He’s tired again. She can tell by the way his head dips a little lower, baring more of the back of his neck than usual. Every now and then he straightens up, but it only lasts about thirty seconds or so before his head begins another lethargic descent. His breathing is slow and deep. She can’t hear it, but she can see the slight rise and fall of his shoulders.

 

She wonders why he’s so tired. Is he still catching up on sleep from the nights of long talks? Or did they have another talk last night? They probably did after the way she’d bungled that conversation with Karen. What was wrong with her? It’s like her psyche is purposefully sabotaging her, making her fumble over lies and reveal the truths that she wants to keep hidden. She hates her psyche. Stupid psyche.

 

His head pops up again and she watches it slowly descend. She imagines his eyes fluttering halfway closed.

 

Maybe they did talk last night. Maybe she asked him if it really was “just a kiss.” Maybe she said, “I talked to Pam. I didn’t get the impression that it was ‘just a kiss.’”

 

How would he respond? How much damage control would he have to do? Because he couldn’t have told her the truth. How could he have told her the complete truth about the kiss and manage to leave her with the impression that it was “just” anything? It wasn’t possible for her to call it “just a kiss.” She hoped it wasn’t possible for him. “Just” belonged nowhere near that night. That kiss.

 

She’s trying to get answers from the back of Jim’s neck, but she’s finding that she and the back of Jim’s neck have communication problems. Much like she does with Jim himself.

 

Then she feels it again, that uneasy feeling, and she knows that Karen is watching her. She immediately turns her attention to her computer and pretends to type something. She just ends up typing the word, “just” a few dozen times. Karen has been watching her a lot today. She’s probably concerned that Pam will leap over her desk and throw herself at Jim.

 

She imagines actually doing it—just going right over to his desk, wrapping a fist around his tie and yanking his lips up to hers. Karen would shoot up out of her chair and ask what the hell she was doing. Pam would just slide innocently back to her desk and reply, “What? It was just a kiss.” That does get a little smile, but it quickly disappears.

 

Poor Karen.

 

Pam hadn't meant to leave seeds of doubt in her mind. Karen wasn’t just trying to clear the air with Pam yesterday in the break room; she was staking her claim and Pam had messed that up by throwing in her own bid. It was a complete accident. She had meant to assure Karen that she never had feelings for Jim. She had meant to tell her that it was nothing, that it was just a kiss, after all. She had meant to lie. Stupid psyche.

 

She botched the whole thing up and now Karen was watching her, probably for any sign of lingering affection. Pam supposes that spending hours staring at the back of a person’s neck might qualify as a sign of affection.

 

Oops.

 

And then Karen is standing and walking into the break room. Pam feels herself stand. She feels herself following Karen. She hears herself say, “Hi,” and she sees her hands fill a teapot with water and put it on the stove. Not her teapot, not the one Jim gave her, the one that she thinks of fondly as “Jimpot” (even though she would be mortified if anyone knew that). She felt stupid using that teapot at work. Jimpot is safe at home, hiding where she can use it in private and think thoughts that make her happy and sad at the same time.

 

She feels herself grab a mug from the cabinet and put a teabag inside. The whole time she sees and feels and hears herself doing these things, her mind is screaming, “MAYDAY! Get out of there! Out! I know you’re going to try to fix what happened yesterday, but trust me—you are GOING to screw this up!”

 

Karen is stirring cream into her coffee when Pam finally speaks.

 

“Hey, I just felt like we left things really weird yesterday, and I was just like,” she rolls her eyes and sort of sticks out her tongue. “Ech! You know? Out of it. I was really distracted. I have this art show coming up and I’m just always sort of… you know… I think it might have come off like I’m ‘chasing after Jim’ or something.”

 

Pam ends her rambling with a laugh, but it sounds more like a sigh. Scoffing would be a better word. She’s scoffing at the very idea of chasing after Jim, like he isn’t the thing occupying her thoughts every second of the day.

 

“Oh, no. Totally, I understand. It’s fine. You were… clear,” Karen says. When she says ‘clear,’ she says it emphatically, like saying it forcefully will make it true. She’s smiling, but it’s not a real smile. It’s like she wants them both to agree on this so they can move past it, whether or not it’s true.

 

“Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that you knew exactly what I meant to say. It was just a crush that he had.”

 

Pam is sure that she says he and not we or I. Yesterday Karen asked her if she still had feelings for him and that implied that she had a crush like Jim did. Which of course she did, but there was no way that Karen was going to know that.

 

“Right. Yeah, he told me.” There it is again. The smile. Pam knows that she should just stop now, but she can’t stop her mouth and all of a sudden it’s open again.

 

“Right. And the kiss was… it was just a kiss. I don’t want you to feel like weird about me. Like…” Pam’s voice trails off. Like what? Like I’m competition? Like I tried to flirt with him just yesterday morning about SLEEP? Well, with flirting like that, you have nothing to worry about. Pathetic.

 

“Yeah,” Karen says to fill the pause. “Well, from what I understand it was sort of one-sided, so I promise you—no hard feelings.”

 

Pam winces a little at this. It wasn’t one-sided. Not at all.

 

“I mean, I know that you weren’t exactly all there at the time, so…” Karen continues. She’s smiling kindly, like she’s accepting an apology.

 

Pam frowns. Karen thinks she wasn’t “all there”? What does that even mean? Is she calling me stupid? No! Of course not. Karen wouldn’t do that.

 

“What?” Pam asks dumbly.

 

Karen leans forward like she’s about to tell Pam a secret and Pam finds herself leaning in as well.

 

“Well, Jim told me that you had had a lot to drink that night. So it’s totally understandable. If I had to try to go back and explain why I did some of the things I did when I was drunk… You know?” She smiling more now, but it’s more authentic, like she’s trying to make Pam feel better.

 

“Oh, um… I… guess I had a couple of glasses of champagne, but…” Pam stutters. All she can think about is when she tried to use the drunk excuse on Jim and he didn’t buy it. They had definitely established that alcohol was not a factor that night.

 

“Champagne, huh? Wow, you were really living it up in that Chili’s.” Karen’s eyebrows are raised and she looks amused. Pam’s frown deepens. Did I step into a different conversation?

 

“Chili’s?” Pam says it like a question. There is a pleading tone in her voice. Please tell me what we’re talking about because I’m lost.

 

“Yeah. I heard that you got prrrretty excited about the ‘whitest sneakers’ award, which I think is totally true, by the way. Props for excellent sneaker care,” Karen says happily. Now the smile is full-blown and it hits Pam all of a sudden.

 

He didn’t tell her about Casino Night. He didn’t tell her about that kiss. He told her about the other kiss, the first one. The one where Pam was drunk from second drinks and happy and Roy-less and she just… went for it. That was the kiss he chose to tell her about?

 

“Yeah,” Pam hears herself say numbly. “That was… embarrassing. I got totally drunk and just…” Just did what I’d been wanting to do for four years.

 

Karen is still smiling. “Yeah, so it’s obviously not a big deal at all. You were drunk and he said that you never even talked about it afterwards.” Karen pauses, as if reconsidering this detail. “I hope this isn’t awkward. You know, because you and Jim never really talked about it and now I’m like, interrogating you about it. I don’t mean it like that.”

 

She realizes that Karen is staring at her, waiting for a response. Her head is flooded with thoughts, but she can’t say any of those. What did Karen ask? Awkward… right.

 

“No, awkward is not the word I would use… At all. This is fine. Good. I’m glad we cleared this up. So…” Pam clears her throat, which suddenly feels tight. “So um, good.”

 

The teakettle starts to sing and Pam has never been happier about boiling water in her life. She gestures at the kettle, which is behind Karen.

 

“Oh, sure! Sorry,” Karen says. She shifts away and toward the door. “I’ll just…” she trails off and gestures at the door. They smile at each other like they just had a nice chat about the weather and Karen walks out of the room.

 

Pam busies herself with the kettle, burying the teabag in water and watching it bleed everywhere.

 

He told her about the kiss at the Dundies.

 

Well, that kiss was nothing…

 

And everything.

 

Their first kiss. She remembered it, of course. She wasn’t sure if Jim knew that. He probably assumed she did, but if she’d told him she didn’t he wouldn’t have pushed it. She was drunk, and for once all of the denial holding her back floated away in a lovely haze of half-melted El Nino Margaritas. And he was so much fun and so funny and so… Jim. It felt good to just throw her arms around him and do it.

 

But neither of them thought that it was serious. At least, she was pretty sure that he didn’t. It wasn’t a declaration of love. Maybe it was a declaration of… crush? Did those exist? It didn’t really matter. The question that was most pressing at the moment was why did he tell her about that kiss and not the other kiss?

 

There was no reason to tell her about any kisses if he was going to leave out the one that really mattered. Maybe he felt guilty. He probably felt the need to come clean about kissing her, but… But what?

 

And then Pam feels the tiniest jump of something hot and light in her chest. She doesn’t dare give it a name, but her psyche tells her that it’s hope (damn psyche). She imagines that he wanted to say their second kiss, their real kiss, was “just” a kiss, but he couldn’t. She imagines that he couldn’t say there was anything just about that kiss. That he could have lied, but it was like… something wouldn’t let him lie like that, wouldn’t let him do such an injustice to such an honest moment. Their only truly honest moment.

 

She knows it doesn’t change anything. Jim is still with Karen and Pam is still stuck trying to foster a relationship with the back of Jim’s neck. But at this moment it hurts just a little less. He knows that kiss was everything. It was like his psyche sabotaged him. He couldn’t take away from that moment they shared.

 

She rethinks her position on psyches.

 

Psyches kind of rock.

 

When she goes back to her desk, tea in hand, and ignores the strange sensation that tells her Karen is watching her again. She stares boldly at the back of Jim’s neck and decides that maybe her psyche is sabotaging her for a reason.

 

The next day she brings Jimpot back to work. Baby steps.

 

He didn’t notice it the first two times he entered the kitchen, once to throw his lunch in the fridge and once to use the bathroom. It wasn’t until visit number three, lunchtime, that he saw it: the teapot he had given her a little over a year ago when things were so completely different but just as impossible.

 

He doesn’t like to remember what things were like a year ago, and he’s slightly annoyed that there is a reminder on the stove, staring him in the face. Remembering what things were like back then is like taking a mental step backward. He’s trying to stay in the present, and the present is Karen. He’s already slipped up once and it cost him five nights of sleep.

 

Sometimes late at night he turns on the TV and catches a rerun of Cheers and he can’t help but make sleepy comparisons to his life. On Cheers there were the Diane years and the Rebecca years. His admission to Karen after the cell phone prank was a dangerous backslide into the Pam years.

 

The Pam years are embarrassing. It hurts to think about them. They leave him with feelings of rejection and heartache and humiliation. They are full of schoolboy pining and quiet one-sided longings that ultimately turned out to be just that. Wasted time. Stupid misinterpretations.

 

He’s never been entirely convinced that he really misinterpreted things. She asked him out for coffee on his first day back. A little part of him had always held on to hope that if he ever came back, she would be ready. But he made sure to sabotage that by starting a new relationship. A buffer.

 

He couldn’t focus on the hypothetical, on baseless hopes. He had been living in the hypothetical for years and it got him nothing.

 

He tries to avoid backslides at all costs. This also means avoiding things that could trigger memories of the Pam years. Teapot shaped things, for example.

 

But there it is, sitting innocently on the stove like it was just a mundane ceramic object.

 

He knows better.

 

He is just sitting there, staring at the unassuming little teapot. His lunch remains untouched in front of him.

 

“Earth to Halpert.” Karen’s voice breaks him out of his trance. “What’s wrong?” She sits across from him holding up a forkful of leftover penne rigate from their dinner date last night.

 

He purses his lips and raises his eyebrows. “What? Nothing. I’m just a little tired still, I guess.”

 

Pam’s words from the day before seep into his brain before he can stop them. Gotta get your REM cycle, going with the whole… sleeping… better than not.

 

Karen interrupts his thoughts again. He’s thankful.

 

“You better be careful. Dwight told me yesterday that Velociraptors can sense drowsiness in their prey. You’re a sitting duck,” she says, trying to sound very serious.

 

“So I should be careful in case a Velociraptor pops by?” He’s smiling. He can’t help it.

 

She shrugs. “Well, I may have told Dwight that my brother works as a military scientist and he’s trying to develop a new biological weapon to use against the terrorists.”

 

He’s grinning now and barely holding back a big belly laugh, because sometimes she’s so funny that he wonders how the hell he got so lucky.

 

“And you told him that your brother was working on a race of government-cloned Velociraptors? Like out of Jurassic Park?” he asks.

 

“No, he guessed.” She’s just barely holding it together now. “On his first try.”

 

“Imagine that,” he says. He manages to keep a straight face for about a second before smiling again. “Seriously, you said, ‘my brother is working on a weapon to use against the terrorists’ and his first guess was ‘Velociraptors’?”

 

She loses it, cracking up. “Yup. Like he’d heard rumors about it before. I had to go with it. I never would have thought of anything better.”

 

“Yeah, sometimes Dwight gives you little presents like that,” Jim says. “There was this one time he asked me to be in an alliance with him. He ended up letting me tape him into a box in the warehouse.”

 

“NO!” she shouts. Her eyes are wide and she points another forkful of noodles at him. “I need details. Is there any chance of reassembling this alliance?”

 

“Um, no. It was…” Memories flood his mind before he can stop them.

 

His hand is resting on the back of her neck. He can feel her hair between his fingers and he squeezes her hand tighter. He can barely contain his excitement and he doesn’t know if he’s more likely to burst out laughing or squeal like a little girl. It’s just too good to be true.

And then it’s the opposite. He can’t figure out how things went so wrong so fast, but suddenly the man that he likes to pretend doesn’t exist most of the time is there. It’s hard to pretend that someone doesn’t exist when they’re shoving you into a wall.

“You know what? It actually isn’t a great story. You had to be there.” He smiles and hopes that she’ll accept this evasion without any suspicion.

 

He needs to change the subject. “So anyway… You know you have to come to work tomorrow with big fake claw marks on your arm, right?”

 

Her smile is so beautiful and he feels himself smile back (a real one this time). “Where can we get fake blood?”

 

“I’m sure Michael can point us to a suitable magic shop,” he assures her. He’s about to regale her with a story about Michael’s attempts at magic when the door to the break room swings open.

 

It’s her.

 

She smiles brightly and says hello. Then instead of retrieving her yogurt and retreating to her desk, as has been her routine for a while now, she goes straight for the stove. Jim tries to look away. He looks at Karen, but she is looking straight at Pam.

 

“Cute teapot,” she says conversationally.

 

Jim looks straight down at his Styrofoam container of leftover lasagna. Karen had made fun of him for ordering lasagna again. It was all he ordered when they went out for Italian.

 

“Thanks,” she says, now filling the teapot with a generous amount of tap water. Karen never uses tap water in her tea. Karen uses filtered water from the fridge.

 

“Where did you get it?” Karen asks.

 

Jim feels his stomach turn. He studies the curly edges of the lasagna noodles

 

“It was a gift, from Jim actually,” she says like she’s remembering a fun little factoid.

 

Jim wanted to bash his face into his leftover lasagna.

 

“Really?” Karen asks. She doesn’t really say it like a question though and she isn’t saying it to Pam. She’s looking at Jim, but Jim is still pretending that noodles are the most interesting thing in the world and Pam is answering regardless.

 

“Yeah, for Secret Santa last year.”

 

“Oh,” Karen says. She sounds slightly relieved.

 

“It was nothing,” Jim interjects, finally able to speak. “Just a Secret Santa thing.”

 

“Right,” Pam says. “It’s just a teapot.” She’s looking right into his eyes.

 

His mom used to call it a tempest in a teapot: making a huge uproar over some small, insignificant thing. It seemed especially applicable in this case. He knows that Karen will be talking to him tonight about that teapot. He can pretty much count on being exhausted tomorrow morning. Maybe he’s crazy. Maybe it really is just a ceramic pot that doesn’t mean anything. Maybe when he told Karen that tonight he could mean it.

 

But he knows that won’t happen. It isn’t just a teapot. She knows that. She traded a video iPod for that teapot. That teapot is important.

No one says anything for a while. There is an uncomfortable silence as Pam goes about making her tea. She hums. Hums. Like there’s nothing awkward at all about this. Like it really is just a teapot. Like it isn’t killing him to have it there in front of him. Like it means nothing to her.

 

Why did she bring it today? Why is she flaunting it so openly in front of him? In front of Karen. Is she making fun of him? He doesn’t think she would do that, but he’s so unsure now. He can’t read her like he used to.

 

Is she telling him that it doesn’t mean anything to her anymore? That she’s over… well, she was never under him. Technically. He hears Michael’s voice in his head.

 

That’s what she said.

 

Karen doesn’t finish her penne rigate. She tosses the Styrofoam container in the trash and walked briskly back to her desk, declaring that she promised a client she would call at half past twelve. Jim grunts noncommittally and stays put. Pam finishes steeping her tea and starts pressing the bag against the edge of her mug with a spoon, getting every last drop of flavor out of it. She pulls the damp bag out of the mug and throws it out. It lands on top of Karen’s leftovers.

 

It isn’t until she starts squirting a little honey into her mug, the kind in the teddy bear, that he finally speaks.

 

“Why did you bring that here?” He gestures at the teapot.

 

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t be able to bring my teapot to work?” She continues to fix her tea, adding a little milk to the mug. He grows frustrated. How can she act so calm?

 

“Come on, Pam,” he says. His voice is low and gravelly. His tone isn’t pleading, it is impatient.

 

“Come on Pam, what?” she asks in a teasing voice. Teasing? She’s smiling. This is not a joke. This isn’t something that they can laugh about like hiding Andy’s cell phone in the ceiling. Anger floods him and he feels himself go numb.

“Jimpot was lonely at home,” she says pleasantly. Jimpot?

“What?” he asks. He’s so confused. He can’t figure out why she’s so happy and what the heck a jimpot is.

 

“I named him,” she says proudly. It’s so cute the way she says it, but he doesn’t want to think about how adorable she is.

 

“You named your teapot?” he asks slowly.

 

“After you. It’s dorky, I know,” she’s smiling and looking sort of shy.

 

Last year he would have smiled and laughed with her about this. He might have teased her about it a little but he would have been secretly thrilled that she named her teapot after him.

 

But last year was part of the Pam years. He’s in the Karen years now.

 

She keeps trying to make him relapse into the Pam years. She’s wants to go back to the way things were. She told him they’d always be friends. Just friends. He can’t go back.

 

“What are you trying to do?” he asks abruptly. His mind is back at that night when she stopped him short with the same question. What are you doing?

 

“Jim. It’s a teapot. I’m trying to make tea.” She isn’t smiling anymore. She isn’t anything. She’s sealing up the milk and returning it to the fridge.

 

“Fine,” he says. He stands abruptly and tosses his lasagna into the trash. It covers her teabag. He doesn’t look at her as he makes for the door. He is almost there when she speaks again.

 

“What is wrong with you?” she asks. She finally sounds a little worked up. She finally sounds like he feels—impatient, angry, confused.

 

He debates telling her that nothing is wrong with him. That he has to get back to his desk. That it’s just a teapot and she can make Earl Gray to her heart’s content and he won’t give a damn. Instead he says,

 

“You know what that teapot means.”

 

She looks up at him and he sees that she has stopped pretending. She doesn’t look confused or cheerful or oblivious anymore. She looks serious and exposed.

 

“I like it,” she says simply.

 

He sighs.

 

Of course she would do this, brush this off like it was nothing. Well, fine. If that was how she wanted it he’d play along. He really needs to stop getting his hopes up. He is never happy with the outcome.

 

“I know you like it. That’s why I got it for you,” he says, turning to leave. He is stopped again by her voice.

 

“No, I mean… I don’t like it because it’s green or because it’s cute. I like it because of what it means.”

 

She looks at him with pleading eyes, but he can’t let himself believe that she’s saying what he thinks she’s saying. He can’t do that again. He can’t.

 

“I don’t think it means the same thing to you that it means to me,” he says quietly.

 

He stands there looking at her for almost half a minute and neither of them says a thing. They are always saying nothing. The one time he said something it blew up in his face.

 

Jim shakes his head and turns again, determined not to turn back again even if she started to speak. But then she says something that stops him in his tracks.

 

“I read the card.”

 

It’s like someone flipped a switch and stopped his heart. He can’t move. He can’t breathe. He doesn’t want to turn around, but his feet seem to be moving automatically.

 

“What?” It comes out with whatever breath is left in his lungs like an exhalation.

 

“The card that came with the teapot,” she clarifies. She doesn’t have to. He knows. But he still can’t believe it, can’t wrap his head around it.

 

“You…” He tries to repeat it back to her, but he can’t say it.

 

“I read it. Before you took it back,” she continues.

 

He feels like someone just popped his head off and kicked it down a hill. He’s dizzy and he can’t think and he can’t breathe.

 

“It’s polite to read the card first, but I didn’t notice it at first, when we were all in the circle.”

 

He wishes she’d stop talking because he hasn’t even processed the first thing she said yet.

 

“When I traded with Dwight I saw it. I was going to talk to you about it. After the party. When we could talk alone.” She’s speaking slowly and carefully now. She’s looking at him, but he’s looking at nothing. His eyes are unfocused like his thoughts.

 

“You read the card.”

 

He was finally able to say it. He congratulates him self for a second before he realizes exactly what this means.

 

“But then you took it back. I was confused. I didn’t know if you regretted it. If you didn’t really mean it.” She looks at him questioningly. Like she needs him to confirm for her that he really meant it.

 

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

 

“You knew…”

 

“Jim?” She sounds anxious.

 

“You knew? You knew the whole time.” He finally looks at her, fully focusing on her. She’s twisting her hands and she her eyes are darting around the room looking at everything but him.

 

“Yes… But I wasn’t sure. You took it back,” she says softly.

 

“Just a few weeks later, when he re-proposed, because the first one didn’t count,” he says this bitterly. “You knew. And he set a date and you looked so happy and you knew.”

 

“You were with Katy then. And you took the card back. I wasn’t sure…” she trails off weakly. She can’t fix this.

 

“When I poured my heart out to you, when I made an idiot out of myself you knew.”

 

He hates that his voice sounds so raw. He hates that he was the first one to make reference to that night. He hates that she knew about the card. It makes that night just that much worse.

 

“Jim—” She starts to plead, but he cuts her off.

 

“You said I misinterpreted our friendship,” he says numbly.

 

“I know.” She’s looking at him again and she looks so sorry, but he can’t even process that right now because all he feels is hurt and stupid and all the bad feelings that the Pam years used to make him feel when he wasn’t unbelievably happy.

 

“You acted like you never had a clue.” He feels the blood rushing to his face and he feels himself getting angry.

 

“I know,” she says helplessly.

 

“You lied,” he almost laughs when he says this, because it’s just so bad.

 

“I lied about a lot of things that night,” she says.

 

What does that mean? Does it mean… No. He won’t do it again. He won’t hope again. It really hurts to hope.

 

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” he asks quietly. He won’t look at her.

 

“Please don’t be mad. I’m trying to tell you—”

 

“What are you trying to say, Pam? By bringing this to work, what are you trying to tell me?” he raises his volume a little and meets her gaze.

 

She looks away from him for just a moment so that she can reach back to the counter and grasp the handle of the teapot. She holds it against her chest and looks back at him.

 

“I’m trying… I’m trying to tell you that I’m sorry,” she begins quietly. “That I’m sorry I lied and that I don’t want to lie anymore. And this teapot means to me exactly what it means to you.”

 

He doesn’t want to let himself believe what she just said because it will hurt too much if he’s wrong. He can’t allow himself to step backward. Not again.

 

There is a long pause. Pam's eyes are glassy and wide. Her breathing has become heavy and she has one hand around the teapot and she’s using the other one to toy with her necklace like she always does when she's nervous or uncomfortable. He hates that he knows that about her. He hates that she occupies so much space in his head. Every inch she takes up hurts him. It used to be a sweet torture, but now it’s only a persistent dull pain.

 

He needs to stop her. It’s just not fair that she can continue to have this affect on him even after that night. Especially now that he knows she knew. She knew months before he got the courage to tell her. And she didn’t do anything.

 

He opens his mouth and tries to stop her from hurting him again.

 

“Pam. It’s just a teapot.”

He turns and walks out and if she tries to stop him, he doesn't hear her. He walks back to his desk and leaves her standing there in the kitchen holding a small piece of ceramic pottery, wondering if all this time she was the one making a tempest in a teapot.

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

 

She’s almost told him a dozen times. She realizes now that “almost” is worth about as much as “just.”

 

“Almost” and “just” are the reasons that she’s currently sitting on the bathroom floor cradling a green teapot between her knees and her chest.

 

She knows that her cheeks are wet, but she can’t remember crying. She can’t really remember walking into the bathroom either, but she distinctly recalls the thud as she collapsed onto the floor, and it was only then that she realized she was still holding the teapot.

 

She feels numb.

 

She can’t reconcile the Jim she knows with the Jim she just saw. He must have meant it. How could he say something so terrible and not mean it?

 

She was too late.

 

He was right. How could she hold on to that knowledge since the Christmas party and never say a word?

 

Her brother ran cross-country in high school. He always told her that when he lost a race by ten yards he could brush it off. No big deal. Win some, lose some. But when it was a few feet, a few inches… it was devastating.

 

When he told her this she’d roll her eyes and tell him she’d never understand runners. There was no point in running unless you were being chased by something. Maybe bears.

 

But now she understands perfectly, because the thing that’s making her heart hurt and her stomach tighten and her hands shake against the cold tile of the bathroom floor is the knowledge of how close she was to telling him. So many times. And he never knew.

 

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

He shows up with Katy and the already chilly air drops twenty degrees. It’s like a bucket of ice water running down her insides.

The card meant nothing. He took it back for a reason.

But then they’re alone on deck. Together. When he could have been with Katy. Katy who he supposedly stopped seeing months ago, and who Ryan was going to ask out, and who by the way was a CHEERLEADER in high school. She was so wrong for him.

And then her stomach lurches because Katy fades from her mind and she remembers Roy offering her a snorkel shot.

“Sometimes I just don’t get Roy.”

There is a long pause.

She almost adds, “…like I get you.” And she almost asks, “Why did you take the card back?” And she almost says, “Because I can’t stop wishing you hadn’t.”

But instead she says, “I’m cold.”

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

The door swings open and for half a second she thinks it might be him. But of course it isn’t, because she waited too long and he’s not coming back this time.

 

“What are you doing?” Angela asks.

 

She’s frowning and staring down at Pam like she’s trying to decide if there is something unholy happening in her presence. As if Pam wants to be here right now and she’s up to no good.

 

“Nothing,” Pam answers. She swipes inefficiently at her cheeks with the heels of her palms.

 

Angela looks conflicted. It’s as if she’s trying to compute an appropriate response to the situation, but her copy of The Tight-ass’s Guide to Professional Office Behavior didn’t include a chapter on finding sobbing co-workers on the bathroom floor. So she settles on saying something entirely unhelpful.

 

“The floor is very unsanitary. You shouldn’t be down there.”

 

But Angela’s eyes aren’t focusing on the floor and how dirty it is. She’s looking at Pam and the wetness on her face. She’s frowning still, but it isn’t her usual frown of annoyance or disgust.

 

“Why are you holding a teapot?” she asks.

 

It sounds like an accusation coming from Angela’s mouth and Pam starts to laugh but it turns into a sob halfway out of her mouth. And then it becomes just a series of silent sobs. Her head feels heavy and painful like it might explode and she can’t look at Angela anymore.

 

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

She knows it’s weird to hope that you get a concussion, but she can’t help it. She’s jealous of Dwight. For one day he can act completely different and not be held responsible. She knows exactly what she’d do if she had a concussion.

Of course, she knows it doesn’t work that way. When you have a concussion you aren’t thinking clearly.

But she can’t banish from her mind the image of twisting his tie between her fingers, of pulling him close, of telling him with her lips grazing his ear that she read it and she needs it to be true.

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

“Would you like to go with me to grab a coffee?”

 

The suggestion shocks her just as much as it did the first time Angela said it, a week or two ago. Pam stares up at her. Angela isn’t frowning anymore. She seems to be attempting a smile. It looks painful.

 

Before Pam realizes what she’s doing, she’s nodding and Angela takes the teapot from her so that she can stand.

 

“I’ll give you a moment,” Angela says.

 

Pam desperately wants to leave, but she doesn’t want to walk by his desk. She’s considering asking Dwight to rig up some sort of pulley system to help her repel down the side of the building, but she abandons that idea fairly quickly.

 

She’s incredibly relieved to see Angela ready and waiting at the door, holding her coat and purse out to her. She forces herself not to turn to see if he’s watching her, or to check the expression on his face, and she doesn’t exhale until she and Angela are in the elevator and the doors are sliding shut.

 

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

 

The elevator doors slide shut and she can’t tear her eyes away from him. He admitted it. He didn’t say love, he said crush, but it still made her hands tremble and her heart race.

If only he didn’t take it back two seconds later, just like the card.

There are only two floors. She knows she only has a few seconds.

And she wants desperately to tell him, “Please don’t be over it, because I’m only just realizing that I’m under it.”

And she almost does.

But the doors open and he’s gone before she can make her mouth move.

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

They haven’t spoken a word since they left the building but now they’re at the counter and the barista is waiting for her order.

 

“Not tea,” is the first thing that comes out of her mouth.

 

The barista looks un-amused and Angela’s eyebrow is arched but she takes it all in stride and says, “Just pour her a cup of regular coffee.”

 

When they take their seats Pam still can’t speak, so Angela does.

 

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

 

“Why are you being so nice to me?” Pam can’t stop the question from escaping her lips.

 

Angela looks taken aback. As if she’s been nothing but roses since the day they met and she can’t imagine why Pam is surprised.

 

“You’ve listened to me. About… Noelle and Kurt,” she says. She’s smiling her painful almost-smile again, and Pam feels the strangest sense of connection with her. Like they’re actually friends.

 

“I have this friend. Let’s call her… Claire,” Pam starts. Angela nods in approval and it’s clear that she gets the message.

 

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

 

She leaves him seven voicemails. She almost leaves him eight, because it was so hard to look up and expect to see him at his desk and see Michael there instead.

She almost calls him one last time and she almost says, “I missed you. Not just today. All last week when I was with Roy. And every day that I don’t see you.”

Her finger is poised and ready and she almost presses ‘Send,’ but then she’s in her car and it isn’t safe to talk on the phone and she let’s the moment pass.

 

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

 

The story comes pouring from her mouth. It feels like one huge exhalation after holding her breath for years.

 

And it doesn’t even matter that Angela seems scandalized when she hears that Claire had feelings for her coworker Tom even though she was engaged to Bob.

 

It’s finally out of her head and out in the open and for some reason just saying it makes her feel calmer.

 

She’s staring at the bottom of a mug that is empty save for a couple of renegade coffee grounds that sought freedom from the filter, and she knows it’s time to go.

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

She almost leaves Roy that night. She’s running through the directions to his house in her head. Right on Birch. Three lights down. Left on Putnam. Second stop sign, take another left…

Because he never would have told her not to take the internship. And because if she told him about the house with the terrace, he wouldn’t say it’s impractical. And because she read the card and she knows.

She almost goes to his house and tells him, “I’m not fine with my choices.”

But she sits on her bed, trembling, with a half-filled duffle bag in her hands and she repeats to herself, “Dreams are just that.”

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

 

She somehow makes it back to her desk. He hasn’t turned to look at her and the part of her that isn’t deeply hurt is actually sort of thankful. It would be so much harder if she had to face him.

 

But then she looks at her computer, and she sees that there’s an email waiting in her inbox.

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

She has the Valentine all written up. Her hand shakes so violently when she writes it that she has to take a break halfway through, in between the part where she says, “I read the card” and the part where she says, “So I’m sending you one of my own.”

She almost gives it to him.

But then he doesn’t look at her all day, and he doesn’t give her a Valentine this year, not even one with a creepy picture of Dwight on it just as a joke.

He turns around as he’s leaving and says, “Hey, Happy Valentine’s Day,” like it’s an afterthought.

So she runs her card through the shredder.

Because he must have taken his back for a reason.

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

Her finger is perched on top the mouse button. The little arrow hovers over the subject line: “I’m sorry”

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

She has her hand poised to shove the Save-the-Dates into the mail slot and she almost doesn’t. She was so sure that he didn’t mean it because he took it back.

But today he told her he’s going to Australia. And he’s leaving on June 8th. And that has to mean something.

She sees his face every time he overhears her planning her wedding and it makes her wonder why she’s planning at all.

But then the man in line behind her yells something about moving sometime this century and she pushes them the rest of the way through the slot.

 

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

 

She clicks.

 

“Pam.

Sorry I was short with you. I’ve been letting little things get to me lately.

Jim.”

 

That was it.

 

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

 

She can feel him drifting away. He’ll be halfway across the world in a few weeks but he might as well already be on the plane.

It felt almost normal today when he was teasing her about bribing children with candy and when they stood so close to each other in the doorway watching Dwight and Michael perform their horrendous duet.

But when she turns to tell him her theory on Michael’s ukulele skills he’s already got one foot out the door.

And when he waves to her from the doorway she almost gets up and follows him.

She almost catches up to him in the hallway and tells him that it physically hurts her when he drifts like that. That she feels like she’s being ripped apart and stranded. That he’s her anchor and she doesn’t know what she’ll do if he leaves.

But instead she waves back and he drifts a little further.

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

She doesn’t know what to do. She can’t email him back and say, “It’s okay.”

 

Because it’s not, and she can’t lie anymore.

 

She wishes he hadn’t apologized at all, because it makes her feel a million miles farther from where she wants to be.

 

The apology is just so empty that it makes her feel the same.

“I’ve been letting little things get to me lately.”

 

Little things?

 

Was he calling her teapot and his card little things?

 

The sick, aching, empty feeling grows in her chest, and she deletes the email immediately without sending a reply.

 

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

 

Kevin is waiting for the phone call from his doctor and the crew asks her what she would do if she had a week to live. She starts spouting off the names of destinations, but that isn’t the first answer that pops into her mind.

She wouldn’t even wait for the workday to end. She wouldn’t even wait to tell Roy that things were over. No time.

She would walk over to his desk and pull him gently by the hand and he would follow. He would give her a curious look but he wouldn’t ask questions. And when they were in the stairwell and he opened his mouth to ask, she would cover it with her own.

And if he hesitated she would tell him, “I’m yours” and “I need you” and “right now” and he wouldn’t hesitate anymore.

But “Europe” and “South America” and “the Grand Canyon” come so much more easily to her lips.

And later when they’re skating he asks, “Do you think I can let you go?”

And she knows he doesn’t understand that she’s not talking about skating when she says no.

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

They leave together. Pam tries not to watch as he puts her coat on for her, but the coat rack is right there and she can’t avoid them.

 

Karen says something about staying in and watching a movie. He says good because he’s been dying to watch Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason again, and she laughs.

 

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

 

Bubbling laughter threatens to pour from her mouth when she says, “Jim, you can tell me anything.” But then she looks at him and suddenly it’s not a perfect day anymore.

And then they’re sharing a can of coke, sipping from two separate plastic cups. And even though they’re talking, they haven’t broken the real silence, the one that makes them hurt.

But she almost does.

She almost tells him that he doesn’t have to say anything at all, because she knows.

But then he’s talking about Dwight peeing in a cup and the moment doesn’t seem right.

 

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

 

Everyone else is leaving but she doesn’t trust herself to look away from her computer screen, because intense concentration is the only thing keeping her from crying.

 

She’s the last one in the office except for…

 

“Pam, are you all right?”

 

Toby.

 

He looks concerned.

 

“Did someone upset you?” he asks. “Was it Michael?”

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

It was him. He complained about her to Toby.

But he redacted it.

Does that mean he never really meant it?

He’s backpedaling and saying things like “didn’t know he was going to write it down” and “just one day” and “took it right back” but none of it sounds real.

He meant it.

What does that say about other things? Other things he said but took away?

She doesn’t even want to think about it anymore, because if she does she’ll know that the card really meant something. And if the card really meant something, then it makes things so much harder. Because her wedding is only four weeks away and she can’t…

And she almost says, “I know why you did it. You don’t have to pretend.”

And she almost says, “I’m so tired of pretending.”

But she’s just angry. She’s angry at him for taking back the card, and she’s angry at herself for waiting so long to say something (‘too long,’ a voice in the back of her mind whispers), and she’s just frozen by the frustration and the hopelessness.

So all she says is, “Okay.”

 

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

 

“No, it wasn’t Michael,” Pam says.

 

She’s able to meet Toby’s gaze, which she considers a triumph. (Look ma, no tears!)

 

But then he opens his mouth again.

 

“Was it Jim?”

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

 

Her heart jumps into her throat and she can’t get off the phone fast enough because he came back and he’s coming toward her and she just told her mom the truth and she might faint because everything is happening right at this instant.

And she thinks she says his name, but his lips are on hers and she can’t remember anything that came before this moment.

She knows her hands are in his hair and that it’s soft and thick between her fingers but she can’t remember putting them there. His arms are all the way around her and his hands are on her back, pressing her closer, and they’re searing her skin through her dress.

It’s all happening so fast and she can’t breathe and she pushes him away, just a little. His lips leave hers and she feels cold until he grasps her hands and smiles and says, “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.”

And it feels like the most natural thing in the word to say, “Me too.”

But then the world comes rushing back and words like ‘Roy’ and ‘wedding’ flood her mind and she wants to say, “Hold on. I need to think. Too much. Please wait”

But for some reason, “I think we’re just drunk” comes out instead. She hates herself for lying again.

But he tries again, like he always does. He’s always coming back, and she’s so thankful, and this time she tells the truth when he says, “Are you drunk?”

But then he’s coming toward her again, and she still hasn’t processed anything since the first kiss and she has so much to tell him and it’s causing her to panic. She just needs to say it, to get it out of her head and in the open.

She desperately needs to tell him that she read the card. She needs to tell him that she’s sorry she never said anything, but he sent so many mixed signals—from taking it back to saying “crush” instead of “love” to telling her that it was over. And she knows she should have known and been brave but she had so much to lose if she was wrong.

She needs to tell him that she feels the same way and that she’s sorry for not telling him sooner.

So she says, “Jim” just to stop his mouth from covering hers because she can’t possibly say all that she needs to say if he’s kissing her.

But when she opens her mouth she flounders. Again.

She just keeps moving her mouth and no sound is coming out. She’s blinking back tears and trying to remember what she was going to say and she knows that the silence has gone on too long.

At the very least she wants to say, “I need to think for a second” or “I have to tell you something” and she starts to form the “I” but then he’s speaking.

“You’re really gonna marry him.”

It’s not a question the way he says it.

She’s so shocked by his assumption. She wants to say no, or at the very least to say, “Hold on.”

But it’s like she’s back at her default setting. His words give her an easy out. He just put her right back in the safe zone and it’s so familiar that before she knows what she’s doing her head is nodding.

And she feels his hands moving in hers and she realizes that they’re pulling away.

And this time she doesn’t think he’ll come back.

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

She can barely speak, but she manages to get out half a sentence.

“How did you—”

 

“I sit really close to the kitchen,” he interrupts. “I hear more than people realize, I guess.”

 

“Oh.”

 

She looks down and tries to focus on keeping her breathing even.

 

“Listen… Pam…”

 

She looks up at him and he seems uncomfortable and unsure and a little sad. But then again this is Toby so that’s not terribly unusual.

 

“Sometimes you just have to go for it, you know? Some dreams are worth chasing.”

 

It sounds almost ridiculous coming from Toby Flenderson’s mouth. Toby, who sits quietly in the back, and who goes home at night alone, and who takes Michael’s abuse with a sort of apathetic tolerance.

 

It would definitely sound ridiculous if it didn’t happen to ring so true.

 

Because she knows now what her brother meant. And she doesn’t need bears chasing after her to run.

 

And guess what?

 

He did come back.

 

And when she says, “Thank you” in a very small voice, she means it.

 

Toby smiles as he walks out the door, but it’s a sad smile and Pam wonders why he always looks so sad and just when he became so insightful. She thinks that maybe he was a runner in high school.

 

But Pam has more important things to think about than Toby’s high school extracurriculars.

 

Because all at one she realizes that she hasn’t lost the race, because Jim never knew that she was running.

 

He hadn’t seen any of the steps she’d taken. As far as he knew, she had been standing stationary the entire time. “Almosts” weren’t really steps anyway.

 

But she was taking those steps. She feels just as exhausted as if she’d been running the whole time. She wasn’t standing still. It was like she’d been running on a treadmill all this time without realizing it.

 

Time to get off the treadmill, she says to herself.

 

Because almost doesn’t count. She’s so done with “almost.” And she’s ready to start running.

 

 

***