Today marked the start of phase two of Pam’s campaign to make it up to Jim for overreacting when they were horsing around at the dojo last week during Michael and Dwight’s fight. When Pam saw Meredith and the cameras noticing, she just shut it down. She was not ready for the office to start gossiping about them. Jim had been understanding, and had even gotten her a bag of chips to say sorry, but Pam felt like she was the one who should be apologizing, and so that was how she found herself early to work for the last week and a half; the first person in the office. Pam made her way over to Dwight’s desk quickly, as he could turn up at any moment, and peeled Wednesday and Thursday off of the tear-off calendar on his desk, before moving back to reception to shred the evidence.
Dwight had been suspicious early last week when she started doing it, but after the outrage of the ‘dwigt’ find and replace error in Michael’s screenplay that they had read late after work, he had promptly forgotten about it. Pam recalled that night fondly, as she and Jim had escaped the cameras to eat sandwiches on the roof while watching Dwight and Kevin play with fireworks. It had been so mundanely romantic, and to cap the night off they had swayed in the parking lot, tethered to each other by the wires of Jim’s ear buds, before he dropped her off at home and they went their separate ways.
Pam started taking down voicemails onto memo cards as she did every morning. Dwight entered the office at precisely quarter-to. Pam greeted him with a sweet smile and asked about his plans for the weekend, to which he said something about playing board games with his girlfriend. No cameras or coworkers had appeared other than Dwight, and so when he went to get his coffee after starting his computer, Pam quickly scuttled over to deliver his messages. While she was at it, she changed the date on his computer.
When Jim walked into the office to be greeted yet again by Pam’s bright smile and mischievous eyes, he knew she was up to something. When she asked a little too loudly about his weekend plans when Dwight exited the kitchen, he was confused but played along regardless. The first time Dwight let slip that he thought it was Friday, Jim was in awe. How did she do it? Was that why she had refused to carpool with him for the last week and a half? She was amazing. Jim decided right then that it was time to get a ring on her, social norms be damned. He’d had a ring since a week or so after they started officially dating, after spending almost an entire weekend picnicking and playing with her and Nikita in the park near their homes. Jim wanted her in his life forever. Sure, right now she was his girlfriend, but that term just seemed so trivial and insignificant. Jim wasn’t sure if he could call her his lover though, because they hadn’t actually made love yet. Pam had jokingly said that she was ‘over’ pre-marital sex, and that she didn’t want a relationship based around that this time. While Jim could agree with the sentiment, when kissing her and holding felt as good as it did, he couldn’t imagine what all the rest would feel like when they finally got around to it. Jim was shaken from his thoughts when Jan appeared and Michael called them all into the conference room, breaking him out of autopilot.
Pam winked at him when Dwight mistook the date again, and they rolled with it like a well-oiled prank machine, being vague but confident in their responses and preventing any of their coworkers from questioning it. Jim and Pam exchanged wide-eyed looks as they and the entire office overheard Michael and Jan’s conversation at the elevator. At the end of the day Jim walked out of the office and overheard Dwight making plans to go play laser tag with someone, he nudged Pam away from the elevator and towards the stairwell so he could express his awe and love of her.
