This time, for once, Roy actually remembered to take her to Poor Richard’s before the rest of the group left.

That wasn’t fair. When they’d first started dating, Roy hadn’t forgotten to pick her up for things. He’d forgotten to take her back from things—first on their nearly-last first date when he’d left her at a hockey game, but then later when they’d started drinking and she’d had to be the one to drag him back from things—but not, usually, to bring her in the first place. It was only once they started working at Dunder Mifflin, really, that he’d started to forget to include her. Maybe it was because it was easy to get swept up in the tide of everyone going out; maybe it was because he didn’t want to seem like he was “hen-pecked” (which had always seemed to her to just mean that a man actually cared what a woman thought, but to Roy it clearly meant something different). At times she’d wondered if it was a result of the transition from being cool because he had a steady girlfriend to being lame because he had a “ball and chain,” even if they weren’t married yet. But whatever the reason, he’d gotten pretty bad about actually bringing her—though usually he’d tell her, unlike yesterday. He’d call, or come upstairs, or send one of the guys who wasn’t coming to the bar (usually Lonnie, who’d had a DUI and was trying to get better about how much he drank) to tell her “the guys were going out” or he’d take her home and then leave after. Yesterday had been an aberration in that regard.

But today he was there, right at five, jingling the keys.

She involuntarily shot a glance over to Jim’s desk to see how’d he react, but he wasn’t there; then she realized she hadn’t actually seen him for the last couple of hours. Well, whatever. She was sorry she wouldn’t get a chance to ask him how his first day had gone—and what he was going to do about that University of Scranton contract. Oh well. She’d see him tomorrow. On that happy note, she bounced up to Roy and grabbed his arm as they headed out to the truck. He seemed a little nonplussed but accepting until he shook her off to get his keys out of his back pocket. They drove to Poor Richard’s in a fairly amiable silence, since the truck radio wasn’t working, and got themselves settled in the back with the rest of the warehouse guys.

About half an hour in—half a beer for Pam, three for Roy, who had pronounced himself “thirsty” as soon as he sat down—Darryl sidled up to her while Roy and Madge went to play darts.

“So, how’s the new guy fitting in upstairs?”

She found her cheeks heating, which was ridiculous. It wasn’t like Darryl had suggested anything by that comment, not that there was anything to suggest, but how had he known to ask her about Jim? Oh right, Michael’s tour—it always involved a stop down in the warehouse so Michael could ooh and aah over the forklift. A better question then: why hadn’t Roy asked her this same question?

“Good. He’s good.” She took a sip of the beer—why had she let Roy order for her? She hated IPAs—and tried to think of something more useful to say, since Darryl seemed to be waiting for her to go on. But what could she say? It wasn’t like she was going to tell Darryl about staring at the back of Jim’s neck when he bent over the copier, admiring noticing the way the hair curled around his collar. Or about Kelly’s ridiculous suggestion that she should flirt with him to make Roy jealous. Definitely not that one, given that Darryl was Roy’s best friend. “He’s pretty normal.”

Darryl leaned back and laughed. “Yeah, but at Dunder Mifflin, normal’s pretty weird, right?”

“Right.” She smiled, softly, trying not to think about air fives and nicknames. “Though I do think he’s a little reckless.”

“Reckless?” Darryl scoffed. “In an office with Michael Scott? You telling me this new guy swings off something bigger than a forklift?”

“Nothing like that.” Was she still smiling? She needed to stop that. “It’s just…he” and I, but she wasn’t going to say that to Darryl “came up with this idea to cover the fact that he didn’t come in yesterday, and it involved telling Michael that he’d get the University of Scranton account.”

“The white whale?” Darryl whistled. “Michael’s been after that since they went to Staples, what was it, three years ago?”

“Yup.”

“And now the new guy’s caught up in that? What was he thinking?” Darryl shook his head, while Pam blushed again. She’d forgotten that Michael was so obsessed with the University of Scranton account—something about the conversation with Jim, and then the…she’d have to call it what it was, at least in her own head…the flirting with Jim in the stairwell had driven it out of her mind every time it had come up. She hoped she hadn’t inadvertently gotten him into a situation he couldn’t get out of. If so, it was his own fault for being so…distracting.

“I don’t know what he was thinking.”

“He was thinking that his little sister’s in charge of buying stationary for the psych department.” Suddenly Jim was sliding into the chair across from her and Darryl one eyebrow cocked as he set down a dark, fizzy drink. “What’s this I hear about a white whale, Beesly?”

“Uh, it’s just…” she was reduced to babbling. What was he doing here? Why wasn’t Darryl surprised to see him?

“Jim! You made it.” Darryl got up and clapped the newcomer on the back. “Glad you could join us.” He slid into the seat next to Jim and proceeded to detail the events of three years ago, when Michael Scott had lost the University of Scranton paper and letterhead contract to an enterprising Staples rep who had pulled the old “low introductory rate” scam. Jim nodded in the right moments and laughed when Darryl pulled out his Michael impression, but Pam got the feeling that he never actually took his attention off of her. Under normal circumstances, she’d have called it unsettling, but as she examined her own feelings on the matter she didn’t feel unsettled at all. If anything, the opposite: his attention was making parts of her that she usually ignored feel…intrigued.

“So, Beesly.” Darryl, having hit the punchline of the Staples story (Dunder Mifflin hired the Staples rep away and promoted him to assistant regional manager in Stamford, but Michael couldn’t get the contract back), had wandered off to join Roy and Madge at darts, leaving Jim sitting across from Pam with an inscrutable look on his face. “Take a bow.”

“For what?” She’d been so lost in her own thoughts she wasn’t really sure what he expected from her.

“For the double prank, of course. You help me cover for having completely skipped out of work, thus pulling one over on the boss, but you also get me entangled in Michael’s personal obsession. Thanks for that, by the way.” He nodded at her and she felt her cheeks flame.

“It…it wasn’t like that.” She braced herself for the explosion.

“Wasn’t like what?” He leaned back and she winced. Here it came. He was going to yell at her.

But instead he kept his distance and kept his voice soft, somehow pitching it so she could still hear every word. “Beesly? You OK?” He started to get up and then thought better of it, settling back into the chair. “Seriously, what’s up?”

“You’re not mad?”

“Mad?” he sounded confused. “I’m impressed, Pam.”

“Impressed?”

“You pulled off the rare, but coveted, double-reverse. You got me coming and Michael going. Of course I’m impressed. The only thing better would be if you’d somehow gotten Dwight in there as well.” He tapped his fingers on his chin. “Think we could still do that?”

“Maybe.” She wasn’t sure what was going on. “You’re really not mad? I could have made real trouble for you with Michael, associating you with the university in his mind.”

“Nah. Michael loves me.” He spread his hands wide. “And besides,” he winked, “I have someone on the inside. My sister—you remember my sister Larissa? The one who was studying so hard my parents got worried?—anyway, she’s the work-study student admin for the psych department, and because of that terrible deal Staples made with them she has carte blanche to buy stationary, shall we say, under the table without using the university budget system. Apparently they’ve been driving to Office Max and putting paper on credit cards to avoid blowing the entire printer budget by the end of the first semester. She was actually complaining to me about it yesterday—‘Jim, why do I have to drive all the way to Office Max?’” he said in an imitation of a young woman’s voice that she assumed must be Larissa’s. “So I took a couple hours out of the office, drove down with some price sheets, chatted up her department chair, and now Dunder Mifflin is the official-unofficial supplier to the University of Scranton department of psychology.” He took a long sip from his drink and winked again. “So the way I see it, if Michael’s really that obsessed with the university account, you just did me a big favor.”