Pamela Morgan Beesly was tired.

 

Not tired in the way she normally was after a long week of work, or after her lazy fiancé had decided that the kitchen really needed to be cleaned but not actually lifted a finger to help her achieve that goal, but tired in a deeper, more aggressive way. If she normally felt her exhaustion in her bones and muscles, now she felt it in her soul: the very idea of movement was enervating, and the thought of talking to another human being was distressing.

 

It was unfortunate, then, that she was currently occupying a prime piece of real estate on the Beesly-Anderson couch, right in front of the TV, and that today was a Saturday, which meant Roy was up early (for him) to watch whatever sports channel happened to have something on.

 

This meant that Roy was currently nudging her awake, and she was going to have to move and interact with at least one human (him) in the immediate future.

 

To give him credit, Roy wasn’t actually trying to wake her. He was simply shifting her to the side so that he could sit in the spot on the couch he’d carved out with his butt cheeks over the last few years, the particular place where you could reach out and put a beer on the side table and a sandwich on the coffee table without having to get up, and where he kept the remotes and the controller for his Playstation. This was Roy’s morning routine on Saturdays—she could only vaguely remember when TV and beer had been Gatorade and a trip to the Y—and the mere fact that Pam was lying across the couch wasn’t going to stop him.

 

As she fluttered into consciousness—and why, if she’d been sleeping, was she so damn tired?—recollection trickled back into her brain. She was lying on the couch because when she’d come home last night she hadn’t wanted to wake Roy. She’d come back so late because she’d been crying—that was probably part of why she was tired, because she hadn’t just been crying, she’d been sobbing like her heart was going to break. Now, why had her heart been going to break?

 

Oh right. Last night had been the Casino Night at the warehouse at work. Which meant, she realized slowly, that it was only last night that Jim Halpert had told her he loved her, told her he was sorry for misinterpreting their friendship, cried in front of her, and then (after a phone call with her mother that she only vaguely remembered) kissed her silly. Silly enough to tell him she was marrying Roy. Silly enough to sit there dazed as he slipped his hands out of hers and walked out of the room. Silly enough to slump down in his chair and begin the weeping that didn’t stop until it was far too late to get a ride from anyone else and she’d had to call a cab home.

 

At which point she had fallen asleep on the couch. Where she still was.

 

She sat bolt upright as it hit her. She’d been crying so much last night not because Jim loved her or kissed her but because she loved him...and kissed him, she realized, as the recollection grew stronger and she remembered not only not pulling away but running her hands through the hair that curled so enticingly at the back of his head.

 

Sitting bolt upright, unfortunately, had the troubling effect of slamming her head right into Roy’s jaw as he bent over to move her a few more inches to the left. There was a vague ringing in her ears and she heard him curse. She pulled herself into a ball on the couch—still wearing the dress from last night, she noticed as she curled her feet underneath herself—and rubbed her head until he got himself enough under control to talk recognizable words.

 

“What the hell, Pammy?”

 

“Sorry. I didn’t realize you were there.”

 

“You should have.”

 

And that, she thought, was their relationship in a nutshell. Somehow she, who had been asleep all of a minute ago, was supposed to be carefully aware of where he was and what he was doing while he, who was self-evidently fully awake and alert and actively manhandling her sleeping body (albeit not in a necessarily creepy or inappropriate way) was absolved from all responsibility for waking her up, or paying attention to her.

 

How different it was from Jim’s careful consideration of where she was and what she was doing at all times.

 

She knew she shouldn’t compare—or rather, that she’d been telling herself for months that she shouldn’t compare. But why not? Before, the “why not” had been because she was in a relationship with Roy—engaged to Roy—and Jim was just a coworker, so naturally it was easier for him to be kind and considerate, because he only had to deal with her part of the time, and because his feelings weren’t actually engaged so things didn’t matter as much. Now she realized that that was stupid. It should be easier for Roy to be considerate, not harder, if he loved her. They should be comfortable together, not in the sense that he no longer had to pay attention to her but in the sense that kindness and consideration should come naturally by now. And he didn’t actually spend more time with Pam than Jim did, not if you didn’t count time asleep and unconscious. So what the hell was his problem?

 

And besides, Jim did love her.

 

That thought instantly reduced the pain in her head—or at least her sensation of that pain—and she found herself smiling.

 

“What the hell are you smiling about? Is this funny to you?”

 

Of course Roy thought this had something to do with him. She supposed it did, if not in the way he thought. And honestly, it was funny, if not in a ha-ha way, that she was sitting here daydreaming about another man while her fiancé was yelling at her about his jaw. It wasn’t the first time she’d daydreamed about Jim, of course, but it was the first time she’d realized that she didn’t just have to daydream. That Jim Halpert wanted her the same way that she (God help her) wanted him. That all the stories she’d told herself about how he couldn’t be interested in her, he dated women like Katy Moore, he was too charming, too handsome, too much to be interested in her were...false.

 

That all the stories she’d told herself about how she and Roy had a good thing, and it was the right thing, and it was everything to her, that she couldn’t possibly be with someone else (that no one else could really want her) were equally false.

 

That she could be with Jim.

 

She found herself answering Roy with words she’d kept bottled up for a long time.

 

“No, it’s not funny to me. But it’s also not my fault.”

 

“What? You slammed your head into me!”

 

“Because you woke me up! No, you didn’t even wake me up, you just moved me, like I was a sack of potatoes or a bag of groceries, not your fiancée! Because your stupid Saturday morning routine is more important to you than whether I slept well, or why I slept on the couch, or whether I want to be moved out of the way. God, you only think about yourself.”

 

He sighed. “I’m sorry, Pammy.”

 

Usually that would be the end of their arguments. It wasn’t that Roy never apologized—whatever their friends might think (and she had a sneaking suspicion she’d never quite vocalized that a number of their friends, or at least hers, didn’t think Roy ever apologized to her)—it was that he assumed a simple apology would be enough, and he never said what he was apologizing for. It was always “I’m sorry, Pammy” followed by no change. Well, not today.

 

“For what?”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“What are you sorry for, Roy?”

 

He stared at her. “What do you mean? I said I’m sorry, OK?”

 

“What are you sorry for though?”

 

“What the hell, Pammy? First you’re mad at me and now you won’t accept my apology?”

 

She stared at him. He really didn’t get it, did he? He had no idea what he was apologizing for, even though she’d just told him what was bothering her. Well, not everything; not that she was considering seriously the possibility of leaving him for another man. But enough that he ought to at least be able to formulate a coherent reason for an apology.

 

“I’m not going to accept your apology, Roy, until you tell me what you think you actually did wrong.”

 

He threw up his hands in frustration. “You tell me, babe, you tell me.” Even he seemed to realize that wasn’t going to cut it, because he pushed his hands through his hair (and why was it that when Jim did that she couldn’t help but want to stroke her hands through the same hair, but when Roy did it she had no such urge?) and sank into the couch—into his normal spot, she noticed. “I’m sorry I upset you.”

 

“Seriously?” That was the best he could do?

 

“I mean, yeah, babe, I don’t like it when you’re upset. I’m sorry, OK?” He gave her a look that screamed “can we just forget about it.” Or maybe just “I wanna watch the game.”

 

“No, Roy, it’s not OK.” She got up and went to the linen closet, bending down to where they kept the luggage. She wasn’t sure what had guided her steps there, but it seemed right; she needed space, and if Roy’s physically pushing her off the couch had indicated anything (and it certainly had indicated many things, or at least activated her realization of them in her brain) she couldn’t get that space here.

 

“What was that?” Apparently he hadn’t heard her as she walked away from him. A moment later the reason why became clear, as she heard the sounds of announcers or commentators or some kind of sports-related talking heads blare from the TV. He’d actually turned it on while she was telling him she didn’t accept his apology. And sadly, this was typical—well, it wasn’t typical that she actually didn’t accept an apology, but it was typical of him to assume she would.

 

She grabbed the duffel from the closet and headed upstairs, pausing on the bottom step to shout: “I said, it’s not OK.” Well, she didn’t really shout. But for her it was shouting, because she said it full voice, without holding back.

 

He didn’t follow her upstairs.

 

She packed the bag with patience, including pajamas, work clothes, shoes, toiletries, everything she could think of needing. It was a large duffel—they’d gotten it on sale off some website and not realized exactly how big it was, which is why it was sitting unused at the bottom of the closet—and it was becoming ungainly by the time she finished shoving clothes and things into it, but she was amazed to realize that she had everything. Well, not everything: there were some old T-shirts she hadn’t packed. But as she looked around, there wasn’t much else that was her in the bedroom. She lugged the duffel onto her back, scooped up the box that contained her mementoes (years of living together in the house, but they’d never actually made it from the shoebox she’d kept them in as a kid onto the walls and mantel) and stacked it with the larger box that contained her art supplies (shoved under the bed at Roy’s insistence). Then she turned and walked out of the bedroom and back downstairs.

 

Roy was still watching TV.

 

She made it all the way to the doorway before he turned his head and finally reacted to her presence—or rather, her incipient absence.

 

“Where do you think you’re going?”

 

She unlocked the door and deposited her load on the porch before answering. “Out.”

 

“Come on, Pammy, this is no time for games. Where are you going with all that crap?” Of course Roy would find the time to call all her worldly possessions crap.

 

“I’m not sure.” And she wasn’t. But she knew she wasn’t going to stay there. On the one hand it felt like divine revelation, like clouds of fire by night and smoke by day, like tablets at Sinai and an empty tomb on Easter Sunday. On the other, it was just the natural order of things: waking up one day and discovering your parents are aging, or your little sister is a woman now, and forgetting to be surprised by the news because today is not actually any different from yesterday; you’ve just noticed it now. Because there were a lot of reasons to leave Roy Anderson, and while it had taken a thunderbolt of a declaration and a lightning flash of a kiss to make her see them, they’d been there waiting for her all along. Well, not all along: for all that their first date story was an epic disaster, it was unfair to Roy and to their relationship to pretend that it had been doomed from the beginning. But it would have been equally unfair to her, to him, to them to pretend that it wasn’t doomed now. Or not doomed: over.

 

Before continuing to answer Roy’s expectant but stormy look about where she was going, she tugged at her left hand and held the ring she removed out to him.

 

“I’m leaving, Roy.”

 

He stared at her.

 

She set the ring on the table by the door where they kept their mail and turned to pick up her bag and boxes and leave, when she heard him finally respond.

 

“You’ll be back.”

 

She shrugged the duffel back onto her back, dug out her keys, and grabbed her boxes.

 

“No, I really won’t. Goodbye, Roy. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

 

And she was gone. She was a little sad, but not surprised, that he didn’t follow her out. She loaded up the truck and pulled out of the driveway. She’d have to get another car, she realized, and leave this one for Roy, maybe in the Dunder Mifflin parking lot, because she was not a pickup girl. But she could drive it, and her name was on the title too, so she didn’t have any guilt about taking it now.

 

She briefly considered calling Jim and telling him, but settled on calling her mother (hands-free, of course, for safety). There would be time for that later. And besides, she realized as she began to laugh (startling her poor mother, who had just picked up) she should probably change before she saw him again. She was still wearing that damn dress.

She drove slowly, talking to her mother about Roy, her unhappiness, and what she could do now. Her mother’s attitude was warm and comforting, and she felt guilty for being surprised. She’d anticipated a fight, or at least some pushback against the idea that she’d just walked out on her fiancé of three years a month before their wedding date. She’d been with Roy for ten years, after all, and her parents were accustomed to calling him “son.” But her mother had been nothing but caring and concerned about how she was doing, and whether she needed any help, and Pam wasn’t entirely sure but she had almost sounded relieved.

 

In fact, if she didn’t know better (and she was beginning to doubt she did) she’d have thought that her mother started holding her breath as soon as she started with “it’s about Roy” and had let out a big whoosh of relief when she’d said “I left him.” Certainly the conversation had moved much more quickly than she’d anticipated from “what happened” to “what are you going to do?” and there had been not a single touch of recrimination along the way.

 

But then again, it had been her mother she’d reached out to last night, to tell her what Jim had said, and it was her mother who’d asked that fateful question, “are you sorry you told him he misinterpreted things,” to which she could only respond “Yeah, I think I am.” Her mom wasn’t stupid. Even she could tell that the next question was “are you in love with him” and the answer was probably the same—and she didn’t need to have actually asked the question, or to have been in the room while Pam and Jim kissed, to know that didn’t spell good things for her relationship with Roy.

 

Actually, now that she thought about it, her mom had been awfully silent on the topic of Jim the whole time. In addition to pushback on the speed and abruptness with which she’d abandoned a ten-year relationship, she’d expected at least a few probing questions about what she was going to do about Jim. Was this about him? Was this a rebound? Was she going crazy? She’d even had answers ready. Yes (but only because he’d made her realize her life could be more than it was now). No (a rebound implied she was broken up about Roy, but she oddly wasn’t; she was done, but not so emotionally exhausted that she was glomming onto the first man she found just because he was there). And no (at least she didn’t think so).

 

At the moment, however, she was beginning to doubt that last answer, because her aimless driving (she’d needed to get out of the house with her stuff, but with her mom as far away as she was she hadn’t actually decided to drive out there, so she’d just been tooling around Scranton talking) had led her, consciously or unconsciously, to the house Jim shared with Mark. And now she was worried that she was, in fact, going crazy. Because there was a moving van parked in front of the house, and someone who looked awfully like Jim shoving boxes into the back.

 

A young woman she didn’t precisely recognize but assumed must be Jim’s sister from the basic principles of family resemblance was holding the door open while Mark and an older Halpert-adjacent male who must logically be Jim’s father manhandled the couch down the front steps. Unconsciously echoing last night’s conversation, she muttered “I have to go” and hung up the call with her mother as she parked the car across the street. Mark glanced up from the couch, shouted something, and Jim turned towards her just as she jumped out of the car.

 

“What are you doing here?”

 

She didn’t know what she’d expected Jim to say, but somehow that was not it. She ground to a halt halfway across the street and stared at the tableau, speechless, while his eyes skimmed down from her face. She could see the moment he fully registered that she was still in the same periwinkle dress from last night, because something darkened in his eyes. Not moving his gaze off of her, he waved absently in the direction of the team behind him while reaching back and rubbing his neck with the other hand.

 

“Take five, everyone.”

 

The woman was busily muttering something to the older man as Mark herded them all into the house, absurdly leaving the couch wedged halfway down the front steps. She hugged her arms around herself. Jim couldn’t really be leaving, could he? What was going on?

 

That seemed as good a place as any to start.

 

“What’s going on, Jim?”

 

The best description she could come up with was that he tried to smile. The motions were all there, but something about it was slightly off, like one of those uncanny valley AIs you see in the not-quite top-tier videogames.

 

“I asked first.”

 

She nodded. He had asked first, and she probably did owe him something like an explanation for why she was here. The only problem was that she didn’t really have one, or at least not one she was willing to articulate here. What was she supposed to say, “I was wandering and apparently I can’t do anything without thinking about you, so I ended up here?”

 

On second thought, what else was she going to say? “I don’t know?”

 

Apparently two was too many thoughts, because her mouth betrayed her before she could actually decide on a strategy. It opened, seemingly of its own accord, and the only really pertinent information in the world tumbled out.

 

“I broke up with Roy.”

 

His reaction confirmed, if she had needed any confirmation, that she’d made the right decision.

 

“Are you OK?” He started to walk towards her at her nod and then stopped on the edge of the pavement. “Actually, Beesly, I’d feel a lot more comfortable with that answer if you’d get out of the middle of the street.”

 

She smiled at him (there was something she hadn’t done since about 9pm last night) and finished crossing the street, coming to rest next to him, staring up. When had he gotten so tall? Some insane part of her imagined that it had all happened last night: she’d never really noticed quite how tall or lanky he was—or not let herself notice—until he told her he was in love with her. It was like he’d grown six inches with those words, and it made him just that much more delectable.

 

Oh god, she was standing here ogling him. Time to get back into the conversation. What there was of it, because apparently something had distracted him too. He shook himself free of whatever it was and answered her smile with something that looked a lot more like one of his own than his previous attempt.

 

“Thank you, Beesly. I’d hate to see you take such a momentous step only to get hit by a car here on the mean streets of Scranton.”

 

She looked around at the utterly deserted street. “Yes, I feel much safer now.” And she did, but not because she was standing on the sidewalk.

 

He peered down at her, a crease of anxiety folding into his face. “You sure you’re OK?”

 

She wanted to reach out and flatten his forehead, but she didn’t because that wasn’t where they were right now. “I was.”

 

“You were?” The crease was a divot now, and he reached out to grab her arm. “Did he do something to you?”

 

She almost laughed, except that she knew that wasn’t an appropriate reaction right now. “No, no. But, um...Jim?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“You still haven’t answered me. What the hell” she relished the effect her obscenity had on him “is going on?”

 

He followed her glance towards the moving van as if noticing it for the first time as he let go of her arm. She missed his touch immediately. But she couldn’t focus on that; the answer to her question was too important.

 

“Oh...um...” he was back to rubbing his neck again. “I may have sort of taken a transfer. To Stamford.”

 

“Connecticut?” It was a stupid thing to say, but it was all that she could process in that moment. Jim was leaving? “When did this happen?”

 

“Last night.” He sat down on the curb heavily and she was amazed at the reversal of position that now had her towering over him. “Jan offered me the transfer and after I...after you left I told her I’d take it.”

 

She didn’t like having this conversation at different levels, so she sat down carefully next to him. “Don’t transfers take a while to process?”

 

He didn’t meet her eyes. “I’d kind of been bugging her about it for a while.”

 

“How long?” He didn’t answer. “How long, Jim?”

 

“Since the Booze Cruise.”

 

Of course. She felt like an idiot, and not for the first time. It was another confirmation, if she’d needed one (which she didn’t) that she was right to have left Roy. She’d never thought back to that night without regrets, mostly that she’d let a drunken Roy overwhelm all the doubts she’d been having even then with a seemingly randomly chosen date and a microphone. Now she had a more concrete regret to go with the others. But now she also had the chance to do something about it, she realized. She leaned her head on his shoulder.

 

“I never should have let him set that date.”

 

His shoulder jumped, but otherwise he gave no indication he’d heard her.

 

“Can you ever forgive me?”

 

“For what, Pam?” His voice was soft, as if speaking at a normal voice would frighten her off and make her fly away from his shoulder like a butterfly.

 

“For letting myself stay with him.”

 

“No.” She tried to jerk up in surprise, only to find that his hand had somehow snaked around her to hold her in place. “I can’t forgive you for that, Pam, because there’s nothing to forgive.” She settled back into place, letting the warmth of his embrace flow through her.

 

“Then can you forgive me for how I’ve treated you? Especially last night.” She nestled into his chest. “You never misinterpreted anything.”

 

Later, she would swear she could feel the smile start in his chest and travel up until it reached his face, even though she wasn’t looking up. “That, I can do.”

Pam wanted to sit there with Jim forever, but the five minutes he’d asked for from his friends and familly were going to be up very shortly—and the looming presence of the moving van was a reminder that he was planning to leave. And if his surprise at seeing her (and the presence of the moving van on a weekend) was any indication, without saying goodbye.

 

She wasn’t sure exactly how to broach the topic, however, because it seemed like poor repayment for his forgiveness to immediately demand why it was that he was abandoning her. Besides, she thought she could guess: it was probably the same reason that (she now let herself realize) he’d been planning to miss her wedding to be in Australia. If he was really in love with her (and all signs pointed to that conclusion, certainly) it was probably impossible for him to sit around quietly and watch her plan her wedding to Roy, especially after she’d rejected him.

 

Oh god, that was why he’d complained about her wedding planning. How short-sighted she’d been. It had all been self-preservation.

 

But now that she wasn’t going to marry Roy...

 

Mark stuck his head out of the house. “Is it safe to come out?”

 

She and Jim looked at each other. “Is it OK if they come back?” he whispered to her.

 

She started to nod, then stopped. They hadn’t really established what was going on between them, even though she’d told him the most important thing—that she’d broken up with Roy—and even though he’d forgiven her for last night. Were they together? Was he still leaving? What was going to happen next?

 

He must have seen the confusion in her eyes, because he started to wave Mark off, but it was too late. The young woman Pam had seen earlier had dodged past Mark in the doorway and was rapidly approaching them.

 

“Hi, I’m Larissa, Jim’s sister,” she said, while pushing her hair out of her eyes in a way that only confirmed for Pam that the two of them were related and then sticking out her hand. “You must be Pam.”

 

Pam took the offered hand. “Good guess.”

 

“Oh, it wasn’t a guess. Jimmy-boy here has told me all about...” Jim nudged her in the ribs with his elbow. “What? I was just going to say he gave a very accurate physical description of you, so I recognized you immediately.”

 

Pam looked down at herself. “Did it include the wrinkled blue dress?”

 

“Maybe not the wrinkles, but last night we...”

 

Jim slung an arm over his sister’s shoulder. “How about you let me tell Pam about what I said last night?”

 

She leaned into her brother just far enough to wrap an arm around his side and begin to tickle him, which forced him to pull back. “Oh, I think Pam deserves to know.”

 

“Deserves to know what?” Pam couldn’t help herself, even if on reflection she was worried that drawing attention to her interest in what Jim had said to Larissa would cause her to clam up.

 

She needn’t have worried, as apparently Jim’s sister liked nothing more than to embarrass Jim.  “How absolutely gorgeous he thought you looked.” She looked Pam up and down. “Not that he’s wrong.” She moved away from Jim before he could grab her again and slipped her left arm around Pam’s right. “Now, does your presence this morning mean I can stop feeling sorry for my big brother?” She lowered her voice to a whisper only Pam could hear. “I’m kind of sick of being sympathetic. It’s much more fun to tease him.”

 

Pam felt herself get carried away by Larissa’s evident enthusiasm. She looked Jim in the eye and quirked an eyebrow. “That kind of depends on him.” Jim’s jaw dropped open and he gaped for a moment like a fish, which prompted her to whisper back to Larissa. “You’re right, it really is.”

 

Before Larissa could formulate a response Jim had recovered enough of his sense of speech to cut her off. “What are you saying?”

 

She raised the eyebrow again. “What does it seem like I’m saying?” She was not going to be the first one to say it, even if she realized it was probably her turn. After all, she thought, she’d told him about Roy. It was up to him whether he still wanted to be with her or whether her rejection last night had revealed to him that she wasn’t the woman he thought she was. Oh God, was that why it was so easy for him to forgive her?

 

Before her thoughts could travel any further down that particular road, Jim had taken a step closer, almost up to her chest, and the sheer force of his presence distracted her. He looked down into her eyes. “Please, Pam, just tell me what you want here.”

 

She looked up at him, seeing the naked emotion in his eyes for the first time, and instantly felt terrible for how she’d been treating him. It was one thing to tease, but it was another to send mixed messages, and while she knew that she’d finally come around to realizing that she needed to be with Jim, he hadn’t heard that yet. The worry in his face was a stark reminder that she had to let him in; that for all that Jim had always been wonderful at guessing what she was thinking without her actually having to say it, she’d hurt him last night, and (perhaps worse than the actual rejection itself) made him doubt his instincts.

 

She put her hand on Jim’s face, feeling the slight rise of stubble that indicated that he had probably not taken time to shave this morning. It made her smile to think that while she was still wearing the dress, he was still wearing the face he’d kissed her with the night before. She remembered the light touch of a day’s growth of hair pressing against her and suddenly one hand wasn’t enough. She disentangled the other from Larissa and cupped his face in both hands while making eye contact.

 

“I want you.”

 

He blinked, and she heard (as if from a long distance away) Larissa’s gasp by her side, but she didn’t let either one interrupt her.

 

“I’m in love with you, Jim Halpert, and I. Want. You.” She shook his face lightly with each word.

 

The most amazing smile lit up across his face; it was like the way he’d looked at her when she’d first proposed ridiculous names for diseases during the incident with their healthcare, crossed with the relief of speaking after a full day of jinx and deepened by the dark look in his eyes that reminded her of the time she’d thought he was going to kiss her on the Booze Cruise.

 

As if he was lifting the thought from her very soul he bent down. “If you aren’t careful, Beesly, I’m going to kiss you again.”

 

She felt the opposite of careful. She felt reckless, abandoned, delightfully out of control. So before he could finish bending down to her mouth she launched herself upwards, and melted into his kiss.

 

Sometime later she became aware of Larissa shaking her head fondly while looking at the two of them. She and Jim must have come out of their haze at the same time, because his sister wasn’t looking at Pam but at him, and the only word Pam could hear properly was a mildly amused “again?”

 

He reddened. “Uh...I may have left something out of my account of last night.” His muscles tensed as if he was going to raise his arm up and rub the back of his neck again, but Pam tightened her arms around him (and when had that happened?) and held his own around her instead. She glanced up at Larissa, who was quite clearly amused rather than offended to find out that her brother had been holding out on her.

 

“For your information, Larissa, your brother is a gentleman, and a gentleman never kisses and tells.”

 

“A gentleman? This one?” Larissa turned back to Jim. “You’d better stay in Scranton; you never know when she might recover from the head injury.”

 

Pam and Jim both started at the mention of his leaving, but Pam strove to keep the conversation light. “What head injury is that?”

 

Larissa looked at her with disappointment and made a “get with the program” head gesture that Pam was momentarily surprised to recognize until she considered that Jim did the same thing. “The head injury you’re obviously hiding because otherwise you’d see my brother for the big goof he is.”

 

Pam grinned. “Yeah, but he’s a gentlemanly goof.”

 

Larissa shook her head. “I don’t know how you did it, big brother, but she seems to really believe it.”

 

Jim had been watching their byplay with a dazed look on his face—almost as if he’d been the one to receive the head wound Larissa had referenced—but now it had faded away into a serious expression Pam wasn’t entirely familar with. If she had to guess, she’d have said it was his businesslike look, but since Jim hadn’t been businesslike yet in three years at Dunder Mifflin, she wasn’t sure.

 

“Do you want me to stay?”

 

God, what had she done to this man that he could doubt it? Well, it was impossible to change the past ,but she made herself a promise silently that she would never let him doubt her intentions or her feelings again.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Then I’ll stay.” He frowned. “Jan said the transfer would go through first thing Monday, and I could take the week off to look for places up in Stamford while staying in a hotel on the company’s dime.” He gestured towards the van. “I got a storage locker up there for the stuff, but that can just stay empty. It’s not like it cost that much.” He waved Mark over, keeping his other arm around Pam. “Hey man, is it OK if I just don’t move out?”

 

Mark looked back and forth between Jim and Pam and a huge grin broke out slowly over his face. He clapped Jim on the shoulder. “I dunno man, I was looking forward to having all that space to myself.” He shook Jim’s shoulder lightly. “But I suppose I could deal with seeing your ugly face again if I had to.”

 

“Thanks, man.” Jim’s face was still furrowed in thought. “I think if I could get Jan to cancel the transfer before Monday, it would work. She won’t be happy, after all the fuss I made to make it happen in the first place,” here Pam squeezed his side to reassure him that she wasn’t mad at him for wanting to leave—or at least that she understood why. He smiled down at her, but continued in the same unusually serious tone. “But I don’t know how to do that before the paperwork goes through.”

 

“Doesn’t Jan have a cellphone?” This was Jim’s dad, or at least Pam assumed so, who had strolled up to the conversation along with Mark. “Also, are you going to introduce me, or should I invent a name for this young lady?”

 

“Oh! Sorry, Dad. Pam, this is Gerald Halpert, my dad. Dad, this is...this is Pam.”

 

“Jim’s girlfriend,” Pam added, glancing at Jim to gauge his reaction while reaching out a hand to shake Gerald’s. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Halpert.”

 

“Please, call me Gerry. Pleased to meet you, Pam. Now, Jim...” Gerry Halpert grinned at his son, who was staring down at Pam and mouthing “girlfriend?” down at her. She shrugged, and mouthed “if you want.” He mouthed “girlfriend” again and smiled until Gerry cleared his throat. “Jan’s cellphone?”

 

“Oh, right.” Jim shrugged. “She definitely has one, but I don’t know the number.”

 

“HR would definitely have it on file, though,” Pam mused.

 

“Yeah, but the building’s closed...” Jim began. “And Dwight has both keys,” Pam sighed.

 

“Is that all?” Larissa put her arms around both of them and stage whispered. “Did you forget how I spent my misspent youth, brother mine? Don’t tell Dad, but I can get you in there.”

 

Gerry took a step backwards, shaking his head. “I’m not listening to this.” But he was smiling, and Pam got the sense this was a long-running joke among the Halperts. It warmed her inside to be witnessing it.

 

“You sure, L?”

 

“Of course I am.” Larissa rolled her eyes at Jim in Pam’s direction. “You think Jim is good at pranks? I taught him everything he knows. And I still have a few things up my sleeve he doesn’t know...”

 

“You taught me? Please, I was pulling pranks literally before you were born.”

 

“Yeah, bad ones.” Larissa stuck her tongue out at Jim. “Do you want to get that number or not?”

 

“Fine, fine.” He squeezed Pam. “No time like the present, right?”

 

“Right,” Pam nodded. Thinking of this as a big prank helped her ignore the little voice that was saying that breaking into work after hours was a bad idea. “You know, while we’re there, we could always grab something of Dwight’s.”

 

“And do what with it?” Jim was instantly invested, though whether this was because it was actually a good idea or simply because he was no longer hiding his feelings about her Pam couldn’t quite tell.

 

She mused for a moment, then bounced up and down with glee. “Put it in the storage locker in Stamford.”

 

“And leave him a series of clues as to its whereabouts?” Jim wasn’t about to be left beehind.

 

“Exactly.” They grinned at each other. “Perfect,” Jim concluded. “I have some of Dwight’s old stationary I...recycled. I can send him a message from his future self telling him he had to stash whatever we take in Connecticut.”

 

“Brilliant. We can tell him it was to keep an eye on the Stamford branch somehow.” Pam was enjoying the feeling of planning a prank while tucked into Jim’s arms. It felt different, but the same in a delightful mix of old and new.

 

“Come on you lovebirds, let’s get going.” Larissa was walking over to Pam’s car. “And because you won’t look at the road if you’re both sitting in front, I call shotgun.”

 

Jim shrugged. “It’s probably best to let her have this one. She sulks otherwise.” He waved at Mark and his dad. “We’ll be right back.”

 

Mark and Gerry shared a glance. “We’ll just start unloading the truck, shall we?” Mark inquired sweetly.

 

“That’d be great, thanks.”

 

“No problem.” Mark grabbed a box out of the back. “But don’t blame me if it all mysteriously ends up in the basement bathroom.”

 

Jim made a rude gesture. “No, I’ll blame dad.”

 

“Hey, leave me out of this, boys,” Gerry added genially as he hefted a box of his own. “And that goes double for whatever you and your sister are planning. You tell your mother I had nothing to do with it.”

 

“Sure thing, dad,” Larissa chimed in. “You were never here.”

 

“That’s my girl.”

Pam pulled into the office parking lot and found a parking space—not a difficult task on a weekend, but made more so by the unspoken compulsion she felt to avoid the spot where she and Jim had spoken the night before. She unlocked the doors and felt rather than saw Larissa (who had quickly realized that in a bench-seat pickup the middle, not the shotgun, was where she had to be to keep Jim’s and Pam’s eyes off each other) pushing her brother out the other door while Pam herself hopped down from the driver’s side. She exchanged glances with Jim as Larissa took off like a rocket to the front doors of the office. He shrugged, a “what can you do” expression on his face, and leaned against the truck watching not his sister but her.

 

Something about watching Jim lean against Roy’s truck felt wrong to Pam, but the wrongness wasn’t with Jim—it was with the truck. She tried to imagine him leaning up against a smaller car—maybe a Honda Accord, or one of those little Toyota Yarises she’d recently started seeing around—and the feeling was...domestic. She remembered her great aunt, who had married a farmer years ago and, on the day of his funeral, had sold the farm, the farmhouse, and the pickup truck and moved immediately to the (still small) nearest city. She, like Pam, was a petite woman, and she’d said something about “owning a car and a house that fit her.” Pam had never really understood what she meant until now. Maybe it wasn’t just Roy who hadn’t been right for her. Maybe the life she’d been leading hadn’t been the right one either.

 

“Got it!”

 

Jim and Pam both started to hear Larissa’s joyful shout and turned to see her holding the door to the building open. As Jim gestured for her to go first, Pam heard Larissa whisper into her ear “it was already open, but don’t tell him.” She exchanged a conspiratorial wink with the other woman before pressing the button for the elevator.

 

“What are you doing?” Larissa hissed in a stage whisper. “Don’t you know that for a covert operation you always use the stairs?”

 

Jim closed the door carefully behind him. “She’s right, Beesly. Basic secret agent stuff.”

 

Pam looked between the two of them and decided she was not letting them leave her out of this. “Oh, you must both have missed the day in spy school when they taught us to call the elevator down first so that anyone watching will assume we’re coming up that way.” She turned to the stairwell and cracked the door open. “But I completely agree, the spirit of the thing still requires the stairs.”

 

They moved the stairs, Larissa doing a passable Charlie’s Angels-style kick-turn at each landing as if she were covering the stairs with a non-existent gun. Jim and Pam followed at a slightly more sedate pace, exchanging smiles at her obvious enthusiasm. “I see where you get it from, Halpert,” Pam whispered to him as Larissa ostentatiously gestured to them that it was safe to move forward.

 

“Don’t fall for Larissa’s propaganda.” He grinned down at her. “I’m the big brother, so I’m the original, after all.”

 

“But you know girls grow up faster than boys.”

 

“Would you care to rephrase that statement?” He gestured at Larissa, who was clearly having the time of her life, but whom not even Pam (not even to score a point) could accuse of acting in the most grown-up of manners right now.

 

She sniffed in what she hoped was quiet dignity. “I simply assumed that for a Halpert, that was adult behavior.”

 

“Careful, you’re starting to sound like Dwight.” Sticking his tongue out took any potential sting out of Jim’s words.

 

Larissa stuck her head out over the stairs. “Pam! Do you have a bobby pin?”

 

Pam stuck a hand into her hair—god, she still hadn’t showered or anything...what must Jim and Larissa think of her?—and pulled out one of the few pins that had survived a night on the couch and the ensuing morning. She hurried forward to the landing, where Larissa was staring carefully at the door to Dunder Mifflin.

 

“Great!” Larissa surprised Pam by sticking the pin into her hair, instead of using it on the door in any way. “Now, can you distract my brother so it looks like I’ve cracked this door too?” Following Larissa’s gaze, Pam noticed that the door was actually slightly ajar—just as she remembered leaving it when she’d slipped out after the kiss the night before. She grinned at the younger woman. “Leave it to me.”

 

Larissa made a face. “Just don’t tell me what you do.” The grimace turned into a grin. “Who am I kidding? Go make my brother’s day.” She pushed Pam gently. “Quickly, before he sees.”

 

“Before I see what?” Jim rounded the stairwell with a long, lanky stride. Pam let Larissa’s light shove move her in his direction, and his arm came very naturally around her shoulders.

 

“Before you see my super-secret technique.” Somehow Larissa had the pin back out of her hair and was kneeling in front of the door. “I don’t want you claiming you ‘taught me’ this like I don’t know anything myself.”

 

“Let’s leave her to it.” Pam wasn’t sure what had possessed her—maybe it was the way Larissa just assumed that she would distract Jim in a way that would “make his day,” maybe it was the realization that in a moment they’d be back in the same place where he’d kissed her just a few hours ago, maybe it was the heady feeling that as long as they were in between the parking lot and the office again they were somehow in a liminal zone where last night hadn’t fully resolved itself yet and she could rewrite history—but she surprised herself by practically dragging Jim back around the bend in the stairs, perching awkwardly on the horizontal part of the handrail at the landing below, and pulling his face down to hers.

 

Well. She couldn’t speak for Jim’s level of distraction, but she was certainly completely unaware of anything happening up by the doorway right now. And from the way he was reacting—initial shock followed immediately by bringing his warm, strong arms around her to steady her on the railing and leaning down to make it easier for her to ravish his mouth with hers—she was pretty sure he was at least moderately focused on her as well. She could get used to this, to being able to just kiss Jim like it was the most natural thing in the world, like she belonged right there in his arms...which, she considered, she did.

 

“Oh my god, you two, get a room!” Larissa was back at the top of the stairs, her arms crossed. Once the two of them had pulled enough apart that she was apparently satisfied, she mouthed “good job” down at them. Pam would have assumed it was at her—after all, Larissa had told her to distract Jim—but Jim obviously thought it was directed at him, since he responded by mouthing back “thanks.”

 

What could she say, she liked looking at his lips.

 

Once they were into the Dunder Mifflin offices, it was a simple matter of booting up Pam’s computer, logging into the remote company directory, and dialing Jan’s number. Pam abruptly felt awkward about listening to that conversation—did she really want to know how much Jim would divulge about why it was he was staying?—so she dragged Larissa across to examine which of Dwight’s possessions they could most profitably send on a trip to Stamford.

 

They’d just decided on his nunchucks, which he wasn’t supposed to have in the building anyway and which would therefore be the most amusing to make him admit that he’d lost (having discarded the bobbleheads because, in Larissa’s words, taking one would “make the others lonely” and his actual work stuff because “he’d just replace it”) when Jim finally hung up the phone.

 

“Well?” Pam was too focused on what Jim had or hadn’t just learned that she didn’t even bother to call “jinx” on Larissa when they said the word at the same time.

 

Jim ambled towards her and Larissa. “So, what are we kidnapping?”

 

“Jim.” Pam glared. “What did Jan have to say?”

 

“Oh, that?” He took the nunchucks out of Larissa’s hand and looked them over before handing them back. “Nice choice.” He slid between the two of them and leaned on Dwight’s desk. “I’m staying.”

 

“Oh thank god.” Pam collapsed against him and felt herself being folded into his warm embrace. She hadn’t wanted to admit quite how nervous she’d been that something would go wrong—that somehow they wouldn’t get Jan, or that she’d say it was impossible to cancel the transfer, or something. She looked up at Jim as he continued. “Jan was disappointed but she reminded me she’d told me yesterday to talk to people here, and she’d always figured I’d find a reason to stay if I took her advice.”

 

Jan had said that? Pam’s respect for their boss’s sensitivity to the world around her rose several notches. Apparently she’d been paying attention around the women in the workplace seminar, or on one of the occasions when she’d followed up with Pam about the internship she’d never managed to convince her to take.

 

“Aww, that’s awesome.” Larissa was grinning ear to ear. “Now, let’s blow this popsicle stand.” She swung the nunchucks around and headed for the door, and Jim and Pam followed—or at least she thought they were going to. But Jim still had his arm around her shoulder, and he sudden stopped short.

 

“Just...right there.” She realized he’d stopped her at his desk, right where she’d been last night. She saw a dark light in his eyes that she thought she recognized, and thought she might just know her cue.

 

“Listen, Jim...” As she’d thought, he didn’t let her finish the thought this time either, and his lips were on hers. They kissed again, sweetly this time, until she put her hands on his chest and he drew back.

 

She could see him tense to ask the same question he’d asked last night, but she forestalled him.

 

“Jim, I’m in love with you.”

 

A giant grin broke out over his face, and he leaned in for another kiss.

 

“Come on you two.” Larissa’s head popped back around the doorway. “These nunchucks won’t take themselves to Stamford.”

 

Pam looked up at Jim. “I’m glad you’re not transferring there.”

 

“So am I,” he whispered in her ear. “But how do you feel about a quick overnight visit? Just long enough to visit a certain storage locker with a certain piece of weaponry?”

 

She pretended to ponder the question. “It is still early.”

 

“Just the start of the weekend, in fact,”

 

“Let’s do it. But first...”

 

“Yes?”

 

“I’d like to change out of this dress.”