Leah looked up from her notes just as Pam started to ramble a bit, something about finding a male Karen for herself. Pam was always one of Leah’s favorite people in the office, someone that she’d learned a lot about in the three years she’d been producing the documentary about life in a failing paper company office. She knew she had a job to do, and realized that being friends with Pam wasn’t really part of it. But she knew. She had seen almost everything, and knew that Pam’s heart was broken, even though she was putting up a brave front. After the interview ended and the camera was turned off, she asked Pam if she wanted to go get a cup of coffee.
************************************
Pam walked back over to the table where Leah was sitting with a Chai Latte and a Vanilla Latte. Cafe Beignet was her favorite coffee shop, nicer than Dunkin Donuts, quieter than Starbucks, and the décor appealed to her. She handed Leah the Vanilla Latte and took a sip of her tea. It was warm and comforting, something she needed to steel her nerves. She liked Leah, knew she could talk to her and was grateful that the cameras were nowhere around. She also knew she had all afternoon, because Michael was in New York with Jim and Karen, interviewing for a job he was wildly unqualified for. She sighed a little as she settled back into her chair, thinking that soon Jim would likely be gone again. There was some comfort in that, not having to see his interactions with Karen every day, but mostly she knew she would miss her friend.
Leah looked up at Pam over her coffee. “So spill it,” she said, trying to get Pam to express some of the emotion she was wearing on her face. “What’s really going on?”
Pam looked up, tears threatening to form in her eyes. She blinked quickly, hoping the water would not start to fall, and tried to assuage Leah with the same story she told the cameras, “I’m fine. I’ll miss Jim, sure, but he’s qualified and this is a great step for him, and I just want him to be happy and…” She couldn’t continue. Leah was looking at her hard, and Pam knew she wasn’t buying it for a second. “I don’t want to be here without Jim, at Dunder Mifflin I mean. It wouldn’t be the same. He’s my best friend, even if we haven’t been that close since he came back. He’s still Jim, and that’s what counts.” She took another sip before going on. “I remember his first day here. I warned him about Dwight, that his life would never be the same again. I didn’t realize mine wouldn’t either. He was so easy to talk to, so friendly, and even then, we had fun together. It was completely different than what I had with Roy, although I’d never have admitted it at the time. I think I just didn’t know better.”
“What do you mean?” asked Leah, although she knew. Pam needed to talk it out, she realized, because if Jim gets this job, Pam would need to summon a bit more courage quickly, to really be clear about what she felt for Jim. Leah could see it, all the camera crew could see it. Karen was nice enough, and Jim liked her well enough, but he’d never looked at Karen like he looks at Pam.
“I don’t know… I guess that I was having a hard time understanding that the way Roy treated me wasn’t what I wanted. I had my best friend at work, and I thought that was enough. Roy was stable, we’d been together for years, most of the time he was nice enough. We just didn’t have fun together. I meant what I said at the beach. There were lots of reasons to not be with Roy, but yeah, none of them really mattered to me until I met Jim. I just didn’t want to deal with it all I guess. I was scared to leave Roy.”
Leah narrowed her eyes a little and asked the obvious question, “Why?”
“Well, what would I have been going to if I left him? We were together since high school. I had no back up plan. We lived together, we had a life together. It wasn’t easy even when I did leave him. Not just finding a place to live and all of that, but getting used to being alone. It was scary. I just should have done it earlier. If I had, I might not be alone now. Anyway, Jim’s with Karen, probably having a great time in New York, realizing his potential in life. So maybe I would still be alone. I don’t know.”
“Pam, you had to have known. Seriously. Jim may not have confessed until that Casino Fundraiser night, but you had to have known. That Christmas when he gave you the teapot, the Booze Cruise, you know, like every single day when he looks at you the way he does. You knew. You had to have.”
Pam looked down into her now cold tea. She could feel the tears forming in her eyes at the thought of the Casino night. She willed herself not to think about his words, not to have hope right now. He was with someone else. He was leaving again. She couldn’t think about that night, the one that completely changed her life.
“Christmas. I think that’s one of my all time favorite gifts. I use that teapot all the time. I love the stuff he put in there too. I kept it all. I probably shouldn’t have, but I did. I have it all in a drawer at the bottom of my desk. I wasn’t sure what to make of the gift though. I know about the card. I’ve thought over and over about what it could have said. Usually after Roy and I would fight about something, I’d think about that gift and that card.
“What did you mean, the Booze Cruise? He didn’t say anything to me that night. He was there with Katy. That was the night Roy set the date.”
“So, nothing was going on when you two stepped outside for a minute? There was a pretty intense silence there.” Leah wondered for a second if she was going too far. She felt like a friend to Pam, but also knew that she spent the last three years trying to capture all the drama in her life because it would make for a better documentary.
Pam smiled a little. “Yeah, I guess there was. I wasn’t sure what he was going to say, I wondered if he was a little drunk, and I got scared. Not scared of him, just what he might say. Ultimately it doesn’t matter now, does it? I mean, he finally spit it out, then left, so it doesn’t matter.”
“No? Pam, I’m not trying to stir up anything. The cameras are gone, it doesn’t make for good TV if we don’t get it on tape. I just see the way you look at him still, and I think it matters. At least, it looks like it matters.”
Pam put her head in her hands. She knew it mattered. It had always mattered. Pam knew that she wasn’t great at hiding her emotions. She had often realized that she was being watched by those cameras and tried to hide, to no avail. She wondered for a second if it was the same way with Jim. She’d caught him staring a few times since he came back. She was sure of that. She had no real idea about what it meant though.
Pam sat back again, just thinking about all the times she’d spent laughing with Jim. A flood of memories came, the Diversity Training day, the time they tried to convince Dwight that it was Friday and he came rushing in all panicked because he was late to work. When Jim convinced Dwight to hide in a box in the warehouse. She grimaced when she realized that most of her great memories of laughing with Jim involved Dwight. She also thought of the night she had grilled cheese sandwiches on the roof with Jim. She loved thinking about that night, how he made her dinner and they just talked. She also remembered going home to a very angry Roy that night. He didn’t understand why she had to work so late, why she wasn’t there to make his dinner. She tried to explain, but it just made Roy angrier, so she tried to forget it. She realized how cold she had sounded to Jim that next morning when he was joking about it being their first date. She realized it had a date feel to her as well, and that scared her a little. She fought so hard at the time to forget that spending time with Jim that night felt like the best date she’d ever been on.
Pam realized she’d been quiet for a while. Leah was looking at her and it made her a little uncomfortable, as though Leah could read her thoughts. “Yeah, it matters, I guess. I’m not over him. I know I messed up, I know I can’t have him, and that’s ok, it really is.” She tried hard to convince herself that what she was saying was true. She didn’t think Leah bought it either. “He’s my friend. We’ll always be friends.” Even as she said the words, she knew they sounded a little hallow. It was true, they were friends, they would continue to be so, but just as Jim had confessed to her one painful night, she knew she wanted more than that. She’d always wanted more than that.
As though Leah had read her thoughts, she gently asked Pam, “What happened on Casino night?”
“I got scared. I’d been having fun, Roy was leaving and not giving me a hard time about it, I was having a good night. Then all of a sudden Jim starts talking about how he feels. The one topic we avoided at all costs. He put it all out there and I didn’t have time to react. I was in shock. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I just didn’t know how to react.”
Leah wasn’t sure what to say, but she knew there was more than that. The ten minutes between the parking lot and the kiss in the office gave Pam enough time to think. She knew that, she’d heard Pam’s end of the phone call.
“And then he kissed me and my mind started racing. In that moment I had never felt so safe, so loved, so happy. But I had made a promise to Roy and I couldn’t just throw it away like that. I couldn’t walk out on him because Jim kissed me.” Pam shivered a little at the thought of Jim kissing her. Those last few weeks with Roy, Pam had avoided thinking about that moment as much as possible. If Jim hadn’t left right away for Stamford, she might have allowed herself to think about that kiss a little more often. As it was, it still made her blush to think about the way he moved across the room towards her, so confidently, so sure. She hated to think about what happened after he kissed her. How she crushed him, telling him she was going to marry Roy, despite knowing Roy had never kissed her with so much intensity, so much love. Pam felt the tears start to betray her again.
***********************************
Leah went to get more coffee as Pam composed herself. She wanted to be a friend to Pam, not cause her more hurt. She just wanted Pam to see that Jim looked at her the same way she looked at him. Leah knew Jim was conflicted too, trying to protect his heart after that disastrous night last year. She had heard the comments, the ones about moving on to someone after the person you really love breaking your heart. She knew that despite being with Karen, it wasn’t over for Jim. She could tell that Jim cared about Karen, didn’t want to hurt her, but he couldn’t move beyond his feelings for Pam. She had seen the footage from when he was in Stamford, the confused, pensive looks, the emptiness in his eyes. Leah was a sucker for a good love story, and just wished that Jim would muster up the courage to tell Pam how he felt, how he still felt about her. She didn’t want to interfere though. Jim was with Karen, that was his choice. Her opinions were just that, opinions. Jim had never told her that he still felt the same way about Pam, and couldn’t just tell Pam to go for him. That would be unfair to Karen, and it could be devastating to both Jim and Pam if she was wrong.
When Leah returned to the table, Pam mentioned that they should be getting back to the office. Michael may not care, but under Dwight’s regime, she could sense there would be trouble if she were out all afternoon. Plus, she wanted to see what Dwight was up to. She’d heard Dwight and Andy talking about black paint for Michael’s office and realized that this might be too good to miss.
The drive back to the office was pretty quiet. Pam sat silently reflecting on the last several years, thinking of all the times her actions could have betrayed her emotions. She knew that there was potential for major embarrassment when the documentary finally aired, for her, Jim, and Roy. Dwight could fend for himself, she thought. Despite all the drama with Roy, and the terrible way things ended with them that night at Poor Richard’s, she didn’t want him to be humiliated. She realized in those long moments back to the office that the camera had seen a lot more than she ever intended it to. She knew they had seen the look in her eyes when she moved the coat rack for Jim, and how crushed she was when he was rubbing Karen’s back in the parking lot. She remembered lying during the ‘Who would you do?’ conversation after Ryan started the fire in the toaster oven. She vaguely remembered saying Toby’s name after all the other girls mentioned Jim. She wondered for a second if Jim had been covering up something when he claimed he would “do” Kevin. She threw up a little in her mouth when she thought of Michael proclaiming boldly that he would “have sex with Ryan.” Even now, she was a little angry about Roy saying Angela’s name. It was only a game, and it was a long time ago, but still. It stung a bit.
They were pulling into the parking lot as Pam started to think about the Casino night again. She started to wish she could do it all over again. What if she had told Jim she loved him too, that she always had. She could have gone home and ended it with Roy. Maybe Jim wouldn’t have taken the transfer. Maybe they could have given dating a try. She knew it was too late though. Jim would be leaving again. She knew he’d get the job. Michael wasn’t even remotely qualified, Karen was nice and all, but Jim deserved it. She knew he’d be offered the job. She found herself fighting back tears again, and tried not to think about it as she walked back into the office.
Dwight, as usual, was right there to ask all sorts of questions about where she was, what she was doing. After all, she was the Secret Assistant to the Regional Manager now, she needed to be responsible. She sat down at her desk and tried to get to work, attempting to ignore the empty desk in front of her.
************************************
Leah could sense that Pam needed another break after a few hours of working with Dwight as manager, so she called her in for another interview. She had to give it to Pam, she could really pull it together for the camera. After all the heartbreak she’d seen over the years, Pam rarely broke down in front of the crew.
Pam was saying something about being fine when they heard the door open. Everyone looked up to see a very clean cut looking Jim standing in the doorway, looking just a little nervous.
“Pam… “ and then a sorry to the crew. “I was wondering if you were free for dinner tonight?”
“Yes, “ said a slightly confused and hopeful Pam.
“Then it’s a date,” and with a couple taps on the window, Jim left the room.
Pam turned back to the camera smiling, with tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, what was the question?”
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Leah was glad that they weren’t invited to go film the date. Disappointed, but glad. Jim and Pam deserved this.
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