-----------------------------------

She’s almost told him a dozen times. She realizes now that “almost” is worth about as much as “just.”

“Almost” and “just” are the reasons that she’s currently sitting on the bathroom floor cradling a green teapot between her knees and her chest.

She knows that her cheeks are wet, but she can’t remember crying. She can’t really remember walking into the bathroom either, but she distinctly recalls the thud as she collapsed onto the floor, and it was only then that she realized she was still holding the teapot.

She feels numb.

She can’t reconcile the Jim she knows with the Jim she just saw. He must have meant it. How could he say something so terrible and not mean it?

She was too late.

He was right. How could she hold on to that knowledge since the Christmas party and never say a word?

Her brother ran cross-country in high school. He always told her that when he lost a race by ten yards he could brush it off. No big deal. Win some, lose some. But when it was a few feet, a few inches… it was devastating.

When he told her this she’d roll her eyes and tell him she’d never understand runners. There was no point in running unless you were being chased by something. Maybe bears.

But now she understands perfectly, because the thing that’s making her heart hurt and her stomach tighten and her hands shake against the cold tile of the bathroom floor is the knowledge of how close she was to telling him. So many times. And he never knew.

-----------------------------------

He shows up with Katy and the already chilly air drops twenty degrees. It’s like a bucket of ice water running down her insides.

The card meant nothing. He took it back for a reason.

But then they’re alone on deck. Together. When he could have been with Katy. Katy who he supposedly stopped seeing months ago, and who Ryan was going to ask out, and who by the way was a CHEERLEADER in high school. She was so wrong for him.

And then her stomach lurches because Katy fades from her mind and she remembers Roy offering her a snorkel shot.

“Sometimes I just don’t get Roy.”

There is a long pause.

She almost adds, “…like I get you.” And she almost asks, “Why did you take the card back?” And she almost says, “Because I can’t stop wishing you hadn’t.”

But instead she says, “I’m cold.”

-----------------------------------

The door swings open and for half a second she thinks it might be him. But of course it isn’t, because she waited too long and he’s not coming back this time.

“What are you doing?” Angela asks.

She’s frowning and staring down at Pam like she’s trying to decide if there is something unholy happening in her presence. As if Pam wants to be here right now and she’s up to no good.

“Nothing,” Pam answers. She swipes inefficiently at her cheeks with the heels of her palms.

Angela looks conflicted. It’s as if she’s trying to compute an appropriate response to the situation, but her copy of The Tight-ass’s Guide to Professional Office Behavior didn’t include a chapter on finding sobbing co-workers on the bathroom floor. So she settles on saying something entirely unhelpful.

“The floor is very unsanitary. You shouldn’t be down there.”

But Angela’s eyes aren’t focusing on the floor and how dirty it is. She’s looking at Pam and the wetness on her face. She’s frowning still, but it isn’t her usual frown of annoyance or disgust.

“Why are you holding a teapot?” she asks.

It sounds like an accusation coming from Angela’s mouth and Pam starts to laugh but it turns into a sob halfway out of her mouth. And then it becomes just a series of silent sobs. Her head feels heavy and painful like it might explode and she can’t look at Angela anymore.

-----------------------------------

She knows it’s weird to hope that you get a concussion, but she can’t help it. She’s jealous of Dwight. For one day he can act completely different and not be held responsible. She knows exactly what she’d do if she had a concussion.

Of course, she knows it doesn’t work that way. When you have a concussion you aren’t thinking clearly.

But she can’t banish from her mind the image of twisting his tie between her fingers, of pulling him close, of telling him with her lips grazing his ear that she read it and she needs it to be true.

-----------------------------------

“Would you like to go with me to grab a coffee?”

The suggestion shocks her just as much as it did the first time Angela said it, a week or two ago. Pam stares up at her. Angela isn’t frowning anymore. She seems to be attempting a smile. It looks painful.

Before Pam realizes what she’s doing, she’s nodding and Angela takes the teapot from her so that she can stand.

“I’ll give you a moment,” Angela says.

Pam desperately wants to leave, but she doesn’t want to walk by his desk. She’s considering asking Dwight to rig up some sort of pulley system to help her repel down the side of the building, but she abandons that idea fairly quickly.

She’s incredibly relieved to see Angela ready and waiting at the door, holding her coat and purse out to her. She forces herself not to turn to see if he’s watching her, or to check the expression on his face, and she doesn’t exhale until she and Angela are in the elevator and the doors are sliding shut.

-----------------------------------

The elevator doors slide shut and she can’t tear her eyes away from him. He admitted it. He didn’t say love, he said crush, but it still made her hands tremble and her heart race.

If only he didn’t take it back two seconds later, just like the card.

There are only two floors. She knows she only has a few seconds.

And she wants desperately to tell him, “Please don’t be over it, because I’m only just realizing that I’m under it.”

And she almost does.

But the doors open and he’s gone before she can make her mouth move.

-----------------------------------

They haven’t spoken a word since they left the building but now they’re at the counter and the barista is waiting for her order.

“Not tea,” is the first thing that comes out of her mouth.

The barista looks un-amused and Angela’s eyebrow is arched but she takes it all in stride and says, “Just pour her a cup of regular coffee.”

When they take their seats Pam still can’t speak, so Angela does.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” Pam can’t stop the question from escaping her lips.

Angela looks taken aback. As if she’s been nothing but roses since the day they met and she can’t imagine why Pam is surprised.

“You’ve listened to me. About… Noelle and Kurt,” she says. She’s smiling her painful almost-smile again, and Pam feels the strangest sense of connection with her. Like they’re actually friends.

“I have this friend. Let’s call her… Claire,” Pam starts. Angela nods in approval and it’s clear that she gets the message.

-----------------------------------

She leaves him seven voicemails. She almost leaves him eight, because it was so hard to look up and expect to see him at his desk and see Michael there instead.

She almost calls him one last time and she almost says, “I missed you. Not just today. All last week when I was with Roy. And every day that I don’t see you.”

Her finger is poised and ready and she almost presses ‘Send,’ but then she’s in her car and it isn’t safe to talk on the phone and she let’s the moment pass.

-----------------------------------

The story comes pouring from her mouth. It feels like one huge exhalation after holding her breath for years.

And it doesn’t even matter that Angela seems scandalized when she hears that Claire had feelings for her coworker Tom even though she was engaged to Bob.

It’s finally out of her head and out in the open and for some reason just saying it makes her feel calmer.

She’s staring at the bottom of a mug that is empty save for a couple of renegade coffee grounds that sought freedom from the filter, and she knows it’s time to go.

-----------------------------------

She almost leaves Roy that night. She’s running through the directions to his house in her head. Right on Birch. Three lights down. Left on Putnam. Second stop sign, take another left…

Because he never would have told her not to take the internship. And because if she told him about the house with the terrace, he wouldn’t say it’s impractical. And because she read the card and she knows.

She almost goes to his house and tells him, “I’m not fine with my choices.”

But she sits on her bed, trembling, with a half-filled duffle bag in her hands and she repeats to herself, “Dreams are just that.”

-----------------------------------

She somehow makes it back to her desk. He hasn’t turned to look at her and the part of her that isn’t deeply hurt is actually sort of thankful. It would be so much harder if she had to face him.

But then she looks at her computer, and she sees that there’s an email waiting in her inbox.

-----------------------------------

She has the Valentine all written up. Her hand shakes so violently when she writes it that she has to take a break halfway through, in between the part where she says, “I read the card” and the part where she says, “So I’m sending you one of my own.”

She almost gives it to him.

But then he doesn’t look at her all day, and he doesn’t give her a Valentine this year, not even one with a creepy picture of Dwight on it just as a joke.

He turns around as he’s leaving and says, “Hey, Happy Valentine’s Day,” like it’s an afterthought.

So she runs her card through the shredder.

Because he must have taken his back for a reason.

-----------------------------------

Her finger is perched on top the mouse button. The little arrow hovers over the subject line: “I’m sorry”

-----------------------------------

She has her hand poised to shove the Save-the-Dates into the mail slot and she almost doesn’t. She was so sure that he didn’t mean it because he took it back.

But today he told her he’s going to Australia. And he’s leaving on June 8th. And that has to mean something.

She sees his face every time he overhears her planning her wedding and it makes her wonder why she’s planning at all.

But then the man in line behind her yells something about moving sometime this century and she pushes them the rest of the way through the slot.

-----------------------------------

She clicks.

“Pam.

Sorry I was short with you. I’ve been letting little things get to me lately.

Jim.”

That was it.

-----------------------------------

She can feel him drifting away. He’ll be halfway across the world in a few weeks but he might as well already be on the plane.

It felt almost normal today when he was teasing her about bribing children with candy and when they stood so close to each other in the doorway watching Dwight and Michael perform their horrendous duet.

But when she turns to tell him her theory on Michael’s ukulele skills he’s already got one foot out the door.

And when he waves to her from the doorway she almost gets up and follows him.

She almost catches up to him in the hallway and tells him that it physically hurts her when he drifts like that. That she feels like she’s being ripped apart and stranded. That he’s her anchor and she doesn’t know what she’ll do if he leaves.

But instead she waves back and he drifts a little further.

-----------------------------------

She doesn’t know what to do. She can’t email him back and say, “It’s okay.”

Because it’s not, and she can’t lie anymore.

She wishes he hadn’t apologized at all, because it makes her feel a million miles farther from where she wants to be.

The apology is just so empty that it makes her feel the same.

“I’ve been letting little things get to me lately.”

Little things?

Was he calling her teapot and his card little things?

The sick, aching, empty feeling grows in her chest, and she deletes the email immediately without sending a reply.

-----------------------------------

Kevin is waiting for the phone call from his doctor and the crew asks her what she would do if she had a week to live. She starts spouting off the names of destinations, but that isn’t the first answer that pops into her mind.

She wouldn’t even wait for the workday to end. She wouldn’t even wait to tell Roy that things were over. No time.

She would walk over to his desk and pull him gently by the hand and he would follow. He would give her a curious look but he wouldn’t ask questions. And when they were in the stairwell and he opened his mouth to ask, she would cover it with her own.

And if he hesitated she would tell him, “I’m yours” and “I need you” and “right now” and he wouldn’t hesitate anymore.

But “Europe” and “South America” and “the Grand Canyon” come so much more easily to her lips.

And later when they’re skating he asks, “Do you think I can let you go?”

And she knows he doesn’t understand that she’s not talking about skating when she says no.

-----------------------------------

They leave together. Pam tries not to watch as he puts her coat on for her, but the coat rack is right there and she can’t avoid them.

Karen says something about staying in and watching a movie. He says good because he’s been dying to watch Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason again, and she laughs.

-----------------------------------

Bubbling laughter threatens to pour from her mouth when she says, “Jim, you can tell me anything.” But then she looks at him and suddenly it’s not a perfect day anymore.

And then they’re sharing a can of coke, sipping from two separate plastic cups. And even though they’re talking, they haven’t broken the real silence, the one that makes them hurt.

But she almost does.

She almost tells him that he doesn’t have to say anything at all, because she knows.

But then he’s talking about Dwight peeing in a cup and the moment doesn’t seem right.

-----------------------------------

Everyone else is leaving but she doesn’t trust herself to look away from her computer screen, because intense concentration is the only thing keeping her from crying.

She’s the last one in the office except for…

“Pam, are you all right?”

Toby.

He looks concerned.

“Did someone upset you?” he asks. “Was it Michael?”

-----------------------------------

It was him. He complained about her to Toby.

But he redacted it.

Does that mean he never really meant it?

He’s backpedaling and saying things like “didn’t know he was going to write it down” and “just one day” and “took it right back” but none of it sounds real.

He meant it.

What does that say about other things? Other things he said but took away?

She doesn’t even want to think about it anymore, because if she does she’ll know that the card really meant something. And if the card really meant something, then it makes things so much harder. Because her wedding is only four weeks away and she can’t…

And she almost says, “I know why you did it. You don’t have to pretend.”

And she almost says, “I’m so tired of pretending.”

But she’s just angry. She’s angry at him for taking back the card, and she’s angry at herself for waiting so long to say something (‘too long,’ a voice in the back of her mind whispers), and she’s just frozen by the frustration and the hopelessness.

So all she says is, “Okay.”

-----------------------------------

“No, it wasn’t Michael,” Pam says.

She’s able to meet Toby’s gaze, which she considers a triumph. (Look ma, no tears!)

But then he opens his mouth again.

“Was it Jim?”

-----------------------------------

Her heart jumps into her throat and she can’t get off the phone fast enough because he came back and he’s coming toward her and she just told her mom the truth and she might faint because everything is happening right at this instant.

And she thinks she says his name, but his lips are on hers and she can’t remember anything that came before this moment.

She knows her hands are in his hair and that it’s soft and thick between her fingers but she can’t remember putting them there. His arms are all the way around her and his hands are on her back, pressing her closer, and they’re searing her skin through her dress.

It’s all happening so fast and she can’t breathe and she pushes him away, just a little. His lips leave hers and she feels cold until he grasps her hands and smiles and says, “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.”

And it feels like the most natural thing in the word to say, “Me too.”

But then the world comes rushing back and words like ‘Roy’ and ‘wedding’ flood her mind and she wants to say, “Hold on. I need to think. Too much. Please wait”

But for some reason, “I think we’re just drunk” comes out instead. She hates herself for lying again.

But he tries again, like he always does. He’s always coming back, and she’s so thankful, and this time she tells the truth when he says, “Are you drunk?”

But then he’s coming toward her again, and she still hasn’t processed anything since the first kiss and she has so much to tell him and it’s causing her to panic. She just needs to say it, to get it out of her head and in the open.

She desperately needs to tell him that she read the card. She needs to tell him that she’s sorry she never said anything, but he sent so many mixed signals—from taking it back to saying “crush” instead of “love” to telling her that it was over. And she knows she should have known and been brave but she had so much to lose if she was wrong.

She needs to tell him that she feels the same way and that she’s sorry for not telling him sooner.

So she says, “Jim” just to stop his mouth from covering hers because she can’t possibly say all that she needs to say if he’s kissing her.

But when she opens her mouth she flounders. Again.

She just keeps moving her mouth and no sound is coming out. She’s blinking back tears and trying to remember what she was going to say and she knows that the silence has gone on too long.

At the very least she wants to say, “I need to think for a second” or “I have to tell you something” and she starts to form the “I” but then he’s speaking.

“You’re really gonna marry him.”

It’s not a question the way he says it.

She’s so shocked by his assumption. She wants to say no, or at the very least to say, “Hold on.”

But it’s like she’s back at her default setting. His words give her an easy out. He just put her right back in the safe zone and it’s so familiar that before she knows what she’s doing her head is nodding.

And she feels his hands moving in hers and she realizes that they’re pulling away.

And this time she doesn’t think he’ll come back.

-----------------------------------

She can barely speak, but she manages to get out half a sentence.

“How did you—”

“I sit really close to the kitchen,” he interrupts. “I hear more than people realize, I guess.”

“Oh.”

She looks down and tries to focus on keeping her breathing even.

“Listen… Pam…”

She looks up at him and he seems uncomfortable and unsure and a little sad. But then again this is Toby so that’s not terribly unusual.

“Sometimes you just have to go for it, you know? Some dreams are worth chasing.”

It sounds almost ridiculous coming from Toby Flenderson’s mouth. Toby, who sits quietly in the back, and who goes home at night alone, and who takes Michael’s abuse with a sort of apathetic tolerance.

It would definitely sound ridiculous if it didn’t happen to ring so true.

Because she knows now what her brother meant. And she doesn’t need bears chasing after her to run.

And guess what?

He did come back.

And when she says, “Thank you” in a very small voice, she means it.

Toby smiles as he walks out the door, but it’s a sad smile and Pam wonders why he always looks so sad and just when he became so insightful. She thinks that maybe he was a runner in high school.

But Pam has more important things to think about than Toby’s high school extracurriculars.

Because all at one she realizes that she hasn’t lost the race, because Jim never knew that she was running.

He hadn’t seen any of the steps she’d taken. As far as he knew, she had been standing stationary the entire time. “Almosts” weren’t really steps anyway.

But she was taking those steps. She feels just as exhausted as if she’d been running the whole time. She wasn’t standing still. It was like she’d been running on a treadmill all this time without realizing it.

Time to get off the treadmill, she says to herself.

Because almost doesn’t count. She’s so done with “almost.” And she’s ready to start running.

***