It's strange to Jim when office romances start coming up in conversation. The Jan/Michael situation is...gross, actually. But also awkward in that they have something he can't. Even if Jan is probably crazy for ever having been with Michael, at least they took that chance. And Jim...can't.
It's a weird day all around, with Dwight thinking that it's Friday and Jan coming and going amidst the rumors, and the performance reviews - or lack thereof.
"You don't, I don't think, you know, come all the way back. Especially working together," he's saying to Pam about office romances. She clarifies that he's talking about being with Michael, but he's still stuck on his original train of thought.
Have things been different since the Chili's kiss? Is that why he's messing up more, crossing the line more? Why they're hurting each other when they used to have such an easy flow at all times? Is he still stuck in that Chili's dining room, with Pam's arms wrapped around the back of his neck, a Dundie in her hand, margarita on her breath, her lips against his?
Maybe Jim's been trying too hard to come back, and he just can't. Because they work together.
When a second office romance comes to his attention, it's almost annoying. Dwight and Angela? Really? Pam must be crazy. She tells him she's going to investigate further, but he's laughing inside. What a weird couple that would be.
He thinks about inviting Katie to his party that night, but then Pam says Roy isn't coming, so he doesn't. And he thinks again about how he knows that's wrong. He knows he'll never have real feelings for Katie, but he keeps holding out hope that she'll do something, say something, that will make him fall in love with her.
But instead he's just still here, stuck, in love with Pam.
It's a little weird when the camera crew asks to come to his party, but he figures they're just trying to get a closer look at everyone's lives, so he lets them. At this point, it's an "everyone but Michael" party, so anything is game. He finds himself in his bedroom, alone with Pam, and he's simultaneously glad the crew is there and also angry that he let them come.
He's angry because in ten years, if he watches this documentary alone, he is going to be broken at this interaction.
He's happy because in ten years, if he watches this documentary with Pam, he's going to laugh, and hug her, and say, "Look at that look I'm giving you! And you didn't even notice!"
And she's sitting on his bed, looking through his embarrassing yearbook, and he's imagining that life. She's sitting on his bed because it's their bed and she's showing his dorky yearbook photo to their kids. And maybe their dog. And he's staring at her and thinking how lucky he is that she's his and he's hers, and they're so in love and-
And then he has to return to real life, to the engagement ring on Pam's finger, to the party he's having for his co-workers, and nothing more.
He asks her, later, about this Dwight-Angela romance theory, and she shuts him down pretty quickly.
"Grasping at straws," she calls it. And oh, can he relate to that. He's grasping at every straw he can when it comes to Pam. She seems a bit defensive over this, so he doesn't push it, doesn't ask her why she gave up. But it's just as well because the last thing this world needs is for Dwight and Angela to get together.
Christmas at Dunder Mifflin is always an adventure. But, for once, Jim is excited about Christmas, about the Christmas party, about Secret Santa. His gift for Pam tops, like, every other gift he's ever given anyone.
The teapot is cool, it's something useful that he knows she wants. But the gifts inside have been jumping around inside his brain for weeks.
The card, though, was the real problem. He wanted to express his feelings, but he didn't want to sound cheesy and over the top. He'd tried poetry - original and quoted - and lyrics. He'd actually attempted to write a song, but that did not go well. He'd written out all of the things he loved about her, but that would have filled three more Christmas cards, so he tossed that idea out.
In the end, he kept it simple. He got straight to the point, consequences be damned. He took a risk and he couldn't wait to see it pay off - or backfire.
The day of the party, Jim is putting the finishing touches on all of the bonus gifts he'd gathered. And then, of course, as always, Michael ruins it. Michael can't just take a damn gift and move on; he has to be the center of everything. And Jim suddenly wants to take back all of the nice things he's done for Michael - the fake closing ceremonies, rescuing him at karaoke, helping him talk through scenarios in his office - because Meredith has just snatched the teapot right out of Pam's tiny, perfect hands. It isn't even fully unwrapped yet, and it's already gone.
Jim knows Pam doesn't mean to hurt him when she keeps taking the iPod - and really, he can't blame her. It's a $400 gift when everything else on the table is twenty or less. He'd probably take the iPod, too.
But when she pulls the teapot out from behind her desk, he still knows the card is all wrong. He knows that this is not the day to tell her how he feels. And at this rate, it may never be. But a day when she only picked his gift - his measly, $20 gift - because she felt bad for him, is not the day to do it. So he snags it while she's distracted by the Boggle timer, and sticks it in his pocket. He'll hang onto it for now. Maybe another chance will come his way.
He feels bad inviting Katie on this dumb booze cruise after avoiding her for so long, but he knows Roy will be there with Pam, so he does it anyway. He knows - really he does - that it's wrong to keep stringing Katie along like this, but God, Pam's got him so twisted up, and it feels like it gets worse every single day that he has to look at her, at that damn engagement ring. So he invites Katie and tries to make the best of it.
But making the best of it is pretty hard when there's something obviously wrong with the couples at the table. While Roy and Katie make fun of Pam for her artsy side, and Katie does cheers right there in their seats, Jim and Pam make eye contact and they don't even have to say aloud what they're thinking.
And then they go outside, in the freezing cold, and this really feels like Jim's chance. He has the card in his pocket - he's been carrying it around since the party - and they're making eye contact. He grows serious, the angel and the devil on his shoulder both screaming at him.
Tell her. Don't tell her. Give her the card. Don't give it to her. Just kiss her. Don't touch her.
And he's not even sure which one is the angel and which one is the devil anymore because he is so damn twisted up and turned upside down over this girl. Pam, with her red nose and rosy cheeks, outside in the cold because she didn't want to be around her own fiance and his warehouse friends. Because she has nothing in common with him, besides a high school graduation class.
And Jim is thinking of a future where Pam is looking at him like this right before he gets down on one knee, and looking at him like this while they say their vows, and dammit he is so in love with her-
"I'm cold," and she's gone.
He breaks up with Katie after Roy yells out June 10th. He had been about to do it, about to give Pam the card and tell her how he feels and then Roy got on that microphone, almost as drunk as Pam had been when she kissed Jim all those months ago, and yelled out a date and suddenly Jim couldn't breathe.
Jim's biggest shred of hope is slashed to pieces when Pam and Roy set that date. That's always been his lifeline. Eventually, she'd get tired of waiting for Roy and she'd break up with him but now here she is kissing him, dancing with him, celebrating this date that's only five months away.
Five months.
He can't stay and watch her get married. He can't stay and watch her be with him anymore. He has to do something but he just isn't sure what.
Surprisingly, Michael has some wise words to share with him.
"Never ever ever give up," Michael tells him. "Engaged ain't married," he's saying.
And Michael's not wrong, but how long can Jim go on like this? How long can he go on feeling so in love with a girl with one ring on her finger, nevermind when it becomes two. How long can he watch his best friend be with a guy she doesn't even understand, a guy who doesn't understand her? How long can he sit at his desk and watch them together?
Things start getting weird after the cruise.
First Dwight takes up Jim's usual spot at reception. It's extra weird because of the Dwight/Angela theory from a few weeks prior, but once they learn Dwight has a concussion, it all makes sense. Dwight and Pam would never be friends, not in a million years. But she's being so nice, and she seems sad to see Dwight go to the hospital, knowing he'll come back his usual self.
This is weird to Jim, because he doesn't think he could ever be friends with Dwight, even a concussed version of him, but then again, Pam likes a lot of people that Jim doesn't.
Then the wedding planning begins. And suddenly, it's everywhere. First the veil, then the hair, and Kelly won't shut up about it, and she's not even in the wedding. Jim needs to get away from it all, as soon as possible.
And then something even worse happens: Michael tells the whole damn office about his booze cruise confession. Jim tries to cover it up. He tells Pam that he used to have a crush on her, back when she first started, and he blows it off like it's nothing.
But oh, it is far from nothing. And standing so close to her in the kitchen makes him want to take out that card and tell her the real truth, but he can't. Not now. Not now that June 10th is happening. He's surrounded by wedding planning and blissful Pam acting as though everything has been perfect with Roy all along. And his feelings for her are far from nothing because his feelings for Pam are literally everything and he can't possibly keep going on like this.
He can't even think about how mildly disappointed she looks when he tells her it was ages ago. He can't let himself go down that path when he's only just dodged such a huge bullet.
When Pam is gone the following week, he keeps looking at reception, out of habit. Ryan must think he's crazy, but he doesn't care. He can't break the habit of looking for her at that desk.
Shit. What is he gonna do when she gets married? He can't keep staring at her like a crazy person.
She comes back on the same day something weird happens in Michael's office, and Michael sends him to the back to be with Kelly of all people. He'd been so looking forward to his usual habits with Pam finally...and then he gets sent back to the chatterbox corner. And not only that, but he's playing Cupid for Kelly and Ryan. Another office romance?
This is getting out of hand. It's like the universe is saying, "hey dummy! Look at all these other people doing it. Why can't you?" But he can't because she's in love with someone else, someone she'll be married to in just over four months.
And everywhere he turns, they're together. Roy is upstairs re-doing Michael's carpet so he's in the office all day. He's in Jim's usual spot at reception. He's at Jim's usual spot in the lunchroom. Jim's just had a week away from Pam and it looks like in that week, Roy and Pam have become some attached-at-the-hip couple. He's stressed that he can't talk to her, but he can't go sit with the two of them, not anymore. It used to be hard enough, but now with that date looming over them, with the planning going into overdrive, he can't do it.
And he feels that tiny shred of hope that Michael had instilled - engaged ain't married, he thinks to himself - shrivel up and die throughout the day, everytime he sees Pam and Roy together during the time she is usually with Jim. The office is their space. It's where he can pretend Roy doesn't exist. It's where he can talk to her about anything and everything, all day, and that's fine and normal and-
He hears her seven voicemails and the hope balloon expands again. Even with Roy in the office, with her fiance right there in front of her, she still needed Jim throughout the day.
How about that.
The weirdness doesn't end on the day of the carpet incident, though. The next thing Jim knows, he's being forced to hang out in the warehouse with Roy. Great. Just what he needs. It turns out that, yes, Roy has heard about Jim's "former" crush on Pam and that he's totally cool with it.
Because it means that Pam doesn't have to talk to Roy about her day at work.
God, Jim just loves that guy Roy.
He loves him even more when he convinces Pam not to take advantage of this amazing art opportunity that Jan suggests. If Jan herself is suggesting this program, then Jim really thinks it would be worthwhile for Pam to at least try, but of course, she lets Roy talk her right out of it. And it kills Jim that she's clearly so upset about it, but she still convinces herself that it's okay.
And that she's happy with "her choices".
He can't stop stepping in it, can't stop saying the wrong thing to her. He's in this inescapable maze and he just wants to move on, wants to find the exit, get over these feelings, and get out of there.
But he's trapped.
On Valentine's Day, when a box appears on Dwight's desk, Jim is really hoping it's some prank Pam has pulled, but it's just...a bobblehead? Of Dwight? He wishes he had time to think about who on earth could have given him a Valentine's Day gift, but he's too busy listening to Kelly talk about Ryan. Again.
He's really sick of all this office romance going on around him when he can't have it himself. He's frustrated and angry and disappointed and just downright sad and he accidentally takes it out on Kelly by giving her the advice he should have taken himself ages ago:
"Suck it up and move on."
She doesn't listen, just like he wouldn't have listened either. Just like he's still not listening. But he wouldn't wish this awful empty feeling on his worst enemy, so he certainly doesn't want Kelly to be feeling this low. Kelly's a nice enough girl and she doesn't deserve to be crushed the way Jim has been crushed for the past few years. Not a chance.
Pam definitely starts to sense Jim's weirdness about the wedding. She tries to keep her voice down when she talks about it, but he hears it inevitably. He tries not to let it bother him, but with less than four months until the date, he can practically hear the ticking of a clock in his head, telling him that his time running out. And every time he hears anything about the damn wedding, the clock speeds up.
So he plans a trip. He knows she's going to invite him to the wedding. He's joked about Roy not wanting him there, but he also knows that Roy probably wouldn't notice if the Pope himself were officiating, so it really doesn't matter what Roy wants. Jim and Pam are best friends, and Pam wants him at the wedding.
But that's too bad. Because his heart is already ripped to shreds and going to that wedding would be like setting it on fire and stomping it out with cleats on. He can't do it, he won't do it. He plans a trip, acts like it's an accident that it landed on the day of the wedding, but it's not.
"Someplace...not here," is his only criteria.
He mentions going on a date a few days after he tells her about the trip. Kevin's step-daughter has just asked him over for dinner - no he definitely didn't bond with her to impress Pam, but being good with kids sure wasn't a bad thing - and he mentions having a date. Kevin's blocking her face most of the way, but he can just barely make out the shocked look, and she's still got her mouth gaping when Kevin moves to leave.
And you know what? Good. Maybe, just like with Katie, she can be jealous. Pam knows what Jim has to offer. She knows it would be good, would be great. She knows it would be better than what she has with Roy, but she won't admit it to herself because Roy is safe and apparently Jim isn't.
He doesn't feel bad for making her jealous, but he has learned from his previous mistakes not to bring his date anywhere near Pam, at least not yet. He can't be around a new girl and a girl he shouldn't be in love with at the same time.
For probably the first time ever, he leaves without saying goodbye to Pam. He sneaks out, sees her looking at him and makes an awkward motion to her. He just wants to get away. As the wedding moves closer, he wants to move farther away.
Which is why shopping for Kevin feels like he's taken about fifteen steps backwards. They haven't spent time alone together like this since their date/not-date on the roof, eating grilled cheese and watching Dwight's weird, sad fireworks. But they're alone nearly all day, and to anyone who didn't know better, he bets they look like a couple. Pushing a cart of very strange items around, buying odds and ends - why is she amazed he uses fabric softener? Does Roy not use fabric softener? He bets Roy doesn't even do his own laundry. They laugh in the card section, picking out a very Kevin-esque card with a girl in a bikini on the front, sure to make him feel better. They head to the hockey rink with everyone else and, for Jim, it's another one of those date/not-date moments. They're on the ice, holding hands, and she's telling him not to let go.
It's all too much.
Every time Jim tries to avoid her, he ends up right next to her again. She has to know that the way she's treating him is wrong, at this point. He knows it's exactly how he treated Katie, and he knew it was wrong then. So Pam has to know now. She's holding his hand - this part isn't his imagination. She's sad that he's pulling away but she's the one who's getting married. He should have pulled away a very long time ago.
The day she jinxes him is the saddest day yet. He's never spent so much time in his own head. The wedding is getting closer, it's hanging over his head and he still has the card in his pocket and he still has so many words to say and it's like she knows. She teases him, saying he can tell her anything. But they both know he can't.
He can't tell her how much he loves when she smiles at him. He can't tell her how their pranks on Dwight are better together because they're better together. He can't tell her that when she's away, he looks forward to seeing her every single day. He can't tell her how much he misses her when he goes home, how he can't eat, can't sleep, can't function really. He can't tell her that she's both the only thing keeping him sane and the one thing driving him insane.
He can't tell her that he's in love with her. And they both know it.
So when she un-jinxes him, he tells her about Dwight. He tells her about the day, the normal, everyday things that happened around him. But he doesn't tell her that there's a sparkle in her eyes when she talks about her art that Roy doesn't notice. He doesn't tell her that he believes in her, that he knows she could be great if she'd give it a shot, take a chance. He doesn't tell her that he has a card burning a damn hole in his pocket with every word he needs to say but can't.
He doesn't tell her anything important.
He does, however, make the dumb decision to talk to Toby about something. And that comes back to bite him in the ass. Michael is as Michael does, and Michael is a mess. In his quest to solve every single conflict in the office, he alienates everyone from each other instead. Pam hears the complaint about her wedding planning and immediately assumes it's Angela.
Jim tries to talk to her, rationalize with her, but she won't have it. He doesn't get why she's feeling quite so much anger towards Angela - sure she's annoying and uptight, but this feels personal. He asks Pam how Roy feels, already knowing the answer: She hasn't talked to him about it. She doesn't like to bother him with these things, she says.
"Oh, like your thoughts and feelings?" Jim asks, and she agrees.
Pam is really something. How does a smart, funny, warm, caring, beautiful girl like Pam really think that it's normal to not talk to her fiance about the problems of her daily life? How does she feel that it's normal for her to talk to Jim all day about every little thing, and then to go home and tell Roy absolutely nothing?
He remembers telling Katie nothing. He remembers telling his date from a few weeks ago nothing. He knows that's not the same as not telling your fiance of three years nothing, but he still knows exactly why she's telling Roy nothing.
Now if only Pam would open her damn eyes and see for herself that she has feelings for Jim, that Roy is not the safe bet, that Roy is not the one for her.
But he can't make her do that, and instead here he is, once again, for what feels like the hundredth time this year, with his foot in his mouth. He admits that the complaint was from him and regrets it immediately. He knows he has to tell her, but he can sense the hurt without even seeing her face. He watches her shoulders tense up. She won't even turn and look at him.
He heads out on the two hour long journey to New York. It's ironic that Dwight was the one who pointed out this transfer to him. That Dwight may have handed him the key to all of his problems. It's ironic and strange and Jim is almost thankful to Dwight for the first time in his life.
Jim sits in the waiting area at the corporate office of Dunder Mifflin and he thinks about the past few months.
He thinks about the confidence he'd had when Pam's engagement was a ring on her finger and nothing more. He thinks about how he dated Katie to make her jealous - about how it worked. He thinks about the hand holding, the hugging, the affection, and he wonders if he's been reading everything all wrong. He wonders if he could have done anything differently - anything to stop himself from feeling this way, or to make her start feeling this way. He thinks about the card still burning a hole in his pocket, all these months later. He thinks about the night on a cruise ship in the middle of January, when Roy yelled out a date, and how he stuck with it this time. He thinks about how maybe Roy is turning over a new leaf.
He thinks about how he backed off of Pam, or he tried to, after that date was set. How he went from spending half of his day at reception to barely half his morning - sometimes less. He thinks about Pam's face when she saw his yearbook photo, when she opened the teapot, when he helped her name her fake disease, when he showed her how good he was with kids, when he kicked her fiance's ass at basketball.
Jim thinks about every moment from the second she sat down to lunch with him that first day, to the moment he sat down in this waiting area. And he knows that staying in Scranton is impossible. He can't get over Pam while sitting across from her. He can't be with Pam because she's less than two months away from being a married woman. He knows all of this, and Jan opens the door, and he's asking her for a transfer.
He keeps it to himself. He knows how quickly word spreads at this office and he won't chance that. The crew, who saw him sitting in the waiting area, but didn't go back into the meeting with Jan, asks him why he went.
"I have no future here," he tells them simply. And he doesn't.
He may have a future as a salesman, but who cares? If he stays in Scranton, he will stay comparing every woman he meets to Pam, and none of them will measure up. And he will not have a future, not a real one.
He talks to Jan at casino night, and she asks if he's told anyone yet. She tells him he should, and he knows he has to do one other thing first.
He thinks he'll start with the transfer and then tell her how he feels, because she'll ask why he's leaving. He thinks that, but he doesn't get that far.
"I'm in love with you," he's saying and there's nothing else. The noise from Casino Night has disappeared and the parking lot and the cars and the trees and Roy's truck are all gone and it's just him and Pam and nothing else. And she's looking at him and he knows, right then, that she never expected him to say it out loud. And she looks like a lost little girl, because now she has to confront her own feelings. Because he's confronted his and that means she has to confront hers.
Right?
But instead she's apologizing and saying his friendship means so much.
And he can't hear that. After all this time, he can't hear that. He knows she loves him, he knows it deep down in his soul but she won't say it and he can't hear anything else she's saying and he's walking away. He's crying and he's broken and he's lost. And maybe he should have just left without a word, gone to Stamford and never looked back. But, he guesses, then he'd always wonder what might have been. But now he's wondering if ignorance isn't bliss because this is worse than anything he's felt in his whole life.
He sees her go up to the office but doesn't want to follow her. He wants to follow her but he doesn't want to follow her. He wants to tell her that other piece of news: that he's leaving. That she won't have to worry about him damaging her precious wedding because he's leaving and he'll be out of her hair and out of her life and out of her mind.
But he walks up and she's on the phone and he can't hear much but he thinks maybe - just maybe - she may have just said, "I think I am," and he thinks maybe, just maybe, the person she's talking to may have asked if she's in love with him.
And he's walking up to her and she starts talking but he just kisses her. He kisses her because he can't wait anymore. He kisses her because that kiss at Chili's wasn't real and didn't count and he needs something real that counts and matters and this matters so damn much. He kisses her because he can't stand to not be kissing her anymore. And she's touching him and holding him and she's kissing him back and it's all he's wanted since she walked in the door, since she sat down to lunch with him, since their first prank on Dwight, since-
And she admits she's wanted to kiss him, too, and she admits she's still going to marry Roy, and he leaves. And he goes to Stamford, and he doesn't look back.
