What if Jim lost her?

He'd considered the possibility before, but had he really considered it? 

There was a time when Pam would come to him for everything. He was her solace, her respite from a dead end job and that idiot of a fiance. Now she can hardly say any more to Jim than "I appreciate" or "I acknowledge." She wasn't even looking at him when he left.

Jim hadn't considered he could ever be what she was running away from.

The door still rubbed against the low pile carpet in an unpleasing way. Someone should really fix that. Come to think of it, it had always been like that since he first started here. He remembers walking through that door and seeing, for the first time, a curly haired woman offering him a heart stopping smile.

Jim bitterly huffed to himself. Even when she's furious with him, even when all he could get was radio silence, she's still so beautiful. The first time he experienced her laugh, he wondered how to get her to do that for the rest of her life. One lunch at Cugino's later and he was inwardly cursing his bad luck.

For a while, being her good work friend was enough. As long as she was smiling and laughing and being Pam, that could be enough. 

But when you spend all your time around someone, you start getting to know them. He became all too familiar with her penchant for art, her way of escaping the reality of a dull occupation. He knew how Roy constantly talked down to her, took her for granted, assumed he knew what was best for her. 

And when she began to tell Jim all this, he became her rock. He placated her with carefully crafted words of assurance, deep down knowing and promising that he would do better. Would he ever get the opportunity to be better? He started to spend both his days and nights with her constantly in mind. Her smile, her laugh, her tears painstakingly committed to memory and played on repeat. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine all these things about her belonged to him and him alone.

Jim called up the elevator and stepped inside, pushing the button to the first floor. Of course, he later realized all of this was tantamount to love but he wasn't about to make things uncomfortable for her. She was still engaged at that point, and as long as the ring was on her finger he really couldn't do anything about it. 

In retrospect, young Jim Halpert just really didn't want to lose her. He actually did think about losing her a lot, then. But back then, he also thought there was no way they would ever happen. With the approaching deadline of June 10th, it seemed near impossible that he could hold himself together the moment she became Mrs. Anderson. He booked a flight to Australia thinking if he wasn't anywhere near her, he could pretend this whole mess never happened. Eventually, even that sounded unbearable. Knowing the day he returned, she would have another ring more permanent than the first.

It wasn't hope or agenda that drove his confession: it was desperation. To this day, Jim can't remember wanting something so much and he knows now he was stupid for not acting sooner. She was-is-the pivot on which his entire sense of being revolved around. 

An interview, two rings, and two kids later, he joined Athlead. To have the one person coveted for most of his adult life was an infinite blessing. But after all these years, he hadn't advanced any higher and selling paper still became his career. Jim felt stuck just as she was back then, doomed to working at a paper company for the rest of his life. They often talked of what it would be like to quit Dunder Mifflin and run off into the sunset yet they both agreed that it never seemed practical. 

On a Monday night, when the kids were put to sleep and Pam was flipping through her old work from Pratt on the other side of the bed, he remembered another impractical graphic design internship long ago and the hollow look when he told her to just take a chance.

The elevator dinged and slid open. He learned his lesson from floppy haired Jim and acted as soon as the opportunity rose. It was amazing; being excited to go to work was a foreign concept at first but it was quickly becoming the norm.

Jim thought she would be happy. He thought she was happy. He could pursue this amazing opportunity and bring in much more money in a few years than he ever would have made as a salesman. Athlead just made sense to him. 

After a few couple's counseling sessions, he began to see her point. On casino night, he was pining for a soon-to-be bride and had nothing to his name but a condo shared with his old college buddy. When he joined Athlead, he had everything.

Floppy haired Jim could never have imagined himself now, married to the woman of his dreams and father to their two children. When they first started dating, he controlled himself around her just as he had for the past four years. Force of habit, he supposed. Until when on their second first date, she kissed the tears away the moment he asked her if this was really happening. Jim meant it partly in jest but he couldn't believe it himself. 

We are real. This is real, she whispered hotly against his skin. He captured her lips within his, reveling in the fact that there was no Roy or Karen to stop them. He smiled at the memory and gave a quick nod of acknowledgement to Hank.

Everything he does is for her and the kids, and that's the goddamn truth. He tried to get that point across in one of their sessions while cutting through the tepid silence of the past few minutes. In his defense, the therapist was clearly uncomfortable waiting for either of them to make a move, so Jim thought he could make this easier for everyone.

Unfortunately for him, she already had a rebuttal ready.

I love you, but I feel like you doesn't ask me before making these huge decisions...and I want to support you in any way that I can but if you can't consider what I do to make this possible, then it's no different from being with-

His wife clamped a hand over her mouth as the counselor tried to coax out the rest of the sentence. She must have known what she just did to him then, because if he weren't sitting on a lumpy couch that would have brought him to his knees.

The sight of the cab rolling up to the curb jolted him from his thoughts. Since that day, Jim has tried to prove her wrong. He did the counselor's stupid exercises and resisted the urge to collapse on the bed every time he got home. To speak his truth, with the end of his marriage becoming an increasing possibility, the latter part was very easy. Yet it seemed every time they've made some progress, they immediately took two giant steps in the wrong direction. 

Divorce. He's heard the word many times before, but Jim never thought of divorce happening to him. All they seem to do is fight and even couples counseling wasn't helping. If she won't move to Philly and he won't stay in Scranton, what next? What would he do then? Maybe he would get to see the kids every other weekend, whatever worked for her worked for him. Years of wordless tradeoffs until even divorced Jim could no longer spend time with the kids. Athlead would continue to grow, trading in his SUV for something refined like a Mercedes. A life of cocktail parties, meetings with sports stars, corporate lingo, living the high life. Just about everything his younger self dreamed of.

He imagines her, ring finger bare of any adornments. Cece and Phillip would be piling their toys and backpacks into his fancy new car and she would laugh with someone on the other side of the phone. He would grip the steering wheel harder, telling himself this was the life he'd chosen. She would wave enthusiastically to the kids but hardly give him a second glance. Later, Jim would be in Scranton for the holidays and just so happen to stop by a brightly decorated condo. He'd shift the car to park as unwanted images of stolen touches and manual transmission lessons danced across his mind. The windows would have a warm, hazy glow framing his son tumbling over the set of model dinosaurs he had begged Jim to get and his daughter petting an unfamiliar golden retriever. 

In the center of his vision of the future was her, effervescent and bubbly. She's in a comfy looking set of flannel pajamas grinning from ear to ear and it takes his breath away. He considered getting out of the car and knocking on the door just to see what would happen but she's already nestled into the side of someone else. With a smile, eyes flutter closed and her head drops onto their shoulder. No matter how many miles he put between them, she would always have the remarkable ability to break his heart.

Jim inexplicably had second thoughts about leaving even as he climbed into the backseat. Life without Athlead was imaginable; he lived that life up until just a few months ago. To even toy with the idea of a life without Pam, though, did something terrible to his psyche. Having the one constant in his life walk out on him, he would just feel-well, lost. Jim resolved to call her as soon as he got to Philly, prepared his spiel on which bus station to drop him at, and braced himself for another lonely night.

Jim! Like an oasis in a desert, Pam came to him at last. Only, she was holding the umbrella that he neglected to bring with the sunny weather. Okay, so maybe she wasn't there for him but he still couldn't help but feel the corners of his mouth turn upward.

He grasped the umbrella only then realizing that he was lost for words. Jim expected she would stick around long enough to hear what he was going to say, and whatever he would have said would have been all she needed to know. Instead, she did the kiss and hug goodbye and that Pam sized hole in his heart just didn't feel quite whole yet. 

The umbrella and messenger bag lay forgotten in the cab. On instinct, Jim caught her by the crook of the elbow and turned her so she was finally looking at him. Finally.

Only he was starting to question the merit of his plan. It was incredible to feel her hands cradled within his, it really did, but he worried this was not enough to communicate the magnitude of his emotions. There's a melancholic gleam reflecting in her eyes and her hair is pinned back in a barrette. The sight evoked a sleek, blue bridesmaid's dress, a quivering I can't, and a young Jim Halpert who bet everything on one girl on this same asphalt parking lot. He didn't perseverate on what once was for too long, however, because he became fixated on everything that came after. Pamela Beesly Halpert: partner in crime, extraordinary wife, and the amazingly resilient mother of his children.

Pam, the same Pam who he shared pointed looks with for years even during her disastrous engagement, could hardly bear to look him in the eye today. Even now, Jim couldn't even begin to fully unravel her inscrutable expression. Yet even in the harsh light of the sun, he recognized the flickers of hope reflected in her eyes. He would do anything for her, and he understood in this mess he'd made of their marriage that all she wanted was for him to stay. 

It is then Jim remembered he was still standing there speechless. Different combinations of words were synthesized, but none of them seemed easy enough on the tongue. What could he say to make all of this right?

The truth is, Jim knows what it's like to lose her. Losing her looks a lot like mindless reruns of Community to drown out the mental noise and food with no taste. And tossing paperclip action figures, tacky Post-Its, everything he knows into a box yet never being quite able to throw it all away. It's looking in the mirror at two in the morning and realizing a part of him never left Scranton. Icy silence and surface level conversation and missing his best friend.

He's not sure he can handle that again.

And so, without hesitation, he circled his arms around Pam's torso, clinging to everything that makes her, her before it's gone. Firm yet fragile hands spanned all of her, taunting him with everything he stood to lose. All thoughts of Athlead and the waiting cab escaped him. He would choose her, he would choose this.

If only she would let him.