One

When he asks her out that first day, it’s one of those things where she kind of knows it’s a date but is convincing herself its not because she likes him (more than someone who’s engaged should) and she wants to have lunch with him. Period.

Pam drops hints. Big ones. Like fiddling with her ring and making constant mentions to a him that’s living in her house and eating her food. But he must have been happily stupid (she wishes she could say the same) because near the end, when he’s paying the check and she’s preparing herself for another four hours of Michael Scott, he kisses her. And it’s really… awkward. Because she has to force herself to not kiss him back and then he’s leaning away and she wonders if this is like having a past life come back to you all at once, where every one of her combined clues slap him in the face and he apologizes. She thinks he blushes.

It’s a shame because she really thinks they could have been friends, good friends, but she’s engaged to a somewhat jealous man, and, well.

You know how it is.

Two

Jim had always loved New Year’s, maybe as some sort of resonating excitement from childhood where staying up past ten was still a novelty, and maybe just because he likes the feeling that this year could be different, before resolutions are broken and it’s just another cold January without any holidays to look forward to. He’s heating up some hot chocolate (because who says it’s just for kids?) and settling under a blanket on his couch in front of the TV tuned to Dick Clarke, premature confetti glittering at the camera. He’s pretending he’s there, living in New York with an exciting life and not at home in a small town thinking that maybe he’d past the dead end sign and rolled over the cliff behind it without realizing.

Then the door bell rings and Jim answers, in his pajamas but not wearing any underwear, so he feels slightly self-conscious when Pam launches herself into his arms. He barely has time to process the words left him and nowhere to go before she’s kissing him. But the only way he can still continue without his brain exploding is by pushing any phrase resembling just a rebound out of his head.

Pam looks better naked than he’d imagined, but after, when she’s lying in his bed twisted up in his sheets and breathing his air, he’s too busy trying to wrap his head around the image to say anything that matters. She leaves in the morning before they can really talk about it and on Monday she smiles as he walks in as if nothing has changed.

They have sex a few more times before she gets back together with Roy and he never gets around to telling her that he’s in love with her.

Three

There was a time, when Jim was standing in front of her like she was the emperor in a gladiatorial ring and his life was in her hands with the simple gesture of a thumbs up or down, and darkness in the office was heavy with expectations and the color of her dress felt just too cheery for the occasion, that she was sure she was making the right decision. Pam says yes and she worries a little after if it was simply to keep him smiling at her like that (she couldn’t bear to disappoint him, which in hindsight was her underlying problem with both men).

She calls off the wedding, selling her wedding dress to a thrift store and hosting a party just to get rid of all the food from the caterer, but it all doesn’t seem so bad when Jim’s at her side.

But Pam Jim’s girlfriend turns out to be just as insecure as Pam Roy’s fiancé, and it’s too late when she realizes that maybe going from one sheltered environment to another was a mistake. Pam feels like she’s trapped, so she finds herself pushing him away just so she can take a breath of freedom. Sometimes she feels like she’s expected to atone for all those years where maybe she did know how he felt, but was playing chicken (whether it’s the whimpy kind or the daring kind, she’s not sure).

Jim proposes a year later and she turns him down because how is she supposed to grow when she loves someone enough to want to stay the same for him? Jim loves the sweet, docile Pam and lately she feels the need to be more. Most relationships can’t survive a declined proposal, so when they begin to crumble Pam ends it quickly, like putting a dog to sleep. She won’t get stuck in a condemned relationship again, she tells herself, so she won’t look Jim in the eyes anymore at work. They don’t stay friends.

Sometimes she misses him. When she stands at the newsstand around the corner from her loft in the city, the cover shoot from her latest art show nestled beside Bride magazine and Better Homes and Gardens, she’s alone and the stiff wind makes her shiver and she almost wishes there was someone’s arm around her shoulders. But the warmth from her proud smile almost makes up for it and when all is said and done she knows she made the right choice.

Four

Jim breaks up with Karen, and vice versa (if you ask, each would say the other was the one to end things) in late April, on a rainy Tuesday when the vibrant colors of the newest flowers were the only objects visible through the smudge of the world outside. It was amicable, as far as could be ascertained, and when Kelly informs Pam the next day, she’s elated, quickly followed by a crushing bout of disappointment because, well, why wasn’t it his voice but Kelly’s twitters breaking the news? She supposes it was the same reason why she never picked up the phone after her canceled wedding to beg him to come back to her. Otherwise known as no reason they could quite put their respective fingers on, just cowardice and uncertainty.

Pam stares longingly at his neck and Jim watches her leave for her car, each waiting for the other to say something, anything. But they weren’t the friends they once were and just talking casually would be something of a leap, so days turn to weeks and then months and maybe they just kept assuming that it would inevitably happen, so they continued to live their lives like normal.

Until Jim’s new girlfriend got pregnant and Pam’s new boyfriend proposed (one of Ryan’s business friends that was initially there just to fill up the loneliness and the waiting), and Pam had a choice. Only it really didn’t feel like a choice when the man you love is moving in and setting up baby furniture with another woman. There’s no talk of marriage for them because none of the three of them ever expected it to last and the girl’s father doesn’t own a gun.

Pam gets married the following September, in an off-white dress, with Jim and Cindy (she hates that name now) sitting in the third row on the left because there wasn’t a legitimate reason for them not to attend. The baby cries halfway through the ceremony, and when Pam glances over, the fact that the child has Jim’s eyes crushes her a little inside, so when she says I do she tears up for all the wrong reasons.

Thirty years later, at Jim’s retirement party, after her husband died of a heart attack and Jim’s daughter is practicing law in New York, they make plans to have coffee and actually keep them for a change. And it may not be everything, but at least it was something.

One

That night they have dinner at a restaurant that probably wouldn’t be deemed date-worthy by any of Jim’s former girlfriends, both of them wearing jeans and sneakers and Pam hasn’t applied any makeup. They fight over a shared basket of fries and talk until closing, when they go walking in a nearby park where Jim kisses her for the first time without any pressure of right-here-right-now.

They date for four months in secret that kind of kills them, but whenever Jim looks at her that way and she can blush without anyone noticing, they know it’s worth it.

They have sex for the first time in her car and it’s far from perfect, because Jim is too long for the tiny compact and she keeps bumping her head into the ceiling. But it’s still them and they have time to get to perfect later.

Pam ends up proposing to Jim while they’re both half asleep watching an old rerun of The Simpsons, and she’s afraid his eyes might pop out of his head and go rolling under the couch collecting dust and hair before he says yes. They make a pact to tell anyone who asks that he’s the one who did it, on bended knee with her favorite kind of flowers and everything.

They decide to elope to Vegas the next weekend, because Pam’s had enough long engagements and Jim can’t think of any reasons to wait. It’s in an Elvis theme chapel, and when a man with black floppy hair and a curled lip and a sparkling jumpsuit pronounces them man and wife they can’t help but laugh because it’s just so them.

They still play jinx and pull pranks. Jim still does impressions and Pam still glares at Angela. Each other’s glances across conference room meetings still serve as life preservers and everything really isn’t different at all except where everything has changed. Pam’s not sure when her life had become an oxymoron but she’s decided she doesn’t mind it at all.