Dwight burst into the conference room five minutes late, brandishing a five-subject notebook and a 30-pack of Accent highlighters. “This meeting is now in session!”
Jim leaned back in his chair, casually resting his arm on the back of Pam’s chair and absentmindedly stroking her shoulder with his thumb. “Where’d you get those, Dwight? Staples? Meet Josh?”
Dwight’s eyes narrowed, and he turned his right shoulder to Jim and spoke instead to Michael. “I got the highlighters, Michael. Michael, do you want me to – Michael?”
Michael’s mouth was buried in his fist, his eyes twisted shut and a huge grin stretching the corners of his mouth. His eyes flicked back and forth from Jim’s face, to Pam’s face, to the left corner of the door, to Dwight’s right shoulder, to Creed’s backward tie, and back to Jim’s face.
Jim’s mouth fell open at the same time Pam’s did. He pulled his arm back around to rest on his lap, and she straightened up and sat in her seat instead of leaning into his shoulder.
“Hey Jim!” Michael choked in between sniggers. “Jim! Jim! You should…you should thank Dwight!” He dissolved into chuckles again.
Pam looked at Jim with a mix of fury, confusion, and panic plastered all over her face. Jim, for his part, was completely confused. “What?”
Kelly shot up out of her seat and threw her Cosmo onto the ground by Dwight’s feet. “You told him about the Committee?!”
Ryan sat up straight and looked at Dwight as though he had run over his pet dog. “You told him?”
Phyllis, Angela, Oscar, and even Stanley burst into a squawking cacophony of protests. Dwight held up his hands and let the notebook fall to the floor. “I am innocent! You are accusing the wrong man! Attica! ATTICA. Wait – hold on - ”
Jim stood up. “Quiet! Quiet, please!”
The room fell still.
“Would somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Jim looked at Phyllis expectantly. “Neither Pam nor I has any idea. Please?”
The room was still quiet. Nobody wanted to meet his eye.
Then Creed coughed and spoke up. “We had a Committee, Jim. The Committee to End Really Obvious Unresolved Sexual Tension. Remember?”
Pam’s look of confusion spread. Jim coughed. “Yeah, I remember. Ryan and Kelly?”
“Yup.” Creed nodded and continued. “Anyway, we came back together about a month ago to begin another case without you. You and her.”
The back of Jim’s throat suddenly, inexplicably, became very dry.
Michael’s sniggers reached a breaking point, and he burst out in Todd Packer laughter. “You had no idea! Oh God,” he gasped for air. “You and Pam are such clueless mind-bongs!”
Creed turned to Dwight. “By the way, I told Michael.” He shrugged. “Performance reviews next month…you take what you can get. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s five o’clock and I have to leave.”
Creed stood up and simply left the conference room, picked up his briefcase and jacket, and left. After a short silence, Kevin and Oscar followed. Then Stanley and Andy (Drew), Phyllis, Angela, and Meredith, and then it was only Pam, Jim, Michael, Dwight, Kelly and Ryan left.
Kelly bent down to pick up her Cosmo and huffed angrily at Michael. “Ohmygod, Michael. I can’t believe you let them know. You’re the mind-bong, not them.”
“Let’s go, Kelly,” Ryan murmured anxiously as he led his girlfriend out the door, thoughts of performance reviews and business school applications filling his head.
Dwight slowly placed the 30-pack of highlighters on the podium before slowly exiting the room, keeping his body aligned toward Michael, Jim and Pam at all times. Michael sighed and picked the notebook up off of the floor.
“God, you two.” He sighed again and chortled. “Such mind-bongs!” And then he left.
Jim was still standing when the door shut behind him. He turned to Pam with a wild, scared look in his eye, but she was composed and was standing up to leave.
“Let’s go back to my place,” she simply said, and he followed.
~~~!~~~
Jim popped a crouton into his mouth and smiled. “So, we gonna talk about it?”
“About what?” Pam asked, her previously adoring glances becoming fainter.
“The Committee to End Really Obvious Unresolved Sexual Tension.” Jim beamed. “I think it’s quite the achievement.”
Pam squeezed the bottle of Caesar almost viciously, the gooey mess slopping all over her salad bowl. “You don’t think it’s a little wrong that they set us up like that?”
Jim waited until she set the salad dressing down and looked at him. Then he reached forward with one swift motion, lifting her up and sitting her on the kitchen counter like a little kid.
He kissed the corners of her smile and slid his hands just under the hem of her shirt as she laughed. “It was bound to happen sometime, though.”
“Oh really?” She reached down and gently pushed his hands to a stop. “It was? Even with – “
“Yeah,” he said, cutting her off. “Even with. It would have happened. I promise.”
She relaxed into a smile and moved her arms to circle around his neck, laced her fingers on the ridges of his spine. Let her mouth fall a little open when he leaned forward and kissed the spot just to the left of the hollow of her neck. “I suppose we should thank Dwight, then.”
“Oh, Pam,” he groans. “No…”
She laughs, and it’s not because of the joke, or the bit of Caesar dressing her fingers left on the inside of his wrist. It’s because his voice still reaches to more parts of her than her ears, because his smile makes Creed’s creepiness seem more like an affectionate nudge, because he has the certainty and casual confidence to say something after the Even with’s and Sorry if you’ve misinterpreted’s. It’s because he’s somehow made laughter synonymous with falling in love in her new understanding of the English language, and she loves this version far more than she should.
He pulls back from the thing he’s doing to her neck and looks into her eyes with the look that makes her breath catch, her arms itch to wrap around him again. “Sexual tension, though,” he rumbles in that voice. “Really now.”
She kisses him and lets her arms fall around to behind his back, lets him pick her up and carry her to the bedroom. And every time she silently counts the giggles and smiles and chuckles that come from nowhere these days, she feels herself sinking deeper.
Later, when her hair’s mussed out in a fan behind her head and her cheeks are flustered and his chest is beneath her fingers again, she stops him to breathe a few quick words into his ear.
“I’ve lost count of the number of times I fell in love with you today,” she says.
He laughs and brings her fingers up to kiss them, one by one. “Start counting again,” he says, and she silently thinks the number one.
