Pam,

I'll pick you up at seven.

Jim Halpert

I can't wait.

Pam read the note again.  And then again.  And then once more.  She would have never thought a little scrap of paper ripped from a legal pad could make her so fervently happy, nor fill her with such intense anxiety.  Tonight was the night.  The night she'd been dreaming of for months or, if she was completely honest with herself, years.  Tonight she was going on a date with Jim.

 She gingerly laid the note on her desk, smoothing it out with the heel of her palm so that it lay flat, feeling an irrational need to protect it, keep it safe and unspoiled.  She read it once again.

Suddenly, it took on a new form, a menacing form.  A feeling of disquiet fell over her.  For some reason, she couldn't bear to look at it.  Impulsively, she shoved it irreverently in her drawer and turned away.

"Don't count your chickens before they hatch, Beesly," she told herself fiercely.

Her eyes were locked on her computer screen, but it was not the half-finished game of freecell she saw.  She was involuntarily reliving a moment from a few months ago.  Her best friend had come back to the office after a painful and tense sabbatical.  Upon his return, she had greeted him exuberantly, throwing for a rare moment her self-consciousness to the wind and pressing her body against his in sheer joy.

Her contentment was dissolved almost instantly however, when later that day, she spied him receiving the affections of another.

That familiar tightening sensation in her belly came rushing back as she remembered how Karen had playfully rubbed Jim on the back, both of them laughing, probably at some inside joke of which she would never be a part.  The feeling of emptiness and then shock, and then that paralyzing flash of panic, what do I do now?, realizing suddenly that up until that moment, she had been putting all her money on Jim, expecting him to be ready and willing to be with her, now that she was ready for him.

Firmly, she pushed away the unpleasant memory.  She had long since come to accept her share of the blame for that development.  It had been selfish for her to secretly expect, or hope, that Jim would have spent his entire time in Stamford pining away for her, merely biding his time until she should belatedly come to her senses and match the courage he had displayed that night.  That night.

Sighing, she turned back to the drawer and quickly and penitently withdrew the note.  She needed to see it again, gripped by an abrupt fear that it may have vanished or changed, that she had imagined the last hour or so of her life.  That Jim had not burst in on her interview in that life-changing moment a mere half-hour ago, but was in fact still in New York, no doubt accepting the job there, where he and Karen would live happily ever after, leaving "Fancy New Beesly" to pick up the pieces and start her life over from scratch.

It was still the same.  She reread it for the umpteenth time, taking in every last detail with an almost supernatural clarity.  The straight, large, angular letters of Jim's handwriting.  The way the vivid purple ink clashed hideously with the yellow paper.  He had used her favorite pen, the one with the little plastic troll stuck on the end of it.  The grooves in one word, suggesting that the pen had started to run out of ink.  The way he had signed his first and last name, in cursive, at the bottom as if it was some sort of official document.  Finally, the messily scrawled line at the end, as if he had been unsure of writing the words, and had jotted them down before he chickened out.  I can't wait.

He was just as anxious as she was, then.  Rather than unnerving her, she was bizarrely comforted by this thought.  However scared and unsure she might feel, she was not alone.  Spirits substantially buoyed by this conclusion, she picked up the note, an unexpected talisman of hope and confidence, gathered her belongings and headed out the door.

She was almost skipping out of pure giddiness.  It was only as the elevator doors closed that she remembered she had forgotten to shut down her computer.  She very briefly entertained the idea of doubling back, before unconcernedly dismissing it.  She would gladly pay the electric bill of the entire building if they asked her to; right now she had to go home and get ready.

"After all," she thought cockily, "Pammy's got a date."