For Pam, the coffeeshop was a welcome respite from everything else in her life. It wasn’t that she disliked her life—not at all!—it was just that so many of the day to day cares and concerns she had didn’t seem important or significant or even (in a certain sense) real when she was there, and that was an enormous relief.

So of course, it couldn’t last.

Not that the coffeeshop went out of business. From what she’d gathered from Jim and Michael, that was practically impossible, because Michael had the money to keep it running even if it didn’t make money—and because, for whatever weird reason (maybe because he owned the building [how did he own the building? She hadn’t yet found that out] so there was no rent or maybe because there was foot traffic at the times she wasn’t there) it did make money. Nor was Michael likely to stop running what was in apparently his lifelong dream.

No, it couldn’t last, and so it didn’t last, because it was too good to be true for another reason.

On the day it happens, Pam is a little late to the coffeeshop, even for her. Her mom had wanted to talk about whether they should get a pet (she thinks she was really asking if that would save her marriage, which Pam doesn’t even want to think about) and that had stolen an hour when she could have been there already, and then she’d had trouble finding a parking spot nearby.

So she’s late. Not that she has a specific time she has to get there, but she’s well aware that from her routine and her own perspective, she’s running late.

She bursts through the doors of The Comedy Roasters and the first thing she sees is Jim, with a look on his face that she can easily identify as pure, outrageous amusement, like he’s watching one of those silly YouTube videos he’ll show her on his phone occasionally. Except it’s not his phone he’s looking at: it’s the two customers in front of him.

One is, and she is not in the least surprised to see this, Dwight Kurt Schrute, large as life and twice as German. He’s pontificating (she can’t hear it, but she knows Dwight by now) with large sweeping gestures to a smaller woman—not Angela—who is trying to order something from Jim, but keeps getting derailed by whatever Dwight is saying.

Pam makes a face at Jim, who smirks back, and approaches the counter.

That’s when things go wrong.

Nothing actually bad happens, of course. Not in any sense anyone else would understand. But as she approaches the counter the woman finally manages to pay for her drink and turn around and that’s when it hits Pam.

It’s Izzy.

“Pam?” Her friend turns to greet her and one of Dwight’s expansive swings catches her in the face. “Ow!”

“Izzy?” She decides to ignore the way Jim is hissing at Dwight for ‘hitting another customer’ and focus on her friend. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh…trying to get coffee?” Izzy grins. “Ideally without beet juice, but you never know.”

“No, no, no! You need to get…” Dwight tries to interrupt and Jim hands him something small and white which Dwight instinctively sticks into his mouth. “Mmmm!”

“Come on, I haven’t seen you in forever!” It’s been like a week, but since Pam had been seeing her most days before she started coming to The Comedy Roasters, often at Starbucks, that does probably seem like forever.

“I’ll bring your order out to your seats,” Jim volunteers, and Pam shoots him a quiet thank-you smile. “Which syrup, Pam?” he adds before Izzy can steer her fully away.

She glances at the wall behind him. “Balsamic fig.”

“Nice choice.” He grins and she can’t help but grin back.

“All right. We are sitting down, and then you are telling me everything, Pamela Beesly.” Izzy tugs her over to a seat and pushes her into it. “Starting with who that is.”