He pushes the door to the bathroom open slowly and carefully, calling out her name as he does. In response, he hears a stifled sob come from the third stall down. He stands in front of it, leaning against the cool tile wall. He doesn’t say anything for a second, just listens to her crying.

But it starts to cut into him so he says, “Pam, are you okay?”

His voice echoes in the empty bathroom and he sees her feet jolt a little in surprise.

“Yeah- Yeah, I’m fine.”

She doesn’t come out of the stall, but he hears the lock click and he rests his hand gently on the steel door. It pushes open and there she is, sitting on the toilet with toilet paper balled up in her hand. She looks up at him and smiles meekly, sniffing and putting the toilet paper into the little trash can on the wall.

“Michael ‘fired’ me,” she says with air quotes and a sad laugh.

When he laughs, he notices the way her face changes and she looks lighter. “This is why he should not be allowed to watch Punk’d.”

He holds out a hand and she takes it, pulling herself up. When she does, she stumbles into him a little. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

He watches her look herself over in the mirror. She wipes at her eyes with a paper towel and blows her nose gently like she’s embarrassed to be doing it in front of him. She looks at him in the mirror and says with a grin, “You’re in the girls’ bathroom.”

He steps forward and smiles. “And it is so much nicer than our bathroom. Hardly any urine smell at all.”

Her reflection smiles back at him for a second before her face falls. She places her hands on the counter and starts to cry again, dropping her head. “You, uh, you said mixed berries. To the camera guys.”

“Oh. They told you about that?” His tongue flicks out to nervously wet his lips and he shoves his hands into his pockets.

She cries harder and he takes another step forward so he’s leaning against the counter next to her.

“Yeah.” She turns to him and he wants to be so mad at her for being beautiful right now with her face all red and soaked. “I wish they weren’t here.”

“The documentary crew?”

She nods. “Everything seems- I can’t just be- You know?”

“Yeah, I know.” He puts his arms around her waist and lets her cry against him. He does it without thinking.

It’s then that he realizes he needs to watch what he says and does now. So he starts to lie to himself just for practice. He tells himself that it means nothing to be standing in the girls’ bathroom after five with her getting his good white shirt wet with tears. He tells himself that her favorite flavor of yogurt is something besides mixed berries, something horribly un-Pam, maybe plain vanilla yogurt. Just so if someone else asked him, he could be wrong and no one would think anything of it.

He makes up lies for her too. She had a headache, that’s why she hurried off to the bathroom. It was just all the stress of the work day, building up behind her eyes and pressing. It happens sometimes. And he was just being a good friend and making sure she was okay, because everyone else had left already. He’ll buy her some of that tension headache stuff and she’ll keep it on her desk for times like this.

Headaches, nothing, vanilla. These are the things that have to become truths now.

She’s going through a window phase and that’s all she’ll sketch. Windows looking out onto oceans or a backyard filled with flowers and trees. Windows in houses that look old and lived in and comfortable.

Before this it was streets. Before that it was clouds and skylines. Before that it was him.

Sometimes when he leaves for the day, he’ll stop by her desk and see if she’s thrown out any sketches. He’ll take the ones he finds home and pretend. Pretend that it isn’t a little weird that he goes through her trash can after she’s left. Pretend that someday he can give her a house like that with a window like that and a yard like that.

While Michael goes on about diversity and being color blind, she’s got a half finished window on her notepad. He looks over at it briefly. He can tell by the way she’s done the shadows that it’s late evening and it’s summer. He likes the way her wrist looks when she’s doing the shading on a drawing. He smiles a little to himself and notices her looking at him.

“It’s good,” he whispers.

“Thanks.”

She tears the sheet from her pad and hands it to him.

“Oh. You don’t have to-”

“No, take it.”

He doesn't say that he’s got about ten at home. He just takes it from her hand, thankful to have one that isn’t crumpled up. He folds it into quarters neatly and puts it in his pocket.

A few minutes later, he hears her whisper something quietly under her breath. Something that sounds to him like, “Someday, right?”

He looks over and she’s falling asleep, her eyes halfway closed and her head swinging back and forth.

Her heads hits his shoulder and she turns so her cheek is warm against his shirt. He smiles slowly and closes his eyes, thinking: Someday.

She lets everyone else on the elevator and stands by the door as they go down, waiting for him to come out. Because she doesn’t think she knows how to ride an elevator without him on the opposite side, leaning his hip against the metal guard rail and watching the numbers tick down to the lobby. Anyway, she always waits for him if he doesn’t come out with her. Sometimes she waits for twenty minutes or so and pretends like she wasn’t waiting. She says some lie about how she went down to the warehouse and Roy had to stay for a few extra minutes so she was just coming up to- and she inserts something stupid like check the phones or go to the bathroom.

When he comes out of the office that night, he’s doing that stupid thing with his lips that he does when he’s angry. She’s seen it a few times. He presses his lips together so tightly until they’re almost completely white and his eyes look more brown than green. He’s gripping his bag tightly with his right hand and she can’t say anything because she’s sort of scared to see him like this.

She tries to remember him earlier in the day when they were sitting on the couch by reception, eating their surprising ice cream sandwiches and talking about health care and fake diseases. She tries to remember how he had smiled in that way he has and reached over with his thumb, wiping at her the corner of her mouth. How he had said in a voice that sounded different somehow, lower and warmer, “You had a little bit of chocolate right there.”

He jabs the button for the lobby hard and doesn’t look at her. He usually glances over and smiles gently and she usually half smiles back, but mostly looks at her shoes. Not today.

She can hear him breathing loudly through his nose. She can see his jaw clenching and unclenching.

When the doors open, he’s quick to walk out. He takes long strides out into the parking lot and just barely holds the door for her.

She glances over towards where Roy parks the truck and he’s laughing with Darryl about something. So she grabs Jim’s arm just gently and he stops dead in his tracks. She trips on her feet a bit, not ready for this abrupt halt. Her hand lingers on her forearm as he turns to her. He’s still doing that thing with his lips.

“Jim, what’s wrong?”

He lets out a loud and long breath and starts walking towards his car again, but slower this time. She follows him and grabs his hand when they reach his car. He pulls it from her grasp and opens the back door to throw his bag in. He shuts the door again with such force that the car shakes back and forth.

He says, “Do you ever just feel like we’re, I don’t know, wasting so much time?”

“What are you talking about?”

“This whole day. I just- Why can’t we grow up and be adults for once?”

“Jim, I don’t- What are you trying to say?”

He twists his mouth and looks around behind her. “We screwed the entire office out of a decent health care plan just because we wanted to mess with Dwight.”

She shakes her head and reaches out to touch- What? Her hands just move about in between them until she pulls them back and folds her arms across her chest. “But Dwight was being so-”

“Yeah, well, Dwight is always just being so whatever. If we had just played along with him this once- If we had just humored him for a second, maybe-” He stops, looking down at the ground and when he looks up, he swallows thickly and she thinks he might be on the verge of tears.

“This isn’t your fault, Jim. Nobody’s blaming you.”

“It’s not about that,” he says, running a hand over his face and then looking at her so steadily that she has to look away. “It’s just- Never mind. I’m just tired and I think I might be coming down with Count Choculitis.”

He fakes a laugh that’s too loud, but she can’t say anything. She just watches him climb into his car and listens to the engine turn over and watches him back out of his parking space and drive away.

“You look cute in your party hat,” he says softly, tugging at a bit of the elastic string by her ear. Color creeps into her cheeks and he smiles down at her.

They’re standing close together in the kitchen. Outside, people are distracted by cake and conversation. He’s been telling her about his alliance with Dwight, but really she isn’t sure she’s heard a word. It’s been a day filled with whispers and games and secrets and her skin buzzes just a little now.

Now he’s laughing and smiling and showing off all of his teeth, leaving his finger there on her cheek just by her ear. But it isn’t tugging playfully at the string anymore. It’s just resting there and she turns her head a little to make it press harder against her skin. Then it’s his palm there and parts of it are rougher than others and the center is so smooth.

They’re quiet now, trapped in one of those moments that they aren’t allowed to be trapped in.

She takes a breath. He doesn’t move his hand. She steps closer to him until he backs into the counter and laughs nervously under his breath. He reaches up and takes off her party hat, slowly so the elastic string won’t snap at her. Her hand floats up to her hair, touching it slightly to fix any damage done by the hat. When it floats back down, it lands on his arm because she’s so close, too close to him.

He’s wearing his blue shirt. The one that makes his eyes look like spring. Her hand rests on the part that’s been rolled up, a few extra layers thankfully separating her fingers from his skin.

He looks at her with a half smile on his lips. Like a dare or a challenge.

She lifts her hand and rests it on her hip. She takes a step backwards and laughs awkwardly when she bumps into a chair.

He cocks his head to the side a little and says, “How far is Stamford again?”

He finds her waiting there at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to the office.

“You should put ice on that,” she says, looking at his lip.

He reaches up and touches it gently. His fingertips come back with blood of them. “Shit,” he says under his breath. “Yeah.”

They walk side by side up the stairs and she keeps looking at him like she’s afraid. When they get to the door, she says, “I’m really sorry that Roy-”

“Oh. No, it’s okay. It happens.”

She nods and follows him to the kitchen. She takes a plastic bag from one of the cabinets and fills it with ice. She turns to where he’s sitting at the table and shrugs, “Since Dwight broke our one cold pack this will have to do.”

She wraps it in a towel and pulls a chair up in front of him so she can place the ice on his lip.

He sits up a little and their knees bump into each other. “You don’t have to- I mean, I can hold a bag of ice.”

She laughs, blushing, “I know. I just feel partly responsible.”

He smiles, but immediately regrets it. He winces and says, “Oh. Okay. So I know this is going to be hard, but try not to make me smile for a while.”

She looks at him and reaches up to push some of his hair out of his face. It’s sweaty and clumps together, but still feels soft. He smiles and winces again.

“Sorry,” she says, ducking her head a little.

“You not making me smile is turning out to be impossible, huh?”

She lifts the ice from his lip and looks at it as concern floods her eyes.

“Is it bad, nurse?”

“Nurse? What, I can’t be a doctor because I’m a woman?”

“Obviously.”

She puts the bag of ice down on the table and touches his lip gently with her fingertips. He takes in a short breath and closes his eyes, saying, “Oh,” under his breath. Her fingers move slowly over the rest of his lip and find themselves resting on his chin as she looks at him.

His eyes are closed a little and she feels frozen there.

He opens his eyes and she jerks her fingers away from his face and says, “Yeah, that’s going to be really swollen come tomorrow morning.”

She lies, “Yeah, Michael’s really making us come into work tomorrow.”

He’s watching something on TV and doesn’t even look at her when he groans and says, “Oh, babe, that sucks. Well, I guess Dave and I will just go down to the lake ourselves.”

“Yeah.”

She wakes up early the next morning. Earlier than she needs to because she has to pretend like she’s going to work. So she puts on her work clothes and kisses Roy and drives around for two hours before coming back to the house once Roy’s left.

She changes into jeans and a t-shirt. She does her hair differently. Takes out her barrette and spends an hour and a half putting it into loose curls. She does her make up more carefully than she normally does. She wears her good bra and stands in front of the mirror for twenty minutes, imagining what it will be like.

She wonders if strangers will think they’re together. And if she’d mind.

And just to see what it might be like, she slips off her engagement ring and places it on the dresser and then poses in front of the mirror with her left hand on her hip. She smiles for a second, but then feels so incredibly dizzy so she grabs the ring and puts it back on. She spends the rest of the time before he gets there, staring at the pictures of her and Roy on the dresser. Saying to herself that she looks so happy there in that one at his mom’s house. Or in that one where he’s kissing her cheek and she’s smiling widely.

The doorbell rings and she jumps. She checks herself in the mirror one more time before answering the door.

He’s standing in her doorway in faded jeans and worn red t-shirt.

“Hey,” is all she can say.

“Hey- Uh, you look…Wow. You look great.” His eyes move up and down her body, lingering in places that make her skin burn.

She hates how hard she blushes. “Thanks. So- So do you.”

He pokes his head in the door.

“Oh, God. I’m sorry. Come in.”

She stands aside and lets him come into the foyer. He looks around curiously. “Roy isn’t home?”

“Oh, no. He’s at the lake with his brother.” She leaves out the bit about lying and saying she had to work so she could be here with him, going to the outlet mall.

“Cool.” He claps his hands together, “So. Ready for those big savings on big names.”

She smiles. “Always.”

The car ride is quiet but comfortable. She rolls down her window and lets in the cool, fresh air as she sings almost silently along to the song on the stereo. She can see him smiling in the corner of her eye and it makes her heart do something strange.

He asks her The Question, “Does Roy know, uh, what you’re doing today?”

She thinks about lying, but when she looks at him, she’s shaking her head. “I told him I had to work.”

He just nods and turns into the parking lot.

She watches him try on new shoes for work. Scrunching her nose and shaking her head at the ugly ones. He watches her try on shoes she’d never wear with killer heels and pointy toes. He laughs at the way she stumbles around the store, trying to walk in them.

In the end, he buys a pair of brown shoes like the ones he already has and she buys a pair of pointy toed, high heeled shoes because he dares her to wear them to work on Monday.

He says he needs some new shirts for work and lets her pick them out. She picks out a bunch of shirts in various shades of light blue because she likes the way he looks in blue. He says something about trying one of them on just to make sure it fits right because sometimes they’re too short and he has to get the long kind. This is when he comes out of the dressing room looking down and fumbling with the buttons on his shirt and he’s only gotten three done because he’s having trouble so she tries really hard to not look at his stomach and the bit of his chest that she can see. He half blushes when he looks up and realizes what he’s doing.

“Oh. Uh, sorry, these damn buttons are sort of…tricky.”

She shakes her head and tries to be calm as she reaches out and does it for him. She makes a joke about men being incapable of doing things or something. She isn’t sure because she’s concentrating so hard on the way his chest feels.

When she’s done, she steps back and looks at him in the shirt. “It looks good.”

He smiles. “Thanks.”

She walks closer to him now as they go from store to store. Maybe she does it on purpose because she likes the way it feels when their arms bump into each other and it would be so easy to grab his hand. She doesn’t though. She’s content with just walking close and feeling the hairs on his arm brush against her skin.

But maybe he isn’t content with that because he keeps sort of grabbing at her fingers with his. Just a little, just loosely. And he lets them go the second he actually has them like it was an accident. He keeps doing it until he finally just holds on to her.

They don’t look at each other for a while. They just hold hands and don’t really pay attention to any of the stores.

She isn’t jealous. She is not jealous. She really, really is not jealous at all that this red head girl with her boobs hanging out her shirt is laughing and smiling and touching Jim’s arm. She really isn’t jealous about any of it. Because jealousy is green and she hates the color green. Except for when it’s his ey- She isn’t jealous.

She rubs her lips together again, feeling them slide against each other. She tastes the lip gloss on her tongue and it tastes awful. It isn’t even her lip gloss. It’s her sister’s and she just borrowed it a while ago and never used it because Roy doesn’t really notice things like that anymore and who else is she trying to impress? So it’s been sitting at the bottom of her bag for a while and she just found it this afternoon and thought she’d try it on.

It’s not because she’s jealous. Because she isn’t. She is definitely not jealous when she sees the way he looks at this other girl’s hips as she walks past him to get to the bathroom. No, her stomach is just hurting because she hasn’t eaten in a while.

She really doesn’t mind that he hasn’t talked to her much this afternoon, because he’s been flirting with her. And it’s not even flirting really. He’s just friendly with everyone. He’s just a really, really nice person who likes talking to people. He did the same thing when she first started here.

She certainly isn’t jealous that this girl gets to ride home in his passenger’s seat tonight. And she certainly isn’t thinking about the things they might do during their date. Or after their date. Because that would be- She isn’t jealous.

She doesn’t notice him standing there in front of her desk, looking down at her and smiling. She jumps when she looks up and sees him there. “What?” Because he’s looking at her really strangely.

“Nothing,” he says, shaking his head, “Just- You look nice today.”

Michael presses his thumbs into his eyes and groans as he walks back into his office and says to Jim, “Fine, but you are now in charge of coming up with a new award for Pam.”

He nods from the doorway, “Okay.”

“And it better be good, Jim. Because people’s lives are at stake here.”

He’s halfway to his desk already and he says, “Yeah, I understand. Don’t worry, Michael.”

So he spends his day trying to come up with a proper Dundie to give to her. But all he manages to come up with before lunch are stupid things that sound like high school yearbook superlatives. Like an award for her smile having the highest wattage. Like an award for her eyes or her hair. It’s so pathetic and he scratches each one off on his little pad of paper.

She stands over his shoulder with her lunch in her hand. It’s 1:30 and his pad filled with nothing now but thick dark lines of pencil is still sitting in front of him.

“What are you doing?” She asks as she reaches over to pick up the pad from his desk.

He stops her quickly, grabbing it and putting it in his top drawer. “Oh, uh, nothing. Just something stupid Michael wanted me to do.”

“Oh?” And that excuse was a mistake because now she’s just intrigued. And when she’s intrigued she lifts her eyebrows and presses her lips together and he always has to clench his fists really tightly to keep from touching her.

“Yeah, for tonight. He wanted me to surprise him with his own Dundie so I’m trying to think up something to give him an award for.” He’s so thankful for his ability to think on his feet. “How do you feel about a Dundie for the most unintentional racial slurs spoken in under a minute?”

She smiles with all 100 plus watts, “Perfect.” And then she nudges his shoulder with her lunch bag, “Come on, let’s eat.”

As he watches her pick at her salad, he’s still trying to come up with an award for her. “If you hate cucumbers so much, why don’t you leave them out? You do make this salad yourself, don’t you?”

She smiles down at her lettuce and says a little sheepishly, “It comes from a bag.”

“I see.”

Cutest Lunch Room Habits? No.

Most Seductive Tomato Eating? No.

Best Knees to Bump Into Under A Table? No.

“What are you thinking about? You seem sort of spaced out,” she says with a mouthful of salad and a bit of dressing in the corner of her mouth.

He comes out of his reverie in time to shake his head. “Nothing. I’m just so pumped for the Dundies.”

She laughs, “Only you, Jim.”

Best Three Words To Be Spoken Today? No.

At four, he still has nothing but lines on his page so he looks at her and writes down random observations about her that could be awards.

Stripiest Shirts (He cringes as he makes up the word stripiest, but her shirts are always striped and there’s that dark blue one that makes her- But the stripes are what’s important.)

Whitest Sneakers (She’s been wearing this pair of Keds since sometime in July and they still haven’t gotten dirty like his Mom’s used to.)

Most Faxes Successfully Sent Out

Most Calls Successfully Transferred

And those start to weigh him down a little as he watches her answer the phone again. Anyway, he’s pretty sure Michael wouldn’t choose either of those. Too boring. Not funny enough.

But he’s tired of trying to come up with anything good so he just quickly adds to the bottom of the list:

Best Dunder Mifflin Receptionist

When he hands the list to Michael at five, he looks it over with his brow furrowing and then crumples it up and throws it in the trash can and looks at Jim, “Yeah, because these awards are really going to keep people from killing themselves. Come on, Jim? Whitest Sneakers? How is that more entertaining than a never ending engagement?”

Jim stands there wordlessly.

“Fine, you know what? It’s…fine. Just go.”

In the silent hum of the break room, her fingertips move nimbly as she links paperclips together. One after another with the bright florescent light from the vending machines bouncing off of her skin. The only noise is the almost inaudible clink of paperclip against paperclip and then the sound of tearing foil as she attaches a yogurt lid to the end of the chain. The only other noise is their breathing and the wet sound his lips make when he parts them a little.

He’s watching her with a pile of paperclips in front of him. Because this is one of those moments when he simply cannot move at all. He tries to lift his palms from the surface of the table, but they seem to be glued there. This is one those moments when she is so purely beautiful that he doesn’t know what to do with it. It’s not the way her fingers move and it’s not the way that piece of hair keeps falling forward and it’s not the way these harsh lights make her skin look.

It’s the entire day. It’s how happy she is to help him with this. How willingly she jumped at the chance to make this happen. It’s how right it feels to be working by her side on something, to be her partner in something. It’s how their excitement seems to rub off on each other until they’re both smiling harder than they’ve ever smiled at work. It’s how he wants every day to be like this. The two of them working towards some common goal. It’s how he thinks the future would be. The two of them, side by side.

She looks up at him, pushing that piece of hair back behind her ear and he still really just can’t move. He wonders if he’s stopped breathing. He can’t be sure. She says, “Jim, are you going to make the bronze medals or do I have to do it myself?”

Turns out he can move a little. Enough to push the corners of his mouth up until his teeth are exposed and his vision’s just a little blurred.

Then the moment passes and his hands free themselves from the table. And he doesn’t think he was breathing, because his lungs are sore and he feels like he’s panting right now.

“Yeah, sorry. I sort of spaced out.”

He starts to link paperclips together. Tries hard to keep focused on the task at hand and not look up at her.

He thinks he wants to work with kids so he says it out loud to her. It’s some strange revelations he’s had today. It feels good to think about the future and not still see himself at Dunder Mifflin. He says, “I think I’d like to, I don’t know- I just think it would be cool to work with kids or something.”

She smiles and nods, “You would be great with kids.”

“But what would I do with kids? Teaching would require going back to school which- I don’t know.”

She puts down the chain she’s working on. He remains focused on his, because he just finally got his breathing back to normal.

“You should do it. Or, you know, you could work here forever.”

He can hear her being beautiful right now and he doesn’t need to look up to know what’s in her eyes.

“Just think about it, Jim. You teaching these kids who will obviously love you. Me painting watercolors and doing illustrations for some local children’s book author.”

He’s been trying to get this one paperclip hooked onto the other for the last minute or so. He drops his half finished chain onto the ground and the loose paperclip goes skittering across the floor. He looks up at her and feels angry for some reason.

She sounds wistful when she says, “We could really do it, you know? We could get out of here. We should get out of here.”

He bites the inside of his cheek hard. Then he releases it and says, “Yeah, we should.”

And he’s really honestly getting tired of the way subtext tastes on the tip of his tongue.

At Poor Richard’s, she drinks two Tequila Sunrises and starts giggling.

He has a beer and laughs when she almost falls off another bar stool.

She orders another and stares at it for a while, saying, “Look how pretty it is. I almost don’t want to drink it.” But she giggles again and sips at it anyway.

She’s still in her cat costume and he can’t handle the way her whiskers look when she smiles at him. Or the way her tail hangs off the stool and swings back and forth as she laughs.

Then she’s serious and leaning in towards his ear, really close so that her lips are almost brushing against his skin and she says, “I’m really sorry. I was so scared when Michael took you into his office.”

He pulls back because it’s not that loud in here and she doesn’t need to be that close. “It’s fine, Pam. Really.”

She places her hand on his forearm and he really isn’t sure if she’s that drunk. “No. No, you don’t- When you were in that office, I just tried to imagine work- No, life without you and it hurt. Do you understand that? That it really hurt to imagine not seeing you every day? Like part of me was being ripped out, that’s what it felt like for that whole time you were in there with him. I meant what I said about blowing my brains out. I really would if you left.”

She pauses and takes a few more sips from the drink in front of her. Then she hiccups and puts a hand to her mouth and she’s so adorable.

“I would miss you so, so, so, so much.” She leans her head on his shoulder and nuzzles him a little, her nose pressing into his shoulder. And he can’t help but touch her hair a little and wonder why Roy isn’t here. “You’re my best friend,” she says quietly and sounds a little sad.

He thinks about making her promises about never leaving.

She sits back up and almost falls again. He reaches out and grabs her arm to steady her. She looks down and just stares at his hand there for a while.

She finishes the rest of her drink, gulping it down really quickly and she winces a little from the burn of alcohol.

Then she’s leaning again and she says, “You make me feel this really strange feeling in my stomach sometimes, you know?”

He wishes he didn’t have to drive home as he finishes his beer and says, “Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

She starts seven different emails that afternoon. And she always winds up rambling on about the length of his arms and the smoothness of his palms on her bare stomach and how it felt to be that close to him. How she had felt his chest and could have sworn she could feel his heart beating. How she really never wanted him to put her down. How it made her feel so inexplicably lonely after she walked away.

He starts ten or maybe it’s fifteen, after a while he stops counting. And he always winds up apologizing to the point of overdoing it and then digresses into a discussion about how he would have kissed her probably if they hadn’t stopped then and if no one had bothered to turn around and look. How he would have probably ended up pinning her down on the ground somehow and she would try to lift her head to kiss him, but wouldn’t be able to reach because he had her by the arms. How he would duck down to meet her halfway and how his knees would be squeezing her hips just a little so she couldn’t get away.

----------

The bag crinkles loudly as she opens it. She puts a chip in her mouth and listens to the crunch echo inside her head. She opens the one email he actually sent while she waits for Michael to come out of his office. It just says:

You have ridiculously soft skin, Beesly.

----------

On Monday, there’s an email waiting for him in his inbox. It says:

I want a rematch.

She’s heard the song before. She’s heard it enough times that she doesn’t have to watch his mouth move to know the words, but she does anyway. She’s heard it enough times to know how the melody goes, but every note feels new with his warm breath on her forehead. When she looks up at him during the chorus, his eyes are mostly closed and she feels like she’s being told a secret.

And it’s been a night of secrets. Up on the roof, the conversation had turned into something serious when he asked her if she thought she was meant to be with Roy. She’d said, “Yeah, of course,” but even then she was painfully aware that it sounded too defensive. Like she was overcompensating. Then she’d asked if he felt anything real for Katy and he’d gotten that look like he wanted to vanish right then and quietly said, “No.” She hadn’t pressed, because he tilted his head back just a little bit like he was to keep his eyes from spilling.

They listen to another song when the first one ends and she doesn’t make any sort of move. Just stands there and maybe moves a step towards him, pretending like she’s trying to look at what song is going to play next. She hears him laugh a little and then the song starts. It’s something soft and she looks down to smile to herself because the sound of fingers on guitar strings has always made her feel this intensely pure sort of joy.

This is when he reaches for her hand and doesn’t try to twine their fingers together or grip it tightly. He just holds it, keeps his palm against hers. It feels like fingers on guitar strings and she doesn’t look back up because she doesn’t want the moment to change or pass or whatever moments like this do.

The singing in the song is hushed like a whisper and it sounds so warm and sincere that she finds herself leaning towards him just a little. As if that warmth was emanating from his body. As if she could trap this feeling here between them and never let it go.

But this is another one of those fleeting moments where she feels love like it’s the first time. Another one of those fleeting moments where she imagines life with him and feels perfection like it’s something completely attainable. Another one of those fleeting moments that will end and she’ll tell herself that she already knows love and that life will never be perfect. It isn’t supposed to be perfect.

The songs ends and he lets go of her hand which is more jarring then the sudden silence. She takes out her earphone and hands it back to him.

He smiles and says, “Well, Beesly, I guess I’ll see you again in just a few short hours.”

She nods and starts to walk towards Roy’s truck. “Yeah, I guess so.”

She’s halfway across the parking lot when he calls out to her, “Oh, and Pam?”

She turns and bites her lip. “Yeah?”

“She’s just a distraction.”

When she doesn’t move or say anything right away, he gives a sad half smile and turns to walk to his car.

“Hey, Jim,” she calls out and there’s something sort of romantic about calling out to him as he walks to his car in a dark parking lot with his shoulders slumped.

From what? A distraction from what? She’d ask, but the answer seems frightening to her.

“Yeah?”

She looks down when he turns back around and tries to think of something to say now when all she really wanted was to see his face for just another second. “Do you think you could get me a copy of that song? I really liked it.”

He smiles and says, “Yeah, definitely,” and then, “See you tomorrow, Pam.”

“Bye.”

She knows tomorrow he’ll probably joke about how this was a date. With the dinner and the fireworks and the songs and Michael’s movie. He’ll joke about it and smile and she’ll want nothing more than for it to not be a joke, but the cameras will be there. Right there in their faces like they always are. So she’ll have to throw it a glance and pretend like she’s mad or that she didn’t at all consider it a date. The thought never crossed her mind.

She starts to work on her lines as she’s getting ready for bed that night.

She’ll say, “Swaying isn’t dancing.”

And it will resound inside of her as if it somehow sums up everything that’s ever passed between them.

She isn’t sure when he started making her entire body feel like a waking limb, just pins and needles whenever he’s around, but she feels it now when he’s all the way across the room, singing karaoke with Michael. She feels something drop inside of her when he stands up and walks over there. Maybe her heart, maybe her stomach. She can’t stop smiling because he’s such a good person.

Afterwards, the crowd starts to thin and soon it’s just the two of them left sitting on the couch. She’s still sitting close to him even though there’s no one else on the couch anymore. She just likes the way his thigh feels warm against hers. His arm is resting along the back of the couch and when she leans her head back, she feels it.

She’s had three beers. She isn’t drunk, but she’s lightheaded enough to not feel self conscious about sitting so close still. She’s dizzy enough to not feel nervous or guilty when she turns hear head and it’s suddenly resting on his shoulder.

“Hey,” she whispers like she just woke up.

“Hi.” He smiles warmly at her and the pins and needles are back.

“Phyllis thinks we’re together,” she says into his sweater. She feels tired suddenly.

“What?”

“I was investigating the Dwight and Angela thing and when I asked her if she knew about any office romances, she thought I meant you and me.”

He moves his arm, causing her to sit up. He folds his hands in his lap. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. I mean, a guy and a girl can just be friends, right?” She looks up at him and doesn’t quite make it to his eyes because she gets caught up in his jaw line and his mouth. But, no, he’s her friend and it doesn’t mean anything that they talk and laugh and smile.

“Of course.” He puts his arm back, only this time it’s not really on the back of the couch. It’s more just around her shoulders. She doesn’t mind and scoots closer to him, because it’s late and her head is so heavy now. She feels it rumble through his chest when he repeats softly under his breath, “Yeah, just friends.”

He runs a hand up and down her arm and she sighs. She closes her eyes a little and feels contentment well up inside of her, spreading its warmth throughout the rest of her body. She curls her body, bring her knees up to her chest as she leans into him. She lets out a breath and says, “God, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this close to anybody.”

She feels him tense beneath her. “Pam-”

She sits up quickly. “I’m sorry.” She isn’t sure what she’s sorry for, but she’s repeating to herself over and over that all of this doesn’t mean anything. She’s repeating to herself what she said to the camera earlier. Just because she’s sitting here with her head on his chest and his arm around her, feeling like she’s finally home, that doesn’t mean that they’re together. They’re just friends.

She stands and says, “I should get going. Thanks for inviting me. I had a lot of fun.”

He helps her put her coat on at the door and says, “Yeah, thanks for coming. I’ll see you on Monday.”

“Yeah. Monday. Bye.”

She drives home with the windows down even though it’s freezing outside. It keeps her awake and it keeps her eyes dry and it keeps her mind on something besides how perfectly she seemed to fit against him.

But she’s cold and he felt so, so warm.

He loves Christmas so much right now. She’s in the conference room with her teapot, talking to the camera.

He waits for her to come out. Not for anything in particular, he’s just waiting for her. He just wants to talk and see her laugh and be near her for a little while longer. Because it’s getting late and the party’s almost over and soon she’ll go home with her fiancé.

He feels a little bit weightless from the punch that’s mostly vodka and when she comes out of the conference room, he smiles down at her and says gently, “Merry Christmas, Pam.”

She holds the teapot carefully in her hands and lifts it up a little and says, “Thank you so much for this, Jim. Really. It’s one of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten.”

He leans against the doorjamb a little and says really softly, “You deserve it.”

She smiles, “I want to make tea with it right now.”

He laughs, pushes himself off of the door and follows her into the kitchen.

She looks so much like a child as she claps her hands happily and fills the teapot with water. And he loves her. She bounces on her feet as she watches it fill with water, her cheeks filling in with pink. She looks at him in the doorway and smiles widely, “Green is my favorite color. Did you know that?”

He did, but he shakes his head and says, “Lucky guess.”

Her eyes fall on something above him. He looks up and says, “Oh.”

Someone (most likely Michael) has hung mistletoe on the door frame. And here they are alone together with the door closed and there’s mistletoe hanging over his head.

He says, “We don’t have to-”

She sets the teapot on the counter and walks over to him with that same giddy smile on her face, “It’s tradition, Jim.”

She’s close to him now. He doesn‘t know how he manages to say, “Yeah, but with Roy out there…”

The card in his back pocket feels like a brick right now. He wants to give it to her and watch her read the only thing he could even think to write: I love you. Because he sat down with the card and was going to write something that explained it better, but this was all that would come out of him.

She pouts. “Yeah, no, you’re right. It’s just I’ve never gotten to kiss anyone under mistletoe before and, anyway, Roy’s hardly paid any attention to me at all tonight and-”

He kisses her then. Lightly, softly, just a peck and then he’s pulling away. She has this look on her face that he can’t read and his left hand is still on the back of her neck. He quickly pulls it back and shoves it into his pocket.

She stands there for a second and then she closes her eyes slowly and reopens them, smiling. “Merry Christmas, Jim.”

She puts on her coat and finds him at the back of the boat, leaning against the guard rail and looking out at the water. His face is vacant and he doesn’t seem to notice when she approaches him.

She pokes him in the side with a gloved finger. “Hey.”

He turns and his face doesn’t move for a second. Then he’s putting on a smile and saying, “Hey! Congratulations!”

She shakes her head, “Oh, right. Finally, after three years, I have a wedding date. Big congratulations to me.”

“You looked happy in there.”

She holds onto the rail with both hands and stands close to him. “Relieved is more like what I was feeling.”

“Ah.”

She bows her head low then. “This is not at all how I imagined it would go.”

“What do you mean?”

“Love, marriage. When I was a little girl, I thought it would be- I don’t know. I thought it would be something better, bigger. I certainly never thought I’d be proposed to after a lasagna dinner at his parent’s house while he’s watching football.”

He pretends to be mesmerized by the water below them.

“That’s how he proposed. I guess I never told you about that. He just turned to me during a commercial and said, ‘Hey, what do you think about getting married?’ And he didn’t even have a ring for me. We had to save up for one. That’s right, half of this baby was paid for by me,” she says and wiggles her ring finger at him. He smiles sadly at her.

She looks at the ring like it’s revolting to her and he wants to hold her.

“And now my big romantic moment. Three years after the fact, my drunken fiancé stands at the microphone of a cruise ship and sets a date because he’s been inspired by stupid Captain Jack.” She laughs, but it’s the saddest thing he’s ever heard. “Yeah, that’s not how I saw it happening at all.”

He puts an arm around her shoulder just for a second. “He loves you though.” He doesn’t know if he believes that, but it’s what she needs to be told.

“Yeah…”

He hears her crying before he sees it and then she looks up at him and the stars are getting trapped in her tears and sliding down her face and he wishes he could just fix her. But he can’t. It isn’t his job to fix her.

She says, “I told him once that my dream wedding would be in the fall, somewhere with a lot of trees. Maybe up in New England. New Hampshire, maybe. And we’d have it right when the leaves would be golden and red and falling around us. And- But he couldn’t remember that, could he?”

He takes off one of his gloves and brings his hand to her face to wipe away the moisture. She smiles when he touches her and says, “You probably would’ve remembered that and, even drunk, set the date for October.”

He lets his hand stay there on her cheek. “You wanted to have apple cider at the reception.”

She bites her lip and looks down at her feet, smiling. “When did I tell you about that?”

He shrugs, takes his hand away from her face and says, “Um…Your second year here, I think.”

It was June, she had had been fighting with Roy, she was wearing her pink shirt, she had smiled so brightly after she told him.

“God,” she groans and presses her face into his chest.

He puts a tentative hand on her back.

Suddenly, she snaps her head back to look at him. “Why aren’t you in there with Katy?”

There’s a change in him now. He shifts on his feet and frowns. His eyes turn glassy and he says, “I, uh- We broke up.”

“When?”

He laughs under his breath, “Five minutes ago, maybe.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

They both lean into the guard rail again and watch the water splash against the boat. The silence isn’t like the one before. It isn’t filled with tension that makes the back of her throat itch like there’s something important she should be saying. It’s comfortable and she can forget for a second that life isn’t turning out how she thought it would. She can forget about settling and disappointment. And she can just lean her shoulder into his and smile while watching their breath come out like smoke, winding together as it drifts into the night.

After a while, she quietly says, “Jim?”

He doesn’t say anything, he just turns his head and gives her these eyes that she could fall into.

“I don’t know if I want to get married anymore.”

He lets out a loud breath and takes her hand, but they’re both wearing gloves and it feels a little awkward. He says, “Stop. You’re going to get married and your husband is going to love you and you’ll be so happy.” He smiles and squeezes her hand, “You’re going to have the best life you could imagine.”

She looks at him doubtfully and everything about him in that moment seems heartbreaking as he gives her this unfaltering look.

“I promise.”

She remembers reading somewhere (in a book or a poem or just somewhere) recently that a lonely person’s voice sounds like it’s caught inside a tin can. So she listens hard for a minute to see if his words are bouncing off of aluminum.

The sun starts to set outside and he turns as she’s talking to see it sinking into the Long Island sound. She’s talking about something, what she ate for dinner last night maybe, but what he hears is that she misses him. And he doesn’t say anything until the sun is finally completely swallowed by blue green water and then he closes his eyes and just listens.

“I’m trying to read Pablo Neruda in its original Spanish,” she says and he’s already thinking in sonnets.

“Do you even know any Spanish?”

“No,” she says, letting her laughter draw out the word for a few extra syllables.

“Well, good luck with that.”

They’ve been on the phone for an hour and aluminum is starting to sound more like cotton.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly when clearing her throat doesn’t get rid of the tightness.

Lights on boats are blinking in the sound, like stars or satellites. “Can we- Just, let’s not right now. Okay? I just want to talk to you without…”

“Yeah.” She wants to bring up the fact that this conversation hurts regardless, but the tin can is back and she wants it gone. “So I’m taking this painting class and we’re supposed to build a mini collection of related paintings…”

“Oh, yeah? What are you doing?”

“Um, leaves,” she says in a small voice, like she’s embarrassed.

“Awesome.”

“Yeah. I bet you’ve got some good foliage in Connecticut. I remember driving through there once in October and there was a lot of red and gold.”

“I don’t know if it’s really any better than Scranton. There is this one tree outside of my building that’s starting to turn this bright, fiery red.”

She smiles, wonders if he can see its branches swaying in the window from bed. “I’m doing this one of, like, you know when you’re driving and it’s windy and there are leaves on the road and they swell up and swirl around?”

“And smack into my windshield, momentarily blinding me? Yeah.”

“I’m trying to paint that, but it’s hard because I feel like I’m not remembering it in my head right and it’s not something you can just sit outside and watch…”

In his mind, just behind his eyes, her wrist is moving as she quickly sketches the curve of a leaf, dancing around in the air.

“So get someone to drive you around while you sketch.” He tries not to let his tone be hopeful or expectant, but it happens anyway.

She just laughs, “And who do you think would be willing to do that?”

Silence then, but they both know what silences like this mean. And they can both puts words for him there in their heads.

He puts, “I would be more than willing. Honored, in fact.”

She puts, “Me. I’ll drive home tomorrow, tonight, whenever and pick you up and we’ll laugh for hours on winding back roads.”

Instead, he says, “Well, if you tell her there’s a new mall somewhere, I guarantee you Kelly will go.”

“Yes, but I don’t know if I could handle the whining once she realized there really wasn’t any mall.”

He laughs, rich and full, “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Cotton, not aluminum. Like he’s speaking under bed sheets, his hand pulling them up over their heads, making their own fortress. The sunlight seeps through the thin layer of fabric and everything glows. It makes it easy to forget all the things that are broken now, all the things they haven’t talked about.

She says, “Um…”

And he says, “Yeah.”

When he finally gets to the studio (icy roads, Karen, that goddamn accident, etc.), she’s taking the final pushpin from her stapler sketch. She’s got all of them piled in her left hand as she pushes the pins back into the wall in the shape of her name. She runs out before she can finish the M and she hangs her head a little before sighing and turning around, startled to find him there.

He feels guilty, but he isn’t sure why. After all, it’s not really his job to support her anymore. It’s never really been his job to support her, he just did it without even thinking most of the time. Still, when she looks up at him with those familiar disappointed eyes, he feels guilt rise up in his throat and that instinct kick starts again within him and he wants to make it better for her.

“Hey, sorry I’m late,” he says, not bothering to list reasons, because he isn’t sure she wants to hear about Karen’s purse and the crumpled up flyer for the show and how he didn’t even know about it until half and hour ago.

Her mouth sort of smiles, but doesn’t really, “Oh, that’s- it’s okay. You didn’t miss much.”

She looks down at her stack of art, her index finger toying with the upper right hand corners. Bending and folding them. He reaches out for them, tentatively with his eyes on hers.

“Can I?”

She nods, hands them over. Her eyes stay on his hands and wrists as he shuffles through them. He looks at each one carefully, looking at details and colors and lines. He smiles softly when he’s done.

“These are really great, Pam.”

She smiles, pulling at her necklace and not looking at his face, “Thanks.”

He hands them back to her. If she had been courageous and honest before, this would be happening differently.

He puts his hands in his pockets and rocks back and forth on his heels. Then he says suddenly, “I love that you’re doing this. I mean- I’m really glad you’re for going after this.”

It’s not about how pretty her art is. He recognizes this, understands this.

She’s pulling her sleeves down over her palms. The studio is empty and silent, just the buzzing of florescent lights over their heads when she starts to cry noiselessly. He has to duck his head so her face catches the light to even be sure that there are tears. But there are and so he reaches his hand out for her shoulder and squeezes a little before dropping his hand back to his side.

“Pam.”

She wipes the corner of her eye with the cotton covered heel of her hand. “Sorry, it’s just been a…Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he says and smiles to reassure her, “You look great, by the way. I like your hair. And your artsy fartsy turtleneck.”

She gives a tear clogged laugh, “Thanks. I really wanted to look the part tonight, you know?”

“Well, it definitely worked for you.”

She nods, smiling and looking down at their feet. Then she sniffles and blinks and says, “So what do you say we go find some defenseless young woman for you to feast on?”

He grins and starts to open his mouth, but she stops him, holding up a hand as they make their way toward the door.

“If you’re going to ask if you can sire me, the answer is no.”

“Aw, come on, Pam, it could be fun. We could roam the dark alleyways together in search of prey,” he says with laughter in his voice and she thinks about sketching his ears or his mouth when she gets home. She thinks about putting them in her next show, an entire series dedicated to the parts of him she wants to keep for herself.