He pushes the door to the bathroom open slowly and carefully, calling out her name as he does. In response, he hears a stifled sob come from the third stall down. He stands in front of it, leaning against the cool tile wall. He doesn’t say anything for a second, just listens to her crying.

But it starts to cut into him so he says, “Pam, are you okay?”

His voice echoes in the empty bathroom and he sees her feet jolt a little in surprise.

“Yeah- Yeah, I’m fine.”

She doesn’t come out of the stall, but he hears the lock click and he rests his hand gently on the steel door. It pushes open and there she is, sitting on the toilet with toilet paper balled up in her hand. She looks up at him and smiles meekly, sniffing and putting the toilet paper into the little trash can on the wall.

“Michael ‘fired’ me,” she says with air quotes and a sad laugh.

When he laughs, he notices the way her face changes and she looks lighter. “This is why he should not be allowed to watch Punk’d.”

He holds out a hand and she takes it, pulling herself up. When she does, she stumbles into him a little. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

He watches her look herself over in the mirror. She wipes at her eyes with a paper towel and blows her nose gently like she’s embarrassed to be doing it in front of him. She looks at him in the mirror and says with a grin, “You’re in the girls’ bathroom.”

He steps forward and smiles. “And it is so much nicer than our bathroom. Hardly any urine smell at all.”

Her reflection smiles back at him for a second before her face falls. She places her hands on the counter and starts to cry again, dropping her head. “You, uh, you said mixed berries. To the camera guys.”

“Oh. They told you about that?” His tongue flicks out to nervously wet his lips and he shoves his hands into his pockets.

She cries harder and he takes another step forward so he’s leaning against the counter next to her.

“Yeah.” She turns to him and he wants to be so mad at her for being beautiful right now with her face all red and soaked. “I wish they weren’t here.”

“The documentary crew?”

She nods. “Everything seems- I can’t just be- You know?”

“Yeah, I know.” He puts his arms around her waist and lets her cry against him. He does it without thinking.

It’s then that he realizes he needs to watch what he says and does now. So he starts to lie to himself just for practice. He tells himself that it means nothing to be standing in the girls’ bathroom after five with her getting his good white shirt wet with tears. He tells himself that her favorite flavor of yogurt is something besides mixed berries, something horribly un-Pam, maybe plain vanilla yogurt. Just so if someone else asked him, he could be wrong and no one would think anything of it.

He makes up lies for her too. She had a headache, that’s why she hurried off to the bathroom. It was just all the stress of the work day, building up behind her eyes and pressing. It happens sometimes. And he was just being a good friend and making sure she was okay, because everyone else had left already. He’ll buy her some of that tension headache stuff and she’ll keep it on her desk for times like this.

Headaches, nothing, vanilla. These are the things that have to become truths now.