Pam’s eyes snapped open, as they did every morning, five seconds before her alarm clock went off. Or rather, five seconds before her alarm clock would have gone off, because as her eyes opened they were met with a ray of sunshine arcing across the bed—a ray that could  in no way have come into the bedroom she shared with Roy, which faced north, and which in any case had (for every conceivable iteration of the day she’d just spent) had its curtains firmly drawn and its shutters closed. This had, in fact, been true for most of the time she had lived in the house, since Roy was extremely uninterested in ever having sunlight interfere with a good hungover drowse.

This room, however, was brightly lit, and there was no alarm clock in sight. She stretched and yawned and then flopped back flat on the mattress as the implications of this sank in. She was in Mark’s room. In Jim’s house. Not with Roy. That must mean…she scrambled for her cellphone, plugged in by the bedside, and checked the date.

Yes.

After so many todays, it was finally, blessedly tomorrow.

Every single thing that was different seemed to call to her with a caressing tone in its voice, and she couldn’t help but respond. Hello, clothes that aren’t set out for me in the morning but crammed into a big green suitcase, she wanted to yell. Good morning, slightly discolored spot where I’m guessing Mark usually hangs a picture Jim didn’t want me to see. Greetings to you on this fine day, pack of tampons sitting on my duffel bag because it was on top and I needed to get under it to my toothbrush last night. She grinned and shuffled through the clothes in her suitcase for the least-wrinkled things she could wear to work. Gray, gray, gray…why was everything she owned in muted shades? If ever there was a day for bright and garish, it was this gorgeous, glorious new day. She briefly flirted with the idea of calling Kelly just to ask for something more colorful, but if she was right and things had gone the way she hoped, she might be interrupting something there.

Thinking of “interrupting something,” she thought back to last night and felt her color rise, not in embarrassment of what she and Jim had done, but in anticipatory excitement for what she thought they might just do tonight, now that she was no longer caught in the loop.

She hustled out of the bedroom and took a moment to reorient herself in the apartment. She’d been here once before, of course, when Jim had hosted that barbecue and she’d found her way into his bedroom on the “tour,” but it felt different knowing that she and Jim were alone in the house. She was pretty sure she remembered which door was the bathroom, but even that was uncertain: the barbecue had been a while back, and she’d been so focused in the evening on worrying about whether she’d wake back up in Roy’s bed that she wasn’t confident that she retained anything about her nightly ablutions.

Fortunately, Jim chose that moment to open the bathroom door and walk down the hall towards his bedroom, whistling. Even more fortunately, he did so wearing, as far as she could tell, only a towel. He didn’t appear to notice her—at least until someone let out a wolf-whistle and she blushed again to realize that it was her.

“Uh…hey there Beesly.” He clutched the towel tighter, which had the effect of moving it further up his legs, while she allowed herself to appreciate the motion before replying.

“Hey yourself.” She had done it. She had gotten through to tomorrow. What was a little embarrassment compared to that? She refused to let it stop her. “Looking good this morning, Halpert.” She was delighted to see that when he blushed, he blushed all over, just like she did only…different somehow. Maybe because watching the red cascade over his chest drew attention to his chest hairs, maybe because she was used to herself being easily flustered but amused and warmed by the thought of him being equally so.

“So, uh, apparently your, um, problem got resolved?” He was stammering. It was cute.

She decided to lean into his embarrassment a bit. “It did. It looks like you have a problem there too…” she let her eyes drop down to the towel. “Anything I can help with?”

He grinned as he reached the door to his bedroom. “Maybe later.” He leaned around the door as he slipped his body inside, his head still in the corridor, and she heard a distinct clump that could only be the towel hitting the floor. “Breakfast in fifteen?”

So this was the meaning of the phrase “hoist with your own petard,” she mused, as she fled into the bathroom, barely squeaking out a “fine” in answer to his question. She hurried through her routine, trying desperately to remember if this was a day for washing hair or not washing hair, and ultimately deciding that she might as well skip it, so that she could be sure to make breakfast in time.

It only struck her when she got downstairs that when Jim said “breakfast in fifteen,” he meant that he would be making breakfast. The scent of bacon wafted by her nose and…was that a waffle iron? Jim looked up from the stovetop, where he had two different…no, three different pans going, and grinned at her. “I didn’t know how you liked your eggs, so I made both fried,” he gestured to the right, “and scrambled,” the left.

“You didn’t have to do that.” The waffle iron beeped and she instinctively went to flip the waffle out.

“I know. But I wanted to.” He grinned. “Nothing but the best for my Beesly.” The grin faltered just a little. “Uh…”

The shower had renewed her font of courage, and she hadn’t spent the last two weeks of subjective time staring at Jim’s face not to be able to know what he was thinking, so she decided to put him out of his misery. “Yes, I’m your Beesly.” She opened a cupboard. “Where’s the syrup.”

“Already on the table.” He gestured to where she saw syrup, butter, and two mugs sitting beside two full table settings.

“Great.” She went and retrieved a plate from the table and flipped the waffle into it, then filled the iron again from the little bowl of batter beside it. “You did all this in fifteen minutes?”

“I’m a fast dresser.” He flipped the fried egg and the bacon and continued stirring the scrambled eggs. “And it did take you longer than fifteen minutes.”

“It did not!” She glanced up at the clock. “OK, maybe twenty.”

He grinned again. “Twenty-two.”

“You timed me?”

“No, I timed the waffle.” He reached for the plate she was still holding, and started shoveling bacon onto it. “Which kind of egg?”

“Why not both?”

“A woman after my own heart.” He filled her plate and shooed her over to the  table, where she noted that one of the mugs was full of tea, the other coffee. She sat by the tea-mug and contemplated him. He was dressed as she usually saw him, in the same work clothes he usually wore, but there was something different about him—or maybe about her, or about the way she was watching him. Seeing him in his own home, in his own kitchen, moving around un-self-consciously made her aware of just how large he was. At work, he stretched and slouched and generally made himself look longer but shorter than he was. Here in the kitchen he was all Jim, and she liked what she saw—so much so that it took a moment for her to notice that he was talking to her.

“I said, can you pass me my plate? Geez, Bees, my eyes are up here.” He winked at her and her face warmed again as she passed him the plate. She rallied quickly though, and cast an appraising eye up and down his form.

“I don’t know, Halpert, who said I was interested in your eyes?”

“I happen to think they’re one of my best features.”

“Look at yourself in the mirror much?”

He shook his head and started eating, and she followed suit. The food was surprisingly good—or perhaps not surprisingly, as Jim had clearly had some practice cooking breakfast. She broke the silence first. “So, is this always how you eat in the mornings, or…”

“Nah, but I’m the earlybird in the family, so whenever I’m home for Thanksgiving or Christmas I get up and cook for whoever’s staying there. I mostly specialize in breakfast foods, as you see.” He gestured to the full table. “After 11am, my menu is much more limited.”

“The famous grilled cheese?”

He flashed a smile, clearly glad she’d remembered—as if she could forget. “And the occasional PB&J.”

“Classics.” She sipped her tea. “You know, I’ve heard some people say—and don’t get me wrong, I know this is a radical proposition—“

“That’s you, Pam, always on the edge of things.”

She dipped her head. “Exactly. As I was saying, I’ve heard it said that you can—and stop me if you’ve heard this—eat breakfast all day. Even,” she lowered her voice, “for dinner.”

He clasped a hand across his chest. “No!”

“Yes.” She grinned and he grinned back and she reveled for a moment in the joy of knowing that they were here—both metaphorically and literally—and that she didn’t have to go back. They went back to eating, and as they were cleaning up the dishes afterwards—she insisted on helping, and Jim insisted on not letting her do them alone—she brushed her arm up against his and asked a question that had been nagging at the back of her head since before they ate. “If I’m your Beesly, what does that make you?”

“Whatever you want me to be, I suppose.” He resolutely scrubbed a plate, not looking at her.

“How does my Jim sound to you?”

“It sounds perfect.” She was never sure which of them moved first, but they were kissing, and it was just as good as the night before, at least until she put her elbow into the suds—which led to a sud-fight that made them both late for work.

It was, she reflected, worth it.

Things at work were surprisingly normal, except that she kept expecting them to repeat the day before. Michael was on time, which shocked her; Dwight’s stuff was already out of the vending machine; Angela was giving her the stink-eye for…well, Pam didn’t know exactly what for, but it was probably something to do with being a hussy, but since thinking of other people as hussies was what made Angela happy she supposed it counted as a good deed. Kelly came up to her not to ask about Jim or Roy but to gush about Ryan, who in turn slunk about the office like a hunted thing, but always within sight of Kelly so Pam supposed it had gone about like she’d expected. Toby showed up to work with a giant smile on his face, which was confusing, but five minutes with Michael in his office put things back to normal there as well.

The only fly in the ointment came about 10:30 am, when Roy slammed his way upstairs and confronted her at her desk. She could see Jim’s shoulders tense, as they always did when Roy showed up, but this time she could admit to herself what she was seeing: his protectiveness and love for her shining through a small crinkling of the muscles in his back.

“Where the hell were you last night?” Roy hissed at her, and she took a moment to be grateful that he hadn’t actually yelled it as he clearly wanted to.

“What are you talking about? We broke up.” She thrust a finger in the direction of his chest. “In point of fact, you broke up with me yesterday morning.” She thrust again. “You told me not to ‘fucking be there’ when you got home.”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, c’mon Pammy, I…”

She interrupted him, which she did so rarely that it actually worked to flummox him. “Don’t ‘c’mon Pammy’ me. I told you we were done. I moved out. It’s over.” She picked up the phone and dialed the voicemail number. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

He reached over and pushed the button to hang up the phone. “We’re not done here.”

She glared at him. “Yes, we are.”

“We’re done when I say we’re done.”

She heard Jim’s whisper float across the office. “Dwight, I think someone’s interfering with Pam’s productivity.” Bless him for knowing that his direct intervention would only make things worse.

“Roy, we are through. I’m…” she wouldn’t say happy “willing to talk about it with you once you’ve calmed down, but you do not get to come up here and make threats.”

“Now listen, Pammy…”

Dwight’s voice cut through Roy’s like a knife through a (well-cooked) beet. “Pamela, is Royce here interfering with your work duties.”

She glanced up at him. “Why, yes, yes he is.”

“Then, as assistant regional manager, it is my duty to request that you return to your own duties, Mr. Anderson. I believe they are located in the warehouse, are they not?”

Roy looked over at Dwight and for a moment Pam thought he would punch him in the face, but then a different look—an anguished look she’d never actually seen on Roy before—crossed over his expression. He shrugged helplessly. “OK.” He turned to Pam. “I’m sorry, Pammy, I just get worked up. You’ll forgive me, right?”

She sighed. “I might forgive you, Roy, but I’m not coming back. I meant what I said. We’re done.”

He nodded sadly. “OK. Can we talk, like you said, in a few days or something? I’m really going to miss you, Pammy.”

“Mr. Anderson?” Dwight was still standing there, looking surprisingly fierce. She looked back at Roy and decided to let him down as easily as she could.

“We can talk, as long as you don’t expect me to change my mind.”

He nodded once more, then turned and walked back down towards the warehouse. Dwight yelled something after him about “counting this as your fifteen minute break” and she smiled up at him.

“Thank you, Dwight.”

He nodded curtly at her. “Pamela. The next time he interferes with your work, please do let me know.” And that, apparently, was that—except that she heard Jim whisper “thank you” as Dwight sat down, which Dwight studiously ignored.

Jim kept away from her desk for a little bit after that, just enough to make it not entirely obvious that he was checking in on her, but after about 11:30 he was up and down as much as ever. In fact, things with Jim were almost alarmingly normal, which only made her more aware of how much flirtation had been concealed behind jellybeans and pranks for all those years. He made his usual pilgrimages to her desk, the only difference being that they plotted out their evening—visiting two of the apartments on the list she and Larissa had composed, and sandwiches for dinner—and that she, ironically, blushed less during their conversations. At five, they watched the other workers slowly trickle away until, by five-fifteen, only they were left in the office.

Jim stood up slowly and walked to the coat rack, grabbing both their coats before offering hers to her ceremonially.

“Thank you, kind sir,” she mock-curtsied and he bowed back.

“Any time, madam.” They held hands and she practically skipped to the elevator, then leaned against him all the way down to the first floor. It felt so good to finally indulge in his presence—his feel, his scent, his touch.

When they were back in the car, and both strapped in, he turned to her, met her eyes, and raised an eyebrow. “Where to, Beesly? Dinner, apartments, mad dash across the country Thelma-and-Louise-style…”

She smiled at him. “You know what, Jim? Let’s go home.”

And so they did.