Pam’s eyes snapped open, as they did every morning, five seconds before her alarm clock went off. Oh god, another day.

She knew she didn’t have it in her to even think about the booze cruise, or more specifically what she’d overheard towards the end of it, so she busied herself by spending an alarming intensity on her day-to-day tasks. She made sure the temperature on the shower was exactly what she wanted. She decided on oatmeal for breakfast, but one of those fancy oatmeals she’d seen on a kitchen blog she occasionally read for fun. As she was chopping apples and wondering if they still had the walnuts her aunt had given them for Christmas stuck somewhere in the back of the pantry, she focused on the people she could help.

Michael: it shouldn’t be too hard to find a way to get him to embarrass himself in the way he liked instead of the way he didn’t. Maybe she could get him some props for his business lecture that he could use inappropriately, but which wouldn’t cause people on the boat to throw themselves overboard.

Toby: well, he was probably actually pretty happy not being on the boat, but not about not being excluded by Michael intentionally. Maybe she could gently recommend that he come a little earlier…and there was probably something she could do to help on the happiness front, but she couldn’t think of it right now.

Dwight and Angela: was there something she could buy from the vending machine that would get Dwight to pay attention to Angela on the ship?

She sighed. This should be easier than it felt. Then again, how many times had Bill Murray had to do this? It must be thousands. She didn’t want to wait that long, but at least she could believe that she wasn’t being slow. It was just a matter of her not figuring things out. It took time.

Maybe she needed to get out of her own head.

As she ate the oatmeal (the recipe was disappointing, but she was glad she’d tried something new) she thought about the one person she had definitely hurt, not helped, during these cycles. Karen Filippelli. Apparently, according to Laurie, she was good people. Pam trusted Laurie as a judge of character; she’d known when Antonio at Utica was stealing supplies, after all. And Pam felt a burning need to know more about the woman she’d inadvertently caused to be hit by a truck, even if the woman in question was undoubtedly perfectly fine right now and the truck collision had happened in another dimension.

Well, she knew where she was driving this afternoon.

As to how she was going to actually talk to Karen or get introduced beyond hitting her with a car…she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

First, though, she had to go to work. Roy came charging in late again, they made their way into work in silence except for the radio, and she walked into the office at the normal time. This time she bought Dwight’s Rolodex.

At her desk, she flipped through the addresses and phone numbers. Most of them were duplicates from the directory system, of course. That made sense, because Dwight had always told Jim (loudly enough that the whole office could hear) that “you can’t trust the computer system. They can delete things remotely!”

Jim had, of course, replied by asking why the company would choose to delete its own customer database, but Dwight had just sniffed and told Jim he wouldn’t understand.

That seemed to be his default response when he was bested, she’d noticed.

But there weren’t just customers in here, or if they were customers they weren’t in her directory (it did occur to her for a moment that Dwight could be right about the company’s systems, but she dismissed this as unlikelier than that he was using the Rolodex for other information).

The best part was when she got to the Ms. Martin, Angela was in there. She quickly flipped back and forth and confirmed there was no Beesly, Pamela or even Halpert, James. No one else in the office at all, in fact. Just Martin, Angela.

And there was a surprising amount of information about Angela Martin contained on this device. Birthday. Phone number. Favorite food. Favorite food (subcategory: beets). Favorite animal (sub-category: non-feline). A myriad of other preferences. Address. Parents’ names. Best friends’ names. This last category confused Pam for a little while until she registered that they were all cats.

It was actually an overwhelming amount of information. Pam didn’t know half these things about Roy, and they were engaged. Dwight Schrute had clearly been doing his homework.

Jim stepped up to her desk, and she instinctively filed the Rolodex over to G (Gebrasalassie, Hailie). She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t want Jim using this in a prank against Dwight. She’d told him about her suspicions before and he’d doubted her; he didn’t deserve to use it now, and more to the point Angela and even Dwight deserved the chance to let their love flourish.

That didn’t mean, though, that she wasn’t glad to talk to Jim. And as they bantered back and forth about the Rolodex (though not the Angela page) she started to think about Jim more seriously.

She knew his birthday (October 1, 1978). His phone number (570-555-8872, though she didn’t have it programmed into her phone because…well, she wasn’t entirely sure why but the idea of Roy finding it terrified her for some reason). His favorite food, his favorite animals (even the ones that weren’t cats), all of it. His parents were Gerald and Elizabeth: always Gerald, never Elizabeth, he’d once joked, because his mother’s mother was also Elizabeth (Liza) and so his mom was Betsy, but his dad hated the name Gerry.

Why did she know this? Because she’d noticed it, she realized. Because he’d mentioned these things one at a time over years and she had, without really being aware of what she was doing, clutched at everything he’d told her. She wondered if he’d done the same. She wondered if he’d done the same with Katy and felt guilty. She didn’t even bother to wonder if Roy had done that for her, just as she knew she hadn’t with him. Oh, she knew most of it because they’d been together for years, but his favorite animal? Maybe a dog? Roy wouldn’t have told her that because he’d never have thought about a question that frivolous, and she wouldn’t have told him hers because he wouldn’t have cared.

She realized she was thinking about Roy in the past tense.

At some point she slipped out of the office (it was becoming a habit) and turned the car north towards Stamford. The three hour drive gave her some time to think.

She liked Jim. This much was obvious. They were best friends. He’d been her best friend for…longer than she cared to realize, actually, since Izzy who had been her best friend had stopped hanging out with her. Well, that was unfair. She’d stopped hanging out with Izzy, because every time she had made plans with her Roy had come up with some reason she couldn’t go, or he’d gotten mad that she’d gone. Not ostentatiously mad in the way that made for obvious abuse. Not even really angry. Just put out and pouty and wondering where his dinner was. It wasn’t that he ever prohibited her from seeing Izzy, he just made it more unpleasant to do so. He sucked the joy out of it, and eventually they just stopped seeing each other very much. But he couldn’t stop her seeing Jim, and he hadn’t even managed to make her dislike seeing him—though he had, she realized, made her feel guilty about it. Why else was Jim’s number not saved in her phone, so that the rare calls they made to each other looked like he was someone unimportant: the dry cleaners, maybe, or the mechanic. He was her best friend, dammit. She pulled into rest area and programmed his name into her phone. Jim Halpert. There. It wouldn’t last the night, of course, but that was hardly her fault, and it made her feel better.

Jim was her best friend. But was he more than that? He was always there for her. She thought he might like her, actually, when she first started. Well, not just like her. He clearly did like her, or at least find her less objectionable than everyone else in the office (which was admittedly not a high bar now that she thought of it). He went out of his way to hang out with her. He seemed to smile at her more. She’d thought at first that meant he like liked her, like Roy did or something. Their first lunch out when they were just starting out at Dunder Mifflin had felt a lot like a date: Cugino’s wasn’t the most romantic spot in Scranton, but it also wasn’t the sort of place most people ended up in a short lunch hour, and he’d stared into her eyes in a way that had made her face feel warm. She’d ended up mentioning Roy in passing as they walked back to his car and now that she thought about it (and while she hadn’t thought about it thought about it in years, it had felt oddly like a raw tooth that you can’t help poking with your tongue, so she’d thought about it enough in the intervening time to remember well) he’d almost stumbled when she’d said it. He’d played it off as some kind of joke, she couldn’t remember exactly what, but it had been the first time she’d seen what she thought of as Jim’s Roy-face: the little twist in his mouth he sometimes got when she mentioned Roy.

That face had bothered her for years, actually, because she felt disloyal to Roy that she let him do it, but she didn’t feel like it was such a big thing that she should actually say something to Jim. But she usually surprised it out of him: it didn’t just come every time her fiancé’s name was mentioned, so she let it slide. And besides, most of the time he made it, she agreed with him. He’d made it when Roy had cancelled their romantic weekend in the Poconos to go to Vegas with Kenny and he’d been surprised to see her at work when she was supposed to be on vacation. He’d made it when she’d worn her winter coat with the hole in it (just a little one,  but still, a hole) two weeks after confiding in him that she’d been planning to buy a new coat at a Macy’s sale, and she’d had to confess that Roy had spent the budget she’d had for that on rims for the truck. Most recently, he’d made it when she’d told him Roy hadn’t supported her about the graphic design internship, just for a moment, and she’d blown up at him because she couldn’t blow up at Roy.

And, she admitted to herself as she changed lanes, because every time she saw that face it felt like an I told you so.

But what if it wasn’t an I told you so? What if it was something more…personal? More intimate?

What if it was an I could do better?

Before today—not this particular cycle, this whole damn day-within-a-day process she was apparently condemned to—she would have been angry if she’d let herself have that thought. How dare he think he knew better than she did? How dare he judge her relationship? But today, she didn’t feel that upswell of indignation. She felt hope. She felt like there was the possibility—just the possibility—that she wanted his face to mean that. And that terrified her almost as much as knowing for sure that Roy didn’t really want to marry her had.

She pulled into Stamford and decided against going directly to Dunder Mifflin. She couldn’t decide how to meet Karen Filippelli (did you just march up to the desk and say “tell her not to cross the street at 3:30?”) and so she headed instead to the shiatsu massage place—but she parked the block before so she couldn’t trigger that horrible accident again.

The massage place was just as good as she’d imagined it had to be if there was going to be a flier for it in Scranton. She felt relaxed, calmed, at peace. Even with the turmoil roiling her life, she was able to breathe more easily.

She was standing in front of the cash register waiting to finish paying (there was a surprising line; it must be a really popular place) when Karen Filippelli walked out of one of the other rooms, carrying some stuff in a shoulder bag labeled “Dunder Mifflin.” Pam recognized it as free swag given out by corporate for some kind of logo rebranding and environmental push two years ago.

“Hey.”

“Hi?” The other woman seemed skeptical of this stranger trying to address her in a public space.

“Do you work at Dunder Mifflin? Sorry, I noticed the bag.” Pam gestured lamely at the bag which proudly proclaimed “Using Only Old-Growth Trees!”

“Oh! Yeah, I…I’m sorry, have we met?”

“No, no, sorry! Pam Beesly, I work at the Scranton branch.”

Karen stared at her strangely. “Karen Filippelli. Scranton’s a long drive. What are you doing all the way up here?”

Pam gestured widely at the massage parlor around them. “Would you believe there was a flyer for this place in the Scranton public library?”

“Seriously?” Karen grinned, and her face was totally transformed. Pam felt like she could like that face. “That’s a long drive on a workday.”

“Yeah, but I really needed the massage.”

“Apparently.” Suddenly Karen clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh god. Scranton. You work with Michael Scott.” She grinned again. “You do need a massage.” She leaned past Pam to the woman working the cash register just as Pam moved to the front of the line. “Put her on my card, Anna.”

“You really don’t have to…”

“Oh, no, I’ve met Michael Scott. This is the least I can do for someone who has to deal with him every day.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.” Karen handed two cards to the lady at the register. “Besides, it gets me another punch on my frequent buyer card.”

“You come here that often?”

“It’s just across the street. And anyway, my boss might not be Michael but…it’s still a man’s world up there if you know what I mean.”

Pam nodded. She did. “Thanks. Can I buy you a coffee or something? Least I can do after you got the massage.”

Karen tucked her arm into Pam’s. “Sure. It’s not like I was looking forward to going back to work anyway.”

Karen led Pam down two storefronts into a Dunkin’ Donuts.  They ordered drinks (black coffee for Karen, iced latte for Pam) and sat in the window.

“So…Scranton…is it really as crazy as everyone says?”

“How crazy do they say it is?” Pam wasn’t sure how much to tell this woman, even if Laurie did think she was good people—and even if she was being incredibly nice to her.

“Well…let’s just say that every single training we have to do, Josh says it’s because of something down in Scranton. And I did meet Michael at the last sales convention, because Jan insisted I come as a female representative of the salesforce, and he wouldn’t stop talking to Jan.”

“Then no, it’s not as crazy as they say.” Karen looked briefly disappointed until Pam smirked. “It’s worse.”

She proceeded to tell Karen about the time their diversity day had turned into a stereotypes hour, and then about the time she and Jim had made up disease names to prank Dwight. She surprised herself by having the other woman in stitches by the time she was through. She wasn’t used to thinking of herself as funny, but Karen was literally gasping for breath.

“No, no, he didn’t say that.”

“I swear.”

“Oh god.” Karen wiped her eyes. “So how long have you and Jim been dating?”

“What?”

“You are dating, right?” Karen looked at the ring on her hand. “Oh! I’m sorry, you’re engaged! Congratulations!”

Pam turned beet red: she could see her own reflection in the window and worried it was going to try to run away. “No, I…I’m engaged to someone else. Roy. He…works in the warehouse.” Then she realized: she didn’t have to do this. Nothing she said had any consequences, and anyway, she didn’t want to be engaged to Roy anymore. So she could say what she wanted. “Well, I was…I don’t think it’s actually going anywhere.”

“I should say not!” Karen scooted her stool a little closer to Pam. “Come on, you’re really not dating this Jim guy?”

“…No.”

Karen rolled her eyes. “Well, it doesn’t sound like you’re super enthused about this Roy character either. You didn’t mention him once before I asked if you and Jim were dating.”

“No, as I said…I think that’s going to end sooner rather than later.” Probably before “today” actually ended, she thought, though obviously not this cycle.

“And then you’ll date Jim?”

“Why do you assume I’m going to date Jim?” Pam was red again, she could feel her face burning and the reflection looked almost maroon.

“I mean, I could say ‘because you talked about him nonstop’ or ‘because if he looks anything like as hot as you say he’s funny, you need to snatch that up,’ but I’ll go with ‘because you blush every time I say his name.’” Karen elbowed Pam lightly and winked. “Jim.”

Pam felt flames up the side of her face.

“See?” Karen glanced at her watch. “Look…Pam, I have to go, our boss has us doing a camaraderie event at 5, and I need to kick his ass at Call of Duty, but it was really nice to meet you. Give me a call some time—here’s my number—and tell me how things go with Jim.” She winked, tossed her cup into the trash, and walked out.

Pam sat and stared at her reflection, willing it to turn a normal color. It took a long time—but on the plus side, at least she got a second drink out of her iced latte, once the ice melted.