He watches Angela walk determinedly back to her car. As her headlights shrink in the distance, the reality of the situation hits him.

Pam is in my house. Pam. She made Angela take her here instead of home to Roy. She’s sitting on my couch right now, and she’s going to spend the night. Here. In my house. Possibly in my bed. While I’m on the couch, but still. Oh my god. Pam is spending the night. Okay, deep breath.

Closing the door gingerly, he turns back to the living room. There she is, seated on his couch with her legs tucked under herself. Mark is saying something to her, and then he walks into the kitchen.

She’s looks up and catches him staring. A small, sheepish smile flits across her face, mirroring his. Summoning every ounce of cool that he possesses, he manages to get all the way over to her without tripping over his own two feet.

“Hi,” he says, leaning against the couch in a way that he hopes looks casual.

“Hey,” she replies.

“How are you doing?” he asks.

He takes note of her slightly bloodshot eyes (still beautiful, he thinks).

“I’m fine. I’m really good. Great,” she babbles, nodding enthusiastically. She’s doing that thing that girls in college did all the time; trying to pass for sober and overcompensating.

Jim’s mouth quirks up. He tilts his head at her.

“Pam,” he starts, and there is laughter and playful admonishment in his voice. “You can’t act sober in front of the guy who saw you completely wasted about thirty minutes ago.”

She smiles and hangs her head for a second, letting out a half-sigh, half-laugh. After a moment, she raises her eyes back to meet his.

“Okay. Honestly? The room is going like this,” she replies, holding out her hands and jerking them like she’s holding a steering wheel and making repeated sharp turns.

“Ah, the spins. They can sneak up on you. Here, I’ll get a bucket just in case you need it… Unless—do you just want to go to bed?”

“No, I’m not tired,” she states immediately.

Good.

“I’ll be right back,” he promises.

He gets up and enters the kitchen. Mark is there, filling up a tall glass with tap water.

“Hey, man,” he says in greeting. “Pam said she needed some water, so…” he gestures at the glass in his hand. “That is Pam, right? The Pam?”

“Yeah. Thanks. She’s still out on the couch,” Jim replies, grabbing a pot from one of the lower cabinets.

“I’m going to head over to Steph’s for the night. I figure you might want the house to yourself,” Mark says from the threshold between the kitchen and the living room.

Jim pauses in the middle of inverting a plastic bag inside the pot. Suddenly his face is hot.

“It’s not like that, man. She’s just crashing here because she had a fight with her boyfriend,” he explains.

“Fiancé,” Mark corrects him.

Jim regrets ever telling Mark anything about Pam.

“Whatever,” he says, waving a dismissive hand. “You don’t have to leave.”

For some reason Jim feels that it is imperative to make Mark believe him. It’s like the times when, as a kid, his older brother would tease him about liking a girl and he would get himself all worked up trying to deny it. Of course, these situations often led to Jim getting so frustrated that he tried to convince his brother with his fists, and since he was younger and smaller, this usually resulted in Jim running to his mom with a bloody nose.

Jim is fairly certain that he can take Mark in a fight, but luckily Mark doesn’t press the issue.

“Nah, it’s cool. Steph is always bugging me to go over to her place anyways,” he says nonchalantly. “She told me you have cooties.” Mark states this last bit of information as if it is grave news.

“Yeah, I got them from your mom,” Jim retorts.

Mark laughs and flips him off before retreating back into the living room to deliver Pam’s water. Once the plastic bag is secure inside the pot, Jim follows. Pam is still on the couch, sipping her water, but Mark is nowhere to be seen.

“He went upstairs to pack,” Pam says, as if reading Jim’s thoughts.

Jim nods.

“Here’s your little safety bucket,” he says, plopping the pot down on the carpet next to Pam.

She is sitting on the far end of the couch and he seats himself on the opposite armrest, because it feels dangerous to actually sit on the couch next to her.

Pam eyes the bucket for a moment. When she speaks again, it looks as though she is addressing the bucket and not him.

“I can go,” she says abruptly.

“What? No,” Jim blurts out.

She can’t leave. Not tonight.

“I mean,” Pam starts again. “If it’s weird that I just showed up. I can go. I’ll get a room at the EconoLodge or something.”

Jim cocks his head to the side and frowns incredulously.

“Okay, first of all, no you cannot get a room at the Scranton EconoLodge. My brother stayed there with his wife once. There was a crack in the ceiling that had been patched up with a used Band-Aid.”

Pam looks at him with wide, horrified eyes.

“Ew,” she concludes.

“Yeah,” Jim replies. “And secondly, this isn’t weird.” But it is and they both know it, so he keeps going. “I mean, it’s fine. It’s more than fine. I’m glad you’re here. I mean, I’m not glad that you’re already feeling sort of hungover, but it’s great to see you. I mean…”

SHUT UP! Stop rambling. Idiot, he berates himself.

Pam lets out a pained moan and buries her face in her palms. He panics. Did he weird her out? I’m glad you’re here. Yeah. That sounds great, Jim. I’m so happy that you’re fighting with your boyfriend—no, fiancé—because it means that I get to stare at you all night.

“It’s always like this. I hate the spins,” she mumbles into her hands.

Relief floods through him. Of course. She’s moaning because she’s feeling the effects of a night of heavy drinking, not because of anything he’s said. Thank god. Then he thinks about what she just said and how she phrased it, and he gives her a curious, teasing sort of smile.

“Is this a regular occurrence, Beesly? Get wasted on El Nino margaritas until the room spins?”

“No!” she denies immediately.

He grins at her defensiveness and she sticks out her tongue at him.

“The last time was like two years ago,” she insists. “At Roy’s brother’s birthday.”

When she says Roy’s name, conversation screeches to a halt and they both remember why she’s here in the first place. The silence is heavy. He looks down in his lap for a few seconds before turning hesitantly towards her.

“So, you’re fighting with Roy?” he asks, hoping the question sounds conversational and not prying.

“Yeah,” she tells the pot on the floor. “We got into a fight in the parking lot.”

“About what?” he prods, because he has to know.

“He just…”

She pauses and looks up at the far corner of the ceiling, as if it holds the answers to his query.

“Sometimes I think he doesn’t care what I want,” she says finally.

She continues to stare into the corner of the room, and he can tell she’s thinking hard about something. He wants to tell her that she deserves better than Roy. That she’s right; Roy doesn’t care what she wants and she deserves someone who does. He wants to tell her that he’s so proud of her for not going home to him tonight and that she can stay here for as long as she needs to.

He opens his mouth and starts speaking without knowing exactly which of those thoughts he is going to voice.

“Well, it sounds like—”

“I don’t want to talk about Roy,” she interjects hastily.

“Okay,” he replies.

There is another awkward pause, and thankfully the silence is broken by Mark, who chooses this moment to come back downstairs. He slings a small duffel over his shoulder and says a quick “See ya” as he walks out the door.

As the door shuts behind him, Jim decides that it’s time to steer the conversation back to safer waters.

“Hey, remember that time you fell off a barstool in Chili’s?” he asks, as if he’s recalling a pleasant memory from years past.

“Shut up,” she mutters, trying to hold back an embarrassed smile.

“Just fell right over!” he says gleefully.

He reenacts the fall from his perch on the couch armrest, allowing his body to tip over like a fallen tree, complete with a shout of “Tiiiiimberrrr!” He keels right over backward and lands face up, the top of his head just brushing against her leg as he hits the couch. She peers down over him, trying to communicate with her expression that she is not amused by his little show, but when he grins up at her she just smiles and shakes her head.

“I will never be able to get the image of a shirtless Dwight out of my mind,” she groans.

“Oh, me either,” he assures her, sitting up so that he’s on the cushion next to her.

He should really move over to the far cushion. When there are three couch cushions and two people on the couch, you leave the middle cushion empty. That’s just how it goes. Who sits like that? Couples, that’s who, he answers himself. But he doesn’t move.

“But I was under him,” she reminds him, shuddering.

Jim can’t help himself.

“That’s what she said.”

But Pam barely hears him. She’s too busy reliving the memory. She speaks like a Vietnam vet recalling a horrible battle.

“When he couldn’t get his shirt all the way off, his stomach was moving like… like waves. It looked like a pale, pale ocean,” she says dazedly.

“Okay, if you keep going, I’m going to need that pot,” he warns her.

“It was almost as gross as Angela and her cats,” she says, spitting out the last word like it’s a curse.

“Yeah?” he prompts.

“One of them has Feline Idio… Idiopatetic… Cys… Cysti… It pees everywhere,” she blurts out, giving up on correct pronunciation.

She is so fucking adorable, even talking about cat piss. How is that even possible? He laughs a little louder than normal because he has this crazy urge to just lean forward and kiss her. She wouldn’t stop him, he’s almost positive. He forces himself to speak in order to keep his mouth otherwise occupied.

“Yeah. She mentioned something about removing urine stains before she left,” he acknowledges.

“Did she also mention that she wears goggles as she tends to them?” Pam asks, disgust evident in her tone.

Jim’s eyebrows shoot up and he juts his face forward questioningly.

“I’m sorry, WHAT?” he demands.

She giggles, and it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. God, he’s such a sap. She could throw up in the pot right now and he’d probably think that was the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Yup. All of them have conjuntiv…” She squints in concentration, but ultimately decides not to attempt that word tonight. “Pink-eye,” she finishes.

Jim squints at her and poses a serious question.

“Pam, what kind of goggles are we talking here? Like swimmers’ goggles or those huge ones from high school science class?”

She frowns.

“Is one better than the other?”

“No, but I need a complete image in my mind. It’s that amazing,” he replies. And then an idea strikes him.

“Okay, wait,” he says. “You are going to put that artistic talent of yours to use. I’m going to run upstairs, grab a box of crayons and some paper from my desk, and you are going to draw a picture of Angela tending to her cats in goggles. I’d like two pictures, each with a different goggle type.”

She can’t even reply. She is overcome with silent laughter, so much so that she collapses into him. She buries her face in his chest and he almost dies on the spot. But then she’s sliding further. She falls over his lap, her head resting on the empty couch cushion, her chest and stomach pressing against his legs, still shaking with inaudible giggles. Without thinking, he brings a hand down and buries it in her hair, grinning like a fool.

“Okay, on second thought maybe you lack the necessary hand-eye coordination for this task,” he concedes, still grinning so hard it hurts. “We’ll wait till morning.”

She manages to push herself upright again, and he can’t help but feel a bit disappointed at the loss of contact.

“Oh my god!” she gasps between laughter. “You have crayons in your desk? Are you eight?”

What? He laughs out loud, because she’s so drunk and he kind of loves it when she busts on him like this. Besides, he knows it’s just because she’s had a few too many. It’s totally normal for a twenty-six year old guy to have crayons. Right?

“My nephew visits sometimes,” he says defensively.

“How often?” she asks skeptically.

“Like twice a year,” he admits, and she cackles a little. “Okay, you know what, Drunky? You are in no position to judge.”

“Do you like to color, Jim?” she asks mockingly. “Do you have a SpongeBob coloring book?”

He pretends to be mortally offended.

“No, Mark has the SpongeBob coloring book. Mine is Strawberry Shortcake,” he explains.

She snorts with laughter and he almost dies when she swings her feet up onto the couch and stretches out, laying her legs across his lap and leaning her back against the arm of the couch. His hands go automatically to her knees, gripping them ever-so-gently. She tilts her head back and sighs happily.

They just sit like that for a moment, and Jim thinks that he’ll be perfectly happy if they don’t say a thing for the rest of the night. They can just fall asleep like this and the night will have been perfect.

“Angela thinks we’re going to sleep together tonight,” she says absently.

His legs jerk so violently that it makes her knees bounce up and she looks at him questioningly.

“I told her no, that I might want to spend the night in Chili’s with you, but not for sex. We’re just best friends,” she continues. Then she pauses, because he still hasn’t responded. “Right?” she asks.

Okay, Jim. Focus. What was the question? Will I have sex with you in Chili’s? YES. Wait, no. That wasn’t the question. Oh god, why did she have to put any of these images in his head. Oh! Are we best friends? That was the question.

“Yeah. Of course,” he says. He is desperate to get things light again, because he absolutely cannot handle this topic of conversation and keep his promise to Angela.

“I mean, not that we could spend the night in Chili’s. Seeing as how you got a lifetime ban,” he adds.

Her eyes widen and she looks surprised.

“Oh no! Did I? How did that happen?” she asks.

“Are you really that upset to be banned from Chili’s?” he asks incredulously. “I promise I’ll take you somewhere nicer than Chili’s. You’ll see it’s no great loss.”

She gives him a mischievous smile.

“You’ll take me out to dinner?” she teases.

That smile. Is going. To kill him.

“Oh, uh no. Not like… I mean, maybe on our lunch break we can go somewhere or…” He stutters for a moment before shaking his head.

“Hey, listen,” he continues. “You are… somehow way more drunk then you were when you left Chili’s.”

He’s about to suggest that they just go to bed, separately, of course, when she giggles again.

“I like being drunk,” she admits like it’s a secret.

“Oh, do you? Why is that?” he asks, trying and failing to keep the flirting edge out of his voice.

“Because then I can do things and it’s okay because I’m drunk,” she replies.

He frowns.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

She sits up, and leans in very, very close. She cups a hand over his ear and whispers to him.

“I kissed you.”

Normally he would have melted into a puddle and slipped between the couch cushions at this moment, because Pam is whispering seductively in his ear. But all he can feel is hurt and sort of angry.

Because she is going to write this off as a drunken mistake. She’s happy to do so, in fact. Whereas he wasn’t drunk, and he enjoyed every millisecond of that kiss. It meant everything to him, and she just thinks it’s so great that tomorrow they’ll pretend it never happened.

Did she do it on purpose? Did she think to herself, now’s my chance to kiss him and blame it on the drinking, without thinking at all about how it would affect him? And if that’s true, then how long has she wanted to kiss him? Oh god. She was happy she kissed him.

No. He stops himself from celebrating, because the fact of the matter is that she wants to forget it in the morning. It doesn’t mean anything real to her. He loves her, he’s sure of it. Is this just some sort of meaningless flirtation for her? Something she just wants to get out of her system one random drunken night?

“You should go to bed,” he says quietly.

He can’t look at her, but he can feel the confusion in her voice when she replies.

“Okay.”

“You can take my bed. I’ll go change the sheets,” he says, pushing her legs gently off of his lap and standing.

“No, I’ll just stay here,” she says.

He knows that she’s trying to get him to look at her, but he refuses to oblige.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’ll just take a sec,” he says, before practically running up the stairs.

He leaves her feeling stunned and confused on the couch.

---------

What did she say wrong? She wracks her brain for an answer, but suddenly the spins are hitting her harder than ever. She doesn’t think it’s just the alcohol that’s making her nauseous, either. Jim is mad at her. It’s the worst feeling in the world. All she wants to do is make it better, but she’s having trouble reasoning out a course of action, or even what she did to land herself in this mess in the first place.

All she said before he got mad was that she was happy that she kissed him. That was a good thing, right?

An awful thought occurs to her. Maybe it wasn’t a good thing. Maybe he was horrified that she kissed him. She tries to remember his reaction to her kiss, but she can’t. She was so drunk and happy and wound up that she didn’t even look at him to gauge his reaction after the kiss. She just sat back down at their table, grinning like an idiot.

Oh god. Of course he wouldn’t be happy about that. He’s a decent guy. She’s engaged. Oh! And he’s dating Katy. Ugh. The purse girl. He has a girlfriend and she just threw herself at him and kissed him and now she’s spending the night, and he’s probably just too polite to say anything, but she’s totally freaking him out. She was practically lying on top of him on the couch, and she was definitely flirting.

She tries to remember the last time she felt so stupid and so crappy, but she can’t. She stands and wavers a moment. Once she regains her balance and her vision stops swimming, she slowly makes her way to the stairs. She leans on the banister like it’s a safety robe and climbs them carefully, one at a time.

He’s in his room, her back to him as he leans over the mattress to pull up the old sheets.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly.

His shoulders tense. He deposits the sheets in a pile on the floor and starts unfolding the clean ones.

“For what?” he asks, not bothering to turn around.

She just wants to cry.

“You’re mad at me,” she says pathetically.

He sighs and throws the fitted sheet across his bed. He answers her as he tucks the first corner under the mattress.

“No, I’m not,” he says robotically.

He still isn’t looking at her. He’s moving on to tuck in the other corners.

“You are, and I’m sorry if I messed up your night by coming here,” she replies earnestly.

He spreads out the top sheet without replying. She feels a tear roll down her cheek. He finally turns around after a long pause and when he does, he immediately zeroes in on the tear. His face softens instantly.

“Come on, I’m always happy to see you,” he says softly.

“Then why are you mad?” she asks, and her voice cracks halfway through.

“I’m not,” he says firmly, turning back around and spreading the comforter out over the bed.

“Is it because I kissed you?” she demands.

He spins around and when his eyes meet hers they’re burning.

“No!” he says resolutely.

She must look as unconvinced as she feels, because he keeps talking.

“Pam, you were… are… drunk. It wasn’t a big deal. Don’t worry about it.”

He smiles. Smiles. Reassuringly, like she spilled his coffee or something and he wants her to know it’s okay.

“It wasn’t a big deal?” she repeats, frowning.

“Seriously, don’t worry about it. Tomorrow morning I’ll make you breakfast and make fun of you again for falling off your barstool and things will be totally fine,” he promises.

She looks away and has to concentrate really hard on not crying. She knows that she should be glad that he’s going to let this slide. This could have completely screwed up their friendship and she should be thankful that tomorrow things will be back to normal.

“Yeah. Do you have anything I can wear to bed?” she asks numbly.

He points to the middle dresser drawer, telling her that she can pick out anything from there.

“Okay, so… goodnight, I guess,” he mumbles, making his way to the door.

“Goodnight,” she whispers.

He turns to go, and she can’t stop herself. This is the Chili’s parking lot all over again. She can’t chicken out this time.

“Wait, Jim,” she hears herself say.

He turns back warily, and she takes a deep breath. She freezes with her mouth open and fumbles.

“Thanks. For everything,” she says, cursing herself for doing this a second time in one night.

“Sure, no problem, Beesly,” he says, turning back to the doorway.

“No wait,” she calls out.

He turns again, and she sighs in frustration. Why is this so hard? Thoughts of Roy and Katy are spinning through her head and she finally speaks.

“Um, goodnight,” she says.

DAMN IT! She wants to scream. Isn’t being drunk supposed to make this easier?

He smiles like he did earlier that night when he told her that “Thank you” wasn’t really a question.

“I think we already said that,” he replies.

“Oh. Right,” she nods.

She hates herself. He turns away a third time, and she decides, screw it. She’s going to do this if it kills her.

“Jim,” she calls out again.

Turns back, smirking.

“Do you need me to get you a glass of water?” he asks. “Check for monsters under the bed? I usually make Mark do that for me.”

But this is no time for jokes. He’s already letting it go back to normal, and she can’t do that yet.

“If Roy and I weren’t… If we weren’t together…”

She takes a deep breath, trying to ignore that her heart is racing and her hands are trembling.

“Pam, you’re drunk. Stop,” he warns her.

He looks terrified, but she can’t stop.

“No, I want—”

“Come on, I promised Angela I’d take care of you,” he begs her.

She’s embarrassing him. She needs to just stop. This night has been such a mess. But she can’t stand that he brushed off the kiss like it meant nothing. Like it was forgettable. Because she might have been drunk, but she would never regret that kiss.

But you know what? Maybe he’s lying. Maybe the kiss meant a lot and he’s just telling her what he thinks he has to say because it’s noble or because it’s what he thinks she wants to hear.

There’s only one way she can think of to find out. Somewhere in the back of her mind it occurs to her that testing him this way is cruel. That this is a very, very bad idea. But all of her thoughts are sort of jumbled and all she can focus on right now is her desperate need to know how he really feels about that kiss.

She crosses the room and stands in front of him. He looks so scared as she brings her right hand up to his face. She rests her thumb on his cheek and her fingers land whisper soft on his neck, right under his ear. He allows her to pull his face down as if he’s lost all power to resist. His eyes slide shut on their own accord. She leans in slowly and brushes her lips across his for a brief second.

She pulls back almost instantly and this time she makes sure to observe his reaction. His eyes are still closed. He looks like someone put him on pause. Pam starts to get worried that she broke him somehow, when finally he exhales.

“What was that?” he asks in a ragged whisper.

“A goodnight kiss,” she says anxiously. “No big deal right?”

He looks at her like she just slapped him, and she doesn’t know what do to.

“What the hell, Pam?” He spits it out like an accusation, and she reels back.

“It doesn’t matter, right? I’m drunk?” she asks nervously.

She made a mistake. This was a bad idea. He’s mad. Is he mad because he doesn’t want her to kiss him because he has a girlfriend and she has Roy, or is he mad because it means something to him? But then she doesn’t care why. She made him mad, and she feels awful.

“Did you just do that because you’re drunk?” he demands.

He’s so angry, so serious right now that it scares her. She has never seen Jim this way before. She wants to answer his question, just to make him not mad anymore. What was the question? Oh, right: did she kiss him because she’s drunk.

“No,” she replies honestly. “Jim, I just needed to know—”

But she’s cut off by his lips. She gasps and arches toward him. His arms are around her, and his palms are flat and hot against her back, pulling her so close that there is absolutely no space between their bodies. She opens her mouth without thinking and he immediately takes advantage, running his tongue along the edges of her lips before dipping into her mouth. She’s thankful that Jim is holding her so tightly because she’s pretty sure she’d be on the floor otherwise.

This kiss is so different from the first two. All she can focus on is the sensations of his mouth on hers and the heat surging through her body. It has never been like this with Roy.

Never.

Then just as suddenly it began, he pulls away. He grips her shoulders and pins her with his gaze and she realizes that he is still very angry.

“That was a big deal to me,” he snarls. “When you kiss me, it’s a big deal. So the next time you want to get drunk and have fun so that you can write it all off the next day, don’t come looking for me. I don’t want that.”

He storms out of the room, slamming the door behind him.