When Pam woke up in his bed on Sunday morning, the first instinctual feeling she had was sheer, blinding panic. For a minute it was like the last nine months of her life never happened—no life-altering kiss, no breakup, no heartbroken months of weary depression mixed with relief and a desperate, frenzied sort of hope. She was back in that room that had alternately comforted and stifled her for the better part of her adult life. There were more clothes on the ground than when she’d been living there, and the TV in the corner was new (she’d always thought bedrooms were for sleeping). But the duvet cover was the same blue and white checkered pattern she’d picked out at Target three years ago, and the hamper was the big wicker one her mom gave them when they moved in.

She sat up in bed, careful not to wake Roy, who was snoring softly beside her. As she looked at him—his face so gentle in sleep, his fist clasping the bed sheet against his chest—she felt the panic recede. She felt tender towards him, she realized. A tenderness with history. Millions of words and facts and events that added up to something completely imperfect but also substantial. As his dark eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks, she remembered things. Random things. The way his clean laundry had smelled when she’d put it away; the comfortable weight of his arm across her chest every night as they’d gone to sleep. The Sunday evenings when they’d rented movies (one each, because they never liked the same), and sometimes she’d put her head in his lap and he’d played with her hair.  

Last night, he’d been sweet and funny and kind. The way he could be, when he was in a good mood. And there was something about him lately—something softer, more attentive. It was like he was really trying to see her for once; to figure out who she was now and what kind of person he’d have to be to accommodate it. Before, all the things they’d said to each other had felt predictable. Now it felt like she had the power to surprise him; to put him on his guard. It felt new….it felt really nice.

For the first time in nine months, Pam let herself think that maybe there was a chance with Roy. For the first time in all those days and hours and minutes of hoping and wishing for something…more extraordinary than what she’d known, Pam wondered whether she was just kidding herself. Because what did it all add up to really? A lighthearted friendship (“best friends” was a lie, she knew. You aren’t best friends with someone you only ever see between 9 and 5); a confession in a parking lot on a warm night in May; one perfect kiss in a dark office… But then…nothing. It had been enough to sustain her fantasies for months, to keep her heart racing every time someone knocked at the door, every time the phone rang. To keep her thinking, every day, that maybe the next would be different. But now he was laughing and smiling with someone else and what they’d had was starting to feel a little less special. Sometimes she saw something in his eyes—a flicker or a warmth that seemed to say maybe—but it was fleeting, insubstantial. Roy was solid. Roy was here.