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Author's Chapter Notes:
Pam and Jim catch dessert.

There was a nice little ice cream place down the block—at least, Jim assumed it was nice, because everyone else seemed to be enjoying it immensely. A nice Australian couple was sitting two seats down from him and Pam, devouring massive quantities of creamy goodness in a manner that strongly suggested that this place was pretty good.

 

He wouldn’t know, because while he could tell whatever he was eating was cold, he had no idea what else it might be. Edible, definitely. Maybe vaguely chocolate-flavored, but he might be getting that more from color than anything else since it was definitely brown. Brown. Cold. These were things he could hold onto.

 

Because he didn’t really know what to say to Pam about Stamford.

 

Well, he knew what to say. It even had the benefit of being the truth. But how to get her to understand that Stamford was just a place to be that wasn’t where she was? A place where he could maybe piece together something resembling a normal life?

 

A place that he now deeply and intensely regretted ever having suggested to Jan that he might ever possibly be happy?

 

“Come on, Halpert.” Pam tapped his spoon with hers to get his attention. “Spill.”

 

“I don’t know what to say, Pam.” He figured honesty was the best policy, given that trying to hide his feelings from her for years had led them to…well, actually a pretty good point when you looked at it from a certain angle, but to a lot of really low points before that. “Stamford was, I don’t know, a mistake?” His voice rose at the end of the sentence, which annoyed him, because he wasn’t used to expressing himself uncertainly without anticipating it and making a joke out of it. “I needed somewhere else to be. Someone else to be. And the assistant regional manager at Stamford seemed as good as anything else, and a lot quicker.”

 

“Wait, they made you the ARM? Not the assistant-to-the, but the actual thing?” Pam seemed surprised by the news.

 

“Yeah, didn’t Michael mention? Nice little raise, extra vacation days,” he gestured around, “supposedly an ocean view. According to Jan I’m ‘moving up in the company.’” He put air quotes around it to emphasize how little he cared about that.

 

“That’s great, Jim.” She ducked her head to get into his line of sight. “Seriously, I’m glad someone else finally recognized how great you are, even if it’s at selling paper.”

 

He tried to grin at that, but it came out crooked. What could he say? “It’s nice, I guess, but I wouldn’t have taken it if I knew…”

 

“But you couldn’t know. Hell, Jim, I didn’t know.” She was shaking her head. “You did the right thing.”

 

“I did?”

 

**

 

“You did. But now we need to figure out what we’re going to do about it.” It bothered her that he was so listless all of a sudden. It was wonderful that he’d gotten a promotion, even if it hurt her heart to think that it was only her presence in Scranton that had been keeping him down, and he needed to realize that not all was lost just because they had an obstacle to overcome. It couldn’t be as bad as the distance between Scranton and Sydney, after all, and they’d overcome that.

 

“We?” She rolled her eyes.

 

“Yes, Jim, we. Or did you think that that couple thing only went one way?” She pulled a pencil and a piece of paper out of her purse—even an aspirational artist was never unprepared—and handed them to him. “Since you don’t want to eat your ice cream, here’s something else to do with your hands.”

 

“That’s what she said.” He sounded distracted as he said it, but she’d count it as progress.

 

“Right. So. Ideas.” She wasn’t actually sure where to start, but she knew that starting somewhere was important. “Long distance?”

 

“Not my preference, but better than pining away to nothing in a cheap apartment in Stamford.” He shrugged, and she could see a little bit of her Jim coming back into him. “Scratch that, because apparently there are no cheap apartments in Stamford. In an expensive apartment in Stamford.” He wrote down Long Distance with a minus sign next to it, and Pining Away with a whole series of them. “You moving to Stamford?”

 

She grimaced. “I mean, I would, you know that…”

 

He cut her off. “But I’m not Roy, and I’m not actually going to ask you to give up your independence just to date me.”

 

She nodded, relieved that he and not she had put it into words. “Put two minuses down.”

 

He wrote Pam Moves- - and then looked up at her. “Unless you could become the receptionist there.”

 

She shook her head. “Polly’s too nice for me to wish her any ill.”

 

“I should have known you all knew each other. What about like an art job or something? Art school?”

 

She smiled. “I mean, eventually maybe.” It made her happy that he thought of her that way, but she was nowhere near ready to make that kind of commitment to art. She was busy making other commitments right now, and art took time anyway.

 

“Fair enough.” He sighed and reached for his spoon, which she took as a very good sign.

 

“How about you moving back to Scranton?” she suggested, as he took a bite of his ice cream.

 

“I’d do it in a heartbeat, but I may have burned that bridge with Jan.” He swallowed and stared at the spoon. “Hey, this is pretty good.”

 

She giggled, and he had the good grace to look abashed. “I guess I wasn’t really paying attention before.”

 

“Well, pay attention now, Halpert.” She tapped her fingers together. “What if we gave her a sacrifice?”

Chapter End Notes:
Cliffhanger! Not a major one. Thanks to all who've read and reviewed! I really appreciate the human contact during this time.

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