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Setting: Season 2
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The twisting, low in her stomach, certainly wasn't making the day go by any faster. Most of the staff was gathered in the conference room, apathetically watching as Michael, clad in what Toby consistently referred to as "inappropriate" yoga attire, demonstrated the downward dog position. The other workers (read: Stanley and Creed) remained comfortably at their desks, working or (more accurately) surfing the web. Pam glanced longingly at her own desk, wanting nothing more than to sip her waiting hot green tea...

"Yoga," Michael explained, "is Buddha for peace." He closed his eyes for emphasis. "Our performance of yoga will bring peace to Dunder Mifflin."

"Michael, none of us are dressed for yoga," Phyllis noted.

"Clothing is but a mere hinder.." Michael began, stumbling over the word. "hindra...hindrance," he finished triumphantly. "Now, sit on the floor. No chairs. There are no chairs in Buddha, and there will be no chairs here."

"Buddha is not the name of a country, or a language," Jim noted, his amused eyes glancing over to the cameras.

"Buddha is all of our countries."

Jim nodded in mock-agreement, before turning to Pam for reaction. On any other day, she'd nod back to him in equal mock-agreement, their mutual sense of humor one of her favorite things, but the pain in her stomach, and gradually progressing to her head, prompted only a small smile, before she turned back to the scene unfolding before her.

She didn't catch Jim's confused, even hurt reaction, didn't know then how he lived for moments when she would, in fact, play along with his bits and pranks. He furrowed his eyebrows, looking down for a moment. When he looked back up, Pam had a hand on her head as she lightly massaged her temples. Oh.

"You okay?" he asked her, attempting to sound casual. Every conversation with her seemed to rest on his seeming casual.

She smiled weakly, just as she had earlier. "Headache."

"I have some Advil in my desk?" It was more a question than a statement.

"Yeah, I took some--" she trailed off, thinking that telling Jim she had just downed as much Midol as the label directed her to (and maybe a teeny, tiny bit more) would be at the very least, awkward. Even Roy hated discussing these things with her. "Pam, we don't have to tell each other everything, okay?" he'd say, disgusted at the topic.

"I took something," Pam finished decidedly.

"Oh. Okay." Jim paused, unsure of what to say next, fighting the intense urge to massage her neck.

"Pam," Michael announced, interrupting his thoughts, "will now demonstrate the downward dog."

"Michael, is the downward dog the only yoga position you know?" Oscar asked.

"No, it was Buddha's favorite position and I'm honoring him," Michael answered quickly, before returning to his original train of thought. "Pam! Come up here, come to the front, and demonstrate the downward dog."

Pam groaned inwardly. "I'm really not feeling well," she ventured.

"Nope, no, no excuses, come on up, Pamela--"

"Why doesn't Dwight demonstrate the downward dog?" Jim interrupted.

Dwight stood up readily. "I will demonstrate, Michael."

Michael sighed, "Fine," as Dwight dropped to the floor, thrusting himself upward.

Jim laughed, delighted, glancing over at Pam out of habit. She was biting her lip, looking deeply uncomfortable, and he felt his heart drop at the sight.

"Hey," he whispered. "Why don't you go home, get some rest?"

"Roy wouldn't want me to do that."

Something almost like anger shot through Jim. Of course.

Jim scoffed, albeit unintentionally, but Pam noticed all the same.

"What?"

"Nothing." He still sounded angry. He was always doing this. God, he was supposed to just stay casual, stay neutral...

"No, what?" she sounded almost angry now, the pain and the cliche hormones making his prior suggestion suddenly annoying to her ears. "We need the money, we do have a wedding to plan," she muttered, looking away from Jim.

Her words were like a slap to his face and he turned away as well, both of them now silently focused on Michael and Dwight's argument over the appropriate way to praise a small golden Buddha statue.


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He took a detour on his way to the office, returning from an afternoon sales call, to pick up a birthday gift for his niece. Exiting the store, a line-up of flowers along the wall caught his eye, and he stopped for a moment. Roses. Pam loved flowers, she even loved gardening, but not many people knew that, including Roy, who probably wouldn't notice the flower garden in their backyard if he camped in it.

Jim reached for a single rose, the image of her slumped over her desk once the ridiculous morning conference session was finally over, displaying tragically in his brain. Still, he wondered briefly if buying a rose for her would be too extreme, too boyfriend-like, too not casual.

He decided he didn't care.


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They normally walked out together, or at least said a proper goodbye, at the end of the day. He watched as she stood at the shredder, feeding documents into it with a tired expression on her face. Quietly, he gathered his coat and messenger bag, walking gently to her desk and laying down the rose before exiting.


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Pam wearily returned to her desk, surprised to see the rose laying brightly atop a stack of papers. Her eyes lit up, truly for the first time all day, as they scanned the writing across the attached note.

Cheer up, Beesly! Tomorrow's another day. (Yeah, that's good or bad, depending on how you look at it...But let's go with good for now, okay?)

Jim

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The problem with attentiveness is that it makes you ache.

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Jim had ached for as long as he could remember, though no one could ever guess it. Sure, he’d been a little “dorky” in high school, as Pam would happily remind him when paging through his yearbook, but he’d blossomed in college, smirking with amusement as girls giggled and blushed when he so much as glanced across a room at them. He was charming, he knew that, and when he’d see an interesting girl, he’d approach her, charm her, and before long find her on his too-small twin bed, his fingers mapping her body as his roommate was at British Lit 101 or something. It was easy, almost too easy, and by college’s end, he’d slept with his fair share of interesting women---but he never felt for them, not really. He hesitated to think it, to think himself a guy like his brothers, who slept with women without any strings attached or feelings connected, but he knew it was the truth. Of course, there had been some...there had been that girl, Lacie, she was kind of cool...he’d liked her, he guessed. She had been funny. He liked funny girls, liked the laughter...but really, it hadn’t been anything show-stopping. She hadn’t stopped the ache.

When he was a kid, his father loved to recount the tale of the first time he met their mother. She’d sit by, smiling and blushing just like those school girls, as Gerald told the story. “Like something out of a movie, kids,” he’d emphasize, still seeming stunned that he had experienced feelings as soon as he saw her. “Like something out of a movie.”

Pete and Tom had thought that was crap. Larissa had thought it embarrassing. Jim had wondered if it existed, really, and if it did, if that kind of love really was true, if it was his parents’, he wondered if he could have it too.


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The first time he had lunch with Pam, she choked on her manicotti. They were laughing, just like he had with all those girls in college, but the atmosphere was different. He wasn't trying to charm her; she was charming him. He was saying something witty, something you’d think he’d remember since he remembers everything about his first mid-day lunch with Pam Beesly, but all he knows is he was saying something witty and she started to laugh but suddenly looked simultaneously surprised, embarrassed, and scared, before coughing uncontrollably and reaching for her tea glass, eyes watery and face red.

“Whoa--you okay?” He felt awkward instantly, unsure of what to do. Do you do the Heimlich on a person who’s coughing? You don’t, right? Do you? Would she want him to? That shouldn’t matter, though, right? The awkwardness? She’s choking! You wouldn’t not do CPR on someone just because it’s awkward, right? Oh, God, what if she needs CPR? Nope. No. Breathing...

She sucked in a deep breath, coughing once more and taking another desperate gulp of tea just as the waiter walked by, probably concerned this was somehow going to affect his tip. “Ma’am, are you okay?”

Pam nodded, eyes shimmering with tears, and something inside Jim wanted to reach out to her. “Yeah,” she croaked, lightly coughing, sniffling.

“Could you bring her some more tea?” Jim heard himself ask without even thinking. What? Her glass was almost empty and she was choking. Any reasonable human being would’ve done the same thing.

She smiled softly, embarrassed. “Thank you...I’m sorry...”

“No, hey, manicotti tends to be a choking hazard.” Something witty. Always something witty.

Pam laughed, lightly and a little cautiously, and that nervous look on her face faded somewhat. He’d charmed her, as he did girls, and he was going to ask her to dinner too, was going to suggest they go somewhere with less of a death rate, when he suddenly noticed the engagement ring on her finger shimmering as she picked up her napkin.


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“Morning, Beesly.”

“Hey.” Pam smiled awkwardly, the previous day’s tension standing strong in her vision. “Um, hey,” she repeated as he slung his messenger bag over his chair. “Thanks for the rose.”

Something almost like pride had flashed across his face as he turned to look at her, but it disappeared as soon as she thought she saw it and he was casual again. “Yeah, no, I saw them at the store...Vanessa’s birthday...and I mean, I know you were having a bad day...uh...” he stumbled. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah, I’m a lot better.”

“Good!”

“Yeah...and I had chocolate last night.” What was that? “You know ‘cause, like, chocolate cures everything...or something,” she laughed, her face growing hot.

“Oh, does it?” Jim grinned. “Well, I guess I went to the wrong aisle.”

She giggled. “I guess you did.”

He turned to his computer with a smile on his face and she felt relief that there was no tension. She fought with Roy almost every day, over some trivial, insignificant thing, and fights with Roy never gnawed at her like fights with Jim.

Jim was, after all, her best friend.


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He wasn’t depressed necessarily, he wouldn’t say that. He was just...empty. He was surrounded by people who knew what they wanted. He watched as his roommate, Mark, mapped out plans for a Philadelphia move, watched as even his brothers, his completely offensive brothers, married and welcomed children. He didn’t have a passion, didn’t know what he wanted, so he kept his job at a paper supply office and went home to TV dinners and Trading Spouses. One night, over fish sticks and macaroni, he imagined Pam on the couch next to him, her own dinner in hand. He imagined her laugh, warm like her. He thought of those feelings his dad had bragged about all those years.

The problem with attentiveness is that you can't turn it off.

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Pam couldn’t turn off her mind. She laid across the bed, eyes closed, as Roy slept beside her, his gentle breathing interrupted every so often by an abrupt snore.

She glanced at their alarm clock, the late hour flashing back at her, and squeezed her eyes more tightly. Her mind drifted still, to thoughts of Jim, and she allowed it to be okay, because everyone always said dreams are merely mental composites of the day's events, and surely, she surmised, thoughts must work the same way. It was a psychological effect, simply her brain remembering moments with her best friend--It wasn’t a fantasy, it wasn’t a hope. It was just her brain.

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The first time Pam had lunch with Roy, he knocked over her water bottle. She’d been sitting with her friends from art class, and Roy had come over and she was sure he was trying to tease them, just like he had in class, when he and his friends were sneakily throwing paper clips at the teacher’s desk and one had hit her in the shoulder.

He was a jock, this obvious even in the cafeteria as he fist-bumped classmates Pam herself had never seen before and shouted out, “Hey, man!” to anyone who crossed his path. He knew everyone, that was clear, and everyone knew Roy Anderson.

She was a much quieter personality, content with quietly sketching during lunch while her friends chatted about movies and music and just really simple things. She loved that simplicity. She didn’t like the girls at Roy Anderson’s table, those girls who laughed far too loud and far too long at things that weren’t even very funny.

“Hey.”

When she heard Roy’s voice above her head, she warily looked up from her sketchbook. Her friends had stopped talking. Pam stared at him, waiting, and he rested his arm awkwardly against her chair.

“I just wanted to, uh, say I’m sorry...about the paper clips?”

“Oh.”

“Yeah...it was stupid. We were just messing around. Old Man Lock, you know, he failed Ronny and...anyway, we didn’t mean to hit you with one.”

“It’s okay.” She looked back down, ready to continue her drawing. Roy didn’t move.

“Is that, uh...is that the Pocono’s?”

She looked up in surprise. “Oh, um...yeah. I love the mountains.”

“Me too!” He pulled out the empty chair beside her, and she caught the shocked look on her best friend Isabel’s face as he sat down. “My dad has a place out there.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, it’s right by that place with the bumper cars---“ Her open water bottle toppled over with his excited gesture and she jumped up, stunned as the water spread across her drawing and streams of water toppled over the table edges.

“Oh, my God! Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry.” Roy was frantically grabbing napkins, trying to mop up the mess, but her sketchbook was ruined, as was a good portion of her jeans. Other students turned toward the commotion and she felt herself blush as one of the supervising teachers came over with more napkins.

“I have to go change clothes,” she sighed to her friends, happy that at least one good thing about following her mother’s encouragement to continue playing volleyball in high school was that she always had extra clothes in her locker.

“Pam, I am so sorry.” Roy pulled out his wallet, removed a ten dollar bill. “Here, take this. Buy a new sketchbook, okay?”

She smiled slightly, forgiving. “It’s okay.” She handed the money back. “I have another one at home.”

“No, take it.” He shoved it back into her hand. “And just--how can I make it up to you? Maybe...do you like hockey?”

She furrowed her eyebrows. “Hockey?”

“Yeah, I have an extra ticket to the game tomorrow at The Ice Box. Let me make it up to you.”

Pam felt her friends staring at her. “Okay.”

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Jim always seemed to be watching her. Not in a scary, creepy, Every Breath You Take kind of way, but he seemed constantly aware of her presence. Sometimes she’d be working and she’d feel his eyes on her, and she’d look up to meet them and he’d just smile. Chills would run through her in those moments, good chills, and she’d feel her heart start to speed up a little bit.

She loved Roy. That wasn’t a lie, wasn’t fake, wasn’t phony---she really did love him. Still, she couldn’t remember ever having those chemical rushes when she first met Roy...or anytime, really. She felt something close to obligation when she was with Roy. But that’s what happens, right? When people are together for awhile? Yeah. They had just been together for so long. She’d smile, thinking of that, and the next time Roy came up to the office, she’d kiss him.

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It was the dead of winter and Roy’s truck wouldn’t start. Pam stood in the empty parking lot, Target having closed half an hour before, and wished with all her heart someone would just answer their damn phone. She rested her head on the steering wheel, the coat around her not coated enough to keep out the December cold, and willed herself not to cry. Roy had been watching the game, seemingly home for the night, so she’d taken the truck on a search for last minute Christmas gifts. There was no reason for him not to be answering his phone. No reason.

She felt the tears start to come, finally. She was freezing and angry, she’d called practically everyone in her cell phone contacts, she couldn’t remember the number for that dang taxi company, everything around her was closed, the gas station was up the road and she guessed she’d have to trek through the snow to see if someone could--

Her phone rang, the name Jim flashing across her caller ID as a musical interlude played from the cellular, and she felt herself actually laugh in relief.

“Hey!” she answered gratefully, her breath forming white clouds in the air. “Thank God!”

“Hey! You okay?”

“The truck won’t start...” The tears must have been evident in her voice, because she hadn't even gotten through the sentence before Jim was asking her where she was and telling her to stay in the truck and that he was on his way.

She shut her phone and called Roy back, leaving another voice mail message, this time telling him not to worry about it, that Jim was coming for her.

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She really couldn’t turn off her mind. Lying across the bed, eyes closed, as Roy slept beside her, his gentle breathing interrupted every so often by an abrupt snore, Pam thought of Jim.

”I was just trying to finish Christmas shopping!”

Well, Christmas shopping is a dangerous experience, Beesly...C’mere...”

She could still smell his cologne from the hug he’d given her, quick and friendly, but so warm.

”You gonna be okay?”

“I think so.”

She’d laughed, embarrassed to be crying in front of him, and he’d lightly touched her shoulder.

”No jumper cables?”

”We like to live life on the edge.”

”Hmm, and I see how that worked out.”

While he was working on the truck, she’d sat in his car, the heat on full-blast per Jim’s orders. She flipped through his CD case, popped a Travis disc into the player. But if you sing, sing...

”Alright, after all that, you have to be hungry. And I have to buy you a hot chocolate, because I will not be responsible for hypothermia due to lack of warm beverages.”

Pam smiled to herself, Roy’s snores intensifying beside her.

The problem with attentiveness is that it makes you wonder.

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