Karen hated the feeling that she was spying on her own boyfriend.

It hadn’t started this way. At first, when she looked over at his desk, it was to flirt, and to see if she could figure out whether they were ever going to get past grabbing a drink together after work. Then it turned into something more clandestine and romantic, the sort of thing she secretly loved. When she caught his eye, it was because she was his, and he was hers, and the rest of the office might as well not exist during those moments, for all she cared.

            But there had been a shift, and even though Karen couldn’t exactly remember when it was that she noticed Pam staring at the back of Jim’s neck, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something she was missing. And when Phyllis had dropped that comment about Jim getting over Pam, Karen had felt for a few minutes like she might never be able to breathe normally again.

            Conversations are good things. Karen has always believed that it’s always best to talk about your problems. And Jim had been so cooperative that she had started to think that maybe she didn’t have anything to worry about after all. But she couldn’t help herself from glancing over in Jim’s direction—not to make eye contact with him, but to see if he was making eye contact with Pam.

            At Phyllis’s wedding, Karen had started to relax back into the relationship. It began to feel like it had a few weeks earlier, before she confronted Jim about his feelings for Pam. She had wondered, from time to time, whether things might not have been better if she had just left it all alone. She could have gone on just fine without thinking that her boyfriend might still have a crush on another woman. She could have pushed all those little worries out of her head. She had done it before, in other relationships. Karen had gotten pretty good at convincing herself that she was the right girl for whoever happened to be the right guy at the moment.

            But things were different with Jim, and they always had been. He hadn’t thrown himself at her or tried to impress her or made an ass out of himself in front of her. Jim had acted like she was just another normal person, and that had made it so much easier for her to fall for him. The weirdness had started when she realized that it didn’t seem like Jim was falling for her. This was new for Karen, and in some small way, she appreciated it. She’d had to work for Jim. She’d earned him.

            She just hadn’t understood that she was competing with someone else all along.

            And it would be easier, too, if Pam wasn’t so nice. Out of all the women in this office, Pam was the only normal one, the only one Karen could see herself talking to and being friends with. So when she’d had to work for Pam’s friendship almost as hard as she’d had to work for Jim’s affection, Karen had again felt a little bit triumphant. She’d won. She may have pulled up her entire life to move to Scranton, but now she had a boyfriend who was tall and funny and definitely had the cutest smile she’d ever seen, and she had a friend who was clever and gentle and genuinely nice.

            Things were supposed to keep going like that. Things were supposed to stay good. She wasn’t supposed to notice Jim’s hand brushing Pam’s as they pulled pranks, or Pam’s smile growing three sizes whenever she talked to Jim. She wasn’t supposed to ask questions point blank that basically accused the only two people she liked in this city of carrying something on behind her back.

            And she wasn’t supposed to see Pam grab her coat at 10:17 on a Tuesday morning, and she wasn’t supposed to see Jim slip into the stairwell two minutes later. She wasn’t supposed to sit at her desk, unable to focus on anything but the fact that Pam and Jim were somewhere, together, doing something.

            Things didn’t get better when Pam came back, looking flushed but steady. And when Jim followed, looking flushed and confused. Karen tried to catch Jim’s eye, feeling guilty even as she knew that maybe she wasn’t the one who had anything to feel guilty for, but he refused to look away from his computer screen. And Karen’s eyes drifted over to Pam’s desk, dreading the idea that Pam was probably going to be looking at the back of Jim’s neck, like she often did.

            Instead, Karen found herself looking right into Pam’s eyes. Pam blinked but didn’t look away. Then, slowly but sincerely, Pam smiled a sad smile and shrugged. And Karen returned the gesture. Whatever was going on here—whatever had been going on here—Pam seemed to be just as unsure of what to do about it as Karen was.

            That, at least, was a comfort.