He knows a lot about Pam. Those weird documentary guys made him realize that. Mixed berries yogurt? Since when he’s been paying this much attention?

He doesn’t really know her that well, does he?

She spends a lot of her time doing solitaires, but who doesn't. She wears the same practical shirts and pencil skirts to work every day. And the whitest sneakers he’s ever seen. The only time he’s seen her wearing a t-shirt was that time they bumped into each other at a hardware store almost a year ago. He found himself mesmerized by her arms, and doing impossible efforts for it not to show.

She likes to draw. She’s very good and very very self-conscious about it. That one time, a week after he started working at Dunder Mifflin, he went over to get a fax and she was so distracted about her own drawing she didn’t realise he had been staring at her work over her shoulder for over a minute.

And when she did, she closed the notebook and blushed, and that was the first time he realized how pretty she was when her eyes shone.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly.

“Not nothing. It looked pretty amazing.”

“It’s just… nonsense I do when I’m bored.”

“Can I see?”

“Why would you want to see, Jim? It’s really nothing.”

“Come on.” And very deliberately he did that thing his mother calls puppy eyes, because maybe that’ll work. And it did.

“Ok. Here.”

He really liked it. Most of it was black and white but some were colored. “What do you use?”

“Watercolors.”

“It’s really amazing, Pam.”

“It’s not.”

“Well, I think it is. And I think you should show it, from time to time.”

She looked at him, and he felt warm and really observed. Not an easy feeling. And then she nodded. “Maybe I should.”

He fled to his seat because, really, that warm thing inside him was completely inappropriate. Because she was engaged.

She doesn’t really like this job. Sometimes it’s hard for her to hide how annoyed she is at Michael, or at Dwight, or at Angela. But she does, because she needs to keep the job, just like everybody else does.

She hates being the center of attention. Especially when it’s Michael the one putting her there. Still, she can hold her own sometimes, and Jim suspects there is an energy inside Pam that is rarely shown but that could be formidable.

Yeah, Jim muses over his cheese sandwich. Maybe he knows a lot about her.

Because maybe he has been paying too much attention since that lunch at Cugino’s on his first day here.

This documentary crew seem to have noticed it. Or maybe their being there makes him self-aware… or…  or what?

When Pam emerges from Michael’s office later that day, giving an almighty slam to his door and heading to the bathroom, he knows she’s crying. Not because he’s especially observant, or not only because of that. He’s seen her cry and try to hide it before.

When she emerges, he walks over to her desk, grabs a couple of jelly beans and asks if she’s ok.

“Headache,” she says. And, almost as if she’s trying to prove a point, she takes some aspirin out of a drawer and swallows it with cold tea sitting on her desk.

“I hope you get better.”

“Sure.”

Pam goes back to the bathroom a moment later. He waits for a while, as people go away for the weekend. He thought those camera guys would leave too, but he sees them around, lingering. Jim is almost sure they’ve hid cameras and he’s not sure how to feel about that.

He likes privacy, he just realizes, but it’s too late for that. They’ve signed the agreements and, even though he is sure this documentary is never going to air - who on Earth will be interested in some losers’ lives inside a boring office? - he’s not sure how all these cameras are going to affect his life in the near future.

As he thinks this, the door to the kitchen opens and Pam emerges, eyes red and cheeks a little swollen.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hi.”

He just wants to get up and hug her, but they don’t do that, and this doesn’t seem to be a good moment to start.

As they speak of stupid stuff, without really listening, he can’t help to glance at the camera badly hidden behind the coat rack. This is not them. This clipped mockery of small talk. And he hates it. This is definitely not them, and this can’t be them for the next weeks or months.

And as she asks him if he’s walking out and he is about to do so, just to be with her a little longer before the weekend, there is Roy and that damn honk.

“Have a nice weekend,” she says.

“Yeah. Definitely. You too. Enjoy it.”

She takes her things in a hurry and he knows she doesn’t want Roy to get angry. Enjoy it. What a stupid thing to say.

Not fair. Not fair that Roy gets to go home with her and not fair that she has to go with him.

With a sudden urge, Jim stands up, and almost at a run manages to get to the door and shut it at his back, in case one of those documentary guys wants to follow him.

“Hey, Pam.”

She is waiting for the elevator, her head raises from looking at her feet and she smiles.

“Hey. What is it?”

Both look around. Apparently, they are alone.

“Do you want to go out?” He sounds like a robot. As if somebody was reading each word form a separate piece of paper.

“Now? With the guys? I can’t-”

“No. Not with the guys. With me. Listen,” he carries on as she opens her mouth, or he knows he’ll lose his determination. “I know. You are engaged. I get it. But the thing is…” Jim sighs, “The thing is, Pam, I like you. I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while.”

“What?” Pam says, now looking at the wall, at the ceiling, at the floor, everywhere but him. And then the elevator dings and the door opens.

“Wait a moment. Please.” Jim grabs her arm, trying for the gesture to be as delicate as possible.

Roy honks again.

“Tell him that you’ll be late. And… and give me a chance?”

“A chance… a chance for what?” she asks, as the elevator door close again.

“A chance to make you consider me. Because it’s not fair that I got to meet you so late. That when I came around you were already engaged. So, give me a chance. Drinks. Dinner. Right now. And then… then you tell me to drop it.”

Pam bites her lip and shuffles her weight from one feet to the other.

“Roy’s waiting outside…”

“Tell him you’re going to be late,” he insists.

“But Jim, we…”

He just looks at her, pleading with his eyes. There are no more arguments. Just the hope that she would see things the way he does.

“One drink…” she whispers, more to herself, nodding very slowly.

“One drink,” Jim can’t believe his ears, and yet, he pushes his luck. “On an empty stomach?”

She chuckles, and pulls the sleeves of her cardigan.

“Ok… dinner could happen.”

She finally looks into his eyes and she is smiling a smile that makes him weak in the knees.

“Ok. Let me get my stuff.”

As he re enters the office he hears her talking. “No, I have to stay late. I won’t come home now. Later. I said later, Roy.”

He eavesdrops, in case there is something more, but the conversation seems to end there. He needs to hurry, he can’t allow her to overthink it right now.

As he grabs his messenger bag, he remembers the Jell-O mold he prepared for Michael, but he doesn’t care anymore. It’s going to be one messy affair on Monday.

With two long strides he is out the door, nodding in passing to the sound guy, now putting away his stuff.

Pam is still in front of the elevator, clutching her phone. She turns around as she hears him and he is relieved to see her smile again.

“You ok?”

She nods. “More than ok.”