"Halpert, you are such a girl."

"What? Just because I occasionally enjoy watching someone prepare a delicious meal, that makes me a woman now?"

"This is Martha Stewart! She's like obsessed with table settings and stationary and decorative thing-a-ma-bobs for every single holiday."

"Hey! This is what my mom watches. It's like being home again."

Pam just laughed.

"I am not a girl," Jim said petulantly, changing the channel to preserve whatever shred of his dignity was left after the last couple of hours. In that time he and Pam had eaten their way through a good portion of what Pam had termed his "break up party spread." They hadn't done much talking yet, but Jim knew it was coming. He didn't want to push Pam, though, so he kept joking with her instead. He would rather have her laughing than crying anyway, though he knew there would probably be a few more tears before the night was over.

"Are too," Pam shot back, her eyes lighting up teasingly.

"Am not," Jim insisted, wondering what possibly could have possessed Roy. If Pam were his to break up with there was no way he would ever let her go. He couldn't even fathom it. How could Roy be so stupid?

"Are too."

"Am not plus infinity."

She didn't say anything, just rolled her eyes. Five minutes later as he flipped through the cable news channels she leaned over and whispered in his ear

"Are too." He would have done more than just smile, if it wasn't for the fact that her whisper had left him with goosebumps running up and down his whole body.

-----

Thirty minutes later they were laughing through a re-run of SNL and eating rocky road ice cream out of the same carton.

Fifteen minutes after that she was sobbing again, into the arm of his couch this time, as he tried to piece her garbled mumblingstogether into a coherent narrative of what had happened. From what he could tell Roy had simply decided that Pam wasn't the one for him, and then told her he'd be moving out the next day.

-----

"Because..." he mumbled tiredly a few hours later.

"Because what?" She was looking at the movie on his TV screen and not at him. Maybe that was what gave him to courage to keep talking.

"Because you deserve more than that."

"What?"

"You... you're... You deserve to have someone love you because of all that stuff not in spite of it."

"You think someone's gonna fall in love with me because I spend the whole day talking to strangers on the phone, but I can't even order pizza by myself? That's not a lovable quality, Jim, that's being too shy to function."

"I think it's cute."

"Okay, well, what about the way I dance? Roy was right about that at least. Even you wouldn't think my dorky dance moves are cool."

"Oh really? Come on, try me!"

"No way. That is definitely not happening."

"Come on, Pam, dance with me," he said, suddenly rising to his feet, not nearly as tired as he'd been a few seconds before. He reached down to pull her up next to him.

"There's no music," Pam said.

Jim flipped down a few channels to a music video of some inane pop song. Then he gave Pam a look.

"This isn't gonna happen," she insisted.

It took a few more minutes and Jim had to switch from VH1 to a CD of some classic oldies, but he finally did get her to dance. Eventually they even wound up belting out the words to an old Beatles song, both way off-key, before simultaneously collapsing in a fit of giggles.

"You know you're right," he said. "Your dorky dance moves are definitely not cool."

Pam whacked him with a pillow.

-----

"I mean, how does he even know that? He's never gone longer than three days without talking to his brothers, he's always just been following them around. Always." Pam paced back and forth across his living room an hour or so later.

"Well, maybe being alone for awhile will help him with that." Jim posited, wondering how in the world he'd wound up defending Roy.

"And another thing, what is so wrong with me wanting to keep my art supplies? I loved art in high school! I could still start sketching again someday. It's not like I don't let him keep his stupid football trophies! Those things have been in our bedroom for like seven years now!"

It was nearing three in the morning and Pam was still talking. Jim's eyelids were getting heavier, but he wasn't about to suggest that Pam leave. He'd stay awake all night if it meant being with her.

-----

Pam knew she needed to get off the couch. Her sugar rush had finally come to an end and was turning into more of a sugar coma. Jim had been asleep for the last hour or so, but his arm was still wrapped around her shoulders. His head was tilted back and his mouth was hanging open a little bit. There was no way that was a comfortable position.

She was staring at the TV out of habit. The movie she'd been watching had ended, but the remote was still in her hand even after she'd turned everything off.

She couldn't think anymore. It was like all of the night's emotions had been washed away, leaving her empty and blissfully numb.

She turned to look at Jim again. He looked so innocent when he was asleep. Boyish and sweet. She'd never really noticed that quality in his face while he was at work. He was nice to her, of course, but he was nice to everyone. Well, everyone except Dwight...and Michael sometimes, but that was understandable.

She carefully pulled herself out from under Jim's arm to kneel next to him on the couch and get a better look at the face she had thought she already knew so well. Without thinking, she started to trace the outline of his features with her fingertips. Not quite touching his eyes and then his nose and then his lips, daring herself to get closer without actually touching him.

What was she doing here? It was the middle of the night and she was kneeling on Jim's couch watching his eyes move rapidly back and forth underneath his eyelids. This wasn't real, was it? Nothing about this night seemed real. Maybe she was already asleep on the couch and this moment now was just a dream.

She got up and turned out the light, then carefully prodded Jim into lying down on his couch. It was too late to go home, especially without a car, but Jim's bed was probably comfy. She hoped he wouldn't mind.

She gave him one last look in the dark before turning to go up the stairs.

The stairs were too far away.