God bless Kevin Malone.

OK, maybe that was a little extreme. But Pam couldn’t help but be grateful for the opportunity to hear Jim’s voice. And not just to hear his voice; not just a voicemail or a background voice on a weird phone call with Michael (OK, that was any phone call of Michael’s, but still). No, she got a conversation. A weird, roving, Jim-and-Pam conversation that warmed her all the way through, as if he’d never left. As if he’d actually responded to her email about Roy. As if they were still friends.

It warmed her up so much she actually bothered to say goodbye to Ryan on his way out, instead of just staring in front of her mindlessly as had become her modus operandi the last few months. And of course that was when it all started to go wrong. Because Jim apparently thought she meant to say goodbye to him, and by the time she’d figured out that he wasn’t the one saying goodbye but thought it was her he had already started to pull away and then he was hanging up and she couldn’t think quickly enough to keep him on the line. Damn it.

Now she was alone in the office. Alone with her own thoughts, which was always dangerous, and never more so than when she was alone with her own thoughts in full view of the place where everything had gone so right and so wrong all at once: Jim’s desk. Well, Ryan’s desk, she guessed now. But anyway, that spot, which haunted her so much she was pretty sure Ryan thought she was crazy for staring at him all day, was not a good place to be looking when she was alone. As she now was.

And now all she had available to distract her from remembering that night and how she’d fucked up was the memory of this night and how she’d fucked up. Not even getting into the unfortunate goodbye—that was really on Jim, did he think she’d just cut him off?—what was that stuff about typing speed? And why oh why had she admitted it felt like he was far away without actually coming out and saying that she missed him? Missed him? Loved him. You need to say the word, Pam, she said to herself in her mother’s voice from their last conversation. If you can’t even tell yourself you love Jim, how do you expect him to figure it out from Connecticut?

And if she couldn’t even say it to him when they actually talked (and they did! Actually talk! She heard his voice and everything!) how was he  going to know even if he weren’t in Connecticut? After all, she realized, if she didn’t mention anything, didn’t even really make a move towards it, he was just going to think things were like they always had been…only less so, because he was at Stamford. Stupid stupid stupid. She should have said something.

But when? Should she have blurted out “I’m in love with you” over discussions of kitchen space and horror movies? Should she have interrupted his little spiel about fantasy football with some kind of innuendo? Not that she was any good at innuendo. So probably not, since bad innuendo was probably worse than verbal diarrhea about typing speeds. She hoped so at least, because those were probably her two options, if she was honest with herself, and she’d clearly chosen door number two.

But it had just been so good to hear his voice, so necessary to her in a way she hadn’t even really realized even as she was telling her mother she was in love with the man. It was like those deserts she’d seen in the Planet Earth special DVDs her sister had lent her: arid and empty and sand-colored one day, and then a rainstorm whirled through and everything lit up with colorful flowers. She’d love to draw one of those someday, if she ever got out of Scranton—and she felt like one of those today when Jim called. Suddenly everything she’d been shutting down had woken to new life, and she was almost giddy—so giddy she didn’t think about what she said at all. And that meant she didn’t say the most important things.

Well. At least the shutdown was over; the rain had fallen; the bloom had begun. And maybe now that they’d talked, she could find a way to talk more—and then she’d get a chance to tell him the more important stuff.

Hopefully soon.