Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. 

"That's not a word!" Jim exclaims, and Pam nods her head vehemently.

"It is too!" She says, but she's biting her lip to stop from laughing and he's shaking his head, and she thinks he might be seconds away from laughing too.

"It is not!" He replies.

"I'll show you, it's in the dictionary," Pam says, jumping to her feet and running to Jim's bookshelves. She loves that he has a dictionary there. And a thesaurus, and that he sometimes uses them. She opens the book and flips through the pages. She holds it up triumphantly, bringing it to Jim and plopping both the book and herself down in his lap. "There!"

"Abulia, noun," he reads. "Loss or impairment of the ability to act or to make decisions." Her eyes twinkle as she smiles at him, and he loves this smile, his favorite smile, her mischievous smile. "Well I'll be."

"Ha," Pam grins starting to climb off to return to her place across from him.

"How did you even know that word?" Jim asks as she settles down again in front of the Scrabble board.

"Word of the day calendar," she shrugs. "It was the word of the day the day you left for Stamford." She turns her head slightly. "I thought it was appropriate. Since I was suffering from an abulia." She's quiet, thinking about how many years she could have had this, had Jim, and was too scared, or too confused, or too something. She hears him climb off the couch and he gently pulls her face towards him and kisses her softly.

"Hey," he says. "you've overcome your abulia. You're here now, and that's what matters. Besides," the grin is back, "you're totally kicking my ass right now at Scrabble."

"I should have gone with Michael's suggestion and made this strip Scrabble," she grins back. "Because I'm totally winning."

"Well, we can make that happen," Jim's smile is easy, and she loves it, loves him, so much. He pulls off his shirt and reaches for hers.

"Oh no," she says leaning back. "You need to catch up. Maybe if you wouldn't have lost your space in the Finer Things Club you might know more words to beat me."

He reaches out to grab her, but she's too fast, slipping past his fingers as she giggles.

"Eventually, I will stage my comeback," he calls to her. "And then won't you be sorry." But he's laughing as he climbs to his feet to chase after her.  

"That's not a word!" Jan says exasperated.

"Sure it is," Michael replies. "It means something full of awesome. Awesomeful."

"It's.Not.A.Word. Don't be an idiot," Jan repeats with her teeth clenched. Michael's looking at her with that hurt puppy look that he gets sometimes. When she knows that she hurt his feelings, and she should care, and she does, or she does sometimes, but she has a headache coming and she can't deal with Michael Scott being Michael Scott right now.

"It's a word," she hears him mumble as he walks away to the garage. She sinks down into the couch and glares at the small television on the wall. This was not how her life should have turned out. At some point she felt it all slip out of her control. She had always prided herself on being so together. It was terrible, but she loved to come to the Scranton office and look around at all those women who would never get out of that small Pennsylvania town, would never rise in a company and hold the kind of position and power that she had.

But she hated coming into the office now. She hated seeing Pam, happy and secure and in love with Jim. Phyllis, married to a man who worshipped her. Even Angela, who was so righteous and so secure in her righteousness. She wonders sometimes if it's karma, coming back to bite her in the ass.

Michael's turned on some music in the garage and she wants to go apologize to him. She wants to open the door and offer an apology and ask him if he'll join her for dinner. But her feet feel heavy, and instead of going and making amends with the only person in her life that never lets her down, she pours and drinks another glass of wine.

"That's not a word," Angela rolls her eyes.

"Sure it is," Andy says. "And I would know, because I went to Cornell. Which, as I'm sure you know, is a pretty good school." Angela rolls her eyes again, silently counting in her head how many times Andy brings up the fact that he went to Cornell. She thinks of dating Andy as her penance, and she wishes she knew a way to let herself off the hook, a way to be less miserable, because the truth is that she is unbelievably miserable. Not that she would admit that to anyone, she rarely admits it to herself.

She wants to not be angry with Dwight anymore, but she doesn't know how to let anything go, she doesn't know how to let anger go and just forgive. God forgives; Martins, as a general rule, don't. That's how it always has been, and Angela has no idea how to even begin to change that.

Andy's humming as he drives, tapping his fingers to a beat in his head. She refused to let him turn the radio on, so he's been entertaining himself for most of the drive. She's sat in her silence, stewing with anger and resentment that Andy isn't Dwight. Mad at him, mad at Dwight, and mostly mad at herself.

"How about Mexican for dinner?" Andy asks, even though he knows what the answer will be.

"No."

"Okie dokie," Andy says, his tone is friendly, with a slight edge and Angela wonders if she was too harsh.

But she doesn't know how not to be.

"That's not a word," Darryl tells Kelly, but he can barely hide his amusement. She's talking a mile a minute, and she doesn't even acknowledge that he said anything. Instead she continues to rant about Angelina and Brad, or maybe Tom and Katie, to be honest he knows more about these people than he ever wanted to know. But he likes it when she talks; it makes him feel less lonely.

"And I was like, oh my God, you know? And Pam was all like, I don't understand why it's such a big deal, and I had to like pull out that magazine, the one about how you know if your boyfriend is going to propose, and all the signs are there! So I told her that Jim was definitely going to propose, and he was probably going to do it soon, and if he did, could I be in her wedding party? And she said that she would think about it, which is better than when she was going to marry that lame-o Roy because she said I couldn't be in the wedding because his cousins' wife and his sister were going to be her bridesmaids or something like that, but this time she said she would think about it, which is great because it means we're close like Courteney Cox and Jennifer Aniston close, only I won't go on her new show and kiss her."

Darryl nods his head every once in a while when she gets like this, and that seems to work. She just rambles until his kisses her, and then she shuts up.

He likes that she wears bright colors and has a bright personality to match. He likes that there are things that she loves, even if it's movie stars and all things celebrity.

He likes to think that maybe she might love him too.

"Can you believe that?" Kelly finally stops and glances over at him, and he shakes his head and ducks his head to hide his smile, and Kelly starts talking about something else, and he takes her hand and he thinks it's calming, like a constant buzz. He thinks he's kind of like those people who use the sound of the ocean or the sounds of the forest to calm them down.

He takes an unbelievable amount of teasing from the guys in the warehouse for dating her, but she's fun, and he likes fun.

"I think you're lying about that one," Jim argues, but it's halfhearted, as he runs a finger down her bare back.

"Do I need to get the dictionary out again?" Pam replies, and Jim bites his lip and shakes his head, pressing a kiss to her temple.

"No, I believe you," he says.

"Good," she smiles. "Good."

"I think you won strip Scrabble," Jim tells her.

"Of course I did. I should thank Michael. Or maybe not." She shudders thinking of how many inappropriate comments Michael would make if he found out that she and Jim played strip Scrabble. She knows she's going to have to go back through Jim's apartment in the morning picking up the pieces of clothing that were deposited on their way to the bed.

"I love you, you know that?" Jim says, and she nods.

"I know," she replies softly. She leans up to kiss him. "And I think that you are full of awesomenality." Jim laughs.

"Now, that's definitely not a word."