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Author's Chapter Notes:
Some angst. Sorry.

As they strolled back down the street after dinner, Jim was aware of a strong desire for this evening to never end: for an endless array of moments just like the ones they’d just shared, with this particular, amazing woman by his side. They had turned down dessert at the restaurant for precisely that reason. Another place for dessert would mean another opportunity to find magic in the everyday moments around them. After all, who’d have expected that they’d find themselves in a restaurant overlooking the water where a genial waiter simultaneously took care of their every need and left them entirely alone most of the time? Another chance to strike gold like that was all he needed to keep this evening going.

 

Or at least that was why he’d turned down dessert. He hoped it was why Pam had too.

 

She was breathtaking to him, her inner glow illuminating something about her hair that made her shine in his eyes like an angel stepping foot down from heaven into the world. He was well aware that was a complete cliché, but he also could not think of another being that would fit the description so aptly. Maybe a saint, as her hair in the streetlights and her own inner warmth turned into a halo. He felt like Moses must have watching the rear end of God pass before him in Sinai—a thought which immediately turned his eyes to her rear end, and he blushed deep red, glad she was so caught up in whatever she was looking at that she hadn’t noticed.

 

Or perhaps not, he realized as she slid to a halt and stared upwards at something that was, regrettably, not her own butt, or her hair, or anything down at street level, but in fact the sign on an awning belonging to a hotel they were about to walk by, one he must have walked by on his way out but had completely missed.

 

The SIR STAMFORD.

 

**

 

Stamford.

 

In her eagerness to see Jim, and to explain everything she’d done to him and for herself, she’d forgotten about Stamford. But here it was, a literal sign above her, reminding her.

 

He’d transferred to Stamford.

 

He hadn’t just not shown up for work for a month, like she’d been pretending to herself that he had, deep down. He hadn’t just left her in the lurch without her best friend. He’d moved on. He’d gone somewhere else, not just Australia but Connecticut.

 

She could understand it. As he’d said, it was self-preservation. It was self-defense. She’d hurt him, and she knew it, and she could understand it. But that didn’t change the fact that when they got on their planes to go home in a week or whenever it was, they would not be going to the same place.

 

He didn’t live in Scranton anymore.

 

She remembered now what she’d been trying to block out in her own quest for self-preservation: the sight of Michael bounding into the main office from his own, bellowing about traitors and turncoats and someone named Josh. He’d swooned—she still wasn’t sure if it was real or fake—when he looked at Jim’s empty chair, and had insisted from that moment on that Ryan come out of the annex and take the spot “so that he wouldn’t be reminded of the betrayal by that Benedict Fat Arnold.” Dwight climbing up on top of Jim’s desk and declaring his victory over the “weak and ineffectual distraction of the now-forgotten Quisling.” Ryan packing up his things (a little quickly, she thought) and hustling into Jim’s spot while Kelly asked how long he would be out there.

 

One of the worst days she could remember—which is why she’d tried so hard to forget it.

 

She turned and saw Jim seeing the same sign she had been looking at a moment before, and noticed the way his eyes instantly turned to hers in silent inquiry. And she noticed his wince.

 

“We should probably talk about that.” He sighed and leaned up against the side of the building looking…just so defeated she couldn’t stand it.

 

“Yeah, we should.” She tugged his hand until he came off the wall. “But we’re going to do it over dessert.”

Chapter End Notes:
So I saw that hotel on Macquarie St. and couldn't resist. I promise they'll get through it, but what would this be without at least a little in-person angst? Thanks to all who've read and reviewed!

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