As soon as they’ve both been approved at their new jobs, Roy insists Pam go with him to the Warehouse to meet his new co-workers. A brief thought occurs to her that of course Roy would never want to meet her co-workers first, but she banishes it. She’s having these sort of thoughts way more than she’d like lately, especially considering that they’d just got engaged. She figures it’s fatigue. They’d been together so long, and of course she was a little antsy. She would get over it. After all, she loved him, and the ring on her finger, which she’d just gotten a few weeks ago, was direct evidence of that. Money was never great between the two, so they’d split the cost, but Pam liked to think of that as a positive thing: they were really collaborating, so maybe she could count on his support in planning the wedding, whenever it would be.

The first man Roy introduces her to is the Warehouse supervisor, Darryl. He says something demeaning about “Mike,” which she knows means Michael Scott, her new boss, who seems bizarre indeed. As she laughs politely, she feels something deeper stir in her. She’s always liked guys that are either very bulky or very tall because they make her feel so petite; Darryl’s even bigger than Roy, and he’s got a better, deeper voice. Every time Darryl speaks, she – twitches, or something, and breathes a little heavier, and she feels terrible because her own fiancé never did that to her. Her laughs are still quiet, but turn throaty, when Darryl says something funny.

“Hey, babe, what was your deal with Darryl today?” Roy asks her that night as they watch TV. “You acted so weird around him.”

Pam thinks it must have been really obvious if even Roy noticed her behavior, then expels that thought from her head, because it's evil and engagement-undermining. “I was just trying to be friendly.” She’s answered too quickly, and he turns a skeptical eye toward her, sighs, and leaves the room. She feels terrible, because they have these passive-aggressive fights way too often; she feels even more terrible as she glances down at her new ring. They finally agreed to this ultimate commitment and here she was, laughing like Kathleen Turner in the 1980s around other men and sneaking glances at their faces across a room as if she was still in high school. When she mentioned she lived with her fiancé to her new co-workers, the tiny blonde accountant muttered something under her breath that sounded like “hussy.” Well, she felt like one now, alright.

So, Pam snuggles next to Roy that night, when she finally goes to bed. They have sex and she doesn’t come, but she doesn’t say anything about it. She stops thinking about Darryl. By mid-April, her attraction to him seems dumb. It’s easy to forget, because she almost never interacts with him; his name gets brought up in conversation a lot, about poker nights and the like, but a name alone doesn’t contain much power. She doesn’t see him much, because she doesn’t go to visit Roy in the warehouse very often, honestly. She always thinks she should pop in and say hi to him during the day, but she doesn’t, and she can never quite articulate the reasons why in her head.

“Hey, you look bored.” A low voice interrupts her lunch and, to be honest, she is, and yeah, her usual salad is doing nothing for her today. She looks up and sees the new sales guy, JAAAAAMES! AAANDREWW! HAAAAALPERT! as Michael had announced him. He’d just sort of looked at his feet and shuffled off to the Annex to go work with Toby. Pam had thought that, with that attitude, yeah, James or Jim or Jimmy or whatever he actually called himself was perfect to work with Toby. He seems far more spirited now.

“Well, you must be psychic, because I am,” she says with a laugh, and she looks at his eyes and her gaze lingers for just a second too long, because he glances away almost guiltily. She thinks she catches him blushing, so she speaks up again quickly. “Sorry I didn’t really get a chance to introduce myself before, though you can probably tell how things are around here with Michael. I’m Pam Beesly, I’m the receptionist.”

“Jim Halpert.” They shake hands, and Pam finds herself thinking he’s possibly the cutest thing she’s ever seen, bulbous nose and all. Her head screams for her not to think that, but the thoughts keep coming, unwanted. “Hey, look, I hope this isn’t really forward or anything, I know I just met you, but I got this discount to that place Cugino’s down the road in my little gift baggy, so...” Pam sort of giggles. She’s not nervous, she’s not, but his use of the word baggy is cute. He’s cute. “Do you want to come with?”

“No, no, it’s not forward at all. Sure, I’ll come!” Pam tries not to sound too enthusiastic, but she is, and not just because he’s very good-looking. She doesn’t really have friends at work; she’ll sometimes eat lunch with whoever, and she gets along well with everyone (except Angela, but that’s a lost cause), but nobody invites her to do things outside of work or anything like that.

She insists that they go in separate cars and Jim makes a joke about destroying the environment that she laughs at uproariously. She hasn’t laughed like that in months. In her car, she bites her lip and worries. She realizes she’s scared of how charming he is, how kind his eyes are, how easily she thinks of herself running her hands through his hair. A thought comes, unbidden, into her head, of her popping off button by button on his shirt and – no. She gnaws on her lip so hard she has to yelp out loud, to herself, and feels stupid.

She expects their conversation to die a horribly awkward death at Cugino’s, but it flourishes without even trying. She’s telling a story, completely animated, so not like her, when the two words she completely forgot about, but that explain why she’s been feeling so guilty since he first spoke to her, slip out – my fiancé. Jim’s smile fades for just a second until it perks right back up. “You didn’t say you were engaged!” he exclaims. Pam thinks he might be overcompensating for some sort of disappointment, but she also thinks she’s probably overanalyzing it. “Let me see your ring.” So she stretches out her hand, forcing a happy grin, feeling a little embarrassed because of how tiny the diamond chip is, but he just says “very nice.”

On the ride back, she replays the “very nice,” in her head, the way his voice turned all gruff but still affectionate when he said it, the way it – broke her heart, really. But no, she has to convince herself this is lunacy. She’s engaged. Even if she wasn’t, she’s sure Jim simply wouldn’t be attracted to someone like her. For God’s sake, it’s July and she’s wearing a cardigan and pantyhose and her hair is frizzing out everywhere. His looks aside, he’s so devastatingly charming and funny, there’s no way he doesn’t have a girlfriend.

They get back to the Scranton business lot at exactly the same time. They take the elevator up together, and it’s so awkward because even though they’re talking, Pam just wants him to press the emergency stop button and, quite frankly, kiss her. Hell, she thinks she’ll do it. Then, she thinks of the finger she’d have to press to stop the elevator, which is connected to her hand, on which another finger she wears an engagement ring. She’s engaged, she has to keep thinking. It isn’t helping much.

Pam doesn’t tell Roy about her lunch with Jim that night, or ever. It feels like a betrayal of some sort, and really, it is. She was out on a date with another man, who she was attracted to, and she’s pretty sure she openly sort of flirted with him. Jim meets her eyes the next day when he comes in, and gives her a giant grin. Pam feels her stomach seize up. She figures if she ignores it like she ignored Darryl, it’ll go away.

But it doesn’t go away, even when she starts a genuine friendship with Jim. At the end of August, Michael has a fit when he catches Toby and Jim in a normal conversation in the Annex, and he moves Jim to the empty desk that’s diagonal from Pam’s. After a week, she moves her computer to the front of her desk, claiming it’s for space reasons. Her job gets much better; all day long, when she feels like she’s going to die of boredom or slap Michael, they’ll exchange looks that are just... great. They’re totally public, but somehow, they’re intimate.

Privately, she’s thrilled. In company, though, she actually snaps and nearly screams at Michael when he suggests once, at the end of the fall, that she’s getting a little too close to Jim (thankfully, Michael tells her later, once she’s calmed down, that he knows that girls get PMS really bad sometimes, and she keeps her job). She makes sure Jim hears her outburst, though she can’t bring herself to turn and look at his face. She wants, needs those boundaries between them. It terrifies her to think of what would happen if they weren’t there.

Almost four years later, she’s playing cards with Jim in the Warehouse. When he says “three nines,” she mishears it for just a second as “very nice,” and it’s with the exact same inflection as that first day. He’s shocked her back to that booth at Cugino’s. Pam tries to remember to tell herself to stop it with the blatant coquettishness, but there’s something in his eyes that night that is irredeemably sad, so she goes along with it, beaming at him and giggling and twirling her skirt in the parking lot. Of course, the outcome is that she sobs even harder in the office, in his chair, later in that night once he’s slipped away.

The new temp, who comes in the first day the cameras are there, poor guy, is actually super cute, Pam thinks, then scorns her mental wording of super cute because what is she, thirteen? It’s not that wild sort of attraction, the heart-lurching connection, she felt in the first few days she knew Jim (and, if she admits it to herself, which she never ever does, that she still feels), but the temp has wide blue eyes. He’s her age. He seems nice, or terrified, enough. Pam rolls her eyes at these thoughts after less than two minutes. God, she’s engaged. She shouldn’t be looking for guys.

“Hi, Ryan,” she introduces herself a little later in the day, when the cameras are off recording the accountants’ introductions and thoughts on downsizing in the conference room, but before Michael pulls that despicable stunt with the fake firing. “I’m Pam Beesly. The receptionist.” She hates the fact that she says receptionist like it’s something to be proud of.

“Yeah,” he says, desert-dry. “I got that when Michael kept screaming your name in a ridiculous tone and you were sitting behind the reception desk.” It’s dry, sure, but not in a friendly joking manner. Pam tries to control the bile that rises up, involuntarily, in the back of her throat. He’s cranky, and sick of Dunder-Mifflin, and is so sure he completely understands Michael’s insanity, after one day? Try three years.

“Oh. Well – ” she starts, but she guesses Ryan feels bad, because his face sort of falls by a millimeter.

“I’m sorry,” he says, though Pam can tell by his eyes he’s just saying it to be polite. She thinks he’s probably not the kind of guy that will say ‘sorry’ and actually mean it often. Still, Pam gives him a beatific smile, because that’s just what Pam Beesly does. She forgives, almost unconditionally. She tries to forget, but always has those nagging little reminders in the back of her mind, which she willfully ignores. “So, it’s almost lunchtime, and I’ve got coupons for Cugino’s in this ‘Welcome to Dunder-Mifflin’ bag...” Once again, his tone in “welcome to Dunder-Mifflin” is way too bitter for someone who has been here for a whole goddamn two hours.

“Um, I’m engaged,” Pam sputters out, and it’s a terrible and mean-spirited rejection to his offer. So, softer, she says, “Sorry.” She knows Ryan’s not coming on to her, but she is infuriated by him and, in some stupid way, misses the ridiculous way Jim had said “gift baggy.” She’s just met this Ryan Howard, but somehow she can tell that he is probably not someone that would ever risk being humiliated by silly words or actions (a few years later, when her life will be so different it will dazzle her, and Ryan’s got a ridiculous half beard and spouts nonsense about “Dunder-Mifflin Infinity,” she’ll think of this first impression and smirk).

Pam can see Jim in her peripheral vision, watching Pam and Ryan conversing with some interest. Jim looks worried, or annoyed, or something. Maybe he doesn’t want Ryan to become her new best friend at work, but she seriously doubts that will happen based on their first conversation. Maybe he’s irritated when Pam brushes Ryan off, because Jim might want her to find another great work friend. Sometimes she clings to him like he’s a life raft. She knows it’s pathetic, asking him to be her constant defense against Michael and Kevin’s stupid comments, against Angela’s sneers and cold eyes, against the sheer soul-sucking boredom of being a receptionist at Dunder-Mifflin Scranton. She was never sure what she thought her life would be, but it wasn’t this. Maybe he resents her leaning on him, both emotionally and sometimes even physically, and bottles up all his hatred at her because he’s a nice guy like that.

So, Pam, once she’s behind her desk, turns toward Ryan and gives him a small, tight smile. She tries to make it clear that it’s not flirty, and not exactly friendly, but that there are no hard feelings. Despite the bad haircut, he is really cute. After all, her being engaged isn’t the reason she turned down lunch with him.

May 1, there’s an e-mail in all their inboxes from the head of the camera crew, saying that the test audiences responded alarmingly well to what they had filmed, and that the cameras would be back in September to start filming again. There’s also something in the e-mail about audiences wanting very badly to see “a certain romantic drama” resolve in the next year, and Pam has no idea what they’re talking about, though she theorizes it’s a subtle dig at the fact that no, she still hasn’t set a wedding date. Over lunch in the break room, she tells her theory to Jim. He laughs half-heartedly and falls awkwardly silent. It’s moments like those that make her want to ask Jim a question about what, exactly, they are, that she hasn’t quite defined in her head. She wonders how she could be terrified of the answer when she doesn’t even know the question.

Michael comes out of his office and up to her desk to chat and she feels herself squirm. She’s always frustrated by the fact that the uncomfortable squirm isn’t a blast of pure hatred. She wishes she could hate Michael, and in the rare occasion she does (she thinks back to the fake firing again), but she’s seen the humanity in him too often, both pre- and post-cameras. “Pam, am I fat?” he asks her. This must be really serious for him, because he’s actually using her name and not some dumb (and, she secretly thinks, kind of endearing) nickname. “Does my hair look bad?”

“No,” she responds, not bothering to look up. His hair is terrible and he’s kind of chubby, but he’s always looked like that and she values her job. Well, the money part of it, anyway.

“Because I saw a few minutes of the first episode,” he continues, ignoring her response, and now Pam can’t help but look up, because he actually saw footage?! “And yeeeaaaccchhhh. I mean, I’m going to be famous and all that, but I look like... you know that guy downstairs? Not the one you’re, you know, doing. The really...big one?”

He means Lonny. “You don’t look like him, Michael,” Pam sighs, returning to her work.

“Well, not exactly. You know, he, um...”

“What? Why doesn’t he look like you?” Oh, she loves goading him, really. She tells Roy it’s the highlight of her day often, because it’s often indeed a secondary highlight and she doesn’t want to know what he’d think of the real highlight.

“He... uhh... errr... well, you know Mr. Brown and Jan said I can’t talk about those things or we might get sued when the documentary airs. The point is I am gross. I mean,” and he lowers his voice here, “sometimes my hair looks worse than Dwight’s.” Dwight definitely hears him anyway, because a “lowered voice” for Michael is still very loud, and the salesman’s face sets in indignation. She knows, though, that Dwight would never do anything to defy or insult Michael.

“Your hair is fine. I’m not sure why you needed my advice.”

“Because – well, err, this is hard to ask, because I am a man – can I have one of your women’s magazines?” Pam looks up at Jim. He’s in the usual state he’s in when Pam talks to Michael, which is that one hand is busy with his computer mouse, and the other is clamped over his mouth to cover his smile. She sees his attempt not to burst out laughing in his eyes, which actually twinkle. She stops thinking about the way Jim’s eyes twinkle, his grinning lips under his hand.

“Uh...sure...” Pam shuffles through her desk drawer where she keeps her magazines (Michael lets her keep them at work, because according to him, her most important job after being his friend and answering the phones is to be eye candy, and those magazines have all those hot fashion and makeup and sex tips, not that she’s ever taken their advice in any manner), and hands him a Cosmo from a few months ago. Michael pages through it, pausing only to hold up a picture of some B-list actress in a slip and growl, but then he lands on an article.

“‘How to Look Hotter than Ever!’” Michael reads out loud, and Pam hears Jim’s snort. She looks up and gives him a covert wink. Instantly, she feels terribly guilty and drops her head to focus on the computer screen again. “I’ll take this.” He disappears into his office, thankfully.

It’s gradual, but he does start to lose weight that summer, and he must get hair plugs or Propecia or something, because sure enough, by the time the cameras come back in late September, Michael’s looking really good indeed. Sometimes, he’ll come out of his office, or appear at her desk without warning like he infuriatingly does, and Pam will find herself admiring him for just a millisecond until he starts talking, and then she rolls her eyes and thinks, Michael. Not in any way attractive.

So she’s at the stupid Dundies and she’s very, very drunk. She almost never gets drunk – she’s not a college student thinking she’s badass by sneaking wine coolers – but she’s doing it for so many reasons tonight. She needs to forget the fight with Roy, she needs to forget the fact that she always seems to be fighting with Roy. She needs the cameras to see her as a different Pam than what they got last season, which was, undoubtedly, like a mouse. Most importantly, though, she needs to take that ever-present edge off when she deals with Jim. She’s so glad she’s drunk. The Dundies actually seem like fun when accompanied by Jim’s commentary and seven drinks in forty minutes.

“Jim!” she hisses conspiratorially, when Michael goes backstage to prepare further costume changes; God, she’s a little afraid. “I have a secret!”

He leans forward, elbows and forearms on the table, similarly conspiratorially. “What?” He’s been beaming since the second she sat up on that stool. He’s absolutely radiant, she thinks, and then banishes the thought from her head. She’s been doing that too much lately, too.

“I think... Michael’s been looking good lately. Like, really good!” She bursts into laughter so loud that Terri turns her head toward them, alarmed, and even Stanley looks over, more slowly. They both look away, though, exchanging amused looks among themselves. However drunk she is, Pam notices they do that all night, and wonders why.

Jim’s mouth is hanging open. His eyebrows move up and down a few times, and his lips quiver, like he’s trying to say something but is too shocked to, and after about thirty seconds he manages to find words. “Holy shit, Pam,” he says, totally dumbfounded, “I love you (when he says it, even though she knows he means I love you as a friend, Pam is sure she goes red as the Christmas sweater she drags out almost every year, because she feels the heat bloom out from her cheeks), but you are wasted.” He chuckles, not meanly. “Should I tell Roy about your secret affair with Michael Scott?”

Sobriety hits her for a second. “I don’t want to talk about Roy right now,” she almost snaps.

Jim looks taken aback. “Um, okay.” His grin returns a second later and, as ever, he easily maneuvers his way out of a totally awkward situation. “You’re so lucky all the cameras went in the back to record Michael’s hijinx, because if this was caught on tape, I would use this to blackmail you for the rest of your life, Beesly. Or should I say, Scott.”

“Stoooop,” Pam moans, lost in her drunkenness again. Michael comes out a few minutes later, and he’s changed from that ridiculous Indian outfit to his tuxedo again. Jim raises his eyebrows at her when Michael starts to sing – wail pathetically, really – his own Dunder-Mifflin-themed lyrics to “Macarthur Park,” because that song just isn’t bad enough already. Pam glares at Jim good-naturedly; that doesn’t stop the fact that, yes, dammit, for just a second when Michael came out, before he opened his mouth, she thought about how it was a little sexy that his suit was totally rumpled and how his face was perfectly angular, even with the gigantic nose, and his eyes so clear. Even though ninety percent of it was the alcohol talking in her brain, she refused to own up to the other ten percent.

But later that night – still. She only kisses Michael on the cheek, no matter how wet and sloppy the kiss, and she makes sure she gets Jim on the lips.

Pam wakes up half an hour earlier than she usually does, so she can get her hair just right, and spends too long picking out her clothes. She rushes out the door at 8:30, which is just enough time to be at work if there’s not bad traffic. There are five different shirts and two different skirts which she considered and rejected spilled across her bed. One of the shirts is that garnet deep v-neck, which she didn’t choose due to it being far too obvious.

When Pam finally gets to the office, it’s 9:15 and she swears she almost got into at least three car accidents on the way. She almost gets all the way to the business park building’s door until she remembers she left the bag with the doughnuts and other bizarre food Michael asked for in her car, so she has to turn back. “Good morning!” she cries out when she walks into Dunder-Mifflin’s suite. Yes, she’s incredibly nervous, but she’s still in a terrific mood.

“Got the food? Good!” Michael exclaims right back. He’s completely ignoring her as a person, but Pam doesn’t mind, not today. “What I want you to do… set it up in the conference room, please. Make it look nice. As if you are trying to impress – ” Her heart seizes up for just a second, because how much does he know? How much does everyone know? All morning long, she knows she’ll feel pair after pair of eyes trained on her.

“ – A much older man who’s way out of your league.” She feels Michael’s hand too heavy on her back, and is immensely creeped out. Yes, he looks good in a suit and tie, but he’s still Michael Scott. She never had any real romantic feelings for him to begin with, but all desire she ever had for any man that wasn’t Jim seemed to have evaporated since May. When she’d finally gotten home from the casino night fundraiser, she’d made sure to inch as close to the edge of her bed as possible, away from Roy; just looking at him had filled her with an empty fury. She knew it was no one’s fault but her own, but she blamed him for the fact that she had to break Jim’s heart.

As she unpacks, she gives the camera crew a ridiculously chipper interview, and swears the female crew members look at her sympathetically, while the male ones roll their eyes. After that, she sits behind her desk all day long. She doesn’t even take lunch. The Stamford employees come in one by one, and Pam feels terrible for all of them, because she’s heard their branch was efficiently run and, well, sane. They can’t know what they’re getting into. Then again, she thinks they might be able to handle it after all when she actually meets them; Tony looks way more bewildered than horrified, Hannah’s bitchiness rivals Angela’s, and Karen seems like she simply doesn’t take any bullshit.

It’s around noon when she sees, through the frosted glass by the door, a tall male figure walking – no, waltzing – to their suite. Pam quickly runs a hand through her hair and shifts forward, because she’s been waiting for this for so very long and –

Oh. It’s not him. She should have known that, because he’s tall but not that tall, and not lanky. The hair is in a precise cut, not floppy. She’s just been so worked up all day, that she feels herself ready to jump any male figure that comes through the room (when Tony had come in, she’d even had to look at him twice). Her next thought is, Well, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to jump him. He’s cute. Very...precise-looking. Pam's horrified by her thoughts. Jim! She’s supposed to be thinking of Jim! She only has been, constantly, for the last five months!

Of course, when she sees the new guy – Andy Bernard, apparently – talk to Michael, it occurs to her how similar he is to her boss, and how similar her reaction to them is. She was, initially, attracted to both of them. And then they spoke, and all attraction evaporated. Her instant attraction to Andy seemed even stupider an hour or so later, when she embraced Jim – Jim! – and as she pressed as close to his neck, chest, groin as she could while still being decent, she didn’t even care that everyone in the office shifted to look at them (in later years, he’d tell her it took every modicum of control in his body not to swoop her up and twirl her around, like a sailor in WWII returning to America, and kiss and kiss and kiss her, right there). It’s perfect, exactly like she imagined, for just a few seconds.

But then, they break apart, and he feels the need to explain his joke and Pam’s stomach seizes up. They never had to do this before; they just got each other. It’s different now. It’s weird. It’s wrong. The roles got reversed; she’s in love with him, pathetically and hopelessly, and he had obviously decided that whatever happened in May was a mistake, and he didn’t love her, never had. Later, in the break room, the parking lot, her suspicions get confirmed. It’s even worse when she considers that she’s got no one to blame but herself. She doesn’t even have the backbone to do what he did six months ago, when so, so much more was on the line.

It’s a week or so later, while that whole stupid thing with Martin is going on, that Andy starts paying attention to her. She’s been so busy moping over Jim, literally moping, sitting in her apartment alone in pajama pants, conspicuously avoiding any sappy romantic comedies that are playing on television, that she totally forgot about Andy, a difficult feat indeed. For just a second when he strode up, every inch alpha male, she was extremely flattered. And then, the words started coming out, so wrong, so perfectly wrong (he called her “Pam-a-lam-a-ding-dong,” for God’s sake. Michael had called her that a few times!), and she realizes what this is. She snatches it up; she has no other options. When Jim whirls around in his chair, that gleeful, boyish look alight in his eye, it is quite literally the best thing that’s happened to her since Scranton and Stamford merged.

As she’s leaving for the day, Andy pauses her by the sofa near reception. “Please wait, my fair lady,” he says, holding up a hand, as if that would really stop her from leaving. “So far, you have proven resistant to my charms.” Pam half-nods. She’s looking at Jim’s neck, trying to see the side of his face, to see if he’s holding back a smile like he used to. Maybe he is. Maybe this would be okay. Things wouldn’t ever be quite the same as they were. Whatever they had was so beautiful, precious, perfect even. She didn’t think she could justify it to anyone with words, just with images, like his face when she said he could tell her anything, or that single tear he’d brushed away, so destroyed he didn’t even bother to hide it. That didn’t exist any more, but what was there now was okay. It was good. Survivable.

“No woman can resist...a banjo!” Andy interrupted her constant internal monologue. He was holding up, indeed, a banjo, pulled out from seemingly nowhere. Oh, no, Pam thought. Oh, no. This is too good. Thanks for this, Halpert. It’s Friday and she’s itching to leave for the weekend, maybe to get some sketching done, but instead she sits on the sofa, listening to Andy singing “The Rainbow Connection,” Pig Latin and falsetto and all, because she thinks if she listens hard enough, hidden somewhere in those words would be the code to making Jim Halpert love her again. It reminds her of the day after the Christmas party last year, when she spread out his “bonus gifts” on her kitchen table and kept rearranging the order she’d placed them in, trying to figure out what, exactly, about him had made her exchange a $400 iPod for a teapot.

As cute as Andy is, and however good he smells (seriously, he smells really good, he must be using some expensive cologne from Abercrombie or something), Pam just can’t keep her eyes on him very long. She turns her head toward the cause of this prank, with a tiny smile for everything they lost, for everything they might get back. She can only see the back of his head, but she sees his cheeks expand, the area right below his cheeks contract. He’s got a big, irrepressible smile on his face, she’s sure of it.

“So, how was your day?” Jim asks, walking out of Dunder-Mifflin. It’s a few minutes later, Andy’s done, and she left the suite and is standing by the elevator. She notes he’s not wearing a coat, so he must have just left to talk to her. It shouldn’t make her so happy, she shouldn’t be thinking like that, but it puts a big smile on her face, like the one he’d surely had a few minutes ago.

“It was okay,” she responds, and her voice sounds so freaking giddy it almost embarrasses her. “There was kind of a nice highlight.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I think I found the love of my life.”

“Really.” He arches his eyebrow and Pam thinks, Yeah, you bet I did.

“Really.” She makes her smile one of those big, almost fake (but she didn’t have to be fake with him. Didn’t used to, she amends.) sweet ones he used to look at and just... melt. She’d taken him for granted so much. She thinks she might see something flicker in his eyes for a second, but dismisses it. She’s over-searching for something, anything, and Jim’s eyes are just so expressive, no emotion of his remained hidden. Still, that one little flash, imagined or not, reminded her, turned her bitter, made her take a turn for the cruel. “I mean it, Jim. Andy’s really cute. Thanks for the hook-up.” The tone’s not nearly as jokey.

He sputters a little. He’s not interested in saying the perfect thing to her any more, hasn’t been since Stamford. “Well. You’re welcome, I guess. Am I gonna get an invite to the wedding?” He’s still smiling, if not widely, at the beginning, but at the word wedding, the way his face falls isn’t subtle. He might not love her any more, but he’s still hurt. Why wouldn’t he be? It just reminds her of months of silence, emphasized by the past week. Physical distance between them was no longer an issue, but maybe the emotional one was insurmountable. She realizes right then that there’s no maybe about that; it is.

Fittingly enough, she answers with the response that doesn’t exist, “Maybe.” Her answer is quick. It has to be, otherwise any hope of anything, of being able to just look at him without crying, will be destroyed. “Thanks, it was funny, though.” She gets in the elevator, and wills herself not to turn around. “It really did make my day, Jim,” she says, but the elevator doors are closing and she’s looking down so she can’t see his face.

David Wallace is not in any way elitist, so he stops by all the branches to say hi to everyone a little while after his cocktail party. Unfortunately, he comes to Scranton at the worst possible time. Roy just got fired the week before, so there’s a weird mood in the office and bad blood all around. Actually, if Pam is being honest, there isn’t really bad blood all around, so to say. There’s just bad blood in her general direction. And it’s kind of only from one person, but Pam’s had to face up to the fact that that one person is becoming her whole world. It scares her.

She sits behind her desk almost all day now. Sure, she’ll scurry away from behind it to go to the bathroom or grab her lunch, but she just can’t face the risk of wandering into the break room to find Jim and Karen together. It’s not so much them, but the fact that they make Pam face the one utter failure of her life. Every time she saw them, she felt her dreams explode and fizzle away like fireworks, like that night they spent on the roof together, long-gone times. The smoke was still in the air; she couldn’t escape it. Sentences she could say to Jim died in her throat, because Fancy New Beesly was totally and utterly defeated that night when Roy destroyed both the bar and her ambitions at honesty.
So, Pam’s behind her desk, of course, when David walks in. She recognizes his face from the Corporate newsletters. “Hello, Mr. Wallace,” she says, summoning the biggest smile she can. It’s not very big.

“Please, Pam, it’s David,” he responds, covertly glancing at her nameplate.

“Oh. Well, David.” She makes herself laugh a little, hoping it will get the slightest response from the neck she sneaks glances at all day. It doesn’t. “The Party-Planning Committee has been waiting all day for your arrival!” She thinks over how stupid that must sound. Mr. Corporate won’t care about the goddamn Party-Planning Committee. “I’ll show you to the conference room.”

As she walks with David to the conference room, where Angela awaits with cakes and streamers, she thinks about how she used to be able to feel Jim’s eyes trailing her – not in a creepy way, but in a way that flushed warmth throughout her body that she refused to acknowledge. Now, she feels nothing. She doesn’t know that he breathes in sharply and grips his mouse tightly until his knuckles go white in his attempt not to react.

Forty-five minutes later or so, the party is in full swing. Pam sits in one of the four chairs along the wall in the middle of the room. No one else sits in the other three. It works for her, because she doesn’t have to immerse herself in pointless conversation, but yet nobody can accuse her of being antisocial. David is in the middle of talking to Michael, who keeps screaming as he laughs. Pam knows her boss is just trying to impress the CFO, but who wouldn’t want to? He seems, by all accounts, incredibly kind and intelligent. He’d gotten the company out of many very bad situations with utter grace. He’s charismatic. And, Pam has to admit, watching him half-smile at Michael’s ridiculousness, he’s very handsome. The glasses suit him.

All these observations about David, though, seem so hollow and desperate. When Pam was engaged, she thought about men that weren’t her fiancé way more than she’d like to admit. After a while, it was really just one man. Now that she was single, she couldn’t stop thinking about only that one man; she’s way more mentally faithful to him than she’d ever been to Roy. The only problem was, she’d had her chance with that man and she’d blown it badly. He was totally out of love with her. She focused on Jim, in the corner, laughing with Kevin. Karen was unsubtly eyeing Jim. Pam wanted, so badly, just to talk to him.

“How are you holding up, Pam?” a deep male voice said from next to her. Pam had been so preoccupied by her own thoughts that she hadn’t even noticed the freaking CFO had sat next to her.

“I’m...” Pam thinks of saying great, but it’s a blatant lie. “I’m okay. I’m holding up.” David doesn’t ask why she’s only okay. They talk, but he gives her distance, on instinct. She finds herself smiling, really smiling, for the first time in which seems like months. She may be hopelessly in love with Jim, but that doesn’t mean she can’t appreciate talking with another man, especially one so charismatic and good-looking as David Wallace.