Disclaimer:  I don't own the Office or the characters depicted herein and I don't intend to profit from this work.  I also don't own Hooters (thankfully), AA (does anyone?), Weight Watchers (I probably should), or Starbucks (I wish).

It was on a Friday when Jim came into the kitchen to find Pam sitting at the break room table, once again trying her best to ignore him.  As he fed his change into the vending machine, he caught her looking at him in the glass.  For a moment, they looked at each other, both a little frightened and unsure.  But it was just for a moment.  As Jim turned to talk to her, she got up and walked out, replaced instead by Kelly and her People magazine.  Unfortunately, the “hey” was out of his mouth before he saw who he was actually greeting.

“Hey Jim.  How are you?  Are you ok since Roy tried to kill you?  Wasn’t that just unbelievable?” 

Jim stared at her blankly, as usual with Kelly he had no idea which question to answer or whether she expected an answer at all.  “I’m dealing thanks,” was all Jim could get out as he started to make for the door.

Kelly looked down at her magazine and said, “I can’t believe he did that, he was so nice to Pam all summer, you know after the drunk driving thing.”

Jim froze in the doorway with his back to Kelly, a wide smile breaking across his face.  This was perfect, Kelly had no ability to keep a secret and she was here while he was gone.  Hearing more about Pam would at least make him feel closer to her.  Besides he felt like he owed it to her to know what she went through.   He knew Kelly would tell him what he needed to know.

He backed up as if he was on slow rewind and then looked down at Kelly with a grin.  “Would you like a soda Kelly?”

“Why?”

“No reason, we just haven’t really caught up in a long time.  I’m way out of the loop on office gossip and I thought maybe we could take a few minutes to catch up.”  Jim pulled up a chair and sat down next to her.  She smiled widely.

“Diet Coke.” 

The fifteen minute break stretched into thirty as Jim heard all about Ryan and Kelly’s ‘summer of love’ and how hot Ryan looked in a bathing suit, Oscar being fabulously gay, Dwight and his antics to train Ryan, Michael ruining Kelly’s big party by proposing to Carol (although Kelly did admit she thought it was very romantic), something about a bird funeral, and many other incomprehensible topics.  Although he desperately wanted to steer the conversation to Pam, he didn’t want to be too obvious.  Finally she got there on her own.

“Let’s see, Pam and Roy broke up, but I guess you know that.  Poor Pam, she was totally sad of course, I can’t image if Ryan and I broke up.”  She paused.  Jim figured she was lost in thought about Ryan so he cleared his throat.

“She seems to be doing ok now.”

“Well yeah, but you weren’t here Jim, it was pretty bad.  Did you know that she had to eat the food from her reception everyday for lunch for 5 weeks!  Can you imagine?  I would totally become bulimic.  Roy was so adorable and would come up here everyday and be all like ‘chicken or fish’?  Course he was totally gross when they were together, but then after she dumped him he like joined Weight Watchers or AA or something and lost weight and was totally attentive and would try to get back together with Pam all the time.  I don’t know why she didn’t actually, I totally would have gotten back with him, Ryan would never pursue me like that.  Well, he kinda would but you know…..you know right Jim?”

“Huh? Oh yeah.  Wonder why she didn’t, go back to him?”  Jim tried to keep a completely disinterested tone in his voice, while his heart was anything but disinterested. 

“Who knows with Pam?  She’s hard to figure out you know?  I mean I set her up with this amazingly cute guy and she said they just didn’t click, but he was an artist of course they clicked.  And she bought all these awesome new sexy clothes and she doesn’t even wear them.  If I had her body I would totally wear cuter clothes.  She’s just like that girl in that Freddie Prinze, Jr. movie, the one where they make the dorky girl over and she’s totally hot?  Oooh she was an artist too, how funny.  Aaaannnnywaaay,  it’s hard for me to spend a lot of time with her what with Ryan and all.”

Jim tried to keep up with her, but his mind felt like it was on tape delay.  He struggled to know how he should respond.  “Yeah, who does she hang out with these days?”

“Since you guys aren’t really friends now?”  Jim hated to think that the whole office knew that they weren’t getting along.  But then again, he knew that the difference in their relationship was noticeable.  “I don’t know.  Ryan says she used to stare at him all day, which would make me really mad, but Pam wouldn’t try to take my Ryan.  Maybe she just thought he was cute, which he is.  She hangs out with Angela sometimes.  I’m not sure she’s talking to Phyllis since she like stole her wedding.”

“Stole her wedding?”  Jim laughed a little at the thought of someone stealing a wedding.

“Oh yeah like the whole thing was Pam’s wedding.  The flowers, the band, the dress, the invitations.  Carbon copy.  She was telling me about it at the reception.  I have no idea how she didn’t just freak out.  That had to be rough you know?”

“Interesting.”  Jim furrowed his brow trying to work out in his mind that Pam had had to attend her own called-off wedding.

“Well I would have freaked. Course she did go home with Roy, but I would have done the same.  I mean, if I didn’t have Ryan, I would have gone home with anyone, like Toby even, to avoid being alone after a day like that.”

“Yeah, I bet that was really hard.”  Jim hoped that she didn’t notice his voice fail him.

“Yeah, oh my gosh, I have to get back to my desk.  I wonder if Ryan missed me?  We should totally double date some time wouldn’t that be fun!”

“Sure.”

Jim walked back to his desk looking at Pam the whole time.  He was embarrassed to admit that he never really thought about how things had been for Pam.  Of course it was hard, but he kept thinking that it couldn’t be worse than what he had been going through.  As it turns out, it was clearly worse.  He also had to admit to himself that maybe he didn’t know everything about her after all.    

He decided that he was going to take Jane’s advice and try to really be her friend; he wouldn’t let his frustration destroy their entire relationship.  Instead of sitting down at his desk, he walked straight for the reception desk where he leaned expectantly waiting for her to look up.

“No messages.”  Was all she said, without looking up at him.

“Pam?”

“Candy’s in the dish.”  Her voice trembled but she continued to stare at her monitor.

He leaned in to her and touched her shoulder, “Pam?”

She turned to him, eyes fearful, clearly afraid of what he would say next.  The idea that Pam would ever be afraid of him, afraid he would hurt her again, shattered Jim.   He took a deep breath and tried to keep his next few words light.  He put his hand back on the counter to give her space.

“Do you wanna get a drink or something after work today?”

She looked confused.  He smiled warmly at her and said “Seriously Beesly, I’ve had the worst week, I just thought maybe you’d like to get a beer or something.”

She blinked hard as if she was trying to see right into his brain to figure out what he was thinking, “Um, you’ve had a bad week?”  The sarcasm in her voice surprised Jim.

He decided he would keep trying, and he leaned back in so no one could hear the next part, “Yeah, I was the biggest ass to my best friend this week.  I was hoping you could help me work out what to do to make up for that.”

She still looked frozen for a moment, but said very seriously, “Mean to Kevin were you?”

Hearing the edge to her voice, he knew she was mad at him.  Really mad.  “Come on Beesly, help me out here.  I’m really sorry, let me buy you a big margarita or a new car or something.”

She scrunched up her nose a little as if she were pondering what she would ask for, “Won’t Karen be expecting you to go out with her?”

His face fell a moment realizing that he hadn’t even thought about that, but then he remembered she was going out of town tonight. “She’s going up to New York this weekend – visiting friends I think. So how about it?”

“We couldn’t possibly.” 

His face fell.  He was getting a little desperate thinking maybe he really had ruined everything with her.  “Pam.”  His voice was more pleading that he had intended.

She held his gaze for a moment like she was trying to decide what to do.  She flashed a tentative but sad smile at him saying, “I mean I was already banned from Chili’s and I’m pretty sure I’m not welcome at Poor Richards now.  I’m not sure we can physically go into a bar to get a drink.” 

He knew he could fix this if she was willing to open the door just a little to him.  “Hmmmmmm, there’s always Hooters.”

“Jim. Don’t even kid about that.”  Slowly they were finding their rhythm again.

“Ok, so how about Starbucks? Let’s see if we can get you banned from there.”

Pam didn’t answer him and he tried to calm his nerves in anticipation that she may just say no.  “Okay that sounds good.”

“Great.”

Jim’s heart was racing as he walked back to his desk.  The very idea of being alone with her seemed so exciting.  He knew he was in trouble, he could never really be just her friend.  But he would try, if that’s what she wanted.  And besides it was better to have her in his life as a friend than to lose her forever.