Pam had decided to stay home for they day - she said she just needed a day to herself to breathe. Roy wasn't worried, because Pam didn't seem sick or upset, and besides, she never skipped work unless she actually needed it, so he kissed her on the forehead and told her to call him if she needed him to pick up anything on his way home. Of course that idiot Dwight had come down to the warehouse to ask him all sorts of ridiculous questions about how Pam had been feeling, how much had she had to drink last night at the Casino party, what were her symptoms, all that crap. Roy just told him that Pam wasn't feeling well, and if he found out that Dwight went over to the house to snoop around and bothered her, he'd break his arms (or something equally painful).

When Roy got home, he found Pam in the kitchen. The whole house smelled like sautéing onions, and her back was to him as she stirred something in a skillet on the stove. Walking up behind her, he put his arms around her, only to feel her flinch slightly. Confused, Roy pulled away, and when Pam turned around to face him, her eyes were rimmed with red, and he could tell that the tears in her eyes had nothing to do with chopping onion.

"Pammy?" Reaching a hand out to brush away a tear that was slipping down her cheek, Roy was actually surprised when she moved away from the gesture, wiping the tear away herself. "Babe, what's wrong?" But Pam just shook her head - whatever was wrong, she didn't want to talk about it, at least not yet, and Roy could tell. "Alright. Well, uh, do you want to be alone for a while longer?" Pam smiled, and a few more tears fell, but he wasn't sure why.

"Actually, my mom's on her way for dinner. I was thinking..." she shifted her weight and swallowed before continuing. "Uh, maybe you could go out with Darryl and them tonight. I just need..." but she didn't actually know what she needed, and that thought made more tears start to brim in her eyes.

"Oh." Roy looked genuinely hurt by this, and that made Pam feel even worse. She could tell that at this moment, he still loved her just as much as he always had, and it made her heart ache a little. "Okay. Lemme call Darryl and see where he is." Roy left the kitchen then, pulling his cell phone out as he did. Pam sniffed a bit and wiped away her tears - again - and turned back to the stove to keep cooking dinner.

After Roy left, kissing her on the cheek before he did, Pam finished dinner and sunk down into one of the chair around the kitchen table to wait. Luckily, she didn't have to wait long - she had called her mom this morning after she took a long, hot shower, and they'd talked for about an hour before deciding it was best for them to actually see each other and discuss everything in person. Her parents only lived about two hours away, so almost as soon as Pam was done with dinner, the doorbell rang, and Pam went to let her mom into the apartment, sinking gratefully into a hug. After she pulled back from the hug, her mother followed her into the kitchen. Pam put some of the stir fry she’d made onto a plate for each of them and added some salad on the side, while her mom got them two glasses of lemonade. Sitting across the table from her daughter, Pam’s mom looked at her expectantly.

"Well?"

“Mom!” Pam sounded almost desperate. Taking a deep breath, she speared a piece of stir-fried chicken on her fork and tried again. “Mom, you know that I haven’t figured anything out. I’m just so, I don’t know. Confused?”

“Pam, you’re not actually confused, you know.” At her daughter’s questioning look, she tried to clarify. “You’re just torn.”

“Torn?” Now Pam was actually getting angry, and she never got angry with her mom. “I’m not ‘torn,’ mom, I’m confused! I have no idea what I need to do. And better yet, I have no idea what I want to do!” Wiping away more tears, Pam took a few bites of her salad.

“I think that’s what’s most important, Pam. Not what you think you should do, but what you actually want to do for yourself. And Pam, I think you’ve forgotten how important it is to think about what you want - for a long time now.”

Listening to her mom, Pam knew she was right. It was actually crystal clear, but for some reason, she’d just been refusing to think about it. Hell, if she wanted to be honest about it, she’d been refusing to think that she wasn’t worried about her own wants for almost six or seven years now. Maybe even longer.

“I…I guess you’re right. But, god, mom, what am I supposed to do? Even if I’m supposed to think about what I want, how am I supposed to know what that is?”

“That part’s up to you, Pam. It’s up to you.”

They finished their dinner without talking about it anymore, instead sticking with topics like how Pam’s older brother and younger sister were, what her dad had been up to, the new shoes she had bought the other day. Anything that didn’t have to do with work, the wedding, Roy, or Jim. Especially Roy and Jim. After dinner, Pam poured them more lemonade and went into the living room while her mom went out to her car to get something she wanted to show Pam. Pam curled up at one end of the couch, hoping desperately that it had nothing to do with table settings or bridesmaids’ dresses.

Pam’s mom came back into the house, closing the front door behind her. She found Pam in the living room, curled up on the couch, their lemonade glasses on the coffee table. Settling down into the armchair, she set something down next to their drinks. Pam looked up at her mom, and then down at the table.

“A photo album? Mom, what does this have to do with anything?”

Her mom smiled, and it was a smile that Pam was used to giving people – they both had that same smile when they were up to something. “Just look through it.”

Pam picked up the photo album, checking the spine for the date. ‘June – August, 1992.’ Pam had turned twelve that summer, in early June. She still couldn’t figure out why her mom wanted her to look through it. Starting to leaf through the pages, she knew instantly that all of these pictures had been taken by her younger self – they all had the artsy feeling that all of the pictures Pam took had. Some were taken on a slight angle, some focused on the sunset or the bright green leaves of the tree in their front yard or a single pebble in their driveway. Others focused on her brother Rick and a few other neighborhood kids playing basketball, her little sister Jill running through the next door neighbor’s sprinkler with their kids, some rounding the corner on their bikes. Pam smiled at the memories. Maybe her mom was just trying to cheer her up. And then, when she turned the next page, her heart stopped and she couldn’t breathe. Staring up at her from one of the faded disposable-camera pictures, staring up at her out of her past, was something that had to be a mistake.

Jim? There was no way. But there couldn’t be any mistaking it. It was Jim alright, and Pam knew exactly why her mom was showing her this. She just couldn’t believe that she’d never realized it herself. And when she was twelve, she thought she’d never forget. Apparently, she was wrong.

Pam had always remembered that summer so clearly, or at least she thought she did. Her older brother Rick (he’d been fourteen that year) had always played with whatever random kids had been hanging around in the neighborhood, while Pam was pretty much alone that summer, what with her best friend Beth at sleep away camp. But it was also the summer that Pam found out just how much she loved to draw and take pictures and do anything artsy, and she’d never forgotten that. She felt like it might change her life, in the hopeful way that twelve year olds have, but it also seemed like no one really cared. Her mom thought they were “beautiful, Pammy!”, and Jill (she was, what, nine that year?) loved being the subject of Pam’s drawings and photos, but no one would’ve believed Pam if she’d said she thought she wanted to be an artist (or that’s what she thought at that point).

Another thing Pam had never forgotten about that same summer was that boy. She’d never known his name, but she’d seen him around the neighborhood once or twice, right after school got out and Beth went away. Once her mom had caught her watching him through the living room window, sketching him as he circled up and down the street on his bike. A few little hearts were scattered around that page. Pam had blushed, but her mom had just smiled at her. “He is cute, isn’t he, Pammy?” Pam had nodded and smiled and gone back to watching him. He wasn’t just cute – he was everything. The way he smiled when a few kids passed him riding their bikes, the way his hair kind of flopped around his face, the way his limbs looked like they were a little bit too long for his body, but especially the smile. It made him look like he was lit up from the inside, and it made Pam feel the same way. She’d never forgotten that feeling, that was for sure. She’d just never made the connection when Jim made her feel that same way almost every day.

And the photo? She could remember that day almost too clearly, now that she thought about it. Sure, the edges were a little fuzzy, but who remembered the edges? Pam had been laying in the grass in front of their house doodling in her sketchbook, but she got sick of drawing the same things over and over again, so she went into the house and got her camera. Settling back down into the same spot, she took a few pictures of their lawn, the blades of grass close up and like an army of tiny green swords pointing straight at the sky, and then realized there wasn’t too much she hadn’t taken pictures of yet that summer, even that boy. She’d managed to take a few pictures of him about a week earlier, when he’d played basketball with Rick and some of his friends. He was good at it, and his laugh made Pam want to be around him forever.

Just then, Pam watched as a few kids on bikes pedaled leisurely around the corner of the street, just a few houses down from her. He was with them, lagging near the back, but still smiling and joking. Pam kind of wanted to run in the house and hide, but she didn’t, for whatever reason. Then she heard the tinkling and jingling that signaled the ice cream truck, coming around the other corner. Most of the boys who were now almost at Pam’s house ignored it, but the boy, the only one that really mattered, said he was going to stop and get an ice cream, slowing down in front of Pam’s house. He had climbed off his bike and let it drop at the foot of Pam’s driveway, smiling at her once before he turned and flagged down the ice cream truck. That smile, directed at her? Well, she decided she wanted to see that every day, for the rest of her life.

He’d gotten a sno cone, the kind with not quite enough flavoring, and before he paid the guy, he asked her over his shoulder if she wanted anything. She just shook her head. He paid, then, and wandered back over to his bike, nudging it with his sneaker as he started on his sno cone. Then he looked back up at Pam, and she tried to breathe normally as he came over to where she was.

“What’re you doing?” he asked, standing a few feet away in the green grass, looking at her and then at the sketchbook next to her. “You draw?”

She nodded, hoping against all hope that this wasn’t the sketchbook that had the doodles of him on his bike in it. “Um, yeah.”

“Can I see? Unless you don’t want to show me, ‘cause I can just…”

“No!” She cut him off, wanting to show him her work, for whatever reason. Pushing herself into a sitting position, she picked up the book and handed it to him. “You can look.” He handed her his sno cone in exchange. Pam raised an eyebrow at him.

“We wouldn’t want to get, well, water, I guess. Anyway, we wouldn’t want to get anything on it, right?” He’d laughed a little bit, and she couldn’t help but laugh with him. It was the best thing she’d ever felt, laughing with him. As he flipped through the book, she tried not to look at him, instead holding the sno cone in one hand and picking her camera back up to take a close up shot of the colored ice. She loved the way it looked through her viewfinder, and snapped a few pictures before she realized that he was watching her, not looking at the sketches anymore.

Smiling at her again, he reached down and took back his sno cone, handing her the sketchbook. “You take pictures too? You’re really talented.” Blushing, Pam just shook her head.

“I really don’t think I’m that talented at all.”

“No, seriously. Those sketches…” he looked like he was just as embarrassed as Pam, on footing just as unsure. “They’re really nice. D’you want to be an artist when you grow up? Because I think you definitely could. Be an artist, I mean.” Pam was blushing harder now, and the smile on her face was starting to hurt.

“Thanks.” She wanted to say so much more, but with him smiling down at her like that, she almost couldn’t breathe.

That’s when his smile changed, into more of a grin, like he was up to something. “So, you take pictures too, right?” When Pam nodded, his grin got even bigger. “Take one of me?”

“W-what?” Pam sputtered, utterly shocked. “Er, I mean, why?”

“Well…” his grin shrunk a bit, and he looked down at his hi-tops. But then he looked brightly up at her again. “Practice makes perfect, right?”

Pam had nodded, biting her lip and smiling. “Alright.” So she’d picked up her camera and taken a picture of him, smiling the most perfect smile she’d even seen, sno cone in one hand, his hair moving a little bit in the breeze.

That’s when the other kids came back around the corner on the bikes, looking for him.

“Hey, you coming or not?” one kid yelled in their general direction.

Jim looked over at him, and then back down at Pam. He half-smiled at her and sort of shrugged, and then retrieved his bike, climbing on and eating his sno cone at the same time. As he pedaled over to the other kids, he looked back over his shoulder at her, once, and she smiled, even waving to him a little bit.

His family moved the next week, to a different development on the other side of town. She had cried as she watched the moving truck following their blue station wagon down the street and out onto the main road. Her mom had rubbed her back consolingly and smiled at her. “Don’t worry, Pammy. There are other fish in the sea.”

And Pam, now 26, sitting on her couch, holding the photo album like her life depended on it, realized how un-true that had been.

More tears were sliding down Pam’s cheeks, and she wiped them away. “Mom, this is impossible. It’s absolutely…”

Pam had loved that gangly boy with her whole heart, with every particle of her body, and she’d been forlorn for the rest of that summer after he moved away. But thinking about it now, she realized why she’d never realized that Jim was that boy. After a few months, the sadness started to fade, and once Pam got to middle school, she tucked the single photo of him away in the back of one of her journals and tried to forget about him. And while she always remembered what it felt like when he smiled at her, and how he had inspired her to follow her dreams to be an artist, she practically forgot what he looked like. By the time she got to high school and met Roy, that gangly boy was long gone, hidden somewhere in the depths of her memories.

Of course, this explained a lot to her about Jim – why she’d felt immediately drawn to him, why they got along so well so quickly, why sometimes, when the first met, she would get a nagging feeling that she knew him from somewhere. And now, faced with actual proof, the photograph she had taken of the boy that had changed her world, she felt as though she should have been able to make up her mind easily about what to do. But for some reason, she was just more confused. If anything, the problem was worse now - her whole world had been turned upside down twice in two days, and Pam was never good with change.

“Mom,” Pam said shakily, wiping the back of her hand across her eyes, “I loved him. I loved him so much.”

“I know, Pam. I know. That’s why I brought it to show you. I actually found it a few days ago, in the back of one of your old journals, but I wasn’t sure if it was actually Jim. Jilly told me it was – I guess she’s seen him somewhere. Anyway, when you called me last night, I got out the album I put it in and I just couldn’t put it away.” She shrugged at her daughter’s questioning look. “I knew he was important to you then, and I thought you’d want to know. I’m actually a bit surprised you never made the connection.”

“I was too,” Pam admitted. “Until I thought about it. I mean, that was so long ago, and I didn’t remember what he looked like or really anything about him. I never even thought about it when I met Jim, you know?”

Her mom nodded, and Pam looked back down at the picture, tracing the edges of it with one of her fingers. “Can I…” she looked back up at her mom. “Can I keep it?”

“Of course, dear.” Pam slipped the photo out of its protective plastic in the book and closed the album, handing it back to her mom. Holding the photo cautiously, she studied it more closely, absolutely sure that it was Jim. She just wished she was that sure of what she wanted to do now.

When Roy got home from Poor Richards, there was a note for him on the kitchen table. Ignoring it for a minute, he took his coat off, dropping it on the arm of the couch on his way to the bedroom. “Pammy?” No answer. No Pam asleep in bed, either. Confused, Roy went back to the kitchen and picked up the piece of paper off of the table.

Roy, it read, I decided to stay at mom and dad’s for the weekend. It’s no big deal – I’ve just been missing them recently. You know how I get. There’s some stir fry left in the fridge. You can heat it up if you’re hungry. I’ll see you Sunday night? Pam

The only thing that really worried Roy about the whole situation was that whenever she left him notes (which she actually hadn’t been doing too much recently, now that he thought about it), she ended them with ‘I love you.’ Putting the note back down, Roy wondered what to do, before deciding that he definitely wasn’t hungry, even if he had been before, and that he should just go to bed. He’d see Pammy Sunday, right? No big deal, he told himself as he brushed his teeth, as he changed out of his work clothes, as he got into bed. No big deal. Pam was coming back on Sunday.

Pam shifted in the passenger seat of her mom’s Volvo, staring at the picture in her hands. When she had packed her overnight bag for the weekend, she’d tucked the photo of Jim from all those years ago safely into a zippered pocket, but she couldn’t stop taking it out and studying it. Now, though, she was staring down a newer photo, even if this one was still a few years old – eleven, to be exact.

She flipped the picture over, looked at her mom’s neat handwriting on the back. ‘Pam and Roy, Lake Wallenpaupack, June 22nd, 1995.’ It was from the day after Roy had taken Pam to his senior prom (she was still a junior then). They had gone to Lake Wallenpaupack with a group of their friends to relax at the tiny summer cabin a friend’s family owned. It had red shutters. Pam had loved the place immediately.

The photo was of Pam and Roy, sitting side by side on the dock in their shorts and tee shirts, Pam’s hair held back by a bandana. Roy had his arm around Pam’s waist and she was leaning into him, smiling shyly as he leaned over and dropped a kiss on the top of her forehead, right at the edge of her bandana. Seventeen-year-old Pam was blushing, and you could just barely see the freckles on her nose that a day in the sun brought out.

She’d always loved this picture – it had a prominent place on her dresser, leaning against her mirror. She had grabbed it before she left with her mom – for some strange reason, she just felt the need to bring it with her. Now she knew why. This picture had always reminded her of how in love she and Roy had always been, how in love they would always be. Or at least thought they would be. A hot tear slid down her cheek at that thought and Pam wiped it away as they pulled into her parents’ driveway.