Jim Halpert was getting pretty good at lying to himself.

Lie number one: He didn’t miss drinking grape soda. Bottled water was perfectly fine. Clear and flat tasted just as good as sweet, purple and fizzy. And it was better for him.

Lie number two: He genuinely cared about selling paper. Card stock was truly interesting to him.

Lie number three: His relationship with Karen was actually going somewhere really good. All the late night talks were a sign of strong communication and honesty.

Lie number four: He was no longer in love with Pam Beesly. They were just friends. Co-workers. They were colleagues. Sure, he cared about her, but any decent person would care about someone with whom he’d worked for so many years.

And so, on a Tuesday in March, at about 11:30 in the morning, Jim sat at his desk and pored over expense reports, looking up to smile at Karen when he felt her eyes on him. He sipped from his bottle of water, and when the phone rang and Pam picked it up with her usual “Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam,” he only felt a slight drop in his stomach because he’d skipped breakfast and it was getting on lunch time soon.

But then she gasped. And he knew without turning around that she’d clapped a hand over her mouth. So when he turned toward her, he wasn’t surprised to see her wide eyed with, indeed, her right hand covering her lips.

Pam nodded rapidly a few times, saying “okay” and “yes.” She didn’t seem to notice him watching her, or if she did, she didn’t seem to care. She nodded again, saying “I’ll be there tonight,” and hung up, immediately rising from her chair and walking out of the office.

Dwight, blessedly, was out on a sales call, so no one noticed when Pam walked out. No one but Jim. And Karen, who was watching Jim watch Pam. He could feel her eyes on the back of his head the same way he could feel Pam’s when she stared at him from her desk.

So he knew Karen was watching him when he too got up and walked toward the door. The further he got, the more intensely he felt her eyes. But what did she expect him to do? Not check on Pam? He would check on Oscar, or Phyllis, or Angela.

Okay, maybe not Angela. But Angela was the tiniest scary person he’d ever met. Or maybe the scariest tiny person. One of the two.

But he’d check on anyone else, because it was the decent thing to do. And Jim was a decent guy.

He found her, as expected, in the stairwell. She was sitting with her back to the wall, her knees tucked under her, her forehead pressed into one palm.

She was crying. Not bawling or sobbing loudly, but whimpering quietly, her shoulders shaking a little.

“Pam?” He didn’t ask if she was okay.

She looked up, stared at him a moment. “My grandmother died,” she said simply.

Oh.

He slid down the wall so he was sitting next to her. Somewhere between his brain and his body, something just wasn’t connecting. He wanted to reach out to her, but he couldn’t make his hand move. He told himself he shouldn’t, then had to force himself not to.

Damn it.

Pam pressed her hand to her forehead again, crying softly as if Jim wasn’t there. He leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes and tried to relax. He turned off his brain and decided to let his body do what it wanted.

He breathed.

“Come here,” he heard himself saying as his arm reached up and around her shoulder, pulling her toward him.

Yes. Yes, that felt right.

She leaned her head on his shoulder, like she had the day she fell asleep on him in the conference room.

She didn’t bury her face in his chest. She didn’t sob harder. She didn’t clutch on to his shirt or tie.

She just rested her head on his shoulder.

She sniffled every now and then, but mostly it was quiet. Jim felt his rear getting numb but he didn’t move. Her curly hair tickled his neck. Neither of them said a word.

Minutes passed.

Then Pam spoke up.

“I want waffles.”

Jim raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Waffles?”

Pam shrugged, not lifting her head off his shoulder.

“My grandparents owned this diner in the Poconos when I was a kid,” she said. “I used to go help out there during the summers. My grandfather - he passed when I was in college - he did most of the cooking, but my grandmother made the waffles.”

Jim grinned. “I love a good waffle.”

Ironic statement, he thought, since waffling was all he seemed to be doing for the past… he didn’t even know how long. Sitting on the floor in the stairwell, his arm around a teary Pam, talking about breakfast foods, he felt the most familiar with himself that he had in months.

How was it, he wondered, that he could spent months, literally months, convincing himself that he had changed, had “evolved,” that everything that had gone down last year and in the years prior simply didn’t matter anymore, and then in a moment Pam could lean her head on his shoulder and say “waffles,” and it was like he’d been smacked in the face.

“Oh yeah,” a voice in his head seemed to say, “this is who Jim Halpert is. This is who you are.”

“She’d make strawberry waffles sometimes,” Pam said , her voice trailing off. “Just puree berries in the blender and stir the right into the waffle mix. They were amazing.”

It didn’t really matter what he drank. And he probably ought to concentrate at work, or find something he actually wanted to do.

He wasn’t the guy who pretended not to feel his best friend’s eyes on him. She was still his best friend even if he’d done nothing to earn the title of being hers lately. And he wasn’t the guy who strung a perfectly wonderful woman along because he was too afraid to be shot down again.

He needed to talk to Karen. And this time, he needed to do the talking.

But not now. For now, he needed to listen to Pam talk about her grandmother and waffles. He needed to sit, with his arm around her shoulder, and listen to her talk.

Because that’s who he was. He was the guy who could make the girl laugh, but he was also the one who listened. And god, he hadn’t been listening to Pam at all lately. She hadn’t been talking much, but he wasn’t that good a liar to actually believe she hadn’t been saying an awful lot.

And he was the guy who would put his arm around the girl and let her rest her head on his shoulder.

“I learned to ride a two-wheeler in the parking lot,” she was saying. “I have a scar on my shin from falling off one time when my grandfather let go without telling me first. I…”

“Tried to turn around to see what was happening behind you?” Jim finished.

He felt her laugh. “You too?”

Jim scooted away from her just enough to make her lift her head. He ducked his down, pulling the hair along his left temple back.

“See there?” he said. “My dad let go, I looked back, flipped over the handlebars in my parents’ driveway. Look close.”

She did and sure enough, there was a faint scar along his hairline.

“Ouch,” she murmured. He nodded.

“Yeah.”

Pam played with a thread on the bottom of her skirt. He moved his fingernail almost imperceptibly along the seam on her shoulder.

“I learned how to make sugar cookies there,” she said softly.

Jim smiled. “You do make good sugar cookies, Beesly.”

“When I was six I took it upon myself to draw a mural on the wall by one of the booths. I used every color in my 64 Crayola box.”

He guffawed. “Bet your grandparents loved that.”

“They sold the place when I was 17,” she said proudly, “with the wall still colored. My grandfather told the buyer if he wanted white walls, he could paint them himself.”

Jim nodded. “Go Mr. Beesly.”

“Mr. Sweetow, actually,” Pam corrected. “My mom’s parents. Papa Joe.” He could feel her smiling.

“Papa Joe sounds cool.”

“He was,” she agreed. “They both were.”

Pam got quiet and he slewed his eyes sideways, looking at her, and he knew she could feel him looking because he could always feel her looking at him.

He moved so he was right next to her again, pulling slightly.

“I had my first kiss there,” she said, almost under her breath, but Jim heard.

He smiled, twisting his body toward her. “Interesting, Beesly,” he intoned. “Very interesting.”

She blushed.

July, 1992

Pam loved the high backed booth next to the rotating cake display in the little diner her grandparents owned. Even when customers meandered over to ogle the black forest cake, lemon meringue pie and strawberry shortcake, she could duck her head down and be hidden by the booth’s high wooden sides.

When the restaurant was empty, her grandmother didn’t need her to help serve food or wipe off tables. Her grandfather didn’t need help putting together the grilled cheese sandwiches or adding lettuce and tomato to hamburgers.

Not that Pam minded helping. She actually enjoyed it, especially helping in the kitchen. Especially when she got to help bake. But sitting in the back booth with the box of Caran D’Ache colored pencils she’d gotten for her birthday, smelling waffles, onion rings and strawberry milkshakes, sketching to her heart’s content, Pam was in heaven.

She wasn’t like most 13-year-old girls, she knew. She would rather hide out in the art room and draw during lunch than gather in the girls’ bathroom and experiment with make up. Boys were confusing and she didn’t really care enough to try and figure them out. Pam thought if a boy liked her, that would be fine, but she didn’t feel like chasing one around.

Her friend Isabelle was the boy chaser. They couldn’t have been more different. Pam thought they were probably best friends because they were so different, they balanced each other out.

Isabelle was tall, with dark hair and dark eyes. She wore hats with big flowers, fell in love with a new boy every week, and plastered her bedroom wall with posters of Luke Perry, Johnny Depp, Joey Lawrence and Gerardo.

“We’re women, Pam,” Isabelle would tell her. “They have to hear us roar.”

Pam didn’t want to roar.

She was happy listening more than she talked. She was shorter, with green eyes and curly reddish brown hair. She wore jeans or jean skirts and t-shirts most days, sometimes with cardigan sweaters. She had one special outfit she wore sometimes that made her feel like an artist: a black turtleneck with a sort of cream-colored jumper that looked like an artist’s smock or an old fashioned apron. Her bedroom had Monet and Van Gogh posters, as well as some of her own water colors. Just the really good ones.

Really, there were only two of her own up. Pam wasn’t conceited or anything.

The sketching she was doing at the table was definitely not something that was going to be put up in her room. It was a lot of fun, but it wasn’t very good.

“That’s really good,” a voice said suddenly and Pam jumped. A tall boy, about her age, with kind of unruly brown hair, was peering into the booth, looking at her drawing.

Pam blushed. “Oh, um, thanks,” she whispered.

She blushed again. The boy was kind of cute. His hair was messy, he had warm green eyes and a funny sort of smile. He had on a Sixers t-shirt and his hands were stuffed in the pockets of his shorts.

He was pretty cute, actually.

Not the kind of cute that Isabelle or other girls in school would like. But Pam was never a big fan of that kind of cute. She always liked Ben more than Mike on “Growing Pains.” Although she and Isabelle had agreed that the guy who had come on to play Luke was very cute.

But this boy was very cute. She blushed again.

“It’s really cool,” he said, looking more closely, “is that you?”

He pointed to the girl in the picture, a curly redhead sitting on the roof of a house, starting out at mountains in the distance.

Pam shrugged. “I guess.”

The boy gulped a little and shifted his weight. “Um, the sign said the pictures here are by local artists. Are any of them by you?”

Pam shook her head. “One,” she said, “it’s in the back hall by the bathrooms.”

Her heart was beating kind of fast, talking to this boy.

“Will you show me?”

Now her heart was beating really fast. Cute boys almost never paid attention to her. They really only talked to her if they wanted help with homework or if they wanted to ask her if Isabelle liked them. Once, Matt Phillips asked Pam to find out if her sister, Penny, liked him.

Penny was 11.

But this boy was talking to her, and not about homework or other girls, but about art. Her art.

It was weird.

She liked it.

“Um, okay,” she agreed, sliding out of the booth and walking the few steps toward the narrow back hall toward the bathrooms. He walked next to her, close but not too close. For a second, Pam thought she felt his pinky touch hers.

“Here it is,” she said.

They stood in front of a pastel drawing, hung and framed on the wall in between the bathrooms.

It was of a sunset over the water, only Pam had switched the colors so that the sun was setting in shades of blue and green over a pink, purple and orange lake.

The boy examined it quietly, not saying anything. He probably didn’t like it.

“It’s kind of weird,” Pam said.

He grinned at her. “It’s so cool. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Wow. He did like it. Pam grinned back at him, feeling less shy.

“It’s really trippy,” he said, then turned red. “I mean, I don’t know. I don’t do drugs.”

Pam shook her head. “No, me neither.”

They smiled at each other. Pam felt that fast heartbeat thing again, with this boy looking into her eyes like that. She didn’t know what to do.

They both looked away, back at the picture.

“Um, I really like this part, right here,” the boy said, pointing to a spot near the bottom where some colors kind of swirled together. Like right here, it kind of looks like, um, like a flower?”

A flower? There were no flowers in her picture.

“Where?” Pam asked.

He pointed again and leaned closer to the picture, kind of tilting his head. “Right here,” he said, “see?”

She leaned closer to look at where he was looking, tilting her head too. She didn’t see anything flower-like.

“I don’t think I see…” she started to say, when suddenly she felt something against her lips.

His lips.

Oh my god, he was kissing her!

Pam had never kissed a boy. She’d seen plenty of kissing on TV and movies though, so after a couple seconds, she remembered to relax her lips and tilt her head a little more.

He put his hands on her waist, so she put her hands on his shoulders, like they were slow dancing.

Pam felt him sort of massaging her lips with his a little bit, sort of switching the placement of their top and bottom lips. Their lips made little sounds. He didn’t try to put his tongue in her mouth and she was glad about that. French kissing sounded a little gross, actually.

They pulled apart, dropping their hands.

She shuffled her feet a little. He stuffed his hands back in his pockets and looked at her with that funny smile again. His lips were kind of mushed together in the middle, with one corner smiling a little higher than the other.

Pam liked his smile.

“Georgia!” A man called out. “Where are you? I need your help.”

Pam jumped a little. Sometimes her grandfather called her Georgia, for the artist Georgia O’Keefe. Pam thought she would love to paint like Georgia O’Keefe. Maybe someday.

“I have to go,” she said, starting to turn.

“Wait!”

She turned back.

“I want to talk to you some more,” the boy said in a rush. “Are you going to that bonfire at the lake tonight?”

Pam nodded.

“Me too,” he said. “Will you meet me by the water ice guy, at 8?”

She nodded.

He grinned at her. “All right,” he said. “Then it’s a date.”

A date? Oh wow. Pam had never been on a date. She felt kind of sick, like there were guppies in her stomach. But good sick.

Good sick? This felt so weird.

“Um, okay,” she said. She gave him one more smile. “Um, bye.”

He grinned at her. “Later.”

****

Present

“You never showed,” Jim said quietly. “At the bonfire.”

Pam stared at him. “Have I told you this story before?” She blushed a bit, her voice cracking slightly.

He swallowed, shaking his head. “Mama Honey’s, right? That was the name of your grandparents’ diner?”

Her chest heaved. “My grandmother,” she said. “Her name’s Helen. But everyone calls her Honey. You…” she gulped, “know it?”

Jim nodded. “You’re right,” he said, “the strawberry waffles were amazing.”

July, 1992

Sometimes Jim felt like he didn’t belong.

In his family, for example. Tom and Pete were 12 and 9 years older than him. They got along great, almost like they were married to each other or something. They were both loud and could kind of act like creeps, which girls seemed to like for some reason.

For example, when the waitress brought their food, Tom had loudly remarked that Jim was a queer because his strawberry waffles - the house specialty according to the menu - were pink because, you know, they had strawberries in them.

Their father had smacked Tom upside the head, but Jim was pretty sure the people at the next table had heard Tom asking Jim if the waffles were the same color pink as his panties.

And Pete had stared openly at the waitress’s giant cleavage and called her “babe.” Which, apparently, she seemed to like, because she leaned over even more and said “thanks.”

For the most part, Larissa didn’t torment him much, but she was only ten. She could be a huge brat though. As the youngest and the only girl, she was definitely spoiled with attention. She shoveled chocolate chip pancakes into her mouth, whining about not wanting to go on a canoe trip that afternoon.

‘There’s a bonfire carnival by the lake tonight,” their mother was telling Larissa. “If you’re a good sport about canoeing, you can get a cotton candy.”

Jim wondered if he could paddle a canoe by himself.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” he said, and got up without waiting to be excused. No one really seemed to notice.

He wandered toward the back of the restaurant. He didn’t really have to go to the bathroom, he just wanted to get up. Sometimes Tom and Pete were assholes (sorry, Mom).

He almost didn’t see the girl sitting in the very back booth, by the cake carousel. She was scrunched into a corner, concentrating on the drawing she was doing on the paper table cloth. He leaned in to look closer. The girl didn’t seem to notice.

“That’s really good,” he said. The girl jumped. Jim hadn’t meant to scare her. He’d just wanted to tell her that he liked her drawing.

The girl blushed. “Oh, um, thanks,” she whispered.

She was cute, with shoulder length hair that curled in a reddish brown frizz that she had clipped back in a barrette. She was wearing a yellow t-shirt. She had a little nose (everyone had a little nose compared to him) and green eyes, which stood out against her pink cheeks.

She was really pretty.

She wasn’t the kind of girl his brothers would like, or most of the guys at school. They tended to like girls with straight blond hair who acted dumb, but like they thought they were great. And girls who had big boobs.

Actually, this girl had nice ones. Not that Jim was looking. Okay, he was, but just a little, not staring or anything. Pete would stare. So would Tom.

The girl blushed again. Jim hoped she hadn’t seem him notice her chest. She was really pretty.

“It’s really cool,” he said, looking more closely at the drawing, “is that you?”

He pointed to the girl in the picture, a curly redhead sitting on the roof of a house, starting out at mountains in the distance.

The girl shrugged. “I guess.”

He gulped a little and shifted his weight. She probably thought he was a huge dork and wished he would just go away. But his stupid mouth kept on flapping.

“Um, the sign said the pictures here are by local artists. Are any of them by you?”

That seemed like a safe thing to ask. Maybe. Jim hated himself a little. He had friends who were girls, like Hallie Harris and Abby Schafer, but he had no idea how to really talk to girls. Sometimes a pretty girl would come and talk to him, but usually because she wanted something. Usually having to do with another guy. More often than not, having to do with one of his brothers.

The girl shook her head. “One,” she said, “it’s in the back hall by the bathrooms.”

Jim took a deep breath before blurting out the next question: “Will you show me?”

Holy crap, what had he done? What did he think, that this pretty, talented artist girl was just going to stop what she was doing, get up and show some strange, dorky looking guy her artwork?

But then he saw a look cross her face. Not quite a smile, but something that showed she didn’t think he was completely annoying. She looked, maybe, a little happy?

“Um, okay,” she agreed, sliding out of the booth and walking the few steps toward the narrow back hall toward the bathrooms. He walked next to her. Their pinkies accidentally almost brushed and for a split second, Jim thought about taking her hand.

“No, you dork,” he scolded himself. He followed her down a narrow hall.

“Here it is,” she said.

They stood in front of a pastel drawing, hung and framed on the wall in between the bathrooms.

It was of a sunset over the water, only she had switched the colors so that the sun was setting in shades of blue and green over a pink, purple and orange lake.

Jim examined it quietly, not saying anything. It was one of the coolest things he’d ever seen. The colors all swirled together, like the time they did marble printing in art class. And he really liked how she’d made the sun blue and the lake pink. His mother would say it had personality. Jim liked girls with personality.

“It’s kind of weird,” The girl said, looking like she wanted to hide.

He grinned at her. “It’s so cool. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The girl grinned back at him, looking happier. He was glad. She looked really pretty when she smiled.

“It’s really trippy,” he said, then turned red. Stupid thing to say. “I mean, I don’t know. I don’t do drugs.”

Jim thought he must have sounded like an idiot. “I don’t do drugs,” like he was in some fucking “this is your brain on drugs” commercial. Dork.

The girl shook her head. “No, me neither.”

Thank god.

They smiled at each other. Jim felt his heartbeat go faster, with this girl looking into his eyes like that. He didn’t know what to do.

Actually, he kind of did. He felt like he wanted to, sort of, maybe, kiss her?

Whoa.

They both looked away, back at the picture.

“Um, I really like this part, right here,” Jim said, pointing to a spot near the bottom where some colors kind of swirled together. “Like right here, it kind of looks like, um, like a flower?”

A flower? A flower? There was nothing that looked like a flower. He didn’t know how the word flower had come out of his mouth. Great, now she probably thought he was gay.

“Where?” She asked.

And now he had to keep on pretending he saw a flower.

He pointed again and leaned closer to the picture, kind of tilting his head, like he was concentrating. “Right here,” he said, pointing to the swirly spot, “see?”

She leaned closer to look at where he was looking, tilting her head too. She was squinting at the picture, not looking at him.

The girl was concentrating on the picture and looking really cute and Jim realized that with the way their heads were both tilted, if he was just about a foot closer to her, he could…

“I don’t think I see…” she started to say, when something inside Jim’s brain screamed “do it” and he swooped down without really knowing what he was doing and pressed his lips to hers.

Holy shit, he was kissing her.

Jim had never kissed a girl. He’d seen plenty of kissing on TV, and he’d definitely heard guys talk about it in the locker room, so he kind of knew what to do, a little bit. He knew to not press too hard and not to make his lips all puckered.

“Don’t smack me, don’t smack me, don’t smack me,” he prayed silently.

She didn’t smack him. After a couple seconds, he felt her relax her lips and tilt her head a little more.

He put his hands on her waist, so she put her hands on his shoulders, like they were slow dancing. He had slow danced with Hallie at the Spring dance and she’d put her head on his shoulder. It had been nice and he thought for maybe a second about trying to kiss her, but that would have just been way too weird.

She’d called the next day to tell him she was really sorry, but she just found out she had lice, and he should probably check himself out. Fortunately, he didn’t have it.

Now, he was glad he hadn’t kissed Hallie, because he liked that this pretty artist girl would always be the first girl he kissed. Jim wanted to try French kissing her, but her mouth wasn’t really open very wide and he didn’t know how to start it without basically forcing his tongue into her mouth. He massaged her lips with his a little bit, switching bottom, top, bottom, top, like he remembered hearing on a TV show. Their lips made little sounds.

They pulled apart, dropping their hands.

She shuffled her feet a little. He stuffed his hands back in his pockets and looked at her, smiling. She smiled back, her cheeks getting pink again.

She was really, really pretty.

“Georgia!” A man called out. “Where are you? I need your help.”

The girl jumped a little. That must be her name, Georgia. It was a nice name, kind of old fashioned. Jim thought maybe she even smelled a little bit like peaches.

“I have to go,” she said, starting to turn.

“Wait!” he called out.

She turned back.

“I want to talk to you some more,” he said in a rush. “Are you going to that bonfire at the lake tonight?”

Georgia nodded.

“Me too,” he said. “Will you meet me by the water ice guy, at 8?”

She nodded again.

He grinned at her. “All right,” he said. “Then it’s a date.”

It’s a date? It’s a date?! Jim wanted to kick his own ass. Could he have possibly sounded dorkier? He wanted to throw up in his mouth a little.

“Um, okay,” she said. She gave him one more smile. “Um, bye.”

Or maybe she didn’t think he was a huge dork. Maybe. All right, he could be cool.

He grinned at her. “Later.”

That was… well, it could have been worse. Actually, it could have been a lot worse. He felt kind of… high, actually.

****

That night at the bonfire

Jim looked at his watch. It was 8:52. He’d eaten four water ices.

She’d never shown up. She must have decided she didn’t want to hang out with him, or maybe she met someone cooler.

He threw away his cup in the trash can next to the stand. The water ice guy gave him a kind of pitying look. Jim shrugged and walked off. He didn’t have to meet his family until 10. He figured he could just wander around until then.

***

Present

“We left the next morning,” he said. “I tried to get my parents to go back there, but my dad wanted to beat traffic so they insisted on waiting until we were on the road to get breakfast.”

Pam was staring at him, her eyes wide.

“I can’t believe…” she said. “That’s impossible.”

Jim shook his head. “It’s crazy,” he agreed. He felt dizzy.

“It was you,” Pam whispered, almost to herself. “I never forgot about that. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you.”

He laughed. “I hope I look different. I was a giant dork with huge ears.”

She laughed. “You’re still a giant dork,” she teased gently, “with slightly more proportional ears.”

Jim felt more relaxed than he had in months. Laughing with her, even among all the sadness, the heartache, the insanity, felt so…honest.

He had to know something. Fifteen years later.

“What happened that night?” he asked quietly. “How come you never showed up? At the bonfire?”

Pam blushed. All the memories that had faded with time, both a little and a lot, came rushing back, and he thought again how pretty she was with pink in her cheeks.

“I was riding my bike home,” she said, “and I tried to jump the curb and flipped over the handlebars. I broke my arm.”

She smiled sheepishly and any last shred of lie Jim was holding on to that he wasn’t in love with this girl anymore went flying out the window. He smiled affectionately at her.

“Beesly, you klutz.”

It was strange how things happened.

They probably never would have had this conversation if Pam hadn’t gotten the call about Mama Honey dying at the office. If she’d found out at home, or even on her lunch break, she wouldn’t have had to leave the room to let the initial shock sink in. Jim wouldn’t have followed her. She wouldn’t have started blathering about waffles.

If she’d gotten the call from her father six hours later, when she’d been at home, she would have called the office and left a message saying she would be out for a couple of days to go to the funeral. She’d have come back to a card signed by her co-workers, filled with messages of varying degrees of inappropriateness. Jim would have rapped her desk with his knuckles as he made his way between the coat rack and his desk.

“Hey, I’m really sorry for your loss,” he would have said, quietly and sincerely, but not offering anything more.

“Thanks,” she would have said, with an appreciative smile, because she’d have known that he meant it, and she would have appreciated it.

They would have kept eye contact for about two seconds, two seconds of honesty between them, before…

“Uh, I better…” he would have mumbled, making some gesture toward his desk.

“Right, yeah, yeah,” she would have responded, flustered, grabbing the closest item and feigning interest.

And the lies would have come bashing back.

It was strange how things happened.

“I can’t believe that was you,” Pam said, for what felt like the hundredth time. Wrapping her brain around the fact that she and Jim had met as kids was one thing: They’d both grown up in Scranton; it wasn’t too far fetched to think that their paths had crossed at one point or another.

But they’d kissed. Fifteen years ago, she and Jim had kissed and she’d never realized it.

Jim Halpert had been her first kiss.

That was just… insane. It was impossible. It was bizarre. It was crazy. It was altogether completely fucked up.

It was somehow… right.

“I know,” Jim said, gobsmacked. “How did we not know that? How did it not come up?”

Pam sighed. They might as well continue with this honesty, which, if she were being honest, might only take place within the confines of this stairwell and this conversation, well then the truth was…

“We never talked about a lot of real things,” she said quietly, watching his Adam’s apple bob up and down in his throat.

Jim exhaled. She was right. Most of their conversations had been about how to prank Dwight, or how crazy Michael was. And of course there were the talks about Roy.

But those had been far from honest.

If they’d be honest, he would have said “He’s not good enough for you, Pam. He doesn’t appreciate you for how talented you are, or how funny, or how sweet. He appreciates that you’re there, sometimes, but you deserve to be with someone who knows how lucky he is to have you.”

Since his return, in the few conversations they’d had, she’d given him advice about sleep cycles and not freaking out about Karen moving to an apartment nearby. And she’d hated telling him to go easy on Karen. He knew that. The devil in him had actually enjoyed it a bit. He’d hated himself a little that day.

Though not as much as he’d hated himself the day he came back and Pam had asked him to coffee.

“I sort of started seeing someone,” he’d said, and watched her try not to let her face fall as he just thought about what an absolute ass he was.

Because the truth was that he hadn’t asked Karen out on a date until he’d realized that he had no choice but to go back to Scranton. Because the truth was that he knew going back there and facing Pam without a shield was more than he could handle.

But if they were going to have a shot at having any truth between them, he needed to know.

“Why didn’t you call me after you canceled the wedding?”

Pam shook her head ruefully at him. “What was I going to say? ‘Hey Jim, it’s Pam. Just wanted to let you know I called off my wedding. And, look, I know I shot you down after I took advantage of our friendship for years, but if you still want to hit this, give me a call.’”

Jim burst out laughing. “ ‘Hit this?’ Beesly, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say ‘hit this.’”

She loved hearing him laugh. Laughing was truth. But there needed to be other kinds of truth too.

“I thought you hated me,” she confessed. She stared at him, stared into him, her eyes at once bold and shy.

He wanted to kiss her then. He wanted to breathe her in and swallow all her doubts. To press forgiveness to her lips and suck second chances from her tongue. He wanted to lick love on the roof of her mouth and moan truth down her throat.

“I could never hate you, Pam,” he murmured, and even though he knew, he knew it was too soon and completely wrong, his head inclined anyway and he reached out to touch her cheek, lowering his lips toward hers.

“I can’t.”

He was such an idiot. She probably just wanted to be friends again and here he was trying to kiss her? What the hell was he thinking? He wondered how well a six foot three inch white guy would do selling sombreros on a beach in Mexico.

“Not yet.”

Jim gulped. “What?”

Pam shook her head

“If we’re going to do this,” she said, “if we’re going to have a chance, I want to start doing things right.” She reached out to touch his cheek, just for a second, pulling her fingers back quickly. “And it’s not right when you’re with Karen.”

Karen. Jim had kind of forgotten about her for a minute.

“I-” he started to say.

“Unless that was going to be a lost kiss,” she pressed on. “And I don’t do those. Not anymore.”

He sighed. “Definitely not, Beesly. You are definitely not a lost kiss girl.” He nudged her. “I’m going to talk to Karen, tell her it’s over. Because this?” He gestured between them. “You and me? I can’t not.”

Pam nodded. “I have a funeral to go to,” she said quietly. “And we probably have a lot to talk about.”

Jim nodded.

“I think we might actually be on the same page, finally,” she said. “But we need to do this slow.”

He could do slow. He was patient. He had waited before. He could wait again, so long as he knew he was waiting for something.

“Well, maybe in a couple weeks,” he said, “I could take you out to breakfast.”

Three days later

Pam turned the Yaris on to her street. It felt good to be coming home to her quiet little apartment after three days with her extended family in Shippensburg. The funeral had been sad, but sweet.

It had hit Pam, somewhere in the middle of the service, that the next person she loved whom she would lose would probably be her father. Mama Honey had been her last grandparent. She needed quiet to process that thought. There wasn’t a lot of quiet with the whole family around, even at a funeral. There were other thoughts to process as well. Happier ones. Ones with more promise.

Pam pulled into the driveway of the house in which she rented a one bedroom apartment. Her headlights illuminated a figure sitting on the front stoop. She smiled and killed the engine, climbing out of the car.

He stood up, but didn’t leave the step. She walked toward him, shaking her head slightly.

He shrugged. “I couldn’t wait.”

They sat down on her front stoop, not saying a word. He didn’t ask pointless questions like how the funeral was, or was she okay? He didn’t try to make her laugh. They were just quiet.

Then slowly, Jim reached out and put his arm around Pam.

She leaned her head on his shoulder.

One month later

He imagines this is how she might have been at that bonfire carnival so many years ago, if she’d shown up. Her eyes are wide, bright and every few moments, she gasps in delight.

“Jim, look!” She grabs his hand and all but drags him over to a painting. “Isn’t it amazing?”

She loves European paintings. He, frankly, would rather look at the Egyptian artifacts, but the look on Pam’s face is worth hanging out with Monet and Cezanne for, even if he does think they’re sort of, well, messy.

The look on her face is worth having fought Upper East Side traffic and driving around for an hour to get a parking spot fourteen blocks away from the Met. Even leaving Scranton before 8 a.m. hadn’t saved them that hassle.

In the four weeks since she’d come home from her grandmother’s funeral to find him sitting on her front stoop, they’d been working their way back to what they’d been and toward what they were becoming.

Karen had moved to Chicago a couple of weeks ago to stay with a friend from college while she pursued an advertising career. The night Pam left to go to Shippensburg, Jim was finally honest with his girlfriend. The truth was, he said, he just didn’t see a future with her.

“Promise me,” she’d said fiercely, trying to keep the tears from falling, “promise me this isn’t about Pam.”

He’d been aware of the cruel irony when he’d hung his head (because he really did feel bad for what he’d done to her) and said “I can’t.”

There were still a lot of long talks, a lot of history to be revealed and emotional snarls to untangle, but he discovered he didn’t mind them with Pam. It wasn’t easy. The who should have called whom after Pam canceled her wedding and Jim found out she’d canceled her wedding debate had gone on and gone nowhere until Pam had informed him, at 3:18 in the morning, that he could “suck it,” without a hint of flirtation in her voice, and slammed out of his apartment. He’d followed her home, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he didn’t know she was safe, then drove sleepily back to his apartment, grumbling about how stubborn she was.

She’d shown up at his door late the next morning with a bag of pastries and a half-smile that was at once sheepish and petulant.

“I suppose I could have called,” she’d sighed, “but you left, so you’ll forgive me if I didn’t think you wanted to hear from me.”

“You rejected me,” he informed her, yet again. “Twice. I didn’t want you to think I was some pathetic vulture, swarming the corpse of the broken engagement.”

“But if…”

“Are we going to do this again?” He’d demanded, snatching the wax paper bag from her. “What’d you bring me?”

Pam had rolled her eyes in a way that would have made his mother remark about them getting stuck that way. “Can we at least agree that we both could have handled things better?”

“Say the chocolate chip cream cheese Danish is mine and I’ll accept some of the responsibility,” he’d smirked, and she’d agreed, only after he’d conceded to share part of the Danish.

They were at that hard-to-define place in their relationship where they weren’t “just friends” but they also weren’t quite dating. Despite spending more time together outside of the office than they ever had before, they hadn’t crossed that line.

They both knew it was a matter of when, not if, so they didn‘t feel a need to rush. Of course, Jim had taken his fair share of cold showers over the past four weeks, but he knew it was worth the wait. She was worth the wait.

He‘s being dragged across the gallery.

“Jim, isn’t it incredible?”

For a small woman, Pam is very strong when she wants something and right now what she wants is for him to look at a blue, green and yellow vertical painting of what he thinks is supposed to be a tree. The placard next to it indicates the work is called “Cypresses” and Jim congratulates himself silently on his artistic insight.

“Incredible,” he parrots brightly, nodding enthusiastically, and she sees right through him, because she knows him and also because he couldn’t be more transparent if he were made of cellophane.

“Yeah, right.”

He has the decency to blush. “I’m sorry, Pam. It just looks like finger painting to me.”

She rolls her eyes. “Look closer,” she instructs him, “look at the intensity of the brush strokes. Look at the texture and how the colors blend together. Look at what it feels like, Jim.”

So he does. He leans forward and sees that close up, there are places where the paint isn’t flat on the canvas. He sees places where the leaves on the tree could be green flames. He sees something frenetic and desperate in the swirling brushstrokes. He tilts his head to look from a different angle, concentrating to see what she sees without having to try.

And suddenly, two small hands are grasping the sides of his black zip up sweatshirt and pulling him down. He realizes what’s happening just as his lips collide with hers and laughs into her mouth.

“That’s my move, Beesly,” he teases, nipping at her, his arms slipping around her waist. “Very unoriginal.”

“You talk too much,” she mumbles, sliding her tongue along his.

He tastes the inside of her whipped cream flavored mouth and swallows her happy sighs.

Kissing her beat the hell out of Van Gogh any day.