She slammed her car door, unthinkingly pressing the alarm button, the horn honking, lights flashing, briefly illuminating the front of her apartment building. A few steps later she shoved her key in the lock, throwing open the door and tossing her purse on the sofa before she flipped on a few lights, then made her way to the bathroom. Usually it was her habit to sink into a bath as soon as she got home - particularly if she'd worked a little later, as she had tonight. But now she just washed her face, even took the time to put her eye drops in (which she usually skipped), dutifully slathering on the moisturizer Kelly had insisted she start using.

She flipped on the television as she made her way to the kitchen, struggling to pull open the freezer door before reaching in to take out a frozen dinner. She popped it in the microwave, shifting to wash the dishes in her sink that were left over from the morning. She lit candles, made a cup of Tazo Calm tea, found herself humming a snatch of a tune she couldn't have placed as she actually set her place at the table - folding a paper napkin, placing a knife and fork on top of it.

She usually ate off of a t.v. tray in her living room as she watched television, but tonight she gravitated toward her tiny kitchen table, shoving the bowl of fruit in the center off to the side as she sat down and began to eat, listening absently to CNN. When the anchor mentioned something about a beluga whale being euthanized in an aquarium somewhere in the south, she felt her throat tighten, the rubbery piece of chicken in her mouth suddenly a lead weight.

Stubbornly, she forced herself to swallow it, the action so difficult that she actually felt it in her ears; when the tears stung her eyes, she told herself it was because of that whale - so sad for it to have been taken out of its natural habitat, moved to a place with crystal clear water and windows, steady care...only to contract a bone infection that made it waste away to the point of having to be put down. It just seemed so unfair, so unnecessary.

That's why she couldn't finish her dinner. So sad, that.

She was clearing away her dinner mess when the doorbell rang, her heart jumping. For a second she froze, almost - almost - letting the first honest thought of the night creep into her head. Is it...? Could it really be...?

Her hands trembled as she reached for the door, swinging it open. Roy was standing there with a box under one arm, shifting awkwardly on his feet, his smile hesitant, hope in his eyes.

"Uh, hey." Flash of his dimples, eyes downcast for a second. "I tried to call, but...."

All she could do was stand there and stare at him, blinking slowly, and then she snapped out of it. "Oh - right, I was...I just got home a little while ago."

"Oh." He nodded, an awkward silence falling. Their eyes met; he pressed his lips together uncomfortably. And then she realized they were just standing there in the doorway, his breath an intermittent haze of faint smoke in the cold.

"God, I'm sorry." She shook her head. "Come on in."

"Thanks." Again the dimples.

He'd been to her apartment only twice before - the first time with a pale face and stark eyes, to get her signature on some papers to close their joint account; the second time with slurred words and flushed cheeks, falling drunkenly to his knees to literally beg her back. Both times it had struck her that he seemed oddly out of place here.

She waved a hand at the couch. "Do you want to sit down...?"

He perched on it uncomfortably but gratefully, then gestured gingerly to the box in his hands. "I uh...some of your stuff..."

"Oh." She took it from him, murmuring thanks as she set it down beneath an end table. Silence.

She couldn't look at him, staring at a mark on the carpet just in front of her foot, wondering how it had gotten there. An accident - of a previous tenant, of course - but had anyone tried to treat the mark before it became a stain?

"Pam...?"

She jerked her head up to find Roy staring at her quizzically.

"Oh, I'm sorry." She shook her head, forcing a laugh that sounded too loud even to her own ears. "I was just...that spot on the carpet."

Roy lowered his head, squinting as if he couldn't see it as she went on. "I was just thinking that it's such great carpet - hardly worn at all - and then there's this spot right in the middle. I just wonder why the cleaning crew that came in before I moved in didn't even try to clean it?"

He looked confused, his brows knitting, prompting her to talk even faster. "I mean...it's not that hard to get rid of a spill, right? You wipe it away; usually just water's enough to clean it. But if you don't do it fast enough, then it's a stain - and then there's just nothing you can do about it."

His eyes were slightly wider now. "I guess...?"

She realized that he wasn't following her; then she heard herself saying - again, too loudly, in a voice she almost didn't recognize - "Hey, so did you hear about that beluga whale?"

"What?"

"The...the beluga whale." She stood now, brushing lint off the arm of her sofa before turning her back and heading toward the kitchen, saying casually, "They had to...put it down. I was just... I mean, I thought it was sad; that's all."

He followed her to the kitchen silently, and when she glanced at him over her shoulder, she was a little surprised to see concern coloring his face. "Hey...you okay?"

"What? Me?" Hearing herself say that out loud - me? - was the first chink in her defense. "Yeah, I'm fine. It's just been a...crazy day."

He smiled, looking a little relieved. "I guess so. All those new people from Stamford... I heard one of 'em quit already."

She smiled back at him. "Oh yes, he did. With good reason."

"No doubt." His grin struck her as easy, charming; even as she thought that, he added, "But hey, I guess you're glad to have Halpert back, eh?"

She froze, eyes wide as one hand found its way to her clavicle, then to the back of her hair, which she'd taken the time to blowdry smooth before work this morning. "Yeah...sure."

What he'd said scared her at first, then suddenly struck a chord in her, the heat filling her cheeks as she felt the anger build.

"Hey." She smiled brightly at Roy. "You want a drink?"

He looked slightly surprised at first, then something else washed over his face. "A drink? You've got alcohol...?"

It wasn't that hard to laugh easily at what he'd said. He knows me - see, he really knows me well enough to know that I don't usually drink.

She ignored the gut-level realization that if he really knew her, he wouldn't have even mentioned Jim - because he'd have recognized him as the ultimate threat.

Instead of sinking, she smiled again, feeling oddly light. "Yes, I do have alcohol. Well, not hard liquor, but wine."

Roy chuckled, and the look in his eyes was so clearly affectionate - the term enchanted came to mind, then he met her eyes. "Good thing - I was starting to think maybe you'd been holding out on me all this time!"

She couldn't laugh, had to turn her back and busy herself with the task of digging out wine glasses, struggling to uncork the wine. She could feel his eyes drinking in her every movement like a man thirsting, suffering.

Such was the course of her thoughts as she drank a glass of wine with him, then another; within an hour and a half, her laughter wasn't forced anymore, and the flush on her cheeks was matched by the flush across her collarbone.

There was something about seeing Roy sipping wine - he who had always dismissed wine and champagne as not worth it - sitting a respectable distance away from her on her sofa, veins in his hands prominent, his tight black tee-shirt stretching across a newly buff chest. Even his jaw was more chiseled. And the beard....

As she watched him tip the bottle, pouring the last of it in her glass, a shocking kind of flutter wafted from her low abdoment to her breasts to her chest to her throat. There was something almost reverent in the way he avoided her eyes, as if it were too much for him to look at her straight on. When he glanced up to find her staring at him, he froze - initially guiltily, then with a kind of resigned weariness.

She was captivated at the realization that there was actually a palpable tension between them, when she'd been sure that the raw attraction she'd initially felt for Roy had sputtered out a long time ago - back when she was someone else, before she lost herself in the complacency that had been their relationship and subsequent engagement.

Long before she became a ghost of herself, pretending not to recognize the things she wanted the most - and for reasons she could never articulate, much less justify.

Maybe that's why she leaned toward him suddenly and pressed her lips against his, the tickling of his beard making him seem like a stranger - not Roy. He didn't even hesistate; in an instant his hands were on her face, his tongue hot in her mouth, a moan caught somewhere in his throat. When he would have pulled back to speak, she gave a firm tug on the back of his head, her lips insistent on his own as he groaned, hands moving from her face to her lower back.

Still he murmured against her lips, "I've wanted you like this...god, Pam, I - "

She wouldn't let him finish - feeling strangely choked at the notion that he might continue speaking, for fear he'd break the spell. And it was immensely important suddenly that she follow this through; the fact that she wanted him - genuinely felt a hunger for him - well, it was her lifeline now.

She'd wondered because of the unfamiliarity of the beard against her cheek, her mouth, if it would be different, making love with him now.

It was.

He kissed her everywhere, it seemed - lips trailing from her neck to her breasts to her belly button, his tongue hot on the inside of her thigh, making her whole body tense. She let him do it, let him pull out all the stops, as it were, his tongue and his hands doing things to her she hadn't realized he was capable of - at least, not for as long as she could remember. His chest was harder than she remembered, his waist trim, abs defined as she trailed a hand across them.

And she wanted it - wanted to feel the burn and the pressure of him inside of her.

"God, Pam..." It was a throaty moan in her ear.

She tightened around him. "Don't talk."

He came; she didn't.

--------------------

She lay in the dark beside him, eyes shut tight against the reality of what she'd just done, at the morbid thoughts of that fucking beluga whale, whose plight - while certainly sad - had nothing, she realized, absolutely nothing to do with her mood tonight. Her actions, her regrets.

"Hey..." He moved to prop up on one arm, smiling down at her. "What're you thinking?"

He'd never asked her that before after sex. Ever.

Did Jim ask her what she was fucking thinking after sex?

The thought was random, the images it brought with it unexpected and sharply visceral; she stiffened all over, and Roy noticed it.

"Pam....?"

"I'm thinking that we shouldn't have done this." The words tumbled out of her. "It shouldn't have - "

"Wait a second." He was sitting up now, panic in his eyes. "You're overreacting."

"No." She shook her head, and then heard herself saying, "See, I don't usually react. I don't. So how could I overreact?"

His brows knit, blue eyes narrowing. "You're not making sense."

"I know."

A seemingly interminable pause, then: "I need you to go; I need you to forget this happened."

Now he looked indignant, bordering on angry. "What the...?"

"I'm sorry." She couldn't look at him. "It isn't your fault."

"Then whose goddamned fault is it?" He threw the covers off, standing to swipe his boxers off the floor, yanking on his jeans. "Can you tell me that, Pam? What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"I don't know."

"You have to know." His jaw was tense, lips thin. "So tell me."

"I can't."