Pam couldn’t stop looking at Ryan. The first week or so, it was because he was just not Jim. But now she was pretty much used to the idea that Jim was gone and Ryan had taken his place, so she wasn’t sure why she kept staring. She knew he had noticed, that he probably thought she was crazy, but for whatever reason, she couldn’t keep her eyes from wandering to him constantly.

When Kelly came to the front of the office from the Annex, Ryan quickly picked up his phone – it was a trick he had figured out early on in their relationship. He knew he’d have to listen to her go on about their double date later, and he really just didn’t want to.

Of course when they met Pam at the restaurant, Kelly had already been talking for the entire car ride and Ryan had the beginnings of a headache.

Somehow, the sympathetic smiles Pam kept giving him from across the table were helping more than his usual three aspirin.

Ryan was sick of Kelly. She’d been going on all day about some shirt or something, and she’d mentioned Pam’s name a few times, so he’d figured it wasn’t anything to important, probably just fashion advice or some other stupid Kelly thing, so he’d zoned out almost immediately when she’d stopped by his desk on the way to the front of the office and stayed for almost half an hour rambling. One her way back to the annex, she stopped again and Ryan briefly considered stabbing himself in the forehead with his pen if it would get her to leave him alone.

He couldn’t keep his eyes off of her for the rest of the day, but reasoned with himself that it was Kelly’s fault for talking about it all day. After all, he needed to find a reason for why he didn’t feel guilty at all for staring.

When he met her eyes in the meeting and used her idea, something in her slid sideways, or rotated, or changed, because suddenly the way he looked at her with the smallest of smirks made her feel warm, free, alive. When everyone started to leave for the day, he appeared at her desk, leaning over it slightly to grin at her. “That was…wow. Good thinking.” He didn’t need to clarify for her to know what he meant. She was oddly happy that he didn’t tap his fingers against the desk as he walked away, and the sharpness in his eyes and his smile relieved her.

By the time she got down to the parking lot, he was finally waving Kelly goodbye as she drove away – Pam knew it took him at least 15 minutes everyday to get the girl to let go of him and climb into her little car. With a look around to make sure the rest of the lot was empty, she walked up to him and kissed him. Just like that – pushed him against the car slightly, and then further when he responded in kind. She had never done anything quite like it, but she knew when she pulled away that the adrenaline wasn’t the only thing that was making it hard to catch her breath.

“Do you have plans for dinner?”

“Oh.” He hesitated for a minute then, his hand still on her waist. “Uh, yeah. With…” It was the second time in twenty minutes that he didn’t have to elaborate for her to understand. But she didn’t want to think about it anymore, so she just kissed him again, harder this time.

Then his cell phone buzzed, and he pulled away, climbing into his car as he flipped the phone open. Pam turned to walk away, willing herself not to look back, but the way that she could still feel his eyes on her back didn’t help.

As much as Pam had missed Jim’s voice, and as easy as it was to just talk to him again, to laugh with him again, it felt different to her. Something inside of her felt strained, wrong. Another part of her felt free from any feelings at all – it was the complete opposite of how talking to Jim used to make her feel. So when Ryan came into the office over an hour after everyone else had left, with Dwight in tow, she felt herself easily pulled away from the voice on the other end of the phone. When Jim misinterpreted her goodbye, she felt obligated to try to correct him, but she didn’t really want to talk to him anymore. Hanging up the phone, she gathered up her discarded belongings and closed the office up for the night.

He was waiting for her by her car, his eyes bright with something Pam couldn’t name. He pulled her to him silently and kissed her again, and the fact that he had initiated it this time meant more to her than it probably should have, considering he’s been dating Kelly for quite a long time and she was supposed to be heartbroken over two different men.

They drove back to her new apartment, but she didn’t really feel like giving him the grand tour. ‘To hell with it all’, she thought, and pushed him towards the bedroom.

Afterwards, they ordered sushi in and ate it on the floor of her bedroom, Ryan in his undershirt and boxers, Pam in his button down with the sleeves rolled up. She’d never felt quite right in Roy’s shirts, but she hadn’t been able to resist picking up Ryan’s and putting it on, letting him watch her button it up slowly over her bra and panties. She liked feeling a little bit risky, and a lot different. He showed her how to eat the little pieces of salmon and tuna with a pair of wooden take-out chopsticks, and she was surprised at how good it was.

When he left he had seven new voicemails, but he snapped his phone shut and kissed her again, tugging gently on the collar of the shirt she was still wearing.

I kind of thought something would happen tonight, too.

Ryan really did look good in his kurta, and they way he met her eyes when she said it made her feel like Kelly wasn’t right there, her hands still resting on Ryan’s chest.

To be honest, Pam knew that she didn’t want to go to the Diwali celebration not because she didn’t have a date but because she didn’t want to watch Ryan with Kelly all night, Kelly fawning over him, Ryan chatting to her parents.  It made Pam feel a little bit sick to her stomach.  But by the time Pam got back to her apartment, she was starting to feel less resigned and more bitter, even a little bit angry, and definitely disappointed in herself.  After all, Ryan was in a relationship with Kelly, and Pam didn’t expect him to just dump his girlfriend and start anew with the girl he had slept with once.  So she took another shower and re-did her hair, changed into some jeans and a sweater, and drove to the banquet hall.

Just because Ryan was dating Kelly didn’t mean Pam couldn’t try to make him jealous.  When she actually started having fun, she was almost surprised.

She tried to tell herself it wasn’t because she could see that Kelly’s family didn’t like Ryan and that Ryan was definitely not enjoying himself.  It almost worked, too.  But Ryan still spent the whole party by Kelly’s side, so Pam, when confronted with a situation too good to let pass, text messaged Jim.  She thought he of all people should know about the situation, and there was no reason not to be civil, even friendly again, with each other.

When she sat down on the steps next to Michael, though, she knew that she was talking about Ryan even if she was supposed to be talking about Jim.

At around midnight, Pam’s phone buzzed on coffee table.  She assumed it would be a reply from Jim, but instead it was from an unknown number in the Scranton area code.  All it said was “Busy?”  Something about it made her feel warm all over, and she could feel a blush on her face when she texted back “No,” and saved his number to her phonebook.

He was at her door in fifteen minutes.