Tell me I didn’t do that. Jim Halpert didn’t really believe in prayer. Sure, he’d grown up going to church, even gotten confirmed, but he’d been drifting away even then and, besides, even when he’d believed he’d never believed, not in that firm, heart-filling sense of actually trusting that someone was listening. But right now, he was desperately hoping that old Pastor Mayhew had been right when he’d told a much younger Jim that “God hears every prayer, even those that don’t believe,” because he needed a miracle right now. Tell me I didn’t reach out and touch the beautiful, funny, wonderful woman I just learned has a fiancé. He wanted to bury his face in his hands, except that would make it even more awkward. He’d just have to go on as if nothing had happened. Because nothing did happen, right? He’d made a joke so bad he didn’t want to remember it—gills, really?—and he’d let the overwhelming urge to reach out and touch her take over the more rational centers of his brain, but all that was really contained within his head, wasn’t it? She hadn’t bristled at his touch, she’d gone along with the bad joke, and now it was all in the past, right?

Only right now the silence stretching out between them was stifling, and that meant it wasn’t all in the past. It would only be all in the past if he could manage to actually do or say something to break the tension that crackled all over the room, thin and hard like the first ice on Lake Waullenpaupack in winter—and just as dangerous. If he broke it, would he plunge through to his death? Or was it more like ice-fishing, where you had to break the ice to get anything done?

Ten seconds. Twenty. The time for a normal, light, witty response to the tension had gone. Now whatever was said was going to have the weight of all the silence behind it, and it was going to be a disaster. He could feel it weighing his tongue down, forcing him to continue the silence well beyond what was safe. He could barely move—they weren’t making eye contact but they were doing the one thing worse than holding eye contact: deliberately not looking each other in the eye. Did that mean she felt something here too, even if it was just the insane awkwardness of what he’d just done?

Twenty-five seconds. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. And to his later relief but his immense startlement in the moment, a hand slapped down on his shoulder.

“JIMBO!” Michael Scott to the rescue, apparently, with the power of never-noticing-awkwardness on his side. “Buddy, why didn’t you tell me you got in?” The arm slid around his shoulders and he was suddenly the subject of the most emphatic side-hug he’d ever received. “We missed you yesterday! I see you’ve met Pam” a wave of the off-hand brought Pam into motion as she smiled awkwardly and fled the room, like a character in a painting coming to life and determined not to return to the oils “and Kelly, but you’ll want to get the grand tour from yours truly of course!” His smile dimmed as Jim remained immobile, still incapable of processing the shift from that shared moment of tension with Pam to…whatever this was. “You remember me, right?” He let go of Jim’s shoulders and stuck out a hand. “Michael Scott?”

Something in Jim responded to the man’s obvious insecurity—and besides, he owed him for helping him avoid any further awkwardness beyond the nuclear embarrassment he’d already experienced. “Michael! How could I forget you?” He pasted a grin onto his face, and evidently it was enough, because the answering smile was back at full wattage. “I’d love the tour, but” he lowered his voice “I do have to tell you about yesterday.”

“What? And why are we whispering?”

Jim flicked his eyes towards the window and back to Michael’s face. It was time to put the plan Pam had primed him with into action. And he couldn’t resist the opportunity to cast things in the most dramatic manner for his own amusement—just like he had with Pam on the phone the night before. “To avoid industrial spies, of course.”

“Industrial spies?” Michael’s jaw dropped open. “Dwight’s always warned me about them, but I thought he was…”

“Paranoid?” Jim shook his head. “If only. I mean, Dwight is clearly paranoid,” no reason not to encourage Michael to think that, given the plans for pranks Jim already had made after fifteen minutes of knowing his coworker “but on this, he’s right.” He lowered his voice to a comical level, so that Michael almost had his ear buried in Jim’s chest to hear him. “Spies who might not want Dunder Mifflin to make the sale of the century.”

“The sale of the century?” Michael seemed impressed, but also confused—but being Michael, as Jim had already surmised from an interview and five minutes in his company, he wasn’t going to let not knowing what was going on stop him. “Of course. The sale of the century.” He nodded. “Remind me about it?”

“Making Dunder Mifflin the sole supplier for the University of Scranton.”

“Oh. Uh. That sale.” Michael goggled. “Sale of the century indeed.”

“Yes. I spent yesterday contacting my…uh…contact at the University.” That was one way to describe Larissa, anyway. “So today I’d be ready to hit the ground running.” He decided it was good to give himself an out in case things went badly. “But I can’t guarantee that spies won’t make it difficult.” He shrugged. “So after the tour, I’ll get right to work on it.”

“Right.” Michael swallowed, and Jim heard him mutter to himself. “University of Scranton. Gosh.” Then he straightened and flashed Jim a surprisingly shy smile. “So we better get the tour going.” He pulled a VHS tape out of his suitcoat—when had he hidden that there?—and grinned. “We’d better start with this.”