Did she seriously just do that? Babble to Jim like a complete idiot about his sleep schedule (oooh boy there was a thought to get her hot under the collar. Jim’s sleep schedule. Jim not getting much sleep. Being the reason Jim didn’t get much sleep. Not getting much sleep herself. Not getting much sleep next to Jim. Sliding her hands up along his surprisingly ripped chest, at least as she remembered it from Casino Night, and the basketball game. Sliding her hands downwards to grasp…ok, probably not a good idea to keep thinking about this at work. Ahem). Where was she? Oh yeah, babble to Jim like a complete idiot about his sleep schedule and then babble again like an even bigger idiot to his girlfriend about him?

“Oh yeah.” Yeah, there was no way Karen was fooled by that.

But hey, at least she’d been honest, even if she’d immediately backtracked from it. She didn’t really want to cause Jim any trouble. She loved him. His happiness was important to her. So while she would absolutely 100% yes please in a heartbeat wholesale replace his current lovely (but not for him dammit) girlfriend with herself, she wasn’t going to just rock that boat to see what happened. Because what was most likely to happen was that Jim would tell her that actually, that girlfriend was just lovely and perfect and wonderful for him, thanks very much, and that she had missed her chance. And she wasn’t going to risk that.

But she had promised herself she’d be more honest about her feelings. Lie…less. And so she’d blurted out that little “oh yeah” to Karen, and she felt proud of it. Even if…even if it was pointless. Even if she ended up unsaying it twenty seconds later.

Because she had at least said it.

She felt like a complete idiot right now, but she’d said it.

And then she hadn’t…quite…lied later, when she’d told Ryan in front of Jim (and yes, she was very very aware it was in front of Jim, because she needed to at least send him some kind of signal, right, even if was a really crappy attenuated one?) that she was ready to be set up with his business school friends. OK, actually, that had been a total lie, if you didn’t count the part where getting set up with his business school friends would probably get Kelly off her back for like 30 seconds, in which case yes she was definitely into that because she needed to stop with the blind date suggestions! But no, the real truth there was the moment when she blurted “God, I need a boyfriend.” Because she did. And she knew just the one, dammit, if he weren’t taken.

And for God’s sake, not Roy again. I mean, he was being pretty sweet recently, but all that did was remind her of high school, and how he’d been so sweet before she actually slept with him. Not that he’d become a total asshole overnight—she’d have dumped him if so—but looking back that had definitely been the start of the decline. The start of when he’d begun taking her for granted. So Roy might be comfortable, and Roy might be on his best behavior, but she’d have to be pretty desperate to go back to him. He was probably super into that stripper they got for Bob Vance’s party—or, knowing Roy-on-his-best-behavior, he’d probably been ostentatiously against it, as if the years of “c’mon Pammy, it’s [fill in the friend’s name here]’s bachelor party, I gotta go” while he was practically salivating over the possibility of stripper on the phone to his buddies while he thought she couldn’t hear hadn’t happened.

At least Jim hadn’t gotten the girls a stripper, though if that Ben Franklin re-enactor was a real method actor, maybe he was. He’d claimed not to have syphilis (information she hadn’t really needed, but she had kind of flirted back and it was her who brought it up, so no harm no foul), but Ben Franklin…if she remembered one thing from American history, it was that Ben Franklin was a stone cold fox. So what did it say about her that this Gordon guy was good enough to fool Dwight for a surprisingly long time and he left her utterly cold?

It said that she was an idiot hung up on Jim Halpert.

As if she didn’t know that already.

Maybe she needed to take Elizabeth up on her offer and learn how to strip, then surprise him.

When though? At his own damn bachelor party when he decided to marry Karen? The thought was too humiliating. And the office was right out—but when else did Jim ever actually hang out with her? Not that he really hung out with her at the office anymore either. But hey, it wasn’t the worst idea she’d had so far. The worst was definitely the actual thing she’d actually done. Verbal diarrhea at both him and Karen, a totally failed attempt at reminding him she was single, and a lot of completely ignored staring at the back of his head. To be fair, it wasn’t as if he could see her, but still. It sucked.

It all sucked. And apparently all she could do about it was babble like an idiot. Which, she supposed, she was. Ugh.