The stationery in the hotel room desk has Hyatt embossed across the top. Jim carefully scratches out the yatt and prints alpert above it. He wants to write her a letter. A real one, the old fashioned kind, by hand, on paper. Unlike her handwriting, his isn’t particularly graceful, but it’s his and she always recognizes it.

It feels kind of corny, and he’s not usually like that. At least, not so overtly. It also doesn’t make much sense – he’ll only be gone for two nights and he’s already spoken to her three times today. He’s rundown a list of Michael’s choicest gaffes since arriving at the convention and relayed Dwight’s request for the little boxed shower cap in his hotel bathroom to bring home for Cousin Mose (Jim had said fine, provided he didn’t have to hear why.) She already knows he may have actually made a sale in the midst of all this and that the chicken at dinner was edible, but the desserts were petrified or melted or somehow both. He’s already told her he misses her.

He hasn’t mentioned his flashbacks of last year’s convention in Philadelphia. How he’d cultivated sales prospects, proven himself to the team, been one of the guys. How the only part of it that had seemed real was the knife to his gut when he’d overheard Michael mention her name and date in the same sentence.

Sitting in his underwear on his hotel bed, criminally overpriced mini-bar beer in hand, he stares at the blank page and thinks about the shoebox in the back of his mother’s closet. He’d come across it when he was about twelve, while staving off boredom by conducting an archeological excavation of places in his house he was supposed to keep his nose out of. The box was stuffed with love letters from his father, written early in their marriage when he’d had to travel often for his job. Jim read barely legibly scrawled words he could hardly imagine coming out of his dad’s mouth in real life. Words like want and beautiful and so in love and can’t wait. When he told him about it, his older brother had pronounced it gross (and yeah, it was, kind of. These were his parents, after all.) But there was something else. Jim suddenly became aware of a private universe his parents occupied - that he knew nothing about.

He considers opening his letter with a lame joke about the convention renewing his commitment to paper. But he doesn’t, because they have plenty of jokes already. He wants to tell her things that aren’t funny.

How he didn’t want to leave when he let himself out that morning before she was awake, before the sun even rose. That he’d kneeled down beside her and kissed her forehead, her shoulder, between her breasts, only half covered by the tangled sheets, a reminder of last night’s long goodbye. That despite sheer exhaustion, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep tonight, without her. That he belongs to her and how fucking lucky he is and he hopes she knows he knows that. That he’s so proud of her. That she can do anything. That she doesn’t have to do anything for him but just be.

He thinks Pam would like having a hidden box of love letters. He puts the pen to paper and writes.

********************

An excerpt of the song this scene's title comes from (written way back in 1970, by someone who knew a thing or two about love): 

I want to have fun, I want to shine like the sun
I want to be the one that you want to see
I want to knit you a sweater
Want to write you a love letter
I want to make you feel better
I want to make you feel free
I want to make you feel free 

 From All I Want by, Joni Mitchell (Blue album)