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Author's Chapter Notes:

Just a little fluff from the afterglow of A Benihana Christmas. It won't be long now, my sisters and brothers. :-)

Disclaimer: These are not my characters. And that's cool. No Copywrite Infringement Intended.

I love you.

Those were the words she'd inscribed over and over again in the back pages of her sketch pad. She started writing those words on paper because for some time now they had been echoing in her head until there was no other space in her mind for anything else. Her heart sang this same unwavering chant every time she looked at him. Every time he had a clever comeback to Dwight - I love you. Every time he managed to reign Michael in just enough prevent embarrassment - I love you. Every smile he ever gave her that said he knew what she was thinking and he agreed completely - I love you.

She wanted to say it. She dreamt of saying it. She imagined elaborately detailed scenarios where they would be together and she finally, finally would be able to say it. But each day arrived, and she found she just couldn't. It was like a physical hurt not to say it, but she was scared it was too late say it. She was afraid he no longer wished to hear her say it.

So to keep her sanity, she found solace in writing it. Each stroke of each letter made it that much truer in her heart. She did love him. For every possible reason she loved him. Even for his faults she loved him. And every time she wrote it she thought perhaps it was giving her one more small degree of courage.

One early morning they all were in another typical Michael Scott meeting, and she found a pad of Post-Its and a pencil in the pocket of her sweater to play with. Jim said something that made her laugh so hard that she found herself writing I love you in faint letters on the top sticky note. She spent the rest of the meeting making a tiny printed border of the words I love you all around the square piece of paper. As the meeting ended, she saw that Jim was leaning over her shoulder, trying to read what she wrote. Her immediate reaction was to cover up her doodling, but for some reason she didn't. She let it lay there openly, with a glean in her eye that dared him to read it, and a thumping in her chest that dared her to explain it.

Jim's eyes fixed on the writing while everyone else filed out of the conference room around them. He finally looked at her questioningly with raised eyebrows. She slightly smiled, then popped the post-it notes into her cardigan pocket, grabbed the pencil and walked back to her desk.

She felt a little rush of adrenaline as she sat back down behind the reception desk. There was no reason Jim would have to suspect she had been writing that because of him, but the fact that he did see it made her feel like she'd just made a confession. And despite all of her previous paralyzing fears, she felt good. She noticed he looked over at her when he returned to his desk, that same muddled expression on his face. It was clear what he saw had left questions yet unasked.

A few hours later lunch was near and Pam headed to the kitchen for a break. Jim had approached her twice since the meeting, both for valid work reasons. But each time he lingered a little longer at her desk than strictly necessary, and longer than he had been doing in the recent past. At one point Pam thought he had gone back to his desk, only to turn around and be startled to see him still standing there. Standing there and looking at her in a way he hadn't displayed for nearly a year. It made her blush a little, and feel that lovely awkwardness that comes with fearing and wishing for the same exact thing.

As she filled her mug with hot water for tea, she remembered she still had that pad of post-its in her cardigan. She reached into the refrigerator for her daily yogurt, sitting next to Jim's brown bagged lunch. She shut the fridge, reached for a spoon, and noticed a pencil had been left in the silverware drawer. The fact that she was alone in the kitchen and had the post-it notes on her mind gave her a crazy idea. She tore off a new yellow note, and with the borrowed kitchen pencil wrote a simple I love you in the middle of the paper. She then opened the fridge again, and stuck it in Jim's lunch bag, nearly slamming the door from her anxiety when she was done. She decided it was best to have lunch at her desk today.

She thought that this was the point people would always refer to when they talked about the day Pam lost her mind. Her heart pounding in her ears, she wondered what in the hell possessed her to do that. He certainly was going to know where it came from given this morning. When Jim got up and headed for the kitchen, Pam just put her head on her desk. This is not how a grown woman behaves, she thought. She made herself sit up and eat her lunch, playing solitaire to help distract her.

About fifteen minutes later she caught his return out of the corner of her eye, and despite her fear she met his gaze. His stare revealed nothing, but she clearly saw a yellow post-it note poking out of the breast pocket of his blue shirt. He sat down at his desk without even approaching her, and Pam took a deep breath. She wasn't sure if she was relieved or disconcerted.

The afternoon dragged on, and after some time spent staring at his back and his shoulders and his neck and his unruly dark hair, Pam found herself back to writing those words in the relative safety of her sketch pad. When he gave her something to fax midway through the afternoon, the note was still in his pocket. He made no mention of it, but he held her gaze a little longer than usual, and the air between them was pregnant with mutual expectations.

When nothing of merit was said between them, Jim walked away and Pam sent off the fax. Then Pam set the phones to voice mail and she walked out of the office. It had suddenly become a bit too stifling for her. She walked out into the parking lot, the sunny afternoon too warm for December, but pleasant for a woman who walked out so jumbled she didn't even think to bring her coat. She strolled over to her car and leaned against the back bumper.

It took her a few moments to notice she'd parked next to Jim's car. Figures, she laughed to herself. I can't seem to get away from him. She rested her head on the glass of her hatchback and closed her eyes again the winter sun. She pulled her sweater tight against her, and felt the post-in note pad fall out of her pocket. She sighed, bent down to pick it up, and found a broken pencil half lying on the gravel behind one of her back tires. She picked up the pad and broken pencil and stared thoughtfully at Jim's car.

One post-it note tucked under his windshield wiper later, Pam was ready to go back inside. Written in frilly cursive, with a few hearts and scrolls tossed in for good measure, the note held what appeared to be the message of the day: I love you.

As she walked back into the office, she saw that Jim, Andy, and Dwight were shut up in Michael's office, and it took her nervous giddiness down a notch. They were still in his office an hour later, and by that time Pam was putting together the final batch of outgoing mail. She decided to leave a little early and drop the mail off at the downtown post office, and as she was putting on her coat she found the post-it note pad again. She set it on her desk, along with the broken pencil, and noticed she still had her original doodling from that morning. Before she could think too hard, she tucked it into the pocket of Jim's blue wool coat that had been hanging on top of hers on the coat stand. She quickly gathered up the mail and snuck out of the office before anyone could notice. She smiled as she got into her car, seeing that the yellow note was still under Jim's wiper blade. She wondered how many more notes she could get away with leaving before he said anything. 

It was shortly before nine o'clock in the evening when there was a knock on her door. She knew that was the time because Fox had just finished their promo for the House, M.D. episode that was coming up next. She felt vaguely irritated that anyone would even consider bothering her when her favorite show was about to start. Dressed in pink plaid flannel pajamas, Pam opened the door to find Jim standing there, three familiar yellow post-it notes splayed between the fingers of his right hand. In his left hand he held a single yellow post-it note with a message written in black: Trying to tell me something?

Pam brought her hands to her face in both surprise and amazement. She looked up at Jim, his face an unreadable collection of expressions. Unreadable, that is, unless you were Pam Beesly. The look he gave her made her immediately forget that she was missing her favorite show. It made her forget why she had been so afraid of telling him what she had been thinking and writing for so long. She looked down at his note, then back up into his eyes. She nodded, and dropped her hands from her face. He stepped through the doorway just as she stepped forward and brought her arms around his waist. She buried her face into the warmth of his blue shirt, and listened to the sound of his heart. It seemed to be beating nearly as fast as hers was. She felt his arm move, then heard the slam of the shutting door. His arms came around her, enfolding her in a tight hug. Then she heard him start to laugh, and the joy she felt radiating between them made her take a step back to look up at him again.

“Are we going to need to invest in 3M stock or do you think you can actually talk to me?” he asked.

“I hear they're a pretty good investment, actually,” Pam smiled. “But I guess there are some things that need to be said and not just written.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Anything come to mind that you'd like to share?”

“You're a dork,” Pam stated, looking up.

“Nice, Beesly. I can see I did the right thing coming over.” She thought she saw a flicker of hurt or disappointment in his eyes for just a minute, which made her become immediately serious. It occurred to her that it might have been a big thing for him to come over here, to take a risk on her again.

“You did do the right thing. I should have done the right thing the minute you walked back into my life.” She had his full attention now. “I love you, Jim Halpert. I really, truly love you.”

And having said that, the need for words was temporarily, and quite indefinitely, put on hold.



time4moxie is the author of 77 other stories.
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