When the elevator dings, she knows that the bright chime is exactly what her heart would sound like at this moment, if it could make a noise. Pam blushes into the receiver of her cell phone, her lip caught underneath her top row of teeth as the cute boy she’s been dying to talk to like this for years and years and years reminds her of the friendship rekindled and the romance lit anew just last evening.

“Now, are you sure you’re safe to work today?” He half-laughs with a rough voice, still sleepy. She blushes harder. “I mean, you chugged over half that bottle last night, Beesly.”

“Oh, shut up,” she giggles. She hopes it’s not too girlish. “You’re exaggerating. I had, like, three glasses.”

“What you have is a record,” he harkens back to a time that she sometimes forgets existed. “So, I’d be a liiiittle more careful, if I were you. Chili’s might be making the rounds—“

“Stop it!” Pam chirps on a laugh as the doors open, and she’s met with a boom mic in her face. “Oh! Uh, hey, let me—uhm, I’m just getting here now,” she apologizes to the phone as she flashes a grin full of teeth at Camera Man Paul who sidles around her. It’s an awkward tango as she tries to fit around his hardware and on to the floor. “So, I’m just gonna get that early stuff done and—“

“Oh, okay,” he nods on the other end. “I’ll be there in like twenty minutes anyway, so—“

“So— yeah,” she grins and he grins in his house across town, she can hear it through the phone. “See you.”

“Obviously.” He snickers at her and she smiles, “Can’t wait.”

The smile on her face might break her cheekbones if it stretches on much longer. She closes her phone with a snap and turns to see Paul holding the door-open button, a crooked smirk in place as he observes her. Pam can only flush in response and shrug a nonchalant shoulder. “You guys, uhm,” she nods to his camera case, the mic at his side, “packing up for the summer?”

“Uh, yeah,” Paul clears his throat and grins. It wobbles, and Pam catches it keenly. The camera men aren’t the only ones who’ve become good at reading people since this whole documentary thing started. “Look, Pam, I just wanted to say I’m glad for you. Both of you.”

“You’re not allowed to say that,” Pam laughs awkwardly and tucks a twist of her hair behind her ear.

“Eh, it’s summer, I’m off-duty,” Paul waves off and pushes the button again to prolong their conversation. “But listen, I have to tell you, you might want to wait a couple minutes before heading in there.” He gestures toward the Dunder Mifflin office, and she sees his expression turn a little sour. “Probably wouldn’t be best to head in there all … well, all the way you are right now.”

Pam knits her brow and pats her kinky hair in the back where her clip is fastened. “What? Why?”

Paul clenches his teeth and raises his eyebrows, and she has to smirk a bit. The boys have been really bad about picking up Jim’s facial habits. She’d like to say she didn’t notice until now, but that would be a lie. The actuality of it is that she started realizing it just a couple days after he had transferred and she’d thought she’d never see those trademark faces ever again. Her heart cinches in relief.

“I’m just giving you fair warning, ‘kay?” Paul smiles and waves his palm at her. “I’m outta here. See you in a couple months, alright?”

She smiles and rolls her eyes as the doors begin to close, and when they do, she heaves a sigh of utter liberation. It’s like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders, like the karma of the world has shifted and she expects harps and a heavenly chorus to rise with dawn. Or some other poetic, wonderful stuff reminiscent of that. It’s the kind of feeling that has her fingertips itching for a pencil and some paper and she imagines she could sketch the world.

So, even despite Paul’s cautioning, Pam practically skips into the office, a song on her heart and blissful humming on her lips as she thinks about carefree summer days ahead of her and that aforementioned cute boy who should be buttoning up a shirt or running a hand through his hair to ‘style’ it right about now.

At once, however, she’s greeted by what Paul’s words of warning had referenced, and the clouds fall in and that chorus goes off-key. Karen is moving around with sharp and angry motions, her tiny hands slamming things into a box. At the edge of her desk, Andy hovers, a look somewhere close to disappointment and confusion wrinkling his face.

“I can’t believe you’re really doing this,” he mutters when a little wooden box is pitched in with her other knick-knacks. A tinkling sound suggests she might have broken something. Andy grimaces on her behalf, since Karen appears a bit too flustered to care. “I mean … Utica is really—“

“Far,” Karen finishes for him with a huff. “Far, far away. Far enough away from this place that I could actually be content. And, hey! It comes with a pay raise, too” she turns to Andy with what Pam could call a ‘wild’ look – the eyes of a woman trying not to let her rage and frustration get the best of her. “So, yeah. I am really doing this. It’s like one big, huge awesome decision that neither you, nor Michael, nor anyone else in this godforsaken branch can turn me away from.”

Andy’s eyebrows narrow and he squints at Karen’s profile as she ducks to rummage through her desk drawers that Pam’s already seen her open and close twice in the last couple minutes. “Is this because of Tuna?”

The top of Karen’s head goes still and Pam holds her breath, presses closer to the wall that barely obstructs her from the other pair in the office. Karen finally lifts her head; Pam can see her bangs flutter as she tosses her head. “Excuse me?”

The Cornell grad appears to rethink his statements as he shifts off of her desktop and to his feet. “I just mean, everyone saw you guys in the kitchen yesterday,” he reminds her, and Karen bows her head again. “It’s kind of hard to not come to that conclusion.”

“Well, it’s not about him,” Karen rebuttals before Andy’s even really finished with his sentence, and she stands to her full height again. She tugs at her top to refit it against her form as her back straightens a bit too rigidly. “I couldn’t care less what he does from now on. This is about me, Andy.” She eyes him and notices about the same time that Pam does that he doesn’t seem to believe her. For the record, Pam doesn’t believe her, either. “What? What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing, I...“ Andy starts, then halts. His mouth puckers and curves to the side, like he’s trying to figure out a really difficult math problem. “I just would’ve thought … y’know, more of you. That’s all.”

Pam knows that wasn’t the best thing for him to say. She can see the fire ignite right under Karen. “What the hell does that mean?” Karen spits out, her arms leaping to cover her chest defiantly. “’More of me?’ I’m moving on with my life, that’s what I’m doing.”

Karen vehemently points to the window letting the breaking sun in from the conference room. “Scranton is terrible. Michael Scott is the world’s shittiest boss, ever. Jim Halpert, the man who pretty much lied to my face for months, sits right here,” now her finger swings to the desk not 20 paces from her own and from Pam’s, “and the girl he dumped me for sits right there,” she directs Andy and Pam’s line of vision to reception. “Personally, I just don’t think I get paid enough to deal with all of that, okay, Andy?”

Once her tirade has been expelled, both Andy and Pam have to take a step back and catch their breaths. Of course, she knew it would probably happen this way. Who would want to sit there while the person you loved went on loving someone else without a second glance back? This office was built on that kind of heartache; it filled every corner and was filed in with every fax and memo.

But Pam would admit she briefly had a vision of peace and harmony between all parties involved in this staggering triangle that had constructed itself out of Karen, Jim, and herself. It lasted for about three seconds when she was talking to Jim about his break-up, when her heart and brain were so high on sheer elation of his presence that they tried to keep up the hope that happy endings did come true for everyone.

The truth is, however, that such a happy ending was not in sight for Karen Filippelli.

Andy reaches out and cups Karen’s shoulder. The gesture is genuine, and Karen’s stern back slackens as her face breaks a little. “Hey, I get it,” he tells her reassuringly, giving her shoulder a small shake so she rocks back on her heels. “You do what you gotta do, I so get that.” He drops his arm to his side, and his hands slip into his pockets. His shoulders roll and Pam sees his features weaken into a half-hearted smile. “Just thought I’d give a last ditch effort to save the last fellow Stamford-Scranton remainee.”

Karen’s mouth twitches in the promise of smile in return, but it doesn’t quite make it. “Yeah…” she breathes out and her gaze shifts toward Accounting. “Sorry to say, but it, uh … it looks like you’re gonna be going the rest of the way alone.” When her eyes look back up, Pam sees a hint of glistening at her lash line. She hates herself in that moment.

He draws up a slow grin. “The lone survivor,” Andy comments with a shrug and a far-off look. Pride has somehow manifested itself within that second across his features, and Pam doesn’t understand anything about this guy sometimes. “Kind of cool, I can dig it. It’s actually kind of Thunderdomesque, even.”

“You are so gay,” Karen chuckles and sniffs, her index finger crooking as she dabs at eye. Another sigh propels from her, and she looks down at her box, then up toward the kitchen. “Okay, so … I think I have everything,” Karen’s voice is back to business as she rubs her palms together. “Alright. I’m out of here, Bernard.”

When the smaller woman goes to grab her box, Andy makes to reach for it, but she swats him out of the way. “What? Dude, Kar, let me help you to your car, at least.”

“No,” she denies him firmly, hefting the box to chest-level with a grunt. “I’ve got this. I don’t need anymore help. You’ve already done enough, Andy.”

There’s a look between the two that suggests something funny had happened earlier, but Pam’s not sure she can read it. “Fine, be that way. Women’s lib and all that, I see what you’re doing,” Andy nods knowingly, before he’s pressing his arm across his midsection and lowering into a bow, which gets Karen’s shoulders shaking in a quiet laugh. “Be gone with you then, good lady, into that sweet morning.”

Karen isn’t sure how to take his farewell, so she kind of half-grins with a roll of her eyes. “Yeah, okay,” she agrees vaguely. A tiny wave of her hand underneath her box is given in goodbye. “Keep in touch?”

“Will do,” Andy accents with Cockney and twitches his nose, like a silent sniffle. “You, uh … you take care, okay? If you need anything—“ His voice is already on the verge of breaking. Pam has to stop herself from gagging.

The other woman beats him to the chase with a humoring chuckle. “Yeah, yeah, you’re a phone call away. I’ll see you around, Andy.”

It occurs to Pam a little too late that Karen’s already heading toward the place she’s been hiding, and if she’s going to be found out, she certainly doesn’t want to be found out while snooping. So that’s when Pam steps forward like she just came through the door, and she’s positive she looks all kinds of unconvincing. She's reassured of this when Karen and Andy’s attention lands on her, and she knows that they know she has been there for at least for part of their conversation.

Karen stops dead in her tracks, and Pam sees her tug the box closer to her chest. “What are you doing here?”

“I, uhm,” Pam startles; she doesn’t know why she didn’t expect Karen to say something. “I had … early work.” Her eyes travel to the box, then back to Karen’s face, which had turned into something bordering on furious in the second it took for her to glance away. “You’re—- uhm, you’re leaving?”

“Oh, no,” Karen pretends with wider-than-necessary eyes. “I’m just taking all these things to my car for no good reason.”

Pam bites her tongue. If the jig is up … she looks over to Andy, who is doing his best to not look like he’s paying attention. “Utica?”

It takes Karen a moment, but she snorts and eventually looks down at her knick-knacks, “Yeah, that’s real classy of you, Pam.”

She feels guilty for having eavesdropped. But there’s nothing she can do about it now. Just like there’s nothing she can do about that palpable dislike coming off of Karen in waves. “I’m sorry,” Pam quiets, and it catches Karen’s attention quicker than a snap of her fingers. “Really,” she amends with her voice a little stronger, praying that Karen may feel her genuineness. “I just … I wanted you to—“

“Save it,” Karen bites in, her eyes closed tight against Pam’s sincerity. “I really don’t—I’m not here to hear that, okay?” When she opens her eyes again, Pam meets her gaze, and instantly she feels that discontent, that uncomfortableness that heralds nausea or something like that that she remembers feeling almost every day in middle school. “You know what? You should really just … totally forget about me and just enjoy yourself. I mean, I'm sure that's what you really have planned, right?”

Pam can’t even muster a response to that mocking tone in her voice, and so Karen’s expression tightens as she pushes past Pam and toward the door. Pam only half-turns to watch her go, and before Karen’s made it completely through the portal, she hears her call out, “Oh, and tell Jim I said ‘bye!’”

The door shuts with a creak, and Pam’s blood feels like it stops dead in her veins. She’s looking at the carpet but instead of seeing the floor as a whole, she feels like she can make out every little fiber, she’s staring down so intently. A sudden burning stings around her ear, and she glances up to find Andy watching her almost painfully. Something hits her square in the chest and she has to cough to dislodge it. Pam clears her throat and reshoulders her purse as she moves around to her desk that suddenly feels far too spacious for her.

It’s quiet for all of three seconds before Andy’s soft footfalls make it around to her desk. Pam’s fingers shake as she drags her keyboard closer to her and she wiggles her mouse to start her computer to life. “What?” She queries with a clogged voice. His mouth had just started to open, but he promptly shuts it again.

Andy inclines his head eventually, his fingers dancing awkwardly on her countertop. It reminds her of Jim, and she’s sorely tempted to smack him away. “Look, Pam—“

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she promptly cuts him short, eyes riveted on her monitor. It can’t load fast enough. All she’s seeing is his worried gaze in her peripheral. “Karen’s—she’s right, it's justified. This is just…”

“C’mon,” Andy waves her off. “Pam, you can talk to me—“

“No, I can’t,” Pam looks up at him sharply, her eyes having gone wide with seeming bewilderment. This sudden change seems to throw Andy off-guard, but she can’t quite bring herself to care. “What would even make you think I’d talk to you about this?”

Andy falters at the harshness of her tone. “I just—I don’t know,” he struggles and his eyebrows furrow tight together. “I just assumed, y’know … with the situation, you might need someone to… dot, dot, dot?” With each ‘dot’ he taps his middle finger to the counter, but he keeps his eyes averted from her as he goes for blasé. “But, hey. Y’know, it’s cool, if you don’t want—“

“I don’t.”

He starts, then stops and presses his lips together, as though that was not the follow up he had anticipated. Nevertheless, he bobs his head once. “Righty-ho.” And as he turns, Pam wishes she could feel that same relief she had captured earlier this morning, but it appears as though that effort has been exhausted.

This is made especially so as Andy rounds himself again and marches back to her desk, knuckles knocking firmly in his own personal hello. “Look, okay. So, yeah, I don’t know the whole sitch,” he begins quickly, before Pam can get a protest in, “but I know you, and I know Karen, and I know Tunes. And I heard what happened on Beach Day from Kelly, and yeah, I care. Whatever it is that’s goin’ on, I wanna know that my buds,” he pushes his splayed hand across his chest where his heart is centered, “are gonna be okay. Because, Pam?”

She lifts her brows at him to suggest that he continue, though she wishes more than anything that he wouldn’t.

“You three are pretty much the only cool people here in the office,” he completes the thought with a horizontal wave of his hand followed by another rap of his knuckles before he begins to tick off everyone with his fingers. “Like, Dwight’s really weird and talks about bears all the time, Oscar’s hard to relate to (since he’s gay and everything), and Phyllis and Stanley are just old and boring.”

Andy sighs a little too dramatically, his arms folding as he leans into her desk. Pam dips away unconsciously, her nose wrinkling at his proximity. “But you and Tunes, you guys … I care. So, whatever it is between you guys, I am not picking sides.” Thankfully, he begins to back away at last, his hands displayed in a defensive motion in front of him. “I just wanted you to know that, before any dramz starts riling up in here. Andrew Bernard doesn't play teams.”

Pam takes a steadying breath to keep her blood pressure and her temper down, a weary smile eventually lifting the corners of her mouth imperceptibly. “Well, thanks,” she commends cautiously, her eyes taking in his slow steps backward. “I … appreciate that. But, really, sides are … they don’t exist,” she finishes lamely and glances back to her computer as her email loads.

“Uh, yeah,” Andy agrees in an obvious tone, an eyebrow quirked at her suddenly. “That’s what I’m saying, didn’t you hear me?”

She looks askance at him, in all his pomp and brightly colored tie, and she halfway rolls her eyes. “No, Andy,” she corrects like she’s reashing something with a five-year-old. “What I meant is that, uhm—there’s no reason for sides. I mean, I’m not…” Now Pam hesitates, as she finds Andy’s gaze a might too scrutinizing for her tastes. “Jim and I aren’t … like that,” her hand motions toward the door that she swears is still rippling with Karen’s fury. “We’re just—“

“Friends?” Andy offers with a knowing grin that she instantly dislikes. “Yeah, okay, Pamcakes. I hear ya.” When she parts her lips to argue his evident disbelief (and ream him for that ridiculous moniker), he gestures for her to stop. “No, seriously,” he takes on a more solemn tone, and his hand resettles itself across his sternum. “I do. And really, that’s all on you and Tuna.”

Pam can already feel her cheeks burning with embarrassment of even stumbling into this conversation. She double-clicks furiously and stares determinedly at her monitor. “Andy…” she groans quietly, unable to dreg up a proper reprimand. Instead, her chest deflates and her shoulders slump as her eyes roll back toward the salesman who is openly wearing what could be considered a Cheshire cat smile. “No. Don’t. Don’t do that,” she warns him with a quick point of her finger, already straightening in her chair. “If I see you doing that at all, I swear I’m going to remove that grin with my bare hands. Don't think I won't.”

Tapping into a dominant reserve she had only recently become aware of seems to pay off, as Andy balks at her apparently convincing threat. “Ho-kaay,” he falters and takes another, much more exaggerated step back from her desk. “Geeze, Pam, no need to get so hostile. Someone’s being defensive.” With his eyes skimming the ceiling and back down again, Andy pivots and makes for the kitchen, a shout offered over his shoulder, “Tuna’s really going to have his hands full, isn’t he?”

‘Mortified’ would have her picture by it in the dictionary, she’s sure, as instantaneously she pales and sinks deeply into her chair, a hand slapping over her face to shield her from the impending despair this day has just begun to unleash. Already, she wishes she could fall into the earth, back into that dream she had conjured not a handful of minutes ago. Something about angels and harps…

There comes another knock on her desk, and Pam is positive that she’s going to beat the hell out of a grown man today. She jerks upright and, as she slips her hand from her face, she prepares to level the most dangerous expression in her arsenal should Andy be what lay beyond her palm.

It’s Jim that’s leaning toward her, a lazy smile across his face as he examines her gradually pinkening face with childlike curiosity. She can make out stardust and admiration lingering in his eyes from just that prior evening, while he wonders in a teasing lilt, “Soo, what is it I’m supposed to have my hands full of, exactly?”

Pam’s heart flutters at the rough catch of his voice and the potential rife within that comment. She covertly steals a glance toward the kitchen and back, and it’s clear he can’t exactly read her. Daringly, she hops up and takes a peck from his parted lips, instilling in his features a look of awe.

“Just so you know, this is a secret, and Andy’s in the kitchen,” she readies him in a hush, her eyes ducking down and away toward her invisible paperwork just as the kitchen door swings open and Andy bellows a grand ‘good morning’ to the cute boy whom she is sure will be her favorite secret office romance.