So you’ve probably heard the song that goes “life is a highway”? Well, she thinks this life is prison, and absolutely she wants to find a way out. He’s embarrassed her too long and far more than the usual proportioned amount of humiliation husbands are allowed to give their wives. It’s kind of turned ugly, that is to say that she doesn’t really care what he does anymore or who he’s with – but he is ravenously jealous and can’t help but want to protect her because he sees her as his. So ugly, I promise you. She used to be able to pretend that the bad spots were few and far between with the good, but such roles are now reversed.

This life used to be all she wanted. Kisses, smiles, hugs, laughter. She could tumble in the sheets with him and have her heart be filled with nothing but happiness and love and still have an empty little space left over. He could never quite fill her heart up with the passion of his love, of his kindness. She saw dawn and dusk and all the spaces in between as she looked into his eyes. She still knew his love could never be enough.

His eyes were filled with sparks of love and lust and she always wished they were filled with mischief. Adulterous thoughts from a woman engaged for almost half her life like a little girl clinging to her baby blanket for comfort. Her relationship with Roy was the old ratty blanket that her mother had repeatedly tried to throw away when Pam had outgrown the necessity for a physical representation of comfort and protection. No matter how many times her mother had thought the blanket had been disposed of, it always managed to come up again and again in the arms of her curly haired daughter.

A long time ago, as a little girl, Pam always hoped she would be happily married by this time. She had hoped to have a pretty house with wide open rooms and a terrace and a wide wraparound porch. In the summertime, she would sit out on the wraparound with one hand clenched around a sweet tea and the other frantically trying to capture the movements of her children on the lawn in bright, chalky pastels. Her daughter would chase her son, the family dog would tear after them with a joyful bark, her husband would be yelling in vain to have the “darn kids” slow down because he didn’t want to cart them off to the emergency room on such a beautiful afternoon. Sure enough, her daughter would take after her (clumsy) and slip on the freshly watered lawn and take a spill. Pam would calmly put down her tea and go kiss her daughter’s skinned knee in a vain attempt that patented Mom Spit would cure all injury. Not too far behind her would be her husband, whose messy hair would fall in front of his eyes as he bent down to rescue his baby girl from the twin dangers of an older brother and slippery greenery. He would pick her up with a wide smile and swing her over his shoulder and carry her back to the house, jokingly announcing that they were making a detour to the garage to get a hacksaw to take care of her newest injury. The joyful shrieks of laughter from her daughter as he flopped her upside down and started to tickle her relentlessly would make Pam’s heart warm.

They would stay out on the porch until the evening started to descend, and he would curl up with her on the porch swing as the fireflies started to swarm around the lamps. She dreamed that in the arms of her husband that her heart would feel full and complete. She dreamed that a family of her own could heal the wounds in her heart as she prolonged an engagement headed toward nowhere. Often Pam wondered if her real life was nothing more than a painful in between; a world that was only halfway between the better and the best.

Better was the best of times with Roy. The times that still squeeze her heart a little to simply recall them. The kisses at her locker, the warmth of his embrace after she had sat on the sidelines all night at one of his football games, the saltiness of his kisses after he had just finished football or track practice, the feel of his hand on hers as he slid her corsage onto her wrist. Over the years, his tenderness had blended into comfort. She felt like his companion, not his fiancée. Like a cheap lover who knew her love would never be requited. She felt disgusting.

Young Pam had never factored in feeling disgusted with her future husband. Young Pam never imagined living with her fiancé for years without it actually resulting in a wedding. Young Pam had certainly never thought she would fall in love so soundly with someone else, never knew the possibilities of falling for a man who was the complete polar opposite of Roy.

The best were the moments with this polar opposite. He was a breath of fresh air in her stagnant lifestyle, a balm to heal her battered nerves. He could make her smile, he could make her laugh, and he could make the crappiest day the best she’d had in a long time.

He simply made her life the best it had ever been. He had shattered the illusions of Young Pam, turning better into best. His love hit her like a ton of bricks, and once she knew for certain, she ran away. She had already trapped herself in mediocrity, so why try?

Even the promise of “more than that” was not enough for her at the time. He cried, she cried, she lied and told him in the simplest of terms, “I can’t.” And she watched as his heart broke before her eyes. As her wedding day drew ever closer, Pam found herself repeating her poetic mantra of, “I can’t. I can’t.” Though she had already ruined one life with those words, she couldn’t help but realize that she had to blurt them out again. When she had turned Jim down, she had directed the painful words at the wrong person. It had taken her years to summon the courage to tell Roy how she felt about their doomed relationship, and she had just blurted them out to the wrong man.

So first she took responsibility for the man she did have a claim on – she took his worn hands in hers and simply told him the bitter truth, “I can’t.” She pressed her ring into his meaty palm and he cried and she cried and her life was turned upside down. She was trying to throw her baby blanket into the garbage again, and somehow the blanket had found a life of its own.

He tried to chase her, she tried to push him away, and he would run to try and woo her and come up empty and still alone and still unengaged. Everywhere she looked she would see Roy crying to come back to her and she struggled.

She was alone and harboring a hunger for a man who had returned with a shield to protect his wounded heart from her. She had forced such loneliness upon herself, but she couldn’t go back. She wouldn’t go back, karma be damned. It didn’t take long and the insult of Jim had finally burrowed deep into her sensibilities and she was back at a bar with Roy. What a stupid idea, thinking that the wolf in sheep’s clothing wasn’t just seducing you back into his powerful jaws.

Sweet words, sweet nothings, and then sweet destruction. One bar full of broken glass later and she’s humiliated and heartbroken yet again. Pam knew it was too miraculous to last, but then again, when has she ever listened to her conscious?

As he follows her home in his truck, drunken and angry, she wonders about her avenues for escape. Knowing it’s stupid and actually doing it are two entirely different things, but Pam realizes her options are limited for now and reaches for her cell. It takes every ounce of strength she’s got to dial the numbers and then wait for the heartbroken fool on the other end to pick up. She wonders if he even will bother to do so – since the advent of caller ID he can pick and choose who gets to hear the velvety tones of his voice.

He’s ignoring her, and she’s frantic: “My God Jim, pick up! Roy destroyed Poor Richards and I’m in my car, thank goodness he and I decided to take separate cars. I’ve never been this scared in my life, Jim. I told him about…about us. About Casino Night. About our kiss in the office.” Her voice is shaky as nerves and fear settle into her gut. She halfheartedly notes that this is the first time she’s ever acknowledged that they kissed each other last May to him. She also notes that this is a shitty moment to discuss the most important thing that has ever happened in her life. “Roy’s drunk and he’s angry and I’m not sure what to do. I guess I’m going to keep driving, since I can’t go home. Hell Jim, I can’t get out of my car! He’s right behind me, and has already proclaimed to the entire bar that he wants to kill you.” Her voice starts to deflate in the frustration of the moment. “I…I guess, what I wanted to do was give you a heads up. Just call the police and lock your doors. I don’t…I don’t want anything to happen to you because of what…what happened between us.” With that, she hangs up.

The phone was a waste of time and an exercise in futility. Pam heads toward her apartment, toward loneliness, toward confrontation. She absentmindedly notes the bright headlights in her rearview mirror and her own stupidity in letting Roy have a handhold on her life again. He thought the mistake at Phyllis’ wedding had allowed things to slip back into the Time that Was Before. When he could lurk in blissful ignorance and Pam could endure a companion who cared more about what team was playing football on Mondays rather than his fiancée’s basic needs.

She was so tired of dealing with Roy. She was so tired of the drama of life post Casino Night. She was sick of the frustration of seeing Jim every day and wanting to just blurt out the truth in cheesy soap opera fashion before God and her coworkers and everybody.

She was tired of evolving and pressing forward; of feeling like every ten steps she took resulted in being shoved back twenty. She was tired of watching Karen watching her every movement like a predator stalking its prey. She was tired of being tired.

Her car turned into the familiar street where her unassuming apartment was waiting for her. Pam just had to finagle around Roy and get into her apartment and lock the door. Though she had been gradually gaining more confidence, she wasn’t stupid. A drunk Roy was a violent Roy. The mirrors at Poor Richards and Pam’s memory could validate that.

When no headlights followed her, she thought she had escaped unscathed. She pulled her tiny car into her numbered parking spot and paused for a moment – after making sure the doors were locked. She put her forehead against the cool center of the steering wheel and took a deep breath. It’s now or never, she thought to herself as she started to reach for the unlock button. She looked out her window one more time to make sure nobody was going to leap from the bushes and quickly opened the door and slipped out of the car. Like a woman possessed, Pam ran straight up the stairs and to her front door, unlocking it and slipping inside. She thanked every higher power she could think of that Roy hadn’t decided to stop by for a drunken shouting match.

However, she could have never predicted the next morning, her ex fiancé charging into the office like a raging bull – the angle of his fist precisely calculated to connect with the fine edge of Jim’s jaw. A jaw she couldn’t suppress memories of, the perfect feeling of the strength of the bone covered by gentle flesh and a five o clock shadow. She was lost in the memory of her fingertip tracing the gentle contour, how she had smiled at the thought that his skin felt mildly like sandpaper from the tiny hairs that refused to be suppressed by the arc of a razor. The sound of spraying snapped Pam from her memory and she focused on the writhing form of Roy and the coughing of her coworkers.

With a brazen act of aggression, Roy Anderson was removed from Pam Beesley’s life forever. It was easy; his violence provided her with a reason to avoid him permanently. For weeks, with regards to Roy, her conscious was silent at long last. She no longer felt guilty ignoring Roy’s phone calls filled with desperation and longing; simultaneously wondering if this was how his polar opposite felt about her.

Those words, said in passing, said in bitterness in the break room snapped her heart in two again. She would never find her way back to Roy ever again. She would never regress to his browbeating and high handedness, the drunken nights and cheap feeling. She would never wear his gold ring again, would never wonder what could have been if she had just stuck it out until June 10th.

Oh, it was over.

Oh, she was alone.

But oh, how sweet it is to learn how to define yourself. The months after the incident at work, she threw herself into her art. She smothered herself in technical drawing, in charcoals, in the frustration of oils on canvases that seemed to be filled with the beginnings of something great. She finally felt a change in herself and it was easily reflected in her work.

She pined for him, it’s true. Pam couldn’t help feeling the pangs of watching her love fall in love with someone else. She was determined to continue and progress. Before, she had simply desired for change. Now, she hungered for progress and the growth that stemmed from that. She wanted to fall in love with herself for once. So much of her identity had been Roy Anderson that she needed time to define herself.

So she painted and sketched and took pictures. She drew the sunrise, painted the sunset, photographed the children playing in the fall leaves and laughed. She re- learned the simple things, like what kinds of movies she loved (Casablanca and The Apartment) and what kinds of movies she hated (28 Days Later and the Ace Ventura movies). She made iPod playlists and called her mom and experimented with cooking and danced around her tiny living room while singing old Pet Shop Boys songs. She grew and experienced her own kind of rapture.

But she never took her eyes off of him. While she grew and changed before his eyes, she still couldn’t forget the feel of his hands in hers or the mischief in his eyes when they hid Andy’s cell phone. She couldn’t forget the sparkle in his eyes as Andy serenaded her with his banjo a la Kermit the Frog or the way the dim light in the parking lot caught the tears in his eyes.

Karen hadn’t forgotten about her either, eyes trained to Pam like a hawk – even though Jim had essentially given up communication with Pam for now. The dark haired woman couldn’t shake the feeling of change that had overcome the mousy receptionist. Karen knew something was coming, but couldn’t put her finger on it. So, she did the next best thing: planting the seed of change in Jim by telling him to apply for the job at Corporate if Wallace asked. He was done with Scranton, she reassured him. There are one too many people here.

But first, the acknowledgement of growth in the mousy receptionist, who continued to perform her duties with a lackluster desire and a frustration that was clearly evident by the time Michael had finished uttering “I want you to take notes on everyone. Record what they’re doing and what they say.”

He had engineered a day filled with mindless team building and a gauntlet of fire to determine the worthiness of his successor. She was tired of being tamped down by her position. She spoke up, and was promptly squashed.

She didn’t care.

As the group dissipated from around the bed of coals and heat, she removed her shoes and went for it. The beauty was, in this moment, her transformation was complete. She was tired of being stepped on, tired of longing for her best friend, tired of living in a world confined by assumptions and a reception desk.

And she let loose the gate that had been holding back all the words she had longed to say. It didn’t matter that they were emotional, that she was putting out all the vulnerability she had desperately tried to hide all her life behind a six-foot tall ex- high school quarterback. She blurted out the truth, looking as best as she could into the eyes of a man she had loved since the first day they met. Her love was in his smile, in his laughs and pranks and jokes, in his hands and his good heart. She knew things wouldn’t change instantly, but the important thing was that he knew.

“I wanted…to be…not…here,” he had explained by the edge of the lake. Then, “I guess I haven’t…I haven’t really come back.”

“Well, I wish you would,” she had simply replied. She watched as his eyes widened in surprise, and then his arms were around her with their warmth.

It didn’t matter that there was no immediate resolution. It didn’t matter that when he stepped back she became cold again. It didn’t matter that when he walked away he would be walking back into the arms of his girlfriend. None of it mattered because she had done everything she knew how. The rest, she knew, was simply up to him.

Tomorrow brought insult and copies and laughter. The pounding of her heart and her skull had started when he entered that morning with a perfectly groomed head of hair that made him look boyish and endearing and like he was trying too hard. She thinks that her heart leaps into her throat when Karen demands the sales reports like she’s already her superior, and it honestly takes all the restraint Pam has to keep from whacking the saleswoman across the head with the files she’s handed.

She knew for sure her heart was lodged in her throat as she copied his sales reports and shoved her carefully constructed note inside. It was just a memo sheet and a yogurt lid, but to the Old Jim it would mean more than that. She had to hope that he was in there somewhere – behind the fancy haircut and his devastatingly beautiful girlfriend.

That afternoon she watched as her world unraveled around her. Dwight painting the office, the lectures, her prank, the silent looks of pity from Phyllis. Soon she was in the conference room and reporting on her day and her feelings about the candidates for the job. There wasn’t much to be said, so she rambled on and on for the sake of the camera.

As they ask her about Jim for the hundredth time, she rambles about sugary feelings of hope that he gets the job – her stomach protests. She can feel the combination of her jaw clenching and her stomach fitting. She couldn’t stand the feeling that she had lost him forever because of her stupidity, her fear, and her own lack of confidence.

She was different now, so much better and so much more than who she was when he confessed. She’s ready to wipe the slate clean of her previous blunderous “I can’t.” She wonders how badly the interviewer can tell that she’s been a wreck all day.

They’re in the middle of asking a question and there he is – suit coat abandoned and his hair mildly askew – asking her something. She has to concentrate over the grinding of her jaw and makes out, “Are you free for dinner this evening?”

Silence.

And her world comes together with a simple “Yes.”

“Then…it’s a date.”

These next months are a blur before her eyes. It’s because she’s with him and she’s happy and she’s enjoying not having to wonder what’s next. She loves the peace of finally making things right between them; she enjoys the ways in which she’s wiped the slate clean.

She loves the feel of his skin on hers, she loves feeling his chest rising and falling under her own, she loves this thing called contentment. It’s unbelievable how easily they fit their lives together in the wake of his simple return.

She loves that their lives fit together so easily, that he will do anything for her if she asks. He continues to work and mess up her sheets and grows out his hair for her. She smiles and paints and tries to sneak drawings while he’s still asleep in the early morning light of Sundays. They do the crossword together and try to count the number of times Victoria Beckingham appears in the tabloids. She’s at peace.

Their lives change and grow harder as the year progresses…failed engagement plans, struggles with work, and her impending move to Pratt in New York. She’s not sure even their strong relationship can last the distance of two hours and the stress of college classes. She loves him, he loves her but he has to stay in Scranton and she has to go to New York and get a grip on her future.

He encourages, they pack her things into what feels like hundreds of boxes and puts them in his spare bedroom at his apartment. They go to Pratt together for the first week, Jim helping her move into her RA room and set up the new Macbook Pro he bought her as a moving present. Really, she knows, it’s for his sanity and not hers. It has the ability for her to chat with him anywhere, anytime. She’s worried he’s going to get separation anxiety like a lost puppy. Pam already knows she’s going to be in trouble when he finally folds into his SAAB and she is finally alone.

She loves him so much that it hurts. She never knew that was possible (cheesy romance novels aside) until they finally managed to go on their first date. She had loved him for a while by then, but with each new encounter she loved him a little more.

His first goodbye left her in tears and distress, and he promises to call her every night. He won’t admit it, but he was crying too. Both feel upset about missing their other, and each feels the worry that distance will strain the love that was supposed to last through it all.

Pratt is hard. Every weekend Jim visits and brings her news about life at home in Scranton. Every night he calls her and tries to make sure she remembers exactly how much he loves her. He teases her about being a perfectionist, about the college diet she’s adopted, about how she keeps loosing sleep to work on projects, and about how he’s in love with someone who is permanently a rainbow of colors from the acrylics she uses on a daily basis.

She draws and draws and struggles with Photoshop and the pressure of being at such a prestigious school and often the weight of her uncertainty with Jim rests on her shoulders. She had been so sure he was going to propose to her the night of Toby’s party…

It doesn’t matter, she reflects even as the memory of that night cuts a little jagged piece out of her heart. He’s probably going to wait until the summer is over and I’m back in Scranton.

There are moments where he calls and she ignores him, there are moments where he starts to call and just backs away from the phone. They wonder exactly what they’re doing half the time, running from each other in such a manner, and both reconcile with their lost feelings.

Soon she can’t take it and he can’t take it and they both figure enough is enough.

In her room, she logs onto iChat and searches for her boyfriend. They chat for a little while with the painful intervention of Michael and Dwight, and he implores her to switch to IM. They quickly agree on a meeting place, and Pam halfheartedly gets into her car. She half expects to be utterly rejected as they discuss the frantic pace their lives have taken in the last month and half expects for him to just kiss her senseless.

As she hits the freeway just outside the city, she absentmindedly notes that it’s raining. She remembers that her umbrella is still at the room, happily perched against the wall of the closet. If she squints a little, she can see the red umbrella slyly mocking her from its cozy place of storage.

Within time, she reaches her ultimate destination with nothing but the desire to see Jim again. She gets used to the dull ache in her chest when they’re apart, but she can never get used to the pounding that still starts every time when she sees him.

He’s late; she’s worrying all the time about their future.

She spots his SAAB by the pumps and rushes over, forgetting the pouring rain and the cold.

She starts to joke with him. “Hey you, you’re –“

And he’s on one knee before her.

Her heart is pounding a drumbeat inside her breast.

He’s smiling up at her and she can see those same tears from their past again.

She’s listening and she hears the words she didn’t know she had been waiting to hear.

“Pamela Morgan Beesley, will you marry me?”

And this time, she doesn’t need to wax tragic.

She nods, her whole face breaking out into a grin. “Yes. Yes!”

And she’s in his arms, just like she has a thousand times before this moment, his lips over hers warm and solid.

And her future has never been more certain.