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Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
It starts out as a prank. Dwight is camping in the woods for the weekend and Jim mentions how hilarious it would be to drive down there and scare him while he’s sleeping. It’s a joke, but Pam looks at him with raised eyebrows and says, “Okay.”

So the next thing he knows he’s driving down the road, laughing at her trying to do an impression of Angela. The radio is blasting and he feels kind of like a teenager, but he doesn’t care because she can’t stop smiling at him and it feels good.

Things must have been going too well because suddenly there’s a popping noise and his tire blows out. He pulls to the side of the road (or rather the dirt path through the woods), and gets out to inspect the damage.

She stands beside him as he examines the tire, her hand shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun.

“Is it okay?” she asks hesitantly, as though she can sense his frustration.

“Nope.”

“Do you have a spare?”

“That was my spare.”

And she lets out a small sound, and he closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the car. A flat tire did not fit into his idea of a perfect weekend with Pam.

But suddenly she’s bending down, grabbing his hand and pulling him into the woods and he begins to wonder when his life got so perfect. It seemed like not too long ago that she was always saying no, always leaving, always twisting that ring…

But that ring had been gone for a while now, and he had given her time. Maybe now she was ready. She hadn’t said no. She had said, “Okay.”

They stumble upon an empty cabin and Pam starts singing a song about a “little cabin in the woods” that makes her so ridiculously cute that he wants to just scoop her up in a hug and never let go.

And she’s dragging him into the cabin and he protests, but only a little because his heart is pounding so loud in his ears he can hardly hear what she’s saying.

It’s a small cabin, furnished, with a thin layer of dust covering everything. Pam guesses that it’s a summer cabin and she doubts anyone will be there for another few months. He agrees with her because there’s nothing else he can do. Nothing else he wants to do.

She snoops around the house, looking in drawers and going through papers, getting a whole back-story for the family that owns it. He grins at her and says, “Aren’t you just the little detective?” And he knows that is a corny thing to say because she crinkles her face and laughs at him.

She opens a closet and pulls out Sorry! and challenges him to a game. When he agrees, she sets it up and settles cross-legged on the floor and remarks, “I have to warn you, I’m really good at Sorry.”

He smirks at her. “How can you be good at Sorry? It’s a game that involves no skill whatsoever.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Is that a challenge?”

“Uh…I don’t think so.”

But she ignores him. “Fine. Loser has to jump into that river we passed.”

“It’s March.”

“Exactly.”

They play for about forty-five minutes and of course she wins, and taunts him relentlessly until he finally runs out the door towards the river and jumps in.

The water is cold and numbs him instantly and as he surfaces he can see she’s a little scared and they both realize it was stupid to jump in a river in the middle of winter. Especially a river that has chunks of ice floating in it.

She helps him out and back to the cabin where she insists that he change, hands him some clothes that she found in the closet and leaves the room as he strips down. He feels kind of like he’s in some trashy romance novel but realizes that if that were the case she would have stayed. When she returns, his teeth are chattering and he’s rubbing his arms, trying to get warm. She has that worried look in her eyes again and even though he’s freezing he can’t help but like it, because she’s looking at him like that. She’s worried about him.

He sits on the couch and she wraps him up in blankets and he remarks that she treats him better than his own mother ever did, and she smiles strangely at him and leaves the room before returning with a bottle.

“Here. Drink this.”

He does and it burns his throat as it goes down, but he suddenly feels a little warmer so he takes another sip and she laughs and tells him to slow down.

It’s not long until he feels lightheaded. They’re sitting on the couch, facing each other and she’s telling him a story about how she thought she was lost in the woods when she was ten, but really she was in her own backyard. And he’s laughing really loudly and he can’t take his eyes away from her and when she’s quiet for half a second he says, “You know, you have a really lovely nose.”

She laughs and thanks him and says he has a nice nose too, but he shakes his head and says, “No, but if there were like…a contest for the nicest nose ever, you would win. Hands down.”

She doesn’t say anything, just smiles at him, and he looks at her nose, stares at it so hard that all the freckles blur together so that he has to reach out and touch them to make sure they’re still there.

He doesn’t notice, but she inhales sharply and moves into his hand as he runs his fingers down her nose, touching it so lightly that he has to close his eyes so he can focus on feeling her skin beneath his.

He doesn’t know how it happens because he’s so dizzy, but like a flash she’s so close to him and his eyes are open again, his hand resting on her cheek. He’s suddenly afraid it will end, that the moment will go away. He silently begs everything in the world to keep still so that he can keep this moment, this one moment where they’re so close he can feel her pulse under his thumb when he moves his fingers down to her neck.

And he tries to make it last as long as he can, tries to savor it as they get closer and his eyes are about to close when she says, “You’re drunk.”

But she doesn’t move away and neither does he. He moves his hand to her face and watches as she closes her eyes, and he can’t be sure but he thinks he sees a tear pushed away by her eyelashes. He tries to think of a clever response, but she’s right, he is drunk and that prevents him from being at all witty.

So he simply says, “Yes.”

And while her eyes are still closed, he leans his head forward half an inch and kisses her, and his thoughts are muddled so he can’t think of anything else except the way she feels against him.

He pulls away for a moment to look at her, and she’s smiling at him and that makes him smile back at her. And he can’t help but think how different it is to kiss her now, how kissing her before was a lot like jumping in the river. He had to throw himself all in and when he came back up she would have a frightened look on her face and they would immediately regret it.

But now, now as he leans in to kiss her once more, he has a good feeling. And that feeling grows as her hands find the buttons on the borrowed shirt and he tries to think of another time when a flat tire ended up being so great.

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The next morning, they head back to the car hand in hand. There’s a ticket on his windshield, and he can’t suppress the grin as he sticks it in his pocket, and the grin grows even wider as she calls him a rebel and kisses him against his car, the sunlight shining down through the trees.


bright red shirt is the author of 6 other stories.
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