Every day she wakes up alone and asks herself the same question: why can’t she be as brave as he was? Why doesn’t she just speak up, lay it all on the line, and let the chips fall where they may? God knows, she wants to believe she’d do anything, say anything, if she thought it might bring an end to this awful sadness, the limbo she’s living in every day.

She gets it now in a way that she didn’t back then. She’d been so mad at him for burdening her with the knowledge of something she’d been trying so desperately not to know. But she understands now why he spoke up when he did. Now, she can only wonder how he held it in for so long. He kept his silence for years, for her it’s been mere months and yet she’s crumbling under the weight of it.

Every day the words bubble up inside of her at the most inappropriate times:

As she hands him a message from a client, the words bubble up-

I love you.

As she watches him tease Dwight, the words bubble up-

I love you.

As Michael bombards the sales meetings with a steady stream of inappropriate anecdotes and Jim turns to her and grins, the words bubble up-

I love you

And, worst of all, as she watches him smile at Karen, the words bubble up –

I love you.

The words are always there, simmering below the surface, but they never quite make it out into the air. Maybe she doesn’t let them. Maybe it’s because she’s scared it’s too late, scared he’ll say no…

But mostly it’s because she thinks she has no right. She was the one who said no first. And his face when she said it… that look in his eyes. The only thing worse than never seeing him smile at her again - the smile she knows now was just for her – is the thought of ever seeing him look so sad. He seems happy now. He’s moved on. Yet again, he is braver than she is. And she has no right to mess that up. To cause him more pain.

Maybe she can’t be brave, she thinks. Maybe some people just aren’t meant to be. But if she can’t be brave, she decides, then she can be strong.

She can learn to be happy with what she has, because having his friendship is better than having nothing at all.

She can be happy that in Karen she had another friend. Another ally in the office is never a bad thing.

She can be relieved that Roy is letting go and moving on and she gets to be part of that too. She gets to be friends with the boy she used to know.

She can remember that no matter how much it hurt then, or how much it hurts now, she is grateful to him for shocking her out of complacency. Now she has art classes and a home of her own and new friends and new dreams and all because of him. She doesn’t know if she would have ever found all that if he hadn’t been so brave.

She chooses to be strong and really, it’s not so bad. There are pranks and laughter and eye rolling and drinks after work and shopping trips with Karen and most of the time, she’s okay. The words still bubble up inside her, but not with the same raw pain. Now it’s more of a dull ache. And she channels the ache into messing with Andy and making them all laugh and it really is okay.

She finds out that being strong has its own rewards. It means on the day that she and Karen are the only ones left in the office at the end of the day and Karen confesses she has broken up with Jim; she can say she’s sorry and mean it. And if she doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s sorry they broke up, it’s okay because she can honestly say she is sorry her friend might be sad. She can join Kelly and Karen for a girl’s night out and listen to the story of how it just wasn’t meant to be and not cry or rejoice or do much of anything but listen because that’s all Karen needs.

She can quash the little flare of longing that springs to life inside of her and tell him genuinely, truthfully, she’d sorry things didn’t work out the way he might have wanted them too. She can squeeze his shoulder gently and laugh as he makes a joke to change the subject and she can walk away calmly, indulging only for a second in the delicious dream that maybe that look on his face, the look that’s just for her, will someday be there again.

Strong comes to mean so many things. It means that as time goes on, and she catches Jim looking over at her, smiling at her, just a little more often, she can allow herself to hope again.

It means that when she spills the whole story, in all its messy glory, to Karen over a few too many post-work drinks, that she doesn’t really regret it. Of course, the subsequent humiliation when she wakes the next day and remembers is enough to have her swearing off tequila for life. But then her doorbell rings and Karen is there with bacon sandwiches and coffee and telling her to go for it and it turns out speaking up is absolutely a good thing sometimes. Maybe she will just go for it.

She wonders if maybe now it’s her turn to be brave. She wonders if that’s the way to do it – to lay it all out there as he once did and hope that this time it doesn’t send them ricocheting away from each other.

Or maybe her version of brave is different.

Maybe it’s letting her hand rest on his shoulder for longer than she really needs to as she leans over him to look at his computer screen.

It’s the way she brushes past him in the break room as she goes to get a soda, looking him in the eye and smiling just a little as he suddenly coughs and looks away.

Maybe it’s the way she keeps him company when Michael dumps the dirty work on him and he has to stay late at the office.

It’s the way she reaches out to brush a stray clump of hair off his forehead as she rests against his desk and listens to him mumble about sales reports and customer retention and all the things Michael is making him worry about.

Or maybe it’s in the way he catches her fingers from his hair and holds them lightly away from him as his eyes ask a thousand questions. She threads her fingers through his and nods.

And the words bubble up inside of her again and this time, she lets them free with a gentle sigh-

I love you.