It was strange thinking about the Scranton office closing. He’d gotten this job like right out of high school, when he’d decided college wasn’t for him and that his future was in something more physical, where he could use his muscles and his sturdiness to get things done. Where he could see the results in front of him (a loaded van, a fully stacked set of shelves) and know he had done a good job. So in a way, it was like a second home for him; a second family. He’d known Darryl and Marge and the boys for long enough that he could actually remember (with Pammy’s help…so maybe he couldn’t now) their birthdays and anniversaries. He wasn’t sure what he could do otherwise. Probably another equivalent job, if Staples or someone were hiring. Or really anywhere; he’d heard good things about the Giant food warehouse, where you stacked pallets of corn and beans instead of paper.

It was kind of like Pammy leaving him, in a way. They’d been together ten years; he’d been in the warehouse seven and a half. Pammy had always been home to him; he’d gone to her house (well, her parents’ house, but he didn’t really get along with Mr. and Mrs. Beesly the way he wished he did—he always felt like he had to try to impress them, and that he had always failed to do so—and so he didn’t think of it as their house, but Pammy’s, because otherwise he couldn’t work up the nerve to go in) every time something went wrong at home. Every time his dad was drunk and screaming, or his mom was throwing things, or simpler problems like he’d gotten an F in English and didn’t want to show anyone at home. He’d just known that Pammy would be there for him, and he’d found himself curled up around her thinking comfortable thoughts. Or not even thinking. There was a peace he found with Pammy that wasn’t present anywhere else. Around her he could shut his brain off, just be himself. It was calming.

The warehouse was kinda like that too. He could be Big Roy, the guy they called to pick up the loads that were too small for the forklift but too big for anyone else. He didn’t have to think about an empty house, the extra bottles of her shampoo still sitting in the closet, the chicken and fish in the big freezer out back that were rapidly dwindling (and with them his excuses to see her every day). It was his home away from home, and Pammy was his home, and the big (too big for one person, but what was he going to do, break the lease?) house on the corner was just where he went to sleep at night.

It was nice of her to come down and tell them all. He could tell she was nervous, and he had hoped for a blinding second that this was it—that she was nervous because she was going to ask him if she could come home again, apologize for the last few months, start over, everything he’d been hoping for. And then she’d gone to Darryl instead of him and he’d had a flash of jealousy, just long enough for his hand to curl up into a fist without him knowing it. Then Darryl had gone pale, and she’d turned and told everyone else, including him: “They’re closing a branch. Michael says it will be this one. I’m sorry…but I thought you guys should know.” And then she fled upstairs.

He’d wanted to call after her, to…do what? Thank her? Beg her to come back to him now that he was losing the only other home he knew? Grab her and kiss her and show her what she was missing? All he knew was that by the time he’d even half figured out what he wanted to do she was already up the stairs and through the door.

God, she was beautiful, though, when she was being brave. It was like courage made her hair curlier, her eyes brighter. She’d been beautiful that night too, when he’d gotten up all bleary-eyed and thought she was on the couch, and she’d stood in the kitchen and told him “I can’t do this. I can’t marry you.” He’d broken down then, and begged, and she’d stood firm—he’d have been proud of her if he wasn’t so freaked out—but he’d thought he saw something in her expression—not quite a warmth or a softness, more like pity, but he’d been willing to accept that—and he’d managed to convince her not to tell everyone immediately. To take a moment, take a break, figure out if this is what she really wanted, if there wasn’t anything he could do to convince her to come back. And when the week before their supposed-to-be wedding she’d told him she still couldn’t do it…that was when he’d really gotten mad. But she’d still been brave, still been beautiful, and he’d had to let her go. Just like he’d let her go now, up the stairs, out of the warehouse, maybe out of his life.

He still believed she’d come back, but he was slowly becoming aware that he’d have to do more than he’d been doing to get her to come back. Shaping up his own life wasn’t enough, and neither, apparently, was noticing and complimenting her. He’d need to do something bigger, something better, to make her see that he was really the man she wanted to be with.

Maybe getting that job at Giant Food would help. That would be progress, right? She’d said everything was the same, and while he couldn’t quite see why that was a problem (they were happy…why would they want to change that?) maybe some change would help her see him in a new light.

This resolution lasted exactly as long as it took for him to hear (again from her, again nervous, again brave and beautiful) that it had all been a false alarm. That Stamford was closing, not Scranton. That they all had their jobs still. And in his relief, he forgot all about the possibility of change.