"So, Pam, you work with Jim?" Betsy asked, putting down her menu, having easily decided on her meal.  

"Yes, I am the receptionist," Pam nodded with a self-depreciating smile. She often qualified her statement with ‘my fiancé works in the warehouse' to try and fulfil her need to justify her job, but she had no plans to mention him tonight if she could avoid it. Instead, she carried on with, "I just answer the phones and... take messages, so... not quite as exciting as sales." 

"Oh, come on," Jim, sitting opposite Pam, waved a hand in her direction, "she basically keeps the office going - keeps our boss in check, there's always candy, everyone gets their messages and makes their sales."  

"Because sales is such a wild job," Tom snorted, gleefully giving Pete next to him a high five. 

Larisa rolled her eyes at her brothers over the top of her menu. "I don't think that really needed a high five, losers."

"Kids, behave!" Betsy scolded.

"You're aware we're all adults, right?" Larisa put her hands up in exasperation. 

"Oh, my mom still calls me and my sister ‘kids' too," Pam laughed.

"And you're just about an adult, Larisa," Betsy reminded her daughter. "You're all kids forever to me." 

Jim threw Pam an amused look as he returned to his menu. There was some brief small talk across the table about what everyone was ordering, who was sharing starters, were they getting desserts too? Pam decided to share a pair of starters with Larisa so they could go halves, both of them pulling a face at Jim's choice and rolling their eyes. 

Pam was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to converse with the Halpert family; she had thought it might be a little awkward since she didn't know any of them, but it felt familiar. By the time they were halfway through their starters and Larisa had finished telling Jim and Pam a story of a recent terrible date, Pam got the question she had been deeply hoping to avoid.

"So, are you seeing anyone Pam?"

"Oh! I, umm-" Pam spotted Larisa looking towards her ring finger and brought her hands to her lap for a moment, while Jim dropped the olive he was stealing from Betsy's plate. "It's..."

"A secret?"

"What? No! I'm-"

"You know, Jim is single, and I don't understand why," Betty joined the conversation, swatting Jim's hand away from her plate. Although it wasn't Pam's preferred subject, at least the topic was shifting slightly from her. She was curious why Betsy thought Jim was single, given he was dating Katy, but Pam realized she was hardly one to judge.

"Thanks, Mom," Jim said with raised brows. 

"I'm just saying, if you're both single, that's always an option," Betsy shrugged. 

Pam felt a sudden need to glug her water while Jim rolled his eyes over a mouthful of bread, ears red. She had initially planned on telling the truth about being engaged if she was asked directly, but when it came to it she found she had no desire to tell the truth - and she certainly hadn't been prepared for Betsy's comment. Thankfully for both, Larisa chimed in with, "you know, I don't really get how I'm single, and Jim is weird but generally alright and single, and yet Loser One has a girlfriend and Loser Two is engaged."

"Hey!" Pete scowled, catching on to the conversation when his sister gestured over to him and Tom with her fork. "What the hell?"

"No offence to the girls! I just think they could do better," Larisa shrugged.  

"Oh, because you're always bringing home like, lawyers and surgeons," Tom scoffed, "with massive-"

"The end of that sentence better be ‘savings accounts', Thomas," Betsy pointed her butter knife toward her son before returning to her bread roll.  

Larisa turned to face Pam, one brow raised with an amused smirk on her face. Pam giggled around her mouthful of food; not just at the joke, but at how endearingly similar her expression was to Jim's. She could practically read Larisa's mind with that expression. To Pam's amusement, when she glanced up at Jim he mouthed "that's what she said" and successfully stole an olive from Betsy's plate. With a grin, Pam shook her head.  

"Are all your family dinners like this?" Pam asked, setting down her fork on her now-empty starter plate. 

"Pretty much," Larisa answered beside her, while Jim said "kinda," with a shrug. 

"You have any siblings?" Larisa asked. 

"I have a sister - Penny - so our dinners are a little chatty, but I guess... quieter."

"Ooh, Penny and Pam, that's cute!"

"Oh, please," Pam rolled her eyes. "Penelope and Pamela? We sound like old ladies." 

"No, it's cute!" Larisa assured her. "You know, I used to be jealous because Jim, Tom and Pete all go by those names rather than James, Thomas and Peter, and I'm just Larisa." 

They fell back into easy conversation, each sibling eager to tell a story at the expense of another. Betsy and Gerald would pipe in for clarification or to add an end to a story, often explaining how they consoled each of their children whenever they were the subject of a prank pulled by the others. Pam was not all that surprised that Betsy had been the one to teach them many of the pranks, but Gerald was usually the one in on the smaller pranks. It was completely new to Pam - she couldn't imagine her parents playing pranks on each other, and she and Penny had always been told off whenever they played pranks on each other as kids - so she was enthralled by all the stories. 

Somewhere around dessert, the subject moved on to Tom's proposal, in which he tricked his then-girlfriend into thinking he'd forgotten about their date, knowing she'd walk past the spot they'd had their first kiss on her way back to her car. It was surprisingly romantic, though Pam thought it took things a bit too far and knew she would hate thinking she'd been stood up. It was a little too... familiar. 

"I was definitely impressed you had that in you, Tom," Larisa said. "Me and Jim had to set up that little park fountain area so quickly, because we thought we might get told off or something." 

"That's so sweet that he asked for you guys' help to set it up," Pam smiled. 

"Honestly, ‘sweet' doesn't suit Tom," Larisa pulled a face of disgust. 

"Larisa was making wretching sounds pretty much the whole time we were setting up," Jim laughed, "but she had tears in her eyes when she saw him in his suit."

"Shut up, I did not!" Larisa gasped.

"You did, you totally did!" Tom grinned. "Lame-o!"

"Says the guy who asked me to tie his tie," Pete snorted.

"He had to borrow that tie from me," Gerald shook his head. 

"Remind me, who bought you that tie?" Betsy raised a brow.  

For a moment, Pam zoned out as she tried to remember if Roy knew how to tie his own tie. Nothing came to mind, so she focused back in on the conversation, which had moved along slightly. 

"I'd want something big, for sure," Larisa was saying, "like... everyone claps and cheers when I say yes, we get free champagne, there's a photographer, I want the whole nine yards."

"Well, you need to find yourself a boyfriend first, Larisa," Betsy pointed out.

"One who can afford an engagement ring," Gerald added. "With his own money."

"Ugh, it was one time that one guy jokingly asked you for money," Larisa rolled her eyes, before pointing her dessert spoon at Pam. "What about you? Dream proposal?" 

"Uh," Pam looked around the table before her eyes landed on Jim. He looked curious but apologetic, and she knew he was wondering if she was going to tell the story of Roy's proposal. Apologetic for his nosy family - though she didn't blame them, she loved a good proposal dream as much as the next person - but curious. At work, she would have told the real story, because most people knew about it. But here? She was Pam without an engagement ring (which she felt certain Jim hadn't noticed yet) who could share her dream proposal without the weight of disappointment she usually felt. Not that Roy's proposal was anywhere near any kind of dream proposal anyone could think up, so she technically wasn't lying. She kept her eyes on Jim's as she spoke, unable to look away. "I'd want it to be a surprise. I think... I'd want to know I'm ready for a proposal, but not know when it's coming. I don't care where, just something that... I don't know, leaves me speechless and sweeps me off my feet."

"Oh, that is so cute," Larisa nodded approvingly. "Simple but cute." 

"Yeah," Pam looked away from Jim and down at the slice of apple pie on her plate. She could practically feel the ‘what was that about?' floating from Jim's mind to hers. Why the story - why tell it as if she wasn't engaged? She felt Larisa hesitate and stare at her for a moment as Betsy started speaking, but she stayed focused on arranging her slice of almost-finished pie onto her fork.

"You know, Gerald's mother, bless her, kind of gave Gerald's proposal away," Betsy was saying as Pam, Jim and Larisa quietly worked at their desserts.

"Mom, we've heard this like a hundred times," Pete pointed out. 

"Well Pam hasn't!"  

Hearing her name, Pam looked up with a small smile. "I'd love to hear it."

"She kept asking me if I had something nice to wear for this date Gerald had planned - ‘what are you wearing on Thursday, dear?' she kept saying - on and on. Offered me this gorgeous necklace and kept giving me these looks. Trying to subtly ask me if I think I'm ready to ‘settle down in life' and what my ‘future plans' are," Betsy chuckled to herself then raised her glass towards Gerald. "But it was okay. It just made me even more excited for that wonderful, wonderful Thursday." 

"Oh, that's so sweet," Pam smiled as Betsy and Gerald clinked glasses across the table. 

As the conversation moved along, Pam wondered what it would be like to have a proposal story she actually wanted to share. She was interrupted from the thought when Jim brought her into a story from work (a prank they had played on Dwight in which they'd switched the places of everything on his desk) and decided to leave the thought behind. It was much more fun being Pam - just Pam. Not Pam, of Pam & Roy. Just... Pam, "who literally became an IT genius making sure everything was connected right at 7am!"