A piece of her hair is tickling his nose. 

Here he is, standing close behind her, whispering in her ear, trying to be… sexy?  He’s embarrassed to even think of himself trying to act sexy.  He felt her shudder when he leaned in close to her ear and spoke softly, but he doesn’t consider himself to be a sexy guy.  He’s a normal guy.  He’s not one of the guys you find on the cover of a harlequin romance novel.  He can be funny and charming, that he knows.  But sexy?  No.  He can’t believe it.

The evidence of his romantic ineptitude is becoming painfully clear with each passing moment.  It’s that damn curly hair, the hair that he normally loves but that right now is triggering the incredibly un-sexy urge to sneeze.  He doesn’t have time to pull back from her so instead he leans forward, pressing her body hard into the kitchen counter.  He hears her gasp, and he is hit by the humiliating realization that she thinks he’s about to do something sexy.  Maybe bend her over the counter and run his hands down her sides.  Maybe kiss his way down the side of her neck.  Maybe spin her around and hoist her onto the counter, cocoa be damned, and ravish her right there.

Instead he leans forward and sneezes directly into her cocoa.

It’s a wet sneeze too.  Some spit (okay, a lot of spit) comes out of his mouth and lands in her mug.  He just thanks whatever higher power is watching that there isn’t snot involved.

There is a momentary pause during which neither of them moves.  She is still pressed firmly between the lower kitchen cabinets and his body, her hands tightly gripping the counter’s edge. 

Then he leaps away from her as if he’s been burned.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out.  “Your hair… tickled.”

She still hasn’t turned around, but he sees her shoulders start to shake.  And then he hears it.  Giggling.  She’s giggling at him.  He is never going to make it onto the cover of Harlequin, he decides, and he gives up and lets out a low chuckle.

“Yeah, yeah.  Laugh it up, Beesley.”

She spins around and he’s taken aback because of how beautiful she looks.  She has a huge grin on her face, and he hasn’t seen a smile that big on her face in a long time.  She’s so beautiful when she smiles.

“You can have that cup of cocoa, since you’ve sullied it with your saliva.”

“That saliva does not sully anything.  They could bottle that stuff and sell it,” he says, mock-offended.

“Okay, Dwight,” Pam says, smirking.

“Uncalled for!” Jim says indignantly, and Pam giggles again.  “Low blow, Beesley!”

“If it’s just the same to you, I think I’ll pour myself a new mug,” she replies, still smiling.

“Suit yourself.”

She pulls another mug from his cabinet and makes herself a new cup of cocoa.  He grabs her old mug.  He takes a tentative sip, giving her a sheepish smile which she returns with another brilliant grin.  She stirs her cocoa and places the spoon in the sink.  When she turns back to him, she is no longer smiling.  She looks determined and a little scared.

“Let’s talk,” she says.

He can hardly believe his ears.  She’s ready.  They’re really going to do this.

He nods and motions toward his small kitchen table.  He pulls out a chair for her, and she looks at him with what seems like pain in her eyes, as if his kind gesture somehow hurts her.

They sit there for a moment in silence.  He wants her to speak first.  He doesn’t want to have to force her to say anything.  He’s not Roy.  He’s better than that.  He’s waited for years for this moment.  He can wait another few seconds.

She nods to herself, as if steeling her resolve, and then she looks directly into his eyes.

“I want to just say something to you.  I just want to get it all out at once.  Can I do that?”

“Of course,” he says.

“Sometimes I wish you never came back,” she says abruptly.

He did not expect that.  He frowns and pulls back a little, peering at her inquiringly.

“Wow, um…” he says, unable form a response. 

What is he supposed to say to that?  Apparently he isn’t supposed to say anything, because she’s continuing.

“Because… I mean…” She’s struggling too.  It seems painful for her to speak.  “After you left, this is going to sound stupid.  But it was like… It was like I had to grieve.  You were gone.  You were never coming back.  Out of nowhere.  Like when someone dies in a car crash or something.  Just disappeared.  So I grieved or… whatever.  It was so hard to look up at your desk and see Ryan sitting there.  It was…”

She breaks off, blinking away the moisture gathering in her eyes.  He never knew that she thought of it like that, but in a way it makes sense.  Because as dramatic as it sounds, he felt like he died that night.  It was just over for him.  That life was over.  He had to make a new one.

She takes a deep breath and continues.

“But then it got better.  Little by little.  I started having fun again.  I started pranking Dwight, all on my own.  I planned a funeral for a bird,” she pauses and smiles a little.  Jim remembers that Creed told him something about a bird funeral, but he had brushed it off as the older man’s usual nonsensical ranting.

“It was… I was good,” she continues.  “I really thought that maybe I could move on.  That I could go back to normal, or at least create a new sort of normal.”

A new sort of normal.  Jim can relate to that.  He tried to do the same thing in Stamford.

“And then when I found out about the merger, I was ecstatic.  I couldn’t even hide it from the cameras.  I was… giddy,” she smiles to herself, as if remembering her excitement.  Jim feels guilty because his reaction when he heard about the merger was so entirely different.  It felt like a death sentence.  It felt like someone was punishing him, sending him right back to where he started.

“It was like you had been brought back from the dead,” she says, and he blinks in surprise because her thoughts are a mirror opposite of his.  “I know that sounds stupid, but it was like this amazing second chance.”

Second chance?  Did that mean… Jim can’t really let himself believe it yet.  He needs to hear her say it.  Why can’t she just say it?  He needs to know.

“But then you were there and it wasn’t the same.  You had evolved,” she says the last word with unveiled contempt, and he almost blushes, remembering when he said it to her.  She looks so pained right now, and he wants her to stop.  He doesn’t want to hear about how much he hurt her anymore.

“And it was so much harder.  Harder even than when you left the first time.  Because you really were gone this time, gone for good, even though you were right there in front of me.  You were physically there, and it was like this constant reminder of everything that I had lost.  There was no second chance.”

She’s crying again.  Not blubbering, not even sniffling, but two tears are making their way down her cheeks.  He can’t focus on that.  He wants her to say it.  He just wants to know.

“Pam, are you saying… When you say second chance, does that mean… When Roy said out there—” he stutters, but she cuts him off.

“No.  I’m not done.  You don’t get to jump ahead to the end.  You wanted to talk, so let’s talk,” He’s surprised by the anger in her voice.  “I’m… you can’t just brush past everything else I just said.  I’m mad.  I’m mad at you Jim.”

“You’re mad at me?” he blusters.  Now how does that work?  He was the one with the broken heart.  He was the one who laid himself out there and got pushed away last May.

“Oh, you’re mad at me too?” she snaps.  “What did I do?  Was I not sad enough for you?  Did I not look pathetic enough when you came back with a new girlfriend?  When I asked you out for coffee and you told me that you were seeing someone?”

This talk has turned ugly too fast.  Jim’s not even sure how it happened, but Pam is sitting across from him with an unpleasant look on her face, sounding entirely un-Pamlike and he doesn’t like it.

“Stop it.  That’s not how it was,” he says firmly.

Her face softens, but she’s still frowning.

“When did you start dating her?” she asks.

His heart jumps into his throat.  He knows where this is going, and he can’t defend himself from this one.

“That shouldn’t matter.  It’s over.”  He knows it’s a copout, but at the same time, it’s true.  Can’t they just move on from this?  Do they have to talk about Karen?

“Was it before you knew about the merger?” she prods.

He doesn’t respond.  He just looks away and shakes his head slightly, not in response to her question, but just because he wants to be anywhere but here right now.

“Jim, did you start dating her after you knew you were coming back?” she asks, and he knows that she already knows the answer.  Why does she want him to say it?

She’s not talking, and he’s forced to say something.

“Pam,” is all he says.  His tone is pleading.  He knows that she can fill in the rest herself.  Pam, please just stop.

“How could you do that?” she asks. 

The angry voice is back, and it confuses him again.  Why does she get to be angry?  She had no claim on him.  Was he supposed to wait for her forever, even after she turned him down?  He was perfectly justified in dating whomever he wanted.

“Excuse me?” he replies.

“Were you punishing me?” she demands, her eyes burning.  “Was it some sort of—”

“Just stop it!” Jim snaps.  He knows exactly why he was dating Karen.  Karen herself had pointed that out to him earlier that evening.  Pam had no idea what he went through in Stamford.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he accuses.  “It wasn’t like that at all.  You think that I was punishing you?  Pam, I was protecting myself!  You gave me no indication, I had no idea if you… I couldn’t come back and fall into the same pattern.  I couldn’t do that to myself again.”

She is quiet for a moment.

“You wouldn’t even talk to me,” she says softly.

“That’s not true,” he says stubbornly.

“No?” She looks up at him, and she looks more sad than angry.  “We went entire days without talking.  Jim, last year I couldn’t handle not talking to you for three hours during a stupid jinx game.”

“Hey, jinx is not stupid,” he says, hoping to lighten the mood.  It’s too serious right now.  He didn’t expect any of this.

“Jim,” she says.  It’s clear from her tone that she isn’t in the mood for any jokes.

“Look, I’m sorry.  I was… I wasn’t going to come back and have things be exactly the same.  Do you know how hard it was for me to watch you go home with someone else each night?” he asks.

“Yeah, I think I have a vague notion,” she says stiffly.

Again, a hint.  Why can’t she just say that she feels the same way?  He can’t be sure until she says it.  He seems to be moving the conversation further and further away from such an admission.  Instead he’s just making her angrier.  He sighs.  He can’t seem to say anything right. 

“What do you want me to say?  I already said I was sorry.  It’s not like you were the only victim here.”

“Victim?  How were you a victim?” Her eyebrows are raised and she looks at him challengingly, and he thinks he really stepped in it this time.

“That’s the wrong word,” he acknowledges.  “I just… Pam, I laid myself out there completely.  And you just…” 

And then he changes gears, because he just wants to know and he’s sick of explaining himself. 

“Why can’t you tell me, even now?  Pam, why can’t you just tell me?  Either way.  I just want to know, whatever the answer is.”

She looks at him silently for a moment, and then down at her mug of cocoa.  She seems unable to respond.  So instead she pushes out her chair and stands, and he feels hot white panic leaping in his chest.  She can’t do this to him.  Not again.  Her back is turned to him when he speaks.

“Don’t do this again.  Don’t walk away from this,” he says.

“Excuse me?” she says incredulously, spinning around to face him.  “You were the one who walked away last time, Jim!”

His eyes widen.  He can’t believe that she’s being so difficult right now.

“Yeah, after you shot me down!” he almost shouts.

“Shot you down?” she repeats, questioningly.  She sighs and sits back down.  “That’s not how I meant it.  In May.  I wasn’t shooting you down.”

One delicate finger runs back and forth around the rim of her mug as she composes her next statement.

“You’re braver than me, all right?  I get that,” she says quietly.  “But you know me.  You know how hard it is for me to… I don’t do that, I don’t do big declarations.  It was too much all at once.  I couldn’t deal with it then.  I just… I didn’t expect you to leave without saying goodbye as soon as I hesitated.  I’m sorry.  I’m not like you.  You didn’t hesitate.”

Hesitated?  Jim never thought of her response on Casino Night as a hesitation.  He finds himself thinking about his own hesitations.  How many times had he almost told her how he felt, but stopped himself?

His copout response to “Who Would You Do” in the parking lot during the fire.

On Halloween when she told him to take the other job, and all he could say was, “But it’s in Maryland” when he should have added, “And I can’t leave because I’m in love with you.”

When they were alone on the roof with his famous grilled cheese sandwiches and when they swayed in the parking lot, sharing his iPod, and he just looked at her but didn’t say what he was feeling.

When she was sitting on his bed, in his house, and all he wanted to do was tell her everything and then join her on the bed. 

At the Christmas party when he took back the card.

On the booze cruise, when he just stood on the deck alone with her, mouth hanging open but unable to say a word.

When Michael spilled the beans, and he lied to her and told her that it was nothing, that it was just an old crush.  He took it all back when it would have been so much better to just admit it.

When she left him seven voicemails telling him that it was so hard not to see him all day, and he called her back to joke about Todd Packer’s “gift” instead of telling her that every second he spends without her hurts.

When Roy told her not to take the internship, and he almost told her exactly how wrong Roy was for her and exactly how right he would be.

When he confessed that it was him who complained about her to Toby, but he didn’t tell her why it was so hard for him to hear her make plans for her wedding.

He never considered how hard it must have been for Pam to receive the full brunt of three years of hesitations from him, three years pouring out into one grand action in the parking lot on Casino Night.  How he hesitated a hundred times, but didn’t let her hesitate even once.

“You’re right.”  It’s all he can say.  He’s stunned by the new view of his own actions.

She looks at him, at the cut on his face, and she seems contrite.

“I’m sorry.  This whole night is all my fault and I’m sitting here berating you,” she says remorsefully.

“Please, don’t,” he says suddenly.  “Don’t blame yourself for him.  You did not do this to my face.”

He can’t let her make excuses for Roy.  He doesn’t even want her thinking about him.

“Does it still hurt?” she asks gently.

“Not too bad,” he lies.  It aches with every word he says.  “Tomorrow it’ll probably hurt more.”

She looks back down at her cocoa.  She seems more comfortable speaking to it than to him.  She shakes her head slightly and mutters her next statement so softly he barely hears it.

“I can’t believe I chose him over you.”

But he does hear it and it makes his heart jump again.

“Yeah,” he says, because he can’t think of anything better.

She looks up at him, surprised that he heard her.

“Look, Pam,” he begins.  “I’ve been an idiot.  I just had to leave.  I couldn’t watch you marry him.”

Pam doesn’t speak, but she nods and looks away.  He doesn’t want her to look away.  He needs eye contact right now.

So he stands and she looks up, prompted by the sound of his chair scraping backward across the linoleum floor.  Instead of remaining there, however, he pulls the chair next to hers, inches away, directly facing her, and resettles himself.  Their knees are almost touching, and he wants to reach out and hold her hands in his and stare into her eyes, but he settles for laying his palms lightly on her knees.  She’s wearing jeans, so it’s not as though it’s an especially risqué gesture, but it gets her attention nonetheless.  Her eyes dart toward his hands and then back up at his face, shocked by his sudden proximity.

“Karen knew that I was just using her.  She said that she was just a buffer, and she was right.  I mean, she’s great.  But she… I was just so afraid of coming back and seeing you every day and not being able to handle it.  I know I’ve been the worst friend.  I just couldn’t act like things were the same as they were a year ago.  I couldn’t go back to being that close to you.  It would have been too hard.”

To his surprise she laughs.  It’s a joyless chuckle, one of those frustrated laughs that you let out when you realize that you forgot your wallet when you’re already at the checkout at the grocery store.

“We are so bad at this,” she says.

He lets out a similar chuckle.

“We’re the worst,” he agrees.

They look at each other and smile.  They actually smile. 

“If there was a Dundie for worst communication between two office workers—” she starts.

“Oh, we would win, hands down,” he interjects, and their smiles grow.

There is another pause.  He has removed his hands from her knees, but he still feels a little giddy even though nothing has really happened yet.

“So…” he starts hesitantly.  “You remember kissing me?  At the Dundies?”

She blushes, but she’s still smiling.

“I was really drunk, but there are two things that I couldn’t forget from that night if I tried.  The first was kissing you.”

“What was the second thing?” he asks.

“Dwight leaning over me with his shirt off,” she says, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

“Glad I rank up there with Dwight,” he jokes.

“Oh yeah.  Kissing you and a shirtless Dwight.  Equally arousing,” she deadpans.

“Arousing?” he asks, eyebrows raised.

She blushes again.  He smirks and it hurts his cheek.  He winces, but his smirk only grows.  She notices the wince though, and she looks concerned and guilty again.

“If it’s any consolation, if your cheek scars, you can tell people that you got into a knife fight in a bar.  Very manly,” she says lightly.

He loves her so much.  Loves that she can make him laugh, and make his heart race, and even that she can make it break.  He loves everything about her.  So much that it hurts.

“Way ahead of you, Beesley.  I already have a whole story worked out about how I got into a fistfight with a drunken moron over the woman that we both love,” he says.

Her eyes quickly widen and then return to normal.  She looks down at her mug again.  Her safe retreat.  He knows exactly what he’s saying.  He knows that he used the present tense.  He did it on purpose.  He’s hoping, praying, that she’ll finally tell him.

She’s toying with the edge of her mug again, her eyebrows drawn together as if she’s in deep thought.  She inhales to speak and Jim simultaneously lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

“On Casino Night,” she starts, and Jim feels his heart rate double.  This is really happening.  Finally.

“In the parking lot…” she continues.  “I didn’t want to say ‘I can’t.’”

She’s looking at him now, and her eyes are glassy with unshed tears.  He wants to ask her what she wanted to say, but he doesn’t want to interrupt for fear that she won’t continue.

“And upstairs, when you asked me if I was going to marry him...  I didn’t want to nod,” she continues.

She looks away and shakes her head, as if shaking away those memories.

“Those were just… weak moments,” she says, and then she sighs like she’s angry with herself and shakes her head again.  “I have a lot of those.”

“You are not weak,” Jim says.

He reaches out and gives her knee a small squeeze.  She looks up at him again, and purses her lips.  She nods once slightly, and then again more resolutely.

“Not anymore,” she says.  And then she gives him a small smile, and he finally feels like it’s okay for him to ask.

“Pam, was Roy telling the truth?  Did you tell him that you had feelings for me?” he asks, and he holds his breath waiting for her response.

“Yes,” she says directly, and he can exhale.  “Only I was lying a little.”

“Oh,” he says, taking his hand off her knee.  

He really wishes that she wouldn’t do this to him again.  He can’t take it. 

He’s about to say just that when she grabs his hand and pulls it back onto her leg, but higher up, on her lower thigh.  She keeps her own hand over his.  She curls her fingers around so that the pads of her fingertips stroke his palm, and her thumb traces lazy circles on the back of his hand.  He has to consciously focus on not letting his eyes roll back in his head.  How such a simple gesture can have this effect on him, he can’t explain.

“Only part of what I told Roy was a lie,” she says. “I didn’t mean to say ‘had.’  I meant ‘has.’”

“Oh,” he repeats dumbly, eyes wide.

“No more weak moments,” she says, and she gives him another little smile.  She’s being so brave right now, he knows, and he smiles back at her.

“No,” he agrees.

“Okay,” she says quietly, the smile growing.

He wants to kiss her.  He’s pretty sure that she would let him.  He imagines himself leaning forward, her eyelids fluttering shut, his hand sliding the rest of the way up her leg, trailing up and underneath her shirt, resting on her bare back and running up and down the expanse of skin there while his lips move over hers.

However, just as he is about to act on these thoughts, when he’s just starting to lean forward, there is a loud pounding at his front door. 

His first thought is that it’s Roy, and that he’s come back just to ruin what has to be the most perfect moment in Jim’s life up to this point.  They both look first at the front door and then back at each other. 

“Don’t answer it,” Pam whispers urgently.

“I won’t,” he says immediately.  He would be crazy to leave this table right now.

“POLICE!” a voice calls from the behind the front door.  There is more pounding on the door.  “LACKAWANNA COUNTY SHERIFFS’ DEPARTMENT!  OPEN UP!”

Jim looks at Pam.  She looks wearily back at him and nods resignedly.

“Perfect,” he says, getting up from his chair.