“I’m sorry...what was the question?”

Pam rubbed her fingers against her upper lip as she tried to keep from smiling. It seemed a little ridiculous to be so happy, given that just a second ago she’d been fully convinced that life would be okay if she never saw Jim again. But the grin kept spontaneously breaking over her face, straining the sides of her cheeks, as if she was welling over with total happiness. She wasn’t sure she really believed that the last minute had happened.

Preston, the boom operator, looked at her and rolled his eyes knowingly at Matt, the camera guy in the room. He was the one crew member who never really been that interested in Jim and Pam, other than as good TV. But even he was a little touched by these two kids with such bad timing finally getting it right. After this whole year of just wanting to just lock them in a room with each other until they stopped mooning at each other and actually did something, he was glad that it had been just so simple and direct. He’d never expected anything with Jim and Pam to be so easy.

Matt laughed and waved her away, mock-checking the watch on his other hand. “You know...I think we’re done for today. I think you’d better haul it home and get ready for that date.”

Pam uncrossed her legs and twisted her head to peer through the blinds behind her. “Wow,” she said as she watched Jim put his coat on, shaking his head bemusedly at Dwight and Andy’s paint job. She savored it as she repeated Jim’s words. “It’s a date.”

Preston chuckled as he put down the boom. “Yeah, that was the magic word, huh?”

Pam stood up and reached under her pink cardigan to unclip the microphone from her shirt. “I guess so.” She put her sound equipment on the conference room table and walked to the door. “See you guys on Monday,” she said. “Have a good weekend.”

“Can’t wait to hear how it goes,” Matt called after her. He looked at Preston as she walked out the door. “We probably should have tried to go with them,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Preston. “It couldn’t have been more awkward than that cartoonist guy. But they never would have let us come.”

Matt nodded. “Yeah. That’s why I didn’t even bother to ask.”

--

“Hi,” she said as she walked over to Jim’s desk. He was leaning over his desk, shutting down his computer for the weekend. When he saw her he straightened up quickly and he gave her a smile, a real smile that reached his eyes for the first time in months.

”Hey,” he said. He was grinning too, his fingers drumming quickly on the back of his chair. “What happened to Michael’s office?” he asked. He shoved his hands into his pockets like he wanted them to stay put.

Pam tried to distract the shivery feeling in her throat by remembering how to have a regular conversation. “Dwight got a little carried away,” she said. “Andy helped.” She watched the Windows logo turn to black on the screen and breathed in deeply, trying to relax. “So...” Pam fingered the sleeve of her cardigan. “What time do you want to go to dinner?”

”You know,” Jim said as he grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder, “I really don’t care. I think we should just go right now.”

”Hmm,” Pam said as she walked over to reception. “I do too. But I really want to wear some after-work clothes for a change.”

“Ooh, fancy,” he said. “I guess I might be a little funky after driving for an hour and a half.” He pushed in his chair and walked over to her desk, taking her jacket off the coat-rack.

Pam raised her eyebrows. “An hour and a half?” she asked. “From New York City...to Scranton,” she clarified, as she reached down to grab her purse from by her desk.

”Well...” Jim said, rolling his head back as he hunched his shoulders, “I guess you could say that I was in a hurry.”

"Wow, Jim,” she laughed. “I guess we’ll just have to get ready quickly.”

”It’s a deal, Beesly.” he said.

She followed Jim through the door, grinning up at him as he pushed the door open for her behind him. They walked to the elevator and stepped in. When they both move to push the button at the same time, they both pulled back as if they’d touched an electric fence. Pam laughed at the awkward moment in spite of herself and pushed it.

The silence continued, but it wasn’t that strange, suffocating tension that used to fill the whole elevator, like when she inadvertently stepped in on the night of Jim and Karen’s anniversary. It was their old, comfortable silence, the kind that stretched out between them and seemed full of possibility. Pam leaned into the corner of the elevator and thought that its return might be even better than the conversation they’d just had, planning their first date. Her first date with Jim Halpert.

“So,” he said. He leaned against the opposite side of the elevator, looking at her sideways as he rested his head against the wall.

“So,” she said.

“So, I’m not going to New York,” Jim said.

She nodded. “I sort of got that.”

Jim chuckled. “Yeah, I guess that was kind of obvious. I don’t know...I was just sitting in the interview and it was going great. And then I kind of looked around and it was kind of like, ‘what am I doing here?’“

“Yeah,” she said. “I feel like that every day.”

Jim laughed. “Yeah. But this was like, an actual wakeup call. Wallace asked me where I saw myself in a decade and I just knew that I was coming back. So I called Karen and I told her that I was staying in Scranton...and she kind of knew what that meant. So she decided to spend the weekend in the city with her friends. I don’t think she was that surprised.”

Pam nodded. She didn’t really want to talk about Karen, but she was curious. “Do you think she got the job?”

Jim looked thoughtful for a moment. “I don’t think so. Her interview was really short because Jan kind of freaked--”

“Oh, I know!” Pam interrupted. “Michael told us when he came back. I can’t believe she got fired!” She paused. “Well, I mean, I can, but...”

“Yeah,” Jim agreed. “She pretty much had a total breakdown. Michael drove her home.”

“Yeah,” she said, trying to picture the generally calm, collected Jan finding out she was being fired. “That’s kind of sad.”

“I know. Anyway, after Jan left, Wallace didn’t finish Karen's interview. So I don’t think it will be anyone from Scranton. When I told him I couldn’t take the job, he seemed pretty worried. I guess Jan leaving meant he couldn’t waste time trying to find an outside hire.”

The elevator ding-ed and they walked though the lobby out into the cool May evening. The sun had barely even started to set.

Jim looked down at his watch. “Okay, Pam. It’s...” he paused to look down at his watch. “...5:23 exactly, so I will be at your fancy new apartment to pick you up at 6:15. Think you can handle that?”

She walked over to her little blue car and nodded. “Oh yeah, I can handle that.”