Pam’s eyes snapped open, as they did every morning, five seconds before her alarm clock went off. Usually she was filled with thoughts of what the day might bring (even on this, the longest day of her life) but today (or rather, this time) she could only think one thing: I’m in love with Jim.

She daydreamed for a little bit about what it might be like if he loved, or even liked, her back. She had an inkling this might be the case; he was always so friendly with her, for instance, and Karen, Penny, Larissa…even Kelly had seemed to think there was something there. But on the other hand, he’d straight up told her he was in love with someone yesterday, and he was dating Katy, so what were the odds he was in love with her, Pam? And add to that that she knew Jim was a highly moral person; what were the odds he’d have confessed to being in love with her while she was engaged to Roy?

That was the biggest problem of them all, of course, and it decided right then to turn over and grumble about how she’d set the alarm to snooze. Roy. She couldn’t afford to indulge all these new and exciting feelings about Jim because she wasn’t free to do so. She needed a plan to deal with Roy.

She thought long and hard about what to do with Roy as she showered and changed into the by now so familiar clothes. She laughed softly to herself: Jim had teased her a few times about the fact that she only wore various combinations of the same clothes, and Roy had made some cutting remarks (fuddy-duddy being the kindest) about her wardrobe as well, but they’d both lose their marbles if they realized how many days in a row she’d worn the exact same clothing. She thought back to the debacle that was two times ago when she’d rejected Roy’s proposed date. He’d screamed about how she couldn’t make up her mind, how he’d finally gotten nagged into setting a date and she’d decided she was too high and mighty to take him up on it. It was not an experience she cared to repeat, but she had to break up with him or she couldn’t kiss Jim.

She was definitely interested in kissing Jim.

She tried to think about when might be the best time to break up with Roy. Obviously not after he’d drunk enough to set a date. So, earlier, before he started drinking: that meant, before the cruise. Maybe that would be kind: maybe breaking up with him after work but before the cruise would be best. That way they’d be alone: no audience for Roy to play to, no public shame for either of them in breaking a long engagement, lower stakes.

It seemed like a good idea, so she went about her day with that in mind, and decided to enjoy herself beforehand. She bought Dwight’s stapler, then pretended to need to refill it, discovering (as she’d known she would) the small baggie of dark red, almost purple powder. She forced out a high-pitched squeal like she imagined a woman in a 1960s sitcom might give seeing a mouse.

“Aieeeee!” OK, so she sounded like a bad parody comic panel. It still did the job: everyone came running.

“What is it, Pam?” Jim was looking at her strangely, and she felt a warm feeling bubble down from her chest into her stomach and points south as she met his look of concern. How could she have pretended for so long to herself that she was not in love with this man? He wasn’t even looking at her anymore—his attention had shifted to the bag on the desk—and she still felt folded in a warm psychic embrace by his very presence. It was like she’d surfaced after swimming for a long time underwater: long enough that she’d gotten used to her lungs burning, and the sudden ability to breathe freely was an unexpected pleasure. His smile was oxygen, and she was going to huff the stuff like it was going out of style.

But first, she made sure to meet his eye again and winked, hard.

His face flushed every so slightly, and she wondered if she looked as discombobulated as he did—because she certainly felt the same difficulty breathing.

“Jim! I found a…mysterious substance in my new stapler.” She lowered her voice to a piercing stage whisper that she knew from experience would carry farther in the office than her normal speaking voice ever did. “Do you think it might be drugs?”

Jim’s eyebrows quirked and she could tell from the way he oh-so-casually half-turned to make sure his voice also carried into the rest of the room. “You know, I was just hearing about a new street drug that’s dark purple. The kids call it…The Red Death.”

“That is highly illogical. Why do they call it The Red Death if it’s purple?” Dwight had taken a half-step towards Jim and Pam. Now she just had to lure him all the way.

“I think I saw the same article. It was on CNN…or maybe NBC?” She pursed her lips in mock befuddlement. “CNBC? Anyway, I hear one snort of it and you feel like you can fly.”

“But if you use it too often, your skin starts to fall off.” Jim was clearly getting into the spirit of the thing, and they both made sure not to actually look at Dwight, though she was sure Jim was just as aware as she was of their coworker’s scrutiny.

“And then they powder the skin again to make a new batch.”

“That’s right. That’s what gives it the color: human blood.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Dwight had joined them at the desk and all Pam could think was gotcha. “You said it was purple.”

“It is purple!” Pam waved the baggie in front of Dwight. “But they call it The Red Death because…”

“Because you know how the ancient Greeks didn’t have a word for red?” Jim jumped into the breach. “This is like that.”

“Blue, Jim.” Dwight glared at them both. “The ancient Greeks didn’t have a word for blue.”

“Right, anyway, this was named like that.” Jim wasn’t backing down, but he didn’t make it obvious; instead he just tossed it off like he was sure of himself. That sense of sprezzatura was one of the things she loved about him, she realized, and she felt her face flush as she let herself think the words.

“Clearly you are lying. Pamela’s blushing gives it away.” Dwight snorted. “Try harder next time, you two. Or better yet, don’t and actually let some people get some work done around here.”

“I wasn’t blushing about that! I was blushing about…something else.” Pam’s desire not to let the prank die (or perhaps dye, in context) almost got the better of her determination not to say anything to Jim until she was a free agent. “Anyway, the name comes because whoever named it thought it was more like a maroon or a Harvard-style crimson than a purple. I mean look at it.” She gestured with the baggie again.

“Then why isn’t it The Maroon Death, Pam?” Dwight argued. “And what else were you blushing about?”

“None of your business,” Pam sniffed. “And it’s The Red Death because it sounds better. And maroon’s a type of red, anyway.”

“Or purple,” Jim added, semi-helpfully.

“Or purple,” she conceded to Jim, “but in this case, Red.”

“In that case…” Dwight looked torn between trying to continue proving them wrong and his desire to take control of the situation. The latter instinct won out as he grabbed the baggie. “I will conduct a thorough investigation of this incident.”

“Good luck!” Jim shouted at his back as Dwight disappeared back into the break room. “Nice work, Beesly,” he added in a more normal whisper as he turned back to her.

“Nice work yourself, Halpert.” She grinned back at him. “How long do you think it will take him to realize that’s his own baggie from his own stapler?”

“Somehow it will be both too long and not long enough.” Jim shook his head. “Wait…what is in the baggie? It’s not actually drugs, is it?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s powdered beetroot.” Pam giggled.

“Of course it is. And that’s somehow…not a drug?”

“Not even a little.” Though it had helped her nausea yesterday, but she was still pretty sure that had been psychological.

“Awesome.” He grinned, and when she met his eyes and smiled neither one of them wanted to look away. Pam counted in her head. After twenty-seven seconds of eye contact Jim abruptly turned away. “Anyway, I guess these sales won’t make themselves.”

“Guess not.” She was disappointed, even though she knew it was unfair. She wasn’t single yet, and for all that Jim had an uncanny ability to tell what she was thinking, it wasn’t really telepathy, so he couldn’t tell that, along with counting, she’d been screaming kiss me at the top of her mental lungs. After all, she reasoned, if he initiated it it wasn’t really her fault—even though she knew, deep down, she’d still have felt guilty. So maybe he did know her thought processes pretty well after all. Or maybe he wasn’t actually interested in kissing her—lowering thought.

The rest of the day went about as normal, or at least the new normal. She tipped Brenda and Toby away from the cruise, made an excuse to send both Kelly and Ryan into the supply closet for different things in the space of twenty seconds, and carried on a light flirtation with Jim. At the meeting she sat beside Roy and tried not to think about how this was probably the last time they’d sit next to each other. When five o’clock rolled past and the office started heading out en-masse to the cruise, she made Roy wait until everyone else had pulled out of the parking lot before asking, in a smaller voice than she’d intended, if they could go somewhere and talk.

He sighed. “Seriously, Pammy? We can talk on the boat.”

This put her back up. “Seriously, Roy. It’s important.”

He rolled his eyes and started up the truck. She was preparing to yell at him for ignoring her when she noticed they were pulling into the parking lot of Poor Richard’s. Of course, for Roy, “somewhere to talk” meant a bar.  They went in and sat down at the bar and Roy ordered a Coors. She realized she was going to have to talk fast, before he got the booze into his system.

“Roy…” she faltered, then realized she wasn’t going to get any help so she might as well do this herself. “There isn’t any easy way to say this, so…I think we should break up.”

“WHAT?” His hand crunched around the Coors can and a spurt of beer slid down the side and onto the bar. She watched it intensely, not feeling up to meeting his eyes.

“I think we should break up.”

“I fucking heard you the first time, Pammy. I meant what the hell are you talking about? ‘We should break up.’ ‘There’s no easy way to say this.’” He mimicked her voice. “Bullshit.”

“What’s bullshit?” She was passing quickly from nervous into angry, and she was pretty sure he was well past her there.

“You. You’re bullshit.” He gestured wildly with the Coors and more beer fizzed over the side. “Ten years I have to deal with your nagging about marriage, and setting a date, and…”

“And you never fucking did it!” She exploded at him, pointing her finger in his face. “You proposed to me three years ago, but that didn’t count, did it? You never meant to marry me. You just wanted to keep on going on like we’ve been going on! Well, that doesn’t work for me, Roy, and I’m done.”

“Of course I wanted to keep on going like we’ve been going! We’ve been happy, Pammy, haven’t we?” He was transitioning from angry Roy into sad Roy, the Roy who’d wept on her shoulder when his favorite uncle died—in some ways, her favorite Roy, but not now. Not when they were having a serious conversation, because while angry Roy might yell and throw things, at least he listened. Sad Roy just wallowed.

“You’ve been happy, Roy. I’ve been…stationary.” She grabbed the keys to the truck off the table. “Get one of the guys to pick you up—they all know where Poor Richard’s is, after all. I’m leaving.”

“But I love you, Pammy!”

She didn’t turn, but she paused before walking out the door. “I’m sorry, Roy.”

She heard a crash from behind her, as if someone had thrown a mostly-full can of Coors against the window in the bar, and she quickened her stride as she made her way into the parking lot. She got into the truck, pulled the seat forward, and locked the doors before letting out a huge sigh. She wanted to go on the cruise, wanted to go jump into Jim’s arms and give him a kiss, but she realized that Katy was with him, because she’d forgotten to get Larissa onto the cruise, and she didn’t have it in her to kiss Jim with his girlfriend sitting next to him in the booth. One major emotional step in a day, she thought, before laughing mirthlessly at the thought that if that was so she was probably never going to get out of this loop. The laughter turned into sobs and she wept into the steering wheel for a lot longer than she cared to admit to herself.

She was about to start up the truck and finally head to the cruise, just to have somewhere to go, when Darryl’s car pulled into the lot and he rushed into bar. She cracked the window of the truck just enough to hear him saying something about “lucky I had my phone on” and “gonna have to pay for that you know” before she caught the most important phrase: “it’s a booze cruise, right?”

So Darryl was going to take Roy on the cruise to drown his sorrows. That tore it: she wasn’t going there herself. And that meant this was not the right time to break up with Roy after all. She’d have to do it what—earlier? Later, on the cruise itself? No, she couldn’t be on that cruise with a Roy who was fresh off their breakup, who hadn’t had any time to process or sober up. That meant this whole cycle was a waste, and she was going to have to avoid the cruise after all.

Dammit. She’d been looking forward to kissing Jim. Well, she’d just have to remember to invite Larissa along next time, so there were no other distractions once she’d…dealt with Roy.

The thought of Larissa turned her towards Melanie and the YMCA. Tonight’s abstract piece was all blacks and grays, with a tiny little smudge of white in the upper reaches that could be a bird flying through the clouds, or the sun peeking through to cast daylight on the world. But in her heart of hearts she knew what it was.

It was hope, not quite present but never quite extinguished.

She crashed on Melanie’s couch that night after putting together a sob story that was, at its heart, entirely true. She fell asleep with the thought that for Melanie this was a sort of kindness to a near stranger, while for her it was just crashing at a friend’s place.

This repeated world was a real mindfuck, she thought as she finally fell asleep.