Pam’s first time with Jim is permanently etched into her brain. 

Their first good night kiss on that fateful Thursday night was sweet and gentle and full of emotion, but still fairly tame, all things considered. It wasn’t until their second date that they went all the way, both with their words and with each other. They had spent most of the evening talking about, well, everything that needed to be said.

Pam had finally admitted to Jim that she loved him, and that she had for a long time, definitely since before Casino Night. She had cried a little bit and apologized for not saying it sooner before he swept her up in his arms and tried to kiss her guilt away, meeting her confession and apology with ones of his own.

The night had been long but nowhere near long enough, and when Jim walked Pam to her door, she finally spoke the other set of words he was dying to hear.

Please stay.

They made their way inside. He cupped her face in his hands as he delivered an achingly soft, gentle kiss, their lips barely meeting. His touch left her breathless in her doorway, her heart swelling against her chest so strongly that she thought she might burst. Their noses remained touching as he pulled back slightly and breathed I love you against her lips. She exhaled a reply, and without thinking twice, she pulled him down the hallway and into her bedroom.

She was nervous, but she also felt a strange sense of confidence that she had never felt before, and both feelings grew when he spanned her waist with his hands and wordlessly asked permission before continuing.

The nerves began to melt away when he gathered her in his arms again, kissing her with such love and adoration that she couldn’t help but lose herself in the heaven of his lips. She had never felt so beautiful, so free, so alive. The clothes gradually came off, and Jim worshipped every inch of her with his hands and his tongue and his words, bringing her to an indescribable level of pleasure before they reached an even higher level together.

When she came down after her second climax, his hand was tenderly cupping her face, his thumb stroking away her mess of euphoric tears, but she took his hand and placed it over her heart because she wanted him to feel exactly what he did to her.

Later she was clinging to him with every muscle in her body. She wasn’t crying anymore, although she suspected that she would start again if she looked into his eyes deeply enough. She adjusted slightly and felt his grip on her tighten, and she smiled out of the sheer relief that he needed her just as much. They softly murmured promises and words of love as they gradually drifted off to sleep.

Pam remembers every detail of their first time, down to the exact location of his hands when she finally fell asleep in his arms. But their second time, that melded into their third and fourth and seventh and, okay, at some point there were no numbers anymore. It’s a blur. A fantastic, out-of-this-world blur, but a blur nonetheless. It’s a long but fuzzy memory of kisses and warmth and maybe a few more tears and overwhelming waves of pleasure interspersed with bouts of love drunk sleep.

She doesn’t remember if they ever stopped to refuel, although she knows they must have at some point because she has seen Jim put away a surprising amount of food several times before.

She doesn’t remember putting on his shirt, only that he pulled it off of her at some point later that night.

She doesn’t remember if the sun was out or not by the time they finally went to sleep for more than just an hour at a time, although her guess is that it wasn’t, because she does remember how gorgeous Jim looked under the glow of the nearby streetlight. Or maybe it was the glow of the sunrise. She’s not sure. Because all of her brain activity was dedicated to keeping up with how it felt to be at the mercy of Jim’s body and his overwhelmingly sweet and tender lovemaking.

If they hadn’t wasted so much time apart, they might have been more interested in doing some more intense, mindless things, in just getting each other’s rocks off because they could. And they definitely did that a few times. 

But most of the time, they wanted to look into each other’s eyes, they wanted to feel each other’s heartbeats, hold hands, share the same breath. They wanted every single touch to remind each other of why they had been through the pain and the rejections and the unbearable nights alone. They needed to see each other when they felt just how perfect they were together, which was a stunningly beautiful discovery each and every time. She needed to hold him with every part of her body and wordlessly express how amazing he made her feel.

The one rational thought Pam had that night was that in all the time she had spent pining for Jim, her imagination had never come close to the reality of being with him. She had never come close to living like this before, and her mind just couldn’t take it all in at once. She had no idea that she could feel this way with someone, even though she knew that she and Jim had a truly special connection. He instinctively knew almost everything that she needed, and if he didn’t know something immediately, he quickly figured it out. The slightest of his touches left her feeling overwhelmed, and at the same time impossibly stoked the flames of her desire.

There was no room in her thought for anything else. All she saw, all she felt, all she remembered was Jim.

And truth be told, most of that summer was like that. Sure, she remembers meeting his family and taking him to meet hers. She remembers seeing his apartment for the first time before becoming exclusively familiar with his bedroom. She remembers the weekend she got food poisoning and he stayed by her side the entire time, cleaning up her sheets when she didn’t make it to the bathroom on time and spooning her to sleep when she had finally gotten it all out of her system.

The rest of her memories are far less detailed. They consist solely of smiles and heartbeats and mind-blowing kisses, of being literally swept off her feet and reduced to a quivering, swooning mess as Jim loved her in the best way he knew how.

She wanted to hold onto more in her thought, but at some point she stopped trying to commit her experiences to memory and would just let herself go, losing herself to Jim and the pleasure he brought her.

There was evidence of things happening that she didn’t remember. For instance, she kept getting coupons in the mail for takeout restaurants she had never ordered from, or so she had thought. Apparently, she realized, you order dinner a lot when you’re in the early days of a relationship.

Then there was the time that she and Jim decided to spend the weekend at a bed and breakfast near the beach. It wasn’t until after they got home that she realized they never made it down to the beach, and neither of them can remember the name of the hotel.

She does remember some of the more emotional conversations they had, usually really late at night when they had given up on getting a decent amount of sleep before work. They usually ended with soft, tender kisses that gave way to slow, reaffirming sex. It left them clinging to each other just as tightly as before, but with their hearts a little lighter and their faith a little stronger.

When Pam thinks back on the early days of their relationship, all she can say for sure is that she felt a hundred times happier than she had ever felt before. There wasn’t a single moment that she felt like something was missing, or something more she could get from her life. Sure, she doesn’t remember every detail of her and Jim’s first summer together. But that’s more than okay. Because despite the haziness of the memories, she remembers that summer best of all.