Jim had, of course, nowhere to stay, technically. He was supposed to sleep one night at his old place, go get a moving truck and then pick up all his stuff, and drive to Stamford in the morning via a storage locker on his way out of town, then stay in a company-provided hotel for a week while he looked for apartments and got started up at Dunder Mifflin-Stamford.

That was obviously not happening.

Besides thoughts of Pam (which were the dominant theme, of course) his entire internal monologue on the way back to Scranton was composed of speculation about what he was going to do. Was he going to have to hope him mom was willing to re-sacrifice her sewing room as his bedroom? Should he beg Mark to kick out whatever new tenant he’d lined up and let him stay? He obviously couldn’t move in with Pam—he wasn’t even sure where she was staying, and anyway it was way way way too early in their relationship for that—and Larissa was still in college dorms and he didn’t really know anyone else in Scranton well enough to ask. There were his old friends, and the dudes he played basketball with at the Y, and obviously his coworkers, but no one you could ask to crash with, let alone for an extended period. So it was home or Mark, and he composed little speeches in his head all the way through southern-central-eastern Pennsylvania.

None of them were necessary, because Mark, bless his soul, was the laziest man alive and Jim was paid up on his half of the rent through June, so he hadn’t thought it was a priority to line someone up for July until, like, a couple weeks later.

The fact that that would have put him almost into July was one that Jim forcibly restrained himself from pointing out, for three reasons: one, he was so relieved he couldn’t have quarreled if he’d tried; two, they’d had this talk about Mark’s procrastination so much that it would just have been the same old words in new costumes; and three, he was definitely not dumb enough to look this particular gift horse in the mouth.

So what he’d anticipated being a lengthy discussion of pros and cons (though why he’d anticipated this, given that the longest serious conversation he’d had with Mark had been about five minutes of ‘yeah, man, let’s do it’ about moving in together in the first place, was as yet a mystery unsolved by humankind) was instead a fist bump, a toast with the two most expensive beers left in the fridge (passing up Natty Light for Bud), and grabbing his keys back from the cupboard where he’d left them for Mark to give to the new guy. This was doubly convenient, because not only did he have somewhere to live, but he also had time to call Pam.

Well, he would have if she’d been available. But her text reminded him that he owed his own parents a heads up that their prodigal son was becoming distinctly less prodigal, and he too spent the evening catching his family up on the substantial changes in his life in the past hundred or so hours.

The next morning he shot Pam a good morning text, confirming their time (a relatively relaxed 10 am—they’d landed on a Saturday and it was now Sunday, the day he’d planned to move to start at Stamford on Monday, so they didn’t have to hurry into work), and made his way down to the Mulberry Street Dunkin Donuts a jittery ten minutes early. He wasn’t jittery because he thought she might have changed her mind—he had no doubts of her interest—but because this was the first time he was going to see Pam at a place where they’d been before, but this time with her as his girlfriend. For him, it marked a seismic shift in his life—but seismic in the sense that Iceland’s geothermal energy is seismic, a blessing without which life as he knew it would be impossible.

**

Pam was sitting in the window of the Dunkin on Mulberry staring out the window, a steaming cappuccino in her hand, another coffee and two donuts on the table in front of her. She usually preferred tea to coffee, a fact she was warmly aware Jim knew too, but Dunkin wasn’t a really a tea place—and foamy milk was a benefit in anything hot, tea or espresso be damned. She picked up the apple fritter in front of her and took a bite.

“Starting without me, Beesly?” Jim had apparently chosen the other entrance, the one she wasn’t overlooking, and surprised her. She swallowed quickly and turned to embrace him, grateful for the height of the chair that brought them into closer proximity than usual. He hugged her back, and if they hadn’t been in public she got the sense that neither of them would have objected to deepening and intensifying the clinch.

“Just being prepared,” she returned once they came up for air, and gestured to the seat across from her. “This place doesn’t have many two person tables.” She glanced around. “Especially in the morning.”

Jim surveyed the room around them and nodded. “Good thinking.” He started for the line and then seemed to notice the food and drink. “Wait…is that for me?”

“Yep.” She bounced in her seat. “I figured you had to do so much of the paying in Australia, I might as well start by getting us both breakfast here.”

“You didn’t have to do that.” He slid into the seat across from her. “But I’m not gonna say no, so thank you.” He took a sip of the coffee. “Double cream. Nice.” A grin. “Just like I like it.”

“I know.”

“I love you.” He blurted it out like it had been bubbling in his stomach and simply overflowed.

“I know that too.” She grinned at him. “Check out the donut.”

He frowned at it. “Filled.” Picked it up. Rotated it around. “Not especially powdered.” Took a bite. “Boston Cream?”

“Yep. It was the closest I could come to Connecticut. You know, to thank you for not going there.”

“You really don’t need to thank me.” He wolfed down the donut, though. “I mean, let’s be honest, Beesly, the moment you told me you loved me back, moving to Connecticut really stopped being an option.”

She shrugged. “I’m still glad you didn’t. I don’t want to look up from my desk anymore and not see you.”

“Does that include your desk at home?” He grinned, and then paused. “Actually, where are you staying?”

“With Izzy right now. We’re going apartment shopping this week, if you want to come.” She tried to play it off nonchalantly, but she was pretty sure she was beaming as she said it, and he definitely was as he answered.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world. But speaking of seeing me from your desk…” he leaned forward. “I know Michael probably already told the whole office I was coming back, but we really need to make sure we take the opportunity to get Dwight, if you know what I mean.”

“I think I do. And I have an idea.” She leaned forward too. “Here’s what I’m thinking…”