Scranton, Pennsylvania was a stranger to rain, lately. Things had that certain weight to them that only came from weeks of drought. People were starting to get that look in their eyes. Starting to have that haze, that blank stare that had probably been learned some long time ago in fields, or caves, or some other ancient place that implied that man was really more animal than anything else. People were starting to look thirsty. Dried up. Impatient for moisture as if plumbing didn’t exist and it wasn’t just watering their lawns that was at stake. People were starting to get that look in their eyes and Pam had noticed it in her own reflection.

Her mouth was dry.

Her tongue would stick to the back of her teeth or her throat would catch just a little bit and she would pause and she would notice. She was thirsty, somehow. And Scranton was much too dry.

She found her fingers fascinated by the cool perspiration on the side of the plastic cups she had brought with her, filled to the brim with strong-looking iced tea and perched on the railing like birds on a wire. She found herself smoothing the moisture out and then pressing her damp hand against the painted wood of Jim’s front porch, and she enjoyed the way that the shadow of her hand-print lingered for only a moment before sort of fading away into the warmth of the new afternoon. She was almost hypnotized by it, mostly because she desperately needed some sort of distraction. She needed something to keep her from her own panic and self consciousness, to keep her from wondering where he was and what he might be doing, why he wasn‘t home on a warm Saturday afternoon. She needed a distraction from this heat, from the dryness of things.

After all, they’d only had dinner twice since Jim had gotten back from New York, and she figured playing the part of the curious girlfriend was much too premature. She was finding that time was like a piece of taffy, cool and hard and unwilling to give into the warmth of her touch. She promised herself it would eventually loosen and soften and sit like putty in her hands, but for now, though, she still had to wait on it, work at it, pull at it and hope things would be easier soon.

Her palm swiped against the side of the cup and she sighed.

Eventually she spotted him walking down the sidewalk in the distance and she found herself taking advantage of the fact that he hadn‘t noticed her yet, hadn‘t seen her standing there with her iced tea and her self-consciousness. Her eyes traveled the length of him and she tried hard to quickly memorize the ease of his stroll, the half-grin on his lips, the way his fingers were hidden inside of the pockets of his sweatpants, and she found herself liking the form of him. She found herself comparing him to other men and considering whether anyone had ever seemed this good to her, this right and this kind, this comfortable like apple pie or this warm like an October fireplace. She wondered if she would ever know another person in the soft and gentle way she knew Jim Halpert and she thought probably not. She hoped probably not.

Finally he was only a few houses away and he picked his head up and looked her right in the eye, as if he’d felt her there or as if he somehow knew exactly where to look to find her. He picked his head up and looked her right in the eye and the half-grin on his lips spread wide and open and she felt the taffy of time soften a little, warm up and melt from the honesty of his smile.

“Hey,” he eventually greeted, once he was close enough, and she reminded herself to stand up straight and she refused to let her hands tug on the hem of her shirt the way they wanted to.

“Hi,” she replied easily, smiling back at him and enjoying the sunshine against her shoulders.

“I didn’t expect to see you today,” he murmured, stopping beside her and bending down low to lean against the porch railing, “it’s a nice surprise,” he added almost into her ear and she felt herself wanting to lean against him, press up against him, push against him until maybe she would be able to feel him in undiscovered places. He was still smiling, still warm, still all of the things she’d wanted when she’d gotten the idea to come see him this morning, and the only thing that kept her from pressing her lips against his cheek was the distraction of the sweating cups against her hand and the way the water was dripping impatiently onto her fingers.

“I’m trying out impulsive,” she explained, lying because really she’d had this planned. She lied, holding out his iced tea and offering a little curtsey along with it. He hummed his approval and tipped his head to the side, standing up straight and considering her offering.

“I like it,” he told her, reaching out for the tea and taking a long satisfying sip. His eyes seemed bright with summer and she wondered whether or not it would wear off in a few weeks. She wondered if he would get that winter look again around the fifteenth of June or the first of July, if he would darken and fade and look at her in that tired way that he’d looked at Karen in February. But she liked to imagine that maybe the summer of him now had less to do with June’s arrival and more to do with Pam. More to do with new and fresh like oranges or peaches and how her name was allowed to laugh on his tongue again now the way that it used to before. She liked to think that the summer of him was a state of mind instead of a page in a calendar.

She felt summer inside of her, too. She felt it like the relief of an ice cream cone or like that feeling of how could it have taken us this long to get here? She had childhood exuberance, she guessed. She had the fear of fall. She wondered how she looked when she looked at him and she wondered how much of her heart was on her sleeve.

They sat down on folding chairs he brought out from inside and she asked him how his morning had been. He looked pensive for a second and then he told her it was good in that way that meant something else, like something more. She squinted her eyes at him and took a sip of her tea.

“Good how?” she asked, and he chuckled, acknowledging his own transparence and her ability to know him well.

“Good like, um…coaching baseball at the Boys and Girls Club,” he explained, avoiding her smitten-type stare and pushing his feet out so that his legs were long in front of him. She blinked and shook her head.

“Wow,” she commented, “You must be tired.” That pulled his gaze up to meet hers in amusement and she lifted her eyebrows at him, waiting for a response.

“It is definitely tiring, yeah,” he admitted and she nodded, still sipping out of her straw and still wondering how many things she didn’t know about him, how much of herself was mysterious the way that so much of him seemed to be.

“I had no idea you did that,” she told him, speaking some of her thoughts out loud and saving some for later, feeling her awkwardness and her haunting lack of confidence tickling her tone.

“I don’t, normally,” he was quick to assure her, and that admittance brought relief to the core of her because really she liked to think she knew him well enough to know things like coaching baseball on Saturday mornings or playing hockey on Monday nights. She imagined she knew his spare time, at least a little. “My friend Andre works over there and was sort of in a bind, so I’m helping him out for a few weeks.”

“Ah,” she sighed out in answer, nodding, watching the laziness of the street and the way the oak trees cast big disjointed afternoon shadows over the blacktop. Silence lingered while he watched her watch the street and she pretended not to notice.

And for a while they just sat there, with summer and iced tea and sunshine and sidewalks, and she was hot despite the shade and thirsty despite her drink and neither of them spoke. And time was like cooled off taffy in the palm of her shaking hand.

“I like your sneakers,” he told her, tapping at the toe of her left foot with his right one, and she lifted her feet up into the air so that the pale pink of her Keds could bake for a second in the sunlight.

“Thank you!” she responded happily, smiling and showing them off with pointed toes. “My old ones are totally jealous,” she admitted and he blew out a soft sort of whistle.

“I’m sure they are. These are very, very stylish, Pam. Bold choice.”

And she looked at him knowingly and nodded in agreement, liking the way the afternoon light tripped against his new haircut and pulled that certain kind of mischievous green to his eyes. She liked the way he was watching her carefully with visible intention and she liked the way that they were starting over like this. She smiled.

“I almost bought red,” she admitted, “but that seemed like too much.”

And he shook his head with an impressed kind of grin and then they sat there, content and mostly quiet, with time sticky and heavy in Pam’s overheated hand.

******

The weekend turned into Monday much too soon and everything was still static and hot. Everything was still heavy and without rain and full of paper and phones and shirts and ties, and Jim Halpert found himself day dreaming about other places. He found himself thinking about taller buildings with air conditioned rooms and places where paper was seriously just a thing people wrote on, and then when he realized he might be thinking of New York he felt guilt and a hint of regret and so he focused on simpler someplace else‘s. He focused hard on imagining the sounds of little feet slamming against the canvas of bases and early morning Saturday laughter and he thought of how much he wanted to touch Pam Beesly. He thought about that a lot. His hands itched with it and pulsed with it and he watched her at her desk sometimes because he would imagine pushing his unsure fingers through her hair. The heat made him hungry for her, not that he hadn’t known hunger before, but something about this particular lack of rain pointed out to him how much he really had not known of her, how much he hadn’t yet discovered and how thirsty he was.

He never thought things would be so impossible. Transitions. Waiting.

Eventually Pam had to step over her own lines, he figured. But patience was a rare and mysterious commodity, and he kept forgetting what exactly it felt like.

So, when five o’clock came, his itching hands and his inner hunger for her pulled him up to lean against her desk, and she grinned up at him carefully.

He wished she would be less careful.

“Pam Beesly,” he greeted and she nodded at him like she was confirming that, yes, that was indeed her name. “How do you feel about pizza and beer?” he wondered and her smile got a little bit wider and he figured maybe she didn’t realize that he was inviting her other places too, more hazy places that were cloaked in memories and his past, places that normally he figured might scare her with their weight and importance.

“I am decidedly pro,” she responded and he clapped his hands down on the desktop victoriously.

“Great because I have a place I want to take you,” and suddenly it was like the true weight of this brushed its fingers against her back or whispered hints of itself into her mind’s ear because she sort of narrowed her eyes at him as she reached down to pick up her purse. But then she agreed despite her hesitation and that was really the thing in her that was keeping this slow-plodding, awkward and almost non-existant romance afloat. That was really the thing about her that made his blood sort of hum in his veins and made him invite her places, ask her things, daydream about her hair and her face and her hopes and her future. It was her persistence in the face of adversity, in the face of her fears, her gentle and quiet persistence that kept him following after her and waiting for the dam to break.

He followed her into the elevator and he grinned at her when they reached the bottom floor, raising his eyebrows at her look of wary determination. When she started to turn toward his car he promised her they could walk, and he felt the hands of the air pressing down on his shoulders so that he leaned with the weight of it, his arm accidentally brushing light and careful against hers. Something electric slipped fast down his spine, and he wondered if the universe was trying to tell him something. But he still owned his fear like a dog who had been swatted with a newspaper, and every time he thought of kissing her he felt the fists of his past holding him back. He figured he was waiting for something more than a haphazard confession on the unreliability of sand, like he wanted concrete and solid and sure and defined before he pressed his mouth up against hers, before he grabbed onto her and assumed she would stay. He wanted something else from her, and he would wait, he would follow and he would give her things, hints, hopes, memories, and he would learn some kind of patience, somehow.

They walked in relative quiet, chatting about Michael and corporate and how his lunch meeting had gone,

until eventually they passed by Harold’s front yard and Jim found himself slowing on his feet at the sight of the boy crouched down in concentration and wielding an impressively muddy-looking stick. He was digging it deep into the yard, his brow tight with seriousness. Glancing at Pam, Jim shoved his hands in his pockets and stood there a moment, watching.

“Hey, Harold, how‘s it going?” he eventually greeted. The boy froze without looking up and Jim was finding it more and more remarkable that his own curiosity and interest in this kid and this place seemed to be climbing as time went by. Jim looked over his shoulder at Pam and offered her a look of resignation, but he found that her eyes were not on him but were fixed solidly on Harold and flashing that electricity of interest that he usually only saw in her during art projects or pranks. “Harold doesn’t talk much,” Jim explained, “like, at all,” and Pam nodded her head slowly, taking a step closer to the yard and crouching down so that she could peer beneath the curtain of the boy’s bangs and see the twinkle of curiosity in his seven year old eyes.

“Hi Harold,” she muttered with her voice velvet quiet and with her face cool and serene and looking somehow like the water that was so hesitant to fall from the sky these days, “It looks like you’ve been working really hard here,” she assessed. Jim watched, surprised, as Harold’s head bobbed in confirmation. Harold never really responded much, so even this slight motion, to Jim, seemed like he‘d spoken paragraphs. “You must be hot,” she added and Harold’s head bobbed again, nodding down at the ground while his tongue licked at his lips like maybe he had the hint of words for a moment. “Me too,” she promised, pausing, glancing down at the ground for only a brief moment before gazing up again at Harold’s round face. She squinted at him, concentrated, thought for a second before speaking again, and then eventually she said: “I think you’re doing a really good job,” simply, gently, reaching out careful and pressing the palm of her hand against his shoulder.

She was somehow utterly unaware of the way Jim had stopped breathing. She was somehow utterly unaware that it seemed Harold was inches or moments from responding, like he was maybe ready to speak, or waiting to answer her. Harold picked his head up and looked her in the eye and she smiled at him before standing and glancing over her shoulder at Jim, shrugging as if she hadn’t just been…more, somehow, than everybody else, closer somehow to hearing the voice of Harold Moran. Jim raised his eyebrows at her.

“We’re going to go, but we’ll see you later Harold,” Pam said calmly and Jim shook his head, trying to dislodge the shock and hunger for sound that he could feel dripping from his face.

They turned and headed down the sidewalk and she was quiet for a while with Jim following suit because that was mostly what he did these days. Eventually, though, she spoke, offering a simple sounding “I like him,” that made Jim chuckle down at his shoes.

“Yeah me too,” he answered, smiling to himself until finally they landed at Bobby’s and he paused outside the door. “Ok,” he started, “now, the guy who owns this place has known me since I was a kid…” Pam grinned up at him and waited. “So just, I don’t know,” he sighed, “ignore everything he says,” he instructed her and she laughed and nodded her acceptance as he held open the door and watched her walk through, his stomach fluttering and nervous, unsure.

And he gave her his past here, and he hoped that would loosen her tongue or soften her to him somehow, the way she‘d been soft with Harold. He hoped this would help things heal, or somehow help things change.