For the last few days, ever since he’d first seen its resurfacing, Jim’s been almost too keenly aware of the comings and goings of that teapot. He knows that Pam usually uses it twice a day: once in the morning, once at lunchtime, and she always keeps it at her desk in the in-between. Jim can’t say why, and refuses to really dwell on it, but it’s very important that he knows where that teapot is throughout the day.

He pays careful attention as Pam walks quickly from the kitchen to her desk, the little teapot guarded safely between both hands. She’s got it drawn up to her chest, like she’s trying to keep it out of view from everyone. He pretends like he doesn’t watch her, which he has always been fairly good at, and waits for the squeak of her chair behind reception.

It’s his cue, and he braces himself before rising from his desk. Jim grabs a random sheet of paper from the pile tipping precariously at the edge of his desk, and he starts for the copier like it’s his goal. It’s like running a play on the court; all motions and memorization for a game that he doesn’t know the name to. He chews at his lower lip as he keeps up the charade, hesitating only for a second before he punches the keys at the copier and prays it kicks into life.

When it whirs loudly, he turns and starts the familiar journey toward the counter where she sits, and his fingers almost reflexively dig into the jelly bean jar at his right upon arrival. She looks up sharply with pretty eyes and Jim debates seriously about turning right back around.

Pam smiles just so at realization that it’s him and not some other unwelcome visitor (right?) and he clears his throat around a lemon and a cherry and lets his eyes gravitate toward the turquoise pot. Make this work. “Hey,” he greets, feeling like a buffoon and thinking that Karen’s probably staring daggers behind him. He sees Pam’s gaze flicker briefly beyond his shoulder, and he knows it, now. “I’m bored,” Jim clarifies off her momentary confusion and wariness. “What’s up?”

“Oh, uh … faxes,” Pam half-laughs, like she’s not sure it’s the appropriate reaction, and she waves the Dunder Mifflin logoed sheet in front of her. “And, y’know.” When he shakes his head, clueless to her meaning, she smiles deviously and flips up a legal pad. There on the top sheet, she has drawn an exaggerated caricature of Dwight with a ridiculous English mustache.

Involuntarily, Jim snorts loudly and slides a hand over his mouth, his whole body shaking with barely contained laughter. Pam looks delighted, and his heart skips a beat like picking up a game of hopscotch. He almost hiccups between the two distinct elated emotions and his jelly beans.

“Pretty accurate, huh?” She cheekily questions, and she laughs quietly as Jim squints playfully between the real thing hovering over in Accounting and her rendition.

“It’s uncanny. I think you’ve captured his true spirit.”

“Right? I’m doing everyone, I think.”

“That’s definitely what she said,” his finger points at her and she scoffs as he continues fluidly, “aaand do we get to keep them?”

He wonders if she’s drawn him yet. If he has a silly mustache or funny hat. He really needs to know, suddenly. Index finger tip down on the countertop, he tries to appear stern. “I expect mine, on my desk, promptly at 5, Beesly.”

By the way Pam blushes, he thinks maybe yes, she did draw him, and that makes his fingers itch to snatch up her book and flip through her doodles. But she sets the yellow stack back by her keyboard and rolls her shoulders again, and he thinks it’s fun to watch her try to act coy. “We’ll just have to wait and see. Really, I haven’t decided yet. I was thinking of leaving them for everyone to find in weird places. Like the fridge and--”

“Oh, then do that,” Jim tells her simply and without hesitation, nodding his head over her short burst of laughter.

“No, no! I dunno yet! Like I said, we’ll see,” she keeps on grinning like the sun lives behind her teeth, but the moment he looks up into her eyes, he sees that smile fade and he worries that he’s let this moment last too long, or that Karen’s glaring behind him. But then, he notices: her shoulders hunch in, her chin dips down, and her eyes can’t find a spot to linger on. She’s got something else to say, doesn’t she?

“Hey, uhm…” she begins, and god, how does he know this? Jim sees her hand shuffle some papers at the side, before her fingers withdraw and she looks back up at him uncertainly. “I don’t know if you’re … busy—I mean, or if you have plans—“ Her eyes dart up, over his shoulder, but quickly she turns back to her papers. Hastily, as though deciding last minute, she snatches up a bright blue sheaf and presents it to him, laying it flat on the counter between his elbows.

“What’s this?” He asks as his eyes rove over the bold font.

“I’m having an art show,” she blushes at his quick look of surprise, her hand waving his overthinking off. “I mean, not just for—it’s for this art class I’m taking—“

“Pam!” He exclaims before she’s done, simply overcome with pride for her. Real, true pride. It’s unfounded and illogical for him to feel this way, he knows, since she’s not his girlfriend and he’s not sure they’re even friends at all, but it’s like he can’t stop himself. It bubbles up like her sudden smile regardless and her joy is like a drug. He barely thinks back about a year ago, when she’d come to him with an idea that someone put in her head, with a seemingly unimportant pamphlet, but to her it meant a future and to him it meant her and that’s just how this feels now.

Jim smiles wide like a mile, flourishing the flyer at her. “This is amazing. Seriously.”

“No, really, it’s nothing,” she blushes and ducks her head, all humble and secretly pleased. She’s the definition of adorable, and he doesn’t really realize he’s blatantly admiring her where everyone can see. “I’m just going to show a few of my new watercolors. It’s not big at all, there probably won’t even be a lot of people there.”

“Definitely big,” he assures her, and she sparkles right in front of him. “And you should invite everyone, it’ll be cool.”

“I plan to, yeah, hopefully,” she nods along with him, looking at a flyer of her own now as her brow furrows. Her eyes jump back up to his face and his eyebrows hitch in surprise at the suddenness of her attention. “Really, though, if you can’t make it, you don’t have to go.“ Jim recognizes her uneasy glance back to the far corner of the office and his high drops a little as her face follows suit.

“Oh, no,” he turns his head, looks over his shoulder, and notices Karen focusing on her computer just a second too late. She’s not happy, and suddenly, he’s not either. “I’ll, uh, yeah, I’ll have to see what Karen wants to do,” he coughs and makes a face around the sentence, the sound of it sour to his own ears, “But definitely, we’ll try to make it.”

While Pam seems to falter at first, his assurance and promise look to uplift her, and it soothes the uneasy rumble in his gut that tells him he might not be being completely honest with her. And obviously he’s expressed too much, and the energy hangs electric and toxic between them. He fumbles, doesn’t know what else to do but grin unsteadily back at her and pat the counter before he retreats toward his desk.

“Uhm, Jim?”

Her voice is quiet but he hears it loud in both ears and whips around. “Yeah?”

Pam points toward the copier that has long since stalled. “Don’t forget your copies.”

He laughs self-deprecatingly, completely misses her shy smile down at her monitor, and he starts over to the machine. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices Angela grab a bright pink post-it note from the top of the divider between her and Kevin. For some reason, the smirk stretching her dour mouth strikes Jim as unnerving as she makes a merry tic mark on the slip.