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Author's Chapter Notes:
Pam develops a routine.

Pam starts to find a routine in her visits to The Comedy Roasters (she finds herself pronouncing the capital T in her head, which she would have said was impossible before), and it is, fundamentally a calming thing.

She comes in, as early in the morning as she can make herself. It’s not always easy to make herself get up—not that she’s depressed, but Roy always used to get her up ridiculously early to make him breakfast before he went off to his job in the warehouse, and not getting up early anymore was one of her claims of selfhood and freedom when they finally, finally broke up—and it’s not always easy to get out of the house, because her mom is always up before her and always wants to chat.

And yes, she likes chatting with her mom, but still. She’s got shit to do: specifically, she’s got a coffeeshop employee to visit.

Not that she ever tells Jim that the only reason she’s so insistent on coming to the coffeeshop early every morning is because he works the morning shift. Michael, it turns out, is not a morning person. At all. On one of her first days in the coffeeshop, she overheard him telling Jim a very long, shaggy-dog story about how he’d tried to encourage himself to get up earlier in the morning, including a very distressing incident with a grilled foot. She is glad he’s given up trying to get up early, if that’s the way he was going about it. Michael may not be her favorite person in the world, but he’s important to Jim, and thus to her—and besides, if he hurt himself what would happen to the shop?

Also, she does like him, underneath all the ridiculousness and the kneejerk ignorance. He’s sweet, and sad, and she’d like him not to hurt himself more than he already has.

So she gets in early every day, if she can—not as early as she used to with Roy, because she’s doing this for her, not for Jim, even if she’s doing it because she likes spending time in the same space as Jim—and she makes her way into the coffeeshop, and she asks if they have tea yet.

It’s becoming a running joke between them by now, the variety of reasons why they don’t have tea on the menu.

One day it’s “Michael ordered it, but they forgot it in the shipping container.”

The next it’s “Oh, right, I’m sorry, our order paperwork only went to S this week.”

“Oooh, I think we did get some of that, but Michael dropped it in the sink while washing dishware. The drainwater probably tasted great, though!”

“Fun fact: did you know you can’t brew loose-leaf tea in the coffeemaker like it was coffee grounds? Or that you shouldn’t put an entire order of tea into a single coffeemaker? Michael does. Now.”

“Bad luck! We got some of that last night, then Dwight’s beet juice containers leaked. Would you like some beet tea, or shall we let that go?”

So every day, like clockwork, she buys a steamer instead. She went through all the flavors of syrup, and now she’s working her way through double-combinations, with Jim egging her on. Some of them are obviously good (caramel and English toffee might as well be the same anyway); some are surprisingly good (why is there a ginger lemongrass, and how does it possibly work with anything else?); some are merely disappointing (it turns out caramel simply overwhelms mint); some are horrid (green apple and grenadine, yuck).

But she’s committed to the bit by now, and Jim keeps playing along, and that’s enough for her.

It’s still not on the menu—she wonders if that’s intentional, and doesn’t ask—but Jim keeps making them for her, so who really cares?

Then she goes and does her actual work, however much or little that might be. She’s actually doing pretty well right now: someone in the architecture program at Marywood asked her to do some graphic design work for the program’s handouts to prospective students (she’s still not sure why the graphic design program at the same university didn’t do it, but she doesn’t look gift horses in the mouth), and that led to students in the program asking her for help with their personal websites as they graduated and tried to show off their portfolios online, and that, combined with the slow trickle of work from people on Craigslist has kept her at least in steamer money plus a little kept aside.

After she’s done with the main work for the day, or when she’s reached a reasonable break if there’s a lot, she waits for a break in the customers—this is usually between the morning rush and the lunch crowd, on a slow day for her, or just after the lunch crowd if she’s swamped—and goes up to the counter to chat with Jim.

She’s very proud that she’s actually taken the initiative to go chat with him. It took her a week to decide that if he wasn’t actively busy it wasn’t really invading his time, and she knew that if he brushed her off she’d just go back to her computer, so it wasn’t really bothering him.

Fortunately, he seemed happy to chat while restocking and cleaning up the counter and machines, so…they just started talking. Every day. For as long as he doesn’t have a customer.

And since she’s discovered that The Comedy Roasters does almost all of its business around the commuters in the buildings nearby (rushes in the morning, at lunch, at the 3pm dragging hour, and after work), that means they chat a lot.

She loves it.

Then whenever there are customers (all too often including one Dwight Kurt Schrute), she goes back to work, finishes up whatever she was doing or whatever came in during the day, and heads home early enough that her mother doesn’t complain that she never sees her daughter.

It’s a good routine.

A nice routine.

A much nicer routine, honestly, than she ever imagined she’d have after she broke up with Roy.

And while she’s getting a little sick of steamers, it’s a routine she’d be happy to keep up for the rest of her life, she thinks.

Chapter End Notes:
Soon, that routine will be disrupted! Thanks to all who've read, reviewed, or given jellybeans. I appreciate you!

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