Do the things that you always wanted to
Without me there to hold you back, don't think, just do

While the sole of Pam’s feet really hurt her, her heart felt healed. She’d said it. Everything she’d wanted to say, to him, just once, bad timing at all. She told him that she called off her wedding for him, that she missed having fun with him, that nothing had mattered before she met him. He had only sat there, bewildered, in shock and terror, and silence. And she was the one to walk away this time, proud, smiling, and happy.

As she stood at the water’s edge, she felt him there long before she saw him. He looked at her sadly, telling her that for as long as he’d been back from Stamford he hadn’t actually come back yet. Come back, she wanted to beg, come back to me, come back home. But she didn’t. Her bravery could only go so far. Instead, she wished for it. Wished that he would. Wished that she could.

And she found...that she was too late.

He told her that he wanted it to make it work with Karen, that he was trying to be happy, that life was taking him toward Corporate now. She only stood there, broken, devastated, and finally she realized....finally she saw that the best way to love him....was to let him go. To let him be happy, without her, with Karen, in New York.

She embraced him briefly, his scent filling her senses for the last time. They walked away together, heads down, bond broken. And she wished again, wished that she could be the one brave enough to walk away this time, to love him from afar.

She got back on the bus, alone and terrified, forced to watch her past sit beside his new future, and know, know that she was the sole person responsible for the way her life had turned out.

Later that night, quiet in her bed, she cried herself to sleep. And the next morning, she dried her tears, went to work, and told herself that being his friend would have to be enough.