The Thirsty Bird lived up to its name, both in the quantity of bird provided (more than sufficient) and in the thirstiness it engendered (sufficient for him to learn a lot about exactly how much Fosters was not Australian for beer). He made sure, however, to stay filled up on the birds rather than the brews, because he knew how he got when he was drunk.

For a moment, he let his mind cast back to the dark time that he tried so very hard to forget: the week after Casino Night when he’d just called into Toby (avoiding Michael as much as possible since he…knew things) and told him he was deathly ill and cashing in the PTO he’d accumulated over the previous three years of dragging himself into work every day he possibly could in order to see Pamela Beesly (he didn’t say that last part, even to Toby). He thought about Mark, emptying the house of alcohol and muttering something that (even though the haze of cheap Natty Light) had stuck indelibly in his mind: “she’s not at the bottom of the bottle, dude.”

She wasn’t then, and she wouldn’t be now. But he knew Mark’s point wasn’t just the literal one, or even the obvious metaphorical one. It was the words he’d followed up with that really drove it home: “and neither are you.”

Jim Halpert, the Jim Halpert he thought he was and wanted to be again, wasn’t at the bottom of that bottle. So while he sipped the beer the waiter suggested, and used it to wash down some truly excellent chicken, he didn’t give in to the thirst. He let it sit there, reminding him of where he’d been—both Scranton and rock bottom—neither of which he was planning to return to anytime soon.

**

Pam was actually glad, for once, that she’d been forced to check her main bag. Usually she didn’t like doing it, because she hated the awkward dance at the baggage carousel around the utterly generic bags Roy had insisted they get, because they were cheap, and which it always seemed like she or he or some stranger was confusing with someone else’s bag. This time, though, she’d had to buy a ticket that came with baggage fees included, and she’d only had the big bags anyway because she’d used them to move her stuff out of what used to be their and was now Roy’s house. She had her purse, of course, and a lightweight bag she’d used for art supplies back in college, which she’d carried onto the plane. But her clothes and her toiletries and so on were in the belly of the plane, and it was the airline’s responsibility to get them to her next flight.

All she had to do was make it across two terminals in exactly forty-seven minutes, minus time to get off the plane and the fact that they never actually let you board exactly at the scheduled push back time because then, well, they wouldn’t be pushing back from the gate. She made sure her Keds were laced up, much to the amusement of her seatmate, who had stopped talking to her when she started laughing but who still seemed at least tolerant if not actively helpful. When the seatbelt light went off, her neighbor slid out into the aisle and gestured ahead.

“Go on. My old bones have a big heavy bag to drag along.” The woman looked a spry fifty at the oldest, so Pam expected this was laying it on a bit thick, but she wasn’t going to complain. For once, Pam Beesly was going to take what the universe offered and not look that gift horse in the mouth. She mouthed her thanks (some changes, like speaking loudly, might take a little longer) and dashed up the aisle. One positive about being totally willing, resigned really, to accept a middle seat was that she’d ended up fairly close to the front of the plane. She was out in the terminal remarkably quickly, and to her surprise and delight, for once the exit to the next terminal wasn’t at the very end of the concourse from her. She blessed the graphic design gods for the wayfinding markers that allowed her to quickly and easily navigate her way across the airport without getting lost. By what seemed like a miracle, they weren’t even boarding her group by the time she made the second gate, twenty-two minutes before the flight took off (being in the last of the last groups probably helped with that, she reflected) and she was able to grab a few snacks at the Hudson News by her gate. She also grabbed a magazine blindly off the rack to make sure she had something to read on the plane.

It wasn’t until she was in her seat (middle again, naturally) that she noticed the headline.

RUNAWAY BRIDE.

Well, sometimes the universe just had things on its mind. She decided to take it as a good sign: she wasn’t the only one. There was always strength in numbers, even if the number was only two.