In all honesty, it probably didn’t take Jim all that long to find a set of steps leading down to a plaza in front of the Sydney Opera House. But subjectively, in the part of his brain that was still functioning after realizing that this was Pam Beesly and she was looking for him and she didn’t want him to ‘get away again’, it felt like eons. At first he was amused by the comedy of errors, her following along as he walked down the path, fifteen-to-twenty feet below him. But then it became just awkward, because he was hurrying along to find what he knew had to be there—a way down—and it was too quick of a pace to talk comfortably, and even if it hadn’t been there was that distance, and oh god he was just staring at her now while walking and that was even more awkward and please god shoot him now. Only, don’t, because if someone shot him now he’d never know how it came to be that Pam freaking Beesly was in Sydney, Australia, on what he was pretty sure was either her wedding day or maybe just the time of her rehearsal dinner.

He wasn’t capable of really thinking what that meant other than that it was better, infinitely better, than any scenario in which she was marrying Roy.

Unless they’d somehow decided to make it the most awkward destination wedding in history, with the bride-to-be hunting down her ex-coworker just to tear his heart out one more time before the big day?

Probably not.

It was a mercy that he finally reached a big flight of stairs clearly designed to deliver tourists from one location (the Royal Botanic Gardens) to another (Sydney Opera House) without the tedious inconvenience of circling around to the street. He jogged down the steps as Pam turned the corner and suddenly they were there, standing not two feet apart.

And it was possibly the most awkward moment of his life. Worse than the moment when he’d discovered she had a fiancée after their wonderful lunch at Cugino’s, when he’d been about to ask her out for real on a non-work-day date. Worse than the 27 seconds of silence (yes, he’d counted, pathetic being that he was) on the deck of a boat on Lake Waullenpaupack, when he’d almost kissed her and then she’d gone in and set a date for her wedding. Worse than when he’d had to admit, sheepishly, that he was the one who’d complained about her wedding planning to Toby. He had no idea how you greeted someone who, the last time you’d seen them except for five minutes of walking ago, you’d kissed with all the love in your heart only to hear that they were going to marry someone else. Did you hug? Did you go in for another ill-fated kiss? Did you wave awkwardly at them? What did you do?

Apparently Pam didn’t know either, because she slid to a halt in front of him and they stood staring at each other from a distance that was simultaneously too close and nowhere near close enough.

**

Nineteen. Twenty. Pam didn’t know when she’d started counting, but it didn’t feel like she could stop. She’d had all these speeches prepared, but the way she’d found him, crossed with the five minutes they’d had to walk in parallel but on different levels (now there was a metaphor she didn’t want to examine too closely) had made all of them seem too trite, too prepared, too phony. Only now they were staring at each other and she was getting horrible flashbacks to the last time she’d just stared at Jim in the winter by a harbor.

At least it was warmer in Sydney.

And what the hell was she doing anyway? She’d flown to Sydney for him. The least she could do now to justify that horrific expense and that long-ass day of flying was open her mouth and say something. And not “I’m cold.” She was not going to relive that moment, especially not with the awareness of how awful the timing of what had happened next was. Or how inappropriate it had been to set a date and let Jim give a toast when she’d spent that whole twenty-seven seconds (yes, she’d counted, just like now) wishing he’d kiss her.

But if she was not going to relive it, she had to do something now.

So she did.

She kissed him.

For a horrifying moment he stood stock still and she almost panicked, but then his arms came up around her and for a wonderful moment, all was right in the world. After a timeless interval his arms moved to set her a little bit away from him, and she looked up at him.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.”

His eyebrow quirked as he recognized the line. Thank God. She wouldn’t want to imagine that he’d somehow purged his memories of her in the intervening time, like some kind of Jim Carrey-Kate Winslet thing from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

“Me too.” She sighed in relief as he returned her line to her, but she could see his mouth start to twist and realized she really needed to make a few things clear before he had a chance to say anything more. It was her turn, after all—and there was a limit to how much of that night she wanted to relive either.

“I didn’t marry him.” She blurted it out like the words would burn her mouth if they stayed in any longer. “Or rather…I’m not marrying him. I think technically there’s still a few hours before…you know what I mean.” She blew out a long breath and took another in. He gave her the time. He was good at the little things like that. Recognizing when she needed to do something herself and just letting her be. Listening to what she was saying and what she was not saying. Giving her space, while holding space for her at the same time. Except for once…and she supposed she could probably forgive him for that, now that they were both here.

“I realized over the last month that there were a lot of reasons for me to leave Roy. A lot. Like, dozens.” She gestured with one hand outward, then waved it up and down at Jim. “But none of those reasons really mattered until I met you.” She looked him in the eye, craning her neck up from inches away. “And we really need to talk about a lot of things, but I wanted to start with that. I’m not marrying him. I won’t be marrying him. And I did it for me, but I also did it because of you.”

“Pam…” he started, his voice a little rough, and she hurried on before she lost her nerve from the other two things she desperately needed to say.

“I’m sorry I lied to you. You never misinterpreted anything. But that’s not all we need to talk about. You…that is, I…I needed time, Jim. I needed my best friend not to drop an entire emotional bomb on me…

“And disappear. Yeah. Sorry about that.” He rubbed the back of his neck in a gesture that felt intimately familiar to her. “If this hypothetical best friend of yours were to say he was sorry about that, but that it was entirely self-defense…do you think we could start our talk from that point, and go on from there?”

“Maybe. Depends on how he apologized.” She met his eyes again, and there was a gleam in them she recognized deep down in her soul.

“I was thinking about starting with ‘I’m sorry,’ and going from there.”