"Okay, continue," Jim said, dropping her wrist as the door closed behind them. Her arm fell limply at her side, and she felt a cold chill at the loss of his touch.

She was afraid to look at him and see that he was angry with her. "I just, I didn't know what you'd told her, and I thought it would be more suspicious if I refused to tell her anything." She glanced up at him only as she finished.

"Pam..."

"So I told her the Cliff's Notes version, which is apparently more than what you'd told her, because she got really upset, and she left."

Jim passed a hand over his face. "I can't believe this," he sighed, and looked up at the ceiling. 

"Jim. I'm-"

He shook his head slightly, his jaw tense, his mouth pursed.

Feeling shut out, Pam turned around and pushed open the door to the Ladies' Room, hearing Jim say her name softly and almost apologetically as the door closed behind her. She shut herself in the last stall and cried for the next fifteen minutes. She was so confused, full of such a mix of emotions. She felt ashamed that she actually felt relief that things with Jim and Karen were most likely over. On top of that, she felt like she'd betrayed Jim, and knew she'd upset Karen and lost the possibility of a friendship. Who would want to be friends with the woman who your boyfriend might still be in love with?

But the strongest emotion that came out of the whole situation was hope. The fact that Jim hadn't told Karen the whole story, that he was hiding their past from Karen, probably meant that he wasn’t over Pam. She just hated that this whole thing had blown up like it had, and that it probably put a distance in between her and Jim again, just when they had been slowly repairing their friendship.

Back at her desk, Pam stared at the back of Jim's head for the rest of the afternoon. Karen hadn't returned from her early lunch, and Pam couldn’t keep her mind on her work. She kept looking up at Jim every few minutes, noticing how tense he seemed, watching him dial a phone number, listen, and then hang up the phone. He did that at least five times, and then he started leaving messages. She had to strain to hear, but what she was able to put together sounded like, "Listen we have to talk. Please, just-- call me. If I don't hear from you, I'm stopping by after work anyway. Okay... um, bye."

She watched Jim leave the office at the end of the day without even glancing in her direction. She felt it in the pit of her stomach that she’d lost her chance. Crying in her car on the way home was something she was sort of getting used to.

------

Over the next few days, Pam quickly came to the conclusion that Jim and Karen had broken up. Karen basically refused to look at Jim, and when Pam did catch Karen gazing in Jim's direction, she looked wounded and angry all at once.

Things between Jim and Pam weren’t much better. They were back to square one-- awkward, forced interactions; trying to avoid each other; and whenever their eyes met, their gazes would fly apart like shrapnel.

A week later, Karen transferred to the corporate office. Michael, always looking for an excuse to have fun, threw Karen a farewell party on her last day in Scranton. Pam spent most of it behind her desk, catching up on work rather than participating in the festivities.

At four thirty, Pam heard a rustling in front of her desk. She looked up, and Karen stood there, having just put her coat on, and was looking Pam in the eye for the first time since the conversation in the breakroom.

"Hey."

"Oh... hey, Karen."

"Um, I just... wanted to apologize. For putting you in the middle of everything, and then acting like it was all your fault."

"Oh, Karen, it's okay."

"No, I feel really bad about it. I like you, Pam... I had been hoping we could be really good friends. But everything blew up in my face, and I didn't know how to deal with it."

Pam smiled slightly. "It's totally understandable. And I would have liked for us to be friends, too."

"Karen's whole face relaxed into a smile. "Hey, well, I have your e-mail address, so, if I ever get bored at work..."

"Oh yeah, definitely." Pam smiled.

"Well, I have to go," Karen said, pointing with her thumb over her shoulder.

"Bye, Karen."

"Bye, Pam..." Karen hesitated for a moment, and then leaned closer, her voice lowering to a whisper. "Don't wait too long to tell him."

Pam's eyebrows rose, and her mouth opened and closed with no sound, not really knowing what to say.

Karen took one last look around the office, and turned to go.

------

Slowly, over the coming weeks, Jim and Pam began to talk again, to eat lunch together again, and they even planned a few pranks together. As Valentine's Day approached, Pam knew better than to get her hopes up about Jim doing anything special for her on that particular day. But she still found herself in the card aisle of the Stop& Shop, looking through the Valentine's Day cards the night before February 14th. She found the perfect card for Jim. She couldn't help herself- she had to buy it for him. It played too well into one of their inside jokes for her to not to at least give it to him for the laughs that would come out of it.

The next day in work, as she predicted, Jim hadn't made any Valentine's Day gestures toward her. But she couldn't help but feel a little twinge of disappointment, even though she'd tried to prepare herself for it.

Late in the afternoon, she walked over to his desk and leaned back against it to his left, facing him. She casually dropped the red envelope on his desk, and watched his face. He looked surprised, touched, and maybe even a little bit shy.

"Open it," she said from her perch on his desk. She hadn't leaned on his desk like that in such a long time, she'd forgotten how intimate it was. She watched as he picked up the card, looked at the small, neat letters that spelled "JIM" on the envelope, and then turned it over and slid his finger underneath the flap, opening it.

She watched his face blossom into a smile as he looked at the picture on the front- two cartoon people who looked suspiciously like Dwight and Angela- and she almost closed her eyes at the sound of his deep chuckle at her note on the inside- "These two people on this card look so familiar. But I can't quite place them. Hmm..." which was followed by a smiley face and her signature.

"Very nice, Beesly," he said to her, laughing.

"Glad you like it," she answered softly.

She smiled at him, and his eyes sparkled back at her for a long moment, before he broke the silence. "So, hot date tonight?" he asked.

She laughed. "Nope..." then asked, tentatively, "What about you?"

"Just a date with the TV and some leftover pasta," he answered.

They held each other’s gaze again for longer than usual. Pam tried to hide her disappointment when he didn't say anything else on the subject, and then gave him a little smile and retreated back to her desk. 

So close, but not quite there yet.

To Be Continued...