1.

Roy doesn't notice Dylan for a while, 'cause he's kind of short and skinny and weird, with his messy dark hair and comic books and skateboard, but then one day after school he comes to the newspaper room, where Dylan and Pam are working late on some layout thing. They're standing at the counter in the back and Pam's hunched over, peering really close at the page because she doesn't like wearing her glasses, her hair twisted up off her neck. Dylan is watching her, not the door, and when Roy comes in he sees exactly what's going on.

Roy doesn't say anything, just walks over and grabs Pam's shoulder, maybe too rough. She looks up at him with startled eyes and makes a little noise, but she seems more surprised than anything. Dylan's the one with a guilty look on his face and he steps back, away from Roy.

"Hey," Dylan says. "Uh…"

"Is practice over already?" Pam asks. She smiles up at Roy, big and bright. "We have to finish pasting up this page – "

"I'll do it," Dylan breaks in. "Don't worry about it."

Roy glances between the two of them. Pam is still looking up at him, her face open and pleased, and Dylan is staring at the floor, playing with an x-acto knife.

"Yeah, let's go," Roy says. "My brother's waiting."

Dylan keeps looking down at the floor, the point of the knife spinning against his fingertip, as Pam gets her backpack. "Thanks, Dylan," Pam says, and Roy can't hear anything in her voice that should make him nervous.

Outside, Roy kisses her, hard enough that she kind of squirms away, laughing. He's glad now that he didn't say anything, but he's not going to leave them alone again.

2.

"Are you fucking Pam?" Roy asks his brother.

Adam chokes on his beer, little dribbles escaping at the corners of his mouth. "What?"

"You guys have been hanging out a lot lately."

"Twice," Adam says, coughing hard. "We went to the mall. For your birthday present, dickhead."

"Huh?"

"Yeah. She wanted to get you a hockey jersey and she didn't know which guy you liked."

"Oh." Roy thinks. "Shit, she's gonna be mad you told me."

Adam reaches over and whacks Roy, hard enough to make his ear start ringing. "Your fault for being such a paranoid asshole."

"Hey, you've fucked my girlfriend before."

"Cindy?" Adam narrows his eyes, looking away. "Uh, that was different. Trust me, I'd never make a move on Pam."

Roy thinks for a second. That could mean a lot of things. His relationship with Pam is most serious he's ever gotten with someone, going on three years now. But she doesn't look a thing like Cindy, who was all perky tits and shiny blonde hair and long, salon-tanned legs, totally Adam's type. Well, she was a cheerleader – she was pretty much any guy's type.

"Yeah, OK," Roy says. "Uh, thanks for taking Pam to the mall."

"No problem," Adam says, scratching Roy's head like a dog's and messing up his hair. "Hey, grab me another Miller, huh?"


3. 

"Are you fucking that Halpert guy?" Roy asks Pam.

She looks up from the floor, where she's kneeling to scrub barbeque sauce off one of the kitchen cabinets. Sticky strands of hair fall in her eyes, which she scrunches up to match her upper lip, curled in disbelief.

"What?" she says after a long minute. "Why the hell would you ask me that?"

He shrugs, folds his arms, and leans against the fridge. A magnet gets knocked loose and falls to the floor, pizza coupons fluttering after it.

"I don't know, every time I come upstairs you guys are whispering together or some shit," he says. "I don't like it, Pam."

She pulls off her yellow rubber gloves and pushes the hair off her forehead, still frowning at him. "What, I can't talk to someone without you thinking I'm cheating on you? Real nice, Roy."

"Hey, I – "

"Are there any other rules you want me to follow when we're married?" she snaps, getting to her feet. "Should I, like, walk five feet behind you or something?"

"Come on, Pam, don’t be like that," he says, reaching for her bare arm as she goes past. She flinches and moves out of his grasp, throwing her gloves and the washrag into the sink with a wet thwack.

"Jim's my friend, OK?" she says. "It's not like there's anyone else in the office I can talk to."

"Hey, I'm sorry," he says, straightening up and moving toward her. "You haven't been working there all that long. I'm sure you'll make some friends."

"And how about trusting me a little?" she says, ignoring him. "Jim doesn't even think about me like that. God."

"Pam," he says. "I'm sorry." He opens his arms to her, and she shakes her head.

"I don’t want to talk about this right now," she says, and walks out of the kitchen. After a second he hears the bathroom door slam, and the shower starts.

"Shit," he says to himself, quietly. He thought getting engaged last year would make Pam let up on him, but lately it seems like every other thing she talks about is "when we're married."

By the time Pam comes out of the shower, wrapped in a towel with her hair dripping down her back, she's calmed down enough that she lets him kiss her neck and slip his hands under the top of her towel. He's sorry enough about making her mad that he just lets the whole thing go, but he doesn't forget that she never actually said no.

4.

A week before the wedding, Pam moves away from him in bed when he starts dancing his fingers up the soft curve of her back.

"You OK, babe?" he asks softly, his nose in her hair.

"Yeah," she says. "I'm just tired." She twitches a little farther away, and pulls the sheets up over her bare shoulders. "Good night."

She's been kind of far away all month, he realizes. He's figured it was just wedding crap, her worrying about the favors she ordered being the wrong color or something like that, but now he wonders. They've only had sex a couple of times recently that he can remember, and she was far away then too. Maybe she's having a last fling with some guy. His face gets hot when he thinks about it.

It's hard to think of who that guy would be, though. Halpert moved to Connecticut weeks ago, and anyhow, Roy figured out a long time back that the guy was too chickenshit to do anything but stare at Pam like he's in middle school. The temp's kind of a pretty boy, although he's doing that Indian chick and Roy's never really seen Pam talking to him or anything. All Roy's friends and the guys in the warehouse would know better than to mess with his fiancée, and that's pretty much all the guys he can think of.

She's still distant at breakfast, but she pours him orange juice before he asks for it and squeezes his shoulder as she walks past to get her purse and coat. He keeps having that feeling all day though, working hard to get an overdue shipment out the door, like he's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

5.

Roy still watches her. He spent almost a decade not paying much attention to her at all, and then for the last year he's watched her more than ever before, waiting for some moment, some sign that things were going to get back to normal at last and she was coming home. Even now, when she's been dating fucking Halpert for three months and everyone in the warehouse has caught them making out in the parking lot or his car at least once, he's still in the habit of watching Pam. He can't seem to help it.

So he notices that she takes one break instead of two, to make an extra-long lunch, and he doesn't know if she tells Halpert that she's got a hair appointment or what but a couple of times a week she takes off by herself, in that dorky little crackerbox car he still can't believe she bought. And he doesn't really know when he first picked up on it, but fifteen minutes later someone else always comes down to the parking lot and takes off in the same direction as Pam.

It might just be a coincidence, or something innocent if they happen to end up in the same place. Shopping, maybe. But this is Roy's second summer paying attention to every little thing about Pam and he recognizes the way she smiles, the way she holds Halpert's hand, because last year she was doing the same thing to him. The smiles are too long, the squeezes of his hand are too short, and Roy's pretty damn sure she's doing something behind the guy's back.

He really shouldn't care. Halpert hasn't done him any favors, although it's been long enough that he doesn't even really think he wants Pam back, just kind of misses the way things used to be when his life was settled and simple. And he has to admit, thinking about her little affair is pretty hot.

Still, he's out in the parking lot at 12:45, leaning against the silver SUV, and Karen lifts her small, shapely eyebrows in surprise when she sees him.

"Where you guys meeting?" he asks.

"What?"

He jerks his head towards Pam's empty parking spot. "Hotel? Your place? I know her apartment is too far away to get there and back on your lunch break."

Karen's shaking her head, but there are two spots of pale pink on her cheeks. Roy's spent some time watching her too, lately.

"I don't – we've gone shopping a few times. We're not – " 

"Fine," he says, shrugging and standing up. "Guess that's what you're telling Halpert."

She meets his eyes, hers dark and wide, and there's a second where he knows he might get something out of this. A favor owed, or maybe something a little nastier, getting a peek at how they spend their lunch breaks. He feels bad as soon as he thinks it.

"Roy," Karen says, her voice low. "Please don't – "

"Hey," he says, lifting his hands in protest. It's weird that he was actually right, that Karen is admitting it. "It's none of my business."

"Damn straight," she says.

"Just…" He sighs, not believing what he's about to say. "I think the two of you have had him pretty spun. Just…quit fucking with the guy. Or whatever."

She looks at him a while longer, her head cocked to the side. After a second, she nods.

"You're right," she says. "It's really none of your business."

After Karen drives off he sits for a few minutes on the bench outside the warehouse, thinking about how he never really knew his girlfriend until she wasn't his anymore.