When Jim was in the tenth grade, he liked a girl named Rebecca Long. For some reason, she seemed to like Jim, too, so he decided to ask her if she’d like to come over and watch a movie. Things were going well until Jim’s older brother Tom had came down stairs.

“I didn’t know your older brother was Tom Halpert!” she’d whispered.

“Um, yeah. My last name is Halpert, too. You knew that, right?” Rebecca was too excited about Tom Halpert, the cute senior on the football team, being in such close vicinity that she didn’t really hear him. Or at least, she pretended that she didn’t.

Rebecca left that night having talked more to (and about) Tom than she had to Jim. After two weeks, she was running around school telling everybody about how lucky she was, because she was going to prom with "Ohmigod, Tom Halpert!!"

“It’s okay with you, right, little brother?” Tom had asked. “I mean, you didn’t even really like her anyway, right?”

Jim had shook his head and said, “no, not really. Go for it, Tom.”

Later, as Jim laid on his bed thinking about how in the world this entire thing happened, one thought kept running through his mind: All’s fair in love and war.

Now, as he walked up the stairs to the office, those same six words were resounding in his head. He knew that Pam was engaged to another man—of course he knew that. He also knew that that other man didn’t deserve her, didn’t appreciate her, didn't love her the way that Jim did.

Jim also knew that what he was about to do was…well, frowned upon, to put it lightly. Making a move on another man’s fiancée? Inexcusable, even if you loved that woman so much that you felt like your heart would explode every time she smiled at you.

Still. Inexcusable or not, there was no way that Jim could let things end with “I can’t.” Even if Pam told him the same thing, he had to try again. His heart had been broken into pieces in the parking lot, anyway, so it wouldn’t hurt anything, right?

Except that when he walked into the office and found her leaning against his desk, twisting his phone cord in her fingers, he knew that this woman had the power to completely destroy him. She also had the power to completely destroy another man—one that was expecting to marry her in a little over a month. For crying out loud, he was at the apartment they shared together, waiting on her. Jim didn’t have any kind of claim on her, so what in the world was he doing?

All’s fair in love and war. It was his new motto, it seemed. It was all he could think about as he moved towards Pam. He barely even heard her when she said his name. Even when his movements became slow-motion and he could see the way her eyes fluttered closed as he pulled her to him, all he could think was all’s fair in love and war.

But then she was kissing him, too, and he couldn’t think about anything anymore.

On the day that Jim had to be gone all morning on sales calls, Pam felt brave enough to use her teapot at work. For some reason or another, she’d been too scared to since he’d come back—she was afraid that he might think it was…pathetic or something. Why he would think that, she didn’t know, but it scared her nonetheless.

But today, she was going to make tea, and then maybe leave the teapot somewhere that he’d be sure to notice it. It might come across as a lame attempt at attention, but it also might be the catalyst that they needed to get things moving in the right direction. The friends direction, she had to remind herself. Jim has a girlfriend.

Pam reached into her bottom drawer and retrieved the teapot from where it had been hiding for the past few weeks. As she walked through the office on her way to the kitchen, Phyllis smiled kindly at her and Pam could have sworn that Phyllis’ eyes lingered on the teapot for a second. Maybe not, though, so Pam just smiled back.

She was looking through the cabinets to see if there even was any tea to make when Karen came into the kitchen. Pam thought she looked tired and thought for a second about how Jim looked the same, but then Karen spoke. “Cute teapot.”

Involuntarily, Pam’s grip on the teapot tightened. “Oh, thank you. It was a Christmas present from a few years back.”

“That’s nice. From Roy? You guys dated back then, right?”

Pam could feel her face turning pink. How did she know that? “Um, yeah, we were dating then, but this was actually from Jim.”

Karen’s back stiffened. “Oh.” She grabbed a package of peanut butter crackers from one of the cabinets and turned to walk back out the door, but Kevin and Meredith were both walking in. So much movement in one area of the kitchen was too much for the tiny room, and before Pam realized what was happening, she’d been bumped from behind and the teapot was falling towards the tile floor.

It broke cleanly into three pieces, and Pam felt her heart do the same. She thought for a second that she might try to superglue them back together, but she knew that it wouldn’t be the same. She tried to ignore the symbolism.

“Oh, no, Pam, I’m really sorry!” Karen apologized. “It was an accident; do you want me to help clean it up?” Pam shook her head no and looked sadly down at the broken pieces of her teapot. Karen slipped out the door before anything else could be said, and only felt a little guilty as she walked back to her desk.

It really wasn’t Pam’s fault that Jim still had feelings for her. It wasn’t Pam’s fault that Karen had been staying up until three AM the past few weeks, trying to figure out her relationship. Karen wasn’t really jealous or vindictive, but she was possessive. If she was being honest with herself, she probably would have found a way to ‘accidentally’ break that teapot, anyway.

When Jim came back into the office, the first thing he saw was Pam’s red-rimmed eyes. He wanted, more than anything, to ask her what was wrong…but he didn’t. Instead, he deposited his bag and jacket on his chair and went to rinse out his travel coffee mug. The pieces of a springtime green teapot in the trashcan caught his attention. He stared, disbelieving, even when he felt Karen’s arms wrap around his waist.

“I missed you all morning,” she cooed.

“Do you know what happened to Pam’s teapot?” A question like that would probably make Karen mad, especially after the things that they’d been talking about lately, but Jim didn’t really care at the moment.

“Oh, that,” Karen said. “I bumped into Pam while she was holding it and she dropped it. Sorry. She said something about you giving it to her a while ago.” Jim could hear the edge in her voice that he knew she was trying to hide.

“You didn’t…did you do that on purpose?”

Karen gasped, too loudly for it to really be convincing. Jim didn’t notice. “Of course not! Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know,” Jim answered. “You wouldn’t. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have even suggested that.” Jim pulled her into a hug, and Karen closed her eyes and rested her head on his chest. She was lying, but again, she only felt a little guilty.

Because isn’t everything fair in love and war?