It was just a lucky coincidence that Amanda Wallace decided to call him that afternoon, but Pam looked at him like he had planned it. Jim would have preferred it if she’d looked incredibly jealous and maybe unbuttoned her shirt a little to get some air to her flushed skin (hot with the jealousy), but any notice of the phone call was pretty good.

Jim raised his eyebrows at Pam as he leaned back in his chair, crossed his ankles on his desk, and said, “Amanda! Wow, it’s been... years, right? Four years?”

She giggled and Jim had a flashback to the loudest sex he’d ever had, platinum blonde Amanda giggling while bouncing on top of him, her bed frame squeaking, a car alarm going off and a few dogs barking at it outside her open window. He’d courteously called her once more after that and was so grateful when she never called him back. “You probably hate me, don’t you?” She giggled (had never stopped giggling). Jim helplessly shook his head and tried to vocalize a “no” she could appreciate, but she kept talking through his mumbles. “I’m so sorry I didn’t call you, Jim! You were such a great guy, such a great lay, but I was going through this ridiculous breakup and you were my rebound, you know? But I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately and how you’re just a great guy, worth so much more than a rebound, and I just had to call you. And I figured you couldn’t still be working for Dunder-Mifflin, but I had to try anyway - I lost your home and your cell, can you believe it? - and here you are!” She finally took a breath.

“Here I am!” This was going to be more annoying than that whole day sitting next to Kelly and Jim was opening his mouth to say goodbye as quickly as possible when he noticed Pam hiding behind her monitor, staring at him, possibly twisting her necklace. Amanda’s call really was a gift and he should use it no matter how asinine this conversation was going to be. “So, how are you? It’s so good to hear from you.”

“I got implants!” she said and took a quick breath. “In my ass! Can you believe it?”

“Mmm.” Jim licked his lips, dropped his feet to the carpet again and made the small standing motion of adjusting his erection although he didn’t have one. Pam sat up straight and frowned at his crotch - and now he was a little hard. “That sounds hot.”

“It is hot,” she said, her voice getting huskier, remarkably like that woman on those old anti-smoking commercials who smoked a cigarette through a hole in her neck. “My jeans look amazing, you have no idea.”

“I could have an idea,” he said in a very good attempt at his own aroused-so-lower voice, and perfectly loud enough to clearly reach the reception desk, but not to be unusually noticeable.

“Do you want to go out tonight?” She giggled.

“Yes!” he said, nodding bigger than he ever naturally would. “Yes, absolutely, let’s go out tonight. How about six o’clock we go for drinks?” Amanda agreed and called Poor Richard’s the place, where she reminded Jim they’d met, and they hung up. Ten minutes later he went into a bathroom stall with his cell phone and cancelled.

Jim flushed the toilet and washed his hands, too distracted by wondering what Pam might be thinking to realize he had no reason to. A little hungry, or maybe just looking for a distraction, he went to the break room and started at the sight of Pam putting a dollar into the vending machine. It was unfair how stunning she looked today. Nothing unusual, he supposed: curly hair, a green striped shirt, dark green sweater, skirt that fell two inches above her knees, making him want to lick them (she was very sensitive there), but she was just so gorgeous. “Chips?” he said, still not thinking straight.

She pressed two buttons without looking at him. A Twix dropped down. Oh, all hell. Pam had a method for eating Twix bars, biting off all the chocolate and then sucking on the caramel until just the cookie part was left, softened, her favorite part, and she finished it with appreciative orgasm sounds. It drove him crazy. And she knew it. If she dared eat one while they were alone, he was on top of her before all the chocolate was gone.

Pam held his gaze as she opened the wrapper, pulled out the first candy bar, and sucked it into her mouth. Then her eyes drifted shut and she whimpered just like she did when... something else was in her mouth. Had she passed by the men’s room heard him cancel his date with Amanda? Because he felt like she had all the cards right now. Like, hidden in her bra.

His mouth was hanging open, he realized suddenly, and, although he really wanted to shut it like a normal person and leave the room, he couldn’t help but lick his lips and continue to stare. Oh, and Pam watched his tongue’s progress and the little wrinkle in between her eyebrows was so beautiful and unsure and all he wanted to do was kiss her and make it all right between them again. But suddenly he remembered the night before and why it had been so nice to see her jealous, even over someone as ridiculous, as pointless, as Amanda Wallace and he did his best to walk away from her without limping and without looking back.

He stared at her the entire time she ate the Twix, played two games of solitaire, one game of sodoku (Kevin once made fun of him for knowing what game Pam was playing just by how her elbow moved, but Jim was long past being embarrassed by how obsessed he was), and glanced at him a few times a minute. In the break room, Jim had forgotten about what happened two months ago, when he and Pam were both working late and Pam was eating a Twix, when Jim locked the door and they got slowly, totally naked and they had sex all over her desk, but now that he was watching her lick the caramel at her desk again, it was all he could think about—almost all, actually, and when Roy and Darryl came into the office to eat, the almost became so much bigger and when Roy smirked at him, Jim felt like his skin was too tight and his organs were going to break through and spill out everywhere.

This was already much worse than any other interaction between them: worse than the three years of being best friends and desperately listening for hints of More in her voice, worse than the two weeks after the first time he told her he loved her, before he went to Australia, worse than his six months in Stamford during which they barely spoke, worse than the first year after the merger, when he was trying so hard keep himself distanced from her. This one afternoon felt worse than all of that combined.

Maybe it only felt that way because he was dealing with it now and everything else was less vibrant with time passed, or maybe finally, finally knowing her body and... no. Better: just knowing what she sounded like when she was almost asleep, but something inside her still made her tell him “I love you,” just truly made it much more painful. That Pam didn’t acknowledge Roy any of the three times he passed the reception desk made him feel only marginally better.

It was logged that Jim had four successful sales calls that morning and even some of the tedious paperwork stuff, but he doesn’t remember any of it.

Pam took a late lunch and left with a lingering glance at Jim to get food. She came back holding a sandwich from Abe’s, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten all day. Clearly reading his mind, she stopped at his desk, and Jim, lacking the balls to meet her gaze, watched her hand go into the pocket of her pink coat and pull out another sandwich, wrapped in paper, smelling like the deli’s perfect grilled ham and cheese panini. Her hand squeezed his shoulder, warm through his shirt and he watched her walk to the kitchen, reminding him that he hadn’t kissed Pam all day either. Maybe it was time to talk this out.

Roy asked Pam to marry him two weeks after she took the receptionist’s job at Dunder-Mifflin.

Jim’d liked Pam right away. He thought she was cute, of course. Every guy in the office did and talked about it constantly when she first arrived. Her beauty was so understated, so natural... but it was more than that. She put up with all of Michael’s bullshit quietly, sometimes even smiling, and then went to Jim specifically and told him about it later. From the beginning, Pam made him laugh more than any other woman he’d ever known and she thought he was hilarious, too. The first prank Pam saw him pull on Dwight was to make him believe someone in the office had a crush on him and Pam sat on his desk and started telling him about Kelly’s interest in Dwight’s description without Jim even raising an eyebrow at her.

By her fifth day, Jim knew he wanted Pam to be his girlfriend. He’d had a girlfriend at the time, Danielle Tatcher, and he ended that when he realized he was having more fun at his ridiculous job than he did going to dinner with her. He told Pam about it (sort of) the next day and she said, “Breakups are really hard. Well, I think—I mean, I know—my sister’s been divorced three times. But, uh, I’ve been dating Roy since our senior year of high school and I, well, yeah, I’ve never really done it.”

That hit him like cold water down the back of his shirt, but with so much obsessing, he was able to rationalize it. After five years with someone she’d barely spoken of in the past five days, Pam was maybe, probably still in that relationship because it was comfortable, because she couldn’t think of anything better and Jim was determined to display himself as something better. Even when Roy proposed a week later, Jim still had hope; the proposal came as Pam was helping an outrageously inebriated Roy off the floor of a new bar a bunch of people from the office decided to try out and he didn’t think the couple would take it seriously. But Pam arrived at the office the next day glowing and dreamy and Jim realized that she really wanted to get married.

Jim went out with Melora Taylor that night and took her back to the apartment, (which he usually waited a few dates to do), but couldn’t hold an erection (which never happened) because, although he had never so much as touched Pam’s hand, Melora felt totally different and wrong, and he had to drive her home, across town at frigid one in the morning. Pam was already making him break his rules and they weren’t even interested in each other yet. Well. She wasn’t interested. Except Jim thought maybe she was. It stayed just like that for the next three years except that over time Jim became interested in other women again. Well. More interested.

Gossip circled the office for weeks when they first got together and Jim reveled in it. Under most circumstances, Jim figured Pam would have wanted to keep their relationship’s beginning quiet, but under the circumstance it really happened, that was impossible.

Jim hadn’t known it at the time, but he knew now that Pam’s day started with running into Roy in the lobby and having to ride the elevator up with him. He pressed the emergency stop, told her he was still in love with her, tried to kiss her, and she pushed him away, still shaking when Jim arrived at the office ten minutes later. He tried to make her laugh for a few minutes, but it never really worked and he sat down only when Michael came over and patted Jim’s arm back to his desk.

Every time Jim turned around to look at her the rest of the morning, Pam was looking at him. He had never been offered so many lying smiles in his entire life. Soon he couldn’t stand it anymore, got up, and went to the break room for a grape soda. He stared at the rainbow can of generic cola on the vending machine and shuffled the remaining change he pulled from his pocket and put in another dollars worth of quarters, took a coke, and went back into the office with the intention of giving it to Pam.

She wasn’t at her desk and (perhaps it was the strain of not talking to her for four entire hours) instead of scanning the rest of the room for her, he stared at her chair, willing her to become uninvisible. This was why he missed her moving toward him and he walked right into her. Pam’s eyes were wet when he looked at her and intense worry filled his entire body, replacing blood, making him drop both cans of soda and steady her, grabbing her elbows in his hands. She stared at the coke can on the floor to their left. “That’s for me,” she said and looked up at him. He swallowed, could feel his Adam’s apple move, nodded.

One of Pam’s hands came up to his face, hovered, and finally cupped his cheek. The other came around his neck and her fingers tangled themselves in his hair. “I—” she started. “I don’t love Roy anymore. Not at all.” Relief prickled in his fingertips. Every time Pam even looked at her ex-fiancé, Jim felt like they were two minutes away from getting back together. “I love you,” she said. Her eyes were moving all over his face, finally settling on his mouth. “I’m so in love with you, Jim. Jim.” A tear came down her cheek and he realized he was crying, too.

“You—” He desperately tried to think of something to say, then realized how stupid that was and kissed her.

Jim grabbed his sandwich and followed Pam into the kitchen. She was sitting at the table with Karen and Toby. They all smiled at him when he came in. “Hey, Jim,” said Toby, taking hold of Karen’s hand and running his thumb over her knuckles.

Toby reacted to Jim now like Jim reacted to Roy, seeming afraid at all times that Karen was more interested in Jim than she ever would be in Toby and he’d better stake is territory so Jim didn’t show Karen interest and make her throw herself upon him. (Jim was lucky Pam found his figurative peeing on her a turn on.) This jealousy of Toby’s was ridiculous. You could catch Karen hiding in the kitchen, just behind the door, watching Toby working and smiling like she was stoned on a regular basis. Karen was more in love with Toby than Jim had seen anyone in love with anyone, but bringing Toby’s jealousy up with either of them was just going to make relations even more awkward than they were now. “Hey Toby.” Jim waved at the couple. “Karen.” He looked at Pam, staring at her sandwich. “Hi.”

Brilliantly knowing he was speaking to her, Pam pushed the chair next to her out from the table with her foot and said, “Hi,” back.

He sat down and unwrapped his sandwich. Underneath the table, his left foot connected to her right, her ankle close enough to his that he could feel her body heat, almost touching. They ate in silence for a while, but Jim was too nervous to let that go on for long. He said the first thing that came to mind, “How did you guys like the dance last night?” somehow not remembering how incredibly awkward it would be.

A few moments of silence and Karen finally gave a response. “Probably the weirdest morale booster yet. How do you think he got access to a high school gym?”

In reaction to turning his upcoming forty-fifth birthday, Michael paid West Scranton High School to decorate their gym for a normal school dance and brought all employees there by school bus at six o’clock. “It’ll let us remember the golden years, right?” Michael said and starting singing “With a Little Help From My Friends” by the Beatles, theme song of “The Wonder Years” in a scratchy falsetto. “Make us feel young again. Yeah!” He clapped and then, back in the falsetto, “Young again!”

Pam and Roy were alumnae West Scranton High School and, Jim had learned last night, Roy kissed her for the first time on the bleachers of that very gym. Roy reminded her of that early in the evening, but Jim was unaffected because thirty seconds later, Pam had him on the dance floor and started fallating his ear. It wasn’t until later, when an Eric Clapton song started playing and Roy came over to them again. “Our song,” he said and held out his hand and without so much as looking at Jim, Pam took it and smiled her way into his arms. They danced too slowly for the song’s beat. Pam was laughing when Roy escorted her back to him and Roy was not funny. Jim drove her back to her apartment and they fought in the car for almost an hour. It ended with Pam slamming the door into a new skirt, ripping it, and breaking into tears as she ran for her front door. Jim sat trembling, staring at the light on in her bedroom, before finally making himself drive away. He only made it three houses down before he parked and went to sleep in the back seat.

“Yeah,” Toby said. “In what other situation would a fortyish man ask to use a high school? I would have been afraid he was a pedophile.”

“I am afraid he’s a pedophile. Ryan could pass for twelve.” That got a laugh. Jim felt his back relax a little, but then another cavernous silence overtook the group. The door opened. Jim looked toward it, hoping for relief, but it was Meredith, who left quickly. This was one of the perhaps four situations of Jim’s life that he wanted to see Michael, Dwight, or Andy. Kelly would have been wonderful.

Karen cleared her throat. “Well—”

Toby nodded and stood. “We should—” They pulled together all of their trash and Pam’s empty can of coke and left.

More silence, then Pam, “How’s your—”

Jim had just taken a bite and in an effort to keep some conversation going, he said through his food, “Good. Great. Thank you. It’s great.”

“Good.” A smile broke her deep concentration on her sandwich for only a few seconds. Picking apart a tomato, she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“Oh my god,” he said, and moved his chair closer to Pam, pulled her off her chair and into his lap, and wrapped his arms around her waist. “No. No. You were right. Of course that’s a fond memory and—”

“Jim, no. Of course you’re jealous of Roy. I wanted to rip Amanda Wallace’s hair out when she called you this morning and you went on, what? Three dates with her? In June 2004?” Jim couldn’t believe she actually remembered his relationship with Amanda. He tightened his arms. Her hands were cupping his face now, two fingers stroking his temples. “If you had been in a ten year relationship before me, I—I don’t even know. But Roy is nothing, Jim. You—I love you like I breathe.”

Her arms went around his neck and her head lay on his shoulder. Jim took a deep breath of her sweet, minty conditioner. He knows he has to get over Roy - (if he really looks at the evidence) it’s obvious that Pam is. Pam mentioned the night before that it wasn’t just that she was dating Roy for ten years, it was that she had known him all her life. His mother still called her to go shopping on Sundays. His niece Susan sent Pam crayon drawings from school, addressed to “Aunt Pam.” It would be impossible to disentangle herself from him and Jim shouldn’t want her to. However, it was still nice to know that she was jealous of Amanda Wallace.

I love you like I breathe. That was the most romantic thing he’d ever heard and it filled him with warmth. He wanted to say something equally romantic back, but he couldn’t think of one thing that Tom Hanks had never said. So instead, he started talking and hoped something good came out.

“Pam,” he started. “I was never in love before I loved you.” She lifted her head and looked at him, wide-eyed. “I thought I had been. But I wasn’t. You filled my whole heart.” Oh, hell. Had Reese Witherspoon said that?... but Pam’s eyes were watering and she smiled the most beautiful, perfect smile and maybe corny was okay.

He thumbed away her tears and then he watched as her eyes changed. She was already straddling him, but she stared moving, just a little in every direction and Jim realized her skirt was entirely hiked up and his pants-covered cock was pressed right against her underwear—no. That was what her hip’s maneuvering had accomplished. He was tucked right into her pussy. Right here in the kitchen, with windowed, unlockable doors on either side of them. They couldn’t— “I want you to fuck me,” she said right into his ear and bit his earlobe. He wanted to.

“Pam,” he choked out. “We’re—look where we are!” But his hands were pulling her shirt from her skirt and moving around to her front to the buttons. His mouth started sucking her throat, licking her collarbone.

“We’re in the kitchen,” she said. “I have a fantasy of you coming inside me in every room in this office. On the conference table. On Michael’s desk. Against the vending machine. And after, we—” She moaned and Jim felt it like an almost painful lightening bolt of pleasure to his cock. “We always know it.” She squirmed in his lap and began undoing his pants. Jim had the greatest girlfriend ever. “I’ve been thinking about doing this with you since my fifth week here.”

Jim very nearly came and he started kissing Pam again, sloppy, wet kisses, licking her mouth, licking her tongue. He loves that he can do this. At first, he made sure to kiss her gently, carefully. It wasn’t until she attacked him on his couch in the middle of a basketball game, biting his lips, sucking bruises into his thighs, that he realized how fantastically rough and kinky they could take it. Pam was so demure in her everyday life, that Jim was shocked to see how confident and adventurous she was during sex. She was open to everything, it seemed. Like exhibitionism, for example. “Purse,” she hissed into his mouth. “Condom.”

She’d pulled out his cock and was stroking it, rubbing her thumb over the head, spreading his precome, and he had no idea how he was going to get her purse, but after so much effort he can barely remember, the bag was in his hands and he found the condom. Pam opened it with her teeth, something she’d shocked him with their first time (shocked herself, it had appeared from her exhilarated shout) and he still found unbearably hot. She rolled it on him, stood up, and sat down again — she was so tight from this angle.

They sat still for a moment, Jim trying to catch his breath and suddenly it became very obvious that Michael was laughing very close to the kitchen and it was getting louder. “Fuck,” he said, considered stopping, realizing there was no way he could, and so grabbed Pam’s ass in both hands and stood up. She hooked her legs around his hips and he took three great leaps into the woman’s bathroom and the first stall he saw. Pam was spasming around his cock, her head ducked, flicking her tongue over his nipples.

This was going to be embarrassingly fast, Jim could tell, so he forewent any teasing and took her clit between two fingers and tried to aim for that sweet spot inside her although it wasn’t that often they had sex against a wall. Within twenty seconds, though, she was chanting his name and he knew he was doing it right just before he came faster than he had when he was thirteen-years-old. Pathetic, but Pam looked so perfectly debauched with her head tucked into his shoulder that he really couldn’t feel at all bad about it.

He helped her down to her own feet, buttoned her shirt, organized her hair, while she tied off the condom and flushed it, zipped his pants and rubbed lip gloss of his face with toilet paper. “Move in with me,” someone said and then Jim realized it had been him.

“Yes,” Pam said and started kissing him all over his face. “Wait. Are you sure?” It took him a few seconds to realize that he was sure. In fact, perhaps there had never been a better idea. Laughing slightly hysterically, he picked Pam up again and twirled her around, which he wasn’t very good at, and caught his balance on the baby changing table. “Yes.”

As Jim escorted Pam back to her desk, Angela was glaring at them and Kevin was smirking so clearly the entire office knew what they’d done. Pam was blushing like he’d never seen her blush, but Jim was sort of pleased everyone knew. Michael would never get them in trouble, probably mention how it had come pretty close between him and Jan a few times, and this was such an easy way of bragging that he was the luckiest guy any of them knew.