Something is in the air tonight, Pam thinks as she grabs two spoons, two knives, and two forks from the silverware drawer and wraps two napkins around them before placing them in the picnic basket. Maybe it’s because the lilac bush outside her kitchen window has blossomed, filling the room with its heady aroma. Maybe it’s because she’s wearing a new perfume that smells kind of like oranges and all the promises that summertime brings. Maybe not. Pam thinks it has more to do with the recent liberation of emotions that she’d kept bottled up for far too long. She’s going to tell Jim the truth tonight.

Two weeks have passed since Jim first asked her to dinner. They’ve been on three dates. The first one was dinner at a Thai restaurant near the mall, and it was more of a reconnection than a date. It was the first time in far too long where things felt normal between them and they used that time to catch up with each other. They talked about the art classes Pam was taking and how excited Jim was to be an uncle again. While they waited for the check, he reached across the table and held her hand and she had just smiled, marvelling at the uncanny way his fingers fit so nicely between hers. There was so much more she wanted to say to him but every time the thoughts formed words, they stopped in the back of her throat; she couldn’t seem to spit them out.

Their second date was a half-Hawaiian, half-sausage and mushroom pizza at Alfredo’s Pizza Café and two tickets to the Marywood University production of Guys and Dolls. After it was over, they strolled around campus hand in hand and talked about the play.

“Are you glad Nathan and Adelaide finally got married?” Jim’s question sounded innocent enough but Pam knew it was loaded with meaning.

She looks down at her feet before looking up at Jim. “Fourteen years is a long time to wait; but if that’s what she really wanted, then yes, I’m glad.” They are silent for a long time before Pam squeezes his hand and adds, “Maybe Adelaide didn’t have anyone to show her that she could have a different future.”

Jim stopped dead in his tracks and cupped Pam’s face with his hands, kissing her the way he had so many nights ago, only this time there was no air of love-ridden desperation, just adoration and hope. When he let go of her, she wanted to tell him the truth but she was so out of breath she didn’t think he would understand her words between gulps of air.

Their third date was a grand affair, filled with the kind of romance and felicity Pam had only ever witnessed in movies. She answered the door to find Jim leaning against the door frame, holding a dozen red roses and a flier for an art gallery opening up in Wilkes-Barre. They dined at an edgy sushi house and while the art wasn’t really Pam’s taste – it was too sharp and angular – she enjoyed talking to Jim about it. He was adorably inarticulate and kept gesturing wildly with his hands as he searched for the exact word he wanted to use and this time Pam stopped him with a kiss, all of her hopes and dreams spilling from her mouth into his.

On the ride home, he traced his finger up and down the palm of her hand and tried to start a serious conversation. He asked about the future, about where she thought this was going and she almost told him then, but she asked him to hold off. It was too warm in the car and she wanted to be able to face him when they had this discussion.

So tonight is all Pam’s idea. She loves going out and trying new restaurants, but she wants tonight to be stripped of all the pomp and frills. She just wants Classic Jim and Pam, no wine lists, no items on the menu that she can’t pronounce, no one else around to interrupt or disturb them. The truth is itching to come out; it feels like a shirt that’s too tight, threatening to rip at the seams.

But she’s going to make him work for it; she snuck over to Jim’s apartment this morning at just after six, taping a clue to his door. It only said ‘Jinx’.

*

When Jim finally arrives at Lake Scranton, Pam claps her hands with glee and greets him with a kiss. “You made it!” she exclaims.

“What a wild goose chase, Beesly. Had me running all over Scranton.”

“I didn’t think it was that hard!”

“Of course not. You were the one who picked the clues!”

“Which one threw you off?”

“Well, I got ‘Jinx’ at the vending machine at work. It took me a few minutes to figure out ‘Swaying isn’t dancing’ but then I got to the roof and got really hung up on ‘Price check on fabric softener’. When I got to the grocery store, the next clue was shoved way back in the back and I had a hard time finding it. But your map was drawn brilliantly and led right to this picnic table.”

“I almost made you drive out to Dwight’s beet farm, but I couldn’t be that mean.”

“That would have been horrible.”

“Are you hungry? I didn’t make anything fancy, just ham and cheese sandwiches and some potato chips and stuff.”

Jim just smiles and rubs his stomach.

Once their bellies are full, they relax on the hood of Jim’s car, Pam leaning back against Jim, Jim leaning back against the windshield. It’s comfortable for both of them; Jim can smell Pam’s shampoo, fruity and exotic and it makes him yearn for summer. Pam can feel the warmth of Jim’s arms wrapped around her.

“I really meant what I said to you that night,” Pam says out of nowhere. “I would be married right now if it wasn’t for you.”

“Yeah.” Jim’s voice is heavy and though they’re pressed against one another, there’s a space wedged between them, between their hearts, like they both know it’s about to get heavy. “How’d you find the courage?”

“I found it from you. From when you yelled at me that day I decided not to take the internship.”

“I didn’t yell at you.” Jim sounds wounded.

“You kind of did,” Pam replies, her voice a bit softer.

“I just wanted you to do something for yourself. For a change.”

“I know. That’s why I did it. I figured that since you were gone, it was too late for me and you, but that I wanted more than I could get from Roy and that eventually I would find it in someone else.”

Jim scoffs. “Someone else? Someone else?”

She can tell by Jim’s tone that it is all going to come out, although when she pictured this conversation in her mind, she thought they would talk it out, not fight it out. But she can feel it coming, she feels it deep in her bones the way some people just know a storm is coming. She scoots out of his embrace and leans back against the windshield so they’re side by side.

Jim looks over at her and continues.“It was never that way for me, Pam. I always knew that it would never get any better than you.” His voice is tinged with anger.

“It didn’t feel that way at the time, Jim. You left the very next day.” Pam’s on edge, too.

“What did you expect me to do? Stick around and watch you marry him? You told me yourself that you were still going to go through with it. It would have been less painful to fall onto a hundred knives. Or jump into an erupting volcano. Or be eaten by sharks.”

“I get the point; you don’t have to be so defensive.”

“Well you’re the one who never called.”

“You never called either! What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, Jim. It’s Pam. I don’t know why the hell you left Scranton without saying goodbye, but I called off my wedding and would like to start dating you. Come back soon!’”

“You could have e-mailed or texted me or something.”

“Jim…” Pam’s cheeks are flushed and she’s biting her lower lip, struggling to phrase what she’s thinking. “Some things are too big to e-mail or text.” She looks away and says lowly, “Besides, you don’t return text messages anyway.”

“I was half-passed out! That doesn’t count!”

“You could have texted me back the next day.”

“Well why would I want to do that? You were already dating other people anyway!”

“What?!”

“When I was with Michael at that convention in Philadelphia, you called him on his cell and right before you got off, he said ‘Have fun on your date!’”

“It was a blind date! Set up by Kelly, of all people, and it was horrible! And don’t talk to me about my singular, stupid date. When you came back to Scranton, you had a girlfriend, who I’m pretty sure you were just using to hurt me on purpose!”

Jim throws his arms up in the air, exasperated. Both of them are talking in circles, dwelling in the pain of the past, struggling to heal the hurt of the past year. Silence overtakes them; they each seem to know intuitively not to press further. Somewhere above, an owl hoots followed shortly by a chorus of bullfrogs, their echoing ‘rrrbits’ serenading Jim and Pam.

“Look at the way the leaves move on those trees,” Jim finally says after an agonizing five minutes of silence. His voice is tender and apologetic and he raises his finger to point to a cluster of Quivering Aspen trees and they watch the leaves tremble as a breeze blows through them. The moonlight is fractured through the stems and leaves and there’s sort of a silvery sheen around the group of trees that strikes Pam as almost haunting in its beauty. She’s kicking herself for not bringing her sketchbook.

“Fact: The wood from the Quivering Aspen is primarily used to make paper.”

Jim’s eyes are wide, his mouth hangs open in astonishment. “Dwight?” he asks. “This is just great, I’m on a date with Dwight.”

“Also, cardboard.”

“My God,” Jim exclaims. “Please stop; you’re starting to freak me out.”

Pam laughs and presses her head against his shoulder. The ease with which they slip back into their usual playful banter is not surprising. “You don’t understand; when he was Regional Manager for the day when you guys went to New York, we had lectures on topsoil and recycling. Some of it stuck with me, I guess.”

“That actually doesn’t surprise me,” Jim says.

“He also made me secret Assistant to the Regional Manager.”

“You are such a liar.”

“I’m not lying about that.”

“Wow,” is all Jim can come up with, like he’s trying to imagine exactly how that scene played out.

“But I am a liar. About other stuff.” More and more stars are blinking in the inky sky and Pam thinks about the last time she searched the heavens, about a night where she held a grown man in her arms as they said goodbye to the past, where she first let herself dare to dream of the future unfolding right in front of her. Pam decides the moment is right; she extracts all her secrets from the stars, the ones she has tucked away for safekeeping. She takes them back from the vastness of space, from the dark corners of the universe where she’s hidden them from everyone, including herself.

“Like what?” Jim’s voice is suddenly cautious and guarded and Pam can feel the drawbridge leading to the fortress of his heart pull upwards slightly, threatening to leave her stranded on the other side of the moat.

She sits up and scoots away from him, turning around so that she can face him. “I lied when I said you misinterpreted things.”

“Oh,” Jim exhales, his body relaxing noticeably, reaching out to thread his fingers between hers.

“And,” Pam continues, her confidence growing brighter as the sky gets darker, “I lied when I said ‘I can’t’, because the truth is that I wanted to more than anything. I should have been braver. I wanted to say ‘ditto’ but I was just too scared.”

“Pam, I--”

“No, wait. I still have things I want to say.”

There’s a bright trail of flashing light that catches both of their eyes; they watch it fall with wide-eyed wonder. Pam knows it’s a sign from whatever force watches over her from above, just like she saw a falling star the night she knew it was over between her and Roy. She’s shivering with goose bumps and filled with so much awe at the mystery of life, at the way pain sometimes lines the road to happiness, at the way the world suddenly feels so much smaller that it takes her a few moments to collect her bearings before she speaks again.

“I wanted to tell you that first day you came back to Scranton, but you didn’t give me a chance. I lied when I said it was totally cool that you were seeing Karen. It wasn’t cool. It sucked.” Pam never talks this much but the words are falling like an avalanche; she can’t control them and it kind of feels good to get all of this out of her head.

“And I finally understood how you must have felt all those years I was with Roy; how hard it must have been to watch me try to make it work with someone who was so wrong for me, knowing all along that you would be so much better. I’m sorry for the way I acted. It was so hard to balance between my regret for not being brave on Casino night and my anger because I thought you were over me. I said and did so many hurtful things because I was mad that you moved on.”

Jim wets his lips and draws Pam’s hands upward, bending down to kiss the backs of her hands. “Wow,” he whispers, running his thumbs over the skin where his lips touched. “Anything else?” he asks. He means it jokingly, but Pam nods and continues.

“Yeah, there is. I lied when I said your haircut was nice. I miss your old hair. Also, I’m in love with you.” There. She said it. The truth was finally out, filling in the space between them, hanging thickly in the air.

“Wow,” Jim whispers. He’s got this far away look in his eyes and several seconds pass before he seems to snap out of it. “I feel like I just won the lottery.”

“I know it’s crazy and I know--”

“Crazy? No, I know what’s crazy,” Jim interrupts. “Crazy is sitting in David Wallace’s office and finding a yogurt lid in my files. Crazy is withdrawing my name from consideration because David asked me where I saw myself in ten years and the answer was definitely not in New York.”

“So where do you see yourself in ten years?”

“Wherever you are, Pam.”

*

Jim insists on following her home because they didn’t leave Lake Scranton until after midnight and he wants to make sure she gets home safely. He carries the picnic basket for her and walks her to the door like a gentleman.

“Tonight was great, Beesly,” he says and she knows he means it.

Pam jiggles the key in the lock and presses her body against the door to get it to open. She turns to Jim and leans up to kiss him. “We just had our first fight. We’re like… really in a relationship now,” she says, sounding almost proud.

“That we are, Pam.” He kisses the top of her head. “That we are.”

“So… do you want to come in?” The question is filled with promise and neither of them realize just how quickly the other’s heart is racing.

Jim grins and there's a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “Absolutely, I do.”