Jim has stopped panicking, not that he’s calm. He really thought he’d done a better job of concealing his feelings. Not that no one could guess—he doesn’t think he’s that clever or subtle—but he thought maybe he’d have some plausible deniability. That’s totally shattered. Every single picture and video he’s looked at has reconfirmed his fears: he’s utterly transparent.

The only reason he’s not panicking is that, hey, if he’s this transparent, she’s got to have realized before this, right? She can’t have missed what everyone else can see so clearly. And that means this won’t be the earth-shaking moment he was afraid of. She won’t be shocked; she already knows.

Of course, if she already knows, she already knows. So he’s switched from panic to depression. If she already knows, and she’s still treating him this way, then he’s been living a lie. That vague idea he’d always had that if he ever really got up the guts to tell her how he felt she might reciprocate—gone. She already knows, and she doesn’t feel the way he does. If she did, she’d have said something. If she did, she wouldn’t still be engaged. If she did…but she doesn’t. And that pretty much breaks him, to be honest.

It’s not that he really had plans to tell her. And it’s not like he expected some fairytale pie in the sky ending where she drops everything to be with him in an instant. But he thought it would matter. He thought it was dangerous—that telling her would have been a make or break moment for them, whether they made or broke. Now he knows it wouldn’t change anything. She already knows.

Jim wonders how early on a Saturday is too early to start day-drinking.

It’s probably too early now.

But he’s not sure he cares.

He goes back upstairs and lies on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He thinks of all the times he’s imagined Pam in this bed—and the one time he had her here, though not exactly in the way he’d imagined. He wonders how you come back from something like this, and he thinks maybe you don’t. If it were a weekday, he’d probably put in for a transfer. Since it’s a Saturday, maybe he should start looking for another job entirely.

He left Mark’s computer down by the sofa, so he pulls out his own laptop. It may be embargoed from show stuff—now he kinda wishes Mark’s had been too—but it can reach job sites just fine. He’s doodling along between Indeed and Monster and Craigslist, not really sure what he’s looking for, and out of sheer habit he checks his work email.

1 New Message.

It’s from an email address he doesn’t recognize—hb123@yahoo.com—and from the subject line (“Call me when you get this”) he almost deletes it as spam. But he decides it might be one of his clients on a personal email address and so he doesn’t. But he doesn’t read it either. He’s not sure he can do work right now, and anyway, none of his orders are so urgent he really needs to deal with them before Monday. He marks it as read, even though he hasn’t, and flags it for follow-up. There are no real paper emergencies in the world, no matter what Dwight thinks.

He fiddles around on the computer some more and heads downstairs for lunch. If he’s going to start day-drinking, he’s not going to do it on an empty stomach.

He is, however, going to do it on a stomach full of ice cream, because that’s the only thing that really appeals to him right now. He opens the freezer and realizes that in his panic about the Janned/Pammed thing at Wegmans he totally spaced on the Moose Tracks he meant to buy. He curses and slips out the door, heading to Giant for reasons he is totally not going to admit to himself. He’ll pick up the ice cream and a sixpack and have himself a nice pity party once he gets back. He considers asking Mark if he wants anything but he’s not really in a talking mood right now, so he just gets in the car and drives.

The radio is really out to get him on the way there: even the NPR station is playing love songs, and the sports talk station is presented by 1-800-FLOWERS so he has to hear five times about their dozen roses for $20 special. He gets his beer and ice cream and heads home.

Two beers and 32 ounces of ice cream later, he’s finally feeling pretty good. For the moment. Mark has cleared out to go visit his girlfriend and Jim has a date with 4 more beers and another 32 ounces of ice cream. He thinks he’ll be seeing them very soon.