom. She still lives right around here."
"Oh, no," Karen says. "We can't do that."
"Why not?" Andy says.
"Um, because it's weird?" Karen says. "And the company's paying for a hotel, anyway?"
"Yeah, but the hotels are booked," Andy says.
"We just have to go farther away," Karen says.
Andy rolls his head back in an exhausted, exasperated movement. "C'mon, Karen," he says, sounding fed up. "Even that place way out in Bridgeport was full. I don't want to drive another hour tonight, and then have to drive back in rush hour traffic tomorrow. The whole point of staying in Stamford tonight is so that we don't have to keep driving back and forth."
"Yeah, but," Karen says, and can't think what else to say. She's too tired to have these dumb fights. "We can't just stay with your mom. It's a huge imposition."
"No, it's not," Andy says. "She won't mind."
Karen rubs at her forehead and thinks about how much she doesn't want to drive anymore tonight either.
Andy must sense weakness. "I'll call her right now," he says, and she should protest again, but she doesn't.
**
The house where Andy grew up is an ordinary brick one in the suburbs, down a quiet tree-lined street. Andy takes them in the back door, through the garage, and barely knocks before opening the door and letting himself in. "Hello!" he calls, and as Karen follows him through the door, hauling her overnight bag, a pleasant looking woman in her 50s comes beaming into the kitchen to greet them. As she's hugging Andy, Karen looks around the kitchen, which is warm and friendly looking. There's a magnet on the fridge saying "Bless this mess," just like the one Karen's mom has, and there's a gray cat stalking down the counter over some Land's End catalogs, and Karen feels like it's been a long time since she's been in a real home, where real adults live. She can feel herself relaxing a little bit, tension from the bad day leaving her muscles.
"And you must be Karen," Andy's mom says, and Karen's surprised when she pulls her into a hug. It's been too long since anybody's hugged her, and Andy's mom feels really mom-like, soft and homey and loving. It's unexpectedly affecting.
She thinks how ridiculous it is that one bad breakup makes her practically into an orphaned Harry Potter getting hugged by Mrs. Weasley. Maybe she should go home and see her parents some weekend soon.
"You kids must be starved," Mrs. Bernard says. "You want some scrambled eggs?"
"Oh, you don't have to," Karen starts, but Andy says, "That sounds great, Mom," and it's too late.
Andy seems really relaxed here, really comfortable. It's weird to watch. He leans against the kitchen counter and tells his mom about the meetings they had during the day, and about some plumbing problem he apparently had at his apartment, and there's almost no bluster at all. Seeing him all normal and calm like this, he's actually sort of attractive. And wow, there's a word she doesn't usually apply to Andy Bernard.
They all sit at the kitchen table to eat the scrambled eggs, and Karen's feeling a lot better now that she's eating and getting a chance to rest. The conversation's easy and relaxed, and she feels more at home than she has in awhile.
"Oh," Andy says as he's finishing his eggs. "Did you want me to look at the VCR for you?"
"If you don't mind," Andy's mom says. "I still can't get it to play tapes without that fuzzy line in the middle."
"Sure thing," Andy says, and excuses himself to go into the living room, where Karen hears the TV go on.
She starts clearing the plates, and as they're cleaning up the kitchen, Andy's mom asks her about where she's from, and how she likes Scranton, and somehow they get on the subject of Jim. And for some reason Karen finds herself telling her a lot more than she means to about moving to Scranton, and how hard she worked at the relationship, and how Jim broke up with her and asked Pam out the same day. Andy's mom must have a really open face or something, because Karen's barely told her own mom this much. Or maybe she's just ready to talk about it now, and Andy's mom's a really good listener. She doesn't even give Karen any advice - she just looks at her like she understands, and says things like, "That must have been awful for you." Karen almost wants to cry.
It's just as well Andy comes back into the room when he does, because she's starting to get a little choked up and given any more time she'd probably break down sobbing like some maniac. But thankfully he walks back in with his hands in his pockets and says, "Fixed it!"
"Did you?" Andy's mom asks, sounding pleased. "How?" She walks around the kitchen island, and as she does, puts a reassuring hand on Karen's shoulder. For a second, Karen's reminded of Andy doing the same thing weeks before, his warm hand gentle. Geez. She's a basket case, cataloging every little human contact.
"I just had to recalibrate it," Andy's saying. He looks at Karen, but he doesn't seem to notice if she still looks a little teary. Either that or he's pretending not to.
**
"I'm going to put you in Matt's room," Andy's mom says as Karen follows her up the stairs. She opens the third door on the right to show a small bedroom with blue walls and a set of bunk beds with green striped comforters. It's obviously the bedroom Andy's brother had since childhood, with a strange mix of little boy and teenage artifacts layered on top of each other. There are Little League trophies on top of the dresser, but one of them has tassels from a high school graduation hanging on it. The shelf of books ranges from the Berenstein Bears to Tom Clancy.
"Here are some towels," Andy's mom says, putting her hand on a stack of red ones on the desk. "And I've put clean sheets on the bottom bunk. Now, just let me know if you need anything."
"Thank you so much," Karen says. "It's so nice of you to put us up for the night."
"Oh, it's wonderful to have you," Mrs. Bernard says, touching her arm, and turns to Andy. "And you'll be fine in your old room, right?"
"Sure thing, Mom," Andy says, and kisses her on the cheek.
"Okay," she says. "Night, sweetie."
As she leaves the room, Andy shoves his hands into his pockets. He's loosened his tie, but is otherwise still wearing his work clothes, and somehow manages to look sort of pleasantly rumpled.
"You wanna go watch some TV or something?" Andy asks.
"Sure," Karen says, and follows him out of the room and back downstairs. "So that's your brother Matt's room?"
"Yeah," Andy says. The upstairs hallway is full of framed family pictures, and Andy points at one as he walks by. "Matt. He's a cop now." The picture is of three boys, and when Karen looks closer, Andy's the middle-sized one, maybe seven or eight, missing a front tooth. Matt is the smallest in the picture, a couple of years younger, and all three of the boys look an awful lot alike. "And that's Robby," Andy says, pointing at the oldest. "Rob. He's a doctor." He pauses for a second, and then says, "And I'm a paper salesman."
"What's wrong with that?" Karen says.
Andy shrugs. "Nothing," he says, and keeps walking.
As they start down the stairs, Karen says, "Middle child, huh?" She feels like maybe this explains a lot.
"Yeah," Andy says.
"You were cute," Karen says as they pass another picture, and he half-turns his head so she can see that he's smiling a little bit.
She follows him down to the basement, which is set up as a rec room. Andy just turns on one standing lamp in the corner, so the light is kind of rosy and dim. It's getting pretty late. "So I guess in high school, this is where you brought all the girls," Karen says.
Andy grins a forced grin, a shadow of his bluster coming back. "Oh yeah," he says. "Lots of girls. Lots and lots of girls."
Karen looks at him and flops down on one side of the couch. "There weren't any girls, were there?" she says. She feels vaguely affectionate towards him, how much of a loser he is and how much he tries to hide it.
Andy pauses, then looks a little sheepish and shrugs wryly. "Nah," he says, and collapses on the other side of the couch from her. He turns on the TV and tosses her the remote. "You can choose," he says, and leans his head back against the couch. "I'm beat."
Karen kicks off her shoes and puts her feet up, stretching her legs out along the couch. She flips through channels until she gets to a rerun of That '70s Show. It's just in the last ten minutes or so of the episode, and she moves around a little, trying to get comfortable. In doing so, she inadvertently kicks Andy in the leg.
"Hey," he says.
"Sorry," she says, and tries to contort herself so she's not in his way, but the couch isn't quite long enough and she accidentally kicks him again.
Andy laughs. "Here," he says, and grabs her feet to pull them into his lap. He leaves one hand resting on her left instep, heavy.
"Oh," she says. "Thanks." His hand is warm on her bare feet, his thumb just barely moving back and forth against her skin. She probably shouldn't be doing this either, lying on the couch with her feet in Andy's lap, but she's exhausted and she really doesn't care anymore. And it's comfortable, anyway.
"No problem," he says.
She settles her head against the couch cushions. "I like your mom," she says.
Andy smiles. "Yeah," he says.
Watching TV with Andy in person isn't that different from on the phone, she thinks. As they watch the end of That '70s Show, Andy makes some remarks on the hotness of Jackie, and she counters with the hotness of Kelso, which then makes Andy agree and say he'd go gay for Ashton, information she could've done without. Karen settles her head back into the couch cushions and starts feeling sleepy.
The show winds up and the channel switches over to a rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond. Karen tosses Andy the remote. "Your turn," she says. "Find something awesome."
"Yes, ma'am," Andy says, and starts flipping. Karen watches the channels flicker by. A Law & Order, a documentary on WWII, MTV kids on a beach dancing, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Will Arnett in what looks like Will & Grace?
"Wait, wait, go back," Karen says, sitting up and putting her hand on top of Andy's on the remote control. He obediently turns it back and she stares at the screen. It's Will Arnett, all right, as a backup dancer for Janet Jackson.
She's so confused she doesn't even realize that she's left her hand on Andy's until she glances back over at him to say something about Janet Jackson and he's looking down at their hands. When he's looking down like that, his eyelashes look weirdly long against his cheeks in this dim light.
She's about to pull her hand away when he laces his fingers through hers.
"Andy," she starts, but she's clearly lacking conviction.
He doesn't say anything, just lifts her hand to kiss the back of it. It should be a sort of ridiculous gesture, and it mostly is, but at the same time it's weirdly sweet and serious. Karen doesn't quite know what to do, and her indecision means she doesn't pull away. She's too tired, her brain's working too slow.
He looks up at her and says, "C'mere." Her stomach actually flips over a little bit at his tone, which probably shows there's something seriously wrong with her. It's just Andy, and yet.
"This isn't...," she starts weakly.
"Yeah, I know," Andy says, a little impatiently. Then he's leaning over and kissing her, his hand splayed across her cheek, his fingertips light against her neck.
She's kissing him back before she's even sure what she's doing. It's not like she wants to be dating him, but it's like this thing with Andy, whatever it is - she's just too tired not to. Tired and worn down. And it's comfortable, kissing him. One more thing she wasn't expecting.
**
She wakes up the next morning with a horrible feeling like she's made a terrible mistake. It only takes her a second to remember what it was. Making out with Andy, good. She's run out of fresh mistakes and is now recycling old ones.
She manages to slip into Matt's bathroom for a shower and back into Matt's bedroom without being seen, but her luck runs out once she's dressed and heading downstairs to the car. She runs into Andy in the hallway between their rooms.
"Morning," Andy says cheerfully, and goes to kiss her.
"Whoa!" Karen says, trying to be firm but keep her voice down at the same time, in case his mom is around. This ends up coming out in a semi-hysterical whisper. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Uh, what does it look like I'm doing?" Andy says.
"It looks like you should cut it the hell out," Karen says.
"Do you have some kind of amnesiac brain disorder?" Andy says, starting to look annoyed. "You have any recollection at all of how you spent last -"
"Good morning," Andy's mom says, coming out of her bedroom. Karen jumps and Andy abruptly breaks off with what he's saying.
"Hi, Mrs. Bernard," Karen says.
"Morning, Mom," Andy says, but he's still looking at Karen.
"There's cereal and coffee downstairs if you're hungry," Andy's mom says, looking back and forth between them like she's a little confused.
"Great, thanks," Karen says, and flees.
**
Once they've pulled away from his mom's house, Andy doesn't say anything for the first five minutes of the drive to the public library, and finally Karen can't really stand it. "Look, Andy," she starts. "I just think last night was a mistake."
"Uh huh," Andy says. He's got his sunglasses on, and is turned away from her, looking out the window.
"I'm not really ready for a relationship right now," she continues, figuring he's still mad, but when he turns back around, he's suppressing a smirk.
"Okay," he says, and nods like he's humoring her.
"What?" she says.
"No, please continue," he says. "I like this little tradition we've built up."
Well, now she's starting to get annoyed. "What tradition is that?" she says.
"Making out followed by lame excuses," Andy says. He's smirking like he thinks they'll do it again next week. Asshole.
She makes an irritated noise. "Well, don't get used to it."
He reaches for the radio. "Whatever," he says. "We'll see." Ugh, he's the most infuriating person she knows. He scans radio stations until he finds oldies, the Byrds singing about a time for every season. At the public library, he makes the sale.
**
By the time they've driven all the way back to Scranton, things are pretty well back to normal. They bicker over what radio station to listen to, and whether Krispy Kreme is better than Dunkin Donuts. She thinks maybe he'll just forget about the whole thing, but then when he gets out of the car back at the office, he says, "I'll call you later?" And he's got this look, a little nervous and vulnerable, and oh God.
She intends to tell him that's not a great idea, but what comes out of her mouth is, "If you want." What is the matter with her?
But when he calls that night, just before bed, he's pretty much the same as he always has been, doesn't say anything awkward, so maybe it's okay. She crosses her fingers and then wonders what she's wishing for.
**
Friday, she's gearing up for another empty weekend when Andy calls and asks her to go to a movie.
"Oh," she says. "I don't know, Andy...." She trails off, opening her freezer to see if she has anything decent to eat. She doesn't.
"Come on, Karen, it's Die Hard. Everybody loves Die Hard."
Karen rolls her eyes. "Everybody?" she says.
"Everybody awesome," Andy says, and she can tell he's smiling.
She puts up a little more token resistance, but Andy grinds her down until she finally agrees to go. It doesn't take that much, especially when she has an big fat load of nothing planned for the evening.
"You should be a salesman," she tells him, after his Die Hard spiel winds down, and he laughs.
When he comes to pick her up, he's wearing a sports coat, and he goes around to her side of the car to open the door for her.
"Aren't you way too hot in that jacket?" Karen says. It's freaking July, and she's wearing jeans and a t-shirt and is still too hot. Besides, they're just going to a movie, for heaven's sake.
Andy shrugs and changes the subject, but when they get to the theater, he says, "Stay there," and jumps out of his side of the car to run around and get her door.
She opens it herself and is out of the car by the time he makes it all the way around, and she rolls her eyes at him. "Andy," she says. "This isn't a date, is it?"
"What?" he says, trying to sound incredulous. "A da - where would you get the idea that this is a date?"
"Okay," she says, but gives him a hard look. She insists on buying her own ticket, but he says something about chivalry when it comes to the snacks.
"Yeah, Junior Mints," Karen says. "Just like the knights of old used to buy."
"Sir Gawain and the Green Jujube," Andy says. "You didn't read that one?"
She doesn't want to, but she laughs. Andy looks pleased.
The movie is actually pretty good, kind of funny with lots of explosions. Andy makes her share his popcorn, and the theater's cool and air-conditioned, and she has to admit she's enjoying herself.
She's got her arm on the armrest between her and Andy, and sometime during the tenth explosion, Andy goes to put his arm there and accidentally elbows her.
"Sorry," he whispers, and she smirks and elbows him back.
"Hey, you're hogging it," he whispers again, and playfully knocks her elbow off.
There's a brief scuffle over possession of the armrest, which Andy eventually solves by letting her have it and then resting his arm on top of hers, like she's the armrest. Karen rolls her eyes but lets him do it.
After a minute or two, Andy reaches down and links their pinkies together, so they're just barely holding hands. She'd shake him off, but it actually feels kind of nice.
You know what you call someone who calls you every night, and who you make out with at his mom's house, and who holds your hand Friday night at the movies, and who is a boy who is a friend? Karen's brain asks treacherously.
Oh, shut up, Karen thinks at herself. So what.
**
END
Fandom: The Office (US)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Karen/Andy
Length: 9700 words
Summary: Post-"The Job". Karen's having a bad summer, and Andy's there.
AN: Thanks to kyrafic for the read through! I wrote this for the nothing_hip challenge Santa Monica (by Everclear).
**
Karen doesn't hear about Jim and Pam until she comes back in to work on the Tuesday after the interview. She'd stayed in New York all weekend, letting her friends play Dumped Therapists, and called in sick Monday when she couldn't face the office. She spent practically the whole day on her couch in her pajamas, watching The Price Is Right and eating pie for breakfast. What? It has fruit.
But by Tuesday she figures she has to go in, and she's barely been there an hour before the crew drags her into the conference room to do an interview.
The thing about the documentary is, they have to take the all-over chaos of real life and organize every week into an A-plot and a B-plot, nice linear narratives, all sewn up. And a lot of times you can tell what they're wrangling into a plot by the kinds of questions they ask when they interview you. So that ends up being how she finds out that Jim asked Pam out - Ben from the crew asks her about thirty questions about her and Jim, and what she thinks of Pam, and what she thinks of Jim and Pam, and finally Karen says, "Did something happen I should know about?" Ben at least has the grace to look embarrassed.
Finding out your ex hooked up with another coworker via documentary film crew? Is not an appropriate venue for that information. Karen feels the same way she did when she found out her high school boyfriend was gay via Facebook. Can no one sack up and give her important information to her face? God. And to top it all off, Ryan the ex-temp got the job at corporate. Unbelievable.
She is having a really bad week. When Jim broke up with her, she thought at least maybe she'd get the job and be able to move away. But now what? She logs into the web banking for her checking account and keeps hitting refresh like the amount's going to get bigger magically, going to be enough for her to afford to break her lease and put down a deposit on a new place. But there's no way she could afford to move somewhere like New York - on her budget, she can't even afford to move to Philadelphia. Plus, she's still paying her parents back for the deposit on her apartment in Stamford. Doomed. She's doomed. She should've made a savings account for emergency break-up related moving expenses.
Her lease isn't up until January. Oh God. She keeps refreshing the New York craigslist roommate listings, but they're all expensive or sketchy or in Queens, and it gets too depressing after about half an hour.
What's more depressing is that from her desk she can see Jim effing Halpert, who, in the course of the morning, gets up to visit Pam's desk eight and a half times. She feels sort of sick. During visit seven, Andy comes by her desk to drop off some paperwork.
"Hey Karen," he says, and turns to follow her eye line to Pam's desk. "Sorry to hear about you and Big Haircut."
"Yeah," Karen says, looking away and taking the paperwork out of his hand. "Thanks."
"I've been unlucky in love myself lately," Andy says. "So I can sympathize. If you ever need somebody to talk to...."
"Oh," Karen says, moving fast to cut him off. "I don't really want to talk about it, Andy, but thank you."
Andy looks a little taken aback, but says, "All right, well, if you change your mind, you've still got my cell number, right?"
"Sure," Karen says, even though she doesn't, and he finally goes away. She can still see Jim and Pam laughing together out of the corner of her eye.
During visit eight, Karen finally gets fed up with the situation and does the one thing she can do, which is asking Michael if she can take Ryan's old desk in the back.
**
She had really liked Jim, is the thing - liked him more than she'd liked anybody in years. She had all these stupid fantasies about moving to New York together, about him coming along on family vacations and playing basketball with her brothers, about what they'd do next year and the year after that. But it turns out that he never really liked her that much after all - or maybe it's more like, never really thought about her that much, and realizing that is not a great feeling.
On top of how she misses him, on top of the rejection and heartbreak and all that crap, she just feels like an idiot, and the whole thing is on camera for posterity. She can't think why she ever signed a waiver for the documentary to film her in the first place. Which they're always doing now - when Jim and Pam flirt over the copy machine, the camera swivels to Karen for a reaction shot. When Michael makes inappropriate comments about Jim and Pam making out in the supply closet, ditto.
Karen's kind of friends with one of the documentary crew, Chris, and one day she's hanging out with him in the editing room they have down the hall from Dunder Mifflin's office. It's a drab, windowless room with dingy beige walls and equipment and wires all over the place, actually even more depressing than the Dunder Mifflin office. But the crew always has good snacks, so it's not unusual for the documentary subjects to be down there stealing their pretzels.
Chris is telling her how filming's going, talking about Jan throwing all of Michael's clothes out of an upstairs window of the condo, and how their producer, Danny, was practically jumping up and down with glee. "He was almost as excited," Chris says, "as when Jim actually asked Pam out on camera. I thought he was going to wet himself." He must see Karen's face, then, though, because he winces and says, "Sorry."
Karen shrugs and pretends it doesn't matter. "Whatever," she says, grabbing a handful of M&Ms. "He was that excited over Jim and Pam? It's not that big a deal, is it?"
"Nah," Chris says, slowly, clearly trying to think how to change the subject. "It's just been going on for so long. Or whatever. Danny gets over-excited about things anyway."
Karen's stomach is slowly sinking, bad news coming. Like a boyfriend telling you that you need to talk. "So wait, how long has it been going on?" she says, doing her best to sound normal. She's cool, it's cool, why would she care?
Chris rubs his forehead and shrugs. "Since before we started filming, I guess. Hey, did you see Toby's face when he read Dwight's latest memo? That was pretty funny, huh?"
Karen is undistracted. "Since before you started filming...?" she says, trailing off as it hits her. "I mean, he said he had had a crush on her but... they're not, like, some major plot point, are they? I didn't wander into some kind of idiotic Mulder-Scully unresolved sexual tension storyline, right?"
"Um," Chris says again. "Well...." He trails off and doesn't seem to know what to say. Crap. Crap.
"Oh my God," Karen says, sitting down heavily into a chair. "I'm Agent Doggett."
"No," Chris says quickly and extremely unconvincingly. When Karen looks at him, he shrugs helplessly and rubs the back of his neck. "Well, I always liked Agent Doggett," he offers.
God, the day the documentary airs is going to be the worst day of her life.
**
Karen dreads the mandatory company picnic for the whole week before, and when she gets there it pretty much lives up to her expectations. As she gets her plate, full of Jell-O and potato salad, and looks around pathetically for someone to sit with, she might as well be in the 9th grade cafeteria again. Jim and Pam are sitting so close they're practically on top of each other, leaning in and laughing, and she just feels sad, sad and rejected and dumped and alone. Not good enough, as usual; the dork with braces and glasses and bangs she couldn't manage, the one nobody liked. She's totally going to die alone.
She finally spots Toby, her fellow annex buddy, sitting on a red plaid picnic blanket over by the kids' soccer goal, and goes to join him with a feeling of relief.
Toby's a nice guy, but after they've talked about work, and his kid, and last night's episode of Friday Night Lights, they are apparently completely out of subject matter. It's actually a relief when Andy comes up to ask her to be his egg-toss partner.
"Stamford egg-toss all-time champ-amundos!" Andy says, and holds up his hand for a high five. She obliges. They actually have won almost every year since she was hired - Karen played softball in high school, and Andy is more athletic than you'd think.
They're competing against Team Jim and Pam, Team Kelly and Toby, Team Dwight and Michael, and Team Kevin and Oscar. Jim and Pam drop out first, Pam with egg splattered all over herself. Karen feels sort of darkly triumphant over beating them and has to roll her eyes at herself - yeah, winning the egg toss. That'll show them.
Andy's bouncing lightly on his toes, excited, as Karen lobs him the egg. Easy. They each take a step back. Karen can hear Andy singing, "We Are the Champions" under his breath, and there's a light breeze ruffling his hair up. Beside them, Kelly gets distracted and misses a catch, so she and Toby are out too.
By the time the toss is down to two teams, Karen and Andy are ridiculously far apart, and only Kevin and Oscar are still in. Andy's doing a little dance every time he and Karen make a successful catch.
"Andy," she says. "Stop it."
"You gotta loosen up, Fillipelli," Andy says, and does some footwork that makes him look like an idiot. Karen rolls her eyes, and throws the egg underhanded. His dance must've distracted her, though, because as soon as she lets it fly she can tell she severely miscalculated, and the egg goes flying over Andy's head, white against the bright blue sky.
"I've got it!" Andy yells, and takes off running, looking over his shoulder to try to get under the egg.
He's heading right for the edge of the parking lot, though, and Karen just has time to shout, "Look ou-" before he trips over the curb at the edge and goes sprawling across the concrete. There's a collective inhale from everybody watching, and the egg splatters across the pavement five feet beyond him.
When Karen gets up to Andy, he's just managed to sit up, looking pale and a little shaken. His khakis are ripped and his knees are bleeding underneath, and both hands look pretty torn up too. Karen sucks in breath through her teeth. "Are you okay?" she says.
"Um, ouch," Andy says. He's breathing heavily through his nose like he's either in a lot of pain or he's counting slowly backwards from 10 in an attempt to keep his temper. A crowd of coworkers is gathering around as Karen helps him up.
"Where's the first-aid kit?" Karen asks, and when Pam points towards the food, Karen helps Andy limp out of the crowd and over to the picnic tables. He sits down gingerly and Karen faces him, straddling the bench.
"Nice throw," Andy says dryly, as Karen opens up the first-aid kit and starts getting out band-aids and rubbing alcohol. His tone's a little aggressive, but she can tell that he's not really mad anymore. The counting to ten thing must've worked, and it's so weird these days to watch him trying so hard to be normal. "Really excellent," Andy continues. Everyone else has dispersed, mostly to where Michael is giving Kevin and Oscar the egg toss award.
"Yeah, that was my bad," Karen says. "Way to sacrifice your body for the play, though. Even if it was kind of pointless. Let's see your hands."
Andy holds them out palms up, and Karen uses some alcohol wipes to try to clean the little bits of gravel out of his scrapes. "Ow!" Andy says. "Jesus!"
"Don't be such a baby," Karen says, holding his wrist to keep his hand still. She can feel his pulse with her thumb, fast under the skin, and she tries to dab at the cuts as gently as she can.
When she glances up, Andy's watching her. He gets a little red in the face when she catches him, and looks away fast. "So," he says, clearing his throat. "It's a nice day for a picnic, huh?"
"Yeah," Karen says, suddenly self-conscious. Even though it's just Andy. She gets out the Neosporin and starts smearing it on his left hand.
"Hey, do you remember that one picnic, back at Stamford?" Andy says. "The one where Josh wore his bike clothes the whole day?"
Karen had almost forgotten about that, and she laughs. "He looked incredibly ridiculous," she says. She starts applying band-aids to his now disinfected and antibioticized hands. "Why did he find all that Lycra necessary?"
"No idea," Andy says, shaking his head.
"That picnic," Karen says, "was like two weeks after I got hired."
"I remember," Andy says. His voice is a little low, almost an undertone. It's the tone of voice he uses when he's remembering the order-form consolidation the week after that picnic, the one where she drank Andy's tequila and they ended up making out for a little while against the wall outside the women's restroom. She hates when he uses that tone - it's embarrassing, reminding her of all the bad decisions she persists in making.
"Yeah, um," she says, losing her train of thought for a second. She should've learned her lesson that time - never hook up with a coworker, because five years later, you'll still have to see them every day. But stupid Jim Halpert came walking in with his scruffy hair and his messenger bag and his entourage of cameras, and she forgot all about it. God. Moron.
She shakes her head a little bit. "Um, anyway, I think seeing Josh in that outfit was the first time I really thought, 'What have I gotten myself into?', you know?"
Remembering it, she feels like she was so young back then, practically an entirely different person. It's weird that Andy even remembers her like that, straight out of college, still uncomfortable in professional clothes with no idea what she was doing. They've really known each other for a long time. Sometimes Karen forgets that, surrounded by all these Scranton people.
"Yeah," Andy says.
"Here," Karen says. "Put your leg up so I can fix your knees."
"Yes, m' lady," Andy says.
"Don't call me that," Karen says, more out of habit than anything, because this is maybe the twenty zillionth time they've had this exchange over the past five years. Andy must be thinking that too, because after a second they both laugh. When she looks up from his bloody knee, he's smiling at her with that doofus smile he has and she's struck by a strange rush of affection for him. Dumb old Andy.
**
Karen gets her lunch out of the refrigerator, but when she goes to eat it in the break room, Jim and Pam are already in there, kissing. She immediately turns around and heads back into the kitchen.
"That was a fast turnaround," Andy says from where he's rinsing out his coffee mug at the sink. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing," Karen says.
"You mean, Jim and Pam," Andy says, in a surprising burst of insight.
"Er, yeah, actually," Karen says.
Andy looks at her, then turns off the water and puts his mug in the drying rack. "You wanna get out of here? Go out to lunch?" he says.
Karen shrugs. Why not? "Okay," she says.
Andy insists on taking his X-Terra, and on the way they talk about Scranton bars versus Stamford bars, and how neither of them has finished unpacking. It's okay, just regular. But then at a stoplight, Andy reaches over and puts his hand on top of Karen's, where it's resting on her knee.
She jerks her hand away. "What are you doing?"
"What?" Andy says.
"Andy," she says, trying to be patient. "We've been through this." She thought he'd given up on putting the moves on her three years ago, but she should've remembered Andy never gives up.
"Huh?" Andy says. "Geez, Fillipelli, I was just reaching for the glove compartment. Don't have a cow."
"Uh huh," Karen says. "What do you want out of the glove compartment?"
"Um," Andy says. "... Gloves."
"It's like 100 degrees out," Karen says. June is apparently a bitch in Scranton. She misses the beach and the ocean a lot on days like this.
"I know," Andy says, and takes some leather ones out of the glove compartment. "The steering wheel's burning my hands, okay?" He pulls the gloves on one by one and sets his hands back on the wheel. Gloves with his short-sleeved dress shirt look completely ludicrous.
Karen tries not to laugh. "Okay," she says.
"Okay," Andy says, and he wears them the rest of the way to the restaurant.
**
Weekdays are depressing, but weekends are worse. It turns out the only friends she had in Scranton were Jim's friends, so now her time outside of work is filled with nobody at all. On Friday night the fourth weekend after the breakup, she gets home at 5:30 and feels restless and at loose ends. How're you supposed to meet people as an adult, anyway? Take night classes? Join clubs? Maybe she should ask Toby.
She heats up a frozen organic pizza and sits alone in her kitchen to eat it, looking vaguely at the empty white walls and flipping through an old issue of Jane she's already read. When she's done she puts her dish in the dishwasher and wanders into the living room, where there are still a couple of boxes of books she needs to unpack. But she only puts three on the bookshelf before she starts feeling depressed and has to sit on the couch.
No stamina anymore, she thinks, and checks her phone to see if anyone's called. They haven't. She thinks about deleting Jim's number out of her phone's address book, but then thinks if he calls her, she wants it to come up on the caller ID so she can avoid answering.
It's a long quiet night. She has three DVDs out from Netflix, so she figures she might as well get her money's worth by watching them. Her marathon continues into Saturday - she wakes up feeling groggy and lethargic and sort of sad, and figures she deserves a day of lying on her couch watching the first season of The O.C.
In the end, that was probably a bad decision, because she just feels more disgusting after a whole afternoon sitting on her ass, and by 7 pm she feels so terrible she has to take a break. Calls her parents but they're not home, and she doesn't leave a message. It's depressing when your parents have plans on Saturday night and you don't.
Her stomach rumbles and she starts thinking about dinner, which is the point when she realizes there's no food in the house and she hasn't eaten since having some toast when she woke up at 11. Way to be an adult, Fillipelli.
She doesn't know why everything feels like so much effort these days. Just the thought of finding her shoes and getting her purse and walking out to the car makes her tired. She slumps on the couch, and it's finally only the memory of that stupid "Where does depression hurt?" commercial with the sad dog nobody will play with that makes her get up.
"I don't even have a dog," she mutters to herself as she unearths some flip-flops from a pile of clothes in her room. She's not depressed, anyway. She's just tired and has no friends and everything is so much work.
The supermarket is pretty empty on a Saturday night, vacant aisles and white tile stretching under buzzing fluorescent lights. She throws things in her basket, barely thinking about them. Chicken breasts. Special K. Coffee filters. Brownie mix. Whole wheat bread. In the fruits and vegetables section, she wants to get either broccoli or green beans, but some guy is standing right in front of them both, his slumped shoulders blocking the way. She feels irrationally angry - a whole empty store, and he has to stand right where she wants to go, the idiot.
She walks up right beside him and says, "Excuse me," as she leans over to get a head of broccoli.
"No problem," the guy says in a quiet voice, moving over, and when she glances at him, it's Andy. For the first second, before he realizes it's her, he seems kind of subdued. But then he beams and she sees him putting his bravado back on with a little effort, like a heavy coat. "Karen!" he says. "Fancy meeting you here."
"Hey Andy," she says, and tries to smooth her hair behind her ears. Obviously she'd run into someone she knows when she's dressed in her grubbiest clothes and hasn't showered. Stupid depressed Saturday.
Andy's wearing a grass-green t-shirt that says, "Ithaca Is Gorges," and it might actually be the first time she's seen him in a t-shirt instead of a polo or something. It looks strange.
"Getting a little vegetation?" Andy says as she puts the broccoli in the thin plastic bag.
"Yup," Karen says. "Realized I didn't have anything for dinner. You?"
"Yeah," Andy says. "I mean, it's Saturday, so I had a hot date, but it got cancelled at the last minute."
Karen is 90% sure this is a lie, but she's too tired to press him on it. And who cares, anyway? It's just Andy being Andy.
"Hey," Andy says, his tone like something's dawning on him. "Why don't you come over for dinner? I'm a mean hand with the ol' grill. We can fire up some steaks, it'll be mucho deliciouso."
"Oh," Karen says. "Thanks, Andy, but I don't think so."
But he won't let it go, and keeps pressing her until finally it seems like less effort just to go over there already. He can be like a tank sometimes, the way he keeps going the way he wants to go, bearing down on you until you either go under or get out of the way.
Andy's apartment is nicer than Karen would've expected, some framed pictures on the walls, a comfortable looking couch. He has a giant TV, like most single guys she knows, and apparently subscribes to GQ, so basically no surprises there. It just seems more like a home than Karen would've expected, more inviting. There are even curtains, which makes her suspect that maybe his mom did the decorating. In the kitchen, there are dirty dishes in his sink, and he gets her a glass of iced tea.
He has a little backyard, just a few square yards of dying grass and a tiny brick patio with a big grill and a small outdoor table. There are a couple of plastic lawn chairs, one of them a chaise lounge, and Andy insists that Karen sit in it while he grills. The plastic's hot from sitting out all day, but the sun's sinking down behind the one maple tree so the air's cooling off pleasantly, orange sunlight moving through the leaves. Andy lights the charcoal like he knows what he's doing.
"Have you been watching So You Think You Can Dance?" Andy asks her as he puts the steaks on the grill. The corn on the cob he leaves on the table to do a little later - Karen didn't think Andy could cook, but he seems pretty on top of things. Full of surprises, this guy. This is the first time Karen's been over to his house in years.
"No," Karen says. "Is it good?"
"It's awesome," Andy says, and starts telling her about all the different contestants, a running monologue he's clearly pretty enthused about. Karen's relieved she doesn't have to talk and lets herself zone out, watch the sun setting. She can hear a lawn mower going a few yards over, a low buzzing in the summer heat, and the steaks are starting to smell really good. It feels like the cook-outs her parents used to have when she was a kid, the heavy warm air and the fireflies starting to come out and the low murmur of voices. She misses being little, when she didn't have to worry about if anybody loved her, because everyone who mattered did.
Ridiculously, that thought makes some tears prickle up, and she tries to wipe them away surreptitiously. She is so unbelievably pathetic she can't even stand it. Get yourself together, Fillipelli, and stop letting stupid Halpert throw you for this stupid loop.
"You okay?" Andy asks.
"Oh," she says, and tries to laugh. "Yeah, sorry. I think something blew in my eye. What were you saying?" She rubs her eye like she's trying to get something out of it, and after a second Andy goes back to talking about summer television. But as he walks around the grill to get the corn, he puts his hand on her shoulder for a second, big and warm and reassuring. She should shake him off, but she doesn't.
She leans her head back against the chair and closes her eyes. When Andy pauses in his monologue she says, "Uh huh," and lets his voice wash over her, not paying attention to what exactly he's saying. The steaks sizzle and smell delicious, and the glass of iced tea in her hand is sweating condensation, cold on her palm. Somehow she's starting to feel better, just being out of the house doing something summer-y and normal with somebody who likes her. When her mom asks her how her weekend was, she can tell her she was out grilling with friends, and maybe her parents will stop worrying about her like she knows they do. The setting sun feels good against her face, and the cut grass smells nice, and it's good to be outside.
"Steaks are ready," Andy says finally, and starts putting the food onto plates, dishing out the pre-made potato salad. When she opens her eyes it's getting dusky, shadows falling long across his lawn.
"It smells amazing," Karen says, because it does.
Andy blinks and smiles a little shyly, that muted expression on his face like he had in the grocery store before he realized she was there. "Good," he says. "It's nothing fancy."
Karen pulls up a chair at the table and sets her iced tea down in front of her. There's a few minutes of silence as they start to eat. Andy's cutting his steak very carefully, and for once he doesn't seem to know what to say.
"Did you ever watch the first season of The O.C.?" Karen asks.
"Yes!" Andy says, which isn't very surprising, but as they talk it actually seems like he enjoys it in the same semi-ironic-but-not-really way she does, which is. The conversation carries them pretty much all the way through the meal, until they're sitting there with empty plates, still going.
"Oh my God," Andy says, still holding his fork in one hand and gesturing with it. "I totally forgot about Luke and Julie Cooper."
"I know, right?" Karen says. "It's so insane. And awesome. Insanely awesome."
Andy laughs. It's almost completely dark by now, and the moon's bright as it's rising over his house. The air's cooled off so it's just really pleasant, that perfect temperature of a humid summer night, and Karen's surprised by how much she's enjoying herself. Crickets are chirping, and she can hear a sprinkler going next door.
A firefly blinks in the air between them, just over the remains of their meal, and then settles on the index finger of Andy's right hand. It lights up again, and Andy goes still and stares at it like he doesn't know quite what to do.
"Hey," Karen says quietly, trying not to startle it. Do bugs even get startled? "Look at that."
"Huh," Andy says. The firefly flashes, a cool summer-y light on his hand.
"You should get a jar with holes in the lid, and put it in there with some sticks and stuff," Karen says.
Andy laughs a little. "Nah," he says, and smiles. "Lightning bugs should be free." They watch it blink one more time, and then Andy blows on the firefly gently until it flies off towards the trees, a tiny light in the darkness.
**
The week after, Andy starts calling her almost every night, just to talk. She should've known he'd do this - at the slightest encouragement, he gets clingy. That first year, after she made out with him she had to stop speaking to him for four months to get him back to normal.
She knows she should stop taking his calls but, well, no one else is calling her. And it's nice to have somebody who really wants to talk to you, even if it is Andy. She lets him talk about Lost and Heroes while she makes dinner, or they watch TV together. Karen's older brother gave her his old, tiny TV, which she put in her bedroom so she can watch as she's falling asleep. And these days more often than not, she's talking to Andy while she does. She guesses neither of them really have other people to talk to.
"Ooh," she says, throwing back the covers and climbing into bed. "Turn to channel 64, they're doing cataract surgery."
She hears the background noise on his end change and then Andy makes a pleased, disgusted noise. "That is revolting," he says.
"I know, right?" Karen says. They watch it for ten minutes before Andy tells her to switch to the Friends rerun on channel 10.
It's Rachel's birthday, and the friends are throwing her two simultaneous surprise parties to keep her divorcing parents away from each other. It's a really old episode, one Karen hasn't seen in forever.
"Wow, Ross and Rachel," Andy says. "I almost forgot about those guys. Is this from before they were on a break?"
"I guess," Karen says. "Everybody looks really young." Her eyes are starting to drift shut and she shifts against the pillows. The room's dark, the only light from the flickering of the TV, and the phone's cool against her ear.
Ross is wearing Rachel's dad's glasses when Karen blinks her eyes open again, and Andy's saying something about Ross annoying him.
"I know," Karen says sleepily. "I hated that dumb Ross and Rachel stuff."
"Booooring," Andy agrees. Now Rachel's dad's yelling at Ross. Karen's eyes close again and she yawns. "Are you falling asleep?" Andy asks, in a slightly wistful voice. "You want to hang up?"
"Oh," Karen says. "No, that's okay. If you don't mind." She sort of likes having Andy on the phone with her. After the break-up with Jim, but before Andy started calling, a lot of times she'd stay up way too late for no reason, just because going to bed seemed kind of lonely, her apartment way too quiet. This is better.
"I don't mind," Andy says, and she eventually falls asleep still holding the phone, listening to him talk quietly about Chandler and Monica.
**
Karen's trying to get some work done at her desk in the back while simultaneously carrying on a distracted conversation with Kelly about Forever 21. It's a skill she's been cultivating over the past few weeks, and when her IM window flashes she barely breaks concentration.
"Uh huh," she says to Kelly, as she clicks over.
howdy, pardner, Andy has just typed. He's been on a cowboy kick lately, Karen doesn't know why.
what's up? Karen types back. "Yeah," she says to Kelly. "I got 4 tank tops there last week for like $12, it was ridiculous."
lunchtime? im starved, Andy sends.
"Ridiculously awesome," Kelly says.
sure, me too, Karen types, then says, "They'll probably fall apart in two weeks, but whatever."
Two minutes later, Andy sticks his head into their cube, holding two brown paper bags. "I grabbed your lunch out of the fridge," he says.
"Oh, thanks," Karen says vaguely, as she saves the spreadsheet she was working on. When she gets up, she notices that Kelly's looking at her like she's gone crazy. "What?" Karen says.
Kelly looks between her and Andy for a second. "Nothing," she says finally.
In the breakroom, Karen and Andy grab the farthest table and start getting their lunches out. Karen packed hers last night to be all healthy and whatever, which means that now she has basically no interest in eating her lunch at all. She looks at her tupperware full of salad with distaste.
When she looks up, Andy's pulling a sandwich out of his lunch bag and looking at it kind of the same way.
"What have you got?" Karen says.
"Egg salad on rye," Andy says. "You wanna trade?"
"Definitely," Karen says, and passes her salad and fork over. Food always tastes better when somebody else makes it, anyway. And Andy makes kickass egg salad.
**
Since the branches merged, their office covers a lot more territory, and Karen and Andy both still have a lot of clients in the Stamford area. By July, some of those accounts are coming up again, and Michael thinks that they better go and talk to them in person. He's right, but she's not enthused about driving all the way up there. Plus, they'll have to spend the night, since some of the places are more than three hours away and they have appointments on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. At least it means missing two days at the office, she guesses.
Tuesday morning she dreams about Jim, him kissing her and holding her hand, and she wakes up to an empty bed on a dark rainy morning. On top of that, she has a killer headache that even Advil and coffee don't fix. Sucks when you've been awake for ten minutes and are already having a terrible day.
The rain's let up by the time she leaves for the Dunder Mifflin parking lot, just before nine, but it's still a foggy morning, gray and misty, oppressive. The clouds are so dark it's hard to even fully wake up, and the whole atmosphere isn't doing wonders for Karen's mood. When she gets to the building, Andy's leaning against his car wearing one of his ugliest ties, a duffel bag on the ground next to him.
"I'm driving," Karen says as she gets out of her car, and Andy's eyebrows go up behind his sunglasses. She must've said it a little more aggressively than she meant to.
"Whooooa, hokay," he says. "Little Miss Crankypants."
She has the feeling it's going to be a long couple of days. At the other end of the parking lot, Jim's getting out of his car, and when he sees her looking, he waves. She's about to wave back, but then sees Pam getting out of the passenger side and her stomach takes a nose dive.
"Here," she says to Andy, turning away and going to open the trunk of her car. "Let's get out of here already." He slings his duffel bag in, and she can see him following her look to Jim and Pam.
"Forget them," he says in an undertone. It almost makes it worse he's being sympathetic, though, like she's some person you should pity.
"Yeah," she says, and she can hear her voice coming out irritable. She tries to soften it. "I mean," she says, more nicely. "Sorry. Let's just go, okay?"
"Sure," Andy says, and gets in the car.
They actually used to go on sales calls together like this all the time, which at least makes it easier, having a routine. She only has to tell him no a cappella twice, and at a gas station on the way up he buys her the kind of chips she likes. Oh, Andy. Creepily never forgetting a thing.
It's a long day, driving and selling paper and going over figures and being nice to people she doesn't like much. By 8 that night, she's made three mid-size sales that'll be a really nice chunk of commission, but she didn't make the last big one that she was counting on. It's frustrating, trying to compete with Staples's prices. So she's discouraged and exhausted and feeling like nothing's going right for her. No boyfriend, no sale, just a loser living in Scranton, Pennsylvania who nobody cares about. And even Andy's dragging a little bit.
"You wanna get dinner?" Andy says. "I've had it."
"Me too," Karen says. "But let's find a hotel first."
Andy shrugs and they pull off at a Holiday Inn at the next exit. But when they ask for two rooms at the front desk, the clerk tells them they're all booked up. "Nothing at all?" Karen says. Fabulous. When she looks at Andy, he makes a face. "Okay, well, thank you," Karen says.
Andy spots a line of payphones with phone books as they leave, and nods towards them. "Why don't we call around and find a place with a vacancy?" he says.
So they start calling, but every hotel is completely booked. By the time Andy's talking to the fifth one, he finally asks what on earth is going on.
"State youth soccer tournament," he says to Karen as he hangs up his cell. "And some kind of giant golf course manager convention. Everywhere around here is full."
"Oh God," she says. "Fantastic. What now? Go way out of town?"
"I don't know," Andy says. "I have that meeting with the public library at 8:30 in the morning, I don't want to be too far away."
Karen slumps against the wall. "I know."
"Hey," Andy says, and actually snaps his fingers. "I know. We can stay with my mom. She still lives right around here."
"Oh, no," Karen says. "We can't do that."
"Why not?" Andy says.
"Um, because it's weird?" Karen says. "And the company's paying for a hotel, anyway?"
"Yeah, but the hotels are booked," Andy says.
"We just have to go farther away," Karen says.
Andy rolls his head back in an exhausted, exasperated movement. "C'mon, Karen," he says, sounding fed up. "Even that place way out in Bridgeport was full. I don't want to drive another hour tonight, and then have to drive back in rush hour traffic tomorrow. The whole point of staying in Stamford tonight is so that we don't have to keep driving back and forth."
"Yeah, but," Karen says, and can't think what else to say. She's too tired to have these dumb fights. "We can't just stay with your mom. It's a huge imposition."
"No, it's not," Andy says. "She won't mind."
Karen rubs at her forehead and thinks about how much she doesn't want to drive anymore tonight either.
Andy must sense weakness. "I'll call her right now," he says, and she should protest again, but she doesn't.
**
The house where Andy grew up is an ordinary brick one in the suburbs, down a quiet tree-lined street. Andy takes them in the back door, through the garage, and barely knocks before opening the door and letting himself in. "Hello!" he calls, and as Karen follows him through the door, hauling her overnight bag, a pleasant looking woman in her 50s comes beaming into the kitchen to greet them. As she's hugging Andy, Karen looks around the kitchen, which is warm and friendly looking. There's a magnet on the fridge saying "Bless this mess," just like the one Karen's mom has, and there's a gray cat stalking down the counter over some Land's End catalogs, and Karen feels like it's been a long time since she's been in a real home, where real adults live. She can feel herself relaxing a little bit, tension from the bad day leaving her muscles.
"And you must be Karen," Andy's mom says, and Karen's surprised when she pulls her into a hug. It's been too long since anybody's hugged her, and Andy's mom feels really mom-like, soft and homey and loving. It's unexpectedly affecting.
She thinks how ridiculous it is that one bad breakup makes her practically into an orphaned Harry Potter getting hugged by Mrs. Weasley. Maybe she should go home and see her parents some weekend soon.
"You kids must be starved," Mrs. Bernard says. "You want some scrambled eggs?"
"Oh, you don't have to," Karen starts, but Andy says, "That sounds great, Mom," and it's too late.
Andy seems really relaxed here, really comfortable. It's weird to watch. He leans against the kitchen counter and tells his mom about the meetings they had during the day, and about some plumbing problem he apparently had at his apartment, and there's almost no bluster at all. Seeing him all normal and calm like this, he's actually sort of attractive. And wow, there's a word she doesn't usually apply to Andy Bernard.
They all sit at the kitchen table to eat the scrambled eggs, and Karen's feeling a lot better now that she's eating and getting a chance to rest. The conversation's easy and relaxed, and she feels more at home than she has in awhile.
"Oh," Andy says as he's finishing his eggs. "Did you want me to look at the VCR for you?"
"If you don't mind," Andy's mom says. "I still can't get it to play tapes without that fuzzy line in the middle."
"Sure thing," Andy says, and excuses himself to go into the living room, where Karen hears the TV go on.
She starts clearing the plates, and as they're cleaning up the kitchen, Andy's mom asks her about where she's from, and how she likes Scranton, and somehow they get on the subject of Jim. And for some reason Karen finds herself telling her a lot more than she means to about moving to Scranton, and how hard she worked at the relationship, and how Jim broke up with her and asked Pam out the same day. Andy's mom must have a really open face or something, because Karen's barely told her own mom this much. Or maybe she's just ready to talk about it now, and Andy's mom's a really good listener. She doesn't even give Karen any advice - she just looks at her like she understands, and says things like, "That must have been awful for you." Karen almost wants to cry.
It's just as well Andy comes back into the room when he does, because she's starting to get a little choked up and given any more time she'd probably break down sobbing like some maniac. But thankfully he walks back in with his hands in his pockets and says, "Fixed it!"
"Did you?" Andy's mom asks, sounding pleased. "How?" She walks around the kitchen island, and as she does, puts a reassuring hand on Karen's shoulder. For a second, Karen's reminded of Andy doing the same thing weeks before, his warm hand gentle. Geez. She's a basket case, cataloging every little human contact.
"I just had to recalibrate it," Andy's saying. He looks at Karen, but he doesn't seem to notice if she still looks a little teary. Either that or he's pretending not to.
**
"I'm going to put you in Matt's room," Andy's mom says as Karen follows her up the stairs. She opens the third door on the right to show a small bedroom with blue walls and a set of bunk beds with green striped comforters. It's obviously the bedroom Andy's brother had since childhood, with a strange mix of little boy and teenage artifacts layered on top of each other. There are Little League trophies on top of the dresser, but one of them has tassels from a high school graduation hanging on it. The shelf of books ranges from the Berenstein Bears to Tom Clancy.
"Here are some towels," Andy's mom says, putting her hand on a stack of red ones on the desk. "And I've put clean sheets on the bottom bunk. Now, just let me know if you need anything."
"Thank you so much," Karen says. "It's so nice of you to put us up for the night."
"Oh, it's wonderful to have you," Mrs. Bernard says, touching her arm, and turns to Andy. "And you'll be fine in your old room, right?"
"Sure thing, Mom," Andy says, and kisses her on the cheek.
"Okay," she says. "Night, sweetie."
As she leaves the room, Andy shoves his hands into his pockets. He's loosened his tie, but is otherwise still wearing his work clothes, and somehow manages to look sort of pleasantly rumpled.
"You wanna go watch some TV or something?" Andy asks.
"Sure," Karen says, and follows him out of the room and back downstairs. "So that's your brother Matt's room?"
"Yeah," Andy says. The upstairs hallway is full of framed family pictures, and Andy points at one as he walks by. "Matt. He's a cop now." The picture is of three boys, and when Karen looks closer, Andy's the middle-sized one, maybe seven or eight, missing a front tooth. Matt is the smallest in the picture, a couple of years younger, and all three of the boys look an awful lot alike. "And that's Robby," Andy says, pointing at the oldest. "Rob. He's a doctor." He pauses for a second, and then says, "And I'm a paper salesman."
"What's wrong with that?" Karen says.
Andy shrugs. "Nothing," he says, and keeps walking.
As they start down the stairs, Karen says, "Middle child, huh?" She feels like maybe this explains a lot.
"Yeah," Andy says.
"You were cute," Karen says as they pass another picture, and he half-turns his head so she can see that he's smiling a little bit.
She follows him down to the basement, which is set up as a rec room. Andy just turns on one standing lamp in the corner, so the light is kind of rosy and dim. It's getting pretty late. "So I guess in high school, this is where you brought all the girls," Karen says.
Andy grins a forced grin, a shadow of his bluster coming back. "Oh yeah," he says. "Lots of girls. Lots and lots of girls."
Karen looks at him and flops down on one side of the couch. "There weren't any girls, were there?" she says. She feels vaguely affectionate towards him, how much of a loser he is and how much he tries to hide it.
Andy pauses, then looks a little sheepish and shrugs wryly. "Nah," he says, and collapses on the other side of the couch from her. He turns on the TV and tosses her the remote. "You can choose," he says, and leans his head back against the couch. "I'm beat."
Karen kicks off her shoes and puts her feet up, stretching her legs out along the couch. She flips through channels until she gets to a rerun of That '70s Show. It's just in the last ten minutes or so of the episode, and she moves around a little, trying to get comfortable. In doing so, she inadvertently kicks Andy in the leg.
"Hey," he says.
"Sorry," she says, and tries to contort herself so she's not in his way, but the couch isn't quite long enough and she accidentally kicks him again.
Andy laughs. "Here," he says, and grabs her feet to pull them into his lap. He leaves one hand resting on her left instep, heavy.
"Oh," she says. "Thanks." His hand is warm on her bare feet, his thumb just barely moving back and forth against her skin. She probably shouldn't be doing this either, lying on the couch with her feet in Andy's lap, but she's exhausted and she really doesn't care anymore. And it's comfortable, anyway.
"No problem," he says.
She settles her head against the couch cushions. "I like your mom," she says.
Andy smiles. "Yeah," he says.
Watching TV with Andy in person isn't that different from on the phone, she thinks. As they watch the end of That '70s Show, Andy makes some remarks on the hotness of Jackie, and she counters with the hotness of Kelso, which then makes Andy agree and say he'd go gay for Ashton, information she could've done without. Karen settles her head back into the couch cushions and starts feeling sleepy.
The show winds up and the channel switches over to a rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond. Karen tosses Andy the remote. "Your turn," she says. "Find something awesome."
"Yes, ma'am," Andy says, and starts flipping. Karen watches the channels flicker by. A Law & Order, a documentary on WWII, MTV kids on a beach dancing, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Will Arnett in what looks like Will & Grace?
"Wait, wait, go back," Karen says, sitting up and putting her hand on top of Andy's on the remote control. He obediently turns it back and she stares at the screen. It's Will Arnett, all right, as a backup dancer for Janet Jackson.
She's so confused she doesn't even realize that she's left her hand on Andy's until she glances back over at him to say something about Janet Jackson and he's looking down at their hands. When he's looking down like that, his eyelashes look weirdly long against his cheeks in this dim light.
She's about to pull her hand away when he laces his fingers through hers.
"Andy," she starts, but she's clearly lacking conviction.
He doesn't say anything, just lifts her hand to kiss the back of it. It should be a sort of ridiculous gesture, and it mostly is, but at the same time it's weirdly sweet and serious. Karen doesn't quite know what to do, and her indecision means she doesn't pull away. She's too tired, her brain's working too slow.
He looks up at her and says, "C'mere." Her stomach actually flips over a little bit at his tone, which probably shows there's something seriously wrong with her. It's just Andy, and yet.
"This isn't...," she starts weakly.
"Yeah, I know," Andy says, a little impatiently. Then he's leaning over and kissing her, his hand splayed across her cheek, his fingertips light against her neck.
She's kissing him back before she's even sure what she's doing. It's not like she wants to be dating him, but it's like this thing with Andy, whatever it is - she's just too tired not to. Tired and worn down. And it's comfortable, kissing him. One more thing she wasn't expecting.
**
She wakes up the next morning with a horrible feeling like she's made a terrible mistake. It only takes her a second to remember what it was. Making out with Andy, good. She's run out of fresh mistakes and is now recycling old ones.
She manages to slip into Matt's bathroom for a shower and back into Matt's bedroom without being seen, but her luck runs out once she's dressed and heading downstairs to the car. She runs into Andy in the hallway between their rooms.
"Morning," Andy says cheerfully, and goes to kiss her.
"Whoa!" Karen says, trying to be firm but keep her voice down at the same time, in case his mom is around. This ends up coming out in a semi-hysterical whisper. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Uh, what does it look like I'm doing?" Andy says.
"It looks like you should cut it the hell out," Karen says.
"Do you have some kind of amnesiac brain disorder?" Andy says, starting to look annoyed. "You have any recollection at all of how you spent last -"
"Good morning," Andy's mom says, coming out of her bedroom. Karen jumps and Andy abruptly breaks off with what he's saying.
"Hi, Mrs. Bernard," Karen says.
"Morning, Mom," Andy says, but he's still looking at Karen.
"There's cereal and coffee downstairs if you're hungry," Andy's mom says, looking back and forth between them like she's a little confused.
"Great, thanks," Karen says, and flees.
**
Once they've pulled away from his mom's house, Andy doesn't say anything for the first five minutes of the drive to the public library, and finally Karen can't really stand it. "Look, Andy," she starts. "I just think last night was a mistake."
"Uh huh," Andy says. He's got his sunglasses on, and is turned away from her, looking out the window.
"I'm not really ready for a relationship right now," she continues, figuring he's still mad, but when he turns back around, he's suppressing a smirk.
"Okay," he says, and nods like he's humoring her.
"What?" she says.
"No, please continue," he says. "I like this little tradition we've built up."
Well, now she's starting to get annoyed. "What tradition is that?" she says.
"Making out followed by lame excuses," Andy says. He's smirking like he thinks they'll do it again next week. Asshole.
She makes an irritated noise. "Well, don't get used to it."
He reaches for the radio. "Whatever," he says. "We'll see." Ugh, he's the most infuriating person she knows. He scans radio stations until he finds oldies, the Byrds singing about a time for every season. At the public library, he makes the sale.
**
By the time they've driven all the way back to Scranton, things are pretty well back to normal. They bicker over what radio station to listen to, and whether Krispy Kreme is better than Dunkin Donuts. She thinks maybe he'll just forget about the whole thing, but then when he gets out of the car back at the office, he says, "I'll call you later?" And he's got this look, a little nervous and vulnerable, and oh God.
She intends to tell him that's not a great idea, but what comes out of her mouth is, "If you want." What is the matter with her?
But when he calls that night, just before bed, he's pretty much the same as he always has been, doesn't say anything awkward, so maybe it's okay. She crosses her fingers and then wonders what she's wishing for.
**
Friday, she's gearing up for another empty weekend when Andy calls and asks her to go to a movie.
"Oh," she says. "I don't know, Andy...." She trails off, opening her freezer to see if she has anything decent to eat. She doesn't.
"Come on, Karen, it's Die Hard. Everybody loves Die Hard."
Karen rolls her eyes. "Everybody?" she says.
"Everybody awesome," Andy says, and she can tell he's smiling.
She puts up a little more token resistance, but Andy grinds her down until she finally agrees to go. It doesn't take that much, especially when she has an big fat load of nothing planned for the evening.
"You should be a salesman," she tells him, after his Die Hard spiel winds down, and he laughs.
When he comes to pick her up, he's wearing a sports coat, and he goes around to her side of the car to open the door for her.
"Aren't you way too hot in that jacket?" Karen says. It's freaking July, and she's wearing jeans and a t-shirt and is still too hot. Besides, they're just going to a movie, for heaven's sake.
Andy shrugs and changes the subject, but when they get to the theater, he says, "Stay there," and jumps out of his side of the car to run around and get her door.
She opens it herself and is out of the car by the time he makes it all the way around, and she rolls her eyes at him. "Andy," she says. "This isn't a date, is it?"
"What?" he says, trying to sound incredulous. "A da - where would you get the idea that this is a date?"
"Okay," she says, but gives him a hard look. She insists on buying her own ticket, but he says something about chivalry when it comes to the snacks.
"Yeah, Junior Mints," Karen says. "Just like the knights of old used to buy."
"Sir Gawain and the Green Jujube," Andy says. "You didn't read that one?"
She doesn't want to, but she laughs. Andy looks pleased.
The movie is actually pretty good, kind of funny with lots of explosions. Andy makes her share his popcorn, and the theater's cool and air-conditioned, and she has to admit she's enjoying herself.
She's got her arm on the armrest between her and Andy, and sometime during the tenth explosion, Andy goes to put his arm there and accidentally elbows her.
"Sorry," he whispers, and she smirks and elbows him back.
"Hey, you're hogging it," he whispers again, and playfully knocks her elbow off.
There's a brief scuffle over possession of the armrest, which Andy eventually solves by letting her have it and then resting his arm on top of hers, like she's the armrest. Karen rolls her eyes but lets him do it.
After a minute or two, Andy reaches down and links their pinkies together, so they're just barely holding hands. She'd shake him off, but it actually feels kind of nice.
You know what you call someone who calls you every night, and who you make out with at his mom's house, and who holds your hand Friday night at the movies, and who is a boy who is a friend? Karen's brain asks treacherously.
Oh, shut up, Karen thinks at herself. So what.
**
END