On Thursday, his gaze drifted to her lips, then rose to meet her own.

Her eyes were bright, and she said yes.

Her hands shook, and she said yes.

Then she looked away, and for a moment said nothing at all.

He waited.

The brightness in her eyes swelled to tears, and when she stared down at his desk it seemed to be underwater.

She wouldn’t look at him; he couldn’t breathe.

“I can’t,” she said. “You know I can’t.”

“Pam—”

“No, Jim. The answer’s no.”

And then she walked away.

*

On Friday, they both called in sick.

Dwight hid in the shrubbery outside Jim’s house for five hours. When he was forced to report back to Michael that Jim had spent the whole day silent in his darkened bedroom, the disappointment in his voice was heartbreaking.

Pam spent the day at the movies. She sat in the dark and tried not to think about anything at all.

When she came home, Roy asked what movies she’d seen.

She couldn’t remember.

*

On Saturday, Jim slept.

Pam had spent the night watching infomercials and a movie starring one of the lesser Baldwins. When the sun rose, she called her mother.

Hours later, she got off the phone and went into the kitchen to find Roy sitting at the table in tears.

Her first panicked thought was that he’d been listening in on her phone call. That would have been unlike him, but then again, so was sobbing over a soggy bowl of Wheaties at one o’clock on a Saturday afternoon.

She asked him what had happened, and, unsurprisingly, it was the last thing she ever would have suspected.

He was unhappy, and he was leaving her.

He loved her, had always loved her, but they’d been together since they were teenagers, for God’s sake, and holding on to something just because it was familiar, just because it was what they’d always done, was wrong.

There was someone else.

She understood him, listened to him, made him laugh. He loved Pam, would always love Pam, but this other girl looked at him like he’d hung the moon.

(Hung the moon? Pam thought. Since when does Roy say things like ‘hung the moon’?)

They called off the wedding.

Pam would have laughed if it hadn’t been so funny.

*

On Sunday, she woke early and told Roy she was going to her mother’s house for a few days. Roy nodded, but he couldn’t meet her eyes.

She got as far as Route 81 when she turned around and came home. Roy’s truck bed was full of boxes, and there was an unfamiliar silver car parked next to it in the driveway.

When she went inside, she saw Katy standing in her living room wrestling with a roll of packing tape.

Katy froze, but Pam walked right past her into the bedroom, where Roy stood staring at the empty spaces in the closet where his clothes had been.

Pam wanted to be angry, to be hurt. She wanted to yell and scream and cry. He’d been cheating on her; she’d been betrayed. She wanted to hate him.

But he stood there and from the expression on his face she could tell he was thinking about everything he was willing to give up to have what he really wanted. The life he was sacrificing for something uncertain—a future he couldn’t be sure of.

The only person she found she could hate in this whole sorry mess was herself.

*

On Monday, she cornered him in the break room, and the fear in his eyes made her sick to her stomach.

“Hey,” she said around the sour taste in her mouth.

He wouldn’t look at her. “We’re not going to do this, Pam.”

“Do what?” she asked defensively. She knew exactly what he meant, and how ridiculous it was to pretend otherwise, but she did it anyway.

“Please,” he said softly. “Just let me go back to my desk.”

She moved aside, but when he reached the door, she heard herself say, “Jim, the wedding is off.”

He stopped, and when he turned around she knew for the first time, without doubt or pause, that she was in love with him.

“Why?” he asked, his voice harsh and so full of hope that she thought for a moment that she wouldn’t be able to find the breath to answer.

She almost lied, almost told him that she’d finally found the courage to risk what she had for what she wanted. He would never have to know.

“Roy left me.”

“Roy left you,” he repeated, and she had to turn away and pretend to study the toaster oven. She knew she would never be able to think of him again without seeing that look on his face.

“For Katy, actually.”

He let out a bark of a laugh that cracked in the small room like a gunshot. She couldn’t blame him.

It was hilarious, after all.

“I’m sorry, Pam,” he said, and the lie was so blatant and his voice so insincere that she wanted to slap him. It was the voice he used on Dwight, on Michael. He was humoring her, treating her like other people, like a stranger.

“You’re not,” she choked out.

“No, you’re right, I’m not.” He looked right at her and made sure she was looking back before he said, “I’m transferring to the Stamford branch. After I leave for Australia, I’m not coming back.”

And then he walked away.