Jim got into work the next morning at 7:02, grabbed the picture of Steve and his family and shoved it in his satchel, then headed out to Starbucks for some coffee. Recognizing that he needed to stay on his coworkers’ good sides after literally skipping a day of work—even if he’d paid them five bucks, they’d still had to work around his absence, he knew, and it must have been at least a little disruptive to deal with Dwight—he loaded up his order beyond his own need for sugar and caffeine in the form of a caramel macchiato. Stanley drank coffee, black, two sugars; Phyllis liked the same but two creams added; Toby was (for some reason) a devotee of a tripleshot Americano, and so on down the list. Jim wasn’t sure when exactly he’d internalized these orders, but he knew them all by heart. Juggling several drinks carriers, he backed through the doors of Dunder Mifflin again at 8:17 and proceeded to distribute cups to workspaces with quiet efficiency. When he arrived at the front again, carrying only two cups, he noticed that he was no longer alone.
“I see you already switched the picture frames.” Pam was sitting at his desk, spinning slowly in his chair and kicking her legs. It was all he could do not to pull out his phone and take a picture. She looked adorable, and she looked like she belonged there, and how could she not see it? Fortunately for his ability to continue to be just a friend to her, his hands were still full, at least until he handed over…
“One Raspberry Zinger tea, extra hot. And yes, it wouldn’t do me much good if Dwight found Steve’s picture on my desk today, now would it?”
“Thank you.” Pam took the tea and blew across the lid opening, making an atonal sound that was somehow still endearing. “No, I didn’t suppose it would.” She stopped spinning but continued kicking her feet against his drawers as she took a sip and hummed with pleasure. He felt a shot of something—maybe desire, maybe just yearning—zip down his spine and around into his gut. “You know,” she continued as she slowly let the boiling liquid tease across her lip, “I really wish I could make this here. The microwave either boils the water entirely off or doesn’t get it hot enough—I swear, it’s like a 1-second window where it’s actually drinkable tea—so I end up drinking whatever disgusting coffee someone’s made in the other machine.”
“Why don’t you use the spout on the coffeemaker for hot water?” Jim perched on the edge of his own desk and admired the view.
“Psht.” She made a shooing gesture with one hand, the other still clutching the rampantly hot tea. “Somehow whenever I do that, the tea comes out tasting like coffee.” She shrugged. “It shouldn’t be possible. I actually asked Dwight once to fix it, before you started here, and he told me there’s no connection between the coffee filter and the hot water spout, but I swear it still tastes wrong.”
“Well, I certainly trust you over Dwight.” Jim smiled.
“Do you?” She swung around on the chair like a Bond villain.
“Yes?” He wondered what this was about, but in true Pam fashion she didn’t continue whatever thought she’d been having, opting instead to sip her tea again, then fiddle with placing it on his desk. He decided it was time to cut the surprising tension with a joke. “Oh, God, does this mean you found out about my secret identity as Dwight’s beta reader?”
“What?” Pam looked up, shocked, and Jim struggled to keep a straight face. “How do you even know that term?”
“How do you know it, Beesly?” He leaned towards her, pivoting his hip on the desk, taking heart when she didn’t push the chair away.
“Harry Potter.” He nodded, understanding at once. One of the first things they’d bonded over in the office was their shared love of the series, and he could easily believe her enthusiasm for it had pushed her into those particular corners of the web. “And maybe a little bit of Darcy/Bingley, in high school?”
“Pamela Morgan Beesly”—he’d gotten her middle name out of her after making great fun of his own the year after Midsummer when Michael had been Duncan in Macbeth—“I’m surprised at you! Slash fiction? At your age?”
Neither of them had heard the door open, or Dwight stride towards the desks, so it was with great surprise to each of them that he interrupted.
“You are correct, Jim. Slash fiction should not be read by those under thirty. And although Pamela is rapidly approaching that age, she has not reached it yet.”
Pam and Jim had different but equally outraged reactions to that statement.
“She’s only twenty-four!” mingled with “Dwight, you aren’t thirty!” and then Jim couldn’t meet Pam’s eyes and she was grabbing her tea and moving back to her desk and he was sitting in his chair and why couldn’t he just keep his mouth shut?
But for all he was embarrassed and discombobulated by his own reaction to Dwight’s slight to Pam, he was not so out of it that he would miss Dwight’s attempt to get him back for yesterday.
Not that it was hard to catch. “So, Jim, where were you yesterday?” Dwight asked.
At least he could have the dignity to do that when he’s not drinking the coffee (black, like the soil that grows good beets) I provided, Jim thought, as he leaned over and withdrew the forms Steve had filled out the day before (on the computer, of course, since Dwight would naturally check the handwriting, but they had to be signed so they were printed out). “Right here, Dwight.” He resisted the temptation to look over his shoulder at Pam, but he could feel her grin beaming on the side of his face. “Don’t you remember?”
