“Well, I’m evolving Pam.”

You know that he was only joking, in response to your remark on change, but you notice every day how much things had evolved in both of your lives.

It went beyond the exchange of water for grape soda, or substituting his ham and cheese sandwich for a new choice every day. He had picked up the pieces of his heart that you didn’t intend to break, and he had placed them back together and moved on.

The two of you had been the fish swimming together in the water, in perfect rhythm, side by side, but he was evolving.

He was growing legs, lungs, and was beginning to breathe the fresh air, while you remained completely submerged, looking up through the murky water at his tall frame.

He was learning to walk upright, stand on his own, and you were still in the water, scraping the bottom of the sea.

You told yourself that you could evolve yourself, but your leaps out of the water were just that, leaps. You arched into the air and fell back again into the same sea, just a few meaningless feet away from where you started.

“There are other fish in the sea.” The words echo in your head, but you know that you are stubborn, and you don’t want any fish. You want Jim, even though you already caught him, and threw him back in.

These thoughts haunted you as you fought to gain control of your life. You watched him continue to walk away from the sea, fading farther away from you, as you set up your home again as best as you could with him gone.

"I'm evolving", you told yourself. But you were still miles behind him. You should have never let Roy come back in your life, but you did, and you are at least happy that led to your choice to keep him out forever.

It wasn’t long after that when you began to notice them. The tiny flaws in his evolutionary chart. The small regressions he was beginning to make.

You found the time you spent staring at the back of his neck was being replaced with full on swivels of his chair, and a large smile in your direction.

He wasn’t drinking grape soda anymore, but you saw him sneak cokes out of the vending machine, his water bottles left untouched, flashing you a quick smirk when he left the kitchen.

When he began to get restless during the day, he came to you again, and you slowly regained your expertise in being his partner in crime.

It was the flaws in evolution that really mattered. Those flaws created the anomalies, the loch ness monsters, the things people really talked about. The smallest cracks in the evolutionary chart made the largest difference, and you noticed every one.

He was at your desk now, fully leaning in to speak, the awkward barrier between you wearing down more every day.

He is still walking, but it seems that every day he takes another step in your direction, back towards the sea. You want him to submerge himself again, but you know he has to test the waters first.

He makes you laugh, loudly, and you notice out of the corner of your eye that Karen is staring at the two of you, noticing his regression as well.

You continue talking to him, making him snort slightly as you he joins you in laughter. You can still see her out of the corner of your eye, and you know you are childishly making her jealous, but you will never evolve out of that.

You believe in divine creation anyways.