Dwight's been counting it down for a week and a half.  He refers to it as The Return, and the way he says it just implies the capitalization.  “Ten days until The Return.”  “Nine days until the Return.”  He's been walking around repeating it, his voice grim and his face set, as if  preparing for war rather than the return of Jim Halpert to Scranton.

            Everyone in the office is getting tired of hearing it, except for Pam.  She doesn’t mind, because she's counting it down herself. This morning it was one day, and a sort of giddy nervousness fills her whenever she thinks about it. 

            They haven’t spoken since the phone call, and of course that had been accidental.  Her only attempt at initiating communication had been the text message at the Diwali festival (for it had taken only seconds after Michael’s proposal for her to see the potential opener in it: Michael Moment. You definitely want to hear this.  Call asap), and it had been ignored.

            Since then, she’s been spending far too much time coming up with possible explanations ranging from the plausible (he lost his phone, his text messages aren’t working, the phone was uncharged and he just hasn’t had bothered to charge it) to the ridiculous (his phone was broken beyond repair in a strange circumstance, he had a new girlfriend who saw and deleted the text) to the unlikely but scary (despite the pleasant, ‘old times’ vibe of the accidental phone call, he doesn’t want to talk to her anymore than he absolutely has to).

            She’ll be glad when he’s back, glad to be done with all this uncertainty, glad to be able to pick up the phone with her standard greeting (Dundler Mifflin, this is Pam), without hoping hear the warm voice floating from the other end, mimicking her exact tone and following it with laughter: Dundler Mifflin, this is Jim. 

            Pam taps her pencil absently and watches Michael, Dwight and Ryan attempt to move desks around to rearrange the ‘sales’ area to accommodate the new employees (or, in one case, the returning employee).  She isn’t paying attention until she hears his name, coming from Michael, who’s setting a desk down, a desk that’s facing the opposite wall.  “What do you think, we can just give Jim this desk?”

            Her head snaps up, and she must look as stricken as she feels, because Ryan glances at her and then back at Michael.  “You know, it’s actually fine…he can have his old desk back.  I’ll move.”

            Michael clamps him on the shoulder.  “Sacrifices.  Excellent.  What teamwork it built of.  Very commandable.” Pam smiles to herself at Michael’s choice of words...and also at the thought of Jim back in that desk.

            She has been going over it in her mind, The Return (Dwight’s announcements have made it impossible for her to stop thinking of tomorrow as that), picturing him walking in with new people, people she doesn’t know.   It's strange really…if he wanted to (and she was not allowing herself to toy with the possibility that he might, not after everything that had happened) think about her and imagine what she was doing at a certain point during the day, he could.  He knows her surroundings, he knows every person.  If they had spoken more during the interval between the Dwali Festival and today, she could have told him stories and he would have understood them, been able to imagine the look on Michael’s face when he proposed to Carol or understand the horror of him trying to kiss her.

            However, if she wants to imagine him there, in his new office (which she did, admittedly, fairly often), there is nothing to picture.  She can picture Jim, obviously, and she knows what he was like at work…but picturing him in an office other than this one is a foreign concept to Pam.

            Dwight saunters by her desk and stops there, pressing his palms on the desk and leaning forward, looking at her with a very knowing expression.  She sighs inwardly, and glances at him.  “What?”

            “One day.  Until The Return.”

            “Yes.”  Struck suddenly with inspiration, she meets his eyes and smiles.  “You know, Dwight, it’s cute that you’re so excited.  I had no clue you missed Jim so much.  You have big plans for welcoming him back?”

            Dwight’s hands slide off the desk and he recoils, a look of disgust taking over his face.  “Are you implying what I think you’re implying?”

            Innocently, she answers in an overly patient tone, “How can I possibly answer that, Dwight, if I don’t know what you think I’m implying?”

            His eyes narrowing, Dwight points a finger at her accusingly, “You are implying that I feel a certain way toward Jim.  I realize he spurned this on with his rumors of me-“ he shudders involuntarily “-kissing him.  Still, it is not true.  I am merely preparing for his return with caution…no doubt you two have something juvenile planned.”  He starts to walk, and then turns around to add, “And I am not just not gay with Jim Halpert, but I am not gay with anyone.”

            He turns to leave and Pam allows the smile she’s been suppressing to spread.  Automatically, her eyes move to his desk…it’s just a habit, her post-joke routine, and she’s no longer surprised to find no response there.

            Until tomorrow, anyway.

            With Dwight gone, the phones silent, and all other distractions eliminated, her thoughts return to Jim.  Past simply picturing him entering with his group of new co-workers, she’s imagined how things would be, preparing herself for the initial awkwardness, yet still feeling confident that they’ll soon be bonding over a comment of Michael’s, or a prank idea for Dwight.

            However, this is as far as she’s gone.  Seeing him and reconnecting what they had.  She’s not sure where the casino night incident will fit in, and she hasn’t considered what, if anything, she plans to do about the fact that, since casino night and his transfer, she’s thought about nothing else, and that part of her knows that she’d never have had the guts to call off the wedding if he hadn’t told her how he felt.

            She doesn’t know how that will play in.  She’s taking it a step at a time.

* * * * * *

            Jim surveys the apartment, the one he only recently rid of boxes that is now empty again except for the small pile of boxes he hasn’t put in the car yet.

            On top of this pile is the smaller box of things he emptied from his desk.  He crouches down slightly and sifts through the papers until he finds a folder labeled “Scranton”.

            He doesn’t know why he kept it in his desk at work; it was comfort thing, maybe.  None of it was anything official.  Inside were papers with extensive prank ideas for Dwight (often completely undoable but fun to think of during periods of extreme boredom), post-it notes he and Pam had left each other, his copy of “Threat Level Midnight” by Michael Scott, an Office Olympics medal, and the Christmas card he’d removed from Pam’s teapot at the last moment.

            The latter item is the one he’s actually looking for; he pulls it out and holds it for a moment; it’s unopened, still…something’s prevented him from rereading what he wrote and from throwing it out entirely, so for now it’s just a sealed envelope with “Pam” on the front, scrawled hurriedly in black Sharpie (hurried because once he’d written it, he’d sealed it as quick as he could before he froze up and tore it to shreds or something). 

            “What’s that?”  He turns and sees Karen entering.  She’s looking questioningly at him, and Jim manages a somewhat stiff smile as he lets the envelope drop back into the folder. 

            “Just stuff from my desk.”  She walks up behind him and slides an arm around his waist.

            “Ready to pack your car?”

            He nods absently.  Luckily, she keeps talking.

            “I’m following you there.  Does it take long?”

            “Couple hours.”

            “Cool.  You’ll introduce me around right?”  He can’t help but smile at the nervous tone in her voice; it reminds him of a kid starting a new school.

            “Yeah, of course.”  Something about this makes a knot in his stomach, and it’s not hard to figure out why.

            “I can’t wait to see what this Dwight guy’s really like.  And meet your old boss. And Pam.”

            His mouth goes dry.  “Huh?’

            “Pam.”

            “Oh.”  He’d mentioned her, casually a few times, when Karen had asked about what the old office was like or when she’d asked about the pranks he used to pull in Scranton.  “Right.”

            He winces at the thought.

            This thing with Karen happened quickly, right after his phone call with Pam, strangely.  She had initiated it, but he’d kept it going, and by the time he realized they were dating, he could hardly think of how they got there.

            In the small, mean part of his head (the part that was actually the most honest), he admits that he wouldn’t have kept it going if he had known about the impending return to Scranton.  This thing with Karen is going to complicate things there.

            Problem is, he also has a strong suspicion that Karen wouldn’t have taken the job in Stanford if it wasn’t for him.  He’s flattered and everything, but Jim can’t help but feel that that’s a bit too much pressure to put on such a new relationship.

            “So.  You ready to go?” 

            He snaps out of his thoughts and smiles at her.  “Yeah.  This is all that’s left in here.”  He gestures at the small pile of boxes.

            Karen picks up a couple of them off the top.  “With both us we can get it in one trip.”

            “Anxious to leave?”  He grins a little, picking up the remaining boxes and moving toward the door, his eyes quickly scanning the empty room to assure himself he hasn’t left anything.

            She shrugs.  “Why not?”

            They head downstairs, where she’s parked behind him on the curb.  Shifting the boxes awkwardly, Jim attempts to open the door to his trunk but is unsuccessful.

            “I got it.”  Karen says.  She bends down to sit the boxes on the sidewalk, and the folder slides out of the top box, which he hadn’t gotten a chance to close.

            Papers, post-its and notebooks go everywhere.  “Damn it…”  Jim instantly puts the load in his arms on the ground and bends down, collecting everything.

            “My fault…”  Karen crouches down, helping him pick everything up.  She’s got a handful of post-its and laughs a little, “What is this stuff anyway?”

            “Stuff from when I worked there.”

            Karen glances down at the post-it currently in her hand.  “These are notes.  Did you really need to pack them all?”  There’s a friendly teasing to her voice, but Jim’s full of defense.

            “Well, clearly, I thought so”, he shoots back brusquely, and Karen glances at him in surprise: rude sarcasm is hardly typical of him.  She hesitates, then stands, leaving him on his knees grasping for every piece of paper to shove it back into the folder.

            When it’s back in order, Jim stands too and looks at Karen, who’s studying him confusedly.  He forces normalcy into his tone.  “Ready?”

            She nods, and Jim finished loading the boxes and they drive off, leaving Stanford behind.

            Jim’s glad they have to drive separate.  He plays music relatively softly, at least softly for him (he generally prefers loud road tunes to sing along with), using them more as a backdrop to his thoughts than a distracter.

            Karen, his girlfriend, is in the car behind him.  Moving to Standford so they can continue working together. 

            So how come all he can think about is the wonderful, terrifying fact that he’ll see Pam the very next morning?

Hi, this is my first time posting on here and I hoped everyone liked the first chapter...it's sort of introductory, setting up the plot, but hopefully still interesting enough.  I'd love reviews to see what you think, and I plan on updating soon.  Thanks for reading.  ~Hannah