“All right, all right, all right, all right. This isn’t Lord of the Rings.” Only Michael could insult both Kelly and Dwight with one sentence. Jim sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Kelly, can you at least tell us what to expect this evening?” He hurried the question in before Michael could move them onto another topic. “Like, anything?”

“Um, Jim, I already said there was going to be food. And dancing.” Kelly gave them an impromptu demonstration. “What more do you need to know.”

He caught Pam’s eye in desperation, and thankfully she came to the rescue.

“Kelly, I just think you should tell us a little about how your family celebrates the holiday,” she chimed in.

Jim jumped on the assist to bring down the hammer. “Before Michael feels the need to ‘inform’ us about ‘the Hindus.’” 

“But I had…” Michael was just about to object (of course) that he had a very informative lecture planned when Kelly suddenly caught on. And while Michael was a champion at getting attention, no one yet born could talk over Kelly.

“:Oh! Yeah, so, we all get dressed in our nicest clothes—like that outfit I was telling you guys about before, it’s just so amazing, like, my mom usually makes me wear the same kind of sari she wears and it is so totally like a mom suit…not even a mom suit, a grandma suit, even though like no one in my family has kids yet, get over it mom, I’m just trying to live my life…and anyway this time she wasn’t in town when I got my sari and let me just tell you it’s the most amazing thing ever, you guys are going to just die when you see it. Well, maybe not you, Jim. Or you, Dwight, or…OK, you ladies are just going to die!”

“I hope I do,” Jim heard Angela mutter under her breath to Dwight.

“And anyway, we eat like the best food—my mom and my sisters have been cooking like, all day, and I would be too except, thank god, I have this job.” She smiled at Michael who seemed somewhat mollified for the loss of his Indian culture lecture. “And like, everyone is just there to see and be seen and eat the best stuff and dance the night away and you should totally dress up except not as much as me—but who cares, because it’s not like any of you losers are ever going to outshine me—and we’ll have just an amazing time.” She grinned at this and sat down, apparently done with her description of Diwali. Jim was not particularly more informed than he had been when she started, but Michael was nodding along and tearing something out of the notecards that Jim had noticed in his hands, so it was definitely time well spent.

**

Pam was glad Jim had gotten Kelly to give a little more detail about Diwali, because she had not previously understood how much she was expected to dress up. She’d been planning on wearing a just the same clothes she was wearing now—a white shirt, a light blue cardigan—but with Kelly’s insistence on dressing up she definitely needed to kick her game up a notch. She wasn’t sure, though, when she’d manage to do that, because she had scheduled an apartment viewing for right after work, and the Diwali party was not much after that. And she’d been so hoping that she and Jim could treat it like a date…

“Heya Beesly.” Jim popped up at her desk as if she had summoned him. “What’s up?”

“Nothing much.” She smiled at him. It was nice, she thought, to be able to just smile at him at work and not worry that her fiancé was going to walk around the corner. She’d had such a load of guilt trapped under her denial, she was realizing, and the lifting of it was like land after glacial retreat: slow, ponderous, and inevitable. “I was just thinking…”

“Oh, that’s a very important activity. You’ll want to keep that up.” He grinned. “But not too much if you want to stay at Dunder Mifflin and not go insane,” he added so that only she could hear.

She giggled. “Well, then, I’ll do my best. I was thinking, though…could you maybe pick me up for Diwali?”

“I was hoping to.” He grinned and she smiled back, but she hadn’t gotten to the meat of her request.

“Well, I was hoping you would. But that’s not all I was going to ask for.”

“Say on.” He swept a hand in a munificent gesture and then spoiled it by grabbing a jellybean and winking. Well, spoiled its munificence—it was still pretty cute.

“I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind, kind of, chauffeuring me around tonight?” She did her best puppy eyes impression. “It’s just, I don’t know if you remember, but I also have an apartment viewing set up, and with Kelly’s insisting that we dress up I’m not sure how well I’d be able to do that, make it home in time to change, and not make you wait.”

“So your solution is to bring me along with you.” He grinned and popped the jellybean in his mouth. “An admirable idea, if I do say so myself. There is one flaw I can identify in your reasoning, though.”

“And what is that?”

“You’re assuming I wasn’t already going to ask to come see the apartment with you. After all,” he lowered his voice. “I feel I have some minor investment in where it is you end up living.”

“And what on earth would make you think that?” She tried to be arch, but she somehow didn’t think people who could pull off arch—like Angela—dissolved into a fit of giggles afterwards.

“Nice, Beesly, nice.” He laughed and tapped the desk twice. “OK. Halpert Chauffeur Service engaged. Meet m in the parking lot at 5. And don’t be late. Don’t forget—I’m going to know where you live.”

The apartment was, unfortunately, disappointing, but the party was not. She made Jim cool his heels in Izzy’s living room while she changed in her friend’s bedroom—guiltily rationalizing it as an excuse to get the two of them to know each other better—and she was more than a little afraid at how he’d react to how she chose to dress for the event.

She shouldn’t have worried. The periwinkle dress, frantically ironed while he waited downstairs after being crumpled up and thrown in a corner on Casino Night then shoved into a bag when she left Roy, still fit like a charm, and the same warm glow filled his eyes when he saw her in it as she had recognized—without admitting to herself that she did—that night. Fortunately Izzy had cleared out as soon as she’d heard Pam coming down the stairs—just as they’d planned when she’d hurriedly called her on her lunch break.

“Now where did you get that dress from, Beesly?” he asked, his voice husky.

“What, this old thing?” She twirled and felt his eyes follow her. “I happen to have some very nice memories of this dress. I was wearing it when my boyfriend first told me he loved me.”

“Correction. That he was in love with you.” He reached out a hand and she grasped it firmly.

“Correction accepted. But you know what?”

“What?” She could see it was difficult for him to pay attention to her words while he stared.

“My one regret is that this dress never got to hear me say it back.” She grabbed his other hand. “Jim, I’m in love with you.”

It wasn’t like they hadn’t kissed in Australia, or since Australia, or really pretty much every day since they’d found each other again. But there was still something special about this one.

“Do we have to go to Diwali?” It was a whisper, a caress of the voice, as they broke fractionally apart.

“Kelly needs us.” She whispered it back.

“Yeah, if we don’t go Michael will probably do something stupid.” Jim sighed and kissed her softly again. “And anyway, I need to show you something.”

“What?” But he was already pulling her out the door and over to his car, where he was grabbing something out of the back seat and pulling it over his head.

“Jim.” She couldn’t believe it. When exactly had he found the time to grab a sweater in midsummer—and how was it the same one he’d worn on Casino Night too?

“Pam.” There was a wealth of smiles in that word—and of course he could read her mind, just a little. “Lunch break.”

“Of course. Shall we?” Not that anything was going to be better than just dragging him back to Izzy’s and making mad passionate love—but she had promised Izzy her apartment back for the night, and it was rude to make love on someone else’s bed—or couch—without their permission.

“I suppose we should.” Jim looked just as regretful as she did—and the fact that he didn’t suggest going to his place probably meant Mark had a similar situation to Izzy at the moment, expecting an empty house. “But promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“If there’s poker at this thing, you’ll still take me all in.”