Jim glanced up at the clock and sighed. It was only 11:30 and he already felt like he had been at work for hours. He had no idea how he was going to make it until 5:00. He and Lauren had spent the weekend with her family at her parent’s cabin in the Pocono’s and even though they were both exhausted when they got home Sunday afternoon, Lauren decided to go into work and they ended up getting into a big argument because Jim had suggested that maybe she should stay home so they could spend some time alone together. The fight ended with her storming out and slamming the door, while Jim ended up falling asleep on the couch watching TV. Lauren was gone by the time he had woken up, but she had left a note on the fridge.

Jim smiled as he read the note and just like that everything was back to normal. Jim had met Lauren in high school. She was beautiful, with her long dark hair and big deep brown eyes. She had moved into town mid-way through their sophomore year, but had quickly become one of the most popular girls in school. She was a cheerleader and he played basketball and they hung out with a lot of the same people. She had asked him to the Sadie Hawkins dance their junior year and she had been his date to their senior Winter Formal. They were friends first and it wasn’t until school had ended that their friendship turned into something more. They had gone to the beach with friends after graduation and after a couple of drinks had ended up making out. But realizing that they each were headed in different directions at the end of the summer, they continued to hang out, mostly in a group of their friends and when August rolled round, she had moved to New York and Jim had gone to Penn State. They exchanged friendly e-mails every once in awhile and as they each kept in contact with some of their high school friends; they met up frequently over the summer after their sophomore year.

They kind of lost contact over the next year until the summer, when they had ran into each other at Gerrity’s, doing some shopping for their parents. Jim asked her out to dinner and everything went from there. About a month before graduation Lauren’s mom got cancer and Lauren moved back to Scranton to help take care of her, finishing her schooling by correspondence. Jim moved home after graduation and had gotten a job at their old high school as the assistant basketball coach. About a year later Lauren’s mom went into remission and Lauren was finally able to look for a job. She had gotten a degree in hotel and tourism management and quickly landed a job at the nicest hotel in Scranton. Jim proposed on their two year anniversary and they had gotten an apartment together. It was during that time that Lauren began questioning him about what he wanted to do with his life and where he was going. He had majored in English Literature at Penn State, but there wasn’t exactly a high demand for those kinds of jobs in Scranton. Lauren had a good job and still wanted to be close to her mom, so Jim began searching the want ads and a week later he was employed as a junior salesman at Dunder Mifflin.

Now, here it was two years later and they were still in Scranton. Jim, a senior salesman with a great client base, mostly content with the routine that was his life and Lauren, a senior manager at the nicest hotel in town, yearning for something more…high paced than Scranton. She traveled quite a bit and had been talking more and more about them moving to New York or some other major city to further her career. They had settled into a comfortable routine of take-out on the weekends and kissing goodbye outside the airport or train station when Jim would drop her off before she went out of town. She always greeted him with a big hug and then would tell him all about her trip and the meetings she had gone to and the pros of living somewhere other than Scranton. He would tell her about his latest encounters with Dwight and she would laugh and then say something about him taking his job more seriously so he could move up in the company. Sometimes Jim wondered if she was tired of him, if he’d ever be enough. Then he would look at the pictures of them found scattered around their apartment and would think of all that they had been through together. He had been the one whose shoulder she had cried on in those dark hours when it seemed like her mom was never going to get better. She was the one that held his hand at his grandpa’s funeral. They had a history together and there was no reason to let that go. So he just smiled when she told stories about New York and how great it would be to live there and figured he’d follow her where she needed to go.

It was at times like this, when time stood still at Dunder Mifflin, that moving to New York sounded like a good idea. Actually, going anywhere sounded like a good idea to Jim. He sent an e-mail to a prospective client and then stood up and walked over to reception.

“Hey.” He said, crossing his arms across the top of the counter.

“Hey.” Pam said looking up from her computer. “Did you have a good weekend?”

“So did you watch Trading Spouses last night?” Jim asked.

“No…I have a life.” Pam said brushing a curl away from her face.

Pam laughed and started to say something when they were interrupted by Michael.

Jim shot Pam a look that said, ‘Help Me’ before following Michael into his office. He turned down Michael’s offer to pick the health care plan and quickly escaped back to his desk. Michael had eventually put Dwight in charge of picking a plan and consequently a mere twenty minutes later, the office was in a frenzy about Dwight’s decision to cut health benefits to the bare minimum. Even though Dwight was being more annoying than usual, Jim was actually slightly enjoying the commotion because at least time was passing a little faster. An hour later, Michael was off “planning his surprise” and Jim was standing at reception with Pam working on Dwight’s disease survey. He looked over to see Pam’s head bowed over her paper and she was writing feverishly.

“Wait…what are you writing?” Jim asked. “Please tell me you’re not writing Ebola or mad cow disease.”

Pam looked at him curiously and he smiled as he picked up his paper and said, “I’m already suffering from both of them.”

Pam laughed and Jim couldn’t help but notice the way that her smile lit up her face. He quickly shook the thought from his head as she said, “I have been making up my own diseases.”

“Fantastic.” He said leaning over the desk to get a look at her paper.

Jim shook his head, “I thought you were making these up. That is spontaneous dental hydroplosion.”

Pam smiled again. “Nice one…” she said before turning back to her paper.

The rest of the day passed quickly. Between getting interrogated about his knowledge of Dwight’s love for Count Chocula and waiting around for Michael to figure out a way to get out of sharing his “surprise” the next time he looked at the clock it was finally time to go home. Pam was already in her car by the time he got out to the parking lot. She smiled and waved and Jim watched her red tail lights disappear down the road, confused by the slight flutter that he felt in his chest.