It breaks her heart to watch them. So young, so full of life and possibility, so stupid. Sometimes she wants to stand up and scream at him or her, "What are you waiting for?" Instead she sneaks off to the break room with her flask under her sweater and loads up her coffee with cheap brandy. It kills the pain, for a little while. She wishes she could tell them. She doesn't think they'd listen. People seldom do.

Valentine's Day is always the worst. The memories are jagged glass in her mind, cutting no matter how careful you are around them. Most Valentine's Days spent either lonely, crying, or frantically hunting for cheap valentine's for the kids' classes. What a stupid tradition. And of course, no valentines for her. Not that she wants any, and the last time she got roses for Valentine's Day was the worst day of her life.

So when it rolls around this year, she starts the day with the breakfast of champions, opening a beer before she's even properly dressed. Jake spent the night at a friend's house (more and more frequently these days), so it's just her. She doesn't have to yell at him to get out of the bathroom and she can take her time. Not that there's much to take time for; she never was much into makeup (like polishing a turd, her mother used to tell her). She notices that her roots are grey again and, as always, debates whether it's worth it to keep dying her hair. But giving up and going gray is still too much like surrendering, and she's not a quitter. Not yet.

Tucked in the corner of her bedroom mirror is a faded photograph. Today she pulls it out of the frame and sits on her bed, looking at it. The colors have dulled, but her hair is still red. His is still black. His teeth are so white he looks like a toothpaste ad. Dark eyes that flashed when he laughed. In the picture, she's laughing, too, and she doesn't quite remember now what they were laughing at. Can't quite remember the last time she laughed like that, either.

They'd met at work. She was a young intern in the accounting office of an environmental engineering firm. He was a civil engineer working on Superfund assessment sites, trying to find out how much damage had been done to the earth by decades of toxic waste dumping. She remembered he always smelled of sandalwood, and he combed his hair wet but when it dried it sprang into little curls all over his head. He wore jeans to the office when all the other men wore ties and slacks. He took two sugars and one cream in his coffee; she used to time her breaks so they had coffee together in the break room. They always laughed.

Whenever she sees Pam get up to get coffee, she times Jim: forty five seconds, max, and he's getting up to go get coffee. They probably don't even notice they're doing it. Something like radar. She remembers what that was like. She remembers when she would walk in the door and instantly know where he was--the break room, his cubicle, the conference room.

"Ask him out," her roommate urged, but she couldn't find the words. She stared at the mirror, at her straight hair and plain features, and couldn't imagine them next to his rugged good looks, his easy, self-confident air. She said nothing, and listened for his laugh over the banks of cubicles. Sometimes she hears a faint echo of that laugh and looks up, and it's Jim laughing with Pam over her desk. She never hears quite the same note when he's laughing with someone else. It's the laugh of a man in love.

One day when she was working late at the engineering firm and everyone had gone home, she sat in his chair in his cubicle and ran her hands over his keyboard. She went through his desk, shamelessly rifling it for some keepsake. There were no photographs on his desk, none in his desk drawer. Did he have a girlfriend? A wife? She wound up stealing a pencil he'd chewed. She still has it, and carries it in her purse every day. She sometimes takes it out and runs it over her lips, the nubby texture sharp and unpleasant, but real. She once saw Pam tapping a ballpoint pen on her lips as she worked a Sudoku puzzle; the next day Jim was tapping it on his lips as he sat staring at his computer screen. She knows he stole it, knows why, knows how that goes. She wishes she could tell them, help them connect. She doesn't think they'd listen. People seldom do.

Six months after they met, he was made senior project manager of a Superfund assessment in another state; he was gone all autumn. It was the dreariest season of her life. They gave his cubicle to another guy. She stopped taking coffee breaks; it was too lonely and painful without him. Meredith tried to call him, but when he answered his phone (at work, of course), she panicked and hung up, unable to give a reason for calling him. When Jim left for Stamford, she watched Pam pick up the phone a dozen times a day, dial a number, and put it down softly without speaking. Meredith is pretty sure she was trying to work up the courage to call Jim; why didn't she? She fought the urge to talk to Pam, to urge her to go for it, but she really isn't close to the younger woman. She doesn't know what to say. Tongue-tied, as always. And she doesn't think Pam would listen; people seldom do.

Meredith remembers when her guy came back--the springtime of her life. They put him in a cubicle near hers, and all day they traded jokes, little observations, gossip. He loved to talk; she loved to listen. He understood her jokes, laughed when other people looked at her blankly. One day he and two of his friends were going to lunch and asked her to join them; within a week the two of them were lunching alone. Then having dinner on Friday nights. Then having dinnner a couple of nights a week. And then spending weekends in his bed. He would always get up before her and make her breakfast.

Meredith puts the photo back in the corner of her mirror, picks up her hairbrush, draws it through her hair. She remembers his hands in it, smoothing it through his fingers, how he would whisper in it when he made love to her. She thinks about how Jim looks at Pam's hair, when Pam rearranges it or brushes it, absently, not looking at him, unaware. The very air vibrates, and Meredith feels static electricity in her own hair. She remembers the sound of a man moaning blissfully into her hair, and wonders if Pam has ever heard that sound. Or if Jim will someday make it. She can tell he wants to.

Meredith's clothes are pretty much all the same; a blouse, a skirt, a sweater. The colors don't matter much. They are all cheap, all easy to clean, none of them really look good on her. She doesn't care any more. Her beer is finished by the time she is dressed and she thrusts her feet into her shoes. She remembers when he would paint her toenails. She remembers dancing with him. She thinks of how Jim looked at Phyllis' wedding, so young and handsome and strong, and how he looked dancing with Karen, and how that looked so wrong. He should have danced with Pam. She wishes she could tell them how good they look together. She doesn't think they'd listen. People seldom do.

The weather report promises freezing rain again, so she hunts up her coat in the hall closet. There's a plastic dry cleaner bag hanging in there, the top of it covered in dust like grey suede. She knows what's in it, doesn't take it out. Hasn't even seen it in years, but she remembers the color of that dress: a deep emerald. He loved seeing it on her. He loved taking it off of her, slowly.

She wore it to his funeral, after he'd coughed his lungs out in a hospital in Philadelphia. She's sure he picked something up at the toxic waste site. Some bizzare combination of germs, modified by a vicious stew of chemicals, that the doctors couldn't even identify, much less treat. He was gone in ten days, from the time he woke up with a fever to the day he coughed his last, lying in a pool of sweat. He died on Valentine's Day. When she got home from the hospital, the roses he had ordered for her two weeks earlier were sitting on the doorstep, wilting.

She had thought they would have more time. She had thought they would have forever. They had three months. On her way home from the funeral, she stopped at a liquor store for the first time in her life.

When she gets to work today, there are already flowers on Karen's desk, on Phyllis', on Angela's. None for her or Pam. She doesn't care about herself, she doesn't want roses ever again, but she aches for Pam. She wonders if she should offer her a snort from her flask, but suspects Pam wouldn't take it. She wonders if she should talk to her, maybe to Jim, but doesn't think they'd listen. People so seldom do. They always think they have plenty of time, right up until they don't.

Still, she hopes maybe it will turn out better for them.

It has to turn out right for somebody.