Disclaimer:  I do not own the characters of Jim, Pam or any of their immediate relatives.  But I do reserve the right to create stories about them or any of their past, present and/or future co-orkers and/or acquaintances.

The Call

"Mom, he asked me...he came back and asked me to dinner tonight!"

Pam knew she was talking loudly, but she couldn't stop herself.  She was shaking, too.  It still felt so unreal.

"Jim?"  Her mom's voice had a quietly confident ring of satisfaction to it, as though she, herself had also been awaiting Jim's return. 

"Yes, Jim.  He drove back from New York and asked me in the office...I was in the middle of doing a talking head with the film crew and he just came in and asked me." She was still muttering a mile a minute.

"Slow down, honey."

Pam tried to take her mother's advice...taking a couple of deep breaths.  It seemed to help.   "I can't believe it mom...when he left yesterday I wasn't sure I'd ever see him again.  I mean I thought he'd get the job, so I knew he'd have to move away again and then he might never come back."

"But you were kind of prepared for that the other night when we talked.  You told me you'd be okay if he wound up leaving."  Pam's mom offered the words as a sort of reassurance, knowing that she, herself hadn't quite believed it...not fully. 

"Yeah, I thought I was.  I mean I knew that if he left I'd be alright.  I'd accepted that as a real possibility and I was perfectly fine with it.  I told you that night that I knew we were both in sort of different places and if he really wanted the job and wanted to move to New York...if that was going to make him happy, then I wanted that for him, too.  I...I knew I could live with it."

"But...?"  Pam's mom recognized the hitch in her daughter's voice...the little hint that Pam wasn't quite as sure of her words as she might think.  She'd first heard it when Pam was in junior high and wasn't fitting in with the other girls and through high school when Pam insisted it didn't bother her that she wasn't "in" with the popular kids.  And, as the years rolled by, she'd also heard it popping more and more into their conversations about Roy, even after he'd set the wedding date.   

It was only about four years ago, when Pam first brought up this new salesman that had started working in her office that the hesitant hitch in her daughter's voice began to be heard a little less often.  There wasn't any restraint when she talked about Jim.  There was never a hint of disappointment or evidence of tightness at the corners of her mouth whenever Pam described the things she and Jim did together at work. And when Pam mentioned Jim, she never saw that sinking dullness that too frequently haunted her daughter's eyes when they talked of Roy.  She only knew that whenever Pam spoke about Jim it had been with a quiet, unabashed joy.

That was, until the night when Pam had called and told her that Jim said he was in love with her and how he'd kissed her and she'd kissed him back.  That night had changed everything.  And it had taken nearly a year for Pam to no longer hide from what she'd guessed all along was the simple truth.

"But mom, when he actually walked out the door yesterday afternoon...it hurt.  I didn't want to see him go.  And I was okay today, I mean I really was.  It was nuts with what was going on, but I was fine.  But I just kept thinking about him...all day.  And not knowing what was really going to happen....and then...he came back...."

She heard Pam choke up on the other end of the line. She let the moment pass to give her daughter some time to compose herself. 

"I'm so happy right now!  Scared as hell, but so very happy!  I couldn't think about much of anything else for the rest of the day...everything's been pretty much of a blur."

"So, did Jim get the job?"

"He turned it down, mom.  We really haven't had a lot of time to talk yet, but he told me he realized during the interview that it wasn't what he really wanted, so he turned it down."

A chill came over Pam's mom as she tried to sense the jumble of emotions that her daughter must be feeling at that very moment.  She knew what this night would mean for Pam.  Ever since Jim had left Scranton for the job in Connecticut, she and Pam had talked a lot about what it was that Pam really wanted.  Real honest to goodness talks...not just about Jim but what Pam really wanted out of life.  She'd figured out pretty quickly that one thing she didn't want was to marry Roy.  And there was her drawing, too so she'd started art classes again and she'd gotten an apartment.  It was the first time in her life that she'd lived on her own. 

And then Jim came back and her hopes had been so high. But he'd come back with someone else and for a while that just seemed to squash the progress she'd made.  She even got back with Roy.  But one night, after the art show they'd talked and Pam seemed to be looking at things in a different way.  She didn't want to talk about changing more things around her...she wanted to talk about how she needed to change.  She wanted to talk about courage and honesty...but about her own courage and honesty.  And so they'd talked long into the night about how nothing else would ever really matter unless she was ultimately willing to risk the loss of the very things she dreamed and hoped of by being unafraid to go after them.  And they had both cried when Pam told her that Jim had said something very nearly the same to her almost a year and a half earlier. 

But this time she'd listened and since that talk her mom had seen a new, more confident Pam slowly emerge.  There were some fits and stops along the way, but she had changed...and it was all for the better.

And Pam hadn't given up on Jim either, even though things had gotten so bad between them.  Her willingness, under the circumstances to say the things she'd said to him just the week before at Lake Scranton about how she missed him and called off the wedding because of him finally put everything out there.  Pam took the big roll of the dice, just as Jim had done with her a year earlier on that Casino Night.  She had no idea what Jim really felt, but she'd said her peace and was willing to live with whatever way it went.  That's all she could do...that's all anybody could do, really.  At some point you just have to roll ‘em and see if it comes up seven or snake eyes. 

After having heard about Lake Scranton, Pam's mom had a pretty good feeling about her daughter, more confident than ever that no matter how things went Pam would be alright.  She wasn't that little girl any more, the one who for too long a time had been so easily intimidated, by Roy and much of life, in general.  That just wasn't Pam any more.  What was it that she said Jim had once called her, before he'd come back to Scranton..."Fancy new Beesly", right?  It fit. 

"Well, Pam...I guess you and Jim will have a lot to talk about."

"Yeah, I guess we will."

"So, are you okay, honey?"

"Yes mom, I think I am!"

Her daughter was a young woman, now and tonight she was ready to take the next big step in her life.  Pam's mom didn't know how things would eventually work out with Jim, but she knew that Pam was in a much better place to make it work with him than she'd ever been before...and there was nothing more she could really ask for.