Jim gets three steps away from Pam’s desk before he doubles back.

“Uh…when I said a date…”

He sees Pam’s face, which had been lit up like the Scranton Times Building for Christmas, start to fall, and an incredible hope starts to rise within his chest. He realizes he hasn’t completed the sentence and she’s starting to reply, but as soon as he hears the tone of her “oh, yeah” he knows he has to cut her off before she can say something horribly devastating like “just as friends” or “we’re just friends” or “we’ll always be friends.”

“Do you want to get dinner before Poor Richards? Just the two of us? Like, a real date?” Well, that’s what he was trying to say. He thinks it came out more like Dyawannag’dinrbfPrichardsjutwouslkerldt (this probably means something in German, but he’s not going to ask Dwight what) because he’s talking so fast he knows he didn’t get most of those vowel sounds out. But apparently he got enough of them out, and it is, for once, the exact right thing to say, because she’s nodding and suggesting Cugino’s and he’s agreeing and suddenly “carpooling from work” has turned into “going out together” and he’s pretty sure he just floats back to his desk.

If he’s going to keep working here while dating Pam, this will probably be a regular occurrence, he thinks. Maybe he should just get a standing desk, so when he’s six inches off the ground he can still do work. That’s getting ahead of himself, but he almost screwed this thing up by trying not to get ahead of himself so he’s just going to let his mind do what it wants to do for the moment.

The rest of the day is somehow both the longest afternoon of his entire work life and over in a flash, and before he’s really ready for it (and yet somehow long after he’s been ready for it) he’s opening the car door for Pam the way he now does every day except it’s totally different because now they’re going on a date. So it’s not friendly, it’s chivalrous. Or really, it was chivalrous the whole time but now he can admit it to himself. He thinks maybe Pam can now admit it to herself too, because she’s blushing as he closes the door behind her and again, he’s done this every day since she broke up with Roy.

They drive to Cugino’s, and he tries to be chivalrous again and order for her and she quirks an eyebrow at him and orders for him and when the waiter leaves they both break out into laughter because of course they can order for each other, they’ve somehow shared enough meals here even without dating that they each know exactly what the other one likes. Not that that’s hard—he’s not sure he’s ever seen Pam order anything but the spaghetti carbonara and he knows she’s never seen him order anything but the pepperoni and beef calzone, because that’s what he ordered the time they came here on his first day when he thought it was a date and it wasn’t because the girl was engaged.

He leans over towards her as they nurse their waters and wait for the food. “Pam.”

“Yes?” She’s smiling at him and he almost forgets what he was going to say.

“I just wanted to check…you don’t have another fiancé you’re going to mention at the end of this meal and make me discover this wasn’t the date I thought it was, do you?”

She chews on the end of the straw in her glass and looks thoughtful. “Hmmmm…now that you mention it…no.” She grins evilly at him, then suddenly her face changes and she looks almost teary. “Wait, are you saying you thought that was…all this time Jim?”

“You really didn’t notice?” He smiles sadly at her. “And here I thought I was being incredibly obvious about my crush on my hot new coworker.”

She blushes and waves a hand in his direction as if to swat him, but without any heat. “Shut up. You were so not obvious.” She sucks on the straw again and it’s all he can do to not stare. “OK, maybe the first day…but then you…wait, that’s when I told you about Roy?” It’s like she’s replaying a video in her head and discovering new Easter eggs as she goes. “That makes a lot of sense.” She puts a hand out and he covers it with his. “Well, I’m happy to tell you that yes, this is a date. Assuming you want it to be.”

“I did ask,” he points out.

“And I said yes.” She squeezes his hand, but then they’re interrupted by the arrival of their food (the first time he’s ever been annoyed at getting fast service at Cugino’s) and whatever she was about to say is lost.

But not forever. He’s pretty sure he finds out what it was she wanted to say when they roll into Poor Richard’s and Steve greets him at the table with a hug.

“Do I know you?” Steve asks as they pull apart. “I seem to remember I had a friend named Jim who looked a little bit like you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He slaps Steve on the back and exchanges nods with Mark, Katy, and Alicia. “Happy birthday, Steve.”

Pam is lingering next to him and he starts to introduce her, but she interrupts him before he can get past “I think you’ve met,” squeezing past to give Steve a hug of her own.

“Jim!” She grins up at Steve. “We’ve missed you at work! Dwight says the catalogs are never as well-organized since you left.”

Steve bursts out laughing and it turns out that somehow they’ve never told Katy this story, and they proceed to tell it in turns, him, Steve, and Pam, each chiming in at a key moment to explain what happened, with Mark providing color commentary. He and Pam order drinks and slide in next to Mark, and by the time the conversation turns to other topics he almost forgets he hasn’t actually introduced Pam to anyone else. Alicia solves this for him by leaning over the table at sticking out her hand.

“Hey, I’m Alicia. I do theater with Steve. And you are…?”

“Pam. I’m Jim’s…” and she trails off, glancing at Jim. He catches her eye and they have one of those nonverbal conversations that he really hopes only takes a moment because otherwise they’re really leaving Alicia hanging before he completes the sentence for her.

“Girlfriend. We also work together, as you may have gathered.” He looks at Pam as if to say is that OK? and the wide smile on her face is evidence enough that he said the right thing. He gestures at Alicia. “I helped Alicia with lights on one of their shows, as a thank-you to Steve for taking part in the prank.”

“Oh, cool! So, you do lights?” The conversation goes on from there—apparently Pam did some scene painting in college, “because that’s how you get other people to pay for the paint and brushes,” and she and Alicia hit it off, and he just sits back and enjoys the evening.

He’d have enjoyed it anyway, because hell, Steve’s a good friend. But hanging out with his friends and his girlfriend? And having that girlfriend be Pam? He doesn’t think it can get better than this.

He discovers he’s wrong afterwards, when he drives Pam home and she doesn’t hesitate before inviting him up.

The next day they go into the annex and sign some papers in front of a somewhat morose-looking Toby, and it’s official.

Pam Beesly is his girlfriend.

And that summer, when he goes to see Steve and Katy in Romeo and Juliet (thankfully Michael-free), he doesn’t have to watch her from across the park. They’re sitting on the same blanket, and after they’ve congratulated their friends on a really gory and exciting version of the classic, they don’t end up going to Poor Richard’s with the cast—because they can go home together, and that’s an even better way to end an evening.