It was awkward at the table.

Pam remembered the joke Jim had made last year about their night on the roof being their first date. Well, it had been a lot easier then.

She’d dressed up, and gotten the wide eyed reaction she’d been hoping for, but beyond that, this date wasn’t a great one. It wasn’t as bad as her first one with Roy, but still…

And she wasn’t disappointed in Jim. It was more a worry at the back of her mind that after almost a year of not talking, they weren’t even friends anymore. 

Maybe she didn’t know his favorite color anymore, or his favorite childhood memory. 

(Which were blue and going to the zoo with his brothers and one of them almost being eaten by a lion. When he saw the look on her face he clarified it was because his brother hugged everyone super tight after because he had thought he was about to die. He didn’t hug them again for another six years.)

“Maybe we should get that hard stuff out of the way first,” Jim said, fiddling with the collar of his shirt. “So we can start fresh, and forget everything that happened.”

“I don’t know if we should forget it,” Pam said quickly. “I mean, stuff happened, and we both messed up, and we can leave it in the past without...forgetting all of it, right? Like we could do better to each other.”

“That’s all I want,” Jim said.

Pam smiled, and he smiled back, and she realized that maybe she didn’t know his favorite color anymore, but she could learn it. 

So they started to rebuild, and the tension at the table slowly faded away. Their feet would touch and they would linger before pulling them away with equally bright blushes. And then he walked her to her car, but cleared his throat.

“Uh, wait here,” he said, rushing toward his car a few spots away. She stood out in the humid air, watching as an airplane passed through the dark sky. It almost looked like a shooting star.

Jim came sprinting back holding out a bouquet of flowers. They were soft blue and purple, delicate and just...perfect.

“I thought they were tacky, but then you talked about doing better, and I figured this was a start.” He handed them to her, and she grinned.

“They’re totally tacky, and I love them.” Then she reached up and pulled his head toward his, kissing him softly.

They stayed like that a few seconds, then a few minutes, until Pam’s heart felt like it was about to explode. Then she giggled, still holding her flowers, and said, “See you Monday.”

Jim waved, and she could see the grin he was trying to hide from her. When she got into her car, she placed the flowers in the seat next to her, imagining Jim sitting there someday, someday soon.

The problem with the two of them was that they didn’t know when to quit.

“In your face,” Pam said, pumping her fists less than a centimeter from Jim’s nose, making him go cross-eyed. 

“Okay, settle down or we’ll get kicked out.” Jim watched as a mother walked her son quickly from the two of them gathered at the claw machine.

And yes, maybe Pam was a bit tipsy, and she definitely wasn’t a quiet drunk. But the look on Jim’s face whenever she laughed extra loud was worth any weird looks from strangers.

“Okay, but I know your coordination isn’t at its best right now, so let’s try this,” Jim said, guiding her toward the basketball stand.

“That’s cheating,” Pam groaned, but she picked up a ball anyway, hugging it to her chest. “I’m still going to win.”

“No way. I’m not going easy on you, Beesly.”

Pam turned her head to the side. “Well, then you’re not coming home with me tonight.”

Jim stared at her for a few seconds, trying to decide whether she was joking, or even willing to take the chance, when Pam spun and put the ball through the hoop, starting the game.

“Hey!” Jim cried, grabbing his ball and hitting the ring.

Maybe alcohol did something to Pam’s basketball skills, because she’d gotten three baskets in a row. She knew Jim would win anyway, but she still tried her damn hardest, and hey, she only lost by about ten points.

When Jim pulled out the tickets, he wrapped his arm around her waist. “I’ll make it up to you. I’ll get you something with all these tickets I won.”

“I have more, so I’ll get you something even better,” Pam countered, and he laughed, squeezing her tighter.

They went up to the counter. Pam got a pair of some funky looking glasses, the kind with the pink nose in the middle, and Jim (with Pam’s pleading), got a wig that looked a lot like Rapunzel, if you cut off about 60 feet of hair.

He put it on for her, striking a pose as she collapsed into giggles on the floor. He carried her to the car she was laughing so hard.

Some of her favorite nights with him were just sitting on the couch, watching shows and laughing and kissing all night long.

Work was tiring, so these nights were pretty frequent. They just ordered takeout and watched Gossip Girl or Avatar The Last Airbender. 

One night they’d gotten Chinese, and Pam was leaning against Jim’s chest when he started to convulse.

She turned to look at him, and his eyes were wide as he pointed to his throat.

Pam scrambled off him. “You’re choking?”

He nodded wildly, and she pulled him up.

“Okay, Heimlich. Uh,” She wrapped her arms around his waist and jabbed her fist through his stomach. He made a muffled sound, but nothing came out, so she did it again, and again, and again, until finally the dumpling fell onto her carpet.

Jim let out a breath, collapsing onto the couch and hugging his stomach. “I’m so sorry. Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Pam said, kicking the dumpling toward the kitchen and sitting back down with him, hugging him tight. Then she started to laugh.

When he gave her an incredulous look, she just continued, shoulders shaking and head ducked. “I don’t know, it’s just funny that you could have died because of a dumpling.”

He smiled and held her tighter.

They had a date hiking through the woods. Pam wasn’t super keen on the idea at first, but Jim insisted they’d have fun. 

“This isn’t fun,” Pam said as she swatted yet another mosquito away, “Just so you know.”

“Just wait,” Jim said, and he was somehow still smiling. “So impatient.”

“Yeah, well, it's been what? An hour?”

“You should have told me you complained so much before I started dating you. I didn't’ know I was getting myself into days of headaches.”

She punched him in the side, and he jabbed her in hers, but when she moved to tackle him, he shook his head.

“Keep going,” he said, grabbing her hand, whether for support or to make sure she didn’t try and run off she didn’t know.

The finally broke through the trees and passed through a meadow of short grass, until Jim sat down on a rock. She sat next to him and watched as he pulled out a sketchbook and her case of art supplies.

“Before we were together, my family and I would come up and hike here. I always found it kind of useless, because we just would stare out at the mountains and trees and then come back down.” He pointed toward the view, but Pam was focused on the sketchbook.

“After I met you, I don’t know, I could just imagine you here with us, but you would sit down for hours and sketch the view. I guess you were just always on my mind.” He laughed, then bit his lip. “Was the hike worth it?”

Pam gently opened the case and turned to a clean page in the sketchbook. Then she looked out at the horizon, smiled, and whispered, “Yes.”

It was Christmas, and for once Pam wasn’t dreading the party. 

She pulled Jim into the break room, practically bouncing up and down as she put the bag stuffed with tissue paper on the table.

“Wow, someone’s excited,” he said, pushing a box towards her.

They stared at each other for a second, and then she laughed and said, “We open on 3?”

“Alright. 1, 2,”

“3!” Pam cut in, quickly peeling back the wrapping paper while keeping an eye on Jim who tossed tissue paper in all directions.

When she opened the box, she grinned, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. It was a picture frame, made of simple wood, but in the center of it was a picture of the two of them that must have been from at least the first year of them meeting.

“Do you remember that?” Jim asked, watching her face.

She studied the picture. Her hair was down and she was still wearing work clothes, but they were outside Poor Richard’s. 

“Your first Dundies?” Pam asked, and he smiled.

“Yep. I said I wanted a picture of the two of us before Michael made you want to die a little inside.”

“He’d already done it plenty of times before,” she said, kissing him quickly on the cheek. “I love it.”

“I have a matching frame, and I figured I could put it with the two of us now.”

Pam continued to smile at him, but then he opened his present and she squeezed her fists together.

Jim pulled out the scrapbooking booklet with  a curious glance, but she only raised her eyebrows at him.

He opened the book, and the painting of blue and purple flowers came first. A smile came lightly to his lips, and he flipped to a picture of a goldfish, a pumpkin, and then chopsticks, him in a mask and Rapunzel wig, and the last one, a landscape of mountains and trees. 

Pam shifted her feet under the table. “I thought about stuff from our dates. And I figured since the teapot gift was so great, I could at least try to one up it. So I drew them from every one I could remember.”

“How long did it take?”

Pam shrugged. “I got the idea after painting the flowers you got me, so I just did one after almost every one. Do...do you like it?”

He flipped through the pictures again, that same quiet smile painted on his face. “Yes. Pam, this is amazing. I love it.”

She launched herself into his arms, and kissed him, not caring that the rest of the office could walk in any second.