By the time Pam reached her room, she could hardly breathe. She'd run out of The 100 Club and as far away from Oxford Street as she could, before getting an Uber half way up Tottenham Court Road when she thought her legs were going to collapse from under her. She'd planned on throwing herself on her bed and listening to Nirvana with her headphones at full volume to drown out any thoughts of Jim. However, she remembered what they had done in her bed not six hours earlier. So instead, she decided to strip her bed of the Jim-scented sheets and then put Nirvana on full blast until she couldn't think anymore.

What she didn't expect to find was her door open, with Kelly standing in front of her wardrobe, rifling through it, and pulling her clothes out. "What are you doing?" Pam gasped, out of breath and almost hiccuping through her tears.

"Looking for my black dre... Jesus what happened to you?" Kelly asked as she turned around, her eyes growing wide as she took in Pam. 

"I," Pam sighed heavily. She did not know how to even begin explaining that she'd gone on several dates and slept with one of the biggest musicians in the world, only to find out that he was just adding her to his roster of groupies. "I'm such an idiot," she wailed as she threw herself on her bed, only to be met with the lingering smell of Jim. She sat up and let her body slither to the floor where she hugged her knees to her chest and let her head hang down.

"Pam, this isn't like you," Kelly said in a concerned tone that was very unlike her. "What's going on?" She sat down on the floor next to Pam, leaning against the bed with her legs tucked under her, looking at her friend for an answer. 

Pam took a deep breath and lifted her head up to stare at the wall in front of her. "I," she paused again, looking for the right words. "I met this guy and slept with him and now I feel like just the biggest moron," she said in a small voice. 

"Oh is that it?" Kelly said, her normal tone having returned and accompanied with a roll of her eyes. "Babe, we've all been there. Just forget him and move onto the next one. There's plenty more fish in the sea."

"No Kel, it's not that. It's-," she let out a deep breath. "He's amazing and so funny and kind and I thought we had a real connection." 

"Didn't anyone ever teach you not to put out on the first date?" 

"It wasn't the first date!" Pam shrieked defensively.

"Alright, alright. Keep your knickers on," Kelly bit back. 

Pam took a deep breath and decided to tell Kelly the full story. "We met on Saturday afternoon and I guess we had our first date then. And then dinner that evening. And then we pretty much spent the whole of Sunday and Monday together. He walked me to class this morning, but then we kind of argued. And then made up," she said blushing slightly.

"Oh you banged it out, huh? Nice," Kelly grinned. 

Pam gave an eye roll and continued. "And I thought it was all kinda, you know, like a done deal that we were boyfriend and girlfriend after that." 

"So what happened?" Kelly asked, now fully invested in Pam's story.

Pam knew she was going to have to come clean about who she'd slept with and thought she was in a relationship with. "Ok, so don't freak out," she warned. 

"Ohmigod what happened?" Kelly excitedly repeated. "Did he do some weird sex thing? Did he try and stick it in your -" 

"Kelly!" Pam shrieked. "No, it was nothing like that. It's more about who he is." 

"Ok...so who is he?" 

"He's, um, he's called Jim."

"Jim? That sounds kinda like a stupid name."

Ignoring her, Pam continued. "But you'd know him as Duncan." She took a deep breath. "Duncan Halpert."

Kelly laughed. "Yeah, right," she guffawed. "You slept with Duncan Halpert? You didn't even know who he was this morning." She looked at Pam through her laughter. "So who did you really sleep with?" Pam just stared at her, and Kelly stared back, raising an eyebrow in question. "Wait, what? You slept with Duncan Halpert? What? How? Tell me everything right now," she shouted, scrambling into a seated position on her knees in front of Pam as if she were begging for the precious information.

"I don't know, I guess I'd never heard of him ‘til a few days ago," Pam began but was cut off by Kelly. 

"How do you not know who he is?" Kelly shrieked. "He's only the biggest and most famous person I can even think of!" 

"I don't know," Pam whined defensively. "He's only big in England and I've only been here a few weeks. But can we focus on what's important here please?" 

"Sorry, sorry. OK, so how did you even meet him?" 

"It was in this tiny little guitar shop. Remember I had to go pick up that guitar for my dad?" Pam asked and Kelly nodded. "Well, he was in there, I guess testing out some new guitars and he sang a little and stuff-"

"Oh my fucking god. You got a private performance from Duncan Halpert?" Kelly interrupted.

"Well, yeah, but that's not really the important thing here," Pam reminded her. 

"Oh yeah. Duh. Of course. You've seen his penis."

"Kelly!" 

"What? You have!" 

"Ok yes, but-" 

"What's it like? Is he huge? I bet he's enormous." 

"Yeah I'm not doing this," Pam said, as she started to get up." 

"Wait, wait. No. Ok, so tell me what happened," Kelly pleaded, pulling Pam back down to the floor. "So you met him, didn't know who he was, went on a bunch of dates. And it never came up that he has a platinum album?" 

"Yeah I guess not," Pam bitterly laughed through her nose. "After you showed me the picture of him kissing some girl, which was me by the way-" 

"Holy fucking shit!" Kelly screamed. "You were on Deuxmoi!" 

"Focus Kel!" Pam shouted above her friend's hysterics. "So yeah, after I saw those pictures, I confronted him and he told me everything. About who he was and his music and stuff. I guess he just let out the part that he has a ton of groupies and I was about to become one of them." She paused and let out a sigh. "How could I be so stupid?" 

"Because he's hot. And charming. And has the voice of an angel. And did I mention hot?" 

"All valid points," Pam tried to laugh, "and I fell for each and every one. He even had this whole bit about being called Jim and how no one ever calls him Jim." She rolled her eyes at the memory. 

"Huh?" 

"So he's called Duncan Halpert right?" Pam said and Kelly nodded. "Well apparently Duncan is his middle name and he uses it as a stage name. And the only people who call him Jim are his family and super close friends. I can't believe I lapped all that shit up." 

"Wow, I've read all about him and I've never seen anything about him being called Jim," Kelly replied in agreement.

"I can't believe I fell for it," Pam said, rolling her eyes. "Of course he's not really called Jim. Even those stupid groupies call themselves the Donuts." 

"The what?" Kelly laughed. 

"The Donuts. Like Dunkin' Donuts. Or Duncan's Donuts. I don't know. They call him Dunky to be cute. But anyway. Surely they'd know if he was really called Jim." 

"Right. So you think he was just adding you to the Donuts?" 

"He must have been," Pam replied flatly. "He's got three other girls. At least three. One was saying how good he looks with his shirt off. And how he's such a good kisser." She wiped away a tear that was rolling down her cheek.

"So what are you gonna do?" 

"Nothing," she shrugged. "I mean, do we need to break up if we weren't even dating?"

"I guess not. Just wait for him to call and ignore him?" Kelly suggested.

"Or even better," Pam said, taking out her phone from her pocket and tapping the screen a few times. "Block and delete him."

--

It had been a full twelve hours before Jim turned up at Pam's door. The knocking had started gently just after 8am, accompanied by a soft "Pam, are you in there?", but steadily built to a hard and insistent rapping against the door.  

Once it had finally subsided, Pam waited thirty minutes for the coast to be clear before opening the door and venturing to Kelly's room. Except it actually wasn't clear. Jim was sitting on the floor opposite her room, staring at the door. "You gotta stop doing this, Beesly," he said quietly, looking up at her. 

"Doing what?" she said nonchalantly, not meeting his eyeline.

He pushed his hands to the floor, stood and slowly walked over to her. "Running away. Turning your phone off. Not talking to me," he listed as he reached Pam, towering over her. "You can't just shut down. This isn't how a relationship works. You have to talk to the other person." 

Pam snorted laughter through her nose and bitterly shook her head. "Yeah, right," she muttered to herself.

"Excuse me?" Jim asked, not fully sure he'd just heard what he thought he did.

Pam looked up and then down the corridor that they were standing in and realised she didn't want to do this there. Without replying, she turned around, went back inside her room, and perched herself on the edge of her desk. Jim slowly followed her inside, closing the door behind him. "So do you want to tell me what's going on?" he asked, standing in front of her. 

"I don't know Duncan. I think everything has planned out just the way you like it, Duncan," she said sarcastically, emphasising his name each time.

"Why the fuck are you calling me Duncan? I told you, my name's Jim," he said, eyebrows furrowed.

"You sure about that? Seems like your ‘Donuts'," she said in air quotes, "seem to know you verrrrrry well. Don't they Dunky?"

"Ugh," he whined, looking up at the ceiling. He shook his head to himself. "Is this what this is about?" he asked, looking back at Pam. 

"Of course this is what ‘this' is about," she shouted, with her air quotes again. "I guess the other girls have just accepted it more easily. But I'm not going to," she said defiantly. 

"Accepted what? There's nothing to accept!" he shouted back at her.

"Can you just go," she said, turning her back on him. It wasn't a question.

"No," he replied, pulling her around to face him. "Can you please just tell me what the fuck is going on?"

"I'm not going to be one of your groupies," she said quietly, trying to straighten out her shoulders. 

"I don't want you to be a groupie," he replied, taking her hand in his, but she pulled it away. "I thought we were more than that?"

"Yeah, well," she sniffed. 

"Well what?" he pushed.

"I guess I'm just not cut out for your rock and roll lifestyle," she sniffed. "So I'll leave you to your groupies." 

"My groupies?" he asked, clearly confused. "I don't want those girls. I want you." 

"Yeah, right," she muttered to herself. 

"What does that mean?" he asked, clearly offended at her suggestion.

"Well, they seem to know what you look like with your shirt off. And how you kiss," she shot back.

"No, that's not what it loo-" he rushed out, but Pam cut him off.

"I think you should go." 

"Pam, please," he begged. "I can explain everything. Don't do this. I want us to be together." 

She stayed silent for a moment, looking anywhere but at Jim. "I can't," she finally whispered.

--

It had been two weeks since Pam had watched Jim walk away from her, wiping a single tear from his cheek. It had almost killed her to lose him, but she knew she didn't want to be in competition with those women. And the more she thought about it, the more she realised she really didn't know who he was.

So while it had been two weeks since she'd seen him in person, it had only been three days since Pam had last stalked Jim. Or Duncan. She still wasn't sure. She just couldn't help herself. She'd even created a fake Instagram account and followed him, as well as several of his ‘stan' accounts. And the official ‘Duncan's Donut's' page. She didn't want to look, but it was like a squished spider - she needed to peek to make sure that it was really dead under there. Except this spider wasn't dead. It was a gorgeous man who she thought she had been falling very quickly in love with. The same man that had his arms wrapped around two of the groupies in the photo that had been most recently posted on the Donuts' page.

When she'd seen that picture, Pam had burst into tears. The two women were cuddled in so closely to him, and he was grinning at the camera with his arms around their shoulders. The caption read ‘In our happy place'. It was at that point that Pam had decided to not only delete the fake account, but also Instagram itself. She didn't need to see these stupid pictures and she didn't need to know anything else about Duncan Halpert.

Except Kelly did want to know more and so had taken it on to become Pam's personal detective and relationship therapist. Not that Pam knew any of this. It had started off innocently enough with Kelly trawling through Duncan's Instagram page but after 45 minutes of scrolling, she realised she was in the pictures where he just didn't look hot anymore. He was much younger, perhaps in his late teens, and had more of a buzz cut going on. His ears were sticking out and he had some bad acne on his face. Kelly also recognised one of the girls that he had his arm around. It was the same girl from the latest post on the Duncan's Donuts page.

Feeling like she'd stumbled across something pivotal, Kelly took a screenshot for safe keeping, and then clicked on the tagged people. Cathy Simms was this girl's name and from the scruffy matching ties that the two of them were wearing, it was clear that they went to school together. So obviously the only sensible option was to stalk Cathy's page for more clues. All of the pictures were of her and Duncan and in almost each one of them, Cathy had her arms wrapped around Duncan, with this wide smile and maniacal look in her eye. He on the other hand had a slight grimace and Kelly noticed that he seemed to be doing everything he could to get away from her. His body would be leaning away from her, his hand not touching her body, his head bent away from her. Interesting, Kelly thought to herself. 

She spent a good hour going through the pictures, taking every possible detail she could from them. It seemed like Cathy thought they were in a relationship and had been for years. The way the captions read ‘always so much fun with this one' or ‘forever with my best friend'. Kelly gagged as she read them. She scrolled all the way to the bottom of Cathy's feed, and then back up to the top, noticing how sporadic the dates between the photos had become in recent years. Rather than the weekly photos Cathy had posted of the two of them when they were younger, by the time they reached their twenties, the photos had dwindled to months between them. Again, Kelly found this very interesting.

Once she had exhausted Cathy, Kelly moved onto the next Dount. Karen Filippelli. Private account. "Dammit," Kelly whispered to herself as she looked at the very stern face in the small circle staring back at her. 

She navigated back to Donuts' fan page and found the last one - Katy Moore. She's cute, Kelly thought to herself with her eyebrows raised, a nod of her head from side to side and a downturned mouth. Her page didn't seem as obsessive as Cathy's. There was more a mix of solo photos of Katy, her with other friends, food, and then a smattering of her with Duncan. There really wasn't too much to go on. Out of habit, Kelly pulled the page down, which refreshed it, and suddenly a pinkish circle appeared around Katy's smiling profile picture. Kelly hesitated for a second, but after she remembered she was using her finsta and Katy wouldn't know who she was if she looked at the story viewers, Kelly clicked it. A full screen video started playing of Duncan sitting on a chair, strumming his guitar and singing softly. Kelly clicked the volume all the way up and listened to the words he was singing:

I can't stop thinking ‘bout her
A piece of my heart is missing

She clicked back on the story and listened to the song again and again. It was on the 3rd listen that she noticed the words that Katy had written on top of the reel in the story - I WISH HE'D SING THIS ABOUT ME - which was accompanied by 3 sobbing face emojis. 

Interesting didn't even begin to cover this. Kelly scrabbled to her feet and ran to Pam's room, banging on the door relentlessly until Pam unlocked it. The door was barely ajar before Kelly pushed her way in, phone first.  "He's written a song about you," she screeched, waving her phone in Pam's face. "He's in love with you!"

"What? What are you talking about?" Pam asked in a much more hushed tone.

"Listen," Kelly demanded, cranking up the volume on her phone and holding the speaker end of the phone up to Pam's ear. She clicked the reel and Duncan's voice floated around them both.

"Please don't do this Kel," Pam said quietly, trying to hold back her tears.

"No, Pam. Don't cry. Look! He's singing about you!" She pressed play on the video and shoved it back into Pam's face again.

"Stop it! Just stop it!" Pam shouted, knocking the phone out of Kelly's hand. 

"Ohmigod why would you do that?" Kelly screamed as she scrabbled to pick her phone up off the floor, checking it for any cracks.

"Because I don't want to see him," Pam shot back.

"But he's in love with you!"

"Stop saying that!

"But he is!"

"How do you know that's about me, huh?" Pam shouted. "It could be anyone. It could be any one of them," she sobbed. "So just stop it ok?"

"Ok," Kelly finally relented. "I'm sorry."

"It's ok," Pam instinctively said, even though it definitely wasn't ok. She had her arms defensively wrapped around herself, and was looking down at the ground. "Do you mind?"

Kelly turned and left Pam's room, making the short walk back to her own bedroom. She threw herself on her bed and began to scroll Instagram again, forgetting that she was still on her finsta account. Before she realised that however, a reel of Duncan filled the screen. He was sitting on a drummer's stool, cradling his guitar with a sad look on his face. "So what's been the inspiration for your new song?" a voice off camera asked. "It's seems a little, uh-"

"Depressing?" Duncan added with a sad snort of laughter through his nose.

"For lack of a better word. Yes."

"Um, well, it's kinda personal," he began shyly, "but I recently lost someone. Someone who was incredibly important to me."

"Someone you maybe loved?" the voice asked.

"Maybe, yeah."

"Oh my fucking god," Kelly whispered to herself as she got herself up off her bed and back to Pam's room. She didn't knock this time. She simply tried the handle, and finding it unlocked, just barged into Pam's room. "It is about you!" she yelled at Pam.

"Kelly, I told you to stop," Pam sighed as she looked up from her desk where she was writing a paper.

"No, I know, and I was going to, but then I found this video." 

"I don't want to see it."

"Trust me, you do," Kelly pressed as she held her phone up for Pam. She let the video play, and once again Duncan was explaining how he'd recently lost someone.

"This doesn't prove anything. It might be about his grandma who died. Or someone he hasn't seen for a long time. Or-"

"You!" Kelly shouted.

"Kel, I can't do this anymore. Please stop," Pam pleaded.

"But look how miserable you are. And look how miserable he is." 

"I can't imagine he's that miserable with all his Donuts," Pam huffed sarcastically. 

"Oh shit, I didn't even tell you. So one of them I think is like his school friend," Kelly rushed out.

"What?" Pam asked, suddenly sitting up straighter.

"Yeah. And from the looks of it, she's totally obsessed with him. I went through her insta, and another one of them, and his, and there's literally nothing remotely romantic going on with any of these women. Like he looks scared in most of the pictures," Kelly explained. Once again, she shoved her phone into Pam's face, showing all the evidence that she'd found earlier.

"It doesn't change anything," Pam said. "He still lied."

"About which bit?" 

"Well his name for starters. The whole Jim thing"

"We don't know for definite he's not called Jim," Kelly reasoned. 

"The kissing," Pam shot back. "The groupie said he was a good kisser." 

"Did he say he didn't kiss her?"

"No, but-" Pam tried but Kelly cut her off.

"Becuase if it was the crazy one," Kelly said as she clicked to Cathy's profile, found the picture of a young Duncan and Cathy, and held it out to Pam, "I'd say maybe they kissed as teenagers."

"Well, another one said he looks good with his shirt off," Pam said defensively.

"Jesus Christ, even I know he does. Do you know how many shirtless photoshoots that man has done? You're being irrational."

"Irrational? Me?" Pam screeched.

"You're jumping to conclusions all over the shop. Did you even let him explain if he was with these women before you kicked him out? Or even knew them?

"Why are you defending him?"

"Because I want to see you not moping around everywhere. And from what you've said about him, I think you're in love with him. And he's clearly in love with you."

"Yeah, well," Pam paused. "Even if I wanted to call him, I deleted his number so I couldn't even call him. 

Kelly held out her phone one more time to Pam. "Well good news. Looks like he's got a gig tonight at The Roundhouse."