Jim’s night was actually better than he’d expected. He did manage to sleep, mostly because his body was absolutely knackered after the emotional rollercoaster of the last twenty-four hours. He did spend some time staring at the ceiling, a lot of which was involved with thinking very deeply about the person one small wall away. But ultimately he slept, and for once in his life (it felt like) slept well, deeply, and fully.

He awoke, with the aid of a very insistent alarm that almost seemed to echo after he turned it off at 7. If he was going to meet Pam at 8, he needed to be ready to face her, even if it was just a matter of opening up the door. He shaved carefully—this was not the morning to have a little bit of tissue paper sticking to his face to cover a nick—and took a long, full shower, long enough that the steam billowed out and the mirrors fogged and he could finally relax. His muscles were aching—he’d been walking all over downtown Sydney and his usual routine in Scranton involved nothing more strenuous than maybe choosing the stairs in the office park or (since he’d been on extended vacation) wandering downstairs to watch basketball in the morning—and the rest of him needed the time in the shower as well.

He stepped out and toweled himself dry with fifteen minutes left. He looked at the clothes he had left, and wondered what he had been thinking when he’d packed for Sydney. Bright pink? OK, that one, a long-sleeve tee, had been a gag present from his sister Larissa, and it was breathable and lightweight, which he’d thought would be important back before he’d remembered that June meant winter in Australia. The short-sleeve tee with the garish WINGS OVER SCRANTON logo was also out—he loved Mark like a brother, but the gigantic plane dropping a wing-bomb on the Scranton skyline was not first-but-really-fifth date material. Ditto the lime-green Henley (thanks again, Larissa).

Wow, he realized, he really had just grabbed whatever was clean in the house and decided not to do laundry before he flew out here.

But of course, he’d been in a pretty bad place then—and he didn’t mean Stamford. Not only that, but even in his wildest dreams he hadn’t expected to run into Pam Beesly, much less to find himself dating her. He pinched his arm again, and it hurt, and it also served as reminder that if he was dating Pam it was not a good idea to start out by being late. He threw on the most normal-looking of his remaining clothes, ran his fingers through his already-combed hair from nerves, and opened the door into the hallway.

No Pam.

Maybe he hadn’t needed to pinch himself after all.

**

Pam had probably been asleep before her head hit the pillow, but her sleeping mind had made up for the early night by being extremely hyperactive, and for once she’d remembered her dreams. There was something to do with a pineapple and coconut cream lube, and another episode involving a position she was pretty sure only praying mantises could achieve, and finally one in a belfry a la Hunchback of Notre Dame (though Jim was very definitely not slumped in any direction) and she woke up already blushing.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Jim was not there to see her embarrassment. Definitely unfortunately, it was already 7:23, because that insistent ringing during the belfry scene had apparently been her alarm trying its best to wake her up for a ridiculously long time.

She hurried through her morning routine as quickly as she could, but there was only so quickly that she could do what she needed to do, and this was Jim. She could remind herself as much as she wanted that Jim had seen her almost every day for the last several years and apparently decided that frazzled receptionist chic Pam was the person he wanted, but that didn’t change the fact that they were going out today in Sydney, Australia, and she wanted to look good.

On the plus side, she had every piece of clothing she’d ever owned, more or less, in these suitcases, because she hadn’t really bothered to repack after moving out from the house she shared with Roy and before getting in Izzy’s car to go to the airport.

On the minus side, she had every piece of clothing she’d ever owned. She never threw anything out, because she’d been saving for a wedding (ha), and she was naturally frugal anyway and it wasn’t like her clothes wore out from sitting at the receptionist’s desk. Kelly had made fun of her more than once for “re-wearing pieces”—though fortunately never throwing anything out meant she didn’t actually repeat outfits that often, since she still had more than a few things, and so Kelly mostly backed off—but she had a lot of “work-appropriate” things that she knew, or had realized in retrospect that Jim liked.

But how was she to choose? She ended up with her least-beige outfit short of going full rainbow (her sister Penny had funny ideas about how she should “branch out,” which Kelly encouraged when the three of them hung out that one time) and was out of the door in record time.

Of course, Jim was already there, pacing a hole in the floor and looking heartbreakingly disappointed.

A look which lifted instantly when he saw her. He tried his best to tamp it down, and mock-scolded her: “I believe someone told me 8 am? Was I mistaken?” But she could see right through him and his face had, for one moment, looked exactly like she imagined her own must have looked when she’d caught sight of him the day before: like Balboa seeing the Pacific Ocean, or Joshua gazing on the promised land.