He tries to prepare for the moment he sees her again. 

The last time he’d laid eyes on her was the night that threw his whole world into a state of upheaval, the night he’d finally kissed her. The night he’d gone all in. 

The greatest and worst night of his entire life.

The amount of time he’d spent watching her that evening was bordering on pathetic. He knows this, even now, but he’d be foolish to pretend that ship hadn’t sailed years ago. And he’s been trying for months now to stop thinking about about how beautiful she looked, and how the last image of her seared into his brain would forever be that. He still hasn’t been able to get that out of his mind: the way the tint of azure in her dress would change ever so slightly beneath the lights when she’d shift her body in another direction. That tiny sliver of magenta on the inside lining he could spot whenever she’d brought her cocktail to her lips. He couldn’t recall having ever seen her bare shoulders before, either. It felt weirdly illicit, like an unexpected gift. 

He can’t seem to forget the way her hair had looked different; her usual frizzy curls tamed into a gentler, softer style. And her eyes, which were typically a deep mossy green, appeared brighter than seafoam. They reminded him of the teapot he’d given her for Christmas, his last thwarted attempt at honesty.

Perhaps it was the memory of the teapot and what it represented that inspired him, sparked him into action. He still isn’t quite sure. It hadn’t been his plan to confess his feelings that night. The plan was to slink away, transfer to Stamford quietly. To let her marry Roy and try his best to get over it. 

He’s been trying for years to simply “get over it.” 

But there had been an electric charge in the air while they were playing poker that had taken hold of them both, as if neither could tear their eyes away from each other. He’d felt it, and he was pretty sure she’d felt it too. For just one precious moment it was like looking through a window that showed him what they could be like forever, if only one of them had the courage to reach out and open it. To turn the version of Jim and Pam from his dreams into a reality.

That very same electricity had clung to them, following them both outside. And when he found himself alone with her in the parking lot, something had come over him. He knew he couldn’t just leave forever without telling her the truth. He could only gaze at her, standing before him looking more beautiful than he could possibly have imagined, his heart on his pilled sweater sleeve, and before he even knew what was happening his secret had tumbled out of his mouth. 

I’m in love with you. 

It was beyond his control, as if the words had been waiting; dormant but vigilant, ready to strike at any moment. And he could have said them a number of times, a number of ways, but what had come out was absolutely raw. What he lacked in eloquence he made up for with sincerity. There was no stirring oratory, no grand plan. It was straightforward and to the point, no room for any more mixed signals. 

This was not just a crush, and he needed her to know it. This was love, real love, deep and oppressive. He’d laid his soul completely bare.

Part of him had hoped she might reciprocate his feelings, that same part of him that had stayed year after year at Dunder Mifflin in the first place. The other part of him knew deep down she wouldn’t, because he knew her better than either of them would admit, better than Roy could ever pretend to. Rather than heed that second part and disappear from her life without a trace, however, he truly believed that, if nothing else, she deserved to know how much she was loved.

I can love you more than he does, he’d wanted so badly to say. I can love you better than he does. 

I can promise that I already do. 

In his wildest fantasy she would tell him she loved him too — of course she did — and everything he’d been searching for his entire life could finally be his. She’d throw her arms around him, hold him close, and thank him for rescuing her from the life she never actually wanted, the life she’d been pretending to want for years because there had been no other option. 

Yes, she’d tell him. It’s you, it’s always been you. 

But  he’d presented her with that option, and she’d given him a resounding no. Twice. 

The fact that she’d picked Roy over him was no doubt a huge blow to his pride. But that was nothing compared to what had come afterwards: week after week of this lacunal hollow that has thus far refused to let anything – anyone – else inhabit him the way she did. It’s the very same cavernous void he’d felt in his chest as he walked away from her that night, every step leaving him emptier and emptier. And each mile away from Scranton, each day at the new grind in Stamford had only made things worse until he felt absolutely numb. 

He’s been trying to resuscitate his decimated heart, to bring himself back to life for months. While some days are easier than others, most of the time everything feels pointless. He feels pointless; at least, the guy he’d been for the past three years does. So he’s had to distance himself from that guy in any way he can.

Sometimes he feels like a car that won’t start, like his engine needs a jump and only one woman has those particular cables. But Pam is an impossible quest. He can’t think this way anymore, he can’t. Because he’s back in Scranton now, and she’s made it very clear where she stands: not interested. 

She’s sitting at her desk with an impatiently delighted look on her face as he enters the office. He isn’t sure what to expect: for clouds to part, revealing a rainbow and some flying doves? A horrible, terrible awkwardness? Or for everything to feel exactly the same?

The third option is the worst of the three, and it’s unfortunately what he gets. 

“Hi, I’m Jim, I’m new here,” he jokes, but it isn’t actually a joke, because they really are sort of starting all over. 

“Oh my god, it’s really you!” Pam says excitedly, and she runs around her desk to embrace him. The last time he’d seen her they’d been in almost precisely this position, only then he’d been able to walk away from her. Now, he’s back for the foreseeable future, navigating uncharted waters without a compass. 

He can’t help but notice her hair looks the same today as it did on that fateful night. He starts to wonder if this was intentional on her part but quickly stops himself. These are old habits: dissecting every move she makes, deciphering the complexities of their every interaction. Bad habits that he needs to start breaking immediately.

She pulls away and looks up at him. He doesn’t know what to think. He certainly isn’t expecting her to drag him into some dark corner, confess her undying love and admit she made a mistake. He isn’t even hoping for that. If that were the case, she’d have done so months ago.

“Yeah, I was just doing a little joke there, about how we'd never met…”

“I know. I don't care.” 

Her smile is as bright as it’s ever been, and she looks at him as if she’s waiting for him to say something revelatory. He isn’t really sure what to say. He’s said so much already, he has no idea what she could possibly want.

“Awesome, good to be back. The place looks really good,” he says, while looking right at her. 

Shit. He doesn’t mean to flirt, but being around her has an unavoidable effect on his tongue. 

“It's really good to see you,” she says. 

“You, too.”

She can’t stop smiling and for a moment, just a split second, he allows himself to be relieved that at the very least she’s happy to see him. His heart then starts pounding in a very familiar way. Her gaze is so intense that their eyes lock in that same way they used to, that same way they always have. That same way he’d apparently misinterpreted. 

He doesn’t want to let it happen again. 

Looking away from her, he breaks the spell to take off his coat and hang it on the coat rack. When he goes to claim his old desk and realizes it’s been taken, he decides not to fight Ryan over it because change is good.

He takes the one right by reception because it’s empty, but it doesn’t occur to him until he sits down that he’ll never be able to look at Pam from this angle. 

Again, that’s probably a good thing.

Karen gives him a friendly little wave from across the room and he waves back. Pam is practically breathing down his neck, and he tries to ignore how emblematic of his situation this all feels, but he quickly realizes that while he cannot see Pam, he’s close enough to smell her: some soap or shampoo she always used to use. His olfactory memory activates instantly and quite inconveniently.

Stop it, he tells himself. Don’t fall into this trap. Not again.

She’s nice to him throughout the day, more so than usual, even. Pam’s always been nice to him. They were friends, which she’d made abundantly clear. But this feels different. Patronizing, almost, like she’s feeling him out, making sure things are okay between them. Making sure everything can go back to normal. Maintaining the status quo. 

She asks him out for coffee after work and his heart flutters with hope for a moment, as if she’s applied those jumper cables. Zap. She’s never asked him out for coffee before like this, just the two of them, outside of work. In any other circumstance it would feel like a date. 

Is she asking him out on a date? 

She isn’t asking you out on a date, dummy. She doesn’t want you. 

He removes the jumper cables, the car doesn’t start. He pegs her offer as another way to neutralize him and keep him from embarrassing himself all over again. A friendly gesture, that's all. And if that’s the case, the last thing he wants to do is go out for coffee with Pam and be reminded of all the ways he loves her, all the ways she doesn’t love him back.

He spends the day keeping his distance. He doesn’t want her to think he’s still in the exact same place he was the last time he saw her (although despite his months-long efforts to the contrary, he’s not entirely convinced he isn’t). That would just make everything worse. So at the end of the day, his decision to tell her he’s started dating someone else is an olive branch. A sort of “We don’t have to be weird about this, I’m okay, I’m not going to accost you in the parking lot again.” 

“You can do whatever you want,” she replies curtly.

It’s the ambivalence that hurts. It’s like a cold front sweeping through, destroying all of her previous warmth from the day. 

“Okay. Um... good.”

“We’re friends,” she says in a tone so placating he feels his heart sink in the exact same way it did last time. The exact fucking same. “We’ll always be friends.”

She turns to go, and he heads back to his car, wishing he’d said nothing at all. 

Seconds too late, he realizes that accosting her again in the parking lot is exactly what he’s just done. And of all the things he didn’t prepare for on this day, at the top of that list was being rejected a third time.

***

It’s morning, and from the moment he opens his eyes he tries as hard as he can not to think about her.

He rolls over in his bed with a groan. Apparently he’d fallen asleep in his clothes. He was sober when he’d left the party last night, but still has no recollection of how exactly he made it home or what happened after that. 

His bedroom comes into focus and he sees his ceiling fan, his bookshelf, his desk. He knows this is the reality of his life now, that he’s leaving Scranton for good. Pam doesn’t love him, and he’ll probably never even see her again. He needs to start trying to move past this, to start the next chapter of his life without her in it, but he cannot stop the memory of the night before from invading his brain: the way his hands slid around her waist so perfectly, the way she smelled. Different, like she’d worn some kind of special perfume or something. Like she’d known the night would be special. 

He picks up his phone from the nightstand. No missed calls. It’s not like he’d been expecting her to call, not like he’d been hoping she’d change her mind and reverse this hellish situation, but his heart drops anyway. Maybe he’d been hoping after all. 

His clothes still smell like her, and he lays in bed trying to figure out whether he should wash them or burn them or never take them off again. He can’t decide, so he does nothing. He’s been so used to this. His default setting for three long years has been just that: doing nothing. 

At the very least, that changed last night. Alongside his shattered heart, he feels a definite sense of satisfaction at having finally done something. 

Three years, he’d told himself. Three years of waiting around, and for what? He’d spent so much time wishing and hoping for something that felt unattainable, and yet somehow – as their lips finally met – inevitable all at once. 

He can’t get it out of his mind: how it felt to finally kiss her, how it was exactly the way he’d always imagined it would be in all those hours spent watching her at reception. And not just a drunken slip at Chili’s he can barely remember, but a real kiss, a proper kiss.

Most importantly, though, he cannot stop thinking about the way she’d kissed him back.

She’d leaned into the kiss, hesitant at first, but then reached up to gently hold the back of his neck, welcoming it. Everything about her actions had told him, for just a moment, things were going to be okay. Not only okay, but perfect. Relief had actually washed over him as he leaned back to look into her eyes, that despite her prior rebuffal, she actually did have feelings for him too.

It was only a few seconds but they were the most important seconds of his life. Because even as she’d pulled away and told him no, the memory of those seconds persists: those precious seconds when she’d told him yes. 

Those seconds represent hope that there was – is – still somehow a chance for them. And try as he might, he cannot make that hope disappear.

He falls back into his pillow and closes his eyes. In any event, he’s leaving this town. Maybe Stamford will be a good change of pace. Change could be good for him. And while he wants to regret coming clean to her last night, he does take some solace in the fact that at least Pam finally knows his truth. That does make it easier to leave her behind. 

Maybe he can now finally force himself to get over her. To stop thinking about those few seconds. Maybe.

He has to try.

***

She tries to convince herself she made the right decision.

Watching Jim walk away, though, feeling him physically slip away from her, is enough to make her second guess herself almost instantly. 

She’d chosen loyalty to Roy. He’s the responsible choice, the safe one. But maybe that’s the only reason she’d chosen him, because she’s never been willing to take a risk. She’s never been brave. And that’s what Jim was asking of her in that moment: courage she was not ready to give.

She takes a deep breath and looks at the ceiling, reliving the past few minutes. 

Yes, Jim initiated the kiss, but she’d allowed it. She’d lost herself while her lips were pressed against his. She didn’t push him away, she participated. She kissed him back. She can no longer deny to herself she’d already been unfaithful to a certain degree over the past three years, at least emotionally, but tonight that crossed over into downright inappropriate behavior. 

You have to take a chance on something sometime, Pam.

Jim had taken a chance on them, on the possibility the two of them could be something amazing. And the most frustrating part of it all is that she knows they could be amazing. She knows exactly what it would be like to be with Jim because, in their own special way, they’ve actually been together for years. She can justify it to herself as much as she wants, rationalize it by reminding herself she has not cheated, she has not committed an infidelity. She’s done nothing wrong. But the truth is, she does do something wrong every single day and she knows it, because she’s in love with Jim too. She’s known this so intrinsically it’s a part of her, deep in her marrow, so deep she’s never even tried to analyze it. It just… is. 

Maybe that’s what terrifies her the most. Because now she’s let him go, but the love remains. And she isn’t quite sure what to do with her feelings now except push them down even further.

Her tears last as long as she can reasonably stay in the darkened bullpen, crouched on the floor alone against Jim’s desk. She can’t tell Roy about this, she won’t. And if she doesn’t go home soon he will wonder where she is. Regardless of her confusion, she’s made her decision. So she picks herself up off the floor and somehow, some way, gets herself home.

It doesn’t take long for her to realize she’s made a huge mistake, but it does take several days too long for her to attempt to rectify it. She knows this because Jim isn’t at work the next day. He isn’t there Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, either. And every day that passes without seeing his face stirs up an uneasy fear within her that she may never see him again. 

It’s silly, really. Jim isn’t going anywhere. Despite this building panic inside her she can’t adequately explain, she’s always been able to count on his presence. 

By Thursday she can’t take it anymore. Jim’s desk remains empty, and no one is saying anything about his absence, even Michael. That in particular scares her. She heads back to the annex in the hopes of learning more.

“Hey, Toby?”

Toby turns around from his desk. “Oh, hey Pam. What’s up?”

“Not much,” she says casually. “I was just wondering… do you know where Jim is? Is he out sick or something?”

“He’s transferring to the Stamford branch next week, so he decided to use all his vacation days up. I guess he didn’t want to take a vacation right after starting the new job.”

She blinks, confused. “Transferring?” 

“Yeah, he got a promotion.”

She’s so shocked by this development she can’t do anything but stare at Toby blankly, trying to think of what to say. Surely he’s got this wrong.

“Like… permanently?”

“Yeah. He didn’t tell you?” Toby asks. “I thought you guys were friends.”

Pam is sickened, legitimately feels like she might throw up. Jim is transferring. Gone forever. That’s that. And he didn’t even bother saying goodbye. 

“Does... anyone else know?” she asks, when she can locate her voice. She’s genuinely surprised that Michael hasn’t said anything, or even Phyllis or Kelly.

“I don’t think so,” he shakes his head. “I sent Michael a memo about it, but… he doesn’t really read them.”

“I just… I thought Jim was going to Australia in a couple weeks. That’s what he told me.”

Toby shrugs. “When he called me to let me know he wasn’t going to be in this week, he did mention he canceled his trip.”

She nods, not understanding any of this, but trying to pretend she does. 

“When… when exactly did he call you?”

Toby thinks for a second. “It was Friday.” 

Friday. The day after she rejected him.

Worried her knees might actually give out, she gives Toby a tight smile and a quick thanks before she backs out of the annex and into the bathroom. 

Jim is gone for good, but the feelings she’s been trying so hard to repress for years are not: in fact, they feel like they’re beginning to calcify. And there’s nothing she can do about it.

She barely has time to shut the stall door before she collapses onto the toilet seat, her head in her hands, dissolving into quiet sobs.

***

She tries to prepare for the moment she sees him again. 

She spends an hour doing her hair, cramped into the tiny bathroom of her tiny new apartment with a blow dryer and straightener, then trying not to burn herself as she recreates those same soft curls she wore the last time he saw her. She tells herself it’s for luck.

This feels like a do-over. A chance to start over. And even though she’s failed to be brave for a long time, he’s finally coming back. It’s like the universe is giving her a second chance to make things right. Somehow, some way, she’s determined to make her feelings known to him.

Throwing her arms around Jim again feels so good, and when he hugs her it’s as if not a day has passed. She’s so grateful for this tiny bit of equilibrium that she almost forgets several months have indeed actually passed. A lot has changed.

The effects of this change hit her in waves throughout the day.

The first wave hits when he doesn’t sit at his old desk. It’s not his fault, of course, and it doesn’t escape her notice that he still sits as close to her as possible. But he’s facing away from her now, and she’s immediately uncomfortable with this new arrangement. He can’t look up at her to share a quick smirk, his familiar insouciant smile. To roll his eyes at Michael, or grimace at Dwight’s chronic Jim-induced frustration. Knowing this won’t happen anymore creates a rolling, queasy sensation in her stomach.

She notices the next wave in the break room when she sees his sleeves are rolled all the way down. It’s a simple thing, dumb even, but it feels false and stiff, so unlike him. Not the guy she knew. She’s aware he’s gotten some kind of promotion but it doesn’t account for this kind of change. It’s more than a wardrobe adjustment, it’s his very essence. Jim: the laid-back paper salesman who would casually dangle his bare forearms over her desk at reception while doing everything he possibly could to avoid working.

He pulls a bottle of water out of the vending machine rather than his usual grape soda. It’s different, again, and she doesn’t like it. 

I’m evolving, Pam, he says. 

She wants to believe he’s telling her the truth when he says he doesn’t have time to get coffee with her, that he really does have a bunch of unpacking to do, but she knows that isn’t the case. Her apartment could be burning down and it wouldn’t keep her from having a coffee with Jim if he asked; seizing the opportunity to slow down and regroup, to do this right. And this was exactly her plan: to let him know how much she missed him, to see if there’s any way they could start over.

She can only conclude that declining her offer to go out is as simple as it seems. He just doesn’t want to.

When Michael walks into the break room, the heaviest part of the wave crashes down. This is when she knows for sure something is very, very wrong. Their boss’ clear awkwardness at having stumbled upon them having a private moment is the type of occurrence that would generally trigger a shared laugh. 

But Jim will not play. You’re not interrupting anything, he says to Michael, very seriously. And then he walks away.

There’s nothing to interrupt, he may as well have said. Nothing. 

The room now feels as empty as whatever remains of their friendship. It hurts, but maybe she deserves it. She hurt him, after all. Badly. Maybe now he’s punishing her.

She doesn’t want to believe Jim would hurt her on purpose. She tries to square his behavior into effectively steamrolling over any residual awkwardness from the last time they saw each other. After all, even though she can certainly claim some responsibility for what happened (or didn’t happen) during the interim, it was he who initiated the series of events that led them to where they are today. Perhaps he’s just trying to wipe the slate clean, trying to be mindful of her feelings. 

But every time she looks for a sign that he’s still interested, that he might possibly want to rekindle whatever it was they had before – what she’d ignored for so many years – she doesn’t find it. It’s almost as if he’s a different person, a completely different Jim. One who doesn’t even remember what went down between them last May.

Maybe he just needs time, she tells herself. Maybe it’s just difficult, readjusting to being back in Scranton. 

That afternoon in the parking lot, however, is when the wave pulls her completely under, down into its murky depths, dragging her along the ocean floor.

The familiarity with which the new girl rubs Jim’s back is undeniable. It’s so painfully obvious that, in an instant, she runs down the endless list of ways Jim had shown his affection for her over the years and she’d ignored it, or redefined it, or reshaped it into something her conscience could live with. As he and the new girl walk back upstairs together, Jim won’t even look back over his shoulder at her, just like he hadn’t bothered to walk down with her to see the Michael-induced hubbub in the first place. The way he would have before, without question. And now she knows exactly what’s going on. 

He hasn’t been trying to ignore what happened. He didn’t “forget.” 

He just doesn’t want her anymore. 

He’s moved on, he’s with someone else. Someone prettier, someone better. And he’s been setting boundaries – clear boundaries – ones she’s unknowingly been attempting to cross all day. 

The employees herd themselves back upstairs but she doesn’t follow. She stands alone in the exact place where, because of her own cowardice, everything went so fucking wrong. She can still hear the crickets chirping, feel the spring air twinged with warmth and the promise of summer, of hope. She can still hear his soft, earnest declaration of love as if he'd only just uttered it.

There are only ghosts in this parking lot now, the two of them standing alone and locking eyes as she made the biggest mistake of her life without even realizing it.

She runs to the benches on the side of the building and sits down, taking a deep, frigid breath, letting the cold air in to occupy every single crevice within her body. It feels as if she’s still being pulled along the ocean floor, her skin rubbed raw, her lungs full to bursting as she drowns.

Then she cries. There’s no one around so she allows herself this indulgence, feeling the hopelessness wash over her, feeling the consequences of her own actions and how irreversible they are. 

Why had she been so stupid? Some part of her must have naively hoped he would wait around for her, but why did she even entertain that possibility? Of course he didn’t.

Of course he wouldn’t. 

After a minute or so, she collects herself, takes a few more deep breaths, and fixes her eyes straight ahead, past the chain link fence, past the junkyard next door and beyond, until she’s staring into nothingness.

“It’s over,” she says aloud, and weirdly, it helps. It makes her current reality feel more substantial, more fathomable. 

It’s over.

That evening, as Pam walks to her car, nursing her broken heart and prepared to face her tiny apartment alone, Jim stumbles upon her. For the first time in a very long time, she has absolutely no desire to see him.

“I feel like things were kind of weird today,” he says. 

She has to stop herself from scoffing. Of course things were weird. He made them weird. She doesn’t even blame him for it, because she knows the situation was weird before either of them stepped into it, but she’s hit her pain threshold for the day. She just wants to go home.

“I think I should tell you that… I’m sort of seeing someone,” he then says. 

It’s like a slap to the face. She’s very aware he’s seeing someone, he’s been making that clear all day by avoiding her and making things weird and now it feels like he’s bragging about it. 

I’m evolving, Pam. 

He may as well have just said it: I’m evolving past you.

She doesn’t want to be rude, she doesn’t want to shut down, but she doesn’t know any other way. She can’t be brave now. She has no reason to be.

“It’s fine, you can do whatever you want,” she says. 

It’s the wrong thing to say and she knows it as the words leave her mouth. She sounds hurt and rejected. Petulant, even, which is exactly how she feels, but she doesn’t want him to know that. She’d wanted to let down her guard today, she’d wanted badly to let him in, but now she can’t.

And if Jim is so intent on setting boundaries, well, she can set them, too.

“We’re friends,” she assures him. “We’ll always be friends.”

It feels like by simply putting this declaration out into the ether she’s making it true. But maybe it isn’t true. Maybe they won’t be friends. Friendship with Jim isn’t enough anymore, and she knows herself well enough to know that she, too, has evolved: she’s evolved past believing it could be. Just like he did.

She’s never felt so low in her entire life as she does in this moment, and this conversation isn’t helping. She wants it to be over as quickly as possible, not to mention there’s a very real possibility she might start to break down right here in this stupid parking lot again. She can only be relieved the damn cameras are at least nowhere to be seen. So she turns to head back to her car, throwing a disingenuous “good to have you back” over her shoulder.

Nothing about this is good, and she doesn’t have him back. She doesn’t know where her Jim is, but he’s certainly not here anymore.

She tries to move through the next few days with as much dignity as possible. It’s not easy, since it feels like she and Jim are actively avoiding each other. It was difficult enough before when he was gone, but having him back in an unfamiliar capacity, it turns out, is even worse.

She ignores him entirely the first day after their painful encounter in the parking lot. On the second day she’s busy doodling a sea serpent – an assignment from last night’s art class – and dares a glance up from her desk to look at him. She probably stares for too long because Karen looks up and notices. Pam looks back down at her drawing, and scribbles some dark hair and long lashes onto the serpent's face. It should be more exotic-looking.

On the third day she enters the office and finds Jim behind her desk at reception, standing at the fax machine. He never arrives before she does, so this is unusual.

“Hey,” she says casually. “What are you doing here so early?”

He looks up like he’s been caught red-handed. “I, uh…” he holds up a piece of paper. “I’ve been sending Dwight faxes from Stamford, and I just wanted to see if I could send them… from here. To here.”

She grins, which feels good. She won’t tell him so, but she’s actually been pretty involved with Jim’s Future Dwight pranks over the past several weeks. A few of them she’d handed to Dwight herself.

“You can, but there’s another fax machine in the annex,” she says. “Different number. If you want it to look more authentic.”

He nods, and gives her a grin. It’s not the same grin, not his usual grin, but it’s something.

“Thanks.”

She waits for “Beesly” to tumble off his tongue. It doesn’t.

He stands still, seemingly unsure of what to do next. This isn’t natural for them, this behavior. Not really knowing what’s permissible, or what’s appropriate. She can’t just goof around with her best friend anymore and it’s breaking her heart all over again. She wants to believe he can sense it too, but she has no idea where they actually stand. 

The last thing she wants is to manufacture another heated moment between them that will go nowhere, so she shimmies around him and starts pulling out her chair to sit down, trying to ignore that his clothes smell different than they used to. Maybe he changed fabric softener. This hurts her more than it probably should.

He maneuvers himself out of the tight space and starts to walk back towards the annex. She doesn’t catch his eye again but in her periphery she sees him briefly look back at her over his shoulder as he passes by her desk. 

She curses her own foolishness that only now does she find herself appreciating the magnetism that’s always existed between the two of them, how rare and special it was. How she hadn’t seized upon it before, when she had the opportunity.

This tiny interaction seems to have begun the repair work on the bridge between them, at least, and over the following days, she begins responding to him organically again. Eventually Prison Mike shows up, and since she no longer has to resort to engaging with a disinterested Ryan, she tosses Jim glances across the conference room the way she used to. And much to her relief and delight, he starts tossing them back. It’s ironic that after years of finding Michael’s antics irritating and bothersome, she’s now also infinitely grateful for them. 

When Jim sends the new guy Andy over to her armed with bad dating advice, it feels like a sort of peace offering. A sense of relief comes over her that something, anything, feels a little bit like it used to. She puts her coat on to leave early but can’t get out of the office before Andy intercepts her with his banjo serenade, but at least Jim has to sit through it as well, which evens the score a little bit. He deserves it, after all.

When Andy departs, she sees Jim shut down his computer for the day. Before she knows it she’s alone in the elevator with him. It’s quiet for a few seconds, but then she decides to go back to work on rebuilding that bridge.

“Thanks for the setup,” she teases. 

“You’re welcome,” Jim grins, laughing a little. “Any potential there?”

“We’re going out ‘frolfing’ Friday night. If I can keep my hands off him until then.”

His chuckle turns into an actual laugh, the first real one she’s heard from him since their phone call weeks ago. It feels like sustenance. 

“Joke’s on you, though,” she adds. “I guess one thing you didn’t know about me is how incredibly charming I find Kermit the Frog.”

“I knew that,” he says, a little softer. “I picked the song."

She smiles at him. It’s weird, how it suddenly feels like not a day has passed since they once stood side by side in the elevator just like this, her wondering what her life would be like if things were different. Only this time, he’s the unavailable one.

The elevator doors open and they step out, walking to their cars like they used to. Fifteen more steps and he’s gone for another fifteen hours. She wonders if he’s going to meet up with Karen. She wonders how serious they are. 

She wishes she could stop wondering.

“See you tomorrow,” she says, heading towards her car with a wave. He waves back, but doesn’t say anything else.

When she gets into her car she shuts the door, turning the key in the ignition, getting the defroster running and the heater going. She lets out a deep breath, closes her eyes, and waits for the car to warm up, tapping the heels of her gloved hands against the steering wheel as the frosty edges of the windshield start to melt and dissipate. 

It’s a new car, and it’s a slow process. One step at a time.

Today was a good day, she decides. Enduring Andy’s advances wasn’t ideal, but knowing Jim had put him up to it gives her a tiny spark of hope that whatever they have between them is still there. Although it might just be an ember, the fire isn’t gone completely. 

She doesn’t really understand much about this new Jim, but pranking is a language she does understand. It’s their language. It means comfort, familiarity. 

It means fun. And god, she’s missed fun.

***

She tries to find a foothold in this new chapter of her life, some semblance of normalcy.

After she calls off the wedding, there’s a peace that comes over her she hadn’t expected. It’s been awhile since she’s done this on her own. In fact, she’s realizing, she hasn’t really ever done anything on her own. 

She’s never had her own apartment. She’s never had her own car. She’s never had space to herself, and it’s strange to acknowledge that she’d never really desired it before. Her life had been so intertwined with Roy’s for so long she’d practically lost her own identity, and it’s only now, after extracting herself from the relationship, that she’s truly starting to find herself again. 

Her place is small: one bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen and a closet. It’s still pretty empty, too; the only major purchase she's made thus far is a vacuum cleaner which, sadly, is already broken. Most of the things she’d decorated her old place with are too bogged down with memories, and not always the good kind. She’d left them behind, determined to make a fresh start. 

The rooms feel slightly barren and devoid of personality at the moment, but at least they’re hers. When she gets home and locks the door behind her, she feels safe and protected, like it’s her sanctuary, her own private little cocoon. Appropriate, since she feels like she’s inside a chrysalis of her own making; everything is new and slightly terrifying, but she hopes in time she will emerge as something different. Someone different.

She misses Jim like crazy, but the freedom does feel good; to be single, and have no one to answer to but Pam. 

Her first real act of independence is to sign up for art classes at the local community college. She wants to remember what it felt like to do something she’s good at that she actually enjoys. 

She wishes Jim were around to tell him. He would be so excited for her. She wishes she’d appreciated his unwavering support of her chasing her dream when she’d had the chance.

She wishes it wasn’t too late to chase after him, too.

Every morning she sits at reception and stares at his old desk: the place where her world simultaneously began and ended. Ryan taps away at his keyboard, no idea he’s sitting in the very spot where Jim kissed her and, rather than admitting he’d finally done exactly what she’d secretly been hoping he would do for years, she let him slip through her fingers, quite literally. 

Every day for lunch she eats defrosted chicken and fish from the wedding that never happened, and each bite is a grainy, chalky reminder of what she’d given up Jim for: something cold and bland and perfunctory. 

She’s never felt such regret in her entire life.

She looks at the phone and wishes she had the courage to call him. She stares at it constantly and rehearses what she’d say over and over again. 

I made a mistake. I want to be with you.

Please come back.

A few times, she actually picks up the phone, but it never gets further than that. She doesn’t wonder why Jim never calls her, either. The ball would be in her court if she thought there was still a game in progress, but surely there isn’t. She’d broken his heart, twice. How could he possibly forgive her? How could they ever come back from this?

I’m in love with you. 

It wasn’t a crush, and despite what he’d told her weeks before, he hadn’t gotten over it. It was love. Years of moments now haunt her daily, the knowledge that every time he’d gotten up from his desk to chat with her, he’d been in love with her. When he’d elbowed Roy in the face during that basketball game, he’d been in love with her. When he’d convinced Michael not to embarrass her for the third year running at the Dundies, he’d been in love with her.

When he'd stood at the railing of that booze cruise ship gazing into her eyes as she waited for him to change her life, he’d been in love with her.

His declaration of love rolls around in her mind but now they’re no longer his words; they’re in her own voice, her own thoughts. The words she should have said back to him. 

I’m in love with you, too.

Why hadn’t she simply told him the truth?

It isn’t fair, she thinks. She hadn’t been free to love Jim the way she wanted to when he'd asked. Now she is, now she wants to tell him so, but he’s gone. Out of her life. She’d barely had a moment to think and he disappeared.

It’s probably her fault. Maybe it was precisely the “taking a moment to think” that had sent him running for the hills in the first place.

Sometimes the brain works faster than the heart, she tries to reason with herself. It’s the only way she can explain the way she’d reacted. 

It’s the only thing she can think of that isn’t simply that she’s a coward. 

***

He tries to imagine Stamford ever feeling like Scranton did. 

He knows it won’t. And it isn’t the unusually professional boss, the modern, sleek offices, or the unfamiliar sounds of efficiency and capability echoing around this bullpen. 

It’s the absence of her.

He tries to remind himself that maybe that’s a good thing. That’s the point of this, after all.

He barely talks to anyone at first, retreating behind the walls that sprung back up after he let go of her hands and walked away. His mother checks up on him every day, the only person to whom he’s confided the entire ordeal. 

“Everything is going to be okay,” she tells him at the end of every conversation. 

Okay.

This is what he’s striving for lately: okay. 

He wears a jacket to work every day now, and keeps his shirt sleeves rolled down. He tells himself it’s because of the promotion but mostly he likes the way it makes him feel: like a different person. A grownup. Someone who wouldn’t waste four years of his life on a girl he has no chance with. 

He makes it to lunch and congratulates himself on not breaking down at any point throughout the morning, especially after spotting the mug in the kitchen cabinet emblazoned with the quote “Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.” There was, unfortunately, no mug with helpful advice for the person who had lost both.

He hasn’t bothered to go to the grocery store since his move so he coughs up the six dollars for a ham and cheese sandwich at the food truck downstairs. 

“No, actually,” he stops the guy from writing that down. “Tuna, please.” 

It feels good to break an old habit. He wonders how many more he can break before the day is over.

He steps back and hovers near the truck window, silently willing his sandwich to materialize quickly so he can head back upstairs without having to talk to anybody. Alas, he isn’t successful in his endeavor.

“So, you came from Scranton?”

He turns around to find the source of the voice. It’s the young woman who sits at the desk behind him, the one with brown hair and a slightly surly demeanor. He isn’t quite sure what to make of her yet. 

She walks over to put her change in the tip jar that sits on the ledge of the truck window and takes down her salad. He doesn’t want to be rude, so he nods. 

“Yep.”

“Liking it so far?”

Pam isn’t here. He hates it.

“It’s fine,” he lies. “Doesn’t feel too different.”

“I have to ask,” she says, inching a bit closer and shifting her eyes surreptitiously over his shoulder. “What’s up with the cameras? Did you trade spouses or something? Audition tape for The Apprentice?”

He laughs, actually laughs, and is surprised he’s even capable of doing so. 

“Sadly, no,” he admits. “I wish it were for some exciting reason.” 

He twists to look back over his shoulder, but the cameras aren’t around at the moment. It doesn’t matter, really, because none of the cameramen or producers he knew in Scranton came to Stamford anyway. As if it’s not enough he’s lonelier than he’s ever been; apparently his shitty new existence only merits the second string.

“I’m actually not quite sure why they followed me here. You’ll have to ask them.”

“Your life must be incredibly interesting,” she says.

“Definitely not the case.” 

She smiles. She has a pretty smile. She’s attractive in an obvious way, and seems nice in a not-so-obvious way. Sort of the opposite of Pam. 

He’s annoyed that he’s instantly comparing her to Pam.

She continues looking at him somewhat expectantly, maybe waiting for him to introduce himself. He’s about to when the lunch truck guy leans out the window and yells “Order up! Tuna sandwich for Jim!” 

Grateful for the reprieve, Jim gives her a tight smile and a little nod, steps over to pick up his lunch, and walks directly back up to the office. He swears he can feel her eyes boring into his back as he does so.

He feels a little bad for avoiding her. She isn’t as intimidating as he’d previously thought, and it seems like she’s actually trying to be his friend. He wants to make friends, and he’s well aware he won’t if he’s quiet and withdrawn all the time, but today is about survival. 

He’ll try harder tomorrow.

He eats his sandwich alone at his desk, and while it doesn’t really have any flavor, nothing he’s eaten since he left Scranton really has. But he does like that it’s something different. 

The guy who sits in front of him, who’d been working pretty quietly all morning, finally turns around. 

“Andy Bernard,” he says, extending his hand. 

“Oh, hey. Jim Halpert.” He shakes his hand half-heartedly.

“Tuna, huh?” Andy Bernard gestures down at his lunch. “Sweet.”

Jim doesn’t really know how to respond to this. It’s the strangest attempt at small talk he’s ever encountered, but the strangest part about it is how delighted Andy seems by his own comment. His smile would be infectious if Jim had any reason to smile.

“Yeah, it’s okay, I guess.”

Andy keeps chattering for a while, and Jim nods and tries to appear engaged in the one-sided conversation about his new desk mate’s college antics at Cornell. He doesn’t necessarily dislike him, but Jim instantly pegs Andy as a prime candidate for any future pranks he might summon up. If he can muster the energy.

He’s about to beg off to the restroom to get out of the conversation when Andy suddenly proves he’s far more perceptive than Jim thought him capable.

“You don’t smile much, do you, Tuna?”

Jim is slightly taken aback, by both the astute observation and his new nickname. 

“I don’t?”

“Let me guess. Left your heart back in Scranton?”

Jim freezes a bit, tightens his mouth. 

“Say no more, my friend. Been there,” Andy says. “Heartbreak city. I get it. No worries, I’ll make you a CD with some tunes to get you through it.”

“I’m good, thanks.” Jim’s eyes dart around the office, and luckily no one else is within earshot.

Andy shakes his head. “Nah, it’ll be good. Tunes for Tuna.” 

He spins back around to face his desk and scribbles something on a blue Post-It note. He then spins back around and sticks it to the corner of Jim’s monitor. It says, simply: “smile.”

“That’s advice straight from the Nard Dog, okay? Keep it there.”

Jim makes no move to touch the tiny blue note, which unhelpfully makes him think of Pam’s dress. He stares at Andy blankly. “Who is... the Nard Dog?”

Andy glares at him. “Just trust me, Tuna.”

Jim nods, and does what the note says. He smiles. 

“Thanks.” 

It’s probably good advice, but it’s tough to follow. Without his best friend around, it feels like he’s forgotten how.

***

It’s Christmas, the time of year to show people how you feel. Unfortunately, Jim doesn’t know how to feel. 

He hadn’t thought it possible to miss someone sitting five feet away, but the truth is he misses her more now than he did when he was in Stamford. At least when he was miles away, it was a bit easier not to think about their disconnect.

Just a bit.

The first couple of days are spent readjusting to the little things that are different: Oscar is gone, Dwight has a new enemy in Andy, Ryan’s doing his best to be a salesman. Lots of little changes, but one big thing, unfortunately, remains very much the same.

He tries to ignore it. He’d promised himself he would do everything in his power to avoid falling back into a situation where he’s vulnerable to yet another crushing heartbreak. But it’s the little things he’s tried to forget that are the hardest to ignore: the row of mixed berry yogurts in the fridge, the hint of her soap or lotion or whatever it is that wafts around him whenever she sets a fax confirmation on his desk. And the teapot he’d given her, which still sits at reception next to her computer. He can’t see it most of the time, but he can feel it just sitting there, two feet behind him. Knowing it’s there is excruciating. Is his yearbook picture still tucked inside, or does she actually use it to make tea? 

He wonders what would have happened if he’d given her the letter he’d meant to; that if he’d just gotten it over and done with, if she’d rejected him way back then, he’d surely be feeling better by now.

But maybe he wouldn’t. 

He kept the note for some reason, jammed way down with his tax documents. He wants to throw it away but he knows he never will. 

Perhaps most difficult to move past, though, are the pranks. He missed them in Stamford and he misses them even more now, and not because Dwight is any more irritating; it's because Pam’s laugh is infrequent lately. He never had to try very hard before to hear it, and now it’s like trying to catch lightning in a bottle.

But pranking would be a mistake. Of the myriad pitfalls that surround him daily, daring him to risk his heart all over again, it’s by far the most dangerous one. And if pranking with Pam is a trap he’s trying to avoid, the fake CIA documents from Dwight that she’s handing him as a Christmas gift is essentially quicksand.

Denying her (and himself) the opportunity to participate in an activity they’d always cherished feels wrong, and seeing her face fall makes him feel awful. But as he walks away from her he knows it’s the right thing to do. He can no longer cherish Pam, not the way he used to. 

It isn’t until later, when he sees her hugging her ex-fiancé, that every iota of his carefully cultivated willpower goes flying out the fixed office window. 

He remembers vividly how it felt to watch them together in the Before Times, when he hadn’t yet told her how he felt about her. When she could still claim ignorance. There were moments he’d shake his head, upset and completely baffled as to why Pam would think her relationship with Roy made sense, why she’d settle for a person who treated her so poorly. But then there were moments when she seemed genuinely happy with Roy. He knew that there was something genuine between them he always wanted to pretend didn’t exist. Maybe that was the real reason watching them had been so painful.

It isn’t about Roy, he tries to convince himself as he watches them now, that same pain from before resurfacing. This isn’t some macho pride thing. And it isn’t the persistent protective urge he’s always felt when he sees them together, to drag Pam away from a relationship in which she isn’t respected. It isn’t either of those things and he knows it. It’s because, quite simply, he understands more than anyone that long-lasting feelings don’t just disappear, regardless of how misplaced they are. And seeing the two of them reconnect, he’s terrified that Pam’s haven’t disappeared either. 

Watching her choose Roy the first time was painful enough. He couldn’t bear to let it happen all over again. 

He goes to get his coat next to reception and he doesn’t even realize he’s saying anything before the words are out of his mouth. Intercepted a transmission. Ice cream social. He’s rallying with Pam again and he didn’t even realize they were on the court.

They walk out of the office together for the second time since he’s been back. It’s probably only because Karen isn’t here; she left work early to pack for her trip back home to Connecticut for the holidays. It feels wrong being alone with Pam and it shouldn’t, because he isn’t doing anything wrong. 

Except feeling all kinds of things he shouldn’t be feeling.

“Are you... sticking around for the holidays?” Pam asks hesitantly.

“Yeah, I’m going to my parents’ house. Karen’s flying back home to be with her family.”

“Ah,” she says, but doesn’t press any further. It’s not as if she didn’t know who he was dating, but it’s his first verbal confirmation. They push open the double doors and a blast of chilled air hits them both.

“How long do you think he’ll wait up there?” Pam asks as they walk towards the edge of the parking lot, looking up at the roof at Dwight.

“For a helicopter? I think he’ll wait all night if he has to.”

“It’s really cold,” she then says. “I don’t want him to freeze to death.”

He thinks for a minute. She’s right. Pranking with Pam again is one thing, being responsible for Dwight’s potential frostbite is quite another. 

“Does he have your cell phone number?” he asks her, and she shakes her head. “He has mine, unfortunately. Send him a text. You know, from the CIA.”

She beams at him, and he knows he doesn’t have to come up with something for her. She’s perfectly capable. She sends a text and after a few seconds, they see Dwight toss his phone over the edge of the building, which makes Pam laugh. 

Her laugh finds its way back into his heart and soul just as immediately as it always had. God, he’s missed her laugh. It’s like a shot of whiskey: warm all the way down. 

She clamps a gloved hand over her mouth, but Dwight is none the wiser as he disappears down the fire escape. Jim knows they only have a minute or so before they’re caught, and she looks at him, apparently realizing this at the same time. Her hair looks soft and shiny and her eyes are sparkling and not for the first time since his return he thinks if she’d just say something, if she’d just give him the slightest indication she’s interested, he’d give up absolutely everything to be with her.

But she doesn’t. She smiles, and it’s at this moment he remembers the last time they stood right here his entire world was crumbling around him. The chill in the air is no longer because of the weather. 

He can’t keep doing this to himself, he can’t.

“I’d better go,” he says. 

She looks taken aback by the abrupt dismissal, and he hopes it’s because she doesn’t want to part ways just yet. Then he inwardly berates himself for wanting such a thing. 

“Yeah, I should too,” she says.

“And thanks, you know. For the present.”

“You’re welcome,” she smiles. “I mean, it couldn’t top yours from last year, but I tried.”

He feels butterflies at her mention of the teapot, and can feel the quicksand creeping up his legs.

“Merry Christmas, Beesly,” he says. He’s been trying not to call her that, but like it did during their phone call back in the fall, it slips out.

For whatever it’s worth, she appears affected by this. She looks at him for a moment, then takes a step back, giving him a little wave.

“Merry Christmas, Jim.”

Pam gets into her car and leaves, and he stands in the parking lot for a minute, watching her go. Then he pulls out his phone to call his girlfriend.

Jim expects spending the holidays with his parents to be a nice distraction from his problems. Karen is in Connecticut visiting her own family, and it’s the first time in weeks he’s been alone with his thoughts for an extended period of time.

Unfortunately, alone with his thoughts is not the best place for Jim to be. Alone with his thoughts only makes him realize he misses Pam more than he misses Karen. Alone with his thoughts only reminds him that he’s no better off now than he was last May.

He’s eager to get back into the swing of things, but that means once again being thrust back into his new normal: smack dab between the two women in his life. By the time the holidays are over, he’s dreading the return to work. 

Michael is still out of the office and Karen isn’t due back until after the new year. It’s odd being in the bullpen with Pam again without his girlfriend there as a buffer, but he smiles at her each day as he walks past reception to his desk, wishes her a happy new year when the time comes, and she responds in kind. They’re cordial, which is better than nothing. She also looks like herself again, the way he remembers from before… is it her hair? He can’t quite put his finger on it but for a moment he has to remind himself which year it is. 

He keeps his head down and tries his best to keep his interactions with her to the bare minimum, which is thankfully easier than he’d anticipated with his back turned to her all the time. Sales are always pretty busy after the holidays anyway.

When Karen returns from vacation, other than a few work meetings, he doesn’t get much of a chance to reconnect with her. He invites her over after work to hang out, which she accepts, but she doesn’t stay for long. She claims she has unpacking to do but seems a little distant.

He isn’t quite sure if this has something to do with him, or if he’s overreacting. They hadn’t talked much while she was gone; a couple phone calls, maybe a few texts, but that was all. He was trying to do the right thing. This whole dating thing is still so new for them, and he hadn’t wanted to appear too needy. He hopes she isn’t mad at him for playing it cool. 

The next morning, he parks his car in the lot and has barely pulled his messenger bag out of the backseat when she suddenly appears right next to him.

“Oh hey,” he says, a bit startled. “You scared me.”

“Sorry.” She steps forward to hug him and he hugs her back.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “You seemed a little distracted yesterday.”

“Yeah, I’m fine… just have a lot on my mind.”

“Something… you want to talk about?”

She sighs into his chest. “I didn’t want to tell you, but it’s my parents. They think this move was so abrupt, which I guess it was. They won’t lay off and it’s kind of bumming me out.”

“Not so stoked about your current career path?” If he can keep this about work, maybe he won’t feel so guilty about being the main reason she’d derailed her entire life.

She shrugs, leaning back a bit to look up at him, but still keeping her arms around him. “Weirdly enough, they said the same thing you did. They said I should have tried transferring to New York.”

He grimaces, because she’s not wrong. “You do come across very corporate.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“...I mean that in a good way,” he grins.

She sighs, but grins back. “I think they’ll change their minds when they meet you, though. You know, someday.”

Someday. It’s only a vague allusion to the future but the word holds a lot of weight.

“Scranton’s not so bad. I promise it grows on you.”

“You said that about Michael, too,” she reminds him, her breath coming out in short puffs of fog. 

“Yeah, you’re right,” he grins. “I’m full of shit.”

She releases him, stepping back, putting her hands in her coat pockets. “How did you manage to tolerate that guy for, what? Three years?” 

“Four, actually.”

“Yikes.”

“You just have to find the fun in every situation. When it comes to Michael it works to your advantage. Because… well, there’s always a situation.” 

She shakes her head. “I still don’t know how you did it.”

He bites his lip. He can’t tell her how he did it.

“Anyway, I’m sorry I was a little distant last night. I guess I’m still sort of adjusting to being here, you know? Everything is so different.”

He pins her with a look. “Good different, I hope?”

Karen looks up at him with a shy smile. “Yeah. I think so.” He grins at her, and she shifts on her feet a bit. “You know… when I told my parents about you, I called you my boyfriend.”

“Oh yeah?” 

She nods. “How do you... feel about that?”

How does he feel about that? They haven’t discussed exclusivity yet, even though it’s obviously where they’re headed. He likes her a lot, he really does. He’d hoped he would feel more secure in their relationship before having this conversation, but it’s apparently happening right here, right now. 

She looks up at him and smiles, her freckles standing out against her rosy cheeks. She looks so hopeful, so happy, and he wants to be, too. 

Boyfriend. He likes the sound of that.

In answer, he leans down and gives her a brief kiss on the lips; nothing excessive, but certainly not something two platonic co-workers would ever be doing in the middle of the parking lot. He’s suddenly aware that it’s the first time they’ve really behaved like they’re dating in a very public area at work. 

He pulls back and she smiles at him. Then her eyes dart over his shoulder, her expression changing to one of surprise.

“Oops,” she says.

Jim turns his head to see Phyllis getting out of her car, a mischievous grin on her face, having clearly witnessed this event.

“Good morning, you two,” she says coyly, waving at them, and makes her way towards the building.

“Morning, Phyllis,” Karen calls after her politely.

Jim tightens his lips into a thin line. “Great,” he mutters.

“How bad is this?” Karen asks.

They hadn’t discussed when it would be appropriate to out themselves to everyone in the office. He still isn’t quite sure what had compelled him to reveal their relationship to Pam the day the branches merged, even though some form of undeserved and misguided revenge probably played a part. And that had certainly backfired.

“It’s not bad,” Jim insists, more to himself than to her. “The cat’s out of the bag, I guess.”

“Will Phyllis say anything?” 

“Are you kidding? I’m sure she’s told the security guard and everyone at Vance Refrigeration by now.”

Karen shakes her head. “I guess we should probably tell Toby, then. Make it official.”

Make it official.

Jim looks at her, confused. “Toby?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Um, yeah. Toby? The HR guy?”

“Why do we have to tell Toby?”

Karen shrugs. “I don’t know, I mean technically you’re my superior, right? I don’t want to get entangled in some kind of workplace romance drama.”

He feels himself nodding. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he says, omitting the fact that whether she knows it or not she’s already entangled in workplace romance drama.

“Let’s go upstairs,” she says. “It’s cold.”

He nods, following her towards the door. Workplace romance. Make it official. Someday. The words are ringing in his head like alarm bells. 

Karen reaches out to take his gloved hand in hers. Two layers of thick leather separate them, but he suddenly feels like she’s much too close.

“Speaking of adjusting and everything,” she then says. “I’ve been thinking about how I can make this move a little more… permanent.”

Jim swallows. He knew this would be coming at some point but his mouth feels like sandpaper. “Oh, uh huh?”

He opens the door and as they enter the tiny lobby, Karen pulls a piece of paper from her coat pocket. She unfolds it and shows him what appears to be an application for an apartment listing.

“I was driving back from your place yesterday and saw a For Rent sign, so I looked up this apartment. It’s available and it’s in my price range,” she says, showing him. As he looks at it she lets go of his hand to hit the elevator button.

When he sees where it’s located -- his own neighborhood -- his stomach churns. Everything feels like it’s moving so fast all of a sudden, and his hopeful attitude seems to be taking an abrupt 180. 

Why is this happening? He likes Karen. He wants to be happy. Doesn’t he deserve to be happy?

Instead of the very real future standing in front of him, his mind instead drifts to fantasy. He knows it’s just an impossible dream, but he’d imagined himself walking down his street holding hands with Pam so many times the image is just… there, still. He wishes it wasn’t, and wants to get rid of it, but what if he can’t? What if it never goes away? What if this doesn’t work out with Karen? 

What if it could still work out with Pam? 

He hates himself for thinking about this right now. The elevator door dings open, and Karen steps in. He follows, slowly, still absorbing the implications of the piece of paper in his hand. A thousand emotions must cross his face but “panic” is the one he’s apparently landed on, because she notices.

“Is there a problem?”

“Um…” he stammers. “No problem, it’s just… this is like two blocks from my place.”

“So?”

The doors shut and he can’t help it, he feels suffocated. It’s only been a month and she’s moving in right down the street? The elevator feels hot. The walls feel like they’re closing in on him. He tugs at his collar.

“It’s a little close, don’t you think? I mean, we just started dating. This feels like... we’d be practically living together.”

She gapes at him. “Are you serious?” She scoffs and turns, facing the elevator doors. “Jesus, Jim, I’m not asking to move in with you.”

Move in with you. God, even the words coming out of her mouth are making him break out into a cold sweat. The alarm bells in his head are deafening. Why is he reacting this way? Why doesn’t he want her living so close? She’s his girlfriend now, for fuck’s sake. He should be thrilled.

If Karen had already lived in Scranton, he suspects he wouldn’t be feeling this intense pressure. But she’d packed up her life and moved all the way from Connecticut. For a job, yes, but they both know it was really for him. For them. For the potential he’d made her believe was here.

Potential that he’s slowly starting to wonder if he’s trying to force.

The air in the elevator is stale and his opportunity to respond favorably to her proposal has passed its expiration date. He can feel the energy shifting between them, but he cannot say yes to this, not right now. He said yes to dating her, said yes to kissing her, said yes to her moving to Scranton, to making this official. He’s run out of yeses for the time being.

He doesn’t say anything more, because he’s afraid of what might come out if he does. Karen books it out of the elevator without even looking back at him and he can tell she’s pissed. He looks apprehensively down at the application in his hand and wonders how bad this is.

Later in the day, for the first time in a while, he finds himself alone in the break room with Pam. When she asks him what’s wrong, his first instinct is to lie, to downplay everything, to keep her out of it entirely. But the way she looks at him makes him weak. The way she looks at him always makes him weak. He spills the entire story before he even realizes he’s doing it.

“Honestly, I think you should go easy on her,” Pam suggests, which isn’t what he expects to hear. Actually, he isn’t sure what he’d expected. For her to say ‘Just dump that chick and risk your heart all over again for me?’ Dumb, Halpert. Cut it out.

Maybe he’s overthinking this. He can’t continue to interpret every action from Pam as some kind of coded overture. And he can’t continue to interpret every action from Karen as an attempt to push them forward, to make this relationship more serious than it is. 

Maybe Pam just wants to be friends. And maybe Karen just wants a place to live.

“You’re probably right,” he sighs. “I’m probably assigning all this meaning when there isn’t any.”

She shrugs. “Libra.” 

His heart thumps at her observation; that she remembers even a crumb of personal information about him and is using it to try to be helpful. 

He raises an eyebrow. “When did you get into astrology?”

She looks embarrassed. “I’m not, really. Just… I’ve been talking to my sister a lot lately. Sometimes it jumps out.”

They laugh, and it’s nice. Despite everything else going on, Pam really is easy to talk to. She always has been. 

“Hey, thanks a lot,” he says, and he really means it. 

“Oh, don't worry about it. I mean, it's better than listening to Michael play a conch shell... which is what I was doing.” He chuckles again, and they sit in a somewhat comfortable silence for a few moments, sort of staring down at the table. Then she looks up at him excitedly. 

“Oh, also... Michael went to Jamaica with Jan!”

Her comment presents an opening, an opportunity to resuscitate their long-lost dynamic. He misses it so much that he bites. 

“Oh, yeah. How have we not talked about this already?” He obviously knows how, but right now it doesn’t matter. “I mean, what happened there? Kidnapping?”

She shakes her head in amusement. “I have no idea.”

“Maybe he has some kind of secret superpower? I mean, whatever it is, he sure keeps the ladies coming back for more.”

Pam looks thoughtful. “I wonder if it has something to do with Carol. His ex.”

“It sounds so weird when you say that,” he admits. “Michael has an ex.”

“I know. But he and Jan have a history. Maybe she sees him with someone else, it makes her want him even more.” 

“But... Michael?” he reiterates, ignoring the feelings her double meaning had surely not intended to provoke. 

She shrugs. “I don’t know. He seems pretty happy, though.”

As if his ears had been burning, Michael parades through the annex playing a rousing tune (or poor excuse for one) on his conch shell, his tiny beaded braid bouncing all around, thankfully skipping right past the break room without interrupting them. 

Jim sits with his best friend — even though he can’t really call her that anymore — and they chat and joke around like they used to for a few minutes. It’s the most like himself he’s felt since he came back. Rather than see this as a problem, however, right now he decides to see it as a good sign: that maybe things are on the right track for him after all. Maybe things are playing out exactly the way they should be.

Later that afternoon, he approaches Karen with the piece of paper she’d left with him. “Uh, I think you dropped this.” 

She looks down at the application, which he’s filled out for her, and smiles. “You sure?”

He isn’t sure. “Definitely,” he says, though, because if this is all part of moving on, he’s sure as hell going to try.

“What made you change your mind?”

He doesn’t really want to mention Pam, but maybe he can get out in front of this whole thing somehow, especially if he and Pam might actually become friends again. Karen is bound to notice something's up.

“Oh, Pam made me realize I was being stupid.”

You were, Karen’s eyes say. 

“Anyway, let me know how it goes,” he continues. “If you want, I can ask Darryl to borrow his truck, you know. For the move.”

Karen grins at him. “Okay.” Then, “Pam, huh? You told her about us?” 

He bites his lip. “Oh yeah, well, I figured we were telling people now.”

“You two... are friends?” She says it curiously, without an air of suspicion. 

“Yeah,” he says as nonchalantly as possible. “I mean, we were friends when I was working here before.”

We kissed. 

I was in love with her. 

I’m probably still in love with her. 

“Oh, that’s cool.” Karen looks back down at the application, apparently done with this part of the conversation. Her lack of interest in his past with Pam annoys him for some reason. 

Maybe it’s not annoyance. Maybe it’s guilt. Because he has more to tell her about Pam — a lot more — and he doesn’t want telling her all of that to be his decision. 

“I’m gonna go call the building manager,” Karen says excitedly, kissing him on the cheek. Then she turns and is gone. 

I think you should go easy on her.

Pam’s advice was good, and it was probably the right call. But the ease with which she’s pushed him closer to Karen only serves as further evidence she’s truly not interested in him.

He sighs, staring after Karen as she heads upstairs. Hopefully this will be a good development for them, for him. But he can’t deny Pam’s presence has impacted this decision. And it isn’t healthy that every single decision he’s made since he returned has been shaped by Pam.

***

Karen kisses him first. He tries to convince himself that’s the only reason it happened at all.

He wasn’t sure if she was even into him when he’d asked her to go out for drinks after work. And he hadn’t thought it was a mistake, either: not when they’d walked into the bar, not when they’d chatted for an hour about their favorite movies and their least favorite movies and where they grew up. All of that was safe, all of that was fun. Even when he kinda-maybe started liking her a little more than he thought he did, Pam honestly hadn’t crossed his mind that much. He’d thought briefly a couple of times “I can do this, I can.” 

But one thing had led to another. After a couple of drinks, here they are at the bar engaging in rather uncharacteristic (for him, at least) PDA.

And now he’s worried he’s making a mistake.

Making out with Karen wasn’t exactly the plan. But her lips are soft and she smells so good and she likes him. She wants him. It feels so good to be wanted that for just a moment, he can almost forget that she’s not the one he wants.

After he kisses Karen for a while, however, thoughts of his kiss with Pam come screaming back into his brain. He thinks about her lips and her smile and that dress and how she didn’t want him and he wills his brain to just shut the fuck up, to leave these agonizing thoughts and memories out of every single waking moment of his life. He really tries. But he’s replayed those precious seconds over and over again in his mind so many times by now that he knows Pam's kiss like a favorite song. 

After a minute or so he pulls back to catch his breath. Karen is smiling, her eyes still closed. “So tell me, Halpert,” she says, opening them. He feels a slight pang at her comfortable utterance of his surname. “Why’d it take you so long to go out with me?”

He laughs a bit without really thinking. “Did it?”

“I’ve been sending you signals for a while now. Been wondering when you’d clue in.”

He shrugs. He hates signals. He hates them because apparently he’s only capable of sending and receiving them incorrectly. 

“Well, I’ve been wrong before,” he explains. “Very wrong. So I guess I’m a little more careful now.”

She looks curious. “Oh yeah? What happened?”

He flinches a bit. The last thing he wants to do is talk to Karen about Pam. 

“Oh, it was... a while ago.” 

It doesn’t feel like a lie. The last few months have felt longer than the four years that preceded them. 

Karen nods, mercifully taking the hint he doesn’t want to keep talking about this, and sips her beer. Then she leans in towards him a bit.

“Well, I’m glad you finally figured it out,” she says. 

He can tell she wants him to kiss her again. He wants to, but there are so many conflicting emotions bouncing around in his brain he feels like the responsible thing to do is to slow everything down.

He likes Karen. He wonders if in a different time, a different place — a different life, maybe — he could be falling head over heels for her. But he isn’t, at least not yet. He doesn’t want to lead her on, but he also doesn’t want to blow a really good opportunity to get to know someone else he could actually like. To move past all of this Pam stuff. 

To evolve.

“I’m glad, too,” he says, and he means it. 

At this precise moment his phone buzzes next to him on the table, and he jumps. Ever since he and Pam started texting again, it seems every time his phone makes a noise his heart reacts like that damn Pavlovian dog. 

He glances over, and sure enough:

Message received: Pam

I heard you’re coming back to Scranton, is it true?

He ignores it. He can’t deal with Pam right now. Just this simple harmless text is intrusive and unwelcome. It’s not her fault, of course, but he finds himself getting pissed at her anyway.

Sensing the moment has passed, Karen leans back. “Jan offered me a sales position in Scranton, by the way,” she says.

“Oh yeah?”

She eyes him, gauging his response. “I think... I’m gonna take it.”

He wonders if her timing is deliberate; if she’d waited all night to tell him this until she was certain their attraction was mutual. She gazes into his eyes, and he notices the freckles scattered across her nose for the first time. She looks so happy and hopeful and Freddie Mercury is belting out out “I want to break free” all around him in the bar and for a moment – just a moment – he entertains the possibility that all of this could be a really good thing. Karen could be a really good thing.

“Well, I guess that means we’ll be seeing a lot of each other,” he grins.

She smiles back at him. “That would be nice.”

His heart is screaming that he’s not ready but, just like the text message, he ignores it. His heart hasn’t been making the best decisions lately anyway. 

His mind flashes wildly to Michael at that paper convention in Philly, his cell phone pressed against his ear, telling Pam to have fun on her date. It hurts to think about it, still, but if Pam is out there dating already, he should certainly be doing the same.

He leans in this time, and kisses Karen again. Maybe it’s irresponsible but he decides he doesn’t care anymore. Fuck responsibility. He has to do this, he has to move on, especially if he’s going to be facing Pam again. 

He has to try.

***

“Pam-a-lam-a-ding-dong!” Michael crows as he saunters into the office. “How was your date? Did you get lucky?”

Pam sighs from her perch at reception. Everything about that date had been ill-advised. “No, Michael.”

“Aw, that’s too bad. Maybe next time.”

“It’s actually totally fine.”

She didn’t feel ready, and she’d insisted as much beforehand, but Kelly had set the date up despite her concerns. Once again, she’d felt pressure to do something she didn’t want to do and rather than advocate for herself she’d simply given in. This time it was a small thing, but she’s so tired of her own cowardice. She’d given up the person she cared about most out of fear. What will she give up next time?

Michael shrugs. In a seemingly rare moment of self-awareness, he glances surreptitiously around the bullpen and lowers his voice. 

“I saw Jim, by the way,” he says.

Pam wonders at Michael's uncharacteristic discretion. She doesn’t really want to talk to him about any of this but she’s dying for information about Jim, any information. She’s drowning in a vast, crushing sea of the unknown. 

“Oh. How is he doing?” she asks as casually as she can. Her eyes dart over to Phyllis, the closest person to them at the moment, but she doesn’t seem to be listening.

“Seems to be having a great time over there in Stamford,” Michael shakes his head and scoffs. He says the word ‘Stamford’ like something absolutely disgusting. “Josh. Blech.”

“That’s nice.”

Michael then turns to face her as if what he’s about to say is only occurring to him for the first time. “You didn’t tell me Jim left Scranton because you broke his heart,” he says somewhat curiously. He says it so unceremoniously, absolutely destroys her in such a laid-back manner, that she doesn’t quite know how to respond.

Pam feels her face get hot. “Um… I don’t… he said that?”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

She blinks. “...Should I have?”

“I mean, yeah,” he admonishes. “I thought we were friends, Pam.”

Pam nods patronizingly, realizing that anything Michael may have to say about any of this should probably be taken with an extra-large grain of salt.

“You’re right, I should have realized this is most definitely your business, Michael.”

“Anyway, that was a huge relief,” he says.

“A relief? What do you mean?” 

“Well, I thought he left because of me. So… good news.” He gives Pam two enthusiastic thumbs up.

Michael never means for his words to have the devastating effect they do at times, and Pam is well aware of this. But Michael isn’t. And it's exactly the reason she can’t possibly expect to have any sort of meaningful conversation with him about Jim. 

He turns and heads into his office and while she wants to leave this alone, she has a great desire to make Michael understand, or at least to attempt the admittedly daunting task.

She gets up and follows him into his office. “Michael?” she says quietly, shutting the door behind her.

“Yeah?”

She looks down at him as seriously as she can. “You understand that it isn’t good news for me, right?”

Michael has that look in his eye that indicates he’s experiencing a slight short-circuit in his brain. His eyes widen and he looks genuinely apologetic.

“I didn’t mean… I’m sorry,” he says. “I guess I just figured you already knew.”

She did know Jim left because of her, she does know that in her heart. But hearing it out loud and knowing Michael is aware of it is painful in a completely different way.

She can’t decide which she wants more: for him to shut up or to keep talking. Trying to get worthwhile information out of Michael Scott is like trying to squeeze a cocktail from a dry sponge. Regardless, her curiosity wins out.

“Did... did he say anything else?” 

Michael lifts his eyes to the ceiling in deep thought. “Not really,” he muses. “Actually, he told me not to say anything to you either, now that I think about it.” He grimaces slightly and zips his lips, then makes a ‘shh’ gesture. “Don’t tell him I said anything, okay?”

She shakes her head sadly. “I won’t.”

He sits down in his chair and pretends to go back to work, but she isn't quite done. 

“Hey, Michael?”

He looks up at her. She doesn’t want to hear anything else that might upset her, but she really wants to know. The idea Jim had confided in Michael, of all people, is so strange to her.

“Why... did Jim tell you all of this?”

Michael looks at her like she’s the dumbest human on the face of the planet.

“Because he’s my best friend, Pam.” 

She knows it isn’t true, but it stings.

***

She’s still trying to be his best friend. 

For the first time she thinks she knows exactly how Jim must have felt seeing her with Roy all the time, wanting to step in and shake her, to make her see what had been right in front of her all along. Because even though they’re ‘just friends,’ now all she wants to do is the same.

This doesn’t make sense, she wants to say. We make sense. You and me, that makes sense.

Everything not making sense is what’s going through her head as one of the documentary producers, Delilah, mics her up for her interview. 

“You look distracted today,” Delilah says. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, do I?” 

“Yeah, what’s going on?”

Pam wonders if the cameras are on. She never knows for sure, but she has to assume they’re always on.

“Well, I guess Michael went to Jamaica with Jan, so… there’s that.”

The producer nods, and they converse a bit about the latest Dunder Mifflin gossip. But after a couple minutes, she is still feeling uneasy and Delilah can sense it.

“Are you sure there’s… nothing else going on you want to talk about?”

Pam wonders if the crew has talked to Jim today, or Karen. If they really don’t know what’s happening, or if they’re baiting her.

She sighs. “It’s just some stuff that’s going on with Jim and Karen. You should probably talk to them.”

“Oh we have, we know all about the whole apartment situation.”

Of course they do. “Well then, you know.”

“But… what does that have to do with you?” Delilah prods.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with me,” she responds quickly. Probably too quickly. “Jim just told me about it and I gave him some advice.”

“Oh,” Delilah says, looking a little surprised. “And… you didn’t mind doing that?”

“No, I didn't mind helping Jim with his problem. That's what friends do. I help Phyllis all the time. Just yesterday, I untangled a piece of tape from her hair. So, yeah.”

Delilah looks at her skeptically. “I see.”

Over the past couple of years, Pam has caught on to the way the producer looks at her when she’s waiting for more she knows is there. Pam isn’t sure how much they know about what’s gone down between her and Jim: what they’ve seen or heard, what they’ve gleaned over all this time. But she has to keep her guard up.

“I actually don’t know if we’re even really friends anymore,” she admits. “Maybe that’s what’s bothering me.”

“Why wouldn’t you be friends anymore?” Delilah asks. 

Pam shrugs. “It’s just... things are a little weird right now. I mean, he was gone at Stamford and we didn’t really talk much. Now he’s back, and he’s got a girlfriend, so everything feels kind of different. We’re sort of just figuring things out again, I guess.”

Delilah nods. “Well, you had a boyfriend before and everything was fine, right?”

She’s so stunned by the producer’s astute comparison that she doesn’t even bother correcting her failure to refer to Roy as her fiancé. Everything was fine. She knows now, of course, that everything was not fine. Just like things are not fine again. 

“Yeah, I guess,” she says, unwilling to go into this any deeper on camera. She never knows how much to reveal to the documentary crew. She does know, however, that Delilah has made her feel very defensive and she doesn’t like it. 

Everything is fine.

They wrap up their interview and Pam hands her mic to Will, the camera guy. The “inventory luau” is supposed to be starting downstairs in a few minutes and she needs to appear as fine as possible. 

When Karen approaches her in the warehouse later with a huge, satisfied grin and an “I owe you one,” Pam hits her limit. The reality of having been the person to help orchestrate this progression in their relationship is a lot to take.

It’s too cold to go outside right now, so she goes downstairs and sits on a bench in the hallway of the floor below them, somewhere she can be alone and undisturbed. She hadn’t meant to push Jim and Karen closer together. All she wanted to do was have a chance to talk to him, to feel close to him again. To be part of his life. 

We’re friends, she’d told him weeks ago. It was reactionary and she’d said it out of hurt, but she’d also said it prematurely. And now, through her own actions, she’s once again demarcated their relationship.

What is she trying to be to Jim anymore? She can’t be his girlfriend. She can’t be his best friend. She can barely even be his friend at all, not like this.

How can she continue trying to be his friend when doing so will only break her heart? 

She’s never felt so alone in her life, so wracked with grief for something she can’t even identify, and for some reason her thoughts travel back to a few months ago, when Michael was having his grief counseling session. When he was desperately trying to find some meaning in his own life, some indication that if he were to disappear off the face of the planet he would not be completely forgotten. No one had really understood him that day, but Pam had, because she was probably the only other person in the office that day feeling just as alone.

She tries to remember the steps Michael had mentioned. Denial. That one she remembers for sure. Because the day Jim returned, she’d been so convinced everything was going to be fine that she’d been completely unprepared for the amount of fine it hadn’t been. Anger, yes… she’d lashed out at him in the parking lot for no good reason, other than she was hurt. And what the hell was that today, in the break room? Bargaining if there ever was any. She’d practically traded every last shred of hope she had left for the simple opportunity to have a conversation with him, and the consequences have such dire implications she’s now finding it difficult to breathe.

When she remembers the fourth step she breaks down, because depression is the only way to describe the way she’s feeling right now. And she thinks again of what she’d repeated to herself out in the parking lot like a mantra after she’d realized Jim had moved on with someone else:

It’s over.

Acceptance.

After this final thought, she comes to a bleak realization: she’s just grieved her friendship with Jim. 

She's been trying for weeks to find her friend Jim again, the one she’s lost. But he’s been nearly impossible to reach.

Some days he’ll actually appear; as fleeting and indiscriminate as a shooting star, giving her a quick smile or a “Beesly” or something else that makes her insides warm. On those days she feels extremely lucky. But most of the time it’s as if he’s regressed to the role of just another co-worker: another Phyllis, another Stanley. It seems unless she has some reason or excuse to talk to him, she really can’t. Not the way she used to.

She doesn’t know how to find him, but maybe she should stop searching for now. She decides to continue working on finding herself a little for a change.

Her art classes have been going well. It’s been fun and sort of thrilling to rediscover a skill she’s been neglecting for so many years, something she enjoys. And she’s pretty good at it, too. At least she thinks she’s pretty good. Jim always said so, anyway. He was really the only person who ever did besides her parents and her tenth grade art teacher.

Stop it. Stop thinking about Jim.

It’s been so difficult not to, as thinking about Jim is basically an uncontrollable impulse. Now that she doesn’t have him in her life anymore – that old Jim who used to love her – what might have been permeates her every thought, their every interaction. And she needs to figure out a way to make it stop. The Jim she used to know is gone, the friendship they used to have is finished, and she has to find a way to make peace with that.

Old Jim, New Jim. Whoever he is, he’s nowhere to be found all morning. Maybe that’s why Karen walks into the kitchen alone at lunchtime. 

“Hey Pam, is it cool if I sit with you?”

Pam is a little taken aback but nods. Ever since Christmas they’ve been pretty friendly, and she has to admit it’s been nice. “Sure.”

“Thanks.” Karen pulls out the chair across from Pam and sits down, opening her packet of vinaigrette and sprinkling it daintily across her salad. For the first time Pam really examines this person Jim is dating: her clothes are tailored, her makeup looks perfect. She's wearing a nice watch. Pam immediately wonders if Jim gave it to her.

It’s unfortunate, really, that there’s this insurmountable thing between them that might never go away. In another circumstance – another lifetime, really – she thinks she and Karen could actually be friends.

“Where’s Jim today?” Pam asks, unable to help herself.

“He’s coming in late, he had a dentist appointment I think,” Karen says. “We have a bunch of sales calls lined up for tomorrow though, so that should make up for it.”

“I don’t know how you guys do it,” Pam admits, shaking her head. “Putting yourself out there like that, talking to strange people, trying to sell them something.”

Karen shrugs. “It is a little weird when you put it like that. But you get used to it, I guess.”

“Jim’s always been really good with people. I’m sure that’s why it comes so easily to him.”

Karen eyes her curiously, sizing her up. “You two are pretty close, huh?”

Pam immediately regrets having brought up Jim at all. Twice.  

“Oh, well, I mean… he’s one of the normal ones,” she backpedals fast, lowering her voice. “I don’t know if you've noticed, but the options are pretty limited around here.”

Karen laughs. “Yeah, very true.” She takes a sip of her Diet Coke. “So, what do you do when you’re not forced to listen to Michael’s nonsense all day? Are you dating anyone?”

“Oh, um… no. I actually broke up with someone kind of recently, so…” she trails off, still feeling reluctant to share anything specific about Roy. The last time Karen broached this topic it was just as awkward. “It was pretty serious. So… not seeing anyone right now.”

“I get it. It’s a good thing though, that space in between boyfriends,” Karen says. “Gives you a chance to figure out what you want.”

Pam nods. In between boyfriends. It’s sort of a weird way to put it, and even weirder hearing the exact thing she needs to hear from the last place she’d expected to hear it. But “in between boyfriends” is probably where she needs to be right now. 

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” She nods and smiles.

“I broke up with my boyfriend about six months ago and was in no place to be dating anyone either,” Karen continues. “But then Jim came along, and it just felt perfect, you know? It was the first time I actually wanted to go out with someone. So that must mean something, I guess.”

Perfect.

Pam feels herself nodding, but every word out of Karen’s mouth jabs at her like a needle. She wants to kick herself thinking about the domino effect of her choices. How saying no to Jim somehow led them to this point, creating the perfect timing for him to meet the perfect woman who isn't her. 

Just as she wonders how quickly they can stop discussing this topic, the bathroom door opens and Stanley emerges, first glancing their way, then ignoring them entirely to go back out into the bullpen.

“So... how’s the new apartment?” Pam asks, using the fortuitous interruption to change the subject. 

“It’s good,” Karen nods. “It’s a little more than I should probably be paying, but I found some pretty cheap furniture.”

“Oh, me too!” Pam says, clinging to this crumb of non-Jim commonality like a starved church mouse. “I moved into a new place a few months ago and I swear it looks like the IKEA catalog.”

“Right?” Karen asks, smiling.

“Although I've spent pretty much all of my free time putting together furniture. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have a social life at the moment.” 

Living on her own has been really nice, but there are moments when she misses Roy, wishes she had a guy around to take care of the stuff she doesn’t want to do. At the same time, she feels an odd sense of victory whenever she looks at the furniture in her apartment. If that’s the trade-off, she’ll gladly take it.

“Jim is terrible at putting together furniture from IKEA,” Karen remarks.

Pam has to bite her tongue from commenting that she already knows how terrible Jim is at putting together furniture from IKEA.

“Well, men are pretty useless sometimes,” she says instead with a playful smirk. “My ex was good at furniture-building, but couldn’t boil a pot of water, for example.”

Karen smiles. “Jim can’t cook either. Not a thing. Remind me again why I’m dating him?” 

They laugh, and while she knows Karen is teasing, she also knows this to be false. Jim makes a mean grilled cheese, and with a microwave to boot. She wonders what it means that he’s obviously never made one for Karen.

Or maybe he has. Maybe she’s just not as impressed as Pam had been.

They chat for a few more minutes, as long as Pam can reasonably withstand being in the presence of the woman who apparently stepped in at the perfect moment to make Jim forget all about her. She takes the last bite of her turkey sandwich and makes her exit with as much grace as possible.

When Jim does eventually arrive at the office, he gives her a friendly wave, and once again she feels that stab of regret that she’d ever taken his interactions with her for granted. More than anything else, it’s been incredibly lonely at work as of late with no one to really talk to. She isn't exactly sure what she's waiting for, but she can only hope she doesn’t feel this way for too much longer.

The loneliness continues into the next day, when all of the sales people leave on their sales calls. With no one around, there are so few distractions that she finds herself unable to concentrate on anything but Jim again: Jim. Jim and Karen. Karen and Jim. Karen’s watch. Jim attempting to put together furniture for Karen while she pokes fun at him, then the two of them probably rolling around on the floor, laughing together.

God. Stop it.

She goes onto her computer, in need of some mindless distraction, anything to get her thoughts off this and onto something else. For one rare, solitary moment she wishes Michael was around.

She scrolls through entertainment news websites, peruses her neglected Myspace page. She plays Solitaire for a while and checks her email. But then, completely unexpectedly, she receives a phone call informing her that the art contest she’d entered on a whim last week wasn’t for naught: she’d won. 

I won.

It’s been so long since she’s felt like a winner in any respect. Maybe it’s silly and unimportant, maybe it’s just a bunch of sixth graders choosing her instead of Jim, but… she won. 

She looks excitedly around the bullpen for someone to share her victory with, but most everyone is gone. Kevin is a no-go. Her interaction with Angela ends so poorly it erases any good feelings she might have initially had. And even though Delilah and the camera crew are excited for her, it isn’t what she’s looking for. Not quite.

But Jim. Jim. The Jim she used to know, the Jim she remembers... he would be happy for her. If she tells him of her triumph, would it be enough to get through to him, even for a moment?

Karen and Phyllis return first from their sales call, and as Karen passes by reception she gives Pam a very odd look. Pam wonders why, but then realizes a bit too late that she was probably staring at Karen’s overly teased hair and ridiculous makeup; lost in a memory of herself and Penny scrounging up every last dollar of their allowances to get Glamour Shots at the mall. 

Soon enough Jim returns as well, and he grins at her as he hangs up his coat. There's a small flutter deep in her belly and it feels like a sign — just a tiny one — that her old Jim might be in there somewhere today.

She sees Karen stand up and begin to approach reception with purpose, Jim turning to look at his girlfriend's new makeover with the same amount of incredulity Pam had. They turn to go for coffee, and just as Pam resigns herself to keeping her exciting news to herself, Jim turns to her.

“Beesly? Coffee?”

It’s the Beesly that does it. It’s a sign, it must be. 

She declines the coffee, but seizes her chance. “Hey, Jim... I won an art contest,” she tells him a little hesitantly. 

She isn’t sure what to expect, but his reaction is so immediate, so pure and genuine, she’s relieved, if only for this moment. He can’t seem to control the enormous grin that breaks out across his face and he gives her a high five, just the way he used to. Even though Karen is rushing him out the door, he asks Pam to show him the winning art piece when he gets back. He’s happy for her, genuinely happy, and his happiness is contagious. 

When the door closes behind him she can’t help but throw Delilah a satisfied grin over her shoulder, which the producer returns, and it's clear to her now what she was after. Seeing Jim smile at her is even better than winning the contest in the first place.

This is what she wanted. He gave her exactly what she wanted. That old Jim, when he shows up, can always be depended upon.

***

“Dunder Mifflin.”

“Uh… hey,” comes a familiar voice on the line. It’s the same one she’s been hearing in her mind for months, only now it’s real and in her ear.

“...Oh my god.”  

She’s been waiting for weeks to talk to Jim again, actually speak to him. It’s hard to believe it’s even happening. Her blood pressure instantly rises, she feels warm all over. She’s unable to hide her lack of preparedness for such a momentous event. 

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” she replies. 

“Sorry, I forgot Kevin's extension,” he explains quickly, as if he needs some kind of excuse to converse with her. “It's a fantasy football thing… and I was just going to go through the system cause I didn't think you'd be there.” She doesn't know what to say. Does he mean he was actively avoiding her? “Why… are you still there?” 

“I had to work late,” she tells him. “Jan's making me keep a log of everything Michael does all day.”

“Wow,” he says, and she can see it in her mind: that enormous smile she adores so much spreading across his face like a flower unfurling beneath the sun’s glare. It’s almost as good as the real thing. 

Almost. 

“Do… you think you could send me a copy of that?” 

“Yeah, totally,” she says, and for just a second everything feels so comfortable, the way it did before last May. Before The Kiss. 

“So…” 

“So…” 

“Do you…” 

“Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.”

They’re clearly out of sync but she tries to brush past it. They’re talking, and that’s what’s important. She honestly wasn’t sure if it would ever happen again at all.

“Uh, no, I... everything's pretty much the same here,” she manages, answering a question he hadn’t asked.

“Oh, good.”

“A little different.” 

She’s minimizing the truth, but her meaning is clear. It’s very different without him here. 

“What time is it there?” she asks. It sounds like something someone says when they have nothing else to say. Or maybe when they’re avoiding saying something they should. He seems to know this too because he pauses. 

“What time is it here? Um, we're in the same time zone,” he chuckles gently.

“Oh, yeah. Right.” She laughs a little.

“How far away did you think we were?” 

“I don't know. It felt far.” 

He isn’t here, that’s all she knows. He may as well be on the moon.

He’s quiet for a moment, but then says, “yeah.” She loves it when they seem to understand each other without having to say anything. She wishes they could do that all the time.

They sit with the silence for a few seconds, and it’s difficult to comprehend why, but it feels okay. Safe, even. As if his mere proximity, even over the wire, soothes her. Babysitting Michael all day had been tedious without Jim there to bring some levity.

“So… how’s Stamford?” she asks.

“It’s okay, I guess. Imagine Scranton, but… if it were efficient.” 

She laughs, and he laughs, and for the next several minutes it feels the same way it always did: their familiar back and forth, this dance they do, two-stepping around the very large elephant in the room. It’s always there and she knows it, but now it’s so large it fills every possible empty space, squeezing against them more tightly than ever. 

Still, they dance.

She tells him about Phyllis’s engagement, about Oscar being forced to come out to the office and his subsequent sabbatical. Jim listens to the tale of Michael’s kiss heard round the office with a barely restrained combination of cringe and delight. He tells her he’s pretty convinced Dwight had a prostitute sent up to his hotel room at the paper conference in Philadelphia and she refrains from dropping the bomb that it was most likely just Angela. 

At one point she pulls her chair out and sits, not really aware that she’s made herself comfortable. While she’s disappointed they aren’t discussing the one thing they should be, her insides are on fire from conversing with him at all, just from hearing his voice again.

Jim doesn’t tell her too much about the Stamford branch, which she wonders about, but he does mention his new apartment full of half-assembled IKEA furniture.

“I don’t have a single flat surface that isn’t a countertop,” he laments. “I’m not sure where I went wrong but those directions are impossible.”

She smiles, wondering if there had been a night when they’d been sitting alone in their respective apartments 150 miles away from each other at the very same time, inserting bolt A into slot C with varying degrees of difficulty.

“I suppose you have to be sort of visually-minded to do it,” she muses.

“That must be the reason I suck at it and you’re a pro.”

She smiles at his easy compliment. Jim always did have a way of making her believe he really means the things he says.

“So… what else is new?” he asks. “Are you doing anything with that, by the way? I mean… the art stuff?”

A rush of excitement runs through her at his interest in that particular aspect of her life. “Yes, actually, I started taking classes at night. It’s been pretty cool.”

“That’s awesome,” he says, and again, he sounds like he genuinely means it. 

“It’s been easier now, you know. Since… it’s just me.”

It’s the first mention of her single status all evening. He doesn’t respond right away, and she inhales a bit in anxious impatience. The back of her neck prickles with gooseflesh.

Ask me, she silently pleads. Ask me why I called off the wedding.

But “I’m really glad to hear that, Pam,” is all he says. 

She doesn’t know if he’s really glad to hear she’s taking art classes or really glad to hear she’s single and she’ll probably never know because she’s too fucking scared to ask him. He knows it too, he knows it. If there’s a path forward for them, he will not take the first step. While she desperately wants him to, she knows it has to be her turn.

But “Yeah, me too,” is all she says.

She doesn’t know what else to say so she waits, absently reaching over to touch the turquoise teapot he’d given her as a Christmas present. It still sits on her desk, a constant reminder of the feelings she’d so handily squashed last May. 

She wants to just tell him, to say what’s on her mind, what’s been on her mind since he left. It's the only thing she wants him to know.

I miss you. 

But she can’t. Her mouth won’t form the words. And even if she could say it, what would it matter anyway? He’s so far away now, it feels beyond her reach to get him back.

She's frustrated by this feeling of uselessness. She rests her fingers against the curve of the teapot, stroking the smooth porcelain with an affectionate reverence. Perhaps if she wishes hard enough, the piece of pottery could act as a sort of talisman; imbue her with some magical power that could correct every mistake she’d made, somehow arm her for the reckoning she hopes awaits them someday.

***

He hasn’t talked to her in so long. He wasn’t ready for this. And he can feel the stretch and pull of those long weeks now, as if the cadence of her voice alone has the power to turn back the clock, to erase all the time he spent trying so hard to get over her. He senses her everywhere: next to him, in his ear, making the tiny hairs stand up on the back of his neck. A Pam specter that’s been haunting his memory, now very present and oh so real.

He wants to hate the way it makes him feel but he doesn’t. 

God help him, he doesn’t. 

They make mindless small talk at first, which is exactly what they need to do to bridge so many days filled with nothing at all. And for a while, it feels okay. But at one point when they’re talking about her art classes, the casual conversation takes a turn. She mentions the fact that she’s living alone; throws it out there like chum to a hungry shark. 

He isn’t sure if she’s baiting him or if she’d simply assumed he already knew. He wants to ask. He wants to know everything; what happened, why she called off her wedding, all of it. But he will not ask. He’s done taking risks with Pam. As much as he’s been trying to convince himself otherwise over the past few weeks, he’s still not over her, and he knew that for certain the moment she picked up the phone and uttered the words “Dunder Mifflin.” If there’s going to be any revisiting of that stolen moment on casino night, he will not be the one to initiate.

“I’m really glad to hear that, Pam,” he says. It’s the safe answer.

It isn’t just one thing he means. He’s glad she’s taking art classes. He’s glad she broke up with Roy, even though it hadn’t led her back to him. He’s glad she doesn’t have someone holding her back anymore: dead weight in a warehouse jumpsuit callously crushing her dreams. 

He’s glad to hear her voice, period. 

“Yeah, me too,” she says. 

She, on the other hand, probably just means the art classes. But he isn’t sure about anything when it comes to Pam anymore.

“I have a question for you,” he then says, becoming so adept at changing the subject tonight he probably deserves a medal. “How many words per minute does the average person type?”

“I type ninety.”

“Shut up. Mavis Beacon doesn’t even type ninety.”

“It’s true!” She’s smiling, he can tell. He hasn’t pictured it in a while but he’s thinking about her smile now and feels that familiar pang he’s been wishing away for weeks. Still, as much as he yearns for her, as much as he desires something more, he truly just misses this: just talking to Pam, his best friend.

She’s still his friend, at least. That doesn’t seem to have changed one bit. 

“Okay, I said average.”

“Seventy? How many do you type?”

He scoffs. “Forget it, I was just about to brag. Forget it.”

“Come on, tell me.”

“No.”

“You have to tell me now!”

“Sixty-five.”

She giggles, and he sighs heavily. “Okay, no need to laugh.”

“No, it’s… that’s respectable.”

“Respectable?”

“What are you typing so slowly, anyway?" she asks. "Is it a novel? A screenplay? Are we due for another table read?”

He smiles, and his cheeks hurt. He supposes that's what happens to muscles you don't really use anymore. 

“Yeah, I’m working on a sequel to Threat Level Midnight. Don’t tell Michael I’m infringing on his intellectual property.”

“Oh my god!” she says excitedly. “He’s still filming that, you know.”

“Really?” he asks. Michael had recruited everyone in the office to help with his pet project. Jim had no objections to being cast as Golden Face, since they were doing it on company time anyway. Most of his scenes were with Pam, who played one of his hostages, and she even had to kiss him on the cheek, so he could hardly complain. Still, he always wondered if that footage would ever see the light of day.

“I don’t think he’ll ever be finished,” Pam giggles. “Michael doesn’t really know the meaning of ‘less is more.’”

“Is Dwight still his assistant director?”

“You mean assistant to the director.”

He grins. “Of course.”

“Like he’d give that job up.”

“Did you know that Assistant Regional Manager is a real job here?” he then says.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I guess when you actually perform work in that role, it sort of manifests.”

“Like Santa’s elf at Michael’s Christmas parties,” she giggles.

“Exactly. How is Dwight doing, anyway?” 

“The same,” she says. “I thought he might ease up without you around but that hasn’t been the case.”

“Sorry about that.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s giving me a challenge, you know? What would Jim do?”

He laughs. “Nice. I’ll have to send you one of those rubber bracelets.”

“No need,” she replies. “I’ll just steal the one on Angela’s desk. Same initials.”

They share another laugh, and it’s music to his ears. He doesn’t know when it happened, but he’s kicked his feet up onto the desk.

“Well, it’s nice to know you’re there to pick up the slack.”

“I’m doing my best,” she says. “How about you? Any new victims over there?”

He chuckles to himself. “Not really. Well, there’s this one guy here, but it sort of went…  awry.”

“Oh yeah? What did you do?”

“It was nothing, just… put his calculator in Jello.”

“Very original,” she says, her sarcasm evident. “It's nice to see you’re branching out.”

“What can I say? I dusted off an oldie. Had to test the waters.”

“So, what happened?”

Jim looks at his feet. “He sort of… kicked a trash can. Screamed a little. Said he was gonna lose his frickin’ mind.”

“That’s… intense.” 

“Yeah, well, suffice it to say there hasn’t been a whole lot of pranking since then. It’s sort of a different vibe here anyway.”

They keep talking for what feels like hours, about all of the things that don’t matter and none of the things that do. Just like old times, he thinks.

Eventually, the conversation steers back around to her new apartment. It feels nice being invited into her personal space. 

“…I have one bedroom, one bathroom, and a closet,” she explains. 

“And how many kitchens?”

“I have one kitchen.” 

“Wow, you got totally taken for a ride, Beesly!” he laughs, officially never wanting this phone call to end. “Most apartments these days have like three.”

“Three kitchens?”

“Yes! How are you going to cook every meal of the day in one kitchen?”

It’s nonsense and they both know it, but this is one of the things he’s always loved most about Pam: their shared ability to turn the mundane into something wonderful. It seems like whenever he’s with her, everything feels extraordinary. 

Just then, he hears her mumble something, but can’t make out the words.

“Pam?” No answer. “Pam?” He looks down at his phone, worried maybe the line went dead or something. But then he hears her again.

“Um. Okay, bye,” she says rather abruptly. 

He’s confused for a moment; he thought they’d been having a pretty good time. He thought they felt like themselves again. Why is she hanging up already? 

He looks at the clock: it’s 7:04. They’ve been talking for almost two hours. 

“Oh, yeah, I should- I should probably go too,” he says as nonchalantly as possible. As if he has anything to go home to.

Pam suddenly sounds like she’s backtracking her goodbye. “No, I was, um... you have to go?” 

The energy between them is deflating faster than Dwight’s old exercise ball. “Yeah, uh, well.”

“No, I should probably go too,” she says.

“Okay.”

It’s dumb, but letting her go is making his heart ache all over again. She’s suddenly going to be gone and he has no idea if or when he’ll ever get to talk to her again.

“Bye Pam,” he says. It feels so final.

“Bye Jim,” she replies.

And that’s that. He hangs up the phone, staring at it. He isn’t really sure what to think. For the past couple of weeks he really thought he’d been making progress, that he was moving on. Her persistent presence in his mind was starting to fade, even if only a little bit.

But tonight that changed. The office is quiet, but her specter remains. Even though they talked about nothing, just hearing her voice on the other end of the line was enough. 

And maybe that’s a really bad sign.

***

He’s been trying to quit, honestly he has. But he's starting to realize the pranking must be an addiction, promotion or no promotion. 

He could blame Andy for being so goddamn irritating. He could blame Ryan for being a no-nonsense bore. He could even blame Karen for refusing to participate. But none of those are the real reason for the prank, because the reason is the same as it’s always been: it’s a surefire way to get Pam to smile. That smile. Her smile is like oxygen; when he sees it he suddenly remembers how to breathe properly. 

His initial response when he’d returned to Scranton had been to ease up on the pranking with Pam, because he knows exactly how it will go: just like a drug, it’s a hit, a rush, and no matter how amazing it feels while he’s doing it, he’s well aware of how low he’ll feel after it’s over. But Pam’s smile makes him feel so good that, when it’s happening, he forgets about everything else. 

An addiction, the pranks. It has to be.

After he’d admitted to Karen over coffee that he and Pam have a history, he was surprisingly relieved. The secret had been almost as burdensome as the feelings themselves, and even though Karen still hasn’t gotten the full story, it was a huge load off to relinquish at least one of those burdens.

Do you want to pull a prank on Andy?

His question to Pam is loaded. He’s giving in, letting himself fall back into his old patterns. But the craziest part of it all is how she doesn’t miss a beat. For her, it’s back to business as usual. He doesn’t have to explain to her what he needs when he places Andy’s cell phone on her desk, she already knows what he wants. She figures out his number discreetly behind her desk, IMs it to Jim immediately, and they’re off to the races.

Just like before.

He has yet to develop anything approaching this with Karen, this unspoken understanding, this dance they do. He’s been cultivating it with Pam for so long he hadn’t even properly appreciated how practiced their steps are.

The prank goes smoothly until it doesn’t. Smoothly, in that he’s treated to Pam’s delighted grin more often in a couple hours than he has since he’s been back, but not so smoothly in that Andy ends up punching a hole in the wall of the office. 

Later, Pam stands near the scene of the crime, looking at the wall curiously, a margarita in hand. 

“Sombrero?” Jim asks as he sidles next to her wearing one of the ridiculously-sized hats himself. He holds it up, raising an eyebrow.

She grins indulgently and leans towards him a bit, allowing him to place it on her head. He can’t help but reach out to instinctively tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, but then jerks his hand away like he’s touched a hot stove. Pam doesn’t seem to notice, instead turning to face the tell-tale cavity on the wall again. They stand in a comfortable silence, the murmurs of the office and cheerful mariachi music bouncing all around them.

“So let me guess,” she says. “Andy was the trash can kicker?”

He’s surprised she remembers something they discussed months ago, but pleased nonetheless. “Oh. Um…” He doesn’t answer right away. As amusing as the incident was, there’s obviously an element of seriousness he can’t help but feel responsible for.

“Jim,” she says in a playfully accusing tone of voice.

He grimaces, which is all the reply she needs.

“I knew it,” she says. 

“What can I say? Old habits die hard.”

“You know, they say doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity,” she points out.

“What are you implying, Beesly?” 

She shrugs, giving him a smile. “I’m implying that we have enough crazy in this office, Jim. Please don’t leave me here all by myself.”

“I’m not sure what you’re so worried about,” he smirks. “You’ll always have Creed.”

She smiles widely, the kind that extends all the way to her eyes. Suddenly every bit of Andy’s bullshit today was totally worth it.

“This is nice,” she then says quietly.

“What is?”

She shrugs. “I mean, I know the outcome was a little much but… it was fun, you know?”

He nods. “Yeah. It was.”

She looks up at him with the same eyes he remembers from last year as they stood on the deck of the booze cruise: those beautiful eyes that always seem to search his for some answer to a question he hadn’t asked. Sometimes he feels like if he just gazes into them long enough he can figure out what’s going on inside her mind.

The moment passes, however, and they both turn to look back at the wall.

“My god,” he mutters, inspecting it. “That’s half-inch drywall.”

“I think we broke his brain,” Pam says, turning to look at him with an air of solemnity. They then burst into laughter.

He puts on his best Andy impression. “It’s not frickin’ funny!” 

They continue laughing together, because even things that are somewhat tragic have a way of circling back to comical around this place. And perhaps laughing with Pam about this ordeal is what seals his fate, because he hasn’t felt this good in months. He can’t deny it.

Maybe Pam is right: he does keep doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. Maybe he is insane. And when she walks away and he’s left by himself again, exactly as he’d anticipated, the high wears off and he feels like absolute shit.

I think we broke his brain.

It’s the we that did it: the we that makes him feel like he’s done something wrong, that he’s dug himself deeper than ever before.

That he’s right back where he started.

To make matters worse, he turns to see Karen staring at him, having clearly witnessed their exchange. He isn’t sure how much she saw, but it probably doesn’t matter. Pam is no longer his secret, and if he thought he could hide his feelings before, he has no chance of it anymore.

He trudges into the mercifully empty conference room with his margarita and waits for the inevitable. Karen will confront him, it’s the one thing he knows for sure about her. She will ask. And he doesn’t know what he will say.

Eventually she comes into the conference room and sits down next to him quietly. He can feel the anxious energy radiating off her and he’s never cheated on anyone in his life but this must be exactly what it feels like.

She lets out a heavy sigh and asks him the one question he’s known the answer to for months, the only genuine constant in his life: 

“Do you still have feelings for her?” 

He isn’t ready to admit it aloud, even to himself. But he won’t lie to Karen again, not after what happened  today. Not after feeling that rush again.

“Yes,” he says, so softly he can barely hear it. He can’t look her in the eye. And yet, with the single word, he can feel his final burden lifting up off his shoulders.

As much as he doesn’t want to have this conversation, he admires Karen's straightforwardness. It’s not something he’s used to. But it doesn’t seem as if there will be any conversation at all. He sees her nod vaguely out of the corner of his eye, and she gets up to leave the conference room. La Cucaracha rings in his ears pervasively, almost violently. He sits still, alone, and his mind reels. 

It was the prank that started all of this, and he wants to blame it for his current situation. But he knows the truth; deep down he’s always known. The pranks aren’t his addiction, they’re just his enabler. 

His real addiction is Pam. 

He’s pretty damn sure Karen has just dumped him. 

Even though the reason he’d started dating her in the first place was to try to get over Pam, he really did want this relationship to work out. But he doesn’t know what the right thing to do is anymore. His brilliant plan didn’t work. He’s not over Pam.

And now Karen knows it. 

He should be sad, or upset, or feel some kind of real loss. But now that it’s over between them he instead feels an unanticipated sense of relief; he doesn’t have to lie to her anymore, he doesn’t have to pretend. 

Karen will be upset, though. She’ll feel betrayed, and she wouldn’t be wrong. She’ll probably hate him, and he’ll probably deserve it. He can’t even blame her. He’s not the biggest fan of himself right now. 

After the way she’d left the conference room earlier without a word, he expects her to feel all of these things, to think all of these things. Maybe to never speak to him again. What he does not expect is to find her sitting outside his building when he gets home from work. 

Karen looks over at him from her perch on his front steps as he approaches, her purse slung across her lap, her eyes red and puffy. He hates that this is all his fault; that because of his actions, she’s crying. That she’s become collateral damage of something that has nothing to do with her, something he should have been able to resolve on his own months ago. 

“Hey,” he says, which feels dumb, but he doesn’t know what else to say.

She sniffles a bit, but he knows her pretty well by now. She smoothly shifts into her game face. 

“We need to talk,” she says.

He blinks. “You mean talk, as in… break up?” 

She looks at him, surprised. Hurt, even. “Is that what you want? You want to break up?”

He doesn’t even know what he wants anymore. “I guess... I just figured this was over.”

She stands up. “I want to figure out a way to move past all this. Don’t you?”

He wants to. God, he wants more than anything to move past all this. But how? Is it fair to Karen to make her wait in the wings while he wills his feelings for Pam to just… disappear?

“I’m not sure what to say,” he says honestly.

“I want you to tell me what’s going on, Jim,” she continues. She doesn't use his first name like this, typically. It's weird. “Between you and her. If we want to make this work, you need to be honest with me.”

He doesn’t want to hurt her, that’s the last thing he wants to do. He doesn’t want to torch this relationship, either. But everything feels so hopeless right now. Dating Karen is like singing a song he doesn’t know; he wants it to sound right, he just can’t find the melody.

Karen watches him closely and he tries to look ahead, tries to look past a point where he can see this actually working, the way Karen wants it to work. He wasn’t lying when he’d talked to Michael about rebounds at the Christmas party. That’s what this is, it’s what it’s always been, and he was the one who made the mistake of fooling himself into believing it might shape up differently. Back in Stamford, when he was far away from Pam, he felt like things were actually getting better. But here in Scranton, she’s no longer just a ghost. She’s real again, and it seems like everything is only getting worse.

It doesn’t matter how much he likes Karen: she isn’t Pam. But she’s holding onto this relationship so tightly it feels like she’s pulling it out of his own grasp, out of his control.

Did he ever have control?

“I really want to try,” Karen says. “Don’t you?”

She looks up at him with hope in her eyes that’s painfully familiar. He thinks of himself last May, hearing Pam tell him no, and just wishing so hard she’d change her mind. That she’d give him a chance.

Maybe he should give this a chance, a real chance. He owes it to both of them to try. Doesn’t he?

He reaches out and puts his hand on her shoulder, gives it a squeeze, forcing a smile.

“Yes, I do.”

She smiles tightly and nods. He can see relief cross her features but she hasn’t let her walls back down quite yet. 

Jim unlocks his front door and lets her in, throws his jacket over the back of the couch, drops his messenger bag onto the floor. She walks around to the other side of his coffee table, arms crossed. He remains behind the couch like it’s some kind of protective force field, arms at his sides.

“So... what exactly do you want to know?” 

“I want to know what happened here before you left Scranton,” she says. “Everything. How you left things with her. Because I think I deserve to know exactly what I’m walking into every day. You owe me that, at least.”

He takes a deep breath. She’s absolutely right, but he doesn’t even know where to start. His relationship with Pam can’t be wrapped up into a pretty little anecdotal package that ended with a neatly tied bow. And he certainly doesn’t want to tell Karen everything that happened, particularly what happened last May. It still feels sacred, something that’s his and hers alone. Sharing it with Karen feels like sacrilege.

“She was with someone else,” he says. “You know that guy Roy? Works in the warehouse?”

He omits the information that they’d been engaged. Revealing she’d canceled her wedding after he left might indicate this situation has a level of seriousness even he can’t comprehend. 

Karen looks surprised. “Wait, what? When was this?”

He sighs. “Right before I transferred. I was already all set to leave. We were at a party, you know, and basically, I told her I…” — he downgrades the truth, again — “...had a crush on her, and she just…” he scrambles for what to say. Does he tell her they kissed? That Pam kissed him back?

That at no point in this story does the part where he got over her ever take place?

“Well… we kissed.”

Karen flinches. “You kissed Pam?”

He nods.

“Like, a kiss kiss?”

“Yeah, but that was it.”

That was it.

She looks confused. “But… you told me she didn’t feel the same way.”

“She didn’t,” he says. It’s the one thing he’s certain of. “She doesn’t.”

Karen looks skeptical. He knows what she’s thinking, because it’s the same thing he’s been thinking for months: he and Pam kissed. It had been a two-way street, if only for just those few seconds. He doesn’t know exactly how to tell her that what he’d felt from Pam while he kissed her and what she’d told him after it happened was the most intense emotional whiplash he’d ever experienced in his life. That the incongruity of her actions and words still haunt him to this day. So he leaves that part out.

“So… you made a move on her while she was with someone else and she told you no? That’s not really what you said before.”

He pauses, considering. It’s sort of the truth, but what makes it a lie is still burned into his brain: that reciprocity. Her hand on his chest, on the back of his neck, the way her lips moved against his: tentatively at first, yes, but then very deliberately. She hadn’t said no, at least not right away.

“It was just a kiss.” 

Just a kiss. And on the long list of diversions and dodges and omissions, it’s the biggest lie he’s told his girlfriend thus far.

Karen looks at him dubiously, like she's searching his face for the lie again. He’s been lying to her since the day he met her, of course: by presenting himself as available, as someone dateable, someone in good working order. But the other day in the coffee shop was the first time she’d actually caught him in one. The fact that she’s starting to hone this particular skill makes him uncomfortable.

He tries to read her expression. Is she buying any of this? Part of him hopes she does, part of him hopes she doesn’t. The biggest part of him wishes he’d never gone out with her in the first place.

“Karen-”

“I feel so stupid,” she huffs, sitting down on the edge of the coffee table, her back slightly to him. “I told her things about us. Personal stuff. And she never said a word about any of this.”

He isn’t necessarily surprised that Pam hadn’t mentioned any of this to Karen. Why would she? But he can’t help feeling a tiny thrill inside that perhaps that moment, that kiss, was just as sacred to Pam as it is to him. Then he immediately chastises himself for even entertaining such a notion, for continuing to allow these tiny slivers of hope to weave their way into his mind.

Karen twists her neck around to look at him. “I told her at the Christmas party she should go out with Roy, and do you know what she said about that stuff you just told me? Nothing.”

He shrugs. “I guess it’s just… a little awkward for her. Or maybe she just doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal. I don’t know.”

“Well, you should have told me.”

He nods. She’s right. He’s the one who encouraged her to follow him to Scranton. He’s the one who told her just the other day that he’s glad she’s here. He’s the one who had decided to jump into this relationship with her when he was nowhere near ready. 

“You’re right, I should have told you. I guess, at the time, I just thought maybe… you’d be weird about it. Since we all work together.”

She looks contemplative, and he thinks of what she’d asked him today, the way she’d just come out and said what was on her mind. He admires that part of Karen a lot, probably more than anything else.

Do you still have feelings for her?

He’s tried so hard for months to forget all of this, all of Pam. Hindsight is twenty-twenty and coming back to Scranton, directly into this entanglement between the three of them, was probably not the best way to do that. But all it took was one good prank, one good laugh for him to realize the truth: that today is the first time he’s really felt like himself in months. And he liked it.

Yes, he still has feelings for Pam. Yes, he’s still in love with her. 

Yes, he never stopped loving her.

He’s angry now, but not at Karen. And not at Pam, either. He can’t be mad at Pam for any of it. It’s not her fault he chose to throw himself back into a situation he knew would be trouble. 

And it’s not her fault she doesn’t love him back.

Karen eyes him closely, as if she sees right through him. Then she asks him the question he dreads most of all. 

“Do you want to be with me, Jim? Really?”

He could say no. He could end this right now. But then where would he be? He’d be in the exact same place he was eight months ago: stuck at the same job, pining after the same woman, with absolutely nothing to show for it. 

Karen’s been so up front about this, so honest. So magnanimous about his embarrassing admission, and she wants to be with him so much she’s willing to try and look past it. She’s making an active effort. He should, too. Doesn’t he deserve a fresh start?

He wants to get over Pam. He wants to, badly. The only thing he wants more is to be with her, and that isn’t going to happen.

“Yes,” he tells Karen soberly, and he truly believes he’s telling her the truth. “I really do.” 

She nods, tears welling in her eyes, and moves over to the couch, climbing onto it, facing him, taking his hand over the back of the headrest. 

“Then I think it’s time we really opened up to each other,” she says. “Lay everything on the table, and see where this can go. Okay?”

“Okay,” he says, and he puts his arms around her, feeling immense relief. He isn’t sure if the source of the relief is Karen not being mad at him anymore, or if it’s just that he doesn’t have to look her in the eyes anymore. But the feel of her arms around him right now is more welcome than he would have even imagined an hour ago.

“We’re gonna be okay,” she says into his ear. He wants to believe her.

He considers telling Karen “I love you.” He has a sneaking suspicion it’s what she wants to hear, what she needs to hear to trust him again. 

But he doesn’t love her, not yet. And he will not lie to her about that.

Maybe he’s been an asshole, but he isn’t going to be that kind of asshole. 

***

Jim awakens groggy, his head pounding. He doesn’t remember the last time he’d had so much alcohol. He isn’t much of a drinker anyway, and he’s surprised he’d let the night get away from him like that.

Water. He needs water. 

He makes his way to the kitchen, noticing his bicycle is parked in his living room. It’s not where he usually keeps it, but he guesses that makes sense in this kind of situation. 

Bits and pieces of the night before come back to him as he puts his hands to both temples. He remembers singing Indigo Girls with Andy most of all, because as drunk as he’d been, the irony of singing about how close he was to fine wasn’t lost on him. 

He then remembers passing out, climbing into Karen’s car, laying down on the backseat, passing out again, then not much after that. Clearly he’d arrived home intact and somehow made it to his bedroom, and he suspects she’s to thank for that.

He grabs a glass from his kitchen cabinet and fills it to the brim, gulps down the entire thing. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a note on the counter.

Morning, Halpert. Drink lots of water. And maybe stay 

off the bike for a while. See you Monday. :)

He smiles, warmed by her concern for him. He has a friend now, an actual friend, and for the first time since he’s arrived in Stamford he feels like he can properly acknowledge that.

He wants to text her a thank you, just to let her know he’s grateful for everything she’d done, and to reassure her he’s feeling better. He instinctively pats his pants pockets, the ones he’d worn last night, realizing he hadn’t taken them off, but can’t find his phone. For a moment he panics, then realizes he probably put it in his jacket pocket. Looking around, he isn’t sure where the jacket is, then he sees it thrown over the back of his couch. 

He reaches into the pocket, pulls out his phone, and sees something he absolutely does not expect.

Message received: Beesly

Michael just proposed to his girlfriend in front of an entire auditorium of strangers. (Spoiler alert: she said no.)

He blinks, stunned. It’s the first text message Pam has sent him since he left, and his heart reacts instantly, practically falling into his stomach. 

It had taken weeks for him to text enough people to bump her name down low enough to where he didn’t have to see it on the home screen every time he flipped open his phone. Now, he’s annoyed that he’s going to have to reach out to people he doesn’t want to talk to in order to get it off the screen again. 

He hasn’t been able to erase her number, can’t bring himself to do it. He’d been hoping she would contact him for weeks and as every day passed with no indication she was even interested in talking to him again — her best friend — he could physically feel his heart hardening. When he’d learned she’d called off her wedding and still no call came, it had practically turned to stone.

The other night when they’d finally spoken on the phone, all of that changed.

He looks at the text again, reads it a few times. She’d sent it last night. He can practically hear it in her voice, which makes him ache, since it’s the way she should be telling him this bit of gossip. In person. In the kitchen, or the break room, or maybe the parking lot.

God, that fucking parking lot.

He doesn’t want to do it, really, but the temptation is too great not to scroll up and read some of her older messages. 

Message received: Beesly

Nice job. Impressive as usual. 

The message was sent in May, of course. He searches his memory for context and remembers: she’d sent this one right after their impromptu mind-control prank on Dwight. 

He scrolls up a bit more.

Message received: Beesly

Roxanne is playing in the grocery store, and I started humming along. Thinking I might have to give Scrantonicity a chance after all.

Message received: Beesly

They’re having a 2 for 1 on fabric softener, you good? ;-)

Unable to help himself from cracking a smile, he closes the phone and puts it back into his pocket, unsure of what to do next. He wants to text her back more than anything, but he also knows doing so would be taking a step backwards, not forwards.

She just wants to be his friend, of course. She isn’t interested in more. And if that’s the case, can he be happy with just Pam’s friendship? Can he have her back in his life this way? Just a tiny digital presence, a bunch of ones and zeroes that will never amount to anything real? Could he get used to living inside that friendship without a shred of hope?

And if any of this is possible, is he even ready for it?

As if compelled by a force stronger than his doubts, he takes the phone back out of his pocket, opens it, and reads Pam’s message again. 

It’s an odd comfort to know that she had a reason to text him, an excuse. This isn’t some kind of signal or proposition, as much as he’d like it to be. They are so far past that he can’t even see the possibility in the rearview anymore.

Maybe it’s safe to text her back. Maybe not texting her back would have more meaning than if he does. 

He starts composing a reply. He types it out, erases it, retypes it and edits it until he thinks he has something he’s happy with.

Wait, do you mean Carol the realtor?

His thumb hovers above the “send” button for a long time before he finally presses it. He tosses the phone down onto the coffee table like a loaded gun and stares at it, waiting. Within thirty seconds, she texts back.

Message received: Beesly

Yes!! It was so awkward, he was so upset. But I felt kind of bad for him.

He’s so shocked by her prompt reply, he doesn’t know what to say next. 

He completely understands why she’d texted him this particular bit of information about Michael. There was probably no one else who could understand the humor of it the way he could. But at the same time, there's something profoundly sad about Michael Scott's particular brand of self-sabotage, and while most people might brush it off as absurd or unworthy of compassion, he and Pam -- together -- always seemed to just sort of get it.

He looks at the clock: it’s 7:30. He tries not to imagine her laying in bed, alone, holding her phone, waiting for his response, but surely that’s exactly where she is, what she’s doing. He can’t delay too long, or she’ll think he’s deliberately avoiding her.

He composes another message, double checks it, then hits “send.”

Sounds very… Michael.

Immediately:

Message received: Beesly

It really was. I think you would have enjoyed it.

He waits for at least two minutes, then realizes that her last message hadn’t really left the door open for either of them to say anything further. This could very well be the end of it. He’s relieved and devastated all at once. But then the phone vibrates once again.

Message received: Beesly

Sorry we got cut off the other night, btw. Dwight took Ryan on a sales call together and when they got back Ryan looked like he’d really been put through the wringer. 

The relief wins out. This is okay, he thinks. We’re just chatting. What’s so wrong with that? He types his reply.

At least he didn’t end up dead in the woods somewhere.

He waits again, and is rewarded again.

Message received: Beesly

Well, now I don’t have to give you 30 bucks. ;-)

He grins, remembering a bet they’d made last year. Ryan was still a temp and Pam had insisted he’d leave Dunder Mifflin before becoming a salesman. Jim knew better.

There’s still time.

She doesn’t reply right away, and he doesn’t want to be the last one texting. So he sends another.

Maybe I should call Ryan and warn him about Dwight?

A minute or so passes, and he worries he’s pushed too far. Maybe she won’t respond again. But soon enough:

Message received: Beesly

I think it’s a little late for that, unfortunately. :-/

He can’t help but smile. He misses her so much, and talking to her again only reminds him exactly how much. He still aches for the “more” he’s been so accustomed to wanting, but if he can’t have that, maybe they can still be friendly, at least. And if he keeps her at an appropriate distance, maybe he can live with that.

He sends one last message, because this has been enough for today. It’s been just enough to convince him that he might actually be able to do this.

Gotta get ready for work. Bye

He considers adding a smiley face to the end of the message, but that’s something the old Jim would do. The Jim who was hopelessly, pathetically in love with her would do that. And he doesn’t want to be that Jim anymore.

He waits for a couple minutes, wishing he could just set the phone down and get ready for work without being on the edge of his seat. Finally, her last message comes through. 

Message received: Beesly

Talk to you later. 

Later. 

She’s left him an opening, she’s given him permission to talk to her again. When they’d spoken on the phone a few days ago it was wonderful, but completely unexpected. And it had ended rather abruptly. After so much time not knowing what was appropriate, not even knowing if she actually wanted to talk to him again at all, this seemingly insignificant “talk to you later” is a small morsel of hope he never thought he’d possess.

He sets the phone down to go get ready for work. His headache is inexplicably gone, and he suddenly feels better than he has in a long time. 

He gets dressed, not realizing he’s rolled his sleeves up to his elbows.

***

She isn’t sure what to make of his last text. 

Message received: Jim

Gotta get ready for work. Bye

He’s pulling away from her again, she can tell. He’d sounded so much like himself on the phone the other night she’d almost convinced herself everything might go back to the way it was before, that maybe there’s still hope for them. Maybe they could salvage this and start over.

Now, she isn’t so sure. 

She composes her goodbye, then looks at it. 

Talk to you later. I miss you.

Her thumb trembles above the “send” button. It shakes so violently that she decides it must mean this is a mistake. 

It’s definitely a mistake. She can’t be brave today.

She deletes the second part of the message. 

***

She’s dreaming about it again. The Kiss.

Last night she’d fallen asleep on her couch watching one of the Lord of the Rings movies, half paying attention, half thinking about her kiss with Jim. It’s been sort of her routine lately. She doesn’t remember the last time she made it through a movie without completely losing the plot halfway through. 

She’d absorbed enough, however, to make a strange comparison: that their kiss is perhaps her own personal One Ring; a treasure she carries with her day after day, and while it’s the most powerful thing she’s ever encountered, it weighs on her, drains her. Makes her weak. 

It’s painful, but she still clings to it, unable to relinquish the memory. Her precious. 

Maybe it’s dumb, but she can’t get it out of her head. Maybe she needs to talk to Dwight, the resident expert, about this. 

Maybe not.

In any event, the dreams have been coming to her more frequently lately. Their kiss starts out softly, gently, the way she remembers it really happening. She’d never been kissed like that in her life: like she was the only thing that mattered, like she was, in fact, precious to him. Only now can she really appreciate how difficult it must have been for Jim to do it at all, to make that forbidden move. How brave he had to be. How important this must have been to him.

How important she must have been to him.

Reality soon ends and melds into fantasy, what she now wishes she’d done instead. She pulls him in close, her fingers gripping the base of his skull, showing him with her body what she's been unable to articulate for years. The kiss goes on for an eternity, like a looping video in her mind: his hands, the same ones that would always slap her a high five in friendship and safety, now warm around her delicate waist. His lips, the same ones that could always elicit a laugh with a grin or a joke, now eliciting a hushed moan of pleasure. She could live and die in it: what might have been. 

Eventually, they pause to catch their breath. His eyes sparkle with utter amazement.

You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that, he says. 

Me too, she replies. It’s the last time she told Jim the truth. She’d wanted to kiss him for a long time, it was simply something she’d filed away years ago as off-limits. 

Tonight, in her dream, she will remedy that. 

I want to do it again, she says this time. I want to do it forever.

He enthusiastically complies, and her lips cling to his once again, feeling so right, so perfect. He breathes soft sighs of satisfaction as they kiss, the corners of his mouth curling up into a triumphant smile as he pulls her in even closer. There is no Roy, there is no messy moral dilemma here in her imagination.

I’m in love with you. 

He says it again, that phrase she’s been hearing over and over in her head, like one of those songs that burrows its way into your mind until it’s all you can think about. The melody is so familiar it’s soothing. Like any good earworm, however, she doesn’t know all the words, so her brain starts making them up, filling in the blanks. Here and now, it doesn’t matter what is right and what is wrong: this song – their song – is perfect.

I’m in love with you, too, she tells him at last, and he smiles in relief. 

I know you are, he replies. I always knew. I knew you could be brave, Pam.

Bravery. That’s exactly what this is, and just like the One Ring it makes her feel powerful, like she can do anything. Like she can leave the man she’s settled for to be with the man she knows she really wants. Like she can leap across an endless ravine, or climb an impossibly high mountain, or walk through fire. 

He lays her back onto his desk, scattering his binders and framed photos and everything else to the floor. It doesn’t matter that they’re in the middle of the bullpen, it doesn’t matter that someone could walk in at any second, that cameras are surely lurking around somewhere. She’s never wanted anything the way she wants this, right here, right now, with this man. And tonight, she will finally go after what she wants.

Their kiss grows more intense and he moves his hand behind her knee. It begins to drift slowly up her thigh, disappearing beneath her cerulean dress; higher, higher, higher…

Then she wakes up. At some point, she always wakes up. Her euphoria morphs to disappointment, as it usually does. 

When she gets to work she can’t help but stare at the back of Jim’s neck, which she finds herself doing more often after having the dreams. Typically she feels her face flush and instinctively crosses her thighs when she remembers some particularly graphic detail. Today, however, something seems off between him and Karen. They keep glancing at each other weirdly, and at one point Karen walks over and hugs him tightly, which is strange, too, since they rarely tend to show affection to each other at work (something she’s been inordinately grateful for). But the pointed look she shoots Pam after sitting down again makes her wonder what exactly is going on.

It’s none of her business, of course. 

So why does she think maybe it is?

The day proceeds like normal – as normal as a day with Michael can possibly go – and the impromptu bridal shower he’s thrown for Phyllis actually turns out to be pretty amusing. It’s been fun today messing around with Ben Franklin with, of all people, Karen. Pam is starting to see why Jim likes her, as much as she doesn’t want to. Karen can be pretty cool.

They’re alone in the kitchen now, arranging some more snacks, when the fun they’d been having takes a sharp left turn.

“Hey um, I wanted to talk to you,” Karen says, her tone getting a bit serious. “I know this is weird or whatever, but… Jim told me about you guys.” 

Pam’s entire nervous system shuts down and her brain stops working, actually ceases to function.

“What do you mean?”

”Well, that you kissed. And we talked it through and it's totally fine, it's not a big deal. It's just a kiss.”

Not a big deal. Just a kiss.

Just a kiss.

But… he was in love with her. At least, that’s what he said. Isn’t that a big deal? Did he tell Karen that? Or did he tell her it was just a kiss? Did he lie to Karen?

Or did he lie to her?

The words “just a kiss” are stuck on a loop now, threatening to supplant his prior declaration, the one she’s been reliving for months. Karen looks at her, ostensibly waiting for her to say something. To say what, exactly? To put her mind at ease at the expense of her own? To agree with her, that it was just a kiss? That it wasn’t a big deal? 

That she hasn’t stopped thinking about it since it happened?

“Wait- you're not still interested in him…?” Karen says after Pam’s extended silence, eyebrows furrowed.

Still interested? Did Jim say she’d been… interested? 

“Oh, yeah,” she says, her mind still stuck on just a kiss. She wants to shut down this conversation, run the playbook, but she’s answering the wrong questions in the wrong order. 

Karen, surprised, misunderstands her. “Really?”

Jesus Christ, what the hell was that? Her mental faculties have entirely left the building.

“Oh no, I was confused by your phrasing,” she explains nervously. “You should definitely go out with Jim. I mean, you're going out with Jim. I'm not going out with Jim.”

Karen is looking at her like she’s grown an extra head and she can hardly blame her. She has no idea what’s even happening. She wishes she had an Excel spreadsheet open to follow this conversation. 

“You're dating him, which is awesome, because you guys are great together,” she babbles. 

Fucking hell, what is she saying? Stop talking, Pam.

“Okay,” Karen sort of chuckles. She seems amused by Pam’s nonsense, not threatened. Why should such a perfect specimen be threatened by her anyway?

“I'm not into Jim. Yeah.” Make it clear you're not threatened either, Pam. You don’t care.

Although she does care. She cares so much that the idea of her kiss with Jim somehow ending up a topic of conversation between himself and his girlfriend feels like a betrayal. And her brain is having trouble processing that Karen would be bringing it up to her now at all.

She wants this to be over, to satisfy Karen and make her go away. 

Then she wants to crawl into a hole and die. 

“So um, we’re good?” Karen sort of half-asks, half-states. Of course they’re good, because they have to be. What other choice do they have?

“Yeah.” 

She can’t believe Jim told Karen about their kiss. That kiss is the last memory she has of him before Stamford, before Karen. Essentially, it’s the last remaining vestige of them, of Jim and Pam, what they were before everything went so wrong.

Their precious.

And now it’s no longer theirs.

How dare he?

“Sorry,” Pam says, for no goddamn reason. 

“What are you sorry about?” 

She can only think of that kiss, and how powerful it had been. When he told her he was in love with her. When she'd told him no and he'd left, crying. The events that night set into motion: her confronting her own feelings for Jim, her breaking off her wedding. Now he’s up late at night talking to Karen about it, telling her it was “just a kiss.” 

She doesn’t feel powerful, not anymore. She feels invisible. Like she’s wearing that stupid ring.

Karen is still looking at her expectantly. 

“Um, what?” 

“What are you sorry about?” Karen repeats herself.

What is she sorry about? She’s sorry she told him no. She’s sorry she let him walk away. She’s sorry she was too chicken shit to call him and therefore enabled him to forget all about her and move on with someone else. She’s sorry he obviously now cares more about that someone else than he ever did about her.

She’s never been more fucking sorry in her entire life.

“Nothing,” she tells Karen, flustered. “I was just thinking of something else.”

The room is sort of blurry around her and she needs to get out of here. She doesn’t know what to think. She excuses herself to go into the bathroom, hoping by the time she gets out Karen will have finished the tray and taken it back to the conference room. Luckily, that’s exactly what happens, and when she emerges into the kitchen alone, she takes a deep breath. 

Thank god that’s over.

The next time she sees Jim he’s teasing her about dating the Ben Franklin impersonator, and it should feel the same as it always did. He isn’t behaving any differently, or saying anything differently. He even calls her Beesly.

But now, all she can think about is that moment she and Jim shared, that precious moment being picked apart and scoured by his new girlfriend until it’s whittled down to nothing. Absolutely meaningless.

Just a kiss.

Maybe that’s exactly what it is. Maybe that’s all it ever really was. And maybe Jim confiding something to Karen that she thought was sacred is proof of that.

She walks miserably back out to reception, sits back down at her desk. The bachelor party stripper is standing there, in Jim’s usual place, her hand in the jellybean jar like some kind of ludicrous farce.

“Oh my god. I would get so fat if I worked here,” the stripper comments idly.

“Oh yeah?” Pam glowers. “I lose my appetite all the time.”

She sits at her desk in a sort of daze for the next couple of hours, listening to the droning sounds of the copier, the tapping of keyboards, the occasional phone ringing. She pictures Jim in the break room, laughing about her with Ryan and Kelly and probably later with Karen. For the first time since Jim’s return, she seriously considers quitting altogether. Maybe she should move on too, for good. Why did she ever think things could get better?

That invisibility she was feeling earlier is even worse now. Would anyone miss her if she were gone? If she just up and left? 

Would anyone even care?

That kiss isn’t her precious anymore. It isn’t sacred after all. And maybe just like the One Ring – just like Jim has done – she ought to finally destroy it for good.

It isn’t June 10th, but it may as well be. 

She hadn’t really missed Roy on what would have been her wedding day. The breakup was still so fresh, and she’d been more focused on missing Jim; on missing an opportunity with him she was certain wouldn’t come around again.

Today, however, she’s somewhat nostalgic, surrounded by memories of her discarded wedding, the one she’d been looking forward to for years. The same flowers, the same place settings, the same dress. Now, enough time has passed that she has the luxury of remembering.

It’s such a strange feeling knowing that, had she not ended it, today she would be married to Roy. She’d be attending this wedding on his arm. She might even be happy, or at the very least, happier than she is right now.

What would have happened if Jim hadn’t said anything at all? If he hadn’t made her believe she deserved something better?

You'll remember me when the west wind moves

Upon the fields of barley

You'll forget the sun in his jealous sky

As we walk in fields of gold

The ballad playing in the rec room isn’t exactly a Police song, but apparently Sting’s solo career falls within Scrantonicity’s weirdly specific catalog. Pam’s eyes land on Jim and Karen, swaying gently on the dance floor. It’s an intimate moment, the kind of which she hasn’t really seen between them before. They look happy together. She can’t pretend they don’t.

She’d wanted to believe he’d been flirting with her at the bar earlier, playfully jabbing at her lack of dance skills, calling her cute. But she couldn’t ignore the two glasses he held in his hands: one for him, one for his waiting girlfriend. 

She’s just so tired. She’s tired of this hot and cold Jim who pays her attention one day and pretends she doesn’t exist the next. His actions may not even be intentional, but it doesn’t make them hurt any less. And she’s been teetering between expectation and disappointment ever since he returned, holding on to that tiny glimmer of hope in the back of her mind that one day he’ll wake up and decide to give her another chance. 

It’s that hope that’s killing her, that’s wearing her down. She’s so sick of the hope. It’s like being trapped alone inside a dark room with the door open just a crack, allowing a sliver of sunlight to creep through; if she’s not allowed outside to feel the warmth on her face, she’d rather the door just stay closed.

So here she stays in her dark, dark room. She watches Jim and Karen some more. They’re talking quietly and she wonders what they’re talking about.

Jim told me about you guys. That you kissed.

After her conversation with Karen in the kitchen last week, something changed inside Pam. Something felt irreversibly broken. Because for weeks and weeks it was her secret, hers and Jim’s: this private, forbidden moment they’d shared together that belonged to them and no one else. Now, it belongs to Jim and Karen. It’s completely out of her hands, just like everything she thought they had together, just like all of their potential.

Before, her daydreams about that kiss felt safe. They were like this secret place she could go anytime to be with Jim whenever she wanted, to be brave and free and the truest version of herself, even if it was only in her imagination. 

Now, it just feels wrong to go to that place.

Will you stay with me?

Will you be my love?

Upon the fields of barley

We'll forget the sun in his jealous sky

As we lie in fields of gold

Tonight, she sits alone at an empty table with her empty glass of champagne and tries not to feel empty. She tries not to think about that kiss, that night. Tries not to be horribly jealous of Karen and how her road to Jim had been so obstacle-free. 

Jim glances over Karen’s shoulder just then, his eyes meeting Pam’s. She’s embarrassed she’s been caught staring, but to make matters worse their eyes lock in that same way they always do, and a thousand missed opportunities from their past flicker across her mind like one of Michael’s stupid slide shows. 

This is all just so unfair. How many times had Jim been the one she’d caught staring? How many times had he quickly looked away; to spare her feelings, probably, but mostly his own, embarrassed by how often his glance fell upon her? 

She isn’t stupid, she was never stupid. She was only afraid.

I never made promises lightly

And there have been some that I've broken

But I swear in the days still left

We'll walk in fields of gold

She hasn’t heard the song in a long time but as she listens to Kevin’s sultry crooning it jogs another memory: freshman year. The year she fell in love with Roy. 

Their families knew each other, so there had already been a casual acquaintanceship. But it was at a high school dance – one that felt a lot like this wedding – when she truly fell for him. She’d had her heart set on Paul Kettleman that night, a junior with sandy hair and scruff on his chin. But as “Fields of Gold” echoed across the gymnasium she watched him spinning around on the dance floor with Amy Watson, gazing into her eyes the way she wanted him to look into hers. It was her first real heartbreak. Real, as in “of the high school brand,” but real to a fourteen-year-old nonetheless. 

That particular heartbreak only lasted for a couple of minutes before Roy Anderson swooped in. Even now, she doesn’t really know if his timing was intentional; if he’d seen her in distress and come to the rescue, or if he’d simply been in the right place at the right time. But in any case, he’d asked her to dance, and the rest was history. Their history.

He was different back then. They were different. 

She can’t take watching Jim and Karen anymore and decides she’s had enough torture for one evening, so she gets up and makes her way out of the main hall, fighting back tears. And it’s at this moment – one of her very lowest – that Roy shows up once again, exactly when she needs him most. 

It doesn’t come out of nowhere. She’s noticed his attentiveness over the past few weeks, his desire to make things right, to start over. She’s been hesitant up until now to even acknowledge it because she’s been trying so hard to be strong. But his attention makes her weak. Attention of any kind has always made her weak.

Tonight, she’s weaker than she’s ever been.

He asks her to dance and she accepts, because he paid twenty bucks for Scrantonicity to play their song. Roy hasn’t done a genuinely romantic thing for as long as she can remember, so for a brief moment she allows herself to wonder if perhaps he’s truly changed.

He takes her just outside the building to dance and she falls against his chest, letting him hold her. He smells so familiar, like their old bed, and it reminds her of the way it was before: when things were actually good. On a night like this, when she’s feeling so alone and invisible, it’s easier to remember the good times they had, the way he used to make her feel. So they sway together like they did at their junior prom, when she was sixteen and wore out two copies of the Pieces of You album. 

You were meant for me, and I was meant for you...

She tries not to think about Jim, if he’s been the one meant for her all along. How she should have just told him so when he’d kissed her but instead she’d said no, and now he’s meant for Karen instead.

Dreams last for so long… even after you’re gone…

The lyrics had no resonance while she was with Roy as a teenager, young and devoid of all the problems and worries of adulthood. It was a pretty song, a popular song, and for some reason it became their song. Now when she listens to the words she’s only laden with regret. 

I go about my business, I'm doing fine

Besides, what would I say if I had you on the line?

Same old story, not much to say

Hearts are broken every day

“You want to get out of here?” Roy asks. 

She considers this invitation, but only for a moment. She does want to get out of here. It’s all she’s wanted to do since she watched Jim and Karen dancing together. So she nods. Yes.

And then Roy leans in and kisses her. It feels good, and she wants to feel good so badly that she lets it happen. She thinks of all her missed opportunities: with Jim, the way he’d given up on her. The way she’d given up on Roy. Her mind and heart are all over the place tonight. 

After a moment he leans back, perhaps sensing her preoccupation. “No pressure, Pammy. I’m not putting the moves on you, I swear.”

Put on my PJs and hop into bed

I'm half alive but I feel mostly dead

I try and tell myself it'll all be alright

I just shouldn't think anymore tonight 

“No, I want to leave,” she says, needing this distraction. “Just take me… away from here. Okay?”

He nods. “Sure. Let’s go get your coat.”

She doesn’t see Jim again before leaving, and she’s glad. If she had, she might have lost her nerve.

Roy takes her back to his place, which used to be their place. It’s only been a few months since she ended their relationship, and somehow she’s back here again. As far as she can tell, it looks remarkably indistinguishable to the way it was when she’d left it. Messier, perhaps, but not too much. It’s still decorated the way she’d done it when they were together, and she wants to believe it’s because Roy misses her, but knowing Roy, it’s more than likely just laziness.

She looks around at the apartment for a few moments, letting the past wash over her: the good, the bad, the ugly. Right now, she wants to see the good. Only the good.

Roy doesn’t wait. He moves to kiss her again, and again she lets him. It’s a weird feeling, like she’s on a first date, but with a person she’s been intimately intertwined with for a long time. He kisses her the same way he always did, runs his fingers from her shoulders down her arms the same way he always did. Her head is screaming stop, you left this for a reason but her heart is so numb she doesn’t even care. She just wants to feel something – anything – that will make her stop missing Jim.

Predictably, Roy’s hand wanders to her breast, and this is when she grabs his wrist, pushing it away.

“Stop,” she says, and to his credit, he does immediately. She can’t remember the last time she didn’t have to say it at least twice to get him off her when she wasn’t in the mood.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he sounds like he actually means it. “We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. I just miss you, Pammy, that’s all.”

There had been moments over the years, even when it was good between them, she’d look into Roy’s eyes and know he was bullshitting her. She supposes that sort of thing can happen when you’re with someone long enough; you start to see right through them. But she doesn’t see that now. She only sees guilelessness, vulnerability. 

Maybe he really has changed. Maybe he deserves a second chance. Maybe he really does miss her.

Maybe she misses him, too.

Maybe.

“Do you want me to take you home?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “No, I want to stay.”

“Okay. I want you to stay, too.” He nods, and smiles at her in a very familiar way that immediately makes her regret giving him the wrong impression.

The old Pam might not bother setting this boundary. The old Pam might just give in, give him what he wants because it’s easier. But if this is going to happen, if she and Roy are really having another go at this, it’s going to happen the way she decides it will. 

“I’m not having sex with you,” she says firmly. She feels a flame erupt within her, just a tiny spark, but it’s powerful.

Roy takes a step back from her and shakes his head a bit. “That’s totally fine,” he says. “Whatever you want.”

Whatever she wants. She wishes she knew what she wanted anymore. She wants things to be different this time, that’s all she knows.

He leads her into their old bedroom and she slips her dress off, tossing it over a chair. He roots around in his dresser and hands her one of his T-shirts, which she puts on, making no effort to hide her body from him. He’s seen it all before, and she’s too exhausted to play games anyway.

She takes the bobby pins out of her hair, letting it fall down across her shoulders, feeling such relief to be out of that rec room, to be somewhere familiar and comforting. 

Roy looks at her in a sort of confused way, like he’s desperately trying to understand something that may be entirely beyond his comprehension. “You want me to take the couch?”

It eases her mind that he’s offered, but that’s not what she wants. Not tonight.

“Will you just… hold me?” she asks. And to her great relief, he nods. It’s a nice feeling, telling him exactly what she wants and getting it. It’s like she’s inside that chrysalis again, only this time she’s twitching against the branch in her struggle to break free.

They climb into the bed together and she scoots back into his waiting embrace. He wraps his arms around her from behind and she takes a deep breath, trying hard not to remember the things that were, but to think instead of what might be.

Roy isn’t who she wants. He could be again, someday. But right now, maybe he can be what she needs: someone to hold her and tell her everything will be okay. 

He doesn’t tell her that, however, and she falls asleep with “Fields of Gold” still echoing inside her head as she lay in Roy’s arms. She can’t help but feel like she’s gone home with silver.

***

“Pammy?”

His voice is soft and slurred. She blinks her eyes, still waking up from a deep sleep, holding her phone next to her ear.

“...Roy?”

“Don’t hang up, Pammy, please.” 

She looks at her bedside clock, the digital readout says 2:02. “It’s two in the morning. Why are you calling me?”

“I’m…” he sighs. “I’m in jail.”

Her eyes bulge in alarm. She’s fully awake now. “Why are you in jail?”

“Me and Kenny went out drinking, and… well, I thought I was okay to drive home. Guess I wasn’t.”

She closes her eyes, not wanting to deal with this crap. Part of the reason she broke up with him in the first place was not wanting to have to deal with this crap. 

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Did you hurt anyone else?”

“No, Pam. It’s fine. Just… caught swerving a little much, I don’t know.”

She sighs heavily, her hand at her temple, her dark bedroom coming into focus in the soft moonlight. “Roy…”

“Can you please come bail me out? Please. I can’t call anyone else now.” 

She’s pissed he’s put her in this position, and she really doesn’t want to get involved, but there’s a part of her that will always care about Roy, and that part knows that no matter how tired she is, no matter how annoyed she is, no matter how done with him she is, she could never let him sit in jail if she had the power to help him.

“Yeah. I’ll be right there.”

He tells her where he is and she rolls out of bed, slipping on her shoes and throwing her peacoat over her pajamas. Her own drive is uneventful and when she walks into the police station and asks for Roy Anderson she has a jarring, alarming vision of what her life might have been like had things played out differently.

“Pam!” She hears his voice from down the corridor as she approaches. It’s not dark and scary like she expected this to be from movies, it’s bright and the lights hurt her eyes. All she wants to do is take him home and go back to sleep.

Roy is standing inside a holding cell, his meaty fists clutching the bars, peering out at her in a pathetic sort of way she doesn’t really recognize. He looks like total shit. It’s more than drunk, it’s quite clearly disorderly.

“You look awful,” she says. “Did you get into a fight?”

He shrugs. “It was nothing. Just a stupid scuffle.”

It always is.

She handles the bail and they collect Roy’s belongings, then walk out into the warm Pennsylvania night. She says nothing, and he follows her silently to her new blue Yaris. He’s never seen it before.

“You got a new car?” he asks.

“Yup.”

“It’s nice.”

“Thanks.” She unlocks his door, then walks to the driver’s side and gets in. They drive back to their old apartment in that same awkward, sustained silence until he finally breaks it.

“So, how have you been doing?” he asks, like they’re meeting up for coffee.

She sighs. It’s way too late and she’s way too tired for this. “We are not together anymore, Roy.”

“I know that.”

“Then why did you call me?”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Yours was just the first number I thought of. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d dialed.”

She peers over at him, and even in the darkness under the syncopated flash of streetlights, even through the enormous shiner on his eye and the days-old scruff, she can see his humanity peeking through. It was something her friends never understood, something she could always find somehow, some way, even at their very worst.

He sounds so sad, it doesn’t feel like a ruse. Maybe he’s telling the truth.

She doesn’t know what to say, but thankfully they soon reach his place. She puts the car into park, sighing again loudly, turning to face him.

“Please tell me you can get together that money by the end of the month.”

“No, of course. I will, I promise. Thanks, Pam.”

She waits for him to get out of the car so she can leave, but he doesn’t. He looks at her with that expression she’s so used to seeing when he’s trying to get out of something.

“Can you maybe come up? Just for a minute, like… to talk?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”

He unbuckles his seatbelt and turns to grab the door handle. With relief, she’s sure he’s going to open the door and get out, but instead he turns back to her, looking into her eyes. Then he leans towards her slowly. She knows what he’s doing as it’s happening, like the entire world is suddenly moving in slow motion, and her body freezes as he reaches out, touching her knee.

For a moment she thinks she might just let him, just let this happen the way she always had, because it was always easier that way. But things are different now. She is different. At least, she wants to be. 

“No, Roy,” she says. He doesn’t listen, and his lips touch hers. He smells like smoke and tastes like whiskey and all she wants is to burrow underneath the covers of her new bed in her new apartment and get back to her new life without him.

She places her hands on his chest and shoves him, hard. “Roy, no!” she says more firmly. He looks surprised, and she can hardly blame him. Other than the very last time they spoke, she can’t remember the last time she told him no.

He blinks. “I just… I just want to know why,” he says with a desperation in his voice she’s never heard.

Their breakup had been swift, like tearing off a band-aid. One night, only a few days before their wedding, she sat up in bed and just knew she couldn’t go through with it. “I can’t,” she’d said to him. And with the very same words she’d broken Jim’s heart, she’d ended a nine year relationship with Roy and took the first step towards her independence.

It was because of what Jim said to her, of course, but not because she still thought she had a shot with him. It was because marriage – for Pam, at least – was supposed to be forever. It was supposed to be the rest of her life. And after believing for so long that Roy was the right person for her, Jim’s declaration had shaken that belief completely loose from its foundation. 

Maybe Roy wasn’t her forever after all. And if she even had that “maybe” in her mind, that tiny gnawing bit of doubt, how could she look him in the eyes on their wedding day and promise him that?

She hasn’t spoken in several long seconds. He looks at her with bloodshot eyes and asks again. “Don’t I deserve to know why?”

She’d never told Roy about Jim’s confession. What would it matter, anyway? He’s gone forever, and admitting to Roy she had feelings for someone she’s never going to be with anyway wouldn’t make him feel any better. Nothing she could possibly say will ever make him feel any better about any of it.

“I wasn’t sure anymore,” she says. “And that’s the god’s honest truth, Roy. I can’t marry someone I’m not sure about.”

He sniffs loudly, but not from crying. It’s more of a knee-jerk reaction to what she’s revealed, a blow to his pride. She glances over to find him staring at the glove compartment.

“You said yes, Pam,” he says, shaking his head. “You told me yes when I asked.”

She feels a tiny flickering blaze deep inside her belly, an opportunity at last presenting itself to throw back in his face the very thing that had caused her so much pain for so long.

“You asked over three years ago,” she says. “A lot can change in three years.”

He looks annoyed, and she knows he still doesn’t get it. “What changed, exactly?”

She looks down at her hands resting on the steering wheel. The tan line around her ring finger is still there; faint, but she can still see it. 

“I guess I just… stopped feeling special. And it’s not even all your fault. It’s mine too, because I’d been feeling that way for a long time and I never said anything.”

She wonders where they’d be today if she had. If she’d told him something was missing long ago, if she'd found the courage to face it, might he have woken up? Would he have changed for her?

Would he have fought for her the way Jim had?

“I am sorry, Roy,” she says, because she is. “I’m sorry I hurt you, and I’m especially sorry I did it when I did. But forever is a big deal. And I couldn’t just… fake it anymore.”

Roy doesn’t speak. He was never very good with words, so she isn’t surprised. But one thing she knows for sure is that she’s sorry everything played out this way. Roy wasn’t always the straightest shooter, but he was never an actual fuck-up. It hurts to see him in such a low state.

He’s quiet for a long time, concentration etched across his features. She can tell he’s going over it in his mind now, every moment he’d taken her for granted, all of the times he’d made her feel unworthy. And she can’t help it; now, she’s thinking about all of the times Jim did the exact opposite. And she’d taken him for granted, the same way Roy had done to her.

“I hope you believe me, that I’m sorry,” she says. “But it’s over.”

It’s over.

Roy nods, and gives her one last sad look. He then opens the car door, slams it shut, and just like that, she’s alone again.      

She wants him to be okay. Hopefully in time, he will be. They will move on and forget. He will forget all about her.

Just like Jim did.

***

He tries to forget her, but forgetting Pam is proving to be impossible. 

He thinks about her every day, every hour, every minute. With every heartbeat he remembers something else that he will never have again: her smile, her laugh, her sense of humor. He misses her so much all the time it’s hard to breathe. 

He wishes he could blame her for what happened between them but he knows he can’t. None of this is her fault. He can’t make her feel something she doesn’t.

Regardless of what she’d told him in the parking lot that night, he’d refused to believe he’d “misinterpreted” the spark between them. And when he made the decision to kiss her, he’d known he was being selfish. But after three years of restraint he decided to permit himself this small act of defiance; this ethical, moral breach. He didn’t care anymore about Roy, about his own pride, about any of it.

Oddly enough, as he walked up the stairwell, opened the front door to the office and saw her, advice from Michael buzzed through his brain:  

Never, ever, ever give up.

She was standing at his desk. Kismet, it had to be, almost as if she were waiting for him to come find her. He couldn’t leave without knowing what it felt like to press his lips against hers, he just couldn’t. Kissing Pam was something he simply had to experience, if only once. 

Well, he got the experience. Once.

But now he has nothing. 

Most days now, he buries himself in his work. When he gets home he walks, usually a different route each time, seeing her face in every puddle he steps over on the sidewalk. He’s walked every street in his beautiful Connecticut neighborhood and nothing around him feels like home. But surrounding himself with the unfamiliar makes pushing through the final stretch of each day feel like some kind of tangible, achievable task. Any victories, even small ones, are worthwhile these days.

Most nights he winds up at a local bar and has a couple too many. He’s never been much of a drinker and this seems like such a pathetic cliché he wants to not be doing it, but he likes the way the liquid amber burns when he throws it back. It makes him feel something. He’s so numb on a daily basis that feeling anything will do. 

By the time the paper convention in Philadelphia rolls around, he isn’t really sure how to feel. Michael crows gleefully about “the prodigal son” returning, but he feels so far removed from everything Scranton, his old boss’s words fall flat.

Seeing Michael and Dwight is only a further reminder of everything he left behind. And even though they weren’t the best parts of being there, they were something he shared with Pam: an eye roll, a laugh. A horrified expression that only she could relate to in her own special way.

“Say hi to Pam,” Michael says offhandedly as he holds up his cell phone, as if the mere prospect of saying hi to Pam isn’t the first time he’s actually felt alive in months. He wonders if she likes married life, if she’s happy. If Roy is a better husband than he was a fiancé.

“Hi, Pam,” he says quietly to Michael’s phone. There’s no way she actually hears him. 

But he definitely hears what comes next.

“Good luck on your date,” Michael says to her on the phone. And Jim’s heart plummets into his stomach like a stone into a freezing cold lake.

Date. 

His brain skips like a record. He can practically hear the skeeeratch as he stares at the phone in Michael’s hand that has just dealt this incomprehensible blow.

Date? 

He tries to control his reaction to this news, something Michael had let roll off his tongue so casually. Like nothing was wrapped up in that word, as opposed to absolutely everything. 

Pam is going on a date? With whom?

He tries to put the pieces together as quickly as he can. Pam wouldn’t be going on a “date” with Roy, that makes no sense. There’s only one explanation – that they're no longer together – and at any other moment it would be welcome news. But right now, the timing couldn’t be worse. 

He hasn’t had much contact with anyone back at the Scranton branch besides Kevin, but even if he had, it doesn’t surprise him no one had told him. Surely everyone assumed Pam had told him herself. 

They were such good friends, after all.

He instinctively glances up at the camera for Will or Delilah or someone else he recognizes, but it’s a new guy he doesn’t really know. It’s not the crew’s job to deliver this kind of news to him, but he still thinks Will might have told him if he’d been part of the skeleton crew at Stamford. 

Maybe that’s the reason Delilah sent a different crew in the first place, he muses. To keep him as separated from Scranton as possible. 

He wonders when and why this happened. It couldn’t have been long after he’d left, since the wedding was only a couple of weeks away. Had his confession had an effect on her relationship with Roy after all? 

And more to the point, why hasn’t she told him about it?

There’s only one answer, really, and he hates it: it’s because it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter. What happened with Pam and Roy has nothing to do with him, and that much is obvious from her clear intention to move on from all of it. 

Good luck on your date.

Before this moment, he could have at least convinced himself she’d said no to him because she was engaged, because her hands were tied. That perhaps she did feel something for him, but out of respect and loyalty and duty she’d chosen her fiancé. 

Now he knows for certain that isn’t the case.

He excuses himself from his company, finds the bathroom mercifully empty and leans against the wall, closing his eyes. He never wants to open them again. It hurts to have them opened to this painful reality: that any what-ifs he’d still clung to, any hope he’d previously held on to, are now completely gone. 

She doesn’t love him back. She never loved him back.

There are moments now, every once in a while, when he wishes he’d never said anything to her at all. Maybe he could have been content with just her friendship, just to be near her every day. Maybe that could have been enough. But then he imagines her in a beautiful white dress, walking down the aisle towards someone else, her eyes shining and her smile dazzling. 

It doesn’t matter that it won’t be Roy. It doesn’t matter who it is. It won’t be him. And he can’t live the rest of his life wishing it had been.

***

He’s almost afraid to admit it, or to jinx it, but things have been going really well with Karen. She keeps telling him they’re “better than ever” and he can’t deny it. They’ve been more honest with each other (although not entirely, he has to admit) and ever since the whole thing with Pam came out, she seems much more relaxed. 

Before, he was skeptical about whether or not Karen could actually help him move past all of this. But now, he really thinks if there's anyone in the world who could, it might be her. 

It’s amazing what being fought for can do for one’s self-esteem.

He’s grateful she gave him another chance at all, really, and he owes it to her to behave. Behave, as in “try not to think about Pam so much.”

He stands at the bar in the reception hall, waiting for his drinks. As if his thoughts manifest her, Pam approaches.

“Hey,” he says in a friendly greeting.

“Hey!” She smiles at him. Everything feels pretty normal. 

“So when are we gonna get to see some of those famous Beesly dance moves?” he grins. He hasn’t seen her dance much, actually, but does remember a night last year, on the booze cruise, when he should have been focused on his date Katy and instead couldn’t stop watching Pam. 

“Oh... I'm pacing myself.” 

“Come on. Get out there. Give the people what they want.” 

She looks down, embarrassed. “No. I'm such a dorky dancer.”

“I know,” he chuckles, and suddenly realizes he might have made her feel self-conscious and that wasn’t his intent. “It's very cute,” he reassures her, and while he’s telling her the absolute truth it comes off as flirting. He shouldn’t be flirting with Pam, dammit. Must be that second beer talking.

“You think so?” she asks.

“Well, yeah. I can’t dance either, so you’ll get no judgment from me.”

She smiles. The bartender sets down his beer and Karen’s wine, then turns to Pam. She orders champagne, and the bartender turns around again in search of a fresh bottle. Kevin’s dulcet tones belt out Police lyrics behind them.

A year has passed since I wrote my note

I should have known this right from the start

“How are you doing?” Jim asks. “I feel like we haven’t really talked in a while.” 

He’s pretty much avoided Pam all evening. Not purposefully, or in a mean way, just in the way a diabetic would avoid sugar, or an alcoholic might steer clear of the bar. He has no desire to be cruel to her, or cut her out of his life. He’s just… pacing himself.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she says, shrugging her shoulders. They’re bare again, just like on casino night. She looks gorgeous and he really wants to tell her so. “Been busy with my art classes and stuff.”

“That’s cool,” he says. Then, like a disease has taken over his tongue, he blurts it out. “You look really pretty.”

Pop! The bartender pops the cork. 

She looks up at him again, and while he feels stupid for having said that, she seems genuinely pleased by his compliment. “Thanks. You look really nice, too.”

“It’s weird,” he then covers. “We don’t really get to see each other all dressed up like this very often, you know?”

“Yeah,” she says in a sort of distracted way, and he wonders if she’s thinking about the same thing he is: the last time they were all dressed up like this. 

The bartender starts filling Pam’s glass. Their time is running out. She looks up into his eyes and won’t look away, again. He hates when she does that. It always feels like she’s waiting for something to happen, some deus ex machina to sweep through and fix everything. He’s vaguely aware of the sounds of her champagne being poured, but his head feels fuzzy. Maybe it’s the alcohol, or the loud music. It’s probably just Pam.

“So where is Karen?” she asks, and even though he doesn’t want to talk about Karen with Pam, it feels like the universe has rewarded him with just a few more seconds with her.

“Oh, she’s… out on the dance floor.”

“Ah.” She then reaches over to grab her drink and starts to step away from the bar.

“See you out there?” he says, which is stupid because of course he will.

“Not dancing?” she grins. “Yeah.”

He gives her a little wave as she walks away, and watches her go. The back of her dress dips down into a V shape and he can see her shoulder blades.

Only hope can keep me together

Love can mend your life

Or love can break your heart

“Ahem.”

Oscar is behind him, clearing his throat, and Jim wonders how long he’s been standing there, how much he saw. 

“Oh, hey,” he says to Oscar, grabbing his two drinks and moving out of the way. “Sorry.”

As he heads back over to the dance floor, he notices Delilah and Will standing about twenty feet away, clearly having captured his and Pam’s entire interaction. Karen is still dancing, so he sets the drinks down on the table. He slinks away to the bathroom, not really wanting to be interviewed at the moment. But of course, on his way back out to the dance floor, Delilah and Will intercept him.

“You and Pam seem to be getting along,” Delilah says. Will, as usual when Delilah is around, just stays silent and keeps the camera pointed at Jim.

“Well, we’re friends,” Jim shrugs. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

He’s not stupid, and he knows the crew isn’t either. He’s lied to them a lot over the past couple of years in order to hide his inappropriate feelings for an engaged woman, and even more so since he returned to Scranton, but they’d be fools to not see the truth. Still, he’s with Karen now. He needs to be careful about what he says.

‘Well, it just seems like maybe there’s something else going on,” Delilah says. “Something more.”

“Um… no?” he replies, genuinely confused. “Not that I know of.”

“But what if there were?” she asks. “You know, hypothetically.” 

Delilah is rarely so forward with him about Pam. He wonders if maybe she’s been drinking tonight. 

“What do you mean, hypothetically?”

Delilah looks at him intently. “I mean, if you thought Pam was interested in something more, what would you do?” Her expression is odd: almost manic, desperate.

Will’s eyes shift over to Delilah, clearly clocking this questionable behavior as well. 

Jim hesitates. “Why are you asking me a hypothetical question? You guys never do that.”

“We’re just observing. From what we observed, it seems entirely possible.”

This is the very last thing he wants to hear. Possibility with Pam is precisely the thing he’s trying to avoid right now.

He feels backed into a corner, but if he doesn’t answer, will he appear too defensive? 

“Hypothetically, if I thought Pam was interested, then…” 

Both the producer and the cameraman look at him expectantly. It’s slightly unnerving, like they’re trying to catch him in some kind of “gotcha” moment. And for what? Why are they playing this little game? What is he supposed to do with Pam’s mixed signals? He’s got a pretty good thing going on with Karen. He doesn’t want to throw it away based on signals he’s misinterpreted for years. 

“No, it's totally hypothetical,” he says. He’s not going to play today. He turns to leave them behind.

“She was flirting with you, man,” Will calls after him. “That’s not hypothetical.”

Delilah twists her head to glare at Will, which Jim finds somewhat unfair, considering the lines she’d been crossing herself. But Will is right. Pam was flirting. She was flirting with him in the break room at work the other day, too, actually. Pretty badly. He didn’t even know what to make of it at the time because her behavior was so unusual. 

Jim turns and storms off, annoyed. It doesn’t matter what Will or Delilah think, or even what he thinks. Because he and Pam have been engaging in what any average person would consider to be ‘flirting’ for years. He knows it, and the crew obviously knows it. The only person who doesn’t seem to know it is Pam, and he isn’t prepared to misinterpret her signals again, especially since he has much more at stake now.

When he gets back to their table, Karen is there waiting for him. She smiles and stands up, looking really happy to see him. It makes his insides warm.

“You wanna dance?” she asks, and he nods, allowing her to lead him out onto the dance floor.

Karen puts her arms on his shoulders a bit awkwardly, and he puts his hands at her waist. They haven’t been in a situation before this evening where they’ve danced together, or really even behaved like a couple in public. It’s a little strange, but he has to admit it’s nice.

“So… that wedding went well,” she says with a chuckle.

He groans. “Just be glad you missed Michael’s toast.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse.”

They laugh together and dance as best they can with his two left feet. He feels content, actually happy for the first time in a long time. Just when he thinks this, he glances over Karen’s shoulder and sees Pam staring directly at them. For a moment – just a moment – their eyes lock in that same way they always do that gives him butterflies. 

Delilah's words bounce around in his head. From what we observed, it seems entirely possible. 

No, it's not possible. It's obviously never going to be possible, and he hates the way Pam's presence always has the power to displace any and all feelings he has for Karen. Why can’t this just stop? Why does it all have to be so difficult?

Pam looks away and gets up, seemingly embarrassed to be caught staring. He can’t help but wonder if she’s jealous, even a little bit, that she’s the one who’s alone this time and he actually has someone. At least, by now, these thoughts feel less like wishful thinking and more like human nature.

He and Karen finish their dance and sit back down, sipping their beverages and people-watching. Well, he people-watches. Karen is more interested in her new phone, which she’s had her face buried in for much of the night. He doesn’t mind, mostly, although it does make him think how, if Pam were sitting next to him instead, they’d be discussing the origin of Toby’s date, or watching Creed dance, or judging Kelly for wearing a white dress to someone else’s wedding. 

“I’m gonna go get another drink,” Jim says. “Do you want anything?”

“Uh-uh,” she shakes her head no, typing away. 

He gets up, heading across the room back to the bar, and it’s here again where he realizes things are not as okay as he thought they were. In fact, they’re worse than ever before. Because as he turns to look over his shoulder at the assembled crowd he sees Pam, walking out of the rec room, hand in hand with Roy.

Roy.

Hand in hand. 

With Roy.

He can feel his Chilean sea bass from earlier in the evening swirling around in his stomach until he’s afraid it might actually come up. She’s going back to Roy? After everything? All of it? If he’d seen Pam leaving with someone else, anyone else, it still would have stung. But this is adding insult to an already agitated injury. 

Suddenly, he’s pissed as hell. Talk about a deus ex machina: it now feels like the universe is deliberately tormenting him, like an ant squirming beneath an enormous magnifying glass. If Pam is getting back together with Roy, what does that mean? Despite his disappointment that her breaking up with Roy hadn’t yielded the results he’d wanted, he’d certainly reached a point now where he could at least be glad that Pam had extricated herself from what he’d always determined was a bad situation for her. Now, she’s willingly throwing herself back into that very situation. Right in front of him.

He tries his best to not betray his emotions, to show how upset he is, how this turn of events has upended everything positive he was feeling. But he fails miserably, and at this precise moment turns back and catches the eye of Will, who’s sitting at a nearby table nursing a Heineken.

Will follows his gaze, but Jim knows the cameraman doesn’t even have to do so to know who he was watching. They always seem to know. 

Every breath you take

Every move you make

Every bond you break

Every step you take

I'll be watching you

No words pass between the two men, but Jim feels that deep discomfort rising within him of being seen through, of being called out. Of being known more intimately than he wants to be by someone he isn’t prepared to share any of this with.

He takes a few steps over until he’s standing right in front of Will, who, like a reflex, reaches down to grab his camera. 

“You got any more questions for me, man?” Jim asks. 

He doesn’t mean to sound threatening or angry but he can’t help it. He’s so fucking done with all of this, and the documentary crew in particular have pushed him too far tonight. 

Will looks slightly alarmed by Jim’s het up demeanor and stops himself, looking up at him like a deer caught in headlights.

“No, it’s fine. Turn the camera on,” Jim says, like a challenge. “Go ahead.”

Will’s eyes dart around for someone – anyone – to take direction from, but no one else from the crew is around. So he does what he does best: he picks up the camera and points it at Jim.

Jim stares into the lens, remembering what he’d almost said to them in his last interview, what they’d almost tricked him into saying. He’s fully prepared to course-correct the evening.

“Here's a 'not hypothetical',” he says. “I'm really happy I'm with Karen.”

Just uttering it out loud has a soothing effect, almost as if the words themselves have their own magical power. He feels better after saying them.

Will isn’t Delilah, and Jim knows he won’t handle the situation the way she would. He doesn’t push, and he doesn’t press any further. But that’s fine with Jim. Because tonight has been the biggest wake-up call of all wake-up calls. He's gone on record now as not caring who Pam’s with and what she does and it’s not his place to care about those things anyway. 

It’s none of his business and it never was, and tonight she’s made that clearer than ever.

With one final glare, he leaves Will to go look for Karen, finding her up by the stage arranging an impromptu performance of “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” with Kevin. As Jim watches her, it amazes him how this person he’d been so close to writing off a couple of weeks ago continues to pleasantly surprise him; how lucky he is to have found her when he did.

Tonight, right now, Karen is a very good thing.

He says nothing to her about Pam and Roy – why should he? – and actually enjoys the rest of the reception. The loud music and Pam-less crowds are a good way to distract him from the things he no longer wants to think about. But when the party's over and they walk to his car hand in hand, the silence is louder than everything else.

Since you've gone I've been lost without a trace.

I dream at night, I can only see your face.

I look around but it's you I can't replace.

I feel so cold, and I long for your embrace.

I keep crying baby, baby, please...

“Can we go to my place tonight?” Karen asks. “I don’t have any makeup remover at yours.”

“Um, yeah, sure,” he replies. He actually prefers it there. He’s still in the process of allowing Karen to ensconce herself fully into his space. 

Now that they’re out in the parking lot, now that they’ve been thrust back to reality, he can’t help himself: he wonders whose place Pam and Roy went to. Did they go to her new place? Or back to their old one? What are they doing right now?

Oh can't you see

You belong to me?

How my poor heart aches with every step you take.

He squeezes Karen’s hand and she looks up at him with a smile. 

“So, I finally understand why you never wanted to go out dancing before,” she teases. 

“Oh you do, do you?”

She laughs. “You’re such a dork, Halpert.”

“Easy.” He tries to smile but he looks at the ground, distracted. 

“Hey, is everything okay?” she asks, for the first time noticing he’s a little off.

He looks over at her as they reach his car and stop. “Everything’s great,” he says. “I had fun tonight.”

“Me too,” she agrees. “Well, I could have done without pretty much all of Michael, but I suppose that’s true every day.”

He chuckles, and then she looks up at him again with every bit of sincerity he’s come to expect from her. “You make me really happy, you know?” 

It’s not I love you, thank god – he’s not ready for that – but it’s the closest she’s come. 

He won’t kid himself. Tonight was rough. But having her around really does ease the blow. He grins back at her. 

“You make me really happy, too.”

It’s such a relief to not have to lie for once.

It’s not that he doesn’t care anymore. Deep down, he knows he does. He’s simply reached a point where he’s able to look the other way from all of it. If she’s made the decision to go back to Roy, what the hell is he supposed to do about it? 

He never understood. He will never understand. So what’s the point in trying anymore?

The past few days have been weird between him and Pam, and not because things are particularly awkward, but because he’s been deliberately avoiding her since the wedding. He’s trying to focus on Karen and their relationship – something that has actual potential – and he’s been pretty successful at thinking less and less about Pam, their history… and that kiss. There are moments throughout each day he can actually forget, which for him is a huge step. A breakthrough, really. While the idea of distancing himself from her both physically and emotionally is painful, it is making evolving easier.

That’s a good thing. It’s what he wants, after all. 

Isn’t it?

It’s the end of the day on Friday, and everyone is packing up to go home. The weekends have become a sort of reprieve for him lately; two precious days where Pam does not have to exist. This weekend, it’s two precious days Pam and Roy don’t have to exist.

But tonight, the reprieve does not arrive.

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you think you’re about to die, but for some reason when Jim sees Roy’s fist headed for his face all he can think about are Dwight’s warnings about bear attacks: how they always come when you least expect them. 

At this point, however, he’d prefer the bear.

As if summoned by Jim’s panicked thoughts, Dwight comes to his rescue, taking Roy down. And just as quickly as it happened, it’s all over. Jim’s first reaction is pain from the pepper spray floating in the air all around them. He can hear Roy screaming in agony on the floor, and feels Karen’s hands on his back, asking if he’s okay.

Suddenly his pain morphs into anger. Karen was standing right next to him. Roy could have seriously injured her, without even intending to. It’s not like Roy cares where he throws his weight around – Jim has seen it all before – but maybe that’s what makes it all worse. 

His eyes are blurred with tears and he can’t see anything but he hears the general panic in the bullpen around him, hears Dwight calling for security and Pam making the call. When he can finally see through aching watery eyes, Oscar and Toby have Roy pinned on the ground, even though Roy already appears to be incapacitated. Will and Brian the boom guy are both standing away from the fracas, and Delilah looks slightly stunned at what’s transpired. Eventually, the security guard (Jim can never remember his name, dammit) arrives and escorts a moaning Roy out of the office. 

Jim glances over at Pam for the first time since the attack, and she’s looking right back at him. Her eyes are red and puffy and he isn’t sure if she’s crying or just experiencing the effects of the spray, but she looks absolutely miserable. He doesn’t have to ask her if this was about their kiss on casino night. Surely that’s exactly what happened: the secret is finally out, and Roy has merely demonstrated his territorialism in the way that suits him best.

And now the entire fucking office (not the mention the documentary crew) knows exactly how far this messy love quadrangle has gotten.

He looks away from Pam. He can’t look at her anymore. For the first time in perhaps as long as he’s known her, he has no desire to.

Jim tries to leave as quickly as possible, but Toby intercepts him on the way out. Is he hurt, will he press charges, et cetera, et cetera. Toby is only doing his job, of course, but Jim just needs to get out of here. He needs his weekend and he needs it right now.

Karen talks his ear off the entire way home about Roy, and how she never would have seen that coming. It’s white noise to Jim because he’s very aware this could have been coming at some point. It’s not his fault Roy is a meathead, but he’s cognizant of the fact that it’s certainly his own fault that any of this happened in the first place.

He's pissed at himself for confessing his feelings in the first place. He’s pissed that Pam told Roy at all, even though he knows it’s hypocritical to think so. He’s pissed his weekend is ruined, because surely now all Karen is going to want to do is talk about the incident, and why Roy tried to attack Jim, all the while getting closer and closer to figuring out that he’d downplayed what happened between him and Pam. 

He’s pissed about all of it, but above everything else, he’s pissed that he’s thinking about that goddamn kiss again. Just when he thought this whole thing was starting to go away, it seems to have returned, louder than ever.

He and Karen spend the whole of Saturday exactly the way he’d predicted, and he’s so exhausted by all of it he feigns an illness on Sunday to get out of her latest inquisition. He stays in his apartment all day and watches a Reno 911! marathon to get his mind off everything.

By Monday, he goes back to the office, feeling somewhat refreshed and prepared to deal with whatever remains of the incident. Hopefully, most people have moved on to something else by now. But seeing Pam in the break room just brings back all of it: her rejection, his heartbreak. The fact that she’d gotten back together with Roy after everything feels like a direct slap in the face. 

She catches his eye, and it’s too late to make a quick 180 and leave the break room (and this situation), so he walks over to the vending machine and stares at it intently, like he’s deciding on a college or a career, not an afternoon snack.

“I’m sorry I almost got you killed,” he hears her say behind him. 

He can tell she’s trying to be blasé about the whole thing, which is very Pam of her, but all he can feel is frustration and irritation. This isn’t a joke to him. Roy is dangerous, always has been dangerous, and he’s annoyed that his concern for her has always fallen on deaf ears. 

She continues trying to get him to talk to her, not taking his lack of engagement as a hint. He knows exactly what she’s doing. It’s not her fault, even; she must be so used to him being there for her that she expects it at this point. 

I’m sure you guys will find your way back to each other someday.

It’s a mean thing to say and he knows it. But he’s lashing out because he can’t help himself. He would be there for her in a heartbeat if she’d wanted him to, but he can’t do it anymore, not like this. Cleaning up Roy’s mess certainly cannot fall to him now. 

She apologizes again, but it’s not what he wants to hear. All he wants to do is leave, to avoid being put into a position to make her feel better about her own bad decisions. Someday, when the dust settles, perhaps they’ll laugh about all of this. Maybe they’ll even be real friends again. But right now, he’s still in survival mode, and he cannot fall back into his old patterns. 

After all, he wasn’t being entirely facetious with his callous comment. He isn’t convinced she’s done with Roy. So when she tells him it’s over, really over, how can he possibly believe her?

***

He’s been trying to decide whether or not to tell her the truth.

Some days he thinks “maybe today,” because she’ll sit a little closer to him in the conference room or smile a little more at one of his pranks. Some days he can convince himself that if he tells her, everything will turn out perfectly.

Most days, though, he’s a chicken shit.

He’s known for a long time the only reason he’s still working here is for her. He’s turned down opportunities, convinced himself he should stay because maybe one day things will change: he will tell her he loves her and she will tell him the same.

But it hasn’t happened. He isn’t sure what he’s been waiting for, exactly, but part of him has hoped she would be the one to change them from best friends into something more. That she would be the one to snap out of her own delusion that Roy could ever give her what she needs and open her eyes.

She hasn’t.

The clock is ticking and wedding invitations have been sent out and bands are being chosen. She’s not going to change her mind now. Deep down he knows this. But still, his secret is pressing against him from within, like a migraine from which he cannot find relief. He feels like his walk towards reception every single morning is a walk to his execution.

One moment of weakness, venting to Toby about Pam’s wedding planning, and everything feels even more real now. It’s painful just being around her anymore. He has to leave, once and for all. He has to go somewhere that’s… not here.

His interview with Jan goes well. He sits across from her in her office and says all the right things, does all the right things. He’s amazed at how easy it is, how if he’d just done this years ago, he wouldn’t be in the position he is now. He tries to imagine what a new life in Stamford would be like. Maybe it could be exciting. Maybe he could meet someone else, someone available.

Someone who isn’t Pam.

The idea of such a thing doesn’t make him feel better, though. It makes him feel worse.

After the interview, he heads back to Scranton to pick up some paperwork, pulling into the Dunder Mifflin parking lot at about 5:20. He hopes he’s timed it perfectly, that most everyone will have gone home by now (well, mainly that Pam will have gone home by now). He parks his car and starts to walk over to the front door but notices that the security guard isn’t in the lobby.

Odd, he thinks. Usually he’s there until 5:30, but must have locked up early. Jim sighs – just his luck – knowing he’ll have to come in before work tomorrow to finish the paperwork he was supposed to finish today, and heads back to his car. Just as he’s about to get in, however, he hears a familiar pair of voices.

Roy’s truck is idling around the corner, which he hadn’t noticed when he pulled in, but he now sees a familiar pink coat walking into his view. Pam looks agitated, and then Roy is behind her, grabbing her arm. They’re clearly arguing about something.

He doesn’t quite know which is worse: seeing Pam and Roy being affectionate with each other, or seeing Roy get rough with her. But either way, he doesn’t like what he sees at all.

He isn’t sure how long he watches them but at one point he sees Roy push past Pam brusquely. She doesn’t fall, and she isn’t hurt, but she looks shocked and upset at his behavior. Roy then gets into his truck and leaves. Just leaves Pam standing there, all alone in the Dunder Mifflin parking lot.

He’s never liked Roy. Ever. But for the first time, Jim wants to fucking kill him.

***

Roy’s never struck her. She doesn’t think he would, but there’s a tiny fear she carries with her, like those times she gets something stuck in her shoe and it stays there all day: a tiny part of her that wonders… maybe.

Maybe.

Occasionally there’s a moment, a split second where she thinks the worst might happen. Just as quickly, it passes. But she’s seen Roy get aggressive before. Maybe it’s just the brawny ex-football star in him, but he reacts without thinking, sometimes violently, and while she knows deep down he would never want to hurt her, she isn’t entirely convinced he’s incapable.

Jim only sees this kind of display from Roy once, as far as she knows. She’s arguing with Roy in the parking lot at the end of the day about money, of all things. They’re supposed to be saving for their honeymoon, not planning a trip to Atlantic City with Kenny. 

Roy doesn’t want to hear it. “Get out of my way,” he says, shoves her aside, and gets into his truck. 

She isn’t hurt or anything, it isn’t like he pushed her hard. But after the truck peels out of the parking lot she glances around immediately, self-consciously, to see who might have witnessed this. No cameras, thankfully. 

Only Jim is present, about twenty yards away, climbing out of his car. He seems to have just arrived at the office even though everyone has gone home for the day. He slams his car door shut and walks over to her, concern etched on his face. 

“Hey, what was that about?”

She’s embarrassed more than anything else. She doesn’t like feeling observed. She doesn’t like being put into a position where she has to defend Roy’s behavior.

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

He clearly disagrees. “Are you okay?”

She sighs. “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just stupid.”

He looks at her with genuine worry in his eyes. She may not be afraid, not really, but she can tell he is.

“I’m really okay, Jim.”

He nods, and while she can tell he doesn’t believe her, he backs off. 

“What are you doing back here, anyway?” she asks him. “I thought you had a doctor’s appointment.”

His hand goes to the back of his neck, so she immediately knows he’s making something up. “Oh, well, I left a couple of files at work I needed to finish. Figured I’d stop by on the way home rather than having to come in early.”

She glances at the front door. “Do you need me to let you up?”

He puts his hand up, waves her away. “No, it’s not a big deal. Do you need a ride home?” 

She does need a ride, actually. Roy’s abandoned her here. But…

“I don’t really want to go home right now.”

He nods. “Okay. Well, I’m not going to just leave you here alone in the parking lot, Pam.” He grins at her, and she feels warm inside. She looks down at her feet. Sometimes his smile has an effect on her she knows it shouldn’t.

“Sorry, you’re right. Um… well… let’s just go up and get your files first, okay?”

“You really don’t have to-”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” she says distractedly, already heading for the front door of the building. Every minute she can stall, each precious second she can stay here with her friend and not have to go home to face Roy and their stupid argument is worthwhile.

He follows her in silence as they walk upstairs and into the darkened bullpen. She flicks on the lights for him as he goes over to his desk, rifling around in his drawers for whatever papers he needs until he finds them. By the time they get downstairs again, only a few minutes have elapsed and she still doesn’t want to go home. But she really doesn’t have another choice.

“Hey, Pam,” Jim says as they exit the building, and he takes her by the elbow gently. It’s so different from the way Roy would take her arm and she can’t help but notice. 

She turns to face him. “Yeah?”

He has a funny look in his eyes, something unfamiliar. Things have been a little weird between them since he’d admitted he was the one who’d made a complaint about her planning her wedding at the office. They haven’t really even had a conversation since it happened. But she’s been trying really hard to figure it out, to figure him out. 

It’s no secret anymore that he used to have feelings for her. And ever since she learned of it, she’s viewed his actions a bit differently. Not because she thinks he still has those feelings, but because she likes to imagine he does. And sometimes, every so often, she can convince herself it’s true.

Yesterday was one of those moments. And try as she might, she can’t shake that.

“I just…” his mouth hangs open, like he wants to say something but can’t. “I know it isn’t my place or anything, but… I don’t think it’s okay for him to do that. Getting physical with you like that. Leaving you all alone here.”

She feels prickles on the back of her neck, unsure if it’s because he’s wrong or because he’s right. She’s exposed, and gets immediately defensive.

“It’s not like he does stuff like that all the time, Jim,” she says.

“I know, I know,” he says, and to his credit, he looks extremely nervous to be saying any of this. “I’m sure he doesn’t. I just… I don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all.”

She sighs and looks down at her white Keds. “You’re not the first one of my friends to say this to me, you know.” Jim flinches, and she’s not sure what part of the sentence did it. “But you really don’t have to worry. Roy can get a little heated, but he would never hurt me.”

Jim looks at her, that same strange expression on his face, but says nothing.

“I mean, we fight sometimes,” she continues. “It’s what couples do. But we always end up finding our way back to each other, you know?”

It’s his turn to look at his feet. “Yeah.”

She’s suddenly uncomfortable with this interaction. Jim’s opinion probably means more to her than anyone else’s, and she doesn’t like feeling judged by her best friend. But she also knows that he’s not around all the time, and doesn’t necessarily get to see a lot of the good stuff she and Roy have together.

It’s pretty clear to her now, however, why Jim doesn’t want to come to their wedding. Why he's complained to Toby, why he not-so-discreetly makes an exit from the room whenever she starts talking about wedding-related stuff. He doesn’t approve. Her sister Penny doesn’t like Roy either, and while Pam didn’t like the idea of her being in the wedding party under duress, she couldn’t not have her sister as a bridesmaid. They’d sort of made a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it came to her relationship with Roy.

It’s always been easy to talk to Jim about anything. Will there now be a Roy embargo on their conversations? Will her friendship with Jim have to change?

She already knows the answer to that one without having to think too hard, and it upsets her. She doesn't want things to have to change.

“I appreciate you worrying about me,” Pam then says, and before she really knows what she’s doing, she reaches out to take his hand. It’s big and warm and soft and it feels like home. Sometimes she forgets how much Jim means to her, how important he is to her. How lost she’d be if he wasn’t in her life. But it’s moments like these – when she feels so seen by him – that make her remember.

He shrugs, and chuckles in a strange, melancholy way. “That’s what friends are for, right?”

They stand there in front of the door for a few seconds. She doesn’t know for how long. But eventually Jim pulls his hand away and sticks it into his pocket. She looks around the empty parking lot, this patch of gray pavement that serves as a flimsy tether separating her two worlds: Roy’s twin tire tracks leading away from her and Jim, the person who often feels like a sort of refuge from everything else. It’s like she’s suspended between these two men in her life: Jim, someone she knows beyond a shred of doubt would never hurt her, and Roy, somewhat dangerous but still somehow the safer choice.

And yes, she thinks about this. She compares the two of them all the time, be it consciously or subconsciously. 

She’s always choosing. Always.

Jim’s eyes get soft. “Can I take you home now?”

She looks around the parking lot, knowing this moment was inevitable, but she still doesn’t want to go home. And she definitely doesn’t want Jim anywhere near that world. She wants him to remain here, where she feels completely safe; where they can stand quietly together without that thing stuck in her shoe.

She nods, but asks him to take her to Penny’s instead.

***

She sits alone in the break room, a place that used to be a sanctuary of theirs. Somewhere they could unload the events of the day, share a Coke or a laugh. So many simple things she’d taken for granted that she doesn’t have access to anymore. 

If she and Jim hadn’t been the starring players in last week’s debacle, typically they might have found a few minutes to debrief by now, to break down Dwight’s heroic rescue and figure out together just how exactly to convince him to accept a “thank you.” But she fears that, regardless of their roles in all the drama, the entire incident will become one more thing they never discuss. Just something forgotten, swept under the rug. 

Like everything else between them.

If this all isn’t bad enough, not one person has come up to her to ask if she’s okay, or bothered to see how she’s feeling about everything. Sure, Phyllis had asked, but only because of the gossip potential, and Angela was only interested in the Dwight-specific portions. She’s used to being ignored in this place, but with Jim avoiding her she may as well not even exist.

An opportunity to talk to him finally presents itself when he walks into the break room in the afternoon. He doesn't really glance her way, and she doesn’t know what else to say other than to apologize. 

“Sorry I almost got you killed.” 

He doesn’t look at her, instead focusing on the vending machine, trying to decide what he wants. She wonders what’s running through his mind right now, because Jim always seems to know what he wants. 

“Yeah, that was nuts.”

“He could have broken your nose or something. Crazy.” 

He gives her nothing. She’s so desperate to feel a connection to him, any connection at all, she pushes further. 

“It's just so stupid. I mean, getting back with Roy and everything. I mean, what was I thinking, right?” She knows that’s exactly what he’s thinking, because she’s all too familiar with the way he feels about Roy.

Say I was stupid. Say “I told you so.” Please, Jim, just say anything.

But Jim, the old Jim that held her hand in the parking lot and worried about her is not here today. He won’t even look at her. 

“No, I mean, you guys really seem to have a strong connection.” 

Strong connection. She never had the connection with Roy she’d had with Jim. She wishes she’d had the courage to tell him so years ago. 

He’s clearly still disgusted that she could ever have chosen Roy over him and she doesn’t even blame him. She’s disgusted with herself. But even if he is, it doesn’t mean he still has feelings for her. How could he have feelings for someone who makes such terrible choices? 

“Not anymore. It's, um... it's completely over now.”

I messed up, Jim. I messed up again. Please forgive me.

“We'll see,” he says, with a horrible scoff that makes her belly curdle. He looks her right in the eye. “I'm sure you guys will find your way back to one another someday.” 

It’s such an awful thing for him to say, especially considering the circumstances. It’s not his fault she chose to go back to Roy, to place herself into a situation he’d certainly tried to warn her about. But she’s already down. Why is he kicking her like this?

“Jim,” she says, as earnestly as she can, as honestly as she can. He finally looks at her and she knows she should tell him the truth right here, right now. The whole truth.

I’m sorry I broke your heart.

I’m sorry for telling you no when I meant yes.

Mostly, I’m sorry you aren’t the same Jim anymore and it’s all my fault.

These are the things she wants to say, but she’s petrified.

“I am really... sorry,” is all she can get out.

“Oh, yeah. Don't worry about it.” He turns to go with barely another glance and she’s left alone again.

It’s not the cruelty that hurts. It’s indifference, disguised as cruelty. And it’s not something she ever expected Jim — any version of him — to be capable of.

After the day is over and she leaves the office, she gets into her car and shuts the door. Tiny droplets of rain patter against her windows, meager but persistent. She’s never felt so isolated in her entire life. She can’t even make herself turn the ignition before she breaks down, her head on the steering wheel. 

She's done with Roy. Jim is obviously done with her. There’s no one here who even cares. 

She has nothing.

She doesn’t know how long she sits alone in her misery, but eventually a tap on the window makes her look up to see the very last face she expects.

Jim has no umbrella, and his hair is getting wet, raindrops on his face that echo the tears she watched slide down his cheeks once. She can tell he’s concerned even through the raindrops on the glass, and he gestures for her to roll down the window. But she cannot move. She can only look up at him, absolutely drained, devastation in her eyes so palpable she can feel it. 

For a moment she genuinely believes he might just turn around and leave her alone. He has no obligation to her after everything that happened. The fact that they work at the same place again doesn’t automatically make them friends. If he were to walk away right now he would be absolutely justified in doing so.

But he doesn’t walk away. He goes around her car and gets into the passenger seat, closing the door behind him. 

The gentle sounds of raindrops tapping against her windshield are the only thing breaking up the deathly silence inside the car. She expects his nearness to make her feel uncomfortable, but despite their awkward interaction earlier in the break room she can still feel that same energy between them she always does, that current, like radiation: inescapable and just as dangerous.

They sit and say nothing for what feels like an eternity, a quiet rumble of thunder in the distance threatening to turn this sprinkle into real rain again at any moment. She doesn’t know how long he plans to sit in the car with her. Even though it’s the last thing she wants to do, she’s promised Roy she’d meet him to talk.

“I’m sorry about before,” Jim finally says. “I didn’t mean it.”

She can’t bring herself to look at him. “Yes, you did.” 

She isn’t interested in playing games anymore. They aren’t fun games, like they used to be. They just hurt. 

He nods. “You’re right, I guess I did. But I’m taking it back.”

She turns and tries to search his face, at least what she can see in his profile. Why is he inside her car? What is he even doing here?

“Why?”

He sighs. “Kelly told me what happened the other night at Poor Richard’s. What Roy did. I had no idea.”

Pam looks back at the steering wheel, feeling his eyes on her, like he’s judging her again. She nervously pulls her skirt over her knees a bit, resting her hands in her lap. 

“I’m really sorry about what I said, Pam. I was upset. But mostly because he might have really hurt someone. Karen, or you, or even Dwight. But I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. It was an asshole move and I don’t know why I said it.”

She doesn’t know what to say anymore, so she says nothing. 

“I just… don’t understand, I guess,” he continues.

She turns to look over at him. “Understand?”

“What you see in that guy,” he says, and their eyes meet for the first time since the break room. “I don’t get it. I never have. And I guess that’s why I reacted the way I did.”

She wants to tell him she knows he’s right. That she sees everything clearly now, more clearly than ever before. She should never have been with Roy, especially when there was another option standing before her, offering himself up to her in the eleventh hour. An escape hatch she should have taken- not just for the escape, but for the promise of better, of feeling love from someone in a way she didn’t realize she deserved.

But she can’t tell him this now. Nothing feels right anymore; more specifically, he doesn’t feel right. He isn’t the same. He’s sitting in her car with his sleeves rolled down, trying to make her feel better, trying to act like the old Jim, but he isn't. And she has no idea if this new Jim would even hear her if she tried.

“Well, you know what they say about the definition of insanity,” she says instead, cracking a smile, trying to lighten the mood. “Maybe I’m just crazy.”

Thankfully, he smiles at her in return. But then he turns to face forward, saying nothing.

“I am really sorry about all of this,” she says.

“Don’t be,” he says, very quietly. “I probably had it coming anyway.”

It’s the first and only time either of them have alluded to what happened between them all those months ago. She wants to take advantage of it but has no idea what to say, and even if she did, her body freezes in terror. He looks over at her, his eyes blazing, and the tension hangs between them like a thick and poisonous gas, something she knows neither of them will touch. She eyes him briefly, but it's too much to handle and she looks away again, knowing they’ve officially reached the point in the conversation where this topic will go no further. Each time they don’t seize upon the opportunity to discuss what happened, she feels that sting of failure; that looming probability that their relationship (or whatever’s left of it) will simply decay. Jim and Pam and their very short remaining half-life. 

She stares out the windshield at the wall of their building, and feels her lower lip start to tremble. She can tell she’s about to start crying again and she doesn’t want to cry in front of Jim. She doesn’t even know for sure exactly what she’s crying about anymore. It could be a million things, it could be just the one thing.

It’s probably just the one thing.

They sit with the weighty silence for what feels like forever, Pam holding back her tears, until Jim suddenly – and very unexpectedly – reaches out to take her hand. He holds it tightly across the console, as if trying to communicate something he’s either unwilling or unable to articulate. He doesn't turn to face her, he just sits and holds her hand, and they don’t look at each other. But neither of them pull away.

And then, at last, he speaks, more quietly than she’s ever heard him before. 

“Everything’s going to be okay, Pam.” 

He still will not look at her, instead staring straight out the windshield. But suddenly the strangest thing happens: she can feel her body start to relax. Her mind clears, and from his fingers she feels a phantom energy leaving his body, going directly into hers as if through osmosis. It’s healing, as if his proximity alone has the power to keep her alive. 

Everything’s going to be okay.

Tears well in her eyes again, but for the first time in a long time, it’s not because Jim is dating someone else, or because she’s missed her chance with him. It’s because she misses him — this — so much. She can barely remember what it felt like to have someone in her life who cared about her the way he did. The way he always has.

She wants this feeling to last forever but she knows it can’t. And with a barely perceptible rub of his thumb across her own, he finally releases her hand, opens the car door, and closes it without another glance in her direction.

Everything is going to be okay.

She’s been holding on to Jim’s words as tightly as he’d held on to her hand, and for the first time in a while, she’s starting to believe them. Maybe things aren’t fantastic right now, or even very good, but she’s feeling better than she has in some time. 

Ever since Roy was fired, there’s been a massive shift inside her, real conviction that she’s finally back on the right path. The last couple of weeks hadn’t held some of her proudest moments (especially with the benefit of hindsight) but she is relieved that she will never again have to wonder whether or not she did the right thing last June. 

Something good has come of all of this, at least, which is that she and Jim are on somewhat friendlier terms. It’s nothing approaching where they used to be, but right now, it’s the most she can really expect.

The light coming through that crack in the door isn’t exactly what she’d been hoping for but it’s better than being in the dark room. She’ll gladly take it.

It’s been a few weeks since her breakup with Roy, and she’s at her parents’ house for a visit. Her dad is in the backyard cleaning out the rain gutters, and her mother sits her down at the kitchen table for a long overdue chat. 

“How have you been, honey?” her mom asks. “You know, since the breakup.”

Pam sits back into her seat and lets out a heavy sigh. “I’m fine, I guess.”

“Better or worse than last time?”

“Not helpful, Mom.” 

Her mother grimaces. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know. And to answer your question, I’m not really sure.”

Last time. Pam closes her eyes. After she’d called off the wedding, she’d desperately wanted to tell her mother the real reason she’d gotten cold feet. And it wasn’t for lack of trying on her mother’s part; she’d always been one of Pam’s closest confidants. But after what had happened, her walls had begun to rebuild themselves so quickly she found it difficult to reach out to anyone. And every time her mother attempted to find out what happened, Pam had shut her down. 

There had been that phone call she’d made as she leaned against Jim’s desk, his confession still reverberating in her mind. At that moment, she was confused. At that moment, she was looking for guidance. But afterwards, she could only feel shame for what she’d done; both for allowing herself to participate in that kiss and for letting Jim walk out of her life. Even though she’d made her decision, the shame had lingered, and she’d never wanted to revisit the topic of her best friend’s unexpected declaration with her mother. 

Her mom sighs and offers the same comforting advice she always does when her daughter closes off.

“Well, this too shall pass, honey.” 

Pam opens her eyes. “Can I ask you a question, Mom?”

“Of course.”

She takes a deep breath. “Did you like Roy? I mean… did you like him for me? Honestly?”

Her mother looks thoughtful, considering her question, and Pam is relieved she seems to understand that now is not the time for politeness, now is not the time to mince words. 

“I did like him, honey. I thought you were well suited for each other. But I guess I didn’t really have a reason to think otherwise, until…” She pauses, gauging Pam’s reaction. It feels like she wants to say more but isn’t sure whether or not she should broach the subject. 

Pam reacts, her eyes darting up to her mother’s then away again so quickly she’s unable to hide her uneasiness. Her first instinct is to retreat, to shrug off her mother’s attempt at fishing and hope it never comes up again. But the weight of her troubles has been so heavy, she’s desperate for someone to help her carry the burden. Her mom has always been a source of strength, and right now she really needs some.

“Until I called you that night about Jim,” Pam says, completing the thought. She looks up at her mom, knowing there’s no more turning back from this conversation. They were probably always going to have it, be it twenty years from now over a game of Mahjong or right here, right now, over a couple cups of Earl Grey.

Her mom nods, then takes a sip of her tea, looking at her daughter over the edge of her mug, carefully considering her next words. “Right. So… are you ever going to tell me what ended up happening with that?”

Pam sighs. “Nothing happened, really. I told him I couldn’t return his feelings, that I was going to marry Roy. Then he moved away, and that was that.”

Her mother looks at her closely, knowing full well that was certainly not that. 

“You told him you couldn’t return his feelings,” she says slowly, trying to understand. “But you told me on the phone you thought you did. Remember?”

Yes, she remembers. Of course she remembers. Every single moment of that night is carved into her memory like an epitaph: her dearly departed chance with Jim Halpert. Rest in peace. 

“I did say that. But then… he kissed me, and I just…” she doesn’t even know how to talk about this. The last time she uttered any of it aloud, it ended in screaming and shattered glass. “He kissed me and I kissed him back. I wanted to kiss him. And I felt guilty for wanting to.”

Her mother is now gaping, her mouth slightly open, the mug halfway from the table to her lips.

“You and Jim… kissed?”

The shame returns with intensity. 

“I was so confused, Mom. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel.”

“Forget how you were ‘supposed’ to feel, Pam,” her mother implores. “How did you actually feel?”

“I don’t know!” Pam explodes. 

She really can’t put into words how she actually felt at that precise moment. She’s beaten herself up about the consequences of her actions that night every single day for nearly a year, but even now she finds it so hard to understand why she did what she did, why she said what she said. The last thing she wants is to be grilled about it. 

Her mom eyes her. “Honey, I know you must have your reasons for never sharing any of this with me. And I’ve been trying to be respectful of that. But… you told me you thought you were in love with Jim. That’s what you said before you hung up the phone.”

“I thought… that I really did feel something for him, but maybe I was just getting caught up in the moment. All I could think about was that I’d made a commitment to Roy. That… I loved Roy, and I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t throw away nine years just like that. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“Sweetheart,” her mom says with a sort of maternal compassionate exhaustion on her face. “You can’t love someone out of duty. That’s not how it works.”

“The wedding was three weeks away,” is all Pam can think to say by way of an excuse. “Three weeks.”

Her mother raises an eyebrow. “But the wedding doesn’t matter, Pam. That’s just one day. Marriage is for the rest of your life.”

Pam can feel her face getting hot, latent tears ready to fall. She knows this, of course, and it’s not as if she didn’t know it back then. But Roy had been ‘the rest of her life’ for so long that it was difficult to imagine anything else, even when that something else was standing right in front of her. 

“Pam,” her mother continues. “You’re saying you got caught up in a moment, but it must have been more than that. It was more than that before you even called me.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because honey, I know you,” her mother says gently. “And if you were as sure about Roy as I thought you were, as sure as you’re supposed to be when you’re about to marry someone, you’d have never made that call in the first place.”

It’s more simple than she expects, and she feels a deep wave of regret crash over her that she hadn’t realized this at the time. 

“You’re right,” she says. “I should have known.”

Her mother looks at her for a very long time as they sit together in silent contemplation. She can hear her father walking around on the roof above them. 

“Pam… now is the time to be honest. Do you love Jim?”

Courage and honesty. Not Pam’s strong points.

Oscar’s words from the night of her art show have haunted her ever since. She didn’t want to believe it, even then, but she knows he’s right. And maybe if she’d been honest with herself from the start she wouldn’t be in this mess right now.

She’s so tired of keeping her feelings in, of being afraid of that honesty. And though telling her mother is a small step forward, it’s still a step she needs to take. So for the first time since this entire thing started, she says it out loud: the truth.

“Yes,” she says, so quietly she can barely hear it. “I do love him. I think I’ve always loved him. At a certain point I guess I realized I was in too deep to even acknowledge it. So I pretended I didn’t. Convinced myself I didn’t, even.”

Her mom nods, listening.  

“As long as I kept telling myself we were just friends, it was okay to enjoy his company. To like the way he always made me feel. There was this time once, when he came up to my desk and warned me not to eat my stupid expired yogurt. It was so weird but I remember thinking it felt so nice to be seen. And that I was so glad it was Jim who was seeing me.” She smiles a bit, remembering. “One day he was getting a Coke out of the vending machine and it was the last one. It's so silly, but he just turned around and handed it to me without a second thought.”

Her mom smiles. Pam knows she remembers Jim fondly. There were only a couple of times they’d actually met, but Jim rarely made a bad impression, and her mother had been no exception.

“And then… this one time he was watching me drawing, and he said I was talented. I could tell he really meant it, you know? It made me feel so good. I don’t think Roy ever said that to me, not once. And it wasn’t something that bothered me about Roy, really, until I started getting to know Jim. Because it was like he filled all these spaces inside me that Roy just couldn’t.” 

She remembers it happening so many times: Jim saying something or doing something that would instantly shed light on areas in which Roy was lacking. Her only recourse at the time – or so she thought – was to try to ignore it, to focus instead on the good things about Roy she loved, their history and their comfortable rhythm. But most of those things were so far in their past she’d find herself making excuses: that this was just what was supposed to happen when people are together for such a long time, that maybe they’d simply gotten too comfortable with each other.

Even now, she wonders if she’d have ever realized she and Roy were wrong for each other if Jim hadn’t been there to show her what right could look like.

She looks up at her mom. “Is it… possible to be in love with two people at the same time?”

She’s thinking about her entire history with Jim now, from the moment he walked into her life to the moment he crossed that carpet and pressed his lips to hers. She wonders exactly how long he’d been in love with her; it’s impossible to pinpoint when exactly she fell in love with him. But she’s also wondering about Jim and Karen, too; if Jim loves her now instead, and if there’s even a remote possibility he could still have any feelings for Pam when he’s had a steady girlfriend for six months.

“I think so, yes,” her mom answers thoughtfully. “But I also think your heart can truly belong to only one person.”

Pam feels her eyes well up. “What if my heart has belonged to Jim this entire time, and I just never knew it? And now that it’s too late… what am I supposed to do with that?”

She looks helplessly at her mother, a somber look in her eyes. It feels like an unanswerable question, an unsolvable problem. 

“Maybe it isn’t too late. I think you should tell him how you feel, Pam.”

She thinks about what she told Roy in the coffee shop. It’s the same excuse she has for her mother. “I can’t. He has a girlfriend.” 

“Well, that didn’t stop Jim from telling you how he felt. Did it?”

Pam shakes her head slowly. “No, I guess it didn’t.” 

She wishes she could locate the strength to tell Jim the truth, to go after what she wants the way he had. Some days she’s angry that he waited for so long to tell her how he really felt; that maybe if he’d said something sooner, she might have been more willing to hear it. But most days all she can do is marvel at how brave he’d been to tell her at all, and how she wishes she could figure out a way to do the same.

Pam shakes her head. “He’s going to pick her, I know he will.”

“You don’t know that, honey. And if he does… at least you’ll know the truth. You’ll be free of the unknown.”

Free. She really does want to be free of all this. Knowing the truth about how Jim really feels about her would put an end to the anguish she’s endured for so long. She could start the next chapter of her life, more certain of herself, more confident in her own skin. Even if that chapter doesn’t include Jim.

“And if nothing else,” her mom adds, “maybe you can still be friends.”

Pam sighs, shaking her head. “I don’t know if we can be friends anymore, Mom. He’s not like he used to be. It’s like he went to Stamford and came back as some different version of himself.”

Her mom tilts her head curiously. “What do you mean?” 

“Just… dumb stuff, like he dresses a little different. He doesn’t pick the same drinks out of the vending machine. He doesn’t eat in the break room anymore. And then big stuff too, like… he doesn’t smile at me the way he used to. He doesn’t talk to me, or joke around with me. Instead I have to sit there and watch him with his perfect girlfriend. Work sucks every day.”

Her mother tightens her mouth into a thin line. “I hate to say this, honey, but if you feel this way now, imagine how hard it must have been for him, too.”

She can imagine it. If it hurt Jim to see her with Roy half as much as it hurts her to see him with Karen, he’d certainly suffered enough. 

Pam looks down into her mug. “I know I hurt him, and I feel awful about that. But I don’t understand why he had to change so much. There are all these things about him I have in my memory, and so many of those things are just gone. He’s here, but… he’s gone. And I just…” she can feel tears finally starting to break free, “...I miss the old Jim.”

Her mother looks at her sympathetically. “I think he probably did what he had to do to take care of himself. And I know that hurts.”

Pam wipes her cheek. “Are you saying he changed because of me?’

“We change each other all the time, Pam.”

“What do you mean?”

Her mother takes a long sip of her tea, sets down the mug and looks her daughter right in the eye. 

“Love… real love, it sort of sits with you. Forever. You can’t just forget about it. It changes you, and I guess you just have to be careful not to lose yourself.”

Pam shakes her head, so frustrated with herself for not having opened her eyes at the time. The idea of Jim losing himself is bad enough without the compounded guilt of having been the one to have caused it. She doesn’t even know what to think anymore. All she can feel is helplessness, the utter impotence of being unable to change any of it now.

“Everything is so clear to me now, Mom. So why didn’t I see it then? Why couldn’t I have just told him how I felt? Why couldn’t I have changed things before everything was too late?”

“Sweetheart, you can’t blame yourself for not knowing what to do.” She reaches out, covers Pam’s hand with hers. “Sometimes… we get so used to what we have that we forget about what we want.” 

Pam nods. As much as it hurts, it makes sense. 

“All you can do is be honest with him now, honey. It’s the only way to take control of this situation. Otherwise, you might lose yourself, too.”

She’s spent so much time over the past year looking for herself in the fallout of everything that’s happened; tiny pieces of Pam hidden amongst all the scattered smoking warfare. Separate from Roy, separate from Jim. Herself. She's proud of the person she’s found. It’s something she’s worked hard for, and she feels like she earned it. Losing herself would be even more painful than losing Jim. 

And something about understanding that feels really, really good.

Pam looks up at her mother, tears running down her cheeks, and wishes – very much like she wishes she’d done with Jim – she’d told her all of this a long time ago.

“Thanks, Mom,” she says in a quiet voice, and her mom smiles back warmly.  

Honesty and courage. 

She’s terrified, and she isn’t sure she can change that. But she’s waited long enough. 

It’s time to be brave.

***

He is her bright spot on an otherwise dull day. She’s starting to suspect she might be his, too.

Ever since Jim arrived at Dunder Mifflin it feels like things are different. The days go by a little faster. Michael is less obnoxious (well, a little). And she smiles more than she used to. Jim has somehow honed in on all the very specific ways to make her laugh. She doesn’t know how he did that, or why. But she likes it.

Her job can be fun. Not always, not even most of the time, but it has its moments, and she can’t help but notice those moments almost always involve Jim. 

Jim: her funny, tall, shaggy-haired new friend.

One day she’s visiting her sister after work, hanging out on the couch with a couple of wine coolers, telling her about how she and Jim had managed to reroute all of Dwight’s calls to Kevin’s desk at accounting. When Penny asks her why, she explains.

“Well, sometimes Jim dies of boredom. We made a deal where it’s my job to bring him back.”

Penny grins. “That’s so cute. It’s like you guys have your own love language.” 

Love language? Pam is immediately uncomfortable.

“I don’t love Jim.” 

Penny shrugs and smiles. “Call it whatever you want, but there’s something going on there. Can you honestly tell me the time you spend with him isn’t the best part of your day?”

Pam shifts uncomfortably on the couch, sets down her drink on the coffee table. “There’s nothing going on between me and Jim.” She sounds far more defensive than she intends to, but she’s not prepared for her sister’s interrogation. 

“Come on, Pam. You talk about him all the time.”

“I do not.”

“Yes, you do. Is he cute? Tell me he’s not cute and I’ll drop it.”

Pam feels herself blushing, realizing that she can’t actually tell her sister Jim is not cute, at least not honestly. Maybe she’s dropped his name in conversation with Penny a few too many times. She needs to get herself some more friends.

Preferably ones that are less… cute.

“It isn’t like that. He’s my friend,” Pam says. “That’s all.”

Penny puts both hands up and sort of smirks. “Sorry. My mistake.”

Pam glares at her sister. Penny has never liked Roy, and has never made a secret of that. She’s obviously just reaching, looking for things that aren’t there. But her comment makes Pam very self-conscious, and she isn’t exactly sure why. 

Her friendship with Jim has always come so naturally, so easily, she hasn’t really considered the possibility it might be inappropriate. She always feels like the time she spends with Jim - when they’re messing with Dwight, just playing together - is safe. She isn’t doing anything wrong. She hasn’t kissed Jim, or slept with him, or crossed any lines. They’re friends, that’s all.

But she does wonder from time to time: what would her relationship with Jim be like if she weren’t engaged to Roy? She’d be lying if she didn’t admit she’d thought about it once or twice. Okay, more than once or twice. 

Okay. Lots of times. 

But it’s just in her head, just dumb thoughts. She would never act on any of it, of course.

So why does she feel like she’s been exposed somehow?

“You know, it’s okay to love your friends, Pam,” Penny then says, interrupting her reverie. Pam looks up, realizing she's been absently twisting her engagement ring around and around her finger. She eyes Penny skeptically, but deep down she knows she’s right. Of course she can love her friends. 

Pam wants to agree with her sister, to retreat into that safe place she goes to every day where she loves Jim as a friend and nothing more. But Penny’s hit on something that won’t allow her to: the truth. A truth she is not ready to accept. 

She doesn’t have the courage to admit it, but deep down she knows: she’s the most authentic version of herself whenever she realizes she likes Jim more than she should.

***

It’s Christmastime at Dunder Mifflin, and this year is special. Maybe it’s stupid, but drawing Pam’s name out of the hat for Secret Santa felt like destiny, a sign of something. Jim isn’t sure of what, exactly. But maybe he can come up with a perfect gift, something that will impress her. Something that will show her how much he cares about her without him actually having to say it.

He should probably just say it, though.

He’s been in this quandary for months. For years, really. Should he tell her how he feels? Or should he let it be? Would telling her the truth be selfish? Or would the ends justify the means?

And the biggest question of all… what if she loves him back?

He sits in the conference room across from the camera crew, another long day of tormenting Dwight behind him. Another long day of allowing his feelings for Pam to torment him.

“How was your day?” Delilah asks, her usual way of kicking things off in these interviews.

“It was pretty good, I guess.”

“We’re excited about the barbecue tonight,” she says. “It’s okay if we come, right? Since you invited everyone from the office.”

Jim shrugs. He’s so used to their presence it barely fazes him anymore. “Sure.”

They unpack the events of the day, just chatting for a couple of minutes. It hadn’t been a particularly interesting day, so their conversation doesn’t last too long. At a certain point a lull inevitably arrives, and Jim moves to take off his mic, figuring they’re done for the day.

Delilah then turns around to the cameraman. “Will, can you turn the camera off?”

Will blinks. “I don’t… think…”

“Just turn it off, Will. And step out for a minute, would you, please? Both of you.”

Will grumbles, annoyed, but obeys. Brian the boom guy rolls his eyes and follows him. Then Jim and Delilah are alone in the room. No cameras.

“I want to ask you about something that happened a few weeks ago,” Delilah says. 

He’s intrigued, but a little anxious. Delilah has never asked to talk to him off camera before. “What happened a few weeks ago?”

“Well, when we were talking about that job in Maryland. Cumberland Mills, was it?”

He eyes her nervously. “Oh, what about it?”

“You said something interesting. You said if Pam weren’t at Dunder Mifflin, you’d take the job.” She tilts her head curiously. “What exactly did you mean by that?”

Did he really say that? Sometimes he’s amazed at what these documentary folks are able to get out of him without even really trying.

“Oh,” he says again. “Well, I was just exaggerating. You know.”

“Were you?”

Jim bites his lip. Every single day he’s here with Pam, the camera crew sees. They see how he gets up to talk to her a dozen times a day. They see the way she makes him smile. They also know she’s engaged. He’s not stupid; he knows his “secret” probably isn’t actually so secret, and the longer this goes on, the worse he probably looks to all of them. 

He isn’t trying to cause drama, or to break up an engagement. He doesn’t want to be that guy. He just wants to be the guy she would finally open her eyes and see for once.

“Can I say something to you, as a friend?” Delilah asks. “Off the record.”

“Um. Sure.” He shifts in his seat uncomfortably. Delilah isn’t really his friend, at least he’s never considered her one. But from the look in her eyes right now she cares pretty deeply about what she’s about to say, and she’s clearly wanted to say it for a long time.

“Jim, I probably shouldn’t say this at all, but I feel compelled to. And I completely understand where you’re coming from, believe me. But if you don’t tell Pam how you feel, and soon, she’s probably going to find out anyway. In a way that you won’t have any control over, if you catch my drift.”

Jim’s entire body goes cold. Has he really been that transparent? He’s been trying so hard to hide the way he feels about Pam, but if he’s been unable to hide it from Delilah, maybe she’s right. Maybe the documentary won’t tell the real story, at least, not the way he would want Pam to hear it.

He doesn’t know what to say. He’s been so conditioned to watch every word around the producer, even though it clearly hasn’t mattered. But she seems to genuinely want to help him. She’s always been kind to him, always made him feel at ease. 

Maybe that’s the problem.

“I… hear you,” he says. “Message received.” 

“Good.”

He leans forward and rubs his face with both hands, letting out a defeated sigh. “Shit.”

Delilah is quiet for a minute. He doesn’t mean to make her feel guilty. He’s actually glad she’d told him. 

“So… do all of you know?” he asks, his head still in his hands. He hears nothing, so he lifts his head up, looking at her through his fingers.

She bites her lip, giving a barely perceptible nod, and he groans. 

“You gonna be okay, Jim?”

“Yeah,” he says, even though he doesn’t feel like he is. “I just have no idea what to say. Or how to say it.”

She shrugs. “Well, Christmas is coming. And Christmas is the time to tell people how you feel. Right?”

He wonders if there’s any possible way the producer could know he’d picked Pam for Secret Santa. He doesn’t like worrying about the possible ulterior motives of a documentary camera crew, he’s got enough on his mind as it is. But regardless, Delilah is right. Maybe somehow, this could be the perfect excuse to let Pam know how he feels about her.

Delilah calls the crew back in, and they wrap up the interview. She asks him about his barbecue, and things feel normal again. But when he leaves the conference room and sees Pam talking to Roy at reception, another chill runs through his body, an anticipatory sense of dread.

What would she say if he actually told her the truth? How would she react? Would she be happy? Would she be surprised? Would she be upset? Maybe she’d slap him for interfering. Maybe she’d tell Roy and he would beat him up.

Maybe everything he thinks they have between them is all in his head.

It was prudent of Delilah to warn him, and he’s grateful for it, but if she’s to be believed, he’s running out of time. And even though a date has yet to be set for Pam and Roy’s wedding, it’s going to happen at some point. There’s no telling when the documentary will air, or what they will decide to show. How they’ll edit it together.

Days pass, and his latest struggle shifts from finding the words to tell Pam how he feels to finding the perfect gift. He’s spending the afternoon one weekend at the mall with his mom – he’d promised to take her to lunch – when he sees it: the teapot. It’s simple and elegant, and most importantly, it’s the color of Pam’s eyes on those days he can pretend her smile is just for him.

“Perfect,” he says quietly to himself.

“Who’s this for?” his mom asks, even though she probably suspects. He’s tried to be careful around the crew but he hasn’t bothered to hide his crush from his mom. 

“I got Pam for Secret Santa at work,” he explains. “Been wondering what to get her. But I think she’ll like this.”

He picks up the teapot and turns it around, inspecting it for any cracks or imperfections. His mom leans over, peering at it.

“I think she will, too.”

He lifts the lid and looks inside.

“You should find out what her favorite tea is and put some in there,” his mom suggests. He nods, because it’s a good idea.

But then he thinks of a better one.

And now he knows exactly how he will tell her how he feels.

Pam,

I’ve waited for years to tell you this. I’m not sure why. But with the cameras and everything, it’s been harder and harder to keep my feelings inside, and I figured maybe now is the time to tell you. So here goes. 

Ever since you told me to take that job in Maryland, I can’t get it off my mind. I’ve been wondering why I didn’t apply. I probably should have. On paper, everything about it makes sense. But the truth is that no job, or anything else for that matter, could ever compare to the way it makes me feel to be here with you. And there’s no opportunity in the world that I want more than just a chance to make you mine.

You are the reason I get up every day. You are the reason I want to do better, and be better. But you are also the reason I stay. Because if I get to see you smile, or hear you laugh, or believe for even a second that you could feel the same way I do, it makes everything else — all of this — worth it.

No matter what happens, I will love you forever.

Jim

***

Forever.

He hadn’t thought about the note he’d written to Pam in a long time. Until now, it had existed as a near-forgotten memory, an unanswered question in his mind. But when he starts working on his taxes, sure enough, it falls out of the file he’d tossed it in over a year ago – plunk – right into his lap. 

And now he’s thinking about it.

Reading it again would probably be a mistake, especially considering all of the very real progress he’s been making with Karen over the past few weeks. It seems like every time he gets closer to moving past Pam, closer to forgetting about all of it, the universe can’t help but remind him of the way he used to feel about her. But his hands have minds of their own as they carefully slip it out of the envelope to read the words he’d written two Christmases ago– and he remembers.

He remembers the way he felt when he’d written it, how full his heart had been of Pam and only Pam for so long that even now he can’t be quite certain when it began. 

Or when it will end, for that matter.

Jim shakes this off – tries, at least – and sets the card down on his desk, trying to focus on deductions and capital gains. But I will love you forever and its persistent promise outweighs everything else.

He snatches the card and gets up, making his way over to the wastebasket. The shredder he’d borrowed from the office sits next to it, tiny confetti-like bits of last year’s unused tax documents peeking out at him through the window. The Jim of last year. 

He holds the note over the shredder but very quickly withdraws his hand, pulls it back like the thing might bite him. The idea of the machine’s teeth violently obliterating his tender words for Pam is a revolting image. He tosses the card into the wastebasket instead, then goes back over to his desk. But it doesn’t take very long for him to wander back over and pluck it out, shoving it angrily back into the file for 2008. 

I will love you forever.

He wonders if it’s true, if there will always be a part of him that’s in love with her. 

Forever.

A couple of evenings later, he and Karen raise their glasses to six months. It’s a far cry from forever, but he knows that’s what she’s hoping for. And he’s hoping for the same, even if he can’t say it yet, even if he can’t feel it yet. Even if he’s still thinking about that damn Christmas card.

“Cheers,” Karen says, and he taps his wine glass against hers. 

He’s amazed they’ve made it this far at all. What he thought would be nothing more than a rebound from Pam has actually evolved into something real against all the odds. He’s genuinely happy with Karen, and he can remember a time where he was convinced it wasn’t even possible. So that’s something worth celebrating. 

They sit at a table in the corner of Anna Maria’s, one of Karen’s favorite places. The only decent Italian food in Scranton, she’d called it, and he’d deferred to her expertise on the subject without further comment. 

“Six months. Not only for us, but for your relationship with Scranton,” he teases. “Think that one can last?”

She scoffs. “Please. First opportunity out of here, we should take it.”

The energy between them shifts a bit. Karen has made no secret of the fact that she doesn’t really care for Scranton. She’s more comfortable in a fast-paced environment, somewhere like New York. Jim has lived here pretty much all his life, and though he knows Karen doesn’t mean to give offense, he always takes her jabs a little personally.

“Ouch.”

Karen raises an eyebrow. “You can’t honestly want to stay here forever, Jim,” she says, as if any answer to the contrary would be absolute madness.

He shrugs. “It’s not so bad. I grew up here, you know. I turned out alright.”

He vaguely recalls his surprise back when the branches had merged that Karen had even been considering moving to Scranton. It had seemed so unlike her at the time, and even more so today. He knows now the main reason she’d moved, obviously, but the long term effects of that move hadn’t really been something he’d contemplated until now. 

Now that he’s starting to wonder about forever.

“Yes, Halpert,” she grins. “You’re the best thing to come out of Scranton by far.”

He grins. “Well, just wait until Beach Day next week. You can’t beat those Scranton beaches, Karen. They’re Michael Scott-approved.”

“Can’t wait,” she says, as good-naturedly as possible. 

A couple tables over, a small child starts crying, and her mood turns sour. Oddly enough, he’s reminded of his very first impression of her: unamused and unimpressed with pretty much everything around her.

“Do they have to bring their kid here?” she grumbles under her breath. “It’s a nice place.”

Jim raises an eyebrow. He turns to look, then turns back. “Yeah, and he’s clearly not meeting the dress code. Slob.”

She sighs in frustration and takes a sip of her wine. 

“Karen. Are you being serious right now?”

“Oh come on, you know what I mean,” she says. “I like kids, just not with my penne arrabiata.”

He wonders if she actually does like kids, or if she’s just taking the temperature of the room. It occurs to him that he’s never contemplated having kids with Karen, not once. Six months into this relationship and the possibility never crossed his mind. What does that mean?

Maybe now is the time to find out.

“I can’t really believe we’ve never talked about this, but… do you want to have kids someday?” he asks her.

She shrugs, as if he’s asked her if she’s interested in ordering dessert. “I don’t know. I mean, maybe someday. It’s not really part of my plan right now.”

Not really part of her plan. Maybe the question should have come up much sooner. 

“Really?” He can’t hide his surprise, and he can tell from her expression she’s clocking it and recalibrating as they speak.

“Well, I mean… I’m not opposed to the idea, I’m just really focused on my career right now. I have goals I’d like to meet, and kids would probably get in the way of that.”

For the first time in his entire relationship with Karen, he feels a sinking sensation in his gut that’s completely separate from the Pam problem. He wants kids, he’s always wanted kids. Can he be with someone who isn’t as sure about that as he is?

The waiter comes over and asks them if they’d like another bottle of wine, and Karen declines. Suddenly the only thing he wants is a grape soda.

“Is having kids… important to you?” Karen asks after the waiter leaves.

He considers telling her the truth. Having a family is something he’s imagined in his future for as long as he can remember, but it was always something he’d envisioned happening in Scranton. For a while, he’d even been able to picture their faces: they’d have his ears, maybe his mom’s smile. Hopefully her nose. Her eyes.

Pam’s eyes.

He looks across the table at Karen, and the images fade away. 

“Nah, not really.”

I called off my wedding because of you.

The sound of Pam’s voice echoes in his eardrums, louder and louder until it’s absolutely deafening. 

I shouldn't have been with Roy. 

There were a lot of reasons to call off my wedding. 

But the truth is, I didn't care about any of those reasons until I met you.

He can’t keep all her words straight in his mind and they bounce around like a bunch of misfiring mousetraps, one after the other. Snap, snap, snap: a steady, cacophonous crescendo.

He doesn’t have to turn his head to feel the heat from Karen’s glare, even more intense than those of the tiki torches surrounding them. As if that isn’t enough, a dozen pairs of eyes then shift from Pam’s departing figure over to him, clearly waiting for him to say something. 

He has no idea what to say. 

Now we’re not even friends, and things are just… weird between us, and that sucks. 

And I miss you.

Karen gets up and walks away from the circle without a word, heading towards the bus. The rest of the group is silent. All Jim can hear are the crackling flames of the bonfire, which is making his entire body feel hot. Or maybe it was just Pam’s speech.

I miss you.

“I was late, but I went to her art show,” Michael eventually says, breaking the tense silence. “What did she mean? Did none of you guys show up?”

Everyone looks at each other sheepishly.

“I was there,” Oscar interjects. “Anyway, I don’t think it really matters. She’s obviously only upset about Jim.”

After a brief murmur of subdued agreement, everyone’s eyes turn back to Jim.

“Jim? You didn’t go to Pam’s art show?” Michael says accusingly.

Pam’s art show is the last thing on his mind after everything else she’d said. Michael, however, looks so personally offended at the mere suggestion Jim wouldn’t have been there that he lets the weight of his absence sink in: how low Pam must have felt that night, how bummed that no one was there to support her. 

What it must mean for their friendship that he wasn’t there to support her.

You were my best friend before you went to Stamford, and I really miss you.

He doesn’t know how to respond to Michael. He’d considered going, briefly, but the thought of seeing her there with Roy was enough to dissuade him. The avoidance tactics he’d been employing were actually working and he had no desire to jinx that. He hadn’t been thinking about her constantly. He was making actual progress. In the end he decided staying away was probably best for everyone.

Now, a very real stab of guilt comes over him for his failure to be a good friend to Pam at a time when she really needed one. But his thoughts then shift back to his primary concern at the moment: Karen, who very clearly needs him right now, and he can actually do something about that. He gets up and leaves the group in search of his girlfriend, taking a deep breath, readying himself to attempt to put out this latest blaze.

He finds her behind the bus, sort of pacing with her head in her hands. She looks completely stressed out, and he feels terrible that she’s in this situation at all. He isn’t sure how much more of this she can take, and he can relate. The hits in their relationship appear to just keep on coming.

“So, what now?” she asks, when she can finally look him in the eye.

“What do you mean?” 

“What do I mean? The girl you have feelings for just told the entire office she has feelings for you, too.”

Jim blinks. That’s not exactly what he heard. Maybe he’s been so conditioned to overanalyze everything, maybe he’s just so used to being rejected by Pam that he isn’t entirely certain what to make of her little speech.

He thinks about what he’d said to Pam a year ago; how he’d bared his soul and she’d absolutely destroyed him. And he thinks about what Pam had said tonight, with everyone they know in watchful attendance:

I  miss having fun with you.

He’s missed having fun with Pam too, but it’s been a long time since he can honestly say it’s happened. Maybe he’s finally past all of that. Maybe it’s not who he is anymore.

He feels as if he’s been running a marathon for a year straight. He’s fucking exhausted. And he’s near enough to the finish line that he really thinks he might actually make it. He’s been trying so hard, he’s been working so hard, and if he stops now, it could all be for nothing.

I called off my wedding because of you.  

Indeed, what he’d hoped was true for so long was, in fact, true. Pam had ended things with Roy because of what Jim said, because of what he’d done. It wasn’t all in his head, at least not entirely. 

But even if Karen is right, even if Pam is interested in more, at this point… is it enough? It wasn’t enough for her to tell him so back in May. It wasn’t enough to make one phone call — just one — telling him she was available, that she had feelings for him too. And none of it was enough to change the course of events that has led him right here, right now, looking into the weary eyes of his girlfriend, someone he truly cares about.

He stares at Karen, still saying nothing.

“I knew something like this would happen,” she suddenly says. “I knew it. If we stayed here…” she trails off, then closes her mouth.

“You knew what?”

She doesn’t answer his question. “When Michael mentioned that opening at corporate, what was your first thought?”

He shakes his head, unsure of what she’s getting at. “That… there’s no way he’s getting that promotion. Unless there’s a new executive mandate for Movie Mondays.”

“I’m serious, Jim. Did it even occur to you to want that job before I suggested we apply?”

Did it? He can barely remember. Pam’s words are taking up so much of his bandwidth, it’s as if one side of his brain is still processing them while the other side tries to reassure Karen. He remembers Karen taking his hand, walking him around the lake until they could find cell service. He remembers her asking him what he thought about New York, he remembers saying he thought it was okay. She did suggest they both go for that job, and while he’d initially thought competing against his girlfriend for a promotion was a little weird, she’d convinced him it was a good idea. Something about increasing their chances.

“I mean… sure. It’s a great opportunity.”

“But it’s not in Scranton,” she says. “What happens if you get it?”

“I don’t know, I guess I just figured I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it.”

She crosses her arms and leans against the bus, sighing heavily. She looks so small against it, so out of place here. Karen doesn’t belong in Scranton and he’s known that since she arrived. Leaving has probably always been her endgame, and this interview at corporate is nothing more to her than a ticket out, for both of them. 

But maybe she’s right to feel that way. Maybe coming back here has always been the only obstacle in their way. He can’t deny the probability that if he’d never come back at all, he and Karen would be somewhere different. Physically, mentally, emotionally.

And then he realizes something profound: the problem isn’t that he’d come back to Scranton. The problem is that he never really has. Because doing so would have only reminded him of the reason he’d remained in Scranton for so long in the first place. 

This entire time he’s been positioned between these two worlds: wedged firmly between his past and his future. Pam and Karen. And as long as he’s stuck somewhere in the middle, he will never be able to budge in either direction.

Maybe that’s been the answer to getting over Pam all along: getting out of here. This job. This job could be the solution to all of his problems. 

“Karen,” he says, approaching her with purpose and grabbing her gently by the shoulder. “I’m with you. I want to be with you.” The more he says it out loud the more he believes it.

“Then what are you going to do about this, Jim? About her? Pretend that little speech never happened?”

“I’ll go talk to her,” he says, even though he has no idea what to say. “Okay?”

Karen looks up at him, and he just wants to stop seeing that look on her face: the one of concern, of fear. Of mistrust. He really wants to stop seeing that look, and he knows he’s the only person who can make it go away.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he says to Karen, and feels a sharp twinge in his heart.

She looks at him in a desperate sort of way. “Do you really mean that?” 

He wants to mean it, he really does. He thinks of Pam once again, and the words he’s still trying to make sense of.

And now you're with someone else. And that's... fine. It's... whatever. 

Whatever.

“Yes,” he says to her. He nods, and heads off to find Pam. 

He means it. He has to mean it. 

***

He’s waiting, again.

After his teapot plan had gone awry, he’d backslid quite a bit in regards to his courage. If he thought she’d been ready to hear him pour his heart out to her, he was wrong. But he knows there will come a time in their future when he will have to summon up his courage once again, whether she’s ready for it or not.

Roy is below decks doing snorkel shots with Darryl, and Pam is up here alone with Jim. His best friend. Everything always feels so good when it’s just the two of them. 

“Sometimes I just don’t get Roy,” she says, rather abruptly. 

Jim doesn’t consider himself the white knight type, gallantly riding in to sweep the girl off her feet, saving her from the evil ogre (in the warehouse jumpsuit). With Pam, he’s always considered himself more of a sidekick, a partner in crime, a ride or die. 

But he does want to save her. He wants to find a way to make her see that she’s in need of saving right now.

“I mean, I don’t know,” she continues. She’s looking up at him like she wants him to present a counter-argument, to lay out his case. But is she asking him as her best friend? Or is this the moment he’s been waiting for, the moment she gives him permission to be honest?

He’s been waiting for the right moment to tell her how he feels, has rehearsed it in his mind over and over, the perfect words to say to her: 

I can love you more than he does. 

I can love you better than he does.

I can promise that I already do. 

They stand together in silence, suspended in time. He isn’t sure how long they do, staring at each other like this, but he feels a strong compulsion come over him, like a voice carried by the icy breeze is whispering “stay.” If only he could exist in this moment with her forever, free of any constraints or expectations, free of his fear and confusion. Just stay exactly like this, in their cozy bubble, without saying a word.

But he can’t, and he knows he can’t. The wind whips in his ears and blows her hair around her face and the lake is on every side of them, an endless expanse of promise, of freedom. 

All he has to do is jump.

“So, what’s it like dating a cheerleader?” she asks him, that mischievous glint in her eye he’s so fond of. It always feels like she’s flirting with him but it’s also always impossible to know if that’s the case.

She’s given him three openings and he’s said nothing. He knows he should tell her now, he knows it. But when he opens his mouth and looks her in the eyes his mind goes completely blank. He forgets everything he’d carefully rehearsed. 

His eyes drift down to her lips, and he considers just going for it. Maybe he doesn’t need any words at all; maybe he just kisses her, lets his actions do the talking. But he’s imagined this moment for so long, the idea of actually going through with it is too much to take. He’s flooded with terror and his body succumbs. 

Pam notices this change, and he can see it happen: there’s a brief moment, ever so brief, when the glint leaves her eyes and is replaced with something else he can’t quite recognize.

No- he does recognize it. It’s disappointment. And he will toil over exactly what she’d been disappointed about for months.

“I’m cold,” she says, and the moment passes. She walks away and he’s left alone, staring out at the lake. 

For the next few minutes he stews in his own disappointment, his own frustration: he blew it. He’s been waiting for this very moment for years and he’d absolutely choked, even though it was presented to him on a silver platter, even though the universe was all but saying “Here, Jim Halpert, this is your chance. Ready when you are.”

His mind is in overdrive for the next several minutes, wondering whether or not he can salvage this missed opportunity, if he can still communicate to Pam the truth. But the universe seems to still be speaking to him: Of course you can. Tonight is your night. 

He sets off from the bar with purpose, leaving Michael and Roy and everyone else who doesn’t matter behind, beginning to weave his way back across the boat through the bustling crowds of drunk passengers.

“I would save the receptionist,” he shrugs to Delilah. She knows he would anyway. And so will Pam, in just another few seconds. 

With every step closer to her, he’s more and more grateful to the universe for guiding him, for showing him that he doesn’t have to wait anymore. He’s so grateful that he’s completely unprepared for said universe to pull the rug out from under him.

June 10th.

Fuck you, universe.

He can visualize this entire situation as a bomb, like in an action movie, with a timer ticking down to his destruction. He’s so mad at everything right now that nothing else seems to matter. He hurts Katy, though he doesn’t mean to. And he confides in Michael, the world’s worst confidant. He isn’t sure why he does either of those things. Maybe he’s just tired of waiting. Maybe he just wants to blow everything up.

But then Michael says something he does not expect:

Never, ever, ever give up.

It’s just a spark, a tiny flicker of hope that even the chilly Lake Wallenpaupack air is unable to extinguish. But it’s enough. If he wants to defuse this bomb, he still might be able to. He’s just going to have to wait a little longer, for another perfect moment to present itself. 

Sometimes he thinks he’ll be waiting for Pam his whole life. 

Sometimes he’s okay with that.

***

There are moments she can remember when she knew she and Jim were meant for each other. 

It wasn’t a single bolt of lightning, like they say; some grand moment of revelation. It wasn’t even a light switch flicking on somewhere in her brain. Rather, these moments were more like tiny fireflies circling her head, ever present: difficult to catch, but their brilliance even more difficult to ignore.

There were small moments, like when he’d save her a seat in the conference room, and when she’d notice the little dimple on his left cheek whenever she’d make him smile. Or bigger moments, like that night she realized he’d somehow gotten Michael to change her Dundie award from something painful and embarrassing into something… not. 

There were even bigger moments, like when he gave her that teapot filled with treasures she tried to shrug off as simply a friendly gesture. And that night on the booze cruise, when she’d gazed into his eyes and secretly hoped he might tell her what she’d suspected for years. 

Or perhaps the biggest moment of all: when that tear fell from his eye after she lied to his face and watched him walk away from her. 

I’m sorry if you misinterpreted things.

She thinks of that tear as she runs across the blazing hot coals, but it’s not an act of self-flagellation. 

It’s an act of self-determination.

***

The adrenaline is beginning to wear off as she stands at the edge of the lake, cool water lapping around her ankles. She’s okay for right now, but knows that tomorrow the pain will arrive, and it will be intense.

She tries to predict what Jim will say. She has no earthly idea. But she isn’t sure if he will even approach her tonight. He has a girlfriend, after all, and Pam had basically just lobbed a grenade at the both of them and walked away. 

It really did feel good to do it, though. It wasn’t just Jim, either; the entire office had borne witness to the final phase of the metamorphosis she’s been going through ever since he kissed her and left, waking her up from a years-long hibernation.

Honesty and courage. 

Tonight, she’s finally done it. She’s faced her fear and told him the truth, and even if it’s all over between them, it won’t stop the triumphant smile creeping across her face; the thrilling agony coursing through her raw, burned feet.

The lake is quiet except for the occasional splash of a duck diving in the reeds, and she closes her eyes, breathing victory into her lungs. After a few minutes of solitude, she hears Jim’s familiar footsteps behind her. She doesn’t have to turn around to know it’s him.

“How are your feet?” he asks.

The sound of his voice is more welcome than it’s ever been. It doesn’t really matter what he says; he’s here. She’s no longer invisible to him. 

“Medium rare. Thanks.”

She tosses him a smile over her shoulder, hoping to keep things light, make him comfortable. The last thing she wants is to let everything get awkward all over again. 

To her great relief, he grins back. “At least it wasn’t a Foreman grill.”

“I think you can give me a little more credit than that.” 

He chuckles a bit. “I’m very impressed,” he then says, gesturing behind them to the extinguished bed of coals. “I didn’t think anyone but Dwight had the balls.”

“It’s the new me, I guess.”

He nods, putting his hands into his pockets. “Yeah,” he says, sounding far away. 

She wants to move past the small talk. She’s riding a high and hopes that they can actually have a meaningful conversation, the one they should have had in her car weeks ago. She’s desperate to say more now that they’re alone, but she doesn’t really know how to begin. 

“Hey, I’m really sorry that I didn’t come to your art show,” he says. To his credit, he really does look sorry. 

“Okay. Is that all you heard? Because I said some other stuff.”

“Really?” He shrugs in that cute mock-confused way of his. “I don’t...”

She gives him an easy smile, and they both laugh to themselves.

“You know what’s interesting? I don’t feel embarrassed at all. I just feel good.” She’s actually feeling better by the second. It’s almost as if with every truth she reveals to him, each one gets progressively easier. 

He continues to appear impressed, and maybe even a little relieved. “Good.”

It’s quiet again, and she watches him, wondering what he’s thinking. 

“If you don’t have anything to say, you don’t have to say anything,” she says, at first wanting to let him off the hook. Maybe he didn’t come down here to have a conversation after all. Maybe he’s just feeling duty-bound to maintain his boundaries, like he did after the branches merged. To keep her secure inside their painfully unresolved status quo. But then she decides that’s not what’s going to happen, not on her watch. 

“Or, no- I take that back,” she says, somewhat defiantly. “You have to say something.” 

She doesn’t want to leave anything off the table. She was brave tonight. At the very least, she deserves something from him in return. 

The jubilant voice of Michael — very suddenly and inconveniently — cuts across their quiet moment from twenty yards away. 

“Hey! You guys, I’m doing it! I’m walking on boiling steam!” he shouts, wobbling across the extinguished coals, extremely proud of his efforts. 

Pam can’t help but laugh. “How can you even think about leaving that?” she asks, pointing to their boss. Jim grins back, and every time they laugh together like they used to it’s another shot of adrenaline pumping through her veins.

“So… you heard,” he says. “About the job.”

“I overheard you guys on the phone earlier down by the lake.”

He raises an eyebrow. “That’s pretty nosy of you, Beesly.”

“It wasn’t on purpose. Michael asked me to fill little bottles with lake water as mementos for everyone.”

“Well, that I believe,” he grins. 

She shakes her head. “It’s weird that you’re leaving again.”

“I haven’t gotten the job yet.” 

“I know you’re going to get it.”

He’s surprised. “And how do you know that?”

“I’ve sat in on enough Michael meetings to know that David Wallace is crazy about you,” she says with a shrug.

He grins and lets out a tiny scoff. “Crazy about me, as in… he’s going to confess his love after years of unrequited pining?” 

She smiles and looks down a bit bashfully, lifting her foot out of the water to slowly drag it along the surface in a lazy figure eight. 

“It wasn’t unrequited, Jim,” she says, very quietly.

It feels so good to finally say it, to admit it out loud. She dares a glance at him and he looks stunned at this admission. She wants to roll her eyes but she knows it’s her own damn fault he never believed it. 

It feels like minutes pass, but it must be only seconds when he speaks again.

“Why didn’t you call me?” he asks, so softly she can barely hear him. “After you broke off the wedding?” 

She doesn’t really know why. Other than: “I guess… I just wasn’t as brave as you were.”

His eyes look glassy and confused, and she can hardly blame him. She’s still disappointed in herself, in her failure to act. But fear and self-doubt had taken such a firm hold on her over the years, it wasn’t easy to shake. It still isn’t easy to shake.

“My mom said something to me the other day,” Pam says. “She said that sometimes we get so used to what we have that we forget about what we want.” She eyes him meaningfully. “It’s the closest I’ve been able to come to explaining why I did what I did.”

There’s a flutter in the bushes, and Jim glances over his shoulder, presumably to make sure no one is coming to interrupt them. She wonders what he’d told Karen he was going to talk to her about. 

“I don’t mean to mess anything up for you, I swear,” she says. “I didn’t plan any of this. I just… had to tell you the truth. Especially now that you’re probably leaving again.” 

The noise stops, and Jim turns back, looking her right in the eyes. 

“I’ve missed you too,” he says. “More than you probably realize. And I’m sorry things haven’t really… been the same.”

She nods. “You don’t have to be sorry. I get it. It’s taken me awhile, but I understand now. Why we can’t be what we were before.”

He looks at her sadly. “And why is that?”

She sighs. “Because…” she turns to look out at the water, unable to meet his gaze. “You aren’t the same you anymore, Jim. And I am not the same me. And… we can’t be the us we used to be, because so much has changed.”

She’s never acknowledged to Jim’s face the idea that the two of them were ever an us. But they always have been, whether she’d admit it or not.

“You seem really happy with Karen,” she continues honestly, then looks down at her feet. It’s hard to say her name anymore. “I was watching you guys today. You seemed to be having so much fun together. And it just got me thinking… that it could have been us, you know? That it would have been you and me goofing around on the beach, if nothing had changed. Even if I were still engaged to Roy, you would have been there for me. You were always there. I guess I sort of always counted on that.”

He still says nothing. She turns to look up at him again. 

“And then I thought about how awful that must have been for you, and how awful it was for me to expect that. To take advantage of that, even though I didn’t know I was doing it. Because you deserve to be with someone who knows exactly what they have when they have you.”

He’s quiet, absorbing her words. She’s already said so much that she waits, hoping for him to speak again. But he doesn’t. 

“You were the one who taught me that,” she continues. “What you said to me, Jim… it made me realize I deserve something better. That I didn’t have to settle for second best. Because of you, for the first time I’ve really gotten to experience what actually believing that feels like.”

He still says nothing, just looks at her in what she can only assume is amazement that she’s saying any of this at all.

“I’m so sorry if I ever made you feel the way I do right now, Jim. Because it hurts watching you have that with someone else. When it could have been me… when it should have been me. And I just wasn’t strong enough to have it.”

She desperately wants to know what he’s thinking, to know once and for all where they really stand. So she stops talking and waits, until eventually he speaks.

“It was my own fault, Pam. Springing that on you the way I did. I shouldn’t have put you in that position.”

She laughs quietly. “Our timing has never been the best.” 

“No, it hasn’t.”

She grins up at him, but he isn’t smiling. 

They look at each other for a long while, both thinking about that night again; years of unspoken emotion passing silently between them. She feels naked and exposed, but he is too. Ironically, she’s never felt closer to him in their entire friendship, so honest. That part feels good, even though it will probably only be for right now. Even though she fears this will all end in heartbreak again, no matter what she says or does. 

She wants to tell him this. She doesn’t quite know how. But something compels her to keep talking. It’s as if the pain in her feet is a perpetual reminder: Be brave. Say what you have to say, because you may never get another chance.

“Michael told me you left Scranton because of me,” she blurts out. “I’m so sorry, Jim. I feel like I let you down. If I’d known you were leaving…”

He looks hurt by this, and begins shaking his head. “No, Pam. It wasn’t your fault I left. I don’t want you to think that you did something wrong, or that I was mad at you, or anything like that. That wasn’t the reason.” He takes a deep breath, and in his eyes she finally sees something she hasn’t seen since that casino night: stripped down honesty. And this time she’s prepared to hear whatever he has to say. “The real reason I went to Stamford was because I wanted to be… not here.”

She nods sadly. “I know.”

“And even though I came back,” he looks like he’s really considering what he’s saying for the first time, “I just feel like I’ve never really... come back.”

She understands him perfectly. He doesn’t have to spell it out for her, she’d already implied as much: that he’d left Scranton as one Jim and come back another one. But she wants that old Jim back, the one who smiled at her, laughed with her, joked around with her. The one who was her best friend. 

The one who was in love with her. 

She doesn’t know if that Jim exists anymore, or if he could still feel that way even if he did. But she can only be honest with him now.  

“Well, I wish you would.”

His eyes search her face, and it’s clear that he wasn’t prepared for any of this. The water splashes against her scalded feet as she feels the gentle breeze all around them and Jim is here, finally facing her, finally listening. Finally seeing her again. She waits, and he stares at her, and all she can think about is how they are here all over again: in the very same place, only this time their roles are reversed. She’s the one who’s gone all in. She’s the one who’s laid all her cards on the table. 

“I’m not sure if that old Jim will ever come back,” she continues sadly. He looks at her intently. “Right now that feels impossible. But I can say this much: if he could come back, and was standing here right now…” 

Courage and honesty.

It’s her final round to play. No more bluffing. She takes a deep breath and pushes the last of her chips in. 

“...I wouldn’t wait another minute before asking him out on a date.”

Her revelation stuns him silent. He still says nothing, just stares at her with his mouth slightly open, processing everything. 

The Jim she used to know would probably smile, relief washing over his face, taking her into his arms and forgetting everything else. But that Jim only exists in her fantasy now, only in her memory: the Jim who pulled away from their kiss with his eyes closed in blissful contentment.

There are so many long, painful months between that Jim and the one who stands before her right now, looking completely shell shocked. Suddenly, everything he had done that night shifts painfully into focus: his compulsion to be honest, his desire to make sure things were not left unsaid. And in this moment, looking into his eyes, she now knows exactly how it felt for him, hoping beyond hope for a miracle while fully expecting crushing disappointment.

She knows he doesn’t want to hurt her like she hurt him, that’s the last thing he wants to do. But she sees the same hesitation in his eyes she’d given him all those months ago. She’s absolutely prepared for it to happen anyway.

“I know it’s too late,” she says, sparing him the discomfort of having to reject her. “I know it is. If… that’s really not who you are anymore. And I can accept that, Jim. I can.” Her eyes begin welling up with tears, her vision blurs. “I won’t run away. I won’t treat you badly. I’ll still want to be your friend. Your best friend, if you’ll let me. And I promise you that I will be okay.”

She hadn’t planned to say this much but the words are coming out of her mouth nonetheless. She can feel an insistent tug on her heart, silently screaming at her to just tell him she loves him, that she’s always loved him and no matter what happens tonight she knows she will forever. But he’s looking at her in such a helplessly sad way that in an instant she finally knows the real reason she’s doing this, despite all of her hopes, despite the pain she’s been going through for such a long time. 

She isn’t trying to make him love her again. That’s not what tonight is about. It isn’t about stealing him away from Karen. It isn’t about winning. It’s about her, finally being brave and honest and open. Standing up for herself. Saying all of the things she’d wanted to say to him months ago, but was too afraid. And in the midst of everything she’s thinking, everything she’s feeling, somewhere between her wounded heart and her scorched feet and the confusion and indecision that’s been controlling her life for months, she finally knows for certain she’s doing the right thing. 

She’s letting him go.

Jim’s confusion is palpable and his eyes betray a melancholy he cannot hide. “What are you saying?” he asks.

She looks up at him: Jim, her best friend. The person who was always there for her, who always made her smile, made her laugh. Made every single day worthwhile. The person who had loved her unconditionally, even when she’d been attached to the biggest possible condition.

She loves him. Letting him go is going to hurt like hell. But for the first time in a very long time, she’s confident that she’s going to be fine on her own. 

“I’m saying... that I just want you to be happy, Jim.” 

His expression, as it has been all night -- all year, really -- is inscrutable. She tries to decipher it, but it’s been a long time since she’s really had the opportunity and she’s out of practice.

“I am happy,” he says, his voice trembling. “Are you?”

She nods, and there’s a tear in his eye now, too, flickering just like it did last time. She knows that despite what he says, he’s probably sad; they both are. They’ve missed so many opportunities over the years she can’t help but feel the sting of disappointment that will probably continue for a very long time. But knowing there are no more secrets between them anymore dulls the ache, if only just a bit.

“Thank you,” she then says, because she suspects that if she doesn’t end this conversation soon she might completely break down in front of him.

“For what?”

“For talking to me. For being my friend. I know you probably think I was just blowing you off but I meant what I said about how much your friendship means to me.” There’s a sharp pain in her stomach, now primarily because if he does get that promotion, if he does move to New York, she’s going to miss him all over again. “You’ve been so important to me all these years, Jim. I can’t even begin to explain it.”

“You don’t have to explain it, Pam,” he says quietly. “You mean the same to me.”

An understanding passes between them, and for just a moment she sees that old Jim standing in front of her, the one she’s in love with. The one she may always be in love with, regardless of where he ends up, regardless of how fine she tells herself she is. This feels like a real goodbye, but even though she can feel her heart breaking into a million pieces, his words are weirdly cathartic. 

She believes him. And that’s not just something. It’s everything. 

There’s a funny look on his face again, the same one she keeps seeing all night. She wants to ask him about it but she’s already overexerted herself. She’s tired, and everyone is waiting, and Karen is surely waiting, and she just wants to go home.

Pam discreetly wipes her eyes and flashes him the same smile she always does, however, the smile she’s always reserved just for him, whether she was aware of it or not. She smiles to hide the way she’s falling apart.

“So,” she says. 

“So.”

She wraps her arms around her front protectively, only now realizing how cold it’s actually gotten. Her feet don’t hurt anymore either, they’re just numb. 

“Friends?” she asks him.

He looks at her thoughtfully for a few seconds longer than she expects, but ultimately nods. 

“Always.” 

He moves to hug her, and she wraps her arms around him – her best friend – an embrace that could very well be their last. But this time around, they will not end in tears. This time around, they will part as friends.

This time around, it’s her turn to know when to walk away.

Looking behind them, she sees the abandoned bed of coals as it smolders. Her heart is aching just as her feet do, but it will all heal with time. And as they walk together up the embankment back towards the bus, she feels it: the tiny snap as she breaks loose from her chrysalis at last and spreads her wings, ascending into the sky. 

He tries to convince himself he made the right decision.

Watching Pam walk back to the bus alone, though, feeling her physically slip away from him, had been enough to make him second guess himself almost instantly. 

He’d chosen loyalty to Karen. She’s the responsible choice, the safe one. And regardless of the inner conflict he’s been trying to suppress all year long, he knows he can be happy with her. He and Pam have a history, sure... but now, so do he and Karen.

Pam was right when she said that he isn’t the same person he used to be. He has evolved. And he’s so close to being able to move past her, past the old Jim, past all of this. He can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

She’d asked him to turn around, but does he even want to anymore?

There’s a large part of him that truly believes he’d be better off moving on, starting over for real. A new job, a new city, a fresh start for him and Karen. But there’s something still clinging to his heart, that tiny bit of unexpected information he didn’t have until that night at the beach: 

It wasn’t unrequited, Jim.

Pam had feelings for him all along. Well, for the old Jim, at least. Despite her inability to act, it was the truth, and she’d finally found a way to communicate it to him. And now this knowledge sits there, immovable. It reminds him of those times something gets stuck in his shoe and he can’t get it out. 

He smiles, trying to remember what exactly it was he and Pam had called it… that thing stuck in his shoe. Whatever it is, it won’t go away. He can feel it with every step he takes. 

He doesn’t really know what to do with that now.

It’s the morning of his interview, and he sits alone in the lobby of Corporate after Karen leaves to go have lunch with her friends. She’s hardly left his side since the beach, having needed constant support and reassurance, and it occurs to him how incredibly ironic it is that right now, when he could use some support himself, is the moment she’s chosen to leave him alone with his thoughts.

So he thinks. He looks around Dunder Mifflin Corporate, and he thinks.

This place is slick and modern, and it reminds him a lot of Stamford. It reminds him of the last time he stood on the precipice of a monumental life change.

He tries to imagine what a life in New York would be like. Maybe it could be exciting. Maybe he and Karen could make a real go of it. Last night, they’d walked around downtown Manhattan with the buzz of traffic and the smell of something new and unfamiliar all around him. She held his hand tightly — very tightly — and he tried not to read too much into it. 

The plan had been to have a romantic evening in the city, just the two of them. But he couldn’t pretend there wasn’t a third tagging along. A third who had been tagging along all week, even if only just a shadow.

We don’t have a future in Scranton, Karen had said. There’s one too many people there. 

She wasn’t wrong. The whole point of this endeavor is to leave Pam behind. He only fears that once they do, here in New York surrounded by thousands, he’ll still always feel one person short. 

His interview should go well, at least. He will sit across from David Wallace and say all the right things, do all the right things. He’s smart, and he’s good at his job. Getting a promotion like this has always been within his grasp. It feels almost foreign to finally be preparing to make the transition official.

“Dunder Mifflin, this is Grace.”

Jim’s neck snaps up as if from muscle memory at the receptionist as she answers the phone. He can’t help but smile to himself; it’s humorous at this point the way the universe continues to insist on reminding him that Pam still exists.

That thing stuck in his shoe still exists.

Eventually, the receptionist calls his name and leads him into David Wallace’s office.

“Hey, Jim!” David says, extending his hand with a huge smile. “Good to see you again.”

He shakes the CFO’s hand and can’t help but think of Pam’s prediction. I know you’re going to get that job.

“Good to see you too,” Jim says. He looks around David’s office. “Wow, this is incredible,” he says as he looks out the window at the skyline. A memory stirs. You can’t beat that view.

“Michael mentioned you and Karen came out last night, did you guys have a good time in the city?” David asks.

Jim shrugs. “Yeah, it was fun. We saw Spamalot. Kind of.”

“Good man,” David chuckles. “My wife dragged me to see that a few weeks ago, even though I had floor seats for the Knicks game. The things we do for love, eh?”

Love. Jim laughs uncomfortably. 

“Well, I’m a Sixers fan anyway,” Jim deflects. “So that wasn’t really an issue.”

“I don't know how I feel about hiring a Sixers fan.” 

Jim points towards the door, falling into a comfortable rhythm with David. Selling himself has never been difficult. “I should leave.” 

David grins, the small talk over, and gestures for Jim to sit down, which he does. 

“Let me ask you a question, Jim. You're clearly a very bright guy. Always hit your numbers, personable, you make a great impression on everyone you meet–”

Jim interrupts him. “I'm sorry, wait, so is the question ‘How'd I get to be so awesome?’ Because I don't have an answer for you.”

They laugh a little awkwardly, but the interruption serves its purpose. Because Jim knows exactly what David’s question was going to be: Why the hell have you been a paper salesman in Scranton for so long? 

He does have an answer for that one. And he isn’t sure how he feels about it.

David asks for his quarterly sales reports, which Jim hands over, but as he does so a note falls out – plunk – right into his lap. He picks it up to look at it.

And just like that, everything changes.

Jim

Don't forget us 

when you're 

famous! 

Pam

It’s a memo, like the kind she leaves on his desk to call back clients all the time, but this time, it’s personal. And attached to the note is a yogurt lid – a gold medal – from their office Olympics. 

His mind goes fuzzy, his mouth turns dry. This is no coded overture. It’s a flashing marquee, it’s a jet puffing out skywriting across the sky. And like a forgotten refrain from a favorite old song, the history of the medal in his hand materializes.

***

The day is pretty normal until it isn’t. That’s the way the days at Dunder Mifflin usually go. But today, there’s something special in the air. 

He and Pam have decided to throw an impromptu office Olympics, something fun to get everyone involved, break up the monotony of the day. He can always convince Michael it’s a team-building exercise if he happens to find out about it.

The athletes are taking a little work break, but Jim is too excited to work. 

“Hey Pam,” he calls from the conference room, beckoning her over.  She picks up the box of closing ceremonies paraphernalia she’s spent the last couple hours putting together and bounces over, mirroring his excitement with a giddy smile. The Olympics have been fun, but he won’t lie… it’s mostly because of that smile.

“Okay, so I was thinking we can hang these up with a little pulley system, and I’ll pull one end to make the little doves fly up.” She holds up one of the paper doves with a little flourish. Jim takes it with a smile.

“I didn’t know you knew how to do this,” he says, impressed.

“Well, I didn’t. Oscar showed me how.”

“Oscar, huh? Who knew.”

“Anyway, maybe we should set it up now, so we can do closing ceremonies before Michael gets back.”

He shakes his head, still grinning. “You’re amazing, Beesly.”

“Thanks, I try.” She flips her hair in a cute little way and starts to walk out of the room when he grabs her wrist gently, pulling her back.

“Wait a sec. You don’t have a gold medal yet. This is clearly some sort of horrendous oversight.”

She doesn’t pull away from his touch right away, but he lets go after a second. “Well, I haven’t won anything yet,” she points out. “So the math adds up, really.”

“No, I’m serious,” he says. “This entire thing was your idea.”

“It was yours, actually.”

“Okay, fine, but you were my inspiration. And you deserve to have a medal.”

“It’s really okay. I’m more of a spectator. Besides, I’m happy with silver.” She holds up her lone silver medal proudly, which she’d won after beating Toby in the staring competition. Jim had come out on top for the gold, which didn’t surprise him, as staring deeply into Pam’s eyes with permission was something he would have done as long as humanly possible.

“No one is actually happy with silver, Pam. Come on.”

She smirks. “Well, I can’t earn a medal if there’s no competition.”

“Yes, you can. It’s our office Olympics. We get to make the rules.” 

He turns back to the conference table where the remaining unclaimed medals are laid out, picks up a gold one, and holds it up. She rolls her eyes but he can’t ignore her smile as he steps forward, lifting the paper clip chain up and around her neck. 

He does it more slowly than he’d planned, placing it gently over her shoulders, and it settles just on top of the silver one. One of the clips catches on her hair and like a reflex he reaches out to untangle it, then moves her hair out of the way. 

“Gold medal for Pam Beesly. Best All-Around.”

“All-Around what?” she laughs.

He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. You win.”

They’re standing very, very close, but she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t step back. 

“Thanks,” she says. “I didn’t even have to try very hard. Just threw some paper clips into a mug.”

Jim shrugs. “The true champions are the ones who make it look easy.”

She cranes her neck to look up at him, and even though he knows the right thing to do is to back off, he’s frozen in place. Her eyes are captivating and she smells so good. He wants to make her his so badly it hurts.

After what feels like an eternity, she looks down at her medal, tilting it a bit. He’s probably imagining the reflection in her eyes, but he still sees it: gold. Tiny flecks of gold.

She looks back up at him. “Now that I have one, I have to admit you’re right.” 

He grins back, confused. “About what?”

“No one’s actually happy with silver.”

***

Jim holds the medal, staring at it. David is chattering about something, some HR rep, he isn’t sure. 

“How do you think you’d function here in New York?” David asks.

“What's that?” There’s a sort of ringing in Jim’s ears, and all of his carefully prepared responses are gone. He can’t locate one single solitary thing to say. “Oh, uh, great. You know? I just um, I really appreciate the buildings, and uh, the people, and um, there's just a… energy... New York has, uh…”

He’s babbling now, probably just some bullshit Karen had spouted last night about the city. David is looking at him with a perplexed expression. Get it together, Halpert. He digs deep and produces a joke he’d planned to toss at the CFO.

“Not to mention, they have places that are open past eight. So that's a bonus.”

David laughs at his canned response. “You've been in the Scranton branch a long time. What have you liked most about that place?”

He can’t say Pam, even though it’s all he’s thinking.

Even though it’s all that’s left to say.

Pam.

“The friendships,” he says honestly.

David Wallace looks at him with that confused look back on his face, “friendships” clearly not being the answer he’d wanted. 

“Okay,” he says indulgently. “Well, we want the person who takes this position to be here for the long haul. So... long haul. Where do you see yourself in ten years?”

Ten years.

Where does he see himself in ten years?

He’s been so focused on trying to prove to himself he’s over Pam, on getting through each day with Karen, that he hasn’t adequately considered what his future would look like with her. And if he accepts this position, if he moves to New York with Karen for the foreseeable future, what does that mean? What will his life be like? Who will he become?

Don’t forget us when you’re famous.

Will he ever forget about Pam? The way it felt to see her every morning as he walked into the office, the way his heart would pound whenever she smiled? The way her laugh filled up every bit of empty space inside of him in a way that Karen’s just doesn’t? As hard as he tries, will he ever be able to just forget all of that? 

And will anything ever be as good again? 

Very suddenly, something hurts, striking him square in the solar plexus. He slips the note into his jacket pocket and brings his hand to his chest, for a moment genuinely worried he could be having a heart attack or panic attack, or that something might be seriously wrong with him. 

Ten years. 

Wallace looks at him expectantly, waiting for an answer, but no words will come out. Then the CFO leans forward, concerned, eyeing Jim as if he can tell he’s experiencing some kind of short-circuit. 

“Jim? You okay?” 

Okay. 

Is he okay?

“Um, I’m so sorry, but can I please take a minute?” Jim asks.

“Of course,” David says. He gestures to the door. “I’ll be here.”

Jim gets up and heads out of David’s office, to the bathroom, closing the door behind him. The sounds of the office lobby become muted, and he steps up to the sink, bracing his arms against the counter, taking calming, steady breaths.

Where do you see yourself in ten years?

He looks in the mirror and he doesn’t even recognize himself. He’s wearing a suit that Karen picked out. His haircut, that she’d pushed him to get, looks like someone else’s. And there’s even something in his eyes that doesn’t feel right, like the light has gone out of them.

He splashes water onto his face. Is he doing the right thing? How can he possibly know for sure?

What have you liked most about that place?

The friendships, he’d said. 

Pam’s friendship, he’d meant.

He’s been trying for so long not to be the guy hopelessly in love with the receptionist that he’s forgotten what’s most important: how to be her friend. More to the point, he’s almost forgotten how to just be Jim. 

He looks down at the yogurt lid in his hand. It’s just a tiny circle of tinfoil but it means more to him than anything else that’s happened all year. 

He then looks back up at his reflection and finally it hits him: the thing he thought he’s been trying to accomplish all year is actually the very thing he’s been avoiding. He doesn’t want to evolve. He doesn’t want to move to New York and work in this building and live with Karen and be some other type of person he doesn’t recognize. He wants to be the person he was, the Jim he’d been before.

The Jim who Pam could love.

We don’t have a future in Scranton.

Karen’s right… they don’t have a future in Scranton. 

But he does.

David Wallace sits in his corporate seat, Karen is downtown having fancy drinks with her fancy friends. Pam is back in Scranton, answering the phone and being Pam, and here he sits, the only person desperately trying to be someone he isn’t. He’s been lying to himself for so long, swimming upstream against a powerful current. And if he stops trying so hard and just lets go, if he allows the current to carry him away, he knows exactly where it will lead: right back to her. 

He thinks of the Christmas card he’d written for Pam, the words he’d poured his heart and soul into. It still sits in his accordion file up in his closet, waiting for… something. There has to be a reason he’s continued to save it, there has to. He’s known for some time he will never actually give it to her. 

So… why? Why does he still have it? Why has he held on to it this entire time? Why can’t he let it go?

No matter what happens, I will love you forever.

Forever.

Ten years, and all he can see is Pam’s face. The Pam he’s known all along, but also this new, courageous, vibrant being he only met a few days ago; someone who has finally found herself throughout this awful mess, without Roy, without him, a whole person all on her own, standing upright on two scalded feet. Days later, he still feels an odd sense of misplaced pride on her behalf, even though he knows he probably has no business feeling it at all.

He tries to visualize Karen, to imagine the life she’d envisioned for them here, but he can’t. He only sees Pam. Pam’s smile, Pam’s laugh. Those kids again, with Pam’s eyes. 

Only Pam.

And now he knows the reason he kept that letter. 

It’s because he wanted to remember how it felt to be in love: deeply, madly, truly in love. Because someday – he told himself – he’d end up with someone else, someone who was not Pam, and he owed it to himself to remember the kind of love he deserved. 

But mostly he knows it’s because that letter is no less true today than it was the day he’d written it. And trying to make it untrue is – and has been – a fool’s errand. 

He doesn’t want to try anymore. He’s sick of trying. 

He looks in the mirror one final time, smiling at his reflection. And all of his prior rationalizations, all of his logic and fear and doubt completely disappear until only one thing remains.

Love.

Don’t forget us, she’d said.

Don’t forget me, she’d meant.

He can’t forget her. He will never forget her. And most importantly… he doesn’t want to.

Jim steps out into the hallway between the bathroom and David Wallace’s office, and can hear the voice of the receptionist in the lobby again.

“Dunder Mifflin, this is Grace.”

Grace.

He’s been ignoring the signs from the universe long enough. This is the right decision. He is sure now, more than ever before. He wants to go home, where he knows Pam will be waiting. He wants to take this gold medal and put it back around her neck where it belongs.

He’s not prepared to settle for silver. 

Jim opens the door to David’s office and steps inside. 

“I’m really sorry, David,” he says, and the CFO’s eyes widen in surprise. “But… I can’t do this. I have to go.”

David watches him in shock as he picks up his bag from the floor and turns to leave.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… I don’t belong here, in New York. I should be back in Scranton.”

“You don’t want the job?” 

Jim turns back, gives him a confident smile, and for the first time in this interview, says something genuine, something real. Something he should have said months ago.

“No, I don’t. I want something else.”

She’s tried to make him her own.

Everything happened the way these things are supposed to happen: girl meets guy, girl likes guy, girl loves guy. 

She hadn’t counted on “guy loves someone else.” 

There have been two parts to Karen’s relationship with Jim. She thinks of them as the Before and the After: Before Pam, After Pam. It’s just semantics, really, because now she knows that the Pam of it has always been. But the moment she learned about her boyfriend’s history with the receptionist things changed between them, and as much as she wants to believe things have gotten better, she honestly isn’t so sure anymore.

It doesn’t matter how often Jim tells her he’s moved on. It's not only that she doesn’t believe him, she isn’t sure he even believes himself.

Karen Filipelli isn’t the type to bend over backwards for a man. At least, she never thought she’d be. When she’d told one of her girlfriends, Monika, that her boyfriend had admitted he still had feelings for another woman, Monika didn’t have to think twice. 

“Dump the motherfucker already,” she’d said instantly. “Why did you even need to call me?”

Karen had sighed, pulling out every possible defense she had from her rapidly diminishing arsenal: Jim is special, this is a strange circumstance, he wants to try, yada yada yada. Monika wasn’t convinced, and she completely understood her friend’s perspective. It seemed like an open and shut situation. But there was just one problem. 

“I love him,” she’d said. 

Monika was a good friend, and had said her piece. She wouldn’t broach the topic again.

Karen still loves him, weeks later: after learning he’d avoided mentioning Pam in the first place, then lying to her about his lingering feelings. After watching them demonstrate their very obvious bond directly in front of her day after day. After Roy attacked Jim in the bullpen over a kiss that happened almost a year ago, and now – even now – after Pam had essentially declared her undying love for him in front of everyone in the Scranton branch.

Okay, she hadn’t said exactly those words, but Karen isn’t stupid. She may not understand Jim all the time -- hell, even most of the time -- but she definitely speaks Pam’s language.

The opportunity to move to New York seems to have fallen into her lap at precisely the right moment. They need to get out of here, and quickly. Otherwise there’s no telling how long she has before she loses him forever. 

It sounds desperate. Hell, it is desperate, but she’s reached that point.

She loves him, after all.

Jim is still at corporate having his interview, and she doesn’t really wonder where he is for a couple of hours. Everything feels so comfortable and safe here at one of the city’s finest local bistros with some of her old college girlfriends. Monika is a successful stockbroker on Wall Street, and Sarah recently got a great job in the Garment District. Karen has been hoping to catch up with them for some time, both literally and figuratively.

Monika teases her about living in Scranton, Sarah orders a bottle of champagne to celebrate the job Karen has certainly gotten at corporate, and Jim comes up as topic only briefly. Soon enough the conversation shifts into talk of other matters: careers and gym routines and New York and the future.

By the time they drain the entire bottle of champagne, Karen looks down at her watch: it’s 1:50. Jim’s interview was scheduled for eleven, and he should have called her by now. 

She shoots him a quick text.

Where are you? We are at Mastro’s in midtown.

He doesn’t reply immediately, but after a few minutes:

Can you come outside? I’m by the fountain around the corner.

It’s weird, the way your body sometimes understands things before your brain does. But this is exactly what happens to Karen when she reads Jim’s text. Her entire body goes cold, her heart skips a beat – not in the good way – and she’s suddenly short of breath.

She lays down a bunch of cash and apologizes to her friends for bailing, and that they didn’t get to meet Jim. Maybe next time, they say, but she is too distracted to reply. Grabbing her coat and purse, she walks around the corner and down 6th until she sees him waiting for her next to an enormous fountain. 

He’s standing alone on the sidewalk, his jacket slung over his arm and his shirtsleeves rolled up to the crooks of his elbows. He looks different. Relaxed, collected, and something else she hasn't seen in all the months she’s known him: very, very certain.

And she is now certain, too. Certain, for the first time, that this is truly and finally over.

***

The new guy is cute. Really cute.

The idea that a documentary crew followed him here gives him that extra air of intrigue, but even if they hadn’t, he’d still totally be her type.

She isn’t sure she even likes him yet, though. It’s weird, the way the cameras tail him constantly, as if they’re waiting for something hugely entertaining to happen. The dude sells paper, for god’s sake. 

She tries to get a read on him over the first few days. He came from Scranton, his name is Jim. He’s quiet, but polite. He has a great smile, whenever she’s lucky enough to get a glimpse of it. 

The others have pegged him as a bit of a suck-up but she doesn’t see him that way; after a few initial bumps in the road, he seems genuinely interested in being helpful, in getting his work done. He’s got an intense drive and it isn’t long before she finds herself wanting to know where he gets it. He keeps his head down, buries himself in the work, and he isn’t very social. 

Which is a shame. Because he’s really, really cute. 

It’s the sweaty shirt and hair that finally does it. She was attracted to Jim before but there’s something about him walking into the office, completely unbothered by how disgusting he looks, that she finds alarmingly sexy.

“Nice basket,” she says, referencing his bicycle but trying to hide the fact that she’s actually looking at his butt.

“Thanks,” he replies. 

He flashes his smile and it’s all over. 

***

When she learns the Stamford branch is closing, she’s filled with conflicting emotions. Even if she’s offered a job in Scranton, it’s hard to imagine actually moving there, actually living there. But she doesn’t really have a choice. Does she? If she decides to quit Dunder Mifflin, she’ll have to look for another job. And that means starting all over again, possibly at the bottom.

She’s worked too hard to start over at the bottom. 

Then there’s the matter of Jim. It’s been a strange several weeks with him, and she’s not really sure what to do with all these feelings she has for a guy she works with who hasn’t really been giving her much in return. Well, most of the time. There are some days she can almost convince herself he likes her too. But nothing ever comes of it, so she’s left to wait and wonder if and when he’ll ever make a move.

Karen has never been a shy person. She’s never balked at asking a guy out, or making her feelings known to him. But Jim sits right in front of her. She’s hesitant to make a move without knowing if he will reciprocate, because avoiding the inevitable awkwardness a rejection would cause feels more important than taking the risk in the first place.

When he tells her he thinks she should come to Scranton, it’s the first real sign he’s given her that he might be interested. And the universe has presented her with an opportunity, it seems: take that risk. See where Jim is at, and then decide what to do. If he says no, and all of this is in her head, she’s no worse off than she is right now. She won’t have to face him in the morning for much longer.

But if he says yes…

She’s so excited at this prospect that she’s far too open with the camera crew. Joe, the producer in charge of the documentary at the Stamford branch, asks her how she’s feeling after Jim said what he said, and she can’t help herself.

“Yeah, I’m happy he said that,” she tells the crew, her excitement all too apparent. “I mean, I don’t think he’s into me or anything, but… I’m kind of into him. So there you go.”

She realizes she’s probably said too much, but she doesn’t care. Because she’ll know soon enough if he likes her back, and then it won’t matter what he sees in the documentary anyway.

She rushes downstairs and catches Jim in the lobby of their building, asks him if he wants to go grab a drink with her. He looks surprised, but pleasantly so, and says yes. Her heart expands, just a bit, like there’s a tiny balloon in her chest that’s slowly inflating. And on her way over to the bar, she gets the call from Jan she’d been counting on.

Jan tells her to take the weekend to think about it. It’s a huge decision, after all, to uproot her entire life, move to a new town. But her sales record is one of the best, and they’d hate to lose her. She’s the kind of employee that could someday make it to corporate, Jan tells her.

She hangs up the phone as she sits in the parking lot of Casey’s Tavern, waiting for Jim to arrive. When he does, she watches him approach the entrance. He’s really so cute, she thinks again, as he takes a deep breath and opens the door. He looks nervous and she thinks that’s probably a really good sign.

She finds him at the bar and takes the open seat next to him. He seems happy to see her, and they chat and laugh for a good hour. She’s two drinks in – her responsible limit for the evening – but she’s feeling really good. She’s feeling brave. And she decides at this moment to go for it: to just lean in and see if he takes the bait. 

When her lips touch his, she can tell he’s surprised. But he doesn’t pull away. He kisses her back, softly at first, then something comes over him and before she knows it, it’s no longer a kiss. It’s a makeout session. 

All of her fears flutter away as he gives her everything she’s been wanting for weeks, leaving no doubt in her mind anymore about what those glances in all their sales meetings might have meant. 

He’s a good kisser, too. That’s a nice bonus.

The rest of the evening goes well, and she takes the opportunity to tell him she’s seriously considering moving to Scranton. He seems pleased by this development, which in turn pleases her. The tiny balloon expands a bit more. She’s not entirely sure how Jim feels about her yet, but he’s given her enough, so she makes up her mind. 

Scranton isn’t necessarily the destination, it could be merely part of her journey. And if Jim is joining her for that ride, well… it would be stupid not to go, right?

By the time he walks her out to her car, she’s feeling on top of the world. It’s been such an eventful day – a good day – and she feels like it couldn’t possibly get any better. 

But maybe it could. 

She briefly considers asking him to come home with her. If he can make her feel like she did in the bar with only his kiss, she’s dying to know what else he can do with that mouth. But she hesitates. She really likes Jim, and this is not something she wants to rush. She doesn’t want this to turn into some kind of one night stand situation. He told her himself he’s really bad at reading signals and for his sake more than for her own, she decides not to send him that one.

They part smiling, lining up a real first date for the next night. Dinner and a movie. 

She calls Jan first thing Monday and tells her that yes, she would be happy to accept the job in Scranton.

***

Jim Halpert moves pretty slow.

It’s interesting to learn this, particularly after the way he’d kissed her in the bar. But they’ve gone on four dates now. She’s more than ready to sleep with him, and now they’re in Scranton for good. She’s ready to take this thing to the next level.

She has to give him a break, she thinks, because it’s been a stressful few days. Packing and moving has been consuming every ounce of her energy that hasn’t been directed at Jim, or daydreaming about Jim. And she can’t complain. It’s been going pretty well so far. 

Maybe he’s just a romantic. Maybe he wants them to be settled, for it to be the right time and place. If so, it’s sweet, and maybe that’s not a bad thing. He’s a really nice guy, after all. She’s not really used to having nice guys in her life.

The documentary crew in Scranton is an entirely new group of people, and a bigger one than she’d met in Stamford. They introduce themselves and she does her best to remember every name. 

“Hi, I’m Delilah,” one of the producers says as she shakes Karen’s hand.

“Hi, Karen,” she replies. 

“Have a seat. Are you excited to be here?” Delilah asks.

Karen shrugs. “Yeah, I mean… I’m excited to see what this place is like. Must be super interesting if you guys are making a movie about it.”

Delilah eyes her curiously. “I take it Jim hasn’t said much about the employees here?”

“Not really,” Karen shakes her head. “He just kept saying I need to see it all for myself.”

Delilah grins, raising her eyebrows slightly and glancing at the floor. Based on this reaction Karen thinks she’s probably right: that there’s something about this place, this group of people, that must be really special. She can’t wait to figure out what that is.

After about an hour of Michael Scott, she decides she should be more careful about what she wishes for. 

“Well, this is going to be interesting,” she says to Jim later that evening as they sit down at their table at Cooper’s. He seems a little distracted by something. “You okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You just seem a little far away.”

“Do I? Sorry,” he says. “It’s just a little weird being back, you know. Seeing everyone again.”

“Is Michael always like that?” She prays he isn’t.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Jim says. “You’ll get used to him, I promise. Eventually.”

She nods, aware he’s trying to be supportive but at the same time really, really not having any desire to get used to Michael. But she’s here now, at least for the time being. She might just have to.

They peruse their menus and order their meals. Karen sits back and sips her water. “So tell me about everyone else. I want the lowdown.”

He clears his throat. “Okay. Well, Michael has pretty much told you everything you need to know about him on the first day. So… there’s that. Dwight… is sort of indescribable.”

“Oh yeah?”

He gives her a tight smile. “Well, he and I don’t really get along very well. I sort of... used to pull pranks on him.”

“Pranks?”

“Yeah, like… just to mess with him. He’s a little much.”

Karen raises an eyebrow. “What kinds of pranks?”

He laughs a little to himself. “Well, like… one time I paid everyone in the office to call him Dwayne all day. That was fun.”

“Okay,” she nods, with a laugh. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing Jim would spend so much valuable work time on.  “Starting to see why you never tried for a promotion before now.”

“Ha, yeah,” he says, again, a bit distractedly. The waiter sets down their drinks and he takes a long sip.

She wants to ask him about the receptionist. He’d seemed pretty friendly with her earlier. She's not typically the jealous type, but she's observant, and it hadn’t escaped her notice the way she’d practically thrown herself into his arms upon his arrival, the way she hovered near his desk all day. Not to mention the way she’d sat down right next to him in the conference room for that horrifying Michael video. 

“What’s up with Angela?” she asks instead. “She seems kind of mean.”

“Oh, she is,” Jim says, his eyes widening. “Steer clear.”

“Is there anyone I don’t have to stay away from, Halpert?” she smirks. “It would be nice to have some friends at work that aren’t you. No offense.”

He laughs in that cute way she’s noticed he does when he doesn’t want to say something. It’s still so early in their relationship; she doesn’t want to pry or make him feel uncomfortable. But he’s been acting weird all day.

“Kevin is cool,” he says. “Phyllis and Stanley are all right. Honestly, you only really need to watch out for Creed.”

“Why? What’s wrong with Creed?”

It appears to be beyond Jim’s explanation. “Just stay on your toes, Filippelli. That’s all I’ve got for you.”

“Is that it?” she asks him, knowing he’s left someone out.

“Um… am I missing anyone?”

“What about the receptionist? Pam, was it? She seems nice.”

He picks up his beer, takes another sip. “Oh yeah, she’s pretty cool.”

He says nothing more about Pam the receptionist. She realizes in the moment that she'd actually been hoping for more not out of jealousy, but because she misses her girlfriends. Based solely on first impressions, Pam seems like the best candidate for a friend here in Scranton. 

Something about Jim's demeanor makes her think he probably does have more to say, but for whatever reason he’s not offering. Maybe it's simply willful ignorance, but she decides to push it away. She wants to focus on him tonight, on them.

“Well, thanks for the 411,” she says. He grins at her, and soon enough their meals arrive, and things feel normal. After a while, he seems to be acting like himself again. So much so, that when they walk back out to their cars, she decides enough is enough.

“Do you… want to come back to my hotel with me?” she asks him, point blank. 

He blinks, a little stunned at her blunt proposition. But she wants to be as transparent as possible with Jim. He’s made it clear to her that he doesn’t like reading signals. Maybe a metaphorical sandwich board with the words LET’S HAVE SEX is the best way to make her intentions clear.

“Um,” he smiles, a little timidly. He reaches his hand to the back of his neck, scratching at the tiny curls of unruly hair. “Yeah. Yes. I do.”

She smiles back. “Okay, then.” She digs in her purse for her second room key and hands it to him, then stands up on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on his lips. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

He looks nervous – slightly terrified, actually – and as she climbs into her car she worries maybe she’s been a little too forward. She doesn’t want to pressure him into something he’s not ready for. But when he arrives at her hotel room, he appears to have transformed. He’s assertive and passionate and it’s exactly what she’d been hoping it would be like.

Afterwards, he lays on his back next to her, his bare chest rising and falling, breathing heavily. He stares at the ceiling.

She pulls the sheets up to her chin and turns on her side, facing him, waiting. “That was… really great.”

“Yeah,” he says. “It really was.”

He’s sort of distracted again, and for the first time she starts to really wonder what’s going on inside his head. The shift is subtle, but it’s like she can actively see him transforming from one Jim into another, depending upon the moment, depending upon the day. So much of him feels like a mystery to her. She can only hope he can continue to let her in, even as slowly as he has been.

“Thanks,” he finally says after a minute or so. He still won’t look at her, just stares up at the stippled ceiling. He sounds far away again. “For being so upfront about everything. For not making me wonder.”

It’s sort of a weird thing to say, but she isn’t really sure what she expects, anyway. “You’re welcome?” she says with a little uncertainty, then she giggles.

Only a few seconds pass, but the silence is oppressive. She’s had enough first times to know that sometimes this is just the way it goes, but she’d really been hoping it wouldn’t feel like this with him.

“Do you… want to stay?” she asks him. 

She prays he doesn’t leave, hopes to god he doesn’t turn what should be something special and wonderful into something awkward. But mercifully, he doesn’t. He twists his neck to face her, finally, and the Jim she recognizes seems to reappear in his eyes. 

“Okay,” he says with a smile, then leans in to kiss her.

***

Jim hasn’t used the word “girlfriend” yet to describe her, and it’s starting to make her anxious. It’s not like this is a difficult conversation to have, and she isn’t necessarily nervous about having it. The amount of time they’ve spent together over the past month is a pretty clear indication they’re already exclusive. But she still wants to hear it, and to be honest, she wants to hear it from him first. As great as Jim is, as much as she likes him and is really enjoying being with him, she can’t help but feel like she’s been the one driving this relationship. It might just be obliviousness on his part – she has no reason to think he’s dragging his feet – but he’s been getting away with quite a bit of it. 

Over Christmas, her parents give her a really hard time about her decision to move to Pennsylvania. She can tell they’re mostly upset they don’t get to see her as much anymore, but she also gets the distinct impression they’ve decided she moved there for a guy, and are uncomfortable with that. Karen hasn’t had the best track record with men. 

She gets defensive, but probably because she’s uncomfortable with it, too.

She didn’t move to Scranton for Jim. Yes, he was a factor, but she moved to Scranton for an opportunity.

…right?

Her parents’ disapproval stays in the back of her mind, though, and it’s all she can think about upon her arrival back at work. And although she and Jim have now at least acknowledged to each other their relationship is official and exclusive, he seems to take another step backwards when he freaks out about her moving in down the street.

They’ve only been dating for a month and she’s already feeling a sense of rising panic that she’s losing him. There are times she has to stop herself from pointing out that she moved here for him, as an excuse to move them forward, to progress their relationship. But every time the thought enters her head she thinks about her parents, and knows that she cannot say this to Jim, because it’s far too much pressure to put on someone she’s only been seeing for a month.

Besides, it isn’t even true.

…is it?

She can’t really explain it to her own satisfaction, so instead of worrying too much about what's going to happen, she’s going to try to relax and enjoy what they have right now. 

There will come a time when they discuss the future, but that day is not today.

***

Things have been going well with Jim.

It’s what she tells the camera crew because it’s the truth. The first few weeks at Scranton have been nice, the Michael Scott Saga notwithstanding.

Yes, there had been that little hiccup with Jim and the apartment building. If she liked him less, she might have let it upset her more. But he was just being a guy, that’s all. Just a typical guy a little freaked out by commitment. And they’d only been dating for a few weeks. She could hardly be upset over him having an honest reaction. A temporary freak out. And ever since, he’s been opening up a little more each day. She’s starting to feel like he’s getting more comfortable with her, more at ease.

Today they’re going on sales calls, and she’s disappointed she can’t go with Jim. But Phyllis hand picked her, which was nice. It might be fun to spend some time with someone else in the Scranton branch who seems relatively normal. 

They’re in the car headed back to the office after closing the sale. She’d been a bit skeptical of Phyllis’ bizarre sales tactics – spending the entire day with a bad makeover isn’t ideal – but the sale was a big one, so the end sort of justified the means.

“I'm so glad you're with Jim,” Phyllis suddenly says. Which is a nice thing to say. But then, “He was hung up on Pam for such a long time. Never thought he’d get over her.”

A chill passes through Karen’s body. She can’t quite comprehend what she’s just heard.

Pam? As in, the receptionist? That Pam?

This bit of information is so unexpected she doesn’t even know how to process it. She wants to ask Phyllis to repeat herself, but her immediate concern is keeping her cool. She doesn’t want to freak out, or make this into a bigger deal than it is.

“That's nice,” she says as calmly as possible, because indicating she has no idea what Phyllis is talking about would make it seem like she doesn’t know Jim as well as she thought she did.

And then it hits her. She doesn’t know Jim as well as she thought she did.

In an instant, all of the little moments between her boyfriend and the receptionist she’d wondered about since they arrived in Scranton shuffle through her mind, one after the other, like a puzzle she didn’t realize she’d been putting together this entire time. And Phyllis has just handed her the final piece.

Suddenly everything makes an alarming, heartbreaking amount of sense. She curses that tiny voice in her head that told her something was up with Jim from the start– that she hadn’t listened to it, that she hadn’t heeded her own gut.

I never thought he’d get over her.

She can’t be upset that Jim had feelings for someone else before they met. She has no right to be. But she is upset that he never mentioned a thing about it, especially if it was obviously something that affected him.

Maybe even something that’s still affecting him.

“You can pay me back later for the makeover,” Phyllis says. Karen barely hears her, because she’s now trying to figure out what to do next. She wants to be straightforward about this, but she also doesn’t want to appear jealous or clingy. It’s entirely possible Phyllis has this wrong, or partially wrong. Maybe it isn’t a big deal at all.

In any event, Jim doesn’t like signals, he doesn’t like games. She will approach him swiftly and honestly, and hopefully squash whatever this is right away. There are two possibilities: it’s not a big enough deal for him to have mentioned it, or it’s a big enough deal that he’s avoided it. And she doesn’t intend on sitting back and guessing which is the truth.

***

“So, let me ask you a question.”

“Okay.” 

“Did you ever have a thing for Pam?” 

His ears turn pink, and she knows immediately it’s true.

“Pam? Did I ever have a 'thing' for her?” He chuckles a little bit in that way he does and tries to cover it by taking a sip of his coffee. “No, why? Did she say something?”

Karen does not chuckle, however. “I moved here from Connecticut,” she says, and refrains from saying ‘for you’ even though it’s all she’s thinking. 

Luckily, he seems to understand the gravity of the situation immediately. She sees the pretense crumble around him and he appears genuinely prepared to level with her.

“Yeah. Okay, here's the…” he looks around the coffee shop, as if the way out of this little pickle is written on the menu or something. “I had… a crush on her before I left. And I told her about it and she didn't feel the same way. So, it didn't amount to anything, and I left.”

The look on his face is very final. Maybe he genuinely didn’t believe it was a big deal. Maybe Phyllis doesn’t know the whole story.

More concerning to Karen, however, is his reasoning. Pam didn’t feel the same way? Really? She’s assumed from the beginning Jim and Pam were good friends, simply from the way they behave around each other. And what, exactly, is not to like about Jim? She hates to admit it, even to herself, but the two of them seem perfectly suited for each other in every possible way. It doesn’t make any sense. Despite Jim’s version of the story, she finds it very, very difficult to believe he’s got his facts straight. 

She must still have a concerned look on her face, because he continues. “I'm really glad you're here. Okay?”

He looks at her with those eyes and his smile is so warm, she can’t help but nod. It makes her happy to feel validated. This conversation could have gone in a completely different direction, after all. Whatever his reasoning for why he and Pam didn’t work out, he’s here with her, and that’s what matters.

Jim, for his part, looks somewhat relieved this is out in the open. “What made you ask me about this, anyway?”

She has no reason to lie to him. “Phyllis told me. On our sales call.”

His eyes widen and his brow furrows. “Phyllis?”

“Yep.”

“What… what did she say?” He looks absolutely perplexed that Phyllis was the source of this bit of information.

Karen takes a sip of her own coffee, eyeing him carefully. “She said you were hung up on Pam for such a long time she was worried you’d never get over her.”

Jim’s eyes sort of shift from confusion to introspection, and she can see him begin to retreat inside himself. “Huh.”

“What?”

“Well, that was pretty presumptuous of her to say, is all. I’ve never exchanged two words with Phyllis about Pam.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

She believes him. Her deskmate has definitely struck her as a bit of a gossip over the few short weeks she’s known her. Besides today’s doozy, she’d also “happened to mention” Meredith’s drinking problem, Stanley’s irritable bowel syndrome, and plenty of drama about Kevin and his fiancée. None of which Karen had asked about.

“She is a bit of a drama queen, isn’t she?”

Jim laughs, looking relieved again. “Totally.” He looks at Karen for a moment. “I like this new look on you, by the way.”

“Courtesy of the drama queen herself.”

“I figured as much.”

“It was a really big sale. So… worth it, I guess. Although I apparently have to pay her back.”

He shrugs and flashes her that grin that makes her forget everything else. “Cost of doing business.”

He reaches out and takes her hand in a comforting way. All of her worries about Pam seem to flutter out the window when he does that. Maybe everything is going to be fine.

***

Everything is not fine.

She leaves Jim alone in the conference room with his “feelings,” grabs her stuff and bolts out the door. She can still hear the mariachi music from Oscar’s party as she waits for the elevator, cheerfully discordant with the way her heart is breaking.

She drives home, her mind in turmoil. It only takes ten minutes – the real reason she picked this place, not because it’s two blocks from Jim – and pulls into the driveway.

She sits, unable to make herself move. And then she cries.

She cries because right here, right now, for the first time she’s realizing she’s in love with Jim. And how can he love her, how can he do anything approaching loving her if he’s still thinking about someone else?

After a few minutes, she stops crying, feeling absolutely drained. She doesn’t like crying over men. She hasn’t cried like this since Derek, and she doesn’t want to fucking think about Derek.

She grabs all of her stuff and takes it into the house, collapsing onto the couch. A stack of files sits on the coffee table: Jim’s. A baseball cap is on the floor: Jim’s. In fact, her living room even smells like him. She didn’t even get the opportunity to make this place her own.

She sighs. It’s her own fault. She doesn’t mean to, but she can’t deny she tends to jump from boyfriend to boyfriend, leaving precious little time in between to just be alone. Monika told her this once: that she’s codependent. She hadn’t believed it, because she’s always considered herself independent. She just happens to like having a boyfriend.

But maybe Monika is right. Maybe she rushed into this thing with Jim, and maybe he rushed into it, too. And because they weren’t honest with each other from the beginning, everything seems to be falling apart. 

Suddenly, she’s resolute. Jim hadn’t been honest with her, but she hasn’t been very honest with herself either. And regardless of how they got here, she does love him. Maybe, just maybe, if they wipe the slate clean and start over, they can salvage this thing.

She’s already invested so much time and energy and emotion into Jim, she wants to see this through. She can either give up, or fight for this relationship. 

Karen hates giving up.

She wipes her eyes, locks her front door, and walks the two blocks to Jim’s place. When he gets home, they’re going to have a long talk.

***

There’s this way Michael starts his day sometimes that drives Karen absolutely insane. Well, everything Michael does drives her insane, but some mornings he comes into the office and immediately starts yelling “Pam! Pam! Pam!” while slapping the edge of the reception desk. She’s pretty sure it annoys Pam more than it does her, but it still always feels like some kind of sick and twisted alarm bell, a reminder that Jim’s past is never far away. 

It’s a shame, too, because she was really starting to like Pam. They’d been becoming actual friends; at least that’s what she thought. While she understands why Pam hadn’t mentioned her history with Jim, and knows she has no right to be upset about it, she can’t help feeling just a tiny bit betrayed. She didn’t really lose a friend, but she feels like she lost a potential friend, and weirdly it’s just as upsetting.

She already feels isolated out here. She doesn’t really have any friends other than Jim, and trusting him lately has been an uphill battle. It’s been incredibly lonely.

The saddest part is that she was actually starting to like living in Scranton. It was beginning to grow on her, just as Jim had predicted. But that was before she became aware of the reason he likes it so much.

I don’t know this place as well as I thought I did.

It’s what she’d said to Delilah in her interview, but it’s not the whole truth. The truth is she doesn’t know this place at all, and she doesn’t really care to, not anymore.

She and Jim are enjoying a moment of solitude in the break room. They rarely sit here for lunch – she prefers to go out to eat – but Michael has been doing safety training all morning and Jim is convinced he has more up his sleeve. For some reason, he doesn’t want to miss it.

“How can you find that guy amusing?” she asks. “Honestly.”

“How can you not?” He takes a bite of one of his baby carrots. “I mean, sure, sometimes he’s awful, but you can’t say he isn’t entertaining.”

“I guess I can’t argue with that. No wonder you feel right at home here.”

A funny look comes over his face, the same one she’s been seeing more and more ever since the day Roy nearly clobbered him. Before she can ask about it, however, they are interrupted by Oscar and Kevin mid-conversation as they head into the break room.

“Double or nothing,” Kevin is saying.

“Kevin, no,” Oscar says, clearly irritated. “You need to stop.”

“But I’ve already lost sixty bucks, I may as well try to get it back.” 

“That’s a classic sunk-cost fallacy,” Oscar says as he puts his dollar into the vending machine. “Also, I think you might have a gambling problem.”

Kevin ignores the latter part of the sentence. “What's a sunk-cost fallacy?”

Oscar’s Diet Coke tumbles down the chute and he leans down to grab it. “Are you serious? They pay you here, actual money, to know these things.”

Kevin glances over at Karen and Jim, clearly embarrassed. “Well, I’m so sorry that not everyone here is as smart as you are, Oscar.” He turns to Jim and Karen. “Do you guys know what it is?”

Jim eyes Karen and furrows his brow. “Um… something about lost causes, I think?”

Kevin harrumphs and starts to leave the room, but Oscar, rolling his eyes, stops him. “Kevin, wait.” Kevin turns around with a pout, arms crossed, and Oscar explains. “It’s when you keep pursuing an investment only because you’ve already invested so much into it. Even though that has absolutely no bearing on the outcome.” 

Something about what Oscar has said makes Karen uncomfortable, and she shifts in her seat. 

“Oh, I get it,” Kevin says slowly, appearing as though he doesn’t get it at all. “But wait… if I put enough quarters into the slot machine, eventually I’ll get a jackpot.”

Oscar shakes his head, eyes closed in exhaustion. “No. That is categorically false.” 

A crease appears on Kevin's forehead as he gives a petulant frown. “Oh yeah? Well, screw you!” He leaves the break room in a huff. Karen idly wonders just how many quarters Kevin has lost in slot machines.

Oscar rolls his eyes. “He’ll be fine,” he says of Kevin, as if he’s a five year old child. “You guys should come place your bets, though. Toby has a running pool going for how many times per minute the air conditioning unit makes that fart noise.”

He exits the break room, leaving Jim and Karen alone with thoughts of sunk costs and lost causes. They don’t say anything to each other, but she knows it’s what they’re both thinking. And it’s not exactly encouraging to realize your relationship can be reduced to a fallacious economic principle.

***

They’re in a local Walgreens one afternoon, and Jim hangs out near the front while Karen goes to find tampons and Midol. When she heads towards the checkout, he’s holding up a pair of double rimmed glasses proudly.

“Check these out. Four dollars.”

She wrinkles her face in confusion. “I didn’t know you wore glasses.”

“I don’t. But don’t they look exactly like Dwight’s?”

“I guess so,” she muses. “What are you going to do with them?”

“Not sure. But I’ll think of something. I wonder if they have clothes here?” He turns and starts searching the aisles, finding the one crammed full of various articles of clothing. It’s a mish-mash of all kinds, and she rolls her eyes, certain he will not find anything Dwight would wear at this drug store. But it appears to be Jim’s lucky day, and after only a couple of minutes, he triumphantly pulls out a mustard-colored button down. It’s eerie how much it looks like Dwight’s.

“Oh my god. This’ll be great,” he says excitedly, taking the shirt off the rack. “This one time, me and P-” he stops himself and tries that again, “I took all of his things off his desk and put them on mine, and did the same thing to my stuff, then I sat at his desk. He accused me of stealing his identity.”

“This is a waste of money.”

Jim walks over an aisle, pulling a child’s digital watch off the shelf. “You can’t put a price on the look on Dwight’s face when he realizes what’s going on, trust me.” 

“Yes you can,” she says flatly, adding up his price tags. “Eleven dollars. That’s eleven dollars you could be spending on your girlfriend, by the way.”

He shrugs. “What can I say, Filippelli? Priorities.” 

She narrows her eyes, unamused.

“I’m kidding, Karen. Come on.” He reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be funny, I promise.” He grins, the same way he always does when he’s trying to get away with something. For the first time she isn’t charmed by it. 

“I’ll be in the car,” she says, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his keys. “Have fun collecting your contraband.”

Before he can say anything, she turns and heads towards the cash register. Jim doesn’t follow, instead continuing his search for anything else that might piss off Dwight.

When she’s done paying, he’s nowhere to be found, so she heads out to wait in the car, thoroughly annoyed. She hasn’t admitted it to him yet, but she’s getting pretty tired of all this pranking stuff. It was fun at first when she thought it was something he did to amuse himself, to simply pass the time. Now she can’t help but associate it with Pam; with his past, something he used to do long before they started dating. When he was someone else. Even the times he’s recruited Karen to participate, she only did it to feel close to him. Nearly six months into this relationship, it’s just starting to feel childish. 

She doesn’t know how long she sits in the car stewing, but after a few minutes he comes up to the window next to her, tapping on it. She rolls it down.

“Why aren’t you just getting in the car?” she asks, annoyed.

She can’t see his face, because he’s standing up straight. But suddenly a tiny gray stuffed animal wearing a purple T-shirt is thrust in front of her face, and he wiggles it around.

“Don’t be mad, Karen,” he says in a silly, high-pitched voice. “Jim bought me for you. I cost eleven dollars.”

It works. She chuckles, taking the little plush from him, and Jim leans down to put his head into the window, resting his arms on the edge, flashing his perfect fucking smile. That goddamn smile will be the end of her, she knows it.

“What… is it?” she asks. She can’t quite tell. The ears are too small to be a bear, but it’s too gray to be a chipmunk. It’s cute, whatever it is.

“Um… a squirrel maybe? Or a koala?”

“I think it’s some kind of weird rodent.”

“Shh! You’ll hurt his feelings,” Jim frowns.

“Shut up,” she laughs. “Get in the car already.”

He walks around to the driver’s seat and gets inside, throwing a Walgreens bag in the back and slamming the door. “Are we okay?” he asks.

“Yes, we’re okay,” she says. She looks down at her little rodent. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

They don’t say much on the drive, but he reaches out to take her hand. They go out to dinner, then head back to her place. He doesn’t mention the Dwight prank to her again.

***

Karen leans against the cold bus window, her dark hair framing her face. Pam the receptionist is somewhere in the back, gone from her sight but not from her thoughts.  

Pam, Pam, Pam. 

The name has rung in her ears for weeks. Ever since she learned of their history she’s been on edge: like a trapped animal, this ‘other woman’ a serpent ready to strike at any moment. And that moment has finally arrived tonight. On beach day.

Jim is sitting next to her, silent as a sentinel. The vibrations from the bus wheels on the pavement hurt her forehead and are making her teeth chatter, but she can’t turn to face him. If she does, she might break down.

Eventually they’re alone in his car, headed back to her place. 

“Are we gonna talk about it?” she finally asks quietly. 

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“You think I don’t want to?” She turns to look at him. “Of course I want to. The question is, do you want to?”

“Not really.”

“Yeah. That’s what scares me.” 

He doesn’t say anything else, his mouth forming a thin line. He still has his baseball cap on from the beach, even though it’s pitch black outside, and she figures it isn't accidental. She can barely see his face. She tries to get a read on him but with Jim, when he goes silent his walls go up. She absorbs nothing. 

She waits for him to offer something, anything, but he doesn’t. He grips the steering wheel and stares straight ahead, deep in thought. 

“You guys were talking for a pretty long time,” she says.

“You don’t have to worry, Karen,” he says quickly. Too quickly. “Nothing happened. Nothing is going to happen, either.”

I called off my wedding because of you.

You were my best friend.

I really miss you. 

“I’m sorry, I just find that hard to believe,” she says quietly. The streetlights whip past them, orange streaks of light going by every second, a visual reminder of all the time she’s potentially wasted on this man. 

He sighs. “What happened with me and Pam… it’s in the past, you know? And I think it’s best if we all just leave it there.”

“Sure, except that it isn’t, Jim.” She pins him with a fiery gaze. “It isn’t in the past. It’s five feet from your desk every day, it’s making overtures at the beach.”

He’s quiet, again. It’s the same silence she remembers from after Andy punched the wall, when she learned the real truth about his feelings for Pam the receptionist. The same silence that always makes her feel like she’s on the outside.

“We agreed that we’re going to just be friends,” Jim says. 

He’s still looking at the road, not at her, and reaches over to take her hand. She wonders which one of them he’s trying to convince. 

“You didn’t tell me she was engaged, Jim. That she called off her wedding. Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“I didn’t know what happened with her wedding. I stopped talking to her by then. I didn’t find out about it until later.”

Once again, he’s cleverly avoided answering her question and she’s sick of it. She’s so angry she wants to slap him. “When you told me she didn’t feel the same way and you left, you failed to mention she was the reason you left.”

It’s a shot in the dark, a guess, but she has a feeling her aim is perfect. Jim shifts uncomfortably in his seat. 

“That’s not…” he sputters. “I left because I got a promotion, Karen.” 

“Can you just stop lying?!” she shoots back, frustrated. 

She can tell he’s trying. But Jim “trying” is basically all this has been, and she’s seeing it clearly for the very first time. It feels like they’re back in that coffee shop, and she’s watching him hopefully – desperately, even – through thick goopy mascara, heavy blue eyeshadow and overly teased hair. Only this time she can’t pretend he’s telling her the truth.

“What do you want me to say?” he says, just as frustrated.

“I just want you to be honest with me, Jim.”

“I fucked up, okay? I didn’t tell you everything and I’m sorry about that. I really am. But when I came back to Scranton I thought everything was resolved between me and Pam. That it was over and done with. And I didn’t want to make you feel weird about having to work with her. I had no idea she was going to say what she did tonight. And that's the god's honest truth.”

Karen shakes her head. She wants to believe him but she doesn’t know how. “We talked for hours about this. I just don’t know why you left me in the dark.”

She leaves the part that hurts the most unsaid: that if he truly cared about her more than he cared about Pam, he would have been completely honest. He would have fought for her. Even if he couldn’t then, he should right now. And the stark reality of her situation right here, right now, is staring her right in the face in a way it hasn’t before. 

Maybe he doesn’t want to fight. 

He pulls into the driveway and puts the car into park, turning to look at her for the first time. 

“I’m sorry, Karen.” he says again. “I really wish you’d believe me. I’m with you now. I want to be with you.”

He appears absolutely exhausted, but in his eyes she can see a spark, a desire for something. She doesn’t know what it is, but she isn’t prepared to let go. Not yet.

“I just want all this Pam stuff to be over,” he then says, and his eyes lock onto hers in that way they do, that way he can always make her forget.

She doesn’t know what he means, exactly, and perhaps she never will. But it’s the first time all night she’s believed him. 

***

“Hey,” she greets him cautiously, approaching the fountain. The street behind them is full of New Yorkers honking their horns at each other for no discernible reason, and while she wishes there were somewhere a little more quiet he could do what she knows he’s about to do, she doesn’t want to go inside either.

“Hi,” he says. “I blew my interview.”

She’s thrown by this. She hadn’t expected him to bring up the job at all. “What are you talking about? I’m sure you did great.”

“No, I mean… I left. I turned down the job. I can’t move to New York.”

 “Why?” she asks him, even though she already suspects why.

He sighs heavily. “Last night was… perfect. You’re perfect, everything was perfect. And it got me wondering... if everything is so perfect, why do I still feel this way?”

She can feel her expression hardening, along with the shell she’s carefully constructed around her. She thinks of last night in the hotel room when she slid her hand underneath his shirt, against his shoulder blades, and he pretended to be asleep.

“What way?”

“In the interview, Wallace asked me where I see myself in ten years,” he says. “So I pictured it. And… it wasn’t here.”

Her jaw clenches. She can feel her tenuous grip on him slipping. “It wasn’t us, you mean,” she says for him. 

The look on his face tells her everything she needs to know. It isn’t that there’s one too many people in Scranton. There’s one too many people in this relationship. 

“This isn’t about the job. It’s about her,” she continues, ice lacing her voice. Her. “She said something to you that night, didn’t she? When you guys were alone down by the lake.” She shakes her head. “I should have known. You were so quiet last night. And you haven’t been acting like yourself all week.”

“That’s just it, though,” he says. “That’s why this feels all wrong. Because ever since the beach, it's like... I’ve been feeling more like myself than I have in months.”

She doesn’t know how to respond to this. Months is all she knows of him, it’s all she has of him.

“I don’t understand.”

He looks at her sort of helplessly, like he doesn’t quite understand himself. “I just… I’m trying to tell you the truth. It’s not even about Pam, at least not entirely. All I know is that I haven’t been myself – my real self – for a long time.” 

She bites her lip hard, so hard she’s sure she’s drawn blood. “So, all this time with me, you’ve... what, been faking it?”

He shakes his head. “No, that’s not what I’ve been doing.”

She’s pissed now. Every minute of their six months together feels like a huge fucking lie. “Then what, Jim? What is the ‘real’ you? What is it I haven’t gotten from you all these months?”

He looks her right in the eye, and a horrifying chill envelops her entire body, because she knows. She knows exactly what she hasn’t gotten from him, and it’s the only thing she’s ever wanted.

Jim looks at her sadly, then shakes his head wearily. “It’s the part of me that… I know... is still in love with her.”

It’s the thing she’s dreaded the most for weeks, and it isn’t unexpected, but hearing the words out loud hurts more than she ever imagined. He hasn’t told her I love you but she’s wanted him to. Now she knows exactly why. At the very least, she can be grateful he’s never lied to her about that.  

She looks at him, unsure if she’s upset or just sad. Part of her is angry at him, and at herself. But the part that loves him — even though she’s never told him so — just aches.

…in love with her.

“So, that kiss you told me about, when you said it was just a kiss…” she trails off, unable to finish the sentence.

He looks at her sadly, the guilt on his face his answer. 

“It wasn’t just a kiss,” he says, and finally, the biggest of all the lies he’d told her morphs into truth.

The things she’s been actively avoiding examining too closely finally all slide into place: the way he was when he first arrived at Stamford, how withdrawn, how quiet. Why it took him so long to go out with her, even though she could sense there was something between them. And that he’d never mentioned Pam to her, not once… 

The fact that Jim encouraged her to come to Scranton only after knowing he was headed back himself never struck her as odd at the time. But it seems so clear to her now what he’d been doing. He knew he would be facing Pam again, he had to arm himself. And she was never going to be someone he could love when she was essentially just Kevlar. 

She thinks of his assurances at the beach, just before he disappeared down by the lake to talk to Pam.

“You said everything was going to be okay,” she says evenly. “Was that a lie too, then?”

“No, it wasn’t,” he says, to her surprise. “I think everything would have been okay. But… I think we both deserve more than ‘okay.’ Don’t you?”

She knows he’s right, as much as it hurts. She can’t make him feel things for her that he’ll only ever feel for someone else. And if that’s the case, she certainly deserves more than he can give her.

They stand in a silence of their own making, as the sounds of the city continue creating unrelenting chaos around them. Her heart is heavy with the knowledge that this is probably going to be the last conversation she ever has with him.

She finally takes a deep breath and summons up her last remaining scrap of dignity. “Can I just ask you one more question?”

He nods. 

“Did we ever stand a chance?”

He pauses, considering how to answer. It looks as if he’s trying to imagine such a possibility.

“I wanted us to,” he says. “I really tried.” 

Though she’s had a hard time believing a lot of the things he’s told her over the past few months, she does believe him now. But it doesn’t make her feel any better.

“You shouldn’t have to try so hard, Jim.” 

To his credit, he looks properly ashamed. “I never wanted to hurt you, Karen,” he says. “I hope you can believe that. And you deserve better than this, than everything I’ve put you through. You deserve someone… who knows what they have when they have you.” It’s the kindest thing he’s uttered thus far.

Jim tilts his head a bit as he waits for her next question, her next defense, her next plea. She looks at him, and thinks about how happy she was at the beginning: the excitement she’d felt when they’d first kissed, whenever he’d hold her hand, when she moved to a new city with only hope on her horizon. But suddenly she realizes she’s been guilty of the same thing he has. And to her own great and unexpected relief, she finally does what they both should have done months ago. 

She stops trying. 

“You’re right, I do deserve that,” she says. And believing it makes everything a little bit easier.

He nods, and they just stare at each other for several long seconds. 

“Are you mad?” he finally asks stupidly.

She shakes her head, breaking eye contact and staring past him at the fountain. Even though she’s pissed as hell, she doesn’t want to admit it. “Not at you,” she says. “I’ve never settled for being second best. I’m mad at myself for letting you take that away from me.”

She can sense the end of this conversation is rapidly approaching, and while she’s relieved it hadn’t gone worse, she’s not at all looking forward to seeing him back at the office tomorrow.

“I’m sorry, Karen,” he says. “I should never have let this… us... get this far without dealing with… everything.”

Despite how maturely she feels she’s handled this breakup, her stare now turns cold. Letting him go isn’t the hard part anymore. Feeling like a complete fool is what finally tips the scales. 

“Well, don’t expect brownie points from me for trying, Halpert.”

There’s an expression in his eyes now she can’t identify. It’s jarring; in all their time together it’s strange to see something new at this juncture. He takes a step back, and she can tell he just wants to get away from all of this as fast as possible. 

“I really hope you get the job,” he says. It’s the exact same thing Pam said to her yesterday before she left, as if they share a fucking brain or something. She wonders if Jim “really hopes” she gets the job for the same reason Pam did.

She turns away from him, now knowing if she doesn’t stop seeing his face she will definitely start to cry. And she does not want to give him the satisfaction. Luckily, there’s a cab passing with its light on and she hails it, getting inside without so much as a goodbye. 

When the door slams behind her, she bursts into tears. She continues sobbing for a few moments, but the cab driver waits. She eventually gets control of her emotions and apologizes.

“You don’t have to apologize, hon,” says the cab driver, who she now can see is female. “Take your time.”

Karen nods, taking advantage of this reprieve, and puts her hand against her head, taking several long, deep breaths. She stares out the window at the fountain, hardly able to process that she and Jim are truly over now for good.

“You okay?” The cab driver turns around.

“I’m okay,” Karen sniffles. “I mean… I will be.”

“Fucking asshole,” the woman says, lowering her window and flicking her cigarette. Jim is too far away now to hear her, and she obviously has only a hint what went down between them, but still, it makes Karen feel a little bit better.

She takes a few more calming breaths and gives the address of their hotel to the driver, hoping Jim has already taken all of his shit out and packed it into his car. Maybe she’ll stay at Monika’s tonight.

Just when she feels like she’s finally got control over her emotions, however, she sees the last group of people she wants to see: the Scranton camera crew, piled into a van right in front of them. Jim is gone, she’s uncertain where he went, but she’s glad. They’ll probably follow him, anyway. Not her.

She tells the cab driver to go in case they change their minds, because the last thing she wants to do is talk to a fucking camera crew about getting dumped. But before the cab can pull away from the curb safely, she sees Will, the camera guy, getting out of the van.

Without his camera.

It’s so odd to see him without it, she has to take a second to even absorb what he’s doing. The fact that it’s only Will and not Delilah is strange enough in the first place, but she assumes the producer must be back in Scranton.

Will approaches her cab, and when he reaches it, he leans down to look through the window at Karen. She can tell her eyes are puffy but does not break eye contact, almost daring Will to interview her. But he just looks sort of sad.

Are you okay? he mouths, much to Karen’s surprise. There’s no hidden agenda in his eyes, no ulterior motive. He looks genuinely concerned. Karen has never been a huge fan of the camera crew being around but they’ve always been kind to her, at least.

“Should I go?” the cab driver asks, her hands on the wheel, at the ready.

“No, it’s okay,” Karen says. She rolls down the window.

The look of pity on Will’s face isn’t something she was prepared for. But what it does indicate is that he was very much prepared for this.

“I’m sorry,” he says to Karen, which is a weird thing for him to say. But it makes her wonder: has the crew known all along something like this would happen? Have they been waiting for it, biting their tongues, unable to say anything?

“Did you know?” Karen asks.

She isn’t entirely sure what she’s even asking: did they know Jim was still in love with Pam? Did they know Jim planned to dump her? She isn’t necessarily accusing Will of anything either, because it’s not their job to interfere; in fact, their job is to do the opposite. But there’s a part of her that hates him right now, even more than she hates Jim. She hates that maybe he could have done something, anything, to spare her the pain she’s feeling.

In any event, Will doesn’t ask her to elaborate. He bites his lip guiltily and sort of shakes his head. “No, we didn’t know,” he finally says. “But we’ve always suspected. And for that, I am sorry.”

Karen simply nods, and stares at the back of the headrest in front of her.

“I hope someday you can understand how difficult this has been for us.”

“Well, it’s over now,” she snaps, ice on her tongue. “I’m sure he’s chasing after Pam now. You’d better go and follow him. Get your story.”

“Can I just say one more thing?” Will asks, and even though Karen has hit her limit for the day, curiosity wins out.

“What?”

Will looks at her closely, and puts his hand over the edge of the door.

“I just… hope you find someone someday who’s going to chase after you, that’s all.”

For a moment, she wonders if he's making a poorly-timed proposition. But she shakes that off quickly. In his eyes she sees only kindness, something she really needs, something she's desperate to hold onto. She isn’t going to miss much about Scranton, but she’s grateful for a small reprieve in the midst of her sorrow. 

She then tells the driver to go, and it doesn’t take long to forget that tiny bit of kindness. Right now it hurts too much to think about anything but the very immediate pain of this loss. To dole out blame; to Jim for his chronic dishonesty, to herself for being such a fucking idiot. To feel nothing at all but regret for all the time she’d wasted on him, but more infuriatingly that despite what he’s told her, there must be something she’d done wrong, there must be something more she could have done. 

Months later, however, when Jim is behind her, and all of this is behind her, she will meet someone else. Someone whose smile is just for her, whose heart is just for her. She will feel the love Jim had told her she deserved; a love that will change her, in all of the right ways. A love that isn't just second best. The dull ache for her ex will fall away, and she will finally understand what he meant when he’d told her his heart had always belonged to someone else. 

Jim Halpert won’t cross her mind very often after this. But whenever he does, she won’t think of the times they spent together. Instead she will only think of that undefinable faraway look he'd given her by the fountain, because she can now define it: it was the moment he’d left her completely to return to Pam, the person he truly loved.

And she will hope he’s happy.

The morning after her coal walk, Pam awakens with the soles of her feet in absolute agony, exactly as she’d expected. Weirdly enough she can’t seem to locate any actual physical burns, and wonders if the pain is mostly in her head. Just in case, she spends most of the weekend with two bags of frozen peas attached to each foot with matching purple hair ties, feeling a bit more like Michael than she wants to. 

Not once does she experience an ounce of regret. 

She should be heartbroken over Jim. She should be drowning herself in Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food and watching An Affair to Remember. But strangely, she doesn’t feel as sad as she thought she might. She still wants him, yes, and maybe there’s a part of her that always will. But wanting and needing are two very different kinds of desire and she’s learned to appreciate the difference.

Her mother comes over to visit on Sunday and Pam tells her the entire story of what happened at the beach: how Jim had admitted he wasn’t the same anymore, but that he missed her, too. That they’ve cleared the air between them at last. 

Mostly, that she’d finally been brave. That’s the thing that keeps her going. Her mom is really proud of her, and she's glad. She’s proud of herself, too.

When she goes back to the office, the first couple of days are a little awkward. Karen sort of avoids her, which makes sense after what had gone down that night. Jim doesn’t, however, and she’s relieved to sense a very real shift between them. Whenever she does catch his eye now, he smiles. If there’s an opportunity to share a joke, he takes it. Somehow, this is enough to make her believe they might actually be okay. Maybe they won’t be exactly what she’d wished or imagined – she won’t get to feel his hands at her waist or his lips pressed against hers again – but that painful distance between them has evaporated. She hopes, at the very least, she might get to see that sparkle back in his eyes before he leaves. Even just once.

On Wednesday, he comes into the office with a new haircut for his interview. She doesn’t really care for it; it looks sort of corporate, which is exactly what he must be going for, but it’s not Jim. Still, she wants to know this new Jim, to be his friend. She’s promised she would. Even though he doesn’t really look like himself, he still looks nice, and she tells him so. Fancy New Beesly doesn’t hold back.

As for the note she sends with him to New York, there is no grand plan, no underhanded scheme. She decides to do it completely spontaneously, and only because of the way Karen asks her to make copies of their sales reports. 

On any other day Pam wouldn’t blink at the request; even though it’s something Karen could easily do herself, she’s usually happy to help the salespeople with tasks that might keep them from making sales. But today, Karen’s request feels different. It seems territorial, and Pam has to wonder why. Why, after Jim had obviously chosen Karen, does his girlfriend still appear threatened?

She tells herself the medal is to wish him luck, to be a good friend. That’s all. But she can’t deny that Karen’s behavior has given her an opening that she’d be a fool to let slip by. So she makes Karen’s copies. And she seizes an opportunity. There’s a part of her that hopes it might remind Jim of who he used to be: that paper salesman who was in love with the receptionist. 

Maybe it’s a long shot, but the receptionist who’s still in love with the paper salesman figures it can’t hurt to try. 

The documentary crew have been very careful with her this week. It’s strange the way they seem to be walking on eggshells whenever they sit her down for an interview. She rarely cares or even thinks about how the crew sees her love life but by Thursday, Delilah has a look on her face that’s so sympathetic, Pam is beginning to think this whole thing has had a bigger effect on the producer than on her.

“How are you doing?” Delilah asks in a voice that’s weirdly reminiscent of her mother’s.

Pam sighs. “I’m fine. You keep saying that like I’m going to burst into tears or something.”

“Sorry. I’m just a little surprised at how this all panned out, to be honest.”

Pam raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean?” 

Delilah, to her credit, appears to catch herself saying too much and switches gears. “Nothing. I guess… you said something yesterday after Jim left that I can’t really get out of my head. You said… that you just want him to be happy.”

“I did. I do.”

Delilah cocks her head, appearing a little confused. “Well, that’s a very noble sentiment, but… what about your own happiness?”

Pam thinks about this for a moment. She does want to be happy, and hopes she will be someday. But imagining her friend genuinely content, getting this promotion, and going after the things he wants does make her happy. It’s hard to explain.

Maybe that’s what love is.

She shakes her head. “I think… that whatever’s meant to be will be. And that whatever happens with Jim, I’m going to be just fine.” 

She has to tell herself this: that she will feel the same way about someone else someday as she does now about Jim. That she will laugh again, that she’ll smile again with someone the way she always had with him.

Someday.

Delilah clears her throat. “So who do you think is going to get that corporate position? I mean, if Jim gets it, he won’t be coming back to Scranton.” 

The thought of him far away from her once again sends a sharp ache straight to her belly. She can’t help it. 

“I haven't heard anything, but I bet Jim got the job,” she says. “I mean, why wouldn't he? He's totally qualified, and smart, everyone loves him… and, if he never comes back again... that's okay. We're friends. And I'm sure we'll stay friends.”

“I hope so,” Delilah says. “You two always seemed to have such a special bond.” The producer’s voice is somewhat wistful, and for a moment Pam wonders if she’d been secretly rooting for her and Jim to end up together all along.

“You think so?”

Delilah nods. “Maybe it’s weird of me to say but… after the other night, we all sort of thought that would be it, you know? I guess I’m just sitting here wondering… why couldn’t you guys make it work?”

Delilah’s frankness surprises her. Pam tries to cycle through every interview she’d ever done with the crew, every moment she’d experienced with Jim since they’d arrived. She’s not surprised anymore that they interpreted what they’d seen in such a way, but it does surprise her that any of them actually cared so much.

She doesn’t have an explanation for the other night that would satisfy Delilah, or anyone, for that matter. More words of substance had transpired between herself and Jim in those few minutes by the lake than in the many years they’d known each other. But at the end of the day, the answer is probably simple, and painfully so.

“We just… we never got the timing right, you know? I shut him down, and then he did the same to me…” Pam realizes that the crew is actually unaware of what had transpired between them in the parking lot last May, but she’s not about to get into all that now. “But you know what? It's okay. I'm totally fine. Everything is gonna be totally–”

She’s about to tell Delilah that everything is going to be okay when the door to the conference room opens. Before she even has a chance to wonder what shenanigans Michael must be up to this time, Jim pokes his head in.

“Pam,” he says, then after briefly turning to offer Delilah an apology for interrupting, "um… are you free for dinner tonight?”

His invitation confuses her on every possible level, but she doesn’t need time to think. She doesn’t even need time to breathe. There’s only one word left she has on reserve for Jim, and she cannot say it fast enough.

“Yes,” she says automatically.

He smiles, and she can feel her heart bursting in a way it never has before. He’s back. It doesn’t matter what he did to his hair. Jim, her Jim, is back.

“All right,” he grins. “Then… it’s a date.”

The sparkle is back in his eyes and it flickers not with relief, but with absolution. She has no concept of how, or why, but it’s almost as if everything that happened before this moment no longer exists.

He closes the door, as if her interview with the documentary crew somehow takes precedence over such a momentous occasion.

…it’s a date. 

Pam can’t fully process anything other than her immediate euphoria, which she can tell is all over her face. The tears that have been threatening to spill all week over losing him for good are finally making an appearance, but this time, they’re tears of happiness. 

Her happiness.

She turns back to Delilah, whose mouth is hanging open, and tries to remember what they were talking about. 

“I’m sorry, what was the question?” 

Delilah turns to look at Emily, who’s operating the camera today. She’s still looking through the viewfinder, grinning like an absolute idiot. “What just happened?”

“I think Jim just asked Pam out on a date,” Emily replies helpfully.

“But… what about the job interview? What about Karen?” Delilah looks around. “What the hell is going on?”

Emily shrugs. She’s peeking around her camera, eyeing Pam with a stupid grin on her face.  While Pam is wondering all of the same things, what matters most is that Jim came back. All the way back.

He came back for her.

The three women sort of stare at each other for several seconds, a dizzying mix of confusion and happiness bouncing around the room. Delilah then quickly shifts back into business mode. “Wait, where is Will?”

“I thought he was still in New York,” Emily says. “But I guess I thought Jim was, too.”