She hears a light knock on the door followed by a muffled version of his voice asking, “Pam? You okay?”

She reaches out to turn the knob and gives the door a slight push to signal it’s okay for him to come in. He lets the door shut, locking it behind him and stands across from where she’s leaning against the sink. The tiny room is cold and musty and she can’t believe she’s doing this in a gas station restroom. At least it’s clean, she thinks. She stares at where the tiles are lifting along the edge of the floor near the corner. She follows a crack up the wall and sees where the paint is chipping, revealing that the walls were once painted a minty green. She stares at anything to avoid looking at him.

“So, how long do we have to. . .”

“The box says three minutes.”

“How long has it been?”

“Fifty three seconds,” she says without looking at her watch.

* * *

Their morning had started out like any other day. They were running a little late (and she can’t help but be amused at the now double meaning of that) because she had hit the snooze button a few too many times, preferring to bury herself in the warmth of their bedding and his body to getting ready. Once they finally got up, he reasoned with her that a joint shower would cut down on time. She tried to argue, but then he gave her that look that sometimes made her lose her balance a little as he promised to behave himself. She knew putting up a fight was a lost cause as he tugged at the strings on her pajama pants and pulled her in the direction of the bathroom.

He did behave himself, but it turned out that she didn’t (“I feel very violated,” he joked as she kissed her way down his water slicked chest before dropping to her knees), and as they left their apartment she mentioned that it had to be the latest they had ever left for work since moving in together two months earlier.

He grabbed the morning paper from the small front stoop of their condo as they left. “Can you believe it’s already the 14th of the month?” He casually remarked, glancing at the headlines on the front page as they made their way to the car.

It wasn’t until they were pulling out the building complex parking lot that she processed what he had said.

“It’s the 14th?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Nothing,” she replied quietly, starting to do the math in her head.

She made up some excuse about needing more jelly beans for her desk and asked him to stop at the Rite-Aid near their apartment. When he reminded her how late they already were, she told him not to worry, that she would buy Michael a Kit-Kat and a some Skittles. An early morning sugar rush would make Michael forget just about anything.

“I love it when you’re sneaky, Beesly,” he said as she climbed out of the car.

She grabbed the candy first, convinced she would forget her excuse for being here as soon as she saw a box with the word pregnancy on it. She wove through the aisles before finding the sign labeled “FAMILY PLANNING” and she let out a huff as she noted that the pregnancy tests were lined up directly across from the sanitary napkins and tampons.

She looked over the boxes with wide eyes, overwhelmed by all the choices. Words like clear and easy were jumping out at her and she had no idea what to do because this was the furthest thing from clear or easy that she had ever done.

She was about to just close her eyes and randomly reach for a box when she heard a very familiar voice coming down the aisle.

“Hey Pam, I was sitting in the car and I was thinking that maybe we should also get Michael a coloring book and some crayons. After his sugar high dies off he can spend the rest of the day....” His voice cut off when he realized what she was looking at.

“Ummm....Pam....Those aren’t jelly beans,” he whispered a minute later, finally able to find his voice again.

“I know,” she said as she grabbed a box, turned on her heels, and hauled ass down the aisle.

He reached for his wallet when they got to the checkout and she simply warned, “don’t.” She wasn’t sure if he was offering to pay because he felt guilty for not staying in the car or guilty for something else he may of done to her. Of course, she knew he was offering because he was Jim and that’s what he does, but she couldn’t help briefly snapping at him.

They were silent until he was pulling out of the parking lot and turning down the small strip of road that lead to Dunder Miflin.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” she said, looking down at the Rite-Aid bag on her lap.

“Don’t worry about it.” He continued to stare at the road ahead and asked, “How late?”

“I think about three weeks.”

She dared to glance over at him and then quickly looked down again when she saw how his eyebrows had shot up and his knuckles had whitened from his tight grip on the steering wheel.

They were within a few blocks of the office when he suddenly he turned the car into the Sunoco parking lot.

“What are you doing?”

“Take the test here.”

It was her turn to raise her eyebrows. “Here?”

“They have a bathroom,” he said, pulling up to the small building connected to the gas station convenience store.

He turned off the ignition and turned to face her. She nodded, grabbing the test out of the bag. He was right. There was no way she could do this in the office, which had been her original plan when he didn’t know she was buying the test. What would she do once she took it? Pass him a note? Leave the office so they looked ever more suspicious? Send him an e-mail?

To: JHalpert@dundermiflin.com
From: PBeesly@dundermiflin.com
Re: Schedule Reminder

Jim,

Please remember you have a conference call at 4pm with Michael and corporate to review third quarter sale projections.

Expense reports are due by the end of the week. You know how Angela gets if they aren’t in on time.

Oh, and it turns out I am in fact knocked up. I’m scared to death and have no idea what to do.

Please advise.


Pam


* * *

“Hey.” The tone in his voice and the way he nudges her knee with his own is incredibly gentle, but it still manages to startle her. Her eyes snap away from the light fixture she’s been studying to look at him. He nods towards the stick in her hands before saying, “I think it’s been three minutes.”

“Yeah,” she says. Her voice is strained and weak and sounds nothing like her own. “Yeah,” she tries again, nodding her head and looking down at her hands. They start to shake and she thinks she’s about to drop the test on the floor when he grabs onto her wrists, his thumbs resting on her pulse, which thumps like a marathoner entering mile twenty six.

She decides to treat it like tearing off a Band-Aid. She thinks back to when she was a little girl and she would cry just thinking about how the adhesive would pull at her skin. Her mom would blink back tears and sneak out of the room, unable to handle seeing her daughter so upset. Her father was always the one would kiss her temple and tell her to close her eyes and count to three before he quickly ripped off the Band-Aids that covered her scabbed knees and elbows.

This time she doesn’t close her eyes.

One, two, three…

She quickly flips over the test so they can both see it.

They stare at it like it’s some sort of road sign in a foreign alphabet even though what stares back at them is one of the most common universal symbols.

He finally asks, “So that little plus sign means. . . ?”

“Uh-huh.”

The walls of the small bathroom feel like they’re closing in and the need for air overwhelms her. She quicky stuffs the test into the box and throws it into her purse. As she pushes open the door, she thinks she can feel him reach for her hand, but she quickly pulls away and practically runs to the car.

“We should just go to work. We’re really late now,” she says, climbing into the passenger seat.

She figures he’s too stunned to argue why being late for work is the last thing they should be worried about now, and he follows her to the car.

Even though they’re less than quarter of a mile from work, she reaches for her seatbelt and looks over to make sure he’s doing the same.

Is this it? Her motherly instinct kicking in? Will she be telling Kevin to go wash his hands before lunch? How long before she’s explaining to Kelly that dressing in revealing clothes and acting like a ditz doesn’t attract the nice boys?

She doesn’t know how this happened.

Of course she knows how it happened. They had been dating for only seven months, living together for two of those, but there had been a lot of sex. A lot of sex. At first they reasoned that they were just making up for lost time. But after about a month, after many sleepless nights and lunch hours where they would sneak off to do it, sometimes not even making it to one of their apartments (she still blushes every time they drive by a particular rest stop on I-81), they admitted that they were just incredibly hot for each other.

She remembers a weekend about a month ago when they didn’t leave the house once between Friday night and Monday morning, not caring that all they had to eat in the house consisted of a box of strawberry Poptarts, three apples, a half a jar of olives, and a bottle of chocolate sauce (which had zero nutritional value, but turned out to be their best find in the fridge). Monday morning she went into work sore but completely satisfied. When Kevin asked Jim if he had a good weekend and Jim loudly replied, “Oh, you bet, Kevin,” she sunk in her chair and looked down to avoid the looks shooting across the room.

She wonders when it happened. Maybe it was the time she woke up in the middle of the night to the feeling of his fingers scribing small patterns on her stomach. She took his hand in her own and moved it lower, showing him that she was, as always, ready for him. They made love slowly, the world around them completely silent and still, except for the rustle of the sheets beneath them and the sound of their breathing becoming more labored as they both neared release.

Or maybe it was the time that she had quietly tip toed out of their bedroom, assuming he was asleep and not wanting to wake him, and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. She was reaching high into the cupboard for a glass when he grabbed her hips from behind and pulled her flush against his body. He simply said, “Come back to bed with me,” and there was something about the growl in his voice and his breath on her neck that made her hips twitch. She could feel him starting to grow hard against her lower back and suddenly the bedroom seemed a million miles away. Her hands gripped the edge of the counter and she bent forward, looking over her shoulder to gauge his reaction. When he bit down on his lower lip and gripped her hips a little more firmly, she couldn’t believe it was her own voice saying, “like this, okay?”

If that’s when it happened, that would certainly be a perfect anecdote for the grandchildren one day.

Child, children, grandchildren.

The words rattle around in her head and she feels short of breath. She rolls down her window and looks over to him, eyes pleading for him to do the same. The wind rushes through the car, blowing so hard that it feels like tiny whips against her eyes and she feels like a butterfly caught in a hurricane.

How can they be parents? They can’t even make it to work on time. They still watch cartoons and their eyes light up when they see that Lucky Charms are on sale at the grocery store. One of their favorite hobbies is playing pranks on a grown man, and some nights they lie in bed and whisper, giggling like school children as they plot their next move on Dwight.

Last week she accidentally set Dog The Bounty Hunter to season pass on their Tivo and she can’t figure out how to fix it . How can she possibly figure out things like baby thermometers and how to assemble a playpen? Last week when they went to the movies they managed to lock their keys in the car. They had to call a locksmith, who charged two hundred and thirty dollars. Who do you call when you lock your baby in a car?

Sometimes they fight. Sometimes she yells and sometimes he yells back. She gets upset when he takes his shoes off and leaves them in the middle of the floor. She grabs them and deliberately throws them into the closet at an angle she knows will create a loud thunk as they hit the wall. She catches him rolling his eyes at her after she’s asked him for the second time in one week if it’s really that difficult to replace a roll of toilet paper. Rarely (once, possibly twice) she thinks maybe this isn’t it.

They always make up. He’ll grab her by the waist and place a sloppy kiss on her neck with apologies that it won’t happen again. She knows it will, but he tries, he really tries.

They’re so late for work that the lot is full. He parks along the side of the building, close to the warehouse. She gathers up her purse and her bag of candy and doesn’t wait for him as she speeds toward the entrance.

But then he’s there, standing in front of her and blocking her path. He grabs her shoulders and gently pushes until her back is against the side of the building and he’s pressed against her.

“I just,” he starts before clearing his throat and trying again. “I just want you to know that I think you’d be a great mother. And.... I mean...I dunno, I think maybe we could be good parents.”

And like that, like always, he makes it a little easier.

Now he’s the one who rips off her Band-Aids.

Her hands clutch at the wool of his suit lapels and she presses her forehead against his chest. “I’m scared I’m going to lock our baby in the car.”

She looks up at him and there’s the smallest hint of a smile on his lips.

“Then we should probably get a second set of keys.” His hand slips between them and even through the fabric of her shirt, his palm is warm against her stomach.

And when he says “I love you,” she knows he doesn’t mean just her.

* * *