It had been six months since Dunder Mifflin closed its Scranton branch.

With the confirmation that they were selling paper in an increasingly paperless world, and major clients turning to the Web for a majority of their business, the corporate brain trust in New York had decided drastic measures were needed to stay afloat. The decision was made to cut one of the remaining branches: Buffalo, Scranton, or Utica. In the end, it was determined that Scranton would get the ax due to the fact that the city was already hemorrhaging money; any negotiations to renew the office space when the lease was up with the city would only add to the operating cost.

Luckily, a few of the regulars at Scranton were able to transfer to one of the two remaining branches, if they so chose. Among them was Jim Halpert. With nothing really keeping him in Scranton, he decided to tough it out in Buffalo, where the economy was not being as hard hit as the rest of the region. After all, America’s love for Buffalo wings would never waver. He thought he’d be safe for a few years.

Sure, Jim missed some of his co-workers, and had some really great memories from his days in Scranton. But Corporate had given the office six weeks to close down operations, and Michael Scott took full advantage. Every Friday, for the remaining six Fridays, the branch threw a party for a no reason whatsoever.

The first Friday after the news, the staff celebrated “Six More Fridays to Go”.

With three more Fridays to go, it was the “Halfway Home” party.

On the final Friday, they appropriately partied to the theme of “Freaky Friday”. The Party Planning Committee had really outdone themselves. The office space was cleared out, which made way for a temporary dance floor to be installed. Since there was a surplus that would just go back to Corporate if it wasn’t used, Michael splurged on alcohol. It was a hell of a way to close an office.

Those who chose a transfer had a week to get their priorities in order. Those who were let go were given six months severance pay. Not great, but still enough to stay on their feet until they found something better. It was the least they could do, the executives thought, for such a resilient group of workers.

After the last drop of vodka had been consumed, and Kevin polished off the remainder of the six-foot sub, they all stumbled out the front door one last time. Michael suggested a group hug and, to his surprise, they all acquiesced. As they all brought it in and stood in the center of the lot with their arms around each other, Michael reflected back on the great times they had. It was, without a doubt, the happiest night of his life.

 ***

On this particular night, Jim was on his way home from another grueling day of selling paper, thoughts from that final party popped unexpectedly into his head. He thought about his old colleagues from time to time, and truly wished they were happy.

As he sat down in his home office to wrap up a few work-related matters before relaxing with his wife, an e-mail sent from one Phyllis Vance popped up in his inbox. The fact that she had sent him anything at all was a bit strange because he hadn’t talked to her since her retirement party. (The reason for the fourth-to-last party, if you’re keeping track at home.) The e-mail was a form letter with an invitation to join one of those social networking sites that were all the rage.

Jim had tried valiantly to buck the trend, but after giving it a bit more thought, he decided it would be nice to reconnect with an old friend from the Scranton branch. Plus, he knew some of his colleagues used this as a professional networking tool, and establishing contacts outside of the paper industry was never a bad thing.

As the site started to pull his contacts from his e-mail account, and Jim watched his history scroll by, he realized just how many contacts he had saved over the years.

Ex-college roommates.

Ex-colleagues.

Ex-girlfriends.

They were all still stored in his address book, as if one day he would have a need to send them a random e-mail. Some things in his life were harder to let go than others.

The site alerted Jim that it was done pulling his contacts and propelled him to read and accept the requisite terms of use before he could proceed. He skimmed the language and clicked ‘Accept’.

It didn’t take him long to regret that decision.

For the first time in two years, Jim Halpert came face-to-face with one Pam Beesly, albeit virtually.

Sitting atop the alphabetical list of contacts who were already on Facebook, Pam, or rather, a 50x50 Jpeg of her, smiled out from his computer screen.

Gone was the frizzy, tightly curled hair that he had come to adore. In its place were bouncy, loose curls that framed what was possibly an even more beautiful face that, if he didn’t know better, contained a touch of makeup.

But there was something else about the photo that stood out, and it caused him to start.

You see, Jim used to think that she reserved her most radiant smiles for him. Whether they were flashed during a friendly game of hold ’em poker, or while watching videotapes of bad wedding bands, they used to get him through the day. She never game them out to anyone but him. But the smile he saw now was foreign to him.

In fact, if he didn’t know better, he was looking at a different Pam Beesly altogether.

She looked truly happy and carefree.

Without him.

And for the first time in nearly two years, Jim Halpert let down his guard and allowed himself to think how it might’ve been.

With her.

Michael Scott stepped out of his office and strode purposefully to the common area in front of reception.

“Can I have everyone’s attention?” he asked.

Staring down at the carpet with a look of apparent dread on his face, he looked up and waited a beat before continuing. Toastmasters stressed the importance of eye contact before relaying potentially somber news, and the membership card in his wallet wasn’t given out to just anybody.

“I have some good news, and I have some bad news.”

The din of the office lessened, but didn’t die away completely. There were even a few groans. Most of the time, Michael’s boldness this early on a Monday meant he was either going to act out his favorite Saturday Night Live skit, or ask for girlfriend advice. It was usually harmless. Today was different.

“I just got off the phone with Corporate, and they have informed me that due to reasons beyond their control, some of you will be getting laid off.”

There were a few eye rolls, somebody coughed, and more than a couple people stopped typing to look up from their monitors to hear how he spun this tale. For as serious as it sounded, there was no way Michael was serious? The only person who looked as if he might be playing along was Dwight.

“And what’s the bad news, Michael,” he asked, grinning deviously at the camera.

“No, Dwight,” he retorted. “Just…shut up,” Michael muttered. He waited three seconds to compose himself before continuing.

“The real bad news is that, yes, there will be cuts forthcoming later this afternoon. The good news, however, is that some of you will be getting laid.”

Michael tried to mask his emotions with a smile, but his weak attempt to play this news off as something other than life changing fell way short of its mark. The guy at Toastmasters who suggested keeping your speeches light was full of shit.

“So, this is a joke, right? Jim inquired.

“No, Jim. This is deadly serious,” Michael answered.

Most of the office workers had heard the rumors, but nobody expected to see it actually happen. Sure, business wasn’t great, but sales were solid, and everybody had received Christmas bonuses at the end of last year. Plus, the Stamford branch had shut down not that long ago. It was a shock to the routine-driven system of everyone at the Scranton branch that some of them were at risk of being let go.

“David Wallace informed me that the company has decided to make strategic decisions now to stay ahead of the curve and to avoid a financial crisis in the future,” Michael added. “But we can assure you that anybody who is let go will receive six months of severance pay.”

“So you really are serious?” Jim asked with a look of disbelief on his face.

“Yes, Jim. I am deadly serious.”

Suddenly, the volume level in the office reached unheard of proportions; questions were thrown at Michael with no regard for his well being.

It was like that hilarious scene in the movie “Airplane!” when the sign indicated it was alright to panic. Except nobody was laughing.

“People, people, please,” Michael begged. Wallace hadn’t told him about this part of the announcement. “I have a call later this morning with Wallace, at which point I’m sure I’ll have more information. But for right now, I can honestly say that I don’t have anything else to say.”

Seemingly satisfied with that answer, the volume in the office leveled off at a steady buzz.

“If anybody needs me, please send me an e-mail. I have a lot of work that needs to get done around this announcement.”

And with that, Michael spun on his heel, walked back into his office, closed the shades, and started crying.

All it took was a tiny, digital image of her face to tear down the wall Jim Halpert had so painstakingly built the past two years. As the images and thoughts and feelings came rushing back, the bricks he had so carefully put in place began to pop out, one by one, letting in a backlight of despair that he had tried so hard to compress.

He was transported back to a drab, gray time in his life; a time when one person, and one person alone, could add color to it just by looking at him the right way. It was a time when he looked forward to selling paper for eight hours a day just so he could spend thirty minutes in the break room with the receptionist at lunchtime.

To an outsider, his reaction might’ve been reasonably explained if he was staring at the picture of an ex-girlfriend. Someone who, you know, he had kissed on more than one occasion. And maybe more. But that would mean he knew what he was missing.

This was much worse.

Two years of working so fucking hard to forget a love that was never reciprocated, or even experienced, was evaporated in an instant. The reawakening of feelings he thought he had permanently put to bed was a shock to his system.

The chair screeched against the hardwood floor of his office as he pushed back from his desk.

Yes. Whiskey might be a good idea.

**********

It had been a week since the discovery, and Jim had sleepwalked through most of it.

He wasn’t sure when (or if) he was going to contact her. But if the past seven days had taught him anything, it was that she still had a major affect on his personal well being.

“Seriously, Jim - what is wrong with you?” Karen had asked one night while they were out to dinner at his favorite Italian restaurant. “You haven’t even touched your veal parmesan,” she stated matter-of-factly as she eyed him suspiciously across the table.

Karen sensed something was wrong with her husband. In the short time they had known each other, she could count on one hand the number of times he didn’t act like the Jim Halpert she had fallen in love with, like last year when he received the news upon returning from the honeymoon that his Grandfather had lost his battle with prostate cancer. That was understandable.

But other times, she was baffled, like when he seemed to take the layoffs at Dunder Mifflin harder than anybody else. She knew he had gotten to know his co-workers as well as he possibly could during his tenure in Scranton, but it seemed a bit overboard to her.

The past few days had been the third time, and the third time was the charm.

At least when dealing with Karen Halpert.

When the dessert plates were cleared, and the coffee was set in front of them, Karen reached across the table and covered Jim’s hands with hers, deciding now was the time to get to the root of the problem. If she didn’t know him so well, his actions might’ve alluded to something far worse going on in his head. But she suspected this had nothing to do with her, and, as usual, her suspicions were spot-on.

“Come on, Jim. You know you can tell me anything. And if you pretend that nothing is wrong, I’m going to dump this coffee down the front of your shirt.”

This caused Jim to smirk.

“Finally!” Karen said in mock rejoice. “The great Jim Halpert has finally broken. Victory is mine!” She raised her arms in the air. Jim rolled his eyes, however slightly.

“Pulling out the big guns, I see,” Jim said with a hint of playfulness in his voice.

“Drastic times call for drastic measures.”

Jim’s thoughts drifted back to spring of last year when he had asked Karen to marry him.

They had been dating for about a year, and Jim had made the decision that he was going to go for it because, when he really thought about it, there were no good reasons to not do it.

She was warm. She was funny. (Really funny, actually.) And above all, what he saw was what he got. She didn’t hide her emotions or play games with him.

It was refreshing.

The longer they dated and got to know each other, he marveled at how awesome she was. And it helped that she took his mind off of Pam.

It wasn’t lost on him that not seeing Pam everyday at work was part of the reason the new memories he was making with Karen were buying up the prime real estate in his brain where his memories of Pam had previously resided.

But he had surprised himself with how well his self-imposed mission to move on was working. ’That ship has sailed’ was a mantra he repeated to himself whenever an inkling to regress arose.

When he got down on a knee to propose at the little diner in Stamford where they went to lunch on his first day at the Stamford branch, the standard ’Yes’ he was expecting was not delivered in the way he had hoped. He had, apparently, so surprised Karen that he ended up wearing her coffee on his crisp, white oxford shirt. It wasn’t the best way to begin an engagement, but she did say yes. It was nice to have good memories associated with that city, he often thought, as opposed to the personal hell he was going through while he lived there.

“Do you remember Pam?“ he asked as he lifted his coffee cup to his lips.

Karen thought for a moment. “The receptionist, right?”

“Right.” Jim shifted in his chair, a chair that had become noticeably uncomfortable in the past five minutes. He cleared his throat before he continued.

“I never told you this, but the real reason I left Scranton was because I was in love with her. I told her the night before I left, but she didn’t reciprocate.”

Karen, who rarely wore her emotions on her sleeve, was caught off-guard by this revelation, but stayed silent. He continued.

“She was engaged to this…ogre who worked in the warehouse, Roy. I had the transfer in my back pocket in case my confession didn’t go as planned. Needless to say, it didn’t.”

Karen gingerly took a sip of her coffee. She knew it was pretty monumental for Jim to open up to her like this, so she knew she had to be gentle with her line of questioning.

“How long were you in love with her?”

“Oh, about four years - give or take a day or two.”

Jim’s attempt at making light of the situation was lost on Karen, who appeared to be contemplating something. But whatever it was, she let it pass.

“Jim, I’m not sure I’m following you. What does this have to do with you acting so down lately?”

Jim took a sip of his water to help with the sudden onset of dry mouth. He thought that this part of his life was over, but he was now understanding how hard it was to run away.

“I got an e-mail from Phyllis about a week ago -- you remember Phyllis, right? -- inviting me to join her professional network on Facebook. When I logged in to see who was a part of it, there she was.” Jim thrust his hands outward at the table, as if to indicate that Pam was sitting cross-legged in their bread basket.

“I’m…I’m still not following,” she replied.

Jim knew that if he was going to tell her why he had been acting like this, she deserved the whole truth, not some half-assed version of it.

“This is probably going to sound cheesy, but the mere sight of her face brought back memories that I thought I had buried long ago.” Jim looked down at the table cloth and began drawing imaginary circles with the butt-end of his fork.

“But Pam wasn’t married.”

“Nope.”

At this, a sudden realization flashed across Karen’s face. It was beginning to make sense.

“I found out two weeks after I transferred that she called off her wedding.” The sense of morose that Jim had been exhibiting all week was replaced with a budding anger. “And I’d be damned if I was going to be the one to make first contact.”

“How do you know she called it off because of you?”

“Oh, I knew. It suddenly made all the sense in the world. But she never, ever reached out to me. Then we barely talked after the merger.” Jim pounded his fist on the table, causing the coffee to slosh out of this cup. He blew out a breath and ran a hand through his hair.

After a few minutes of silence, Karen spoke.

“So what are you going to do?”

Jim looked up at her in surprise.

“What am I going to do?” he asked.

“Yeah - what are you going to do? I mean, you can’t just sit there and pretend everything is cool, because it’s clearly not. And chances are pretty good that she saw your picture.” Karen said the words before she could talk herself out it. “It might be a good idea to contact her and get some closure.”

Jim’s fork came to a halt in mid-circle.

“Closure?” He snorted. “’Closure’ is something you get from an ex-girlfriend or an ex-wife; somebody who shared feelings for you. You don’t seek closure with old friends.”

“Why not?”

Karen’s voice belied the panic that was starting to bubble up in the back of her throat.

“I don’t know. Meeting her face-to-face doesn’t seem like the best idea right now.”

“Maybe that’s the only way to permanently destroy those old feelings. I mean, for all you know, she’s married to a truck driver and tips the scales at a deuce, maybe deuce and a half.”

“For some reason, I doubt that’s the case. Besides, I saw her picture. And if it’s the least bit current, she…” Jim’s voice trailed off, effectively ending that train of thought. Karen noticed, but decided not to push it.

“Look,” Karen said after a minute had passed. “I can’t handle another week of Mopey Jim. So either you contact her and get all of your demons and skeletons and whatever the hell else is in your closet out in the open, or I don’t want to ever hear her name mentioned again.”

Yes, she knows this is crazy. And she knows there is potential for it to backfire horribly. But the former Karen Filipelli was brought up to face things head-on. Not one for backing away, she had always asked for the guy's phone number. She had always done the breaking up. She had always known what she wanted out of life, and went for it.

But never, ever, in her life had she pushed somebody else to face their fear head-on, while the state of her life hung in the balance.

And never had she been so scared.

“You know, I never thought about that option,” Jim replied. “I was content to stew over it for at least three more weeks until it drove me insane.”

Typical Jim. Always trying to downplay a serious conversation with a joke.

But the truth was that the idea of seeing Pam again scared the shit out of him. While he knew he loved his wife, he couldn’t deny the tiny voice inside whispering “What if?” And if he met with her to get everything out on the table, there was a very real chance that he wouldn’t like what he heard.

In the end, he decided to just go for it. He needed to. Two years of running had been long enough. He was exhausted.

“Okay.”

Karen looked back at Jim.

“Okay?”

“I’m going to do it. I’m going to e-mail Pam and see if she wants to meet for lunch, or something. Get everything out in the open. Get some ‘closure‘, as you say.”

“Good. I think it’s a great idea.”

“Then it’s settled. Ready to go?”

Jim stood up from the table and placed his wife’s coat on her shoulders.

Earlier in the week, Jim was getting the feeling that dealing with the fallout from his and Pam’s relationship -- however you would classify it -- would eventually become something he learned to live with, like how people with arthritis learned to live with the bouts of intense pain.

But it was Karen, of all people, that gave him the courage and strength to face it, rather than letting it slowly eat away at him.

So when he returned home, and after Karen had signed off for a fitful night of sleep, Jim logged into Facebook and requested Pam’s virtual friendship.

It seemed absurd that he would need to go through such technicalities to talk to her, but he figured it might be less conspicuous than sending an e-mail. Regardless, he was anxious to see how it played out.

Besides, he thought to himself, he could think of worse people to contact after a two-year hiatus. A lot worse.

It was just Pam Beesly, after all. The same woman who had unknowingly held his heart in her hands for the better part of four years.

Jim’s index finger hovered above his keyboard.

Come to think of it, maybe there wasn’t a worse person to be contacting. This could all go horribly wrong.

Jim clicked ‘Send’ and went to bed.