“I know, it’s very cute”, Jim laughed, a trace of the old flirtatious banter creeping back to his voice and making Pam’s breath hitch a little; but the way his eyes batted away from hers and remained focussed on the bar table only remined her of how utterly different things were now. Almost foreign.

Sometimes she couldn’t recognise this Jim who now stood in front of her, balancing two identical drinks in his hand, one for him and one for his girlfriend- his smart, beautiful and confident girlfriend.

Yep, sometimes she did not recognise him. Sometimes, she barely recognised herself.

Pam sighed and went back to her table with Kelly, Ryan, Oscar and his boyfriend Gill. As she twirled her half-empty glass of gin and tonic, remnants of her cancelled wedding floating around her like debris, Kelly cackled how hurtful and difficult this must be for Pam.

“Don’t you miss Roy? You must be missing him terribly! Oh, Pam. You should go talk to him; you look miserable!”

Pam sighed again. She was doing a lot of that recently. Kelly was nice, she thought to herself. She had really been there for her the past few months she had no one to talk to in the office. But how was she supposed to tell Kelly that what was hurtful, what pained her, was not Roy and their cancelled wedding, but the lanky salesman sitting a few tables away from her and laughing freely as his girlfriend is showing him something on her phone.

Pam smiled a bit despite herself as she saw Jim laugh. He laughed way less frequently than before, but whenever he did, it teleported her to simpler times when he used to share that laugh with her, when their jokes and banter from across the reception desk kept Pam going in a whirlwind of a life, when he was her best friend, when he hadn’t kissed her and told her he was in love with her, and compelled her to dare to wish, to hope, to love, things she had long given up on.

Pam sighed again, forcing her eyes away from Jim and all that could have been, trying to keep up with the conversation on the table as Gill was narrating to them how him and Oscar had met.

**

“Karen, I really cannot dance. My limbs refuse to coordinate.”

Jim had come back with two drinks only to find his girlfriend swirling and twirling gracefully to some pop number he could not quite place. He waited for a few seconds till she caught his eye, beckoning her to come back to the table.

He smiled as a quite breathless Karen made her way back, jumping into a tirade of how he should dance with her before he had even handed her the drink.

“Shut it, Halpert! You have to dance on weddings. Okay, I will show you a few easy steps.” She quickly flipped open the new blackberry she had been obsessing over and showed Jim some video doing the rounds on how to dance at weddings.

Even as Jim laughed as he peered over her phone, something felt caught in his throat, all down till his chest.

“I am such a dorky dancer.”

He smiled involuntarily at the memory, marvelling at the difference despite himself. No, he wasn’t comparing. At least that’s what he must tell himself.

But Jim had often wondered back in his college days what his ‘type’ was. With whatever few relationships he had had during high school and college, he had never really been able to figure out what he looked for in a partner- everyone had some stuff he liked, some stuff he could do without.

And then he had met Pam, and he was certain in less than twenty-four hours of meeting her that this woman right here is his type. But here he was, about four years later after that bittersweet epiphany, with a fantastic woman now making a deal with him to at least slow dance with her, with a woman who is almost diametrically opposite to his so-called type.

“Jim, you literally just have to sway!”

Jim wasn’t sure what changed on his face as Karen announced this, that world flashing across his mind a montage of teapots, firecrackers, curly hair and air hi-fives, but he was certain that he looked distrubed for Karen’s face and tone shifted automatically.

“Hey, I didn’t want to force you. I was just messing around, you know?”

Jim was quick to regain composure. Sometimes, it still caught him off-guard how indelibly ingrained and yet how faint and distant the last two years of his life are in his mind.

“No, no. Don’t worry about it. I will concede and slow dance with you, if they manage to play a song my mind can recognise.”

Karen laughed in relief, and just then a Sting song made its way to their ears and she beamed. “Come on, this is it! Time to show off some of those moves, Halpert!”

Jim was dragged to the floor, and he couldn’t wince a little at the irony of Sting playing on what could be called his and Karen’s first dance. But he talked his brain into blocking out any feelings of utter longingness he felt, which made made his body go stiff and his gut twist- he had gotten pretty good at this, to train himself away from thinking about the way his life had flipped and how sometimes he could barely recognise the person he had become.

He willed his brain to focus on the woman in his arms. 

**

There were quite a few things that remineded Pam of everything she was trying to forget- or was she? Sometimes she thought she wasn’t even trying to move on from the high that Jim coming back to Scranton had given her. Somehow, she had willed herself into believing that everything will be back to normal by him just being there, near her, around her, in this place and in this city where they had become each other’s everything and yet nothing.

But things were anything but normal. In fact, things were better when Jim was away. At least then she could have let him remain a beautiful memory to cherish, and mindlessly blame destiny while negotiating with her own lack of courage and issues of self-worth; oh, how many times had she planned to call Jim and then rationalised against it, citing reasons of distance and time and all those practical issues that kept them apart.

He was here now, though, right here, but a ghost of the Jim that Pam had known, had loved; still loves. He was here as a constant reminder of how her lack of ability to make on phone call and tell him that she loves him too has left her life in shambles. In her defence though, she did ask him out the day he was back. Had worn a new sweater and curled her hair and done all that she would never do for anyone else, hoping, almost believing that Jim would look at her once and all the walls the past few months had erected between them would dissolve.

But Jim only looked past her, that day and every day since, and was now dancing with someone else.

The hammer was back, pushing nails all across her flesh and heart as she saw him move comfortably with Karen in his arms, a testament of what-ifs and guilt and regret dancing away in front of her. And then he looked at her, and Pam’s entire body felt the weight of erupting goosebumps as she quickly looked away- not only because of how embarrassing it was to be caught staring at him like a love-sick puppy, but also because he hardly looked at her these days, and whenever he did his face softened in a way that brought back a montage of teapots, firecrackers, shared smiles, secret jokes, of eyes that had looked at her unwaveringly as she told him that she can’t when it was all that she wanted to do.

Letting that montage take over her brain even for a second in front of him would have her wailing and pleading in middle of a hundred people, so she left, almost ran out of the hall.

**

Wow, what was that?

Jim could barely focus on the swaying anymore, and soon the band shifted to a track he didn’t quite place and as the people around him attuned to the increasing tempo, he quickly excused himself from Karen and headed straight to the bar.

He couldn’t, just could not ignore the way Pam looked at him sometimes, the expression uncannily similar to the way he had looked at her during years which now seemed to him like some long-lost ancient fable and a pressing reality all at the same.

Jim gulped down his whiskey. He cannot be thinking of those times, he had longed lived in hypotheticals and what ifs, and now he was finally living in a today with no misinterpreted feelings and chanced confessions. He had a partner whom he adored and who unabashedly adored him back, he was doing great at work, and despite what his parents and Mark told him, he told himself that he was in a very good place in his life right now.

In fact, things were good with Pam as well. She had once again told him that they are friends, and he was being that- a friend who isn’t always constantly yearning for her. They were civil, they had also shared a couple of pranks since he had come back, she was also giving him relationship advice for god’s sake!

That’s what moving on is, right?

Then why does half a second of catching her eye is all that takes him to register the loneliness written all across her face, and why does that bother him to an extent that he is gulping down another whiskey, heading towards the exit to go look for Pam. 

Because I am a friend, and that’s what friends do- look out for each other. Yes, that’s what it is. 

**

Pam heard someone come in the small balcony she had spotted outside the hall, and turned around to find Oscar hesitantly making his way to her.

“You okay there?”

Pam smiled and laughed a little as he stood next to her. She remembered how Jim and her used to say that the only other sane person in the office is Oscar, and although he had been on his amazing vacation most of the time, he was the only person who saw through Pam’s brave charade at times after Jim had left. She had begun to bond quite a lot with him and his boyfriend recently.

“Hey, yeah. Thanks for asking. Was just a little suffocating in there.”

“Yeah, I get it. Listen, how’s your art show coming along? Gill and I would love to come!”

Pam smiled gratefully at him. Oscar had always discussed her classes with her, and she knew he was trying to distract her to think about better things- more important things.

“Thanks so much! I would love to have you guys. It’s not a big deal, but I am really excited about it.”

“It is a big deal, Pam. What you’ve done in the past few months is really brave.”

Pam smiled. He was referring to a lot of things, but just the word brave made a chill run through her body as she wrapped the shawl closer around her. She remembered the day she had shifted to her new apartment, finally ending things with Roy and the life she promised to leave behind, braving on a new start. She had signed up for classes, registered in a lot of tutorials, joined freelance groups, replenished her art supplies, and made a promise to herself to make the best of this chance of starting over her life.

As Pam discussed some of the work she was planning to put on with Oscar, her mind reminded her of all the promises she had made to herself. The chance to start over was largely due to Jim, for in that one moment where he had held her eyes and laid his heart bare, he had made Pam realise how absolutely empty and passionless her life was, and how she had been living like a clockwork all these years, having forgotten what it is like to dream and wish and hope and love. And even if Jim had walked away, and even if the life that Pam had dreamt of as she had painted the walls of her new home had Jim as a significant part of it, she still had those eyes to hold on to that told her to dare, that told her that she can.

He had called her Fancy New Beesly, and she knew that that was his way of telling her how proud he was of all that she had done. So what if he’s not here by her side to share this fancy new everything with her? She will still dream, still dare, and be the version of herself she had somehow lost in the last ten years of her life. She wasn’t going back to that, ever.

Maybe this what moving on feels like, it will take some time, but I will get there. I will get somewhere, at least. 

**

Jim felt like a ten-year old sneak as he peeped into the balcony where Pam and Oscar stood, and while he just wanted to make sure she was okay, he couldn’t help but stare as she almost animatedly explained something to Oscar, her shawl-covered arms waving around her face.

Pam was rarely this animated, and it reminded him of the few times he had seen her like this- when she had made doves for the Office Olympics, when she had told him about an art internship, when she had took all his money in a game of poker and looked at him with such a glaze in her eyes and a smile cutting across her chin that he had to hide behind a sip of his drink as his breath had quickened.

Jim moved back slightly as Pam and Oscar continued to talk, a little happy to find out that she had found someone in the office whom she could talk to. Jim knew she had always liked Oscar, and they used to often joke that if they were to ever expand to a trio, Oscar would be the one to get an in.

He walked backed slowly towards the stage where Karen was singing with the band, her animated ways completely different; she looked at him as he waved with his phone, a similar feeling taking over his mind once again: where have I come, what am I doing?

But then he saw Karen wink at him as she danced a little seductively, and he thought, maybe this is what moving on is like. It will take a little while, but I will get there. I will get there.

***