Jim rubs his hands together and waits until he can no longer see his breath on frosted glass before reaching down to shift the car into reverse. He pauses, contemplating whether to walk or drive. Does it really make sense to drive the two blocks to Karen’s apartment when it will probably be quicker and safer to walk? It has done nothing but snow all day long and he knows his street is one of the last ones to be scraped and salted. He just bought a new car; it’s worth freezing his ass off rather than running the risk of sliding on the ice into something that could affect his car insurance rate, like another car or a light pole.

There is no one else awake at this hour, just after midnight on a freezing weeknight; the proof is in the silence of his street, of the darkness in the windows of the neighboring apartments. Normal people are doing things like sleeping, or at least getting ready to sleep. But not Jim. Normal is something he thinks no longer exists for him. Normal guys do not confess to their girlfriends that they still have feelings for other women. Not that Pam is just any woman, but that’s neither here nor there.

All of this is Andy’s fault, he thinks as he half-walks, half-slides towards Karen’s apartment, tugging his scarf upward to cover his nose. If Andy wouldn’t have been so annoying, Jim wouldn’t have had to ask Karen to help him play a prank on him (and since Karen declined, maybe this was partly her fault, too). If Pam hadn’t helped him pull it off, Andy wouldn’t have punched a hole in the wall and Jim and Pam would have had nothing to say to each other. Jim wouldn’t have joked with Pam; he wouldn’t have stood close enough to smell her shampoo. And since they wouldn’t have been standing so close, Pam’s fingers would never have curled around his forearm, because she wouldn’t have needed to steady herself because she was laughing so hard.

Jim remembers reaching out to finger the dusty ridge of plaster where Andy’s anger had manifested. “Oh my God,” he whispered to Pam as they both inspected the aftermath of their prank. “That’s half-inch drywall.”

Pam beamed up at him, her eyes shining with both pride and amusement. She leaned in conspiratorially, like she has done hundreds of times. “I think we broke his brain.”

And then they both laughed hard, harder than they’ve laughed together in a long time. Pam’s laughter was infectious; the more she laughed, the more he did, too.

He imitated Andy. “It’s not freakin’ funny!”

And then Pam reached out and rested her fingers lightly on his forearm to even out her balance and when she did, Jim tensed.

It was that touch that did him in. He was content just to laugh with her, satisfied that they were able to share a moment that didn’t involve Pam painfully reminding him that they would always just be friends, pleased that maybe they were finding their way back to the past, where they used to actually be friends. Real friends, and not cautiously optimistic co-workers, which is what they have become.

Her fingers lingered a bit too long and Jim wondered when his mouth became full of cotton. He mumbled something about needing more to drink and, like a frightened snail, retreated into the safety of his shell. Or in his case, the conference room.

Jim tossed his sombrero off and plunked himself down into a chair. He inched up the sleeve of his shirt and stared down at where Pam had touched him, running his own fingers over the spot where her slender fingers sent an electrifying jolt through his body.

He knew what that meant. He knew that feeling well. It followed him everywhere, casting ominous shadows in corners, threatening to swallow him up if he lingered on the thought of her for too long. He’s still in love with her. He has never stopped. This acknowledgement left him feeling exhausted and deflated and, because fate hates Jim Halpert, that’s when Karen walked in.

Jim doesn’t want to replay that conversation. It was hard enough the first time. Hard to admit the truth, and harder still to know that he hurt Karen. He hadn’t meant to. None of this was really her fault. After she stormed out of the conference room, she had collected her purse and coat and left the office for the day.

Suddenly Jim loses his balance and is shaken back to reality by the vivid moment of clarity that comes just before a fall. His moment of clarity is not of Pam or Karen; he knows without a doubt that the news of his impending coma will be in the ‘Weird News’ section of the Scranton Times in the morning. Probably the headline will read: Moron Suffers Head Trauma While Wandering On Ice Past Midnight – It Snowed, Stupid. Stay Inside.

But he doesn’t hit his head. He holds his arms out behind him and lands sitting up, right on his tailbone. He sits there for a moment until the cold seeps through his sweatpants and he has to get up or else he’ll freeze to the concrete. He winces a little but is relieved that it doesn’t hurt as much as he is expecting.

When he reaches Karen’s apartment, he frowns. All of the lights are out. He’s going to have to wake her up. He fishes in his pocket for change, something to throw at her bedroom window to rouse her, but he’s in his sweats. There is no change. He doesn’t even have his wallet. He looks around on the ground; maybe there are some pebbles or rocks or something and feels sheepish. Everything is buried under the snow.

Jim doesn’t know why he reaches for the doorknob; he knows it’ll be locked, but his fingers curl around it all the same and he’s both relieved and concerned when he turns his wrist and the door opens.

“Karen?” he asks quietly, stepping inside. When the door is closed behind him, he flips on the light and looks around. It doesn’t look like Karen has even been home. Her coat isn’t hanging on the rack, there are no dishes in the sink, no magazines lying open on her kitchen counter.

“Karen?” he calls again, walking through her sparsely decorated living room. He sees her purse on her cream-colored sofa and feels himself relax. He hates that sofa. It’s too modern for him. He hates the way there are no armrests and when he lays on it to watch TV, he’s always sure it won’t hold his weight.

His fingers splay against the closed door to her bedroom and he breathes in to collect his thoughts. He likes to think that he’s pretty good with words, but he doesn’t have a response at the ready from his repertoire of smooth things to say to women after he’s fucked up so severely.

He opens the door with a smile on his face and kindness in his eyes. His eyebrows furrow in concern and confusion. Her bed is empty and just the way they left it this morning. They had made the bed together, kissing as they met in the center to smooth down the sheets. Even Jim’s pillow remained lopsided, he had meant to go back and straighten it before they left for work but must have forgotten.

Jim pulls his cell phone out of his coat pocket and calls Karen’s cell. He can hear the faint chirping of the phone and follows the noise. He sees the light from Karen’s phone blinking in her purse and now he’s really concerned. If she’s not here and doesn’t have her phone – Jim forces himself to stop assuming the worst. There is a logical explanation.

He sees something twinkle from the corner of his eye and turns to face the patio. Karen’s got those twinkly lights wrapped around her railing outside and they’re shining brightly in the night. He sees her out there; she’s sitting in a wrought-iron patio chair, wrapped in a sleeping bag.

When Jim slides open the door, he notices a bottle of whiskey on the table next to Karen. He’s never met a girl who drinks whiskey straight, let alone right out of the bottle, and he finds it both charming and intimidating. There’s so much he doesn’t know about Karen, so much that he hasn’t discovered yet and when she turns her head and stares at him, he feels warm; there is no malice in her eyes.

“Do you always leave your door unlocked? It’s after midnight.”

“I had a feeling you’d stop by.” Her tone betrays her; she’s trying to play the ice queen, but Jim detects a sliver of warmth underneath, like she had been hoping, not expecting, that he would stop by.

“What are you doing out here?”

“Wishing on stars.” She sighs after she says it and Jim is struck by how young she sounds, like she’s a little bit lost.

Jim stands in the doorway, thinking that maybe she’ll get up and come back inside where it’s warm, where they can talk. When it becomes obvious that she’s not going to move, he slides the door closed and steps out onto the patio.

Jim doesn’t know what to say, so he just leans against the glass door and stares upward. He wonders which stars Karen has already wished on, thinking maybe he should do the same. He scans the sky for the constellations he remembers from an astronomy class he took in college. He sees proud Orion, poised for battle. His eyes travel eastward to rest on Canis Major, knowing that Karen must have wished on Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. He scans the sky further and he finds Hydra, the monstrous multi-headed water serpant from Greek mythology. He feels like he’s been battling Hydra since the night he put it all on the line for Pam. Each time he made a small step forward, like asking Karen out, two more problems would spring up, like returning to Scranton and hearing Pam say, “It’s totally cool. You can do whatever you want.” He can’t remember how Hercules defeats the monster, he just knows that he does. Eventually.

“Am I being punished?” Karen finally breaks the silence, her voice a little husky from the alcohol.

“Punished? What for?” Jim sits down in the chair next to her and tries not to shiver.

“For not playing that prank on Andy. Are you punishing me for that?”

Jim feels like an asshole. He was frustrated at Karen for not helping him out earlier, but he hadn’t gone to Pam out of revenge. Pam just understood the need to prank. It wasn’t always just to make Pam laugh, but he’d be lying if he said that wasn’t his favorite part. He needs to prank because if he lets himself get too bothered by his co-workers, it feels more like a career than a pit stop, which it what this job is to him. And Jim would rather throw himself in front of a train than be a career man at Dunder Mifflin. Pranks alleviate the annoyance of office politics and help him get through the day. Pam just… gets it.

“No, I’m not trying to punish you for anything. You didn’t do anything wrong.” He’s glad she’s still peering up at the sky. He’s not so great at this part of relationships, at actually saying what’s on his mind and he thinks it would be harder if she were staring at him. He thinks she’d see right through him.

“You just seemed so different standing there with her. I never see you laugh like that.”

“C’mon, Karen,” he says lightly, “you have to admit it was a pretty funny pra--”

“Jim.” The chill in her tone is more frigid than the air they’re breathing and she shifts in her seat slightly to face him. “I don’t think the prank has anything to do with it. It’s her. You were laughing like that because it was her.”

Jim wants to act self-righteous and indignant. He wants to point his finger and get huffy, saying things like “what gave you that idea” or “you’re so paranoid” but he can’t because Karen’s right. It is always because it’s her.

“We just used to be really good friends, Karen. I’ve known her for years.”

“Why did you quit being good friends?”

“We talked about this already. Over coffee, remember?”

“Tell me again.”

Jim sighs. It’s so hard to tiptoe around the truth. He can’t say what really happened, that he held his heart in the palm of his hands, that he stood there so open and vulnerable and offered it to Pam if she would only reach out and take it. He can’t say that when Pam turned him down that he didn’t sleep for four days and couldn’t keep anything more than a few cups of chicken broth in his stomach. So he waters it down until it kind of, sort of resembles the truth.

“I had feelings for her and I --”

“Have, Jim. You have feelings for her.”

Jim would be annoyed that Karen keeps interrupting but he knows it’s because she’s hurting, too. He keeps in mind that she didn’t ask to be drawn in to any of this. That when she said ‘yes’ to an invitation to dinner back in Stamford, she wasn’t saying ‘yes’ to all of his emotional baggage. And he wants it to work with Karen, he really does. He loves the way she whispers Italian in his ear sometimes when they’re making love. He has no idea what she’s saying; it could be something like “Do you know where I can find the train?” but it sounds so sensual and it gives him goose bumps. He loves her ambition, he loves that she knows exactly where she wants to be in five years. He envies that about her, because he has no clue. And it would be easier to lie, to finesse and finagle his way out of this conversation, but Jim’s learning that being an adult means dealing with things instead of hoping they go away on their own. So he tells her the version of the truth that is least damaging. To both of them.

“I don’t want to. I’m trying not to. Have feelings for her, I mean.”

“Does she have feelings for you?”

Jim shakes his head emphatically. No watered-down half-truths here. “She does not.”

“Then why can’t you let go?”

“I’m trying!” Jim can’t mask his frustration.

“Well, how do you think this makes me feel?”

“I know,” he groans. “Don’t you think that’s what I’ve been thinking about all night?”

“I don’t know; you’re hard to read. You’re not very open with your emotions.”

“I’m trying to be better about that.”

“Would you rather be with her?”

“I don’t want to break-up, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That’s not what I’m asking, Jim.”

Of course he’d rather be with Pam. He’d also like to own the Phillies one day and have a flying unicorn to use for transportation instead of a car. Pam has made it clear to him: being with her is not a possibility. That future does not exist for him.

“I want to be here with you.” What else can he say? He likes Karen. He’s working as hard as he can to make this work.

“So you’re still ‘really glad I’m here’?”

“Of course.”

“I just need to know that this is going somewhere.”

Jim pauses. He knows what Karen is saying. He knows she’s falling for him fast and hard and he’s pretty sure that he can love her back, in time. He wants to love her back. “I’m here, aren’t I? I walked here in the snow, in the freezing cold. I even slipped and fell on my ass for you, Fillipelli.”

“You did not.”

“I did too! I promise there is a Jim-sized ass print in the snow about twenty feet from your front door. Come on, let’s go inside.” Jim offers her his gloved hand. For the first time all night, Karen smiles and takes it.

They shelve the conversation for the night and wrap themselves around each other under the blankets in bed. Jim knows they’ll discuss it again and probably soon because Karen is so analytical, but he doesn’t mind. He’s in the arms of someone who wants him, all of him. Someone who doesn’t say ‘I can’t’, who doesn’t slam the door on possibilities and new beginnings.

It feels so good to be wanted, to be desired. He’s so sick of the one-sided longing, the secret yearning that has been his life for… far too long. Until Karen came along, he had forgotten what it felt like to be pursued by a woman; he’s missed the way that feels. So he puts Pam out of his mind and goes to sleep with Karen, someone who wants to make this work, who wants a future with him. But he dreams of a girl with curly hair and she’s smiling and clutching his arm. Even with that giant sombrero on her head, she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen and he knows he will always hope.