Pam's outburst on beach day isn't exactly spontaneous. For months now, she's been doing it in her head, every time Jim won't look at her or ignores one of her jokes or makes some snide comment to remind her that they aren't anything to each other. As the months pass, the speech in her head grows, from just telling him she called off the wedding for him to asking why they aren't friends anymore, and what she finally says that night is six months in the making.
To be perfectly honest, Pam expects that spilling her guts like that will just make everything worse. Okay, maybe the twelve-year-old Disney fan in her head was hoping that mid-confession, Jim would grab her and kiss her senseless, but for the most part, she's pessimistic. Things with Jim are going to be more awkward than ever, things with Karen will be more strained, and the entire office will know she's been rejected and act weird around her until something more interesting happens.
Still, even if honesty has done nothing but slowly dismantle her personal life all year, she goes for it, figuring she'd rather be definitely humiliated than wonder forever, then regret not saying anything when she dies with nobody but a dozen cats named Jim for company. She's realistic about what she expects, she's careful about what she asks for, and because she was prepared for it, it doesn't hurt too much when she walks in on Monday and Jim somehow manages to pay even less attention to her than he did before. It's not very surprising. It's everyone else's reaction that surprises her.
Karen, for one. Pam had assumed that any chance of a friendship forming there was ruined, but when they run into each other in the kitchen, Karen's downright friendly. Pam's pretty sure it's the combination of two things - that Pam didn't openly ask Jim to dump Karen, and that now that Pam has shown some interest and Jim hasn't gone running, Karen no longer sees her as a threat. They talk, chat about their weekends, and it's still weird, but Pam feels like it might be nice eventually, if they keep at it.
Kelly, for whatever reason, calls Pam her inspiration. One Tuesday, about a week and a half after Beach Day, she drags a mortified Ryan to the middle of the office and publicly breaks up with him, listing everything he's ever done wrong in the process. Pam tunes her out somewhere around number seven - "and Ryan, don't think I don't know you reprogrammed my TiVo so I'd miss Top Model!" and it isn't until 29 - apparently Kelly is super offended that Ryan insists that she take her birth control at work so he can see her do it - that Toby emerges from the annex to guide Kelly back to her desk. She spends the remainder of the afternoon IMing Pam about how totally fantastic public confessions are and humming Since U Been Gone at her desk.
Angela disapproves, obviously - after all, public scenes and office romances are two of her least favorite things. (Pam ignores the obvious problem there.) Still, the next time Angela makes brownies for the office, she offers the last one to Pam, even though they're one per person and Pam's had hers already. Later, Pam smiles a little in spite of herself when she hears Angela telling Jim that he should've asked earlier if he wanted one.
Oscar, surprisingly, ends up becoming a pretty good friend after he and Gil break up. Pam knows what it's like, cutting ties with the person your social life depends on - she's been there, and she's happy to have someone to hang out with. Every Wednesday, one of them cooks and they watch a movie. It's nice to have something like that to look forward to in the middle of the week - since she's lived on her own, she's mostly hung out with Kelly, which is great, but it's nice to have entire conversations that aren't all about ex-boyfriends. Roy and Gil apparently shared an inability to put dirty laundry in the hamper, but beyond that Pam and Oscar have no similar complaints, which leaves them free to talk about everything else. In June, they make plans to check out a photo exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that Pam's been dying to see - they'll drive up in the morning, grab lunch, see the exhibit, and then explore Philly for a while before heading back to Scranton.
She should be more disappointed than she is when on Friday morning, the day before they're supposed to go, Oscar comes up to reception and asks if she'd mind rescheduling - he and Gil got back together. Far from being upset, though, Pam feels a little thrill as she says she'll just go on her own - leave right after work, make a weekend of it.
She feels different in Philadelphia, and she's not entirely sure why. With the exception of a few visits to her mother (and one Friday in September, when she made it halfway to Stamford before losing her nerve and turning back), Pam hasn't been more than fifty miles from Scranton since she called off the wedding. Even though she's been coming to Philadelphia since she was in diapers, she's excited, like this is something she's never done before. And it is, in a way - she's never done anything like this on her own. She feels...lighter, she thinks. She's used to being independent by now, spending her days how she wants, but this is different. Here, away from "Dunder-Mifflin, this is Pam" and the silence on the back of Jim's neck, the fact that nobody's waiting up for her frees her instead of filling her with that ache that makes her wonder what she should have done differently. She walks all over Center City, stopping here and there - City Hall, Penn's Landing, JFK Plaza - to sketch, goes to the photo exhibit twice just because she can, and wonders what it is that's making her feel so free. When Sunday comes, she can barely bring herself to leave.
Over the next few weeks, she spends less of her free time at work playing Sudoku and trying to catch Jim's attention. More often now, she's looking up airfare, train schedules, bus routes, and hotel rates. She plans trips to Oregon (not the most conventional way of seeing the Pacific for the first time, but something about driving the Oregon Trail and sending her brother postcards saying "Couldn't ford the river - lost three sets of clothing and 96 bullets" brings a smile to her face), Vegas, Boston, the Grand Canyon, New Orleans, Mount Rushmore - she can't stop, and the map she keeps in the top drawer of her desk shows a quickly spreading field of red dots. She marks places she's always wanted to go, things she wants to see, cities she's been told about or seen on TV, even places she's never heard of but has to see to believe they really exist, like Truth or Consequences in New Mexico. She plans out elaborate road trips and wonders if, when January rolls around and she has vacation time again, she'll still want to see Monkey's Eyebrow, Arizona.
Karen moves to Hartford in July - before she goes, she dumps Jim and asks Pam to keep in touch. Pam spends that entire night on the phone with Kelly, who's convinced that this is the most amazing news ever even if Karen did turn out to be kind of awesome. Pam refuses to assume anything will change, though, and Jim is kind enough to prove her right. Yeah, he visits reception more often, but every time they get close to being anything like they were, he backs off and goes back to ignoring her for a day or two. Pam kind of hates him for it, but it hurts a little less every time he does it. She's not sure this is the kind of thing she should be getting used to, though.
She's watching Stand By Me on TV one day when she's struck by the overwhelming need to clean out her closet. As she whittles it down, getting rid of anything she hasn't worn since before she got engaged, she's a little surprised by two things: how much of what's left are her work clothes, and how much she really, really hates her work clothes. She used to dress up for work, she knows that much - the sting of Roy's indifference, the awkwardness of Jim's forced nonchalance, and the unwanted attention from Kevin and Creed had combined, along with a few dirty looks from Angela, to ease her into the basic, unremarkable uniform she'd assigned herself, and years later she was still sticking to it. Without thinking, she grabs half of it and puts it in a bag to donate, then calls Kelly and asks if she's up for a mall trip on Sunday.
She moves quickly through the rest of the closet, stopping only when she gets to the dress. She hasn't worn it since Casino Night, hasn't even looked at it since a few weeks after the merger. She stares at it for a minute or two and imagines throwing it out in a burst of strength and independence, maybe burning it like Jennifer Aniston did with her wedding dress, but in the end she settles for putting it in the very back of the closet.
Monday comes, and despite the positive reaction to her new clothes - the standard "you look AMAZING" from Kelly, a cleavage joke from Michael despite the fact that the new shirt doesn't actually show any, a slight nod and smile from Jim, and a look from Angela that seemed torn between disapproving and supportive - Pam is restless. She assumes it's just because today is Michael's Annual Midsummer Motivation Madness. This year's theme is "Exploring New Sales Opportunities," and Michael has dressed as Christopher Columbus, who apparently looked a lot like Jack Sparrow, and covered the office in pirate decorations. For whatever reason, he's making her walk around with a stuffed parrot taped to her shoulder, to "complete the look." It's enough to make anyone restless, isn't it?
She goes for a walk on her lunch break, figuring some fresh air and time away from her parrot will snap her out of it, and when that doesn't work, she looks up hotels and tourist spots in New Zealand, but whatever she does, she can't shake the feeling. At three, she pulls the map out of her desk. As she opens it and looks at the red dots and Post-Its she's applied over the last two months, she's reminded so strongly of the scrapbook of wedding ideas she started keeping after Roy proposed, of the last time she poured herself into planning something that never happened, that before she knows what she's doing she's walking into Michael's office, interrupting his meeting with Jim. She asks to speak to Michael privately, and the encouraging grin Jim shoots her confuses her - he can't possibly know what she's about to do, can he? - before she realizes with a twinge of disappointment that he probably thinks she's just saving him from Michael.
It's hard to know what to say, how to put it so that Michael isn't hurt but also so he won't have anything juicy to spread to the rest of the office. In the end, she tells him that the series of speeches he gave that morning, in character as Christopher Columbus, inspired her to travel, and that she wants to do it while she still can. Michael doesn't cry (much) and only makes one crack about sex being the international language, and after promising to keep in touch she's back at her desk, circling August 30 in red on the calendar and wondering where she'll go first.
She did ask Michael to keep it quiet for the first week, so naturally he makes it a little over 24 hours before listing Pam's decision to quit as one of the reasons why he's a more inspirational person than Toby could ever hope to be. Nobody seems terribly surprised, though - with the exception of Creed, who asks why she's quitting when she was just hired, and Jim, who keeps his back to her, the standard reaction seems to be congratulations and a smile. When Pam thinks about it, this really has been a long time in coming.
The silence from Jim lasts for the entire two weeks. She's not sure what that's about - he could be preparing himself to say something to her, he could be trying to smoke her out, he could be giving her the silent treatment to punish her. He's done them all before, and when she looks back on the last five years, it amazes her how much of it was spent waiting in silence. Part of her wishes things could have been different, but deep down, she knows that she's about to do something with her life she wouldn't even have considered a year and a half ago, so maybe things worked out for the best.
It's a Wednesday morning, her last day at Dunder-Mifflin, when he comes up to her desk. She watches him grab a few jellybeans as he leans on the counter, and she wonders what it'll be today.
"Well, I hear congratulations are in order," he starts.
"Yeah, I'm heading west first thing tomorrow."
For the first time in weeks, she sees a real expression on his face as his surprise gets the better of him. "You're not...waiting a few days, sorting stuff out?"
"I had a goodbye dinner with my family last night, and tonight Kelly's coming over to watch Sex and the City and pack what's left, so there's not much left to sort."
"Oh. I guess - I don't know, I thought we..."
She watches his face as he struggles - just like always - with how much to say, how much to reveal. She doesn't know what makes her sadder, that after everything he can't just take the chance and say something, anything, or that she feels detached enough that she's not even upset with him for ignoring her for the last two weeks they'll ever work together. When it's clear he's not going to finish the sentence, she steps in.
"I know...so did I. But how long was it --were we going to wait another three years? I guess I just had to..."
"No, totally," he says, stepping back from her desk. "Well, I should - "
"Yeah, me too. Hey - keep in touch, all right? I'll need someone to call when I see the world's largest ball of twine, and someone has to make sure you're keeping Dwight in line."
"Definitely," he replies, "and make sure it really is the largest one, accept no substitutes." He raps his fingers on the desktop as he goes, and for a second it's like nothing ever changed, but she's been dealing with these seconds long enough to know they don't hold any secret promise.
The rest of the day passes fairly quickly - Michael, in the midst of yet another breakup with Jan, asked her if she minded skipping the traditional goodbye party, and she was more than happy about that. Without the party, the afternoon feels just like her last thousand afternoons here. When five comes, all that's different is that the goodbyes are more final than usual. She promises to keep in touch with everyone, but she doesn't think she will - she'll write to Michael, she thinks, postcards maybe (something he can't respond to, at any rate), and he can update everyone else. Kelly she'll talk to on the phone, and Jim...well, it's up to him.
Just after five, Michael calls her into his office for a hug and one last round of relationship advice. When she emerges, Dwight and Angela are the only people left in the office - Jim must have slipped out while she was searching for hidden meaning in a voicemail from Hunter. ("Michael, your inventory reports are late. Please send them to Corporate as soon as possible." Michael, having zoned in on the word "late," is convinced Jan is pregnant.) Dwight has apparently been waiting for her to finish with Michael - he's putting a tracker on her car so he can send her summaries of the criminal activity in the towns and cities she visits. She's weirded out at first, but it can't really hurt, so she goes along with it and they share an awkward hug when he goes, leaving her at reception with Angela.
"When are you coming back?" Angela asks.
"I don't know that I am," Pam says, and even though she's never said it aloud, it's the truth - there's no red dot on Scranton, she hadn't really planned on ending up here again. Angela's face falls, though, and Pam's quick to add that she's sure she'll be back to visit - "besides, if...people...get married, or if anything else happens, I'll want to be here for it. And you know, maybe when I'm been traveling for a while, I'll realize I want to come back here, but right now...it would feel weird to have my return trip planned, I think." As Angela leaves, Pam says she'll keep in touch, and she's surprised when she realizes she actually means it - she doesn't know how long ago Angela and Kelly became the people she'd miss most, but life is funny like that sometimes.
It's nearly six by the time she actually leaves, making sure her desk is cleared out and dropping her set of keys (office, warehouse, conference room, Michael's office, kitchen, break room, Michael's desk, Michael's condo) on Michael's desk. She heads downstairs, and as she pulls out of the parking lot for the last time, she looks up at the sun and imagines what it will look like setting over the Pacific.
Two weeks later, she's in Oregon watching the real thing, and it's better than she ever pictured it.
Story Notes:
Title comes from Denver Butson's poem Let's Move All Things (September).
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
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