I must thank ElizabethLynn for her invaluable assistance and encouragement.

 Jellybeans 

“Jim?”   No answer.  “Jim?”  Still no answer.

She walked over to his desk, planting herself against the corner.  Everyone else had left for the day so she needn’t be too careful about keeping it “professional,” not that it really seemed to matter here in Scranton anyway.  She lightly ran her hand across the back of his neck, just catching the scruffy ends of that mop of hair that never quite seemed to fall exactly into place.  “Hey, what are you daydreaming about?”

“What?  Who me?”  He finally looked up at her, blankly.

“Yeah, you!  Who’d you think I was talking to?”

Jim couldn’t think who else it might have been so he just sort of shook his head.

“So, you’re coming over for dinner tonight, right...I’m making lasagna?”

“Sure...I think I can get there by 6:30.”

He had to stay a little later tonight and check the sales figures for the month that were due into corporate by tomorrow morning.  He was number two in the office now and Michael had actually made an honest to goodness managerial decision and delegated some responsibility to him... go figure!  At the end of every month it was his job to make sure that all the numbers jibed before Michael signed off on the report and emailed the figures to Jan in New York.  A year ago, before he’d left for Stamford, he would have taken Kevin’s 10,000 to 1 odds that he’d never, ever find a reason to stay over an hour late to do some real Dunder-Mifflin “paper” work.  Now, when he really thought about it, there were reasons he actually didn’t mind so much. 

“OK, see you then.”  Karen leaned over and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.  He tilted his head and gave her a little smile as she gently stroked his shoulder before she rose and walked toward the front door. 

Jim didn’t watch her leave.  Instead, he leaned back in his chair and turned toward the empty reception desk.  Pam had filled the jellybeans before she left.  He’d been thinking about those jellybeans when Karen interrupted him about dinner but he’d never say so.  He’d been thinking about those jellybeans a lot lately.  He’d pretty much stayed away from them ever since his one word admission to Karen the day that Michael had rescued Dwight from Staples and brought him back to the office.  Those long, long nights that followed that admission had pretty much spoiled his appetite for jellybeans.

 Deep down, Jim always knew that it had never been right with Karen...not really right.  He liked her.  He really did.  She was smart, sexy...fun.  And, he knew she cared for him.  Maybe if they’d stayed in Stamford...if Scranton had closed or there’d been no merger.  But that didn’t happen and they’d both wound up back here before they’d gotten anywhere near serious about each other.  He wasn’t sure how he felt now. 

Jim got up from his chair and walked the four or five feet to the counter of Pam’s desk.  She’d filled the little plastic holder to the brim.  There were lots of yellow, green and red ones and only a few orange and purple ones...but he really didn’t like the purple ones that much anyway.  He also noticed right off that there were no black, licorice ones...the better to keep Dwight away.   

He reached for a red one.  As he popped it into his mouth he heard the door handle squeak and he turned to see who it might be.  Had Karen forgotten something?  But it wasn’t Karen.  It was Pam.  Jim stopped dead in his tracks.  The five or so seconds they looked at one another seemed to go on forever.  It was Pam who broke the silence. 

“I waited ‘til Karen left.” 

Jim didn’t know what to do.  

“I have something to say and Jim, I need you to listen!  For once I need you to listen to me!”  She stood straight and looked right at him.  He saw that she wasn’t all hesitant and nervous.  She didn’t have her hands pulled into her sleeves and she wasn’t shifting from foot to foot.  The determination in her words told him she was serious. 

He walked back to his desk, but didn’t sit, choosing to prop himself against the desk’s top.  “I’m listening.” There was a hint of sharpness in his voice.  He only used it with Pam.  It was a defense against the old sort of false friendship they’d fooled themselves into believing they had with one another before he’d come right out and laid it on the line during Michael’s casino night, nearly a year ago now. It was another one of those things he didn’t like about himself, but he’d sworn when he came back that he wouldn’t fall into that trap a second time.

She knew exactly what he was doing.  “Dammit, Jim!  I’m not letting you shut me out this time.”  Pam walked to the front of her counter, stopping directly across from him. “Now listen to me!” It was a command...not a request.

 Jim folded his arms across his chest and crossed his feet, a bit anxious about hearing what Pam had to tell him.   He recognized the first small sign of nerves as she began to fiddle with her necklace.  “Okay.  I’m listening,” he said, the sting to his voice gone. 

Pam bit down slightly on her lower lip.  “Jim...” her voice was softer now, “I know this has been hard on you.  I’ll never know exactly what coming back here has been like after everything that’s happened, but I’ve known you too long and I know you too well to not understand the pain and anger you must feel toward me.  I’ve tried to tell you before how sorry I am about everything, about everything I’ve done...but I don’t think you really wanted to hear me.”  Her voice choked up and Jim saw the first glint of tears in her eyes. “I am so, so very sorry...and I’m not sure there’s really a way I can fix any of it.”

She was right:  he had not wanted to listen to her and he had not wanted to repair things between them.  He’d wanted to distance himself from everything they had once been to each other.  And, in the process, maybe a small part of him had wanted her to feel some of the same hurt he’d lived with since that night, last May.  For the first time Jim felt truly ashamed as he realized how shabbily he’d treated her since his return.  He started to move toward her, but she stopped him.

“Don’t Jim...please don’t,” she wiped the wetness from her cheek with the back of her hand, “I’m not done yet.”  She took a deep breath.  “I made a mistake...a really big mistake.  I was just so scared.  I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what to think and I just got so god damned scared.  I know I drove you away and I know it may turn out to be the biggest fucking mistake I will ever make in my entire life.”   Jim unfolded his arms and rested his hands on top of the desk. “But you shouldn’t have sprung it on me the way you did...it wasn’t fair to me, not a month before I was supposed to get married.   What was I supposed to do?  Jim...what the hell did you expect me to really do?” 

Jim felt the guilt wash over him.  What had he wanted her to do?  He’d never asked himself that question that night in the parking lot before he’d spilled his heart to her.  But he’d asked it at least a thousand times since...and every day since he’d come back.

“I don’t know what I really expected...I really don’t know that I expected anything.  It may have been selfish, but I only know that when I saw you standing there that night, all I could think of was that you were going to marry Roy in less than four weeks and that my world was coming to an end.” Jim could tell his voice was growing louder and that he was talking faster but he didn’t know how to stop.  He had wanted to get it all out for a long time, but he’d been afraid to open up to her again, afraid that she’d tell him once more what he didn’t want to hear.  “I only knew that I had to leave because I couldn’t come to work every day and see that gold band on your finger.  I just couldn’t do that.  I couldn’t do it because....” he hesitated not sure that he really wanted to say the words again.  But Pam was looking at him in the most intense way he had ever seen “...because I knew I loved you and ....I thought you loved me!”

“Oh Jim...I am so, so sorry,” Pam started to cry.  He shook his head, beginning to resign himself to reliving the pain all over again, the pain he’d spent months pushing down so deep that he’d fooled himself into thinking that he could come back to Scranton and have some sort of normal life with Pam still in the picture.

Pam lifted her head and wiped away the tears. “Jim... I was in love with you that night in the parking lot and I’m in love with you now....I’ve been in love with you for a long time...I‘ve just been so afraid and stupid about it and I’ve wanted to tell you ever since you came back.  But when you came back with Karen I didn’t think it was right for me to say anything...I thought it was too late. I thought you hated me.”  She looked at him with a desperation and vulnerability he’d never seen before.  Her tears had stopped but she was sniffling and she wiped her nose on the sleeve of her sweater.  “I know things can never be the same, but can you ever forgive me?”

Jim felt the shame and sadness well up from deep within.  What a fucking fool he’d been!  He was her best friend and she his, and he knew she didn’t have it in her to purposely hurt him.  But he did, and he’d been proving it ever since he’d come back.  He’d never given her a chance.  Why did she even care?  Why the hell did she still care? 

Jim moved slowly to her.  She reached out and he slid between her arms.  She looked into his eyes and then laid her head softly against his chest.  He wrapped his arms around her and felt the same shudder of her body against his that he remembered from that night so many months ago.  God, how had they let it come to this...how had he let it come to this?

He bent down and kissed the top of her head, her hair soft against his lips and her smell so familiar.  “Can you ever forgive me?” Jim whispered, “Can you...Pam?”

The phone on Jim’s desk began to ring.  It could only be one person calling to ask when he’d be done.

Pam slowly lifted her head to meet his eyes.  She did not speak, but her eyes were wide and bright and her lips met his and he knew the answer to all his questions.

Disclaimer:  I do not own the characters of Jim and Pam or any other characters that populate The Office universe.  I do however have a full bag of Brach’s jellybeans waiting to be eaten.