I was with Pamela for a good portion of the day today. This morning she had a long-distance interview with three members of an LEA in London. These people will decide whether or not she gets the position that she has decided she most wants in the fall.
I thought the interview itself went very well. Pamela spoke clearly and intelligently, was polite and presentable, and made her passion for her work very clear. She was anxious about the whole thing, however, and even after it was done it was difficult for her to unwind. I did what I could to convince her not to over-analyze the entire thing, and in the end I had convinced her to believe as I did. Still, she is not completely at ease, and will not be until she hears back from the LEA, which may not be for another week or two.
I encouraged her to talk to someone, and gave her a few names—Diana, Mal, Christine, and even Lee. I added this last to gauge her reaction. She has not met with Lee for a while, and so she hasn’t had much chance to think about him.
She was more willing to consider him than I expected. It was not all about him—she wanted to talk about the job and the possibilities that went along with it, and he had experience living and working abroad that she felt might be useful. But she also remembered how thoughtful he had been, and she decided, without any interference from me, that she would like to know him better.
Quickly, before she could change her mind, she texted Christine to get Lee’s number, and once she had it, she dialed it and waited while it rang, bouncing on the balls of her toes.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Pamela. Christine’s friend,” she clarified, suddenly anxious that he wouldn’t remember her.
Of course he did. “Oh, hey! What can I do for you?”
“Well, you can be neurotic with me,” she said, pacing in her living room.
“Neurosis I can do,” he said, which made her laugh. “What are we fretting about?”
“I just had an interview for a job in London in the fall.”
“That’s great! How’d it go?”
“Well, that’s what I want to discuss.” She hesitated, but I gave her a nudge, so to speak, and she took the jump. “Want to grab that coffee and hear about it so I can pick your brain about whether it went well?”
Lee was quiet for a minute, and Pamela’s mind went in several different directions—that he had lost interest in her, that he didn’t want a platonic meeting, that he was busy, that he was put off by her anxiety. But before she could rescind her words, he said, “I’d love to do that. You name the place and time and I will be there, brain ready for picking.”
His light tone put her at ease, at least a bit, and she told him the name of one of her favorite places. Once she had hung up, I had a great deal of work to do in calming her nervousness as she got ready to go, and I wasn’t completely successful. When she got to the coffee shop, she was stiff with tension, and I made sure to make Lee aware of this the moment he spotted her.
He handled it beautifully, with little to no help from me. He took her coat, pulled out her chair, and fetched her coffee for her. Throughout the whole conversation he kept his hands to himself, never giving any sign that he was there for any reason but to help her. She soon relaxed into the conversation, and they analyzed her performance, deemed it good, and talked about what it might be like to live in London for a year, if not more.
By the time they left the shop, they were friends, with that gentle underlying tension that promises something more. Lee’s crush has solidified into a real admiration, while Pamela feels that she knows him now and is glad that she does. They said goodbye as friends, held one another’s gaze for a bit too long to be just friends, and then walked away with smiles on their faces.
It is a good beginning. I am not sure that it will develop into more than that, and I am not sure it would be wise to allow that if Pamela is going to leave for a year in the fall. But I find it encouraging that after all she has been through, Pamela is still open to love. I hope that I can protect her heart so that she will not close it off to others.