A week after he starts working at Dunder Mifflin Scranton, there are several things he already knows. He knows his boss is a classic example of the Peter Principle: a once-great salesman rendered a completely ineffective mid-manager. He knows his deskmate is hopelessly gullible yet somehow convinced he's the smartest guy in the room, which makes him even more gullible. He knows the redhead is divorced with a kid and sneaks vodka into her Big Gulps, the blonde loves two things; Jesus and cats, and though he doesn't know for sure, he suspects the short dark haired accountant may be gay, just based on the way he checks out the FedEx delivery man.

He knows the receptionist likes to draw, and secretly aspires to be an illustrator. He knows she can type really fast and that she comes to work in pristine white tennis shoes then changes into her loafers at her desk. He knows he needs to quit looking at her because she's recently engaged to her high school sweetheart, but he just can't seem to and he watches as she peels the metallic lid off of a yogurt cup. He knows she likes the mixed berry flavor and remembers that he grabbed the only mixed berry yogurt this morning then put it back because the sell-by date was several days ago. He has no idea what happens when one eats expired yogurt but he strongly feels the need to warn her. He walks to the front desk and leans on his forearms. "Hey," he said softly, her eyes meeting his, "so, this might sound weird, and there's no good reason for me to know this, but that mixed berry yogurt you're about to eat has expired."

Her eyes, which he knows are a beautiful shade of green in better lighting, widen and she laughs that laugh of hers that's giggly and feminine and is quickly becoming his favorite sound. Give it up now, it can't end well, he hears in the back of his head, but it's too late. It's only been a week and he already knows.

A week after the cameras show up, his loses his biggest account. At first he's angry at his deskmate for poaching the client but he's more disappointed in himself for getting so distracted. He sets the mini-bottle of celebratory champagne on the neighboring desk and heads into the conference room, slumping into a chair towards the back.

He's trying his best to recall his salesmen training from years ago, where they covered things like how many cold calls it takes on average to land a new account, and what percentage of business he could expect to lose whenever a new big box store opens in the area (both numbers were depressingly high). Only now does he wish he hadn't spent his training thinking about other numbers like how many visits to the front desk are acceptable in a day and how often can he make the receptionist laugh.

A moment later, he's surprised by a weight on his shoulder. He leans his head forward to see her eyes closed, a honey-colored tendril of hair falling onto her cheek. He feels the smile spread on his face and slowly closes his eyes.

Be still. He breathes shallowly, taking care to not move a muscle. He flashes to a memory of being five years old and watching bugs fly around at the park, his heart fluttering when a monarch butterfly lands on his little hand, his mother behind him whispering "be still".

Be still.

And now he starts to have memories yet to be made, her resting her head on his shoulder at a concert during a slow romantic song, up in the mountains observing the golds and pinks of a sunset, on a dance floor wearing white with a gold band on her finger that matches his, in a nursery looking down at a newborn with honey colored hair...

He's perfectly content to stay here all evening, but it's after five and he has to wake her, though it's worth it seeing her smile and blush when she realizes where she is and who she's next to. She stands and exits the room and he waits a couple beats before following her. The cameraman grabs him as he's about leave the conference room, asking if he'll sit down and make a brief comment about the day's events.

Today was the day he lost his largest account, it was also the day he first felt the warmth of her cheek, how it spread across his shoulders and through his chest. So really, all-in-all, not a bad day.

A week after she learns he complained about her wedding planning, he gives a firm 'yes' on the transfer. He's moving to Connecticut to be the assistant regional manager. He takes advantage of the offer for him to start "as soon as possible" and he asks if he can start in a week. This weekend he will pack his things, come in Monday to settle his accounts, then take the rest of the week off and go apartment hunt in Stamford. He wasn't really planning on telling anyone at work. Last thing he wants is his boss going over top with good-byes, or to suffer his deskmate being overly gleeful he's leaving. All the faux 'happy for you's and 'really gonna miss you's from the coworkers he barely knows, no, he much prefers to just slip out the back.

But then his boss's boss encourages him to tell someone. And if there's anyone he should tell it's her. It's what friends do, right? Tell each other about career moves and goals, be happy for each other's promotions and impending marriages.

It feels a little like good luck when he finds her alone in the parking lot, her fiance's truck roaring off. She greets him cheerfully, and he can't quite look directly at her but he sees everything, the smile on her face, the playful tilting of her head, the dip of her neckline as she laces her fingers together. He's actually rather skilled at it by now, always seeing her even when he's not looking at her. 

He briefly shoves his hands into his pockets and his fingers come in contact with a small disk with ridged edges. Earlier, during their poker game, no one seemed to notice after he pushed all his chips to the center that he kept one in his hand, a single blue chip that he slipped into his pocket. A little memento to remember this day, to remember her flirtatious wink as they pulled off a prank on his deskmate, her little shoulder shimmy as they watched wedding band videos, the tug of her hands when she stopped him from leaving the conference room, her sparkling eyes as she exclaimed she had good cards. 

"I was just, um..."

He only intends to tell her he's leaving, he really does. But she's so pretty and so eagerly awaiting his next words and he has this one blue chip left, one chance to take a gamble and go all in.

So he does.

Now he's leaning against the building across the street, rubbing his eyes and nose and occasionally having to remind himself to breathe. Her words are a maddening echo in his head, What are you doing? What do you expect me to say to that? I can't. I can't. He looks up to the parking lot and sees the sheen of her dress as she walks to the building, not around to the warehouse but through the double door entrance, taking the turn he's pretty sure one only makes when going to the elevator. 

He watches the upstairs window and sees a quick glint, like a light reflecting off the glass of an opening door. He doesn't feel like he has total control of his body as he finds himself crossing the street and walking to the building entrance.

On the elevator, his left hand slips into his pocket and he pinches the blue chip, running his thumb along the ridged edge. He has no idea why he's doing this. Maybe because he's leaving and he doesn't want her final impression of him to be him slinking off in defeat with tears in his eyes. Maybe because the first time she said "I can't" it sounded like a question. Maybe because when he walks into the office and hears her shaky voice it's his desk she's at.

He keeps his eyes on the floor but he still sees her, her breath unsteady and her lips parted ready to try to explain away what happened earlier. He knows the odds are insurmountably against him, but then again they always have been. And he still has this one blue chip left, one last chance to go all in.

So he does.

A week after he tells her, he takes the last box out of the trunk of his car. It’s small, light, but somehow doesn’t feel so as he climbs the two flights of stairs to his new white-walled apartment. The box isn’t labeled, but he can recite the contents by heart: doodles on sticky notes that came attached to faxes, three black paper circles, memos with inside jokes written in the margins, a receipt for drugstore perfume and an obscene number of instant noodle cups, a handful of Polaroids, a single blue poker chip, an unopened Christmas card.

For the briefest of moments he thinks of throwing the box off his new balcony, or running down the stairs and across town to the waterfront and tossing it straight into the Long Island Sound. But that would be too rash, too sudden. No, the only way was to put what he can in a nameless box, store it away in the back of his white-walled closet in his white-walled apartment, and hope he forgets. Maybe someday he will open this box and not be able to remember what it all meant.

If only he could put everything in the box. Put in the slightly fruity taste of her lipgloss, the tickling of her fingers on his neck briefly but deliberately pulling him closer, the feeling of her curves pressed against his chest. If only he could forget the hands so small and warm in his, the slight smile when she admitted she had wanted to kiss him too, the nod when he asked if she was still getting married to someone else, the eyes shifting so fast from hope and maybe even love back to fear and confusion.

If only it was possible, he thinks, to forget it all.

A week after he was supposed to board a flight for Australia, he gets an email at work. From the uptight blonde accountant of all people. The subject line is a vague, “Just thought you should know,” and he clicks the link with knitted brows and a small smile on his lips, fully prepared to be either annoyed or amused by whatever this email contains. And then he sees her name, followed closely by the words "wedding" and "cancelled".

He's positive his own mind is playing tricks on him, that this email is actually an invoice for every non-business related copy he ever made at his old branch, maybe a request for an obscure tax form from early this year. But on the fifth refresh the email contains the same words: her name, "wedding", "cancelled".

His stares at the message, reading the words over and over until they beginning to look odd and unfamiliar, like they may as well be in Greek or Hieroglyphics. He only vaguely hears a ring and it's not until the man with a penchant for brightly colored neckties turns around and shouts "Tuna, you gonna answer that phone?!" that he remembers where he is. 

He picks up the receiver a split-second too late, and tries to ignore the half-scoff, half-mocking chuckle from the brunette behind him as he sets it back on the cradle. He stands, desperate to find somewhere else to be. Settling on the stairwell, he leans against the wall, sliding down until he's seated on the landing.

Her name, wedding, cancelled.  

He has no idea how to feel, is he relieved that she didn’t go through with it? Happy she found the courage to finally leave him? Angry that she couldn’t have done this a month ago? Upset that she hasn’t sent so much as a text? Ashamed that he isn’t there for her even as a friend?

He pulls his cell out of his pocket and scrolls until he reaches the contact that he's come so close to deleting in the past month, as if removing the three letters and ten digits from his phone would do anything, would let him look out the window by his desk and not wish the blues waters were actually golden brown hills, would let him look at the women here with their straight, sleek hair cuts and straight sleek suits and not miss soft sweaters and curly manes.

His thumb hovers over the call button, trying to decide what he would say. "Are you okay?" "What happened?" "What can I do?" "Wanna split my airline voucher from my cancelled flight for two tickets to the West Coast?" He's so close to touching the little green phone icon but for some reason he can't make his thumb push.

The stairwell door above him creaks and he snaps his face up. "Hey," the brunette that sits behind him says curtly, "sales meeting in five."

"Okay, I'll be right th-" but the door slams shut and he shakes his head and forces himself to chuckle. He stands and slips the phone back in his pocket.

A week after they accidentally talked for two hours, he wakes to the worst hangover he's had since she said no in a while. His phone alarm is buzzing on his nightstand and he fumbles for it, taking care not to move his throbbing head. He flips it open and when his eyes finally focus he finds two new texts. The more recent one is from a Connecticut number he has yet to save, it leads off with "Hey Dummy" and requests he sends an "I'm not dead" text when he wakes.

The other text is from sometime last night, and his stomach clenches at the soft curves of her name, making him feel even more sick. It says their old boss did something crazy and to call ASAP. His thumb instinctively hovers over "Reply" but something makes him hesitate.

Five months, five months she's had to contact him and her first non-accidental correspondence is this. He had almost forgotten how easy it is with her, to talk for hours about nothing, to laugh whenever she laughs, to feel like she is everything because she is. It's easy and it's fun and yet nothing gets addressed, nothing that needs to be said is ever said.

He can't do this, he can't have these silly conversations about his ex-boss and bad Sandra Bollock movies and multiple kitchens. It too easily takes him back to May, to barely managing to get himself out of bed after another night of no sleep, to hardly being able to hold a conversation with a client, to not thinking anything when he needed to tighten his belt one notch. Things are finally starting to feel something like okay, he's finally able to imagine something resembling moving on and he just can't do this. I can't.

He hits "Delete" as deliberate as he can, but it doesn't stop him from feeling nauseous when the "Message Deleted" confirmation pops up. He goes back to the previous message and replies. "I'm alive," he types, "barely."

A week after Stamford closes, he fumbles with the buttons of her shirt in the dim lights of another new white-walled apartment. She finally takes over and makes quick work of both her shirt and her small, lacy bra. Her skin is tan and her dark hair slips through his fingers like silk. He’s startled by how tightly she holds him to her, how she kisses him so deeply and with no hesitation, how she’s already unzipped his slacks and is slipping her hand below the waistband of his boxers and…

It’s too much, too soon. He knows so little about her; frankly, he thought she hated him the first four or so months of working together. He doesn’t know her favorite anything, or where she grew up, or her pet peeves, or her quirky habits. He doesn’t know her smiles, her laughs, her eyes. But maybe this is how it supposed to be. Maybe he did it all backwards before, falling so completely before the first kiss.

He watches her sleep, dark hair everywhere, and tries to picture their relationship; going on movie dates, spending all Sunday morning in bed, meeting family, moving in together, getting a dog, giving her a ring.

It doesn't come to him as easily as it always did when he glanced up to reception, but maybe someday it will.

A week after he admits he still has feelings for someone else, he's lying in bed holding her in his arms, his nose tickled by the dark strands of her messy bun and his tee-shirt damp with her tears. It's well past midnight and he's so tired but he doesn't dare let himself fall asleep before her.

"She's right there behind you, what are you waiting for?" she says in a small, broken voice that bears little resemblance to the cool, no-nonsense woman he met in Connecticut eight months ago. "Why keep this going with me?"

He swallows hard and for the fifth night in a row he struggles to come up with a reason, any reason, that doesn't sound selfish or unfair to her. "Because I want to make this work," he whispers back.

He glances down and can see her heavy eyelids closing, her tense shoulders starting to relax as exhaustion takes over. "Think you'll ever feel for me what you feel for her?"

It's a question he's sure he wasn't meant to hear, a thought that must roll around her mind every moment slipping past her tired lips. He wants so badly to believe that the answer is yes, he just needs time. Time for him to not have the urge to grab and hold the small, warm hands that pass him faxes and phone messages. Time for him to not smile and turn his head whenever he hears that soft laughter. Time to allow a different pair of beautiful green eyes to become his favorite sight. At this point loving the woman who sits behind him at work is just a reflex, a habit to break. And he will, with time.

"I hope so," he answers, it's the most honest answer he can give right now. But she's already fallen asleep.

A week after she told him she wishes he would come back, they walk hand in hand to her front door. He reluctantly lets go and she starts digging in her purse. He can feel her anxiousness as she fumbles with her keys and he starts tapping the side of his leg. But when the lock clicks and his eyes look up to her face, she's smiling and he smiles back, following her inside.

They had done their best to make up for the last year this evening. Some parts came easy, the laughter and the smiles and the inside jokes. Some parts were new and exciting, him finally daring to do things like hold her hand and tuck a loose honey-colored curl behind her ear. But the hard parts were the parts they were never any good at. They both shifted nervously when the topic veered too close to all the hurt and the longing and the ache, and both were equality guilty of avoiding any uncomfortable conversation.

She switches on a light and sets her things on the kitchen counter while he makes his way to the living room. The apartment is small and warm and a little cluttered, her couch has a bunched up blanket at one end and her coffee table is covered in papers and pencils and paint trays. He feels her side up to him and they both turn to face each other. She smiles a little, tilting her head and stepping closer, and he half-grins back.

He then knits his eyebrows when her smile starts to fade and her green eyes become a little shiny. She stands up on her tip toes, placing her hand on the back of his neck and her lips on his cheek. I hurt you, she says silently. There's a feather light kiss on his jawline and he closes his eyes. I'm sorry. She undoes the first two buttons of his shirt and presses her lips to his collarbone. Please forgive me.

She lifts her eyes to his and he raises both hands and cups her face, putting his lips on her forehead. I hurt you too. His kisses the apple of her cheek, I'm sorry. His lips meet hers and her eyelashes flutter against his skin. I forgive you. Please forgive me.

In her room, clothes fall to the floor quickly and they're on the bed and she continues to speak only in kisses. I want you. She lightly sucks the pulse point on his neck. Let me. She kisses down his chest and his stomach. Please. Her mouth surrounds him as he digs his fingers into her hair.

He does his best to reply, pulling her up until her curls are splayed across his pillow then moving down the bed. I need you. He kisses up the inside of her thigh until she gasps. I want you. His tongue circles her navel and moves up to the swell of her breast. Please. He joins her at the hips and kisses her, swallowing her moans.

His hand finds hers and he pins it up above her head, their fingers interlaced. You're mine. She drags her lips across his cheek, letting out soft little mewls every time he presses into her. I'm yours. He groans into soft skin below her ear when his tips over the edge. I missed you. Her fingers weave into the hair on the back of his head, keeping his face near hers. I love you.

Breath still heavy he lifts his head and looks at her. There's a smile dancing on her lips and a tear on her cheek. You're really back.

He kisses the shiny droplet away and starts to grin slowly. I am. He drops his forehead to hers and they both let out a deep breath. For good this time.