After leaving a still-tipsy Pam at her door with a promise to figure something out about Stamford, Jim found himself somewhat at a loss. What could he do? They’d already gone through everyone at Scranton. There was no one to transfer to Stamford in his place, even if he could convince Jan to go along with it.

He could quit.

He’d never meant paper to become a career, after all. Basketball, yes. Sports journalism, yes. Sports marketing even, yes. But none of those had really panned out—as his dozens if not hundreds of no responses (and responses of no, from those that had bothered to respond) over the years before he’d started at Dunder Mifflin had showed. He’d given up on basketball in high school when he’d realized that his jump shot was really only NAIA material at best. He’d given up on sports journalism when the first ten  (and the next ten) newspapers had turned him down and his blog was getting hits measurable on his own fingers—without taking a second hand on the keyboard. He’s given up on sports marketing when he’d realized it probably meant moving to Philadelphia and applying for jobs with no cash reserves and no one he knew. And after applying for a lot of jobs from Scranton, of course.

He’d ended up in marketing, well, sales anyway. But not the kind he’d wanted. So he could quit.

But somehow that didn’t feel as liberating a decision as he’d always assumed it would be. Could he really enter into a new relationship with someone he really cared about at the same time he became penniless and unemployed? He hadn’t been bad at socking away savings (after buying every console he wanted, he’d had relatively few expenses after all) but student loans had still sucked out enough of his Dunder Mifflin income that he really needed this promotion to be truly financially independent as opposed to living paycheck to paycheck. Not that there was anything wrong with that. But it wasn’t “quit your job and throw yourself on your receptionist girlfriend’s income” money.

And he wasn’t going to be another mooch off Pam either. Sure, Roy had had a job, but he’d been a mooch all the same—and Jim was determined not to be that.

So no quitting. Which meant he had to find a way to get back to Scranton.

Maybe there was a problem with the paperwork on his transfer? He was pretty sure he’d have heard something about it by now, what with not reporting to work for days-to-weeks, but maybe not. Or maybe it was something they would normally ignore but he could make a stink about it.

He made his way down to the row of computers in the lounge at the hostel, logged into his Dunder Mifflin email for the first time in a month, clicked past a series of emails (from Kevin about fantasy football; from Dwight about…really nothing, he hadn’t realized how much Dwight missed him, even if it was couched as “instructions for how to ensure that you do not undermine Stamford in the way you undermined Scranton”; from Michael and Michael and Michael asking why he’d left.

There were the emails he needed: from Toby and his HR equivalents at corporate and Stamford; from Josh, his new boss; and from Jan.

Well, this was where he’d find out if there was anything he could use. He sat down to do something he rarely did when he was actually at work: try.

**

Pam couldn’t sleep. At first it was because she felt bad about this being the second night in a row she’d bailed on Jim at the door to her room and not invited him in—though with Stamford on their minds neither of them had been particularly in the mood, unfortunately, and he was definitely too much of a gentleman to do more than chastely kiss her on the lips as she left him.

Though it was, she recalled, a particularly nice chaste kiss on the lips.

One of the best she’d had.

That was the second reason she didn’t sleep—imagining all the less chaste things she might have been doing at that time.

But eventually she got to her third, fourth, and fifth reasons for not sleeping.

Three: what if Jim couldn’t find a way to get back to Scranton from Stamford? Could they really do this long distance? They’d try, for sure, but could they really manage? Or would the time difference—fine, they were in the same time zone, but it felt far—doom them as it had doomed her friend Izzy and her boyfriend who went to Purdue?

That gave way to four: excitement. What if Jim didn’t come back to Scranton at all? What if she went to Stamford? Could they find a way to get rid of the receptionist at Stamford, get her that job, and ride off into the sunset? After all, her family wasn’t really in Scranton anyway, and Jim was already planning to move away from his. They could start a new life in a new city; after dating Roy for a decade she’d ended up separated from most of her friendships anyway, and Izzy was too reliable a friend to lose just because of something like distance. So it really could work. Who was the receptionist at Stamford anyway…

Unfortunately, the answer to that was followed by five: guilt. The receptionist at Stamford was Polly Wood. She was married with two children. Pam hadn’t met them, but she’d seen pictures: the receptionists had a group email chain, and Polly was an active member. And Polly’s husband was a schoolteacher in Stamford. They weren’t leaving, and schoolteachers weren’t notorious for being able to support families.

Besides, Polly had like three years seniority on her. So even if she’d had a plan, it probably wouldn’t have worked.

In the throes of guilt, she wandered downstairs to the lounge, searching for some comfort food.

Instead, she found Jim Halpert, printing something off with his back to her and circling something on the page.