When she came out of the bathroom after the last trip, she found Karen sitting alone at the table, staring into her cup. Pam stood with her back against the bathroom door for a moment, struggling to decide what to do. She and Karen had never really settled with each other. Pam had thought that they’d come close to being friends, but for the past few days Karen would barely look at her.

    Still not sure of what she was doing, Pam sat down next to Karen and said, “Hey.”

Karen didn’t look up. “Hi.”

   The two women sat silently for a few minutes, as Karen occasionally sipped coffee and Pam absently doodled on a napkin. At one point, Pam glanced up to see Jim standing at the break room door. He dropped his eyes and turned back to his desk.

     “Are you okay?” Pam finally asked.

   “My coffee is cold.”     

“Oh, well, I can make more.”    

“No.” There was a pause before Karen said, in a very flat tone, “Thanks, though.”     

       They went back to sitting in silence. After another minute or two, Pam got up to leave.    

    “He still has a thing for you,” Karen said, as Pam put her hand on the door.    

   “What?” Pam heard her voice come out in one low, shaky note.   

  “Jim. I ended it with him because he’s still into you. So, no. I’m not really okay.”    

   “Oh,” Pam said. And she walked back to her desk. 

   This was crazy. Even though she was sitting down, Pam felt like she was losing her balance; she felt unsteady, unstable. She felt like laughing. She couldn’t help but stare at Jim’s back and wonder if what Karen said was true. And what Pam could do about it if it was. 

    Karen left early that afternoon, stopping at Pam’s desk to say she had a dentist appointment. Pam just nodded, trying to read the expression on Karen’s face. Did Karen hate her now? Did she deserve to be hated?  

When Pam noticed that Jim didn’t make any effort to say goodbye to Karen, she felt a little guilty—not for noticing, but for feeling so happy about it.

“Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam.”        

  “Pam, hey. It’s Sadie.”     

“Hi,” Pam said, feeling herself smiling.          

  “So, I’m sorry for calling you at work, but Jim refused to give me your cell phone number until I told him what we talked about at lunch.”           

“He drives a hard bargain,” Pam said, laughing at the back of Jim’s head. She could tell by the way he was tilting just slightly in his chair that he was listening.    

“So I was thinking, if you’re free this Saturday, we can go decoration shopping.”     

     “Sure,” Pam said. “I’d love that.” She tapped her fingers lightly on the edge of her desk as she and Sadie made arrangements, and she watched the back of Jim’s head intently the whole time.

“See you Saturday, then,” Sadie said. Pam heard Addy crying in the background.

“It’s a date.” Hanging up, she laughed at Jim’s attempt to turn around nonchalantly. He caught her eye and raised his eyebrows.

    “Big plans for this weekend, Beesly?”        

   “Hot ones,” she said, and she turned back to her computer.

Sadie and Pam met at the party supply store the next afternoon. Pam had been nervous all morning, changing her outfit three times as though she were going on a date. It had been awhile since she’d gone out with a friend—although maybe it was a bit early to think of Sadie as a friend, considering how quickly things had gone wrong with Karen. Pam had finally decided on jeans and the dark red shirt Kelly had forced her to keep. She’d never actually worn it in public before, although she had tried it on three or four mornings before work. No matter how hard she tried to convince herself, she had never managed to wear that shirt to the office.

She and Sadie wandered the aisles aimlessly for a few minutes, tossing around ideas about themes. Pam dismissed the luau idea (it was February), and Sadie laughed at the Mardi gras theme (she didn’t want people thinking about boobs). They finally decided to go with a disco theme to commemorate the decade when Jonathon was born.

Pam held up a disco ball. “This is a total necessity,” she said.

“Do you think they sell strobe lights here?” Sadie asked, putting the disco ball in the cart. “Oh, and those big afro wigs! We need to get some of those.”

  Pam started giggling.

   “What?” Sadie asked, throwing some neon pink streamers into the shopping cart.

   “I was just thinking of Jim with an afro,” Pam said.

“Oh my God,” Sadie said, “you should have seen him at this party in college. He came as John Travolta—white suit, platform shoes, the works. He looked absolutely ridiculous.”

   “God, I would kill to see that.”

   “I bet I have pictures somewhere.”

   They stopped in front of the plates and napkins.

   “This is a tough decision,” Sadie said. “Will people eat off of hot pink plates, or will all the neon make them lose their appetites?”

  “I don’t know,” Pam said. “Angela won’t ever let us get any colors that can’t be found in nature.”

  “What a fantastic rule of thumb,” Sadie said, reaching for the hot pink napkins. “Oh, they have matching forks!”

  As they waited in line to check out, Pam finally worked up the courage to ask Sadie the questions that had been rolling around in her head all week.

    “Sadie,” she said, knowing she sounded tentative and wishing that, just once, she could sound like she had some nerve, “when you said that I should tell Jim how I feel—how did you know that I feel…” She let her voice trail off.

   “You clearly have never seen how you look at him,” Sadie said.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “To a normal human being? Yeah, it’s pretty obvious. To Jim? Probably not so much.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, I love Jim. He’s practically a brother to me—if you ignore the tiny detail that once upon a time we made out.” Sadie laughed at the expression that flashed across Pam’s face. “But I can tell you, the man is incredibly dense. Some things have to be spelled out to him.”

Pam sighed, thinking that Sadie probably could have said the same thing about her. How long had she let herself pretend that she and Jim weren’t flirting when they pulled those pranks? How long had she let herself believe that she and Roy actually worked together? Dense, Pam thought, was the perfect word for it.

They finished checking out and carried their bags out to the parking lot.

     “Look, let’s go get some coffee,” Sadie said. “Jonathon can handle Addy for another hour without losing his mind. I’ll drive.”      

    Pam smiled and opened the passenger door, thinking that maybe she could start to think of Sadie as a friend after all.