“I’m sorry...what was the question?”

Pam rubbed her fingers against her upper lip as she tried to keep from smiling. It seemed a little ridiculous to be so happy, given that just a second ago she’d been fully convinced that life would be okay if she never saw Jim again. But the grin kept spontaneously breaking over her face, straining the sides of her cheeks, as if she was welling over with total happiness. She wasn’t sure she really believed that the last minute had happened.

Preston, the boom operator, looked at her and rolled his eyes knowingly at Matt, the camera guy in the room. He was the one crew member who never really been that interested in Jim and Pam, other than as good TV. But even he was a little touched by these two kids with such bad timing finally getting it right. After this whole year of just wanting to just lock them in a room with each other until they stopped mooning at each other and actually did something, he was glad that it had been just so simple and direct. He’d never expected anything with Jim and Pam to be so easy.

Matt laughed and waved her away, mock-checking the watch on his other hand. “You know...I think we’re done for today. I think you’d better haul it home and get ready for that date.”

Pam uncrossed her legs and twisted her head to peer through the blinds behind her. “Wow,” she said as she watched Jim put his coat on, shaking his head bemusedly at Dwight and Andy’s paint job. She savored it as she repeated Jim’s words. “It’s a date.”

Preston chuckled as he put down the boom. “Yeah, that was the magic word, huh?”

Pam stood up and reached under her pink cardigan to unclip the microphone from her shirt. “I guess so.” She put her sound equipment on the conference room table and walked to the door. “See you guys on Monday,” she said. “Have a good weekend.”

“Can’t wait to hear how it goes,” Matt called after her. He looked at Preston as she walked out the door. “We probably should have tried to go with them,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Preston. “It couldn’t have been more awkward than that cartoonist guy. But they never would have let us come.”

Matt nodded. “Yeah. That’s why I didn’t even bother to ask.”

--

“Hi,” she said as she walked over to Jim’s desk. He was leaning over his desk, shutting down his computer for the weekend. When he saw her he straightened up quickly and he gave her a smile, a real smile that reached his eyes for the first time in months.

”Hey,” he said. He was grinning too, his fingers drumming quickly on the back of his chair. “What happened to Michael’s office?” he asked. He shoved his hands into his pockets like he wanted them to stay put.

Pam tried to distract the shivery feeling in her throat by remembering how to have a regular conversation. “Dwight got a little carried away,” she said. “Andy helped.” She watched the Windows logo turn to black on the screen and breathed in deeply, trying to relax. “So...” Pam fingered the sleeve of her cardigan. “What time do you want to go to dinner?”

”You know,” Jim said as he grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder, “I really don’t care. I think we should just go right now.”

”Hmm,” Pam said as she walked over to reception. “I do too. But I really want to wear some after-work clothes for a change.”

“Ooh, fancy,” he said. “I guess I might be a little funky after driving for an hour and a half.” He pushed in his chair and walked over to her desk, taking her jacket off the coat-rack.

Pam raised her eyebrows. “An hour and a half?” she asked. “From New York City...to Scranton,” she clarified, as she reached down to grab her purse from by her desk.

”Well...” Jim said, rolling his head back as he hunched his shoulders, “I guess you could say that I was in a hurry.”

"Wow, Jim,” she laughed. “I guess we’ll just have to get ready quickly.”

”It’s a deal, Beesly.” he said.

She followed Jim through the door, grinning up at him as he pushed the door open for her behind him. They walked to the elevator and stepped in. When they both move to push the button at the same time, they both pulled back as if they’d touched an electric fence. Pam laughed at the awkward moment in spite of herself and pushed it.

The silence continued, but it wasn’t that strange, suffocating tension that used to fill the whole elevator, like when she inadvertently stepped in on the night of Jim and Karen’s anniversary. It was their old, comfortable silence, the kind that stretched out between them and seemed full of possibility. Pam leaned into the corner of the elevator and thought that its return might be even better than the conversation they’d just had, planning their first date. Her first date with Jim Halpert.

“So,” he said. He leaned against the opposite side of the elevator, looking at her sideways as he rested his head against the wall.

“So,” she said.

“So, I’m not going to New York,” Jim said.

She nodded. “I sort of got that.”

Jim chuckled. “Yeah, I guess that was kind of obvious. I don’t know...I was just sitting in the interview and it was going great. And then I kind of looked around and it was kind of like, ‘what am I doing here?’“

“Yeah,” she said. “I feel like that every day.”

Jim laughed. “Yeah. But this was like, an actual wakeup call. Wallace asked me where I saw myself in a decade and I just knew that I was coming back. So I called Karen and I told her that I was staying in Scranton...and she kind of knew what that meant. So she decided to spend the weekend in the city with her friends. I don’t think she was that surprised.”

Pam nodded. She didn’t really want to talk about Karen, but she was curious. “Do you think she got the job?”

Jim looked thoughtful for a moment. “I don’t think so. Her interview was really short because Jan kind of freaked--”

“Oh, I know!” Pam interrupted. “Michael told us when he came back. I can’t believe she got fired!” She paused. “Well, I mean, I can, but...”

“Yeah,” Jim agreed. “She pretty much had a total breakdown. Michael drove her home.”

“Yeah,” she said, trying to picture the generally calm, collected Jan finding out she was being fired. “That’s kind of sad.”

“I know. Anyway, after Jan left, Wallace didn’t finish Karen's interview. So I don’t think it will be anyone from Scranton. When I told him I couldn’t take the job, he seemed pretty worried. I guess Jan leaving meant he couldn’t waste time trying to find an outside hire.”

The elevator ding-ed and they walked though the lobby out into the cool May evening. The sun had barely even started to set.

Jim looked down at his watch. “Okay, Pam. It’s...” he paused to look down at his watch. “...5:23 exactly, so I will be at your fancy new apartment to pick you up at 6:15. Think you can handle that?”

She walked over to her little blue car and nodded. “Oh yeah, I can handle that.”

Jim stepped out of the shower and stood for a minute in front of the mirror. He still wasn’t really sure what to think of his new haircut. Karen had liked it, and Pam had seemed to, but it just didn’t feel like him. It also seemed like it had been a waste of time, since he hadn’t even finished the interview, but it was probably time he had a haircut that was at least semi-adult. Besides, he was so lazy about his hair that he knew he would just let it grow out eventually.

He wanted to shave, just to kill some time, but he’d just shaved that morning when he and Karen were getting ready for their interviews. He winced a little at the memory of Karen coming up behind him, standing on her toes to smell his aftershave. She was probably getting ready to go out now, too, with friends who would probably spend all night taking shots to swearing off guys from work for the rest of their lives. He shook his wet hair like a shaggy dog, simultaneously trying to get Karen off his mind and to get his hair to look a little bit less like the long-lost brother from The Brady Bunch. He couldn’t tell if it was working.

He walked over to his closet and started rifling through the hangers. He thought about dressing up a little, but decided that they would both be too nervous if this date was anything but casual. He fished out a pair of jeans and pulled a faded blue polo shirt off its hanger, then he looked at the clock. It was 5:45. He sighed and grabbed his regular work shoes and brown coat, the ones he’d bypassed today for something more corporate. He put them on the floor and then flopped face-down on the bed to watch TV. He flipped through the channels for a minute, but he felt like his skin was buzzing from the anticipation. Now it was 5:50.

It’s definitely not going to take me 20 minutes to get to Pam’s, he thought. I mean, her place is so close…. He stopped and sat up abruptly. Jim didn’t know where Pam lived anymore. He was going to have to call and ask for directions.

Pam, who lived practically as close to Dunder-Mifflen as Oscar, almost didn’t hear her cell phone ring over the roar of the hair dryer. She turned it off and set it down on the bathroom counter as she grabbed her phone and flipped it open one-handed. With the other, she fished around under the sink for the curling iron that she hadn’t used since her art show. “Hello?” she said breathlessly.

“Uh, hey, it’s Jim.”

“Oh, hey!” Pam said, wondering why he was calling. For a fleeting second she was terrified that he was going to cancel, then she shoved that thought as far away from her as she possibly could. “What’s up?”

“Well, I was in the middle of getting ready,” Jim said as he looked at himself in the mirror, shoes and coat already on with his keys in his pocket, “when I realized I don’t exactly know where you live.”

“Oh, yeah,” Pam laughed nervously. She found the curling iron at the back of the cabinet and pulled it out. “Let me give you directions. I’ll have to start them from your old place, though…”

“Yeah,” Jim said. “I live one street over, basically, so it won’t be a problem.”

As she told him left, right, straight, light, right again, she realized that she was going to have to let Jim in. To her apartment. Her complete mess of an apartment. She peered out of the bathroom over at her coffee table covered with empty mugs, her table strewn with art supplies, her unmade bed. She was going to have to do some serious high-speed cleaning.

“Okay,” Jim said as he finished writing everything down. “Are you almost ready to go?”

“Um, yeah, yeah, definitely,” Pam answered absently as she turned the curling iron off and ran out into the main room. She wedged her cell phone against her shoulder as she gathered up all the coffee mugs in her arms as quietly as she could. “I’ve just got to do a couple things. See you soon.”

“Yeah, see ya.” Jim hung up the phone and tossed it onto the bed, next to the remote. Then, almost the next moment, he walked out of the bathroom and picked it up, deciding that he would just drive over to Pam’s now and wait for her. He didn’t think she’d care if he was ten minutes early.

“Shit…shit-shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” Pam chanted under her breath as she shook out her comforter as hard as she could. She was still in her work clothes and Jim would probably be here any minute. She shook the pillows the same way, until she realized it probably wasn’t making them any fluffier. She had just slid all her paint supplies off the table and into an empty trashcan when she heard the buzzer. She ran to the door and turned to survey the apartment one last time before she turned the lock. The kitchen table was still covered in paper, but she wouldn’t let Jim sit there anyway. She opened the door.

Jim Halpert was standing on her doorstep. His hair was still wet from his shower, he had his brown coat slung over one arm, and he was wearing a sky-blue polo shirt with a collar whose corners had rolled up a little bit from one too many washes. He bit his lip as soon as she opened the door, and she smiled a little to herself, thinking that Jim’s obvious nerves made her feel a little bit calmer about the fact that they were finally – finally – about to go on their first date.

“Hey!” she said warmly. She took a step forward, just to usher him in, and Jim stepped forward at the same time with his arms held out a little bit too far. Pam said, “Oh,” and held her arms out too, but Jim had already realized she hadn’t been planning on a hug. They both hesitated, then embraced awkwardly. Pam laughed a little from sheer excitement as she let go, breathing in deeply as she got the scent of his shampoo and fabric softener. Jim chuckled too, but as she gave him a second glance she realized that he was obviously trying to hold in laughter for some reason.

“What…?” she said. She looked around as she stepped back and held the door open for him as he walked in.

“What? Oh, nothing,” Jim said innocently as he came in and surveyed her apartment. “Wow, Pam, you totally played this place down.”

“Oh, come on,” Pam said as she shut the door. “I told you, like, six months ago that this apartment was tiny.”

“Yeah,” Jim agreed. “I mean, it’s obviously got nothing on Dwight’s beet farm…” he paused as they both laughed. “But I like it. It’s cozy.” He looked at her again and grinned suddenly.

“Thanks,” Pam said, smiling down at the floor. “Alright, Jim, seriously. What is so funny?”

He made a noise like a muffled snort. “Okay, but don’t get mad. I think it looks cute.”

“What?!”

“Well, Pam, I know one haircut doesn't make me an expert, but I think you may be a little ahead of the curve with the style you’ve got going on there…”

“Oh, no!” she said, laughing as she felt the smooth waves on the left side of her head and the frizzy curls on the right. She ran into the bathroom to find the curler. “Shut up!” she yelled as she closed the door. She could still hear his low chuckles rumbling through. “I got distracted when I realized I had to clean my apartment!” She picked up the curling iron and worked quickly to finish her hair. “You can get yourself something to drink if you want,” she said, thinking to herself that her grandmother was probably rolling in her grave at such bad manners. “There are glasses in the cabinet across from the sink.”

She heard him say, “Okay,” and the floorboards creaked as he walked approximately five steps from the living room to the kitchen. She turned part of the way around to check the back of her hair, then took the front curl on the right side and wound it around the curling iron one more time. Satisfied, she quickly undressed and put on the clothes she had set on the toilet seat before Jim had called. She made a face at herself in the mirror as she realized she didn’t really have time to put on all the makeup she had planned on, but she settled with touching up her lipstick and spraying on the perfume that she saved for nice occasions.

When she came out, Jim was standing over her kitchen table, looking at the papers she had left scattered across it. He looked up and stared at her the way that she had seen him look at her a few times over the years they'd known each other. Before, though, he had always broken his gaze whenever she noticed that he was looking at her. She had always brushed it off as just accidentally catching him when he was staring off into space. This time, though, he didn't have to look away, and she realized that she'd known that he had never really been zoning out all along. She wiped her hands on her skirt as she grew a little embarrassed under his gaze. After what felt like an eternity, Jim cleared his throat like he was waking up. "Well, I'm glad you wanted to come home and change," was all he said.

Pam couldn't even try to pretend that she wasn't blushing now. "Thanks," she said. She was wearing a short-sleeved magenta shirt and a knee-length denim skirt. “It’s really nothing,” she said modestly.

“No, Pam, you look great,” Jim said, loving that he was able to tell her that. “You look…it’s…the shirt, it’s really beautiful,” he finished lamely. Well, maybe he couldn’t go that far just yet.

“Thanks,” Pam said again, with a small smile. “I got it online shopping a couple months ago and Kelly convinced me to keep it. I realized pretty quickly that I couldn’t wear it at work, though.” At his blank look, she continued, “Creed. Kevin…Michael…”

“Ooooh,” Jim said, nodding sympathetically. “You know, the same thing happens to me all the time.”

Pam laughed, then looked down and noticed that Jim was looking at some sketches she had made. “Oh, no, don’t look at those,” she said reflexively. “They’re not done yet.”

Jim held on gently as she tried to tug them out from under his hands. “Aww, Pam, I want to see them,” he said. “I mean, I’ve never really gotten to see your art except for the one in the office.” He paused and looked down at the table as the art show both loomed large in their minds. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to your art show,” he said slowly.

“It’s fine.” Pam fingered one of her curls, thinking. “Well, I mean, it’s not…fine, really, because it sucked. Roy left early and then Oscar and Gil came and…I guess they didn’t really like it. The only good part was when Michael bought the one of the building. But…” she paused, trying to think of how to put it. “I understand why you didn’t come. And it still meant a lot that you were so excited about me winning the contest.” She tugged the papers away from Jim while he was mulling over what she said, placing them on the chair closest to her, then picked up his mostly-full glass of water and walked into the kitchen with it. "And besides, you'll be there next time," she said from behind the counter. "Anyway, this is supposed to be fun. Remember fun, Jim?" She grinned at him as she walked out of the kitchen.

He nodded and followed her over to the door. "You know, I might have a vague memory..." He said as he put on his coat.

"So let's just have fun tonight. No pressure." She pulled her sweatshirt from the day at the  beach off the coathooks next to the door and walked out onto the stoop. "Where do you want to go?" she asked.

"Wow, Pam. You're making me pick the place? I thought you just said no pressure!" Jim joked, holding up his hands in front of her.

She rolled her eyes. "You would be the kind of guy who can't pick a restaurant."

"Hey, I resent that."

"Well, too bad, because it's definitely true." She grinned up at him as they walked out to his car. "How about Cugino's? What?" she asked when he laughed.

"Nothing, I just think it's funny that you picked the restaurant that we ate at back when we first met." He squinted at her in that way he did when he was simultaneously trying to figure out if she was messing with him and hoping that she was. "Don't you remember?" he asked as he got into his car.

"Oh, please," she said as she sat down next to him. "Like I could ever forget." She blushed inadvertently when she realized that what she had meant to come out as a joke had probably come out sounding ridiculously cheesy.

Jim just grinned and turned the keys in the ignition. Pam winced as the radio blasted Rock 107 and Jim jumped to turn down the volume. "Sorry," he said, smiling at her apologetically.

"It's okay," Pam said. As they left her driveway, it started to sink in that this wasn't just another time she had fantasized that she and Jim would finally get to go out. It was actually happening. She and Jim were going out on a date...no grand gestures of love, no flowers, no big expectations. It was just so simple. It felt strange that she didn't have to hold anything back with him, for the first time...well, ever.

Jim looked over at her as he was driving. "Weird, huh?"

"Yeah," she agreed. She felt stupid for not being able to think of anything to add.

Fortunately, Jim seemed comfortable enough to keep the conversation going. "Here, can you plug my iPod into the tape deck?"

She complied and looked down at the screen. Whenever she and Jim shared music she was always surprised at how much he listened to that she didn't know. "What do you want me to play?"

"Hmm...just Death Cab, I guess," he said. "We'll be there soon anyway."

She scrolled down and pressed play. Jim recognized it immediately and said, "Oh, I love this one." Pam was surprised. She was expecting something depressing, since the only songs that Jim had sent her were "A Lack of Color" and "Tiny Vessels." This song was unusually fast.

"What's it called?" she asked as they pulled into the Cugino's parking lot.

"Expo '86," he replied absently. "It's pretty good. Okay," he said as he parked. He turned off the car and got out. "Okay," Pam repeated quietly to herself as she opened the door. "No pressure."

"What's that?" Jim said, bending down as he leaned against the side of the car.

"Nothing," she replied and got out. She tugged her skirt down as she stood up. Even though it covered her knees, she still felt completely exposed.

Jim shut the door behind her and clicked the automatic lock. As they walked toward the restaurant entrance, he grabbed her hand impulsively. "What?" he said when she stopped and looked at him. "It's a daate, Paam," he said teasingly. She smiled at him when she saw how he was trying to cover his nervousness with the joke. "I guess you're right," she said, weaving her fingers in with his. They walked under the striped awning and went inside.