God, she was gorgeous when she was happy.

It hit him then that she hadn’t been happy basically since he’d been back. He’d been pushing that information to the back of his mind, trying desperately not to notice, not to care, not to think about why that might be, but the way she was glowing today after and especially during that little prank on Andy? It made it impossible to ignore. She was happy, and she was beautiful, and he had no hope. None.

Well, he had one hope. He had Karen. And he needed to go on having Karen if he was going to avoid backsliding entirely and living out his life as a mopey salesman at a small paper company in Scranton, pining after a receptionist who didn’t actually want him.

But God, Pam was gorgeous when she smiled. At him. Not that she wasn’t gorgeous when she smiled at anyone else, but he’d gotten so good at flinching when she smiled at Roy that he rarely saw her smile at anyone else anymore. Well, or at all recently. Of course, she was also gorgeous when she wasn’t smiling at all, but that smile just lit up her face like the sun coming out from behind clouds, or a computer screen popping to life when you pressed the button. He’d missed it.

He’d missed her.

He couldn’t go back, but he couldn’t go forward either. Honesty was the best policy, they said, and look where that had gotten him—but as Macbeth once said, by now “returning were as tedious as going o’er,” and while he hoped that he wasn’t covered in blood from a murder he did feel as if being dishonest now would be just as bad as being honest, so he might as well be honest.

Honest with himself when he felt his heart expand as she smiled and Andy punched the wall (he’d almost forgotten how badly Andy took that first prank at Stamford; maybe this wasn’t such a good idea? But look at that smile).

Honest with Pam as he congratulated her on a prank well done.

Honest with Karen—terrifyingly, dangerously, exhaustingly honest—as he nodded his head and whispered “yes” when she asked him if he still had feelings for Pam.

Because he did. God help him but he did. He still stared at her reflection in the black screen of his turned-off computer (and thank goodness no one questioned why he’d started doing more of his work by hand instead of on the computer—though he had a great explanation ready if Dwight ever did ask, involving a delayed Y2K virus, government surveillance, and the inefficiency of goofing off on the Internet). He still made sure to angle his body as he stood in the break room so that he could see her at her desk, and timed his bathroom runs so that they wouldn’t interfere with keeping an eye on her. In a weird way, actually, she consumed his life more now that he was avoiding her than she had when he’d just been trying to hide his feelings. Then he’d openly strode to her desk and eaten jellybeans, but he’d also been able to actually focus on pranks or work (in that order) when he wasn’t actually interacting with her. Sure, he’d snuck a lot of looks, made a lot of air fives, raised a lot of eyebrows, but in between those moments he’d been a functioning human being. Now? Now he had to arrange everything to avoid backsliding, and it meant he actually thought about her constantly, just to avoid letting that thought show. What was the Hindu myth he’d read about once, about the atheist who denied God every minute of the day and then went to heaven because he alone among humanity had always been thinking about God, even if not in the intended way? This was something like that, except instead of heaven he was in hell. A hell of constantly feeling these damn feelings that would not go away, while not being able to show them because doing that would just trigger them harder—or worse, bring on another crushing rejection.

Because that was the real root of his fear. He’d bared his soul to her once, and all she’d been able to say was “I can’t” and some bullshit about misinterpreted friendships. And she didn’t tell him when she broke up with Roy, cancelled the wedding, moved on without reaching out. Sure, they’d had one good phone call while he was at Stamford, but then she’d sent that weird confusing rejection-reminding text, and nothing else. Even once he came back, she’d been friendly but nothing more, telling him they’d always be friends when he tried to sound her out about how she felt about him dating Karen, and then actively working to convince him to…not let Karen move in near him, after all, they were all adults, but to be OK with it when she did. And he couldn’t help but take that as another sign that for her, there was nothing to move on from; that whatever sadness or lack of happiness he’d noticed in her was just because he wasn’t paling around with her like a couple of besties with no romantic interest in the world, not because she was hurting at all, like he had been. Like he was. And if she was only interested in him as a best friend? A sad, pathetic part of him would have still been OK with that, but the rest of him was shouting “no.” He’d wanted to be more than that. He wanted to be more than that. But he couldn’t go back. So even as he acknowledged to Karen that he still had feelings for Pam, he also knew there was no chance that would actually ever amount to anything, because she didn’t feel the same way.

She might miss him, but it was just as a friend. And he couldn’t do that anymore.

So yes, he had feelings for Pam Beesly. That didn’t matter. She didn’t feel the same way. And he couldn’t risk asking because being rejected (twice! Three times if you count not telling him she was ending it with Roy!) was the worst pain he could recall. Four times? You might as well kill him and end the misery. OK, not really. Death was not really preferable. But pretty much anything else was.

Feelings? Sure, he had feelings for Pam. But the dominant feeling was fear.