Pam sat on her bed with about a dozen postcards spread out in front of her. It was Saturday, her 6th day in Italy and the first day she didn't have to be up by 7am. The program was much more intense than she had anticipated; her two classes took all morning, and the afternoons were devoted to field trips to different museums and sights in and around Florence. It was strange to suddenly be so close to works of art she had read about all her life; the Duomo seemed to dominate the sky no matter where in Florence she was, Pisa and it's famous tower was only a train ride away, works by Boticelli, Titian and da Vinci were all under the same roof at the Uffizi, and her art history teacher said the class was going to "drop by" to see Michelangelo's David next week. When the days were over, Pam would collapse on her bed, almost too exhausted to think about home and about Jim. Almost.

If Pam were to complain about anything, it would be the dorm rooms. The beauty of the city was not reflected at all in the box-like rooms with blank, beige walls and room for two uncomfortable twin-sized beds, two dressers, and not a whole lot else. They were quiet, though, which is why Pam chose it as the location to write all the postcards she promised to send out. Her roommate, Cari (who was 20, attended Penn State, and was a hell of a lot more together than Pam was at that age) was down in the commons with most of the other students, so Pam had the room to herself.

She had written out nearly all the postcards on her list; her parents, her sister, a couple aunts and uncles and cousins, and many of her coworkers. Ex-coworkers, she reminded herself. The last person on her list was Jim. She kept putting off writing the postcard, hoping to find it had miraculously written itself at some point. She wasn't even sure how to address the card with a photo of a Florentine sunset on the front. Was it okay to address it to just Jim, or should she write it to both of them? She took a deep breath, addressed it to Jim only, and started to write.

"Italy is unbelievable. I've been here less than a week but I've already climbed the Duomo and spent the afternoon in Pisa. Next weekend I'm taking an excursion down to Rome. I only get three days to see what would probably otherwise take a month, but that's okay. If you ever get a chance to come here, you should definitely take it."

Pam signed her name, and read over what she just wrote. She frowned a little at her impersonal tone, but she wasn't sure what else to write, what would be appropriate. She took a deep breath, trying to summon a little courage, and put the pen back down to the card.

"P.S. I miss y –"

Someone called her name and Pam snapped her head up to see Cari in the doorway.

"We're going to take a walk along the riverfront, you want to come?" Cari asked, tucking some of her long blond hair behind her ear.

Pam nodded, and as Cari grabbed a few things out of her dresser, Pam scribbled out the line she just wrote, gathered up the other postcards and slipped them into her bag.

Jim would be the first one to admit he was out of it. He would hang up the phone after a sale and barely remember the client's name, stand in an aisle at the grocery store and completely forget what he was there for, even just now he was too out of it to get mad at a major Phillies error that made them fall behind in the 8th inning, or at Casey for whining at the door.

He had been spacing out for the whole week, thinking about Pam, wondering how she was doing in Italy and if it was too much to email her and ask her. He thought of all the previously unnoticed signs she liked him as more than a friend and how painfully obvious it was to him now.

He thought back to the Booze Cruise in January; he had reluctantly invited Lisa and she reluctantly agreed to come, unsure how good of a time she would have, but to his surprise she really hit it off with the warehouse workers. Jim was hanging back watching Lisa participate in increasingly rowdy drinking games when Pam walked by, coat in her arms.

"Beesly," he called, and she spun around to face him, "you jumping ship?"

She laughed, "No, I'm just - thought I'd get some fresh air." Jim nodded and watched Pam rock back and forth on her heels. "You wanna join me?" she said it so quietly Jim almost didn't hear her over the sound of Lisa and the warehouse guys chanting "Darryl, Darryl!"

Jim half-smiled, set his beer down and grabbed his coat, following Pam to the door that lead out to the boat deck. The wind was biting and instantly negated the beer buzz he had going, but the cold January air was a welcome change to the stale smell of the boat dining hall. Still, he and Pam opted to stay close to the door. Their eyes met and she laughed nervously.

"Maybe not my best idea," she said with a shiver.

Jim shook his head, "Nah, it's kind of nice, it's too loud in there anyways." They both looked through the glass window of the door, where across the room they could see a neon yellow snorkel being used to take shots.

"Lisa's really getting into it," Pam said.

Jim chuckled, "Yeah, I'm definitely seeing a new side of her tonight." He gazed over Pam across the water for a moment, unsure how he felt about the 'new side' of Lisa, then shifted his eyes down to meet Pam's. "So what's happening with Mr. Varsity Blues," he said, referring to Roy the warehouse worker, who spent most of the evening sitting with Pam, Jim and Lisa, talking about little else beside his glory days as a star football player in high school.

"Roy?" Pam shrugged. "Probably not much. He's a little too ... I don't know if he's really my type."

"What is your type, Beesly?" Jim asked with a smirk.

"Um," she tilted her head and stared off at nothing in particular. She looked back to Jim, an expression on her face that he couldn't quite read. Jim watched her chew her lip, feeling guilty for teasing her about Roy, and feeling increasing nervous for other unknown reasons.

Pam finally broke eye contact and took a shaky breath. "You're cold," Jim said, reaching up to rub her arm, his other hand heading for the door handle.

"No," she said in a voice barely above a whisper. Jim pulled his hand away from the door, feeling his eyebrows knit in confusion as he looked at Pam again, her mouth open as if she were about to speak.

There was a flash of pink in the corner of Jim's eye, and the door swung opened. "Jim!" Before he knew it Kelly's arms were around his neck. "Why didn't you tell us the wedding date had been set?!"

Jim's eyes instinctively snapped to Pam, but she was already facing away from him, her head lowered. She was inside and halfway across the dining hall before Kelly released Jim from her ecstatic embrace.

"A June wedding, it's going to be so perfect!" Jim was barely listening to Kelly as his gaze remained on Pam's curly hair and white coat until she was completely out of view.

Jim was pulled out of the memory by Casey scratching at the back door, and Jim stood to let the dog outside. Pam wanted to tell him, there were so many moments where she clearly had something to say, only to lose the courage or get interrupted. Jim return to the couch, shaking his head, it didn't matter that Pam didn't confess to having feelings for him sooner, he told himself, it would have played out the same as the other night, well minus one part.

For the hundredth time this week, Jim's thoughts returned to what happened last Friday. He still couldn't come up with any kind of satisfactory answer for why he did what he did. Best he could say was somehow three years of inside jokes and glances during meetings and plotting pranks over jellybeans resulted in him inadvertently forming on a crush on Pam. But that was all it was, an innocent crush on a coworker that, save one kiss, he had never acted upon. It wasn't anything compared to what he felt for Lisa, was it?

Before Jim had a chance to linger too long on that question, Lisa came in the front door in a huff, dropping her purse on the kitchen table and scoffing to herself.

"Hey, Lis, something wrong?" Jim called from the couch.

Lisa stomped into the living room and threw her hands in the air, "Well, my dress doesn't fit!"

It took a second for Jim to figure what "dress" she meant. "Doesn't fit?"

"It was a little loose last time, so I told the seamstress to go ahead and take it in. And I guess I've been gorging myself since then because now it doesn't fit. God, first the bridesmaid dresses, now this."

Jim recalled the issue with the bridesmaids' dresses; how Lisa ordered apricot colored dresses and they came back peach. He remembered Pam dubbing it "The Great Fuzzy Fruit Fiasco" and would have chuckled if a very upset Lisa wasn't five feet away.

"Oh my God, and the invitation typo too!" Lisa said before she plopped down on the couch with her face in her hands.

"That's not a big deal, I always wanted to be a 'Helpert'," Jim said, smiling. Lisa didn't react to the joke, and Jim's face fell. "Hey," he said softly, putting his arm around her shoulder, "it's gonna be okay."

Lisa looked at Jim, her sky blue eyes tearing up. "Are you really ready to get married?" she asked in a whisper.

"Of course I am," Jim answer almost too quickly. "Where's this all coming from?"

Lisa shook her head, wisps of chestnut brown hair falling from her bun into her face. She launched into a speech that was a little too well spoken to have been spontaneous, about how she wanted to believe this was a case of "cold feet" but she couldn't shake her doubts. She spoke about how she felt like she hadn't done anything in her life, how she grew up in Wilkes-Barre, went to Penn State, met Jim the summer she graduated, and that was it. She spoke about feeling like they were both on auto-pilot, with their jobs and their relationship and their lives. She lastly spoke about not feeling connected with Jim, that they weren't able to read each other well.

Jim shook his head slightly, He could read Lisa just fine, he thought to himself. Maybe he didn't know every nuance of every look she gave him, but who could actually read someone that well?

Pam's face appeared in his mind, as it had a tendency of doing recently. Jim desperately tried to push the images out; the green eyes that widened when she wasn't quite sure if Jim was joking, the eyebrows that shot up when Michael would say something insensitive, the lip she chewed when she was thinking something but wasn't sure if she should say it, the tongue that peeked out between her teeth when Jim would compliment her brilliant ideas as they plotted pranks against Dwight.

Jim held his breath as his mind still refused to think about anything but Pam, about how he knew when Pam was upset and wanted cheering up, and when it was better to leave her alone. About how he could tell which computer game she was playing by just looking at her eyes (they'd dart around when she played FreeCell verses being focused when she played Mine Sweeper). Sometimes he would even play a game with himself and try to predict if she would get sour cream & onion or barbecue chips with surprisingly accurate results.

"Jim." Lisa's tearful voice brought his wandering mind back to the present, and he struggled to refocus on her. "Did you hear what I said?"

Jim slowly shook his head, "What?"

Lisa's breath wavered, "That we should postpone?"

A scoff escaped Jim's mouth before he could stop it.

"It wouldn't be a big deal, Jim, and we can have more time to think."

Jim didn't want to think anymore, all he'd been doing for the last week was thinking, and all it had done was make him doubt everything he was so sure of a week ago. He needed Lisa to tell him unequivocally that she's happy and wanted to get married in two weeks, not to be turning to him for decisions.

Jim turned to Lisa, locked his eyes with hers, took her hands in his and drew in a deep breath. "Are you ready to get married?"

Lisa's eyes stayed glued to his, and he tried to return a look of solidarity, of strength. But he only felt confused, and he knew she was probably taking notice of his confusion as the water welled in her eyes and as she slowly started to shake her head.

"I'm sorry, Jim."

The next sound he heard was the door latching behind her.