Jim drove himself back from Philadelphia, regretting briefly the expense of having parked his car at the airport (even in the most economy lot, Philly wasn’t cheap) but realizing as he drove towards Scranton that it was a relief not to have to talk to anyone else right now. Not having to talk to anyone meant not having to explain himself to his mother (who had offered to drive him to the airport), or Mark (ditto), or Larissa (double ditto) or his father (who hadn’t, but would probably have ended up in the car if he’d taken his mother up on her request). He didn’t have to figure out how to put into the words the last amazing week, or the sudden and radical change in his plans. He didn’t have to talk at all. He could listen to sports radio (how about them Phillies?) and focus on the road, ignoring everything else.

Everything else, that was, except for his thoughts of Pam, who should have landed in New York about two hours before him. Her layover was ridiculously short—another artifact of having booked late—and so they hadn’t even really tried to meet up in LAX despite both having stops there. She would have been boarding already by the time his flight landed, and even his layover was short, so they’d agreed that she would come to his gate if her plane got delayed—or if she missed her flight, which she had evidently not done. But neither of them had counted on it, and so he had no specific plans to see her until after they got back to Scranton.

Thinking of her, he turned down the radio, pulled off the highway (he needed gas and a bathroom anyway) and, once he was refueled, dialed her number.

It rang.

She picked up.

“Hey.” He could hear a smile in her voice, the same smile she’d had on her face when she’d last turned to see him from the jetway in Sydney.

“Hey yourself. Isabel get you?”

“Yeah, I’m here with Izzy. Say hi to Jim, Izzy.” He heard a muffled ‘hey’ and then Pam was back. “We’re just pulling into Scranton now, actually, so she’s heard aaaaaaaallllll about you.”

He heard another muffled shout, this time something that he was able to decipher without too much difficulty as being along the lines of “too much.” He shook his head. It was nice to know Pam was gushing about him the way he’d drowned Mark and Larissa’s ears about her for years.

“Only good things, I hope.” He tried to project his grin, like hers, through the phone. “So, uh, how was the flight?”

“Honestly? I don’t remember any of it.” She laughed. “It’s like we hit the international date line and I was out. Then there’s a brief bit of LA in there, but I’m not sure that was from this flight or the last one, and then I was getting nudged by my seatmate to get up in New York.”

“Gee, I really wore you out, didn’t I?”

“Worth it.” She laughed again. “Yours?”

“Similar, except I distinctly remember trying to read Moby-Dick and utterly failing.”

“I don’t blame you. Why were you…”

He knew where that question was going. “I thought I’d have a lot more time to kill in Australia, so I figured I might as well better myself.”

“Well, I don’t need a better Jim. I’m happy with the one I have.” He vaguely thought he heard Isabel retching in the background. “Oh, we’re turning down my street. I have to go. Call me when you get in?”

“It might be pretty late.” With a two-hour drive ahead of him, it would be dark before he got to Scranton, and it got dark late in mid-June.

“Did I stutter?” She laughed again, and he marveled again at how different it sounded when he could just revel in it, instead of worrying about Roy coming around the corner. “I’m coming!” This clearly directed at Isabel. “Call me.” Back to him. “Love you!”

“I love you too.” And then he heard the click of the phone, turned the radio up, and kept his focus on the road.

**

Pam and Izzy ordered a pizza, grabbed two beers, and sat down to debrief. It was a short one, given that they’d spent the two-and-a-half-hour drive doing the same, sans alcohol. And anyway, she didn’t really want to have her next call with Jim where Isabel could hear; there was something….dampening to enthusiasm about having someone, even your best friend, listen to that call.

But even when Izzy caught her not-especially-subtle hints and showed her to the guest room, she couldn’t sit still. She separated her laundry—dirty here, to run in Izzy’s washer tomorrow, clean in the other suitcase, but now folded—and flipped through the mail that she’d had forwarded to Izzy’s place. Bill, bill, condolences on her non-wedding…nothing important. She drummed her fingers. She rearranged her art materials in their special pouch.

Finally the phone rang. She hurried to pick it up.

“Hi, honey!” It was her mother. Of course. She hadn’t actually told her parents she’d arrived safely in Australia, much less gotten back. “We were so worried, but your father kept saying ‘Pammy will be OK, you worry too much.’ Well, you know him, that’s how he says he worries too, but really, would it have killed you to drop us a line? Still, we knew you’d be back. You are back, right? You actually did go?”

“I did, Mom. And before you ask…” Pam resigned herself to a long conversation, pulled the phone away from her ear for a moment and quickly texted Jim.

Parents demanding attention. Tomorrow? Breakfast?

She got a response halfway through her mother’s reaction to the fact that she and Jim had in fact found each other.

You got it. Want to be disgustingly American and go to Dunkin? Mulberry St? Love you.

She shot back a quick OK! Love you too! and went back to the long, long call with her mother.