Chapter 1

It starts the way most things do, with a seemingly insignificant space in time that can only be recognized later upon reflection as one of the defining moment’s of one’s life.

The first thing Pam realizes about the new guy on that warm day in early June is that he doesn’t want to be here. The second is that that’s probably a good thing. He’s the kind of handsome that doesn’t belong at a second-rate summer camp, even if he is only in charge of ages 7 to 10, and those are the ones that are considered only slightly insane.

Pam is standing on the stretch of lawn between buildings of the preschool turned summer camp and watching Jeffrey Adams push his sister into a mud puddle. She should theoretically be doing something about this but New Guy, who didn’t come to Dwight’s mandatory Monday morning meeting, the quadruple threat of M and M and M and M, is milling around by the water fountains like he’s not sure where those long legs are supposed to be taking him. If Pam had to guess, it’s less because of the sixth grade girls giggling behind their hands at him from under the big oak tree and more because he has no idea which age group he’s supposed to be looking after.

“Ms. Beesly,” a little voice croons at her elbow. Pam recognizes the voice so the little girl is spared the cold shoulder and the What? I didn’t hear anything, explanation at snack time. “Who’s that?”

Pam slaps the brim of her white visor low over her eyes and closes them for a second against the Austin heat. What does she remember about New Guy’s profile? She’s pretty sure he’s only here because he has to be and she’s inferred that he was planning to ditch right up until the last second. It’s the only way she can think to explain his rose gold Rolex, that she can guarantee will go missing by lunchtime, and his long sleeved button up shirt. She cannot remember anyone ever, in the four years she’s worked here, showing up at Dunder Mifflin Scampton for their first day on the job and being dumb enough to wear a button up, not to mention long sleeves.

“That, my dear, is what we call a slacker,” Pam says at last. “You don’t want to be that when you grow up because then people like Ms. Beesly will have to pray for the lord to give them strength.”

“What’s a slacker?”

Pam glances down at the freshly tanned and slightly burned, round faced and freckled armed Sophie with her too-big sneakers, faded overalls, and pink T-shirt. She remembers for a second why she hasn’t turned in her resignation letter yet and then New Guy lets out a shout and she turns just in time to see Jeffrey and Sarah tackle him to the ground.

Pam sighs and jogs across the field, waving to Dwight as she goes. He’s currently making the kids go through an obstacle course too complicated for the ten or so four, five, and six year olds brave enough to be funneled over the tiny plastic rock wall he brought to work this morning. Pam almost goes over to stop him, since none of the kids are coordinated enough to make it over the wall even when they’re not being surprise attacked with squirt guns, but when she looks back at New Guy he’s face down in the mud and that seems the more pressing issue.

“Hey! Jeffrey! Sarah! Get off of him!” she calls.

She’s vaguely aware that Sophie has trailed after her and is holding onto the edge of her uniform, the dark blue T-shirt with DMScampton on the back in big white letters. Pam puts her hands in the pockets of her jean shorts as New Guy comes to, slowly lifting his head and realizing he is no longer being beaten into submission. Jeffrey offers Pam a shy “Sorry, Ms. Beesly,” and then dashes over to Dwight, his sister in tow. Pam figures they’d rather disappear into the void of Dwight’s most recent contraption than face her wrath.

Unlike New Guy lying prostrate in the mud here.

“Hi there.”

His eyes widen at the sight of her and he stumbles to his feet, trips over his long legs, fumbles to dust at the crush of dirt that is never coming out of those too expensive clothes. When he figures out the brown stains are there to stay, he holds out one hand and plasters a smile onto his face. 

“Hi. I’m new here? Jim Halpert.”

His name alone is annoying and she doesn’t plan on using it. Also, I’m new here? sounded a lot like You should know I’m new here and I should be a priority. Pam frowns at his floppy brown hair and his easy smile and ignores the gesture. “Come take a walk with me,” she says, and starts walking down the side of the administration building along the edge of the field.

Jeffrey Adams oohs because he knows the void is better.

“Sophie, go play with your dolls,” Pam says absently.

She watches New Guy from the corner of her eye. He towers over her and she can’t deny that it’s painfully annoying though it might be useful if he lasts to see the next time Brice Anderson gets stuck in a tree. His attention is flickering between her and Sophie, who’s obediently headed across the lawn to the shade of the next squat brick and beige building over where she left her dolls in a basket by a drainage pipe.

“These kids are wild,” New Guy says.

Pam ignores his attempts at small talk and lets him continue to stop and start, to bluster as they round the administration building and walk onto the basketball court where it bumps up against the green fence that stretches along the length of the grounds. She gets to the center of the court where the only basketball they have sits,—a flat, misshapen thing that Andy should have put away this morning after trying and failing to do trick shots—picks it up and turns around.

And she’s lost New Guy.

Well, geographically speaking, she can see he’s right in front of her, but he’s frowning down at his phone and seemingly forgotten who in the hell he’s talking to. Now that he’s not looking at her at all, she’s free to admire his tan skin and what she imagines are very soft lips.

No. Seriously? Bad Pam.

Her hand flashes out and swipes the phone from him before he can react and she wags the device in front of his nose. “So. I’m confiscating this because apparently you’re fifteen. You’re at work, though that’s clearly a confusing concept for you, and your phone remains off except for breaks and emergencies.”

New Guy opens his mouth.

“Emergencies involving the children.”

He snaps his mouth shut.

Pam shoves his phone into her back pocket and pulls the wrist with the Rolex on it towards her. He jumps like she’s pinched him. “Let’s see, hmm. It’s 9:48 a.m.” She looks up at him. “Staff arrives at 7:30. On the dot.”

He shrugs sheepishly and gives her that stupid smile again. “I don’t see anyone complaining but you.”

“What, because Michael isn’t here?” He looks caught between nodding and the dawning realization that he’s just majorly fucked up. “Oh, I see.” And she’s at least a head shorter than him but suddenly she’s in his face and he’s holding his wrist where she had it in her hand just a second ago. “Well, guess what, sweetheart, Michael doesn’t run this show.”

New Guy is already wincing when he says, “But he’s the boss?”

Pam grins and she knows she looks like a shark and it doesn’t bother her for a moment. “He’s the regional manager and the face of this camp but he can’t take care of himself, not to mention seventy-some kids. Out there”—she points to the parent parking lot on the other side of the green fence—“he’s Michael Scott, amazing with kids and subpar with single moms. In here? He ducks out at the first sign of puke or blood and hides in his office for the majority of the day playing with toys he took from the mini gym.” She nods to her right and when New Guy turns she gets a rush of pleasure at his horrified expression as he makes out Michael watching them through the blinds of his office in the back of the administration building. They make eye contact and Michael snaps the blinds shut.

Pam stalks towards New Guy and he backs up further for every advancement she makes. “I am going to have to explain to sixth grade girls in approximately twenty-five minutes that, no, they cannot play with Suzie-Swims-a-Lot today, because she has miraculously gone missing for the third time this week and is definitely not in the sink of the staff bathroom with Lego Spiderman so Michael can have her star in his stop motion movie, Suzie the Spiderman Slayer.”

Pam cuts herself off and takes a step back to admire her work. He’s definitely freaking out a little. Sweat is beading on New Guy’s brow and following the length of his neck in a delicious arc—Goddamnit. He’s not supposed to be cute.

Then again… This could work in her favor.

“Out there, Michael Scott hired you. In here? Pam Beesly owns you.” Pam steps around Jim and when she shoots the flat ball through the hoop, no net, as she passes him by, she looks back and catches the tail end of an awed expression. “Be on time tomorrow.”

And that’s the first time Pam Beesly meets Jim Halpert.

Jim doesn’t talk to her for the rest of the day, or the rest of the week for that matter. Thursday and Friday fly past in the familiar blur of spit up and screaming and Jim kind of just fades into the backdrop. By Friday she can tell who his friends are, that Andy Bernard, the counselor who usually takes the kids to the gym for sports when staying outside would be more of a heat stroke risk than usual, has taken an instant liking to him and that, as predicted that morning on the basketball court, Meredith and Phyllis are all over him. Friday afternoon Jim tries to apologize to Pam on her way out the door at 5:15 but she gets Kelly’s attention with a jerk of her head and she, too, joins the bandwagon of Have you seen the hot new guy?

That weekend she goes shopping with her sister and tries not to think about the spark of shock in his hazel eyes when she snapped at him or the curl of his lip Friday when he helped Sophie talk to a small group of girls and she actually made some friends. She helps her mother make dinner on Sunday and she tries not to over analyze why her heart is stuttering every so often when she catches sight of the clock and there’s not so much time at all before he’s going to be there again with his airy laugh and perfectly fitted DMScampton T-shirt and jeans. (He wasn’t dumb enough to not wear his uniform twice.)

And then it’s Monday, and he’s clearing his throat.

Pam likes to get to work at 6:55 a.m., ten minutes before Dwight arrives to be the dictator and fifteen before Angela comes in to “check some files” and they both disappear into the storage room that branches off the check in area. The check in area is at the front of the administration building by the entrance to camp and Pam sits at the big oak desk just inside and to the right of the door with the piles of paperwork and the lost and found box. Right now it’s raining and she might have to rework everything if the weather doesn’t improve. She’s going over the schedule and the activities for the day, the Water Wednesday planned for the week after, the hot lunches she has to make sure Kevin doesn’t steal, when she’s aware of a presence at the front of her desk. As the head camp counselor for three summers, Pam has developed an almost uncanny sixth sense for the errant child waiting in her periphery trying to get her attention. She has no idea who could be here so early but she’s going to finish reading this paragraph on the Friday heat warning before she finds out.

At least, that’s the plan, until Jim clears his throat. She looks up at him. He’s in uniform with a satchel slung low at his hip and he’s pulling nervously at his baseball cap. The kids bring backpacks and lunch pails into the check in area in the morning and put them in one of the cubbies and the staff have a similar area in the back across from the storage room. She’s about to scathingly ask him if he’s lost when he pulls the satchel around the front and reaches into it.

“I, um. I have something for you,” Jim says, without meeting her gaze.

She stares harder. “Oh, goody. New Guy paperwork?”

“What? No, uh.” He smiles as he finds what he’s looking for and finally lifts his head triumphantly, holding his hand out to her.

She blinks. It’s a colorful pamphlet for an art gallery downtown that she knows has this amazing couple of pieces showing this weekend and this weekend only, pieces that she’s been dying to—Stop it.

He sets the pamphlet on her desk and nudges it towards her. She watches it for a long moment like it's going to bite her. Then she slides it over the side of the desk, into the trash, and steels herself. “Who told you?”

His grin vanishes. “Told me?”

She narrows her eyes. He looks genuinely confused, not like he’s being a smartass for once, which, according to Dwight, would be very difficult, because Dwight has told her in private that he has great concern for Jim’s intelligence. Pam doesn’t usually listen to Dwight but she also doesn’t usually have Jim Halpert looking at her like she just kicked his puppy. Friday Dwight saw her glaring at Jim for no real reason other than the fact that he was smiling and advised her to proceed with caution. “Kelly Kapoor has informed me he is what they call a ‘fuck boy’. I feel pity for any woman that finds him biologically attractive.”

“Nevermind,” she says slowly, turning back to her papers. “Thanks anyway.”

He takes a few steps away, she hears it more than she sees it. She thinks she’s gotten rid of him and then he’s stomping back towards her and she’s finishing another paragraph when he says, “I saw that picture you did.”

She freezes, her eyes locked on the words of the article on the heat warnings: Dangerous. Will be extremely hot and practically unbearable. It will be tempting to ignore all the warning signs… “...Hmm?”

“That watercolor? Of the building?” Pam’s eyes widen and she forces herself to keep staring at the desk. “It was why you came back Friday, right? You forgot it in your locker? Anyway… I thought it was pretty cool. I saw that pamphlet when I was at the mall yesterday and I thought of you...I just—nevermind.”

The front door bangs shut after Jim.

I thought of you.

Pam puts her head in her hands and surveys the room. The empty cubbies against the left wall. The rows of desks in the middle of the room, the A, B, C rug beside it, the back wall with its drawers of rainbow markers and colored pencils. She goes to the front door and looks out the cracked window. She can just make out Jim sitting in his silver Saab when his forehead down on the steering wheel. She stands there for a long minute and she thinks about four summers of this, three when she loved it so much it hurt and one when every day killed her, when she could look at any of the kids and something would shatter deep inside her. She looks at Jim and she can see him for what he is: A guy with a lame summer job who’s just trying to make the best of it while dealing with the counselor from hell.

She sighs, shuts her computer down, and makes her way to the parking lot amidst a mild downpour. She gets right up to Jim’s passenger window and when she raps her knuckles on the glass he jumps so hard he honks the horn on his way up. He gives her a nervous half smile. She raises her eyebrows and looks meaningfully at his passenger seat. His smile turns into a grin and he reaches across the console to push open the door.

Pam slides in and slams the door after her. The seat is unnervingly warm and she can practically feel the heat radiating off of Jim beside her. “Open Your Eyes” is playing softly over his stereo while the raindrops burst in damp designs across his windshield. Pam is completely out of her element and she doesn’t know what to say.

She opens with: “Hi there.”

“Uh oh,” Jim says, but he’s still smiling.

“What have they told you?”

“‘Hi there’ is Pam Beesly’s death knell.”

“Pfft.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

He shrugs. “You’re not mean.”

Pam almost laughs out loud. “I’m not mean? Jim, didn’t Andy teach you anything about survival on your first day?”

“Okay, so. He might have said something along the lines of defy and you die but when that happened you were braiding Lucy’s hair and it didn’t really add up to me.”

Pam’s mind drifts back to her lunch break on Thursday when she was sitting on a bench behind the gym and Lucy came over with tears in her eyes because Hayden had pulled on her pigtail. The eight-year-old, in a painfully embarrassing attempt at trying to hide his crush on the girl, had ruined the braid Lucy’s mom had done for her on one of the rare days she was still home when Lucy woke up, before her dad dropped her off at day camp. Pam had put Lucy’s hair up into an elaborate French braid instead without a second thought. It had taken most of her lunch break and it made her face flush to think of how long he might have been watching her sit there without her noticing.

“Yeah, well. I’ve been told I can be pretty scary,” Pam says neutrally, and kicks the ball into Jim’s court.

Jim shakes his head. “Right, and this is the same woman that painstakingly redrew the hopscotch outline when Tim spilled his baked beans all over it.”

“I’m a woman of many talents.”

“I gathered that,” he chuckles, and she snorts.

Pam leans back in the seat and regards her hands where they rest, folded, in her lap. “The thing is, Halpert…” She feels those hazel eyes on her and it makes the withering words die on her lips. “I’m not really sure why you’re here. You’ve lived and worked in Scranton your whole life.” (She may have done her research on his file the minute he walked out the door on his first day.) “It’s a bit strange that you’d come out to Austin just to work a medium wage summer job that's just down the road from Roadkill Range.”

“Roadkill Range?”

“Nice try. I’ll traumatize you later.”

He stares at the window, the rain pounding on the glass for so long that she begins to feel like she did on the basketball court, when his eyes were glued to his phone and it was plain that there was someone on the other end of it that was too important to ignore. Pam shakes herself internally. She doesn’t care about his love life. She can’t afford to. Kelly and Ryan are enough to deal with as it is, and that’s if you ignore what Pam suspects is going on between Dwight and Angela. And her own love life is just...

Just when she thinks he’s going to ask her to leave and she’s reaching for the handle on the door, his fingertips brush across the back of her other hand. She pauses. She lowers her hand to her lap and his hand drifts back to his own.

“I just got out of a pretty serious relationship.”

“Wow,” Pam says. “So you were so desperate to get away that flew all the way to Texas just to get mauled by Phyllis Vance?”

Jim starts to laugh then stops. “Wait. Isn’t Vance the guy who restocks the vending machines?”

“That’s her husband.”

Jim’s face is priceless. His mouth drops open and hangs there, trying to find the words. “She—she’s married?!”

“Don’t flatter yourself. You haven’t seen her with Danny Cordray.”

He smacks his forehead with his palm. “Why does that name sound familiar?”

“Trust me, you’ll find out and wish you could forget. I know I do.” She drums his dashboard with her fingertips and worries at her lower lip, ready to get out again. When she can’t take it anymore she grabs the handle. “I don’t know if you want to get back together with this person but don’t let them chase you out of your own state, if that’s where you want to be.”

Jim runs a hand through his hair and takes his baseball cap off. When she opens her door, he takes the keys out of the car and walks with her back to the gate as he considers. “It’s not so much that she chased me out. I just, um. I needed to…” Jim leans up against the gate and the drizzle is soaking through both of their shirts but she’s going to give him this while he’s willing to take it. “I had to get away.” He twists his hat into a knot of fabric between his hands. “Start over.” He looks up, meets her gaze with determined eyes. “I am serious about this job. A buddy of mine knows Michael from Scranton and when he mentioned this place to me it just kind of seemed like the perfect opportunity to get out.”

“I get it,” Pam says, and she does, though she tells herself she doesn’t, and she and Jim go their separate ways.

The rest of that Monday nearly passes by unremarkably. Jim tries to sit next to her outside the gym when she’s on her break and she moves seats. She gets through her sandwich and is just starting to pry open the lid of her favorite yogurt when she notices him watching her incessantly from where he was playing frisbee with Andy and their group. She’s wondering if she has something on her face when he pauses the game and jogs over to crouch at her side, still panting, and says, “This might sound weird.”

“Hit me,” Pam says, and sticks her spoon into the yogurt.

Jim’s hand rests on top of hers. “There’s no reason for me to know this, but that mixed-berry yogurt you’re about to eat has expired.”

Pam drops the spoon and turns the yogurt around to expose the label. Sure enough, the yogurt has been expired for two weeks. She looks up at Jim incredulously but he’s already backpedaling to resume the frisbee game. Pam stares at him with narrowed eyes for at least the next ten minutes, watching him run back and forth and occasionally mop sweat from his forehead with the collar of his shirt, which invariably causes it to rise up his chest—and hell, he’s ripped.

Aaaand, back to ignoring Jim. Until Tuesday. Tuesday Andy wants to play capture the flag out on the larger field way behind the three buildings that make up the front of the grounds. Pam is in the gym supervising T-ball with the Bumble Beavers when Oscar Martinez, the guy who runs the accounting department in the tiny building nearest the big field, who really doesn’t have to leave his office at all on any given day, explodes into the room. He saw two go down out the window and another one just threw up in the grass.

Pam appears at the top of the hill with two bottles of water and Jim looks at her like she’s the messiah. He’s at the end of the field under a stone gazebo with his head between his knees. A couple of the kids ran themselves sick and Andy was trying to get them to take deep, harmonious breaths with him when Jim staggered to the ground somewhere behind him and Oscar finally came running.

When she hands a bottle to him, he gulps it down so fast he chokes and ends up spitting half of it back out. She pats his back until he gets the hang of inhaling water without actually inhaling water and then she sits beside him on the cool granite.

“You didn’t pass out,” she notes, and can’t withhold the hint of surprise there. “Your Scranton blood is simultaneously quaking and acclimating.”

He laughs then trails off with a shiver when she puts the other bottle against the back of his neck. They sit and watch twenty kids fight over a couple of tiny plastic flags for a few minutes in silence before Jim says, “You know, I think I’d like to see Ms. Beesly out there in the thick of things.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Hey, I didn’t almost pass out for nothing. You see that?”

Pam is distracted by Dwight, who’s running down the hill with the first aid kit even though everyone is fine and the worst has clearly passed. “Hmm? Yeah.”

“Pam.”

Pam raises her eyebrows at him. “Excuse you?”

“Ms. Beesly,” he corrects, feigning shame, and she allows a small smile to soften her features. “Look.” He points out to the line of trees and the brick wall that marks the ends of this side of the grounds and then she squints and looks again.

“Is that—is that Dwight?”

She doesn’t know how he got into the printer room or how he got the staff pictures from last summer, but there’s a colored picture of Dwight, all blown up, a piece of his face on each of twenty pieces of paper hanging down from the branch of a tree against the far wall. Pam gets up in awe and walks over to it, right through the middle of the game. When she stops in the shade of the wall, she can see where Jim taped all the paper together to a poster board and tied the poster board to the tree with a knot of thin red rope.

Pam lifts her visor and cranes her neck up at the tree. “How did you climb up there?”

“Let’s just say I have a couple talents of my own,” Jim says, and winks.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t see this and you definitely didn’t put your life in danger just to mess with Dwight.”

“Oh, but I definitely di—”

“What—!” Dwight shouts from somewhere behind them.

Jim jumps and grabs Pam’s hand, dragging her into the bushes behind the tree. “He’s just going to take it down,” Pam whispers as she crouches with Jim.

She’s very aware of the way his knees are grazing her own and his breath is hot on her ear when he murmurs, “He can try.”

And, boy, does Dwight try. Andy offers to help but Dwight tells him to shut up, he can handle it, and yanks on the thing even though the wire is thin and he has hedge clippers—which Pam should inquire about later—tucked in his belt. The brown net of green balloons comes down so fast that she and Dwight yelp at the same time and no one hears her over his gasp as the balloons explode, every color of paint imaginable splattering in every direction, spraying the rocks, Dwight, the tree, the walls. Pam laughs in disbelief and when she looks back at him, Jim is grinning wickedly.

“Is this your way of telling me not to throw out any more complementary pamphlets I receive from you?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Pam,” Jim says, and she’s laughing too hard and enjoying the moment too much to remember to correct him. “You didn’t accidentally tase me Friday when you were hiding your spare stun gun in the supply closet.”

“Still.” She eyes him up and down like he could prank her any minute.

Dwight is ranting and raving. Andy runs over to assist only for Dwight to slip and take them both tumbling to the ground in a wash of color. 

Jim holds up his hands. “I have a special set of skills, and I will reserve those skills for Dwight—not that you wouldn’t look adorable with paint on your nose.”

Pam looks to ask him what he’s talking about right as he leans forward so he’s scarcely more than a breath away and brushes his thumb along the ridge of her nose and the curve of her cheek. His fingers come away pink and they look at each other for a long moment, grinning, until at last Dwight roars “Jim!” and Jim starts, pulls her to her feet and out of the way right as Dwight comes barreling into the bushes, squinting, pink and blue soaked glasses held against his chest. “Pamela!”

“Hi Dwight.”

“I know he did this!”

Pam has exactly one second to decide if she is going to punish New Guy for making her forget for the first time in a year why she hated this place just to appease Dwight or to let it go. Dwight would never let her do the latter.

“He’s helping me,” Pam says suddenly, a lightbulb going off in a recess of her brain that was cloaked in cobwebs. “Remember last summer? I—I was going to paint this wall. Remember how the school asked me to do that?”

Dwight manages a frown despite his current state. “But that was before Ro—”

“I’m painting the wall and Jim is helping me!” she squeaks.

Dwight lowers his glasses and looks at her long and hard. He looks between the two of them, over at the wall, back at Pam. “...This is ineffective,” he says at last, and turns on his heel, stomping away muttering something about “unorthodox methods”.

Pam lets out a shuddering breath and stumbles out into the heat. She removes her visor and fans herself furiously. 

“Pam?” Jim says from somewhere behind her.

She wrings her hands and paces down the slight slope behind the gazebo where the kids can’t see her and throws her visor into the dirt. How could she say that? How could she do that? The school still wanted her to paint it, Jan had gently asked her again if she’d consider it just last week, but no, Pam had told her, I couldn’t possibly, and Jan had given her that sad look that was code for, Because of Roy? and she’d practically slipped a disc with how fast she’d fled from the room. She couldn’t paint anymore, not now, not what Jan wanted. That painting Jim had seen was a leftover piece from last year that she’d brought into work to bring to Penny’s later just to keep up the ruse that she was painting again. She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t pick up a brush, she couldn’t go to a museum, she couldn’t go anywhere in this town without seeing him, without seeing them together, she couldn’t, she couldn’t, she couldn’tcouldn’tcouldn’t—

“Beesly.” And Jim’s hand is on her back and her head is clearing and focusing on the warmth of him, the strength of his bicep beneath her fingertips when she reaches for it to steady her. “What can I do?”

Pam shakes her head mutely.

“Okay. I can work with this.”

And he takes her to one of the tiny classroom’s behind the space doubling as Oscar’s office and they play hangman and charades and come up with absurd lunchable combinations that actually sound kind of amazing until Pam can’t remember what she was so upset about.

Jim sits beside her after she guesses “Meredith feeling you up in the cafeteria” and the golden light slanting through the window highlights the dust motes shifting behind his head. “You okay?”

Pam looks over his floppy hair and his silly grin and fondly pulls the brim of his hat low over his eyes. “You know it, Halpert.”

And she doesn’t know it then but that moment defines the start of something she’ll be helpless to stop.