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Story Notes:
Yeah. I don't know. A look at what would have happened if Pam and Jim had been having an affair throughout the latter half of season two. The title is from a song by The Weepies.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.




It had been going on for months.


Since Christmas. Since the holiday party when she had traded the iPod for a tea kettle. Since the card that she had found taped to the bottom professing his love for her.


Her hands had trembled a little when she read it, tracing her fingers over the words. She had found him in the stairwell, his head in his hands. He glanced up and noticed the card clutched in her hands, her eyes rimmed red. His mouth opened and closed as he struggled to give her an explanation, which finally ended with his shrugging his shoulders and giving her a sad, half smile.


“I love you,” he said. And, “I’m sorry.”


She had crashed her lips to his, and then pulled back just as suddenly, her hand flying to her mouth.


“I don’t…” She trailed off and spun on her heels and ran, a flash of red slipping through the stairwell door.


Pam showed up two nights later at Jim’s apartment, where she once again pressed her lips to his and told him that she didn’t know what she was doing, and he told her that he didn’t care, as long as it ended with her lips against his, her body pressed up against him, her hands tangled in his messy hair.


He never asked her if she was going to leave Roy. He would watch as Roy would come to pick her up at the end of the day, and her gaze would linger on Jim’s and she would look apologetic and guilty, and he wanted to ask her to leave Roy, wanted to tell her to stop making wedding plans for a wedding that shouldn’t be happening, but he was willing to take her any way he could have her. And if it meant sharing her with Roy, then he was prepared to share her with Roy.


Roy sometimes went away on weekends, camping or hunting trips with his brother or cousins and they would spend the weekend together. They spent the first weekend at his place, curled up in his bed, Pam wearing nothing but one of Jim’s button-downed shirts, but his roommate was there, constantly there, and Pam got the impression that he didn’t approve of her, or the situation.


She wanted to tell Jim so many times that she was going to leave Roy, but the words died on her tongue and the problem was that she wasn’t sure if she was going to leave Roy. She knew that both men deserved better than what she was giving them, but she didn’t know how to let go of either, so she held onto both.


They spent the evening of the Booze Cruise listening to Katy and Roy and exchanging amused and flirtatious looks, and were pressed up against each other in the small, confined bathroom of the boat when Roy grabbed the microphone and announced that he wanted to set a date. Jim broke up with Katy that night, and didn’t call Pam for days. He ignored her at work, and deleted her emails and text messages without reading them.


But a few days later, he caught her arm in the break room and slipped into her palm a motel room key for a crappy motel about a block from work with the words, “Meet me after work?” written hastily on a Post-It note. She made some excuse to Roy about meeting her sister for drinks and instead spent the next few hours with Jim in a room where she refused to sit on the comforter of the bed.


And so it went.


She made wedding plans and played the part of dutiful fiancée to Roy, while sneaking glances and stealing kisses from Jim. She felt kind of awful, but also kind of the happiest she had ever been, and it was strange. She knew what they were doing was wrong, and she knew that this wasn’t like them, either of them, but she also knew that she didn’t want it to stop.


When her wedding was a month away, Michael announced that they were going to have a Casino night. She dressed up in a dress she had been saving for a special occasion, and Roy kissed her cheek and told her she looked pretty. After about a half hour, Roy got bored and asked if she minded if they ditched and instead went to Poor Richard’s with Darryl. She told him that she didn’t mind if he went, but that she was going to stay and she’d get a ride home from Kelly. In fact, she might just stay with Kelly and have a girls’ night. Roy kissed her cheek again, and looked relieved, and she heard him telling Darryl that they would have the whole night because Pam wasn’t going to be home and how awesome it was going to be.


She found Jim and they ditched the party twenty minutes later, ending up back at his apartment, where his roommate, thankfully, was spending the night at his girlfriend’s.


When he thinks she’s asleep, she hears him outside in the hallway talking on the phone, and it doesn’t take her too long to figure out that he’s talking to Jan, and he’s talking about leaving. Leaving Scranton, leaving her. And she suddenly knows that she’s pushed her luck.


When he climbs back into bed, and his breathing evens, she slips out. She sits in the dark, empty living room, and she begins to cry, hot tears pouring down her cheeks. She takes in deep breaths, but she can’t stop, and she can’t breathe and she doesn’t hear him come down the steps.


“Pam?” He asks, his voice is quiet and worried, and it makes her cry harder. He sits down on the couch, and his hand hovers for a moment, almost afraid to touch her. Finally he presses one palm to her cheek and he looks at her in a way that she wants to save, wants to bottle up, wants to keep, so that when everything is said and done, when all the pieces have fallen, she knows that once, she was so loved.


“I’m so sorry,” she sobs.


He doesn’t say anything. He can’t tell her not to be sorry, when there are so many things she should be sorry about, and he can’t tell her that he accepts her apology, when he’s not sure what exactly she’s sorry about and he’s not sure that he does accept it. So in turn, he gathers her into his arms.


“You’re leaving,” she finally says, and it’s not a question. But then she loses her nerve and tacks on, “aren’t you?” at the end.


“How do you know about that?” He asks, and then, “I’m sorry.”


Roy was a good guy. He wasn’t the most attentive, and he wasn’t always the most sensitive. And maybe he didn’t love her in the same way that Jim did, but it didn’t mean that Roy didn’t love her. He loved her, and what she was doing to him was just awful.


And what she was doing to Jim. That was awful too.


“You should go,” she hiccups. The words come out as unclear and broken as she feels, and she repeats them, her voice stronger this time, “you should go.”


She knows now that she will have to break off her engagement. It isn’t fair to Roy. And she knows that she will have to break off this thing with Jim. And it breaks her heart.


She stands and his hand falls limply to the couch, his fingers clenching around something that’s not there. She changes back into the dress, the pretty dress that she was saving for something special.


“Can you call me a cab?” She asks quietly.


“I’ll drive you home,” Jim answers. His voice is rough and she sees that he has been crying.


The ride is quiet. She rests her head on the cool window, and closes her eyes.


“I was going to tell you,” he says. “About leaving. About Stamford. I was going to ask you to come with me.” Her breath catches in her throat. “I want you to come with me.”


He pulls up to her house, dark and empty and she drops her head down and feels the tears, relentless and hot, and she cries so much that her face feels bruised, and she feels Jim’s arms around her. And it feels kind of like the world is crashing around her, and she doesn’t know which way is up and which way is down and everything is such a mess, and she did that. She has no one to blame for that but herself.


And she knows that she has three options now. And there’s some sense of relief in that. In having that third choice.


She can get out of the car and she can go inside and she can let Jim go to Stamford, and she knows that he’ll stay with her for a long time, in the deep part of her, maybe forever, but she can go in and she can love Roy and only Roy and she can pretend that these past six months never happened, and maybe she can be happy. And maybe the guilt won’t eat her alive and maybe Roy is enough.


Or she can get out of the car and she can let Jim go to Stamford, and she can break off her engagement to Roy, and she can get an apartment by herself and a car for herself and maybe even a new job. And she won’t feel guilty or awful, and maybe that’s enough.


And then there is the third choice. The choice where she stays with Jim. Where she breaks off her engagement and she goes with Jim to Stamford, or wherever. And she knows, knows, that Jim, wherever, Stamford, Scranton, Istanbul or Hong Kong, he would be enough.


“Okay,” she says finally. “Okay.”


bashert is the author of 37 other stories.
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