When Jim tells the story, he usually says it started the day he met her. Pam giggles and swats him (yes, even now, she can’t help it), and tells him he doesn’t get to count the extra time he pined for her He has to start later. And when he does, after what Pam has dubbed the ceremonial eye-roll, this is how he tells it.
For Jim, it started with the wind, the rain, and a broken box lid. This is the same day Pam looked up the jam. We’ve already established it was a rainy day, but Pam wasn’t out in it the way Jim was. He had three sales calls all in a row in the afternoon, so he left the office in the early afternoon and didn’t come back. He brought with him a box of sample paper, since he’s found most prospective clients won’t buy paper they haven’t seen. There’s something tactile about printer paper; people really want to know the feel, the texture, the weight. He doesn’t care. He only uses Dunder Mifflin in his home printer because he gets it pretty much free. But the clients care, and so he brings the box.
The sales calls do not go well. Really, this is just the continuation of a pretty bad day for Jim; he’s outside in the rain and the wet, the traffic is terrible, Pam was dragged into a meeting with Michael that morning and he barely got to see her, and when he did the jellybean dish was full of regular black. This last one is probably his fault for picking the others out over the week, but he doesn’t really want to admit that because if he does he’ll have to admit how often he goes up there with no other purpose but to chat her up, using the jellybeans as an excuse. It’s not like he’s in denial—he knows he might as well have “Unrequited Love” tattooed across his forehead, as well as “Utter Idiot” because he’s very aware she’s engaged thank you very much—but he’d like to avoid the complete embarrassment of counting his trips, even in his own mind.
So it’s been a pretty bad day. And the calls don’t help—no bites, only one “maybe” of a nibble, and he lugged a big box of paper around for no reason. And then on his way back to the car after the last call, just as he’s opening the door to put it away, the box lid breaks, and the paper comes flying out. Not falling, flying. The wind picks it up, and the rain smacks it down, and before he can react he’s caught in a vortex of paper (very absorbent paper, his subconscious notes) and it’s plastered all over him and ugh that was not what he needed. When he can finally claw it off his face, he sees his whole work outfit has basically been replaced by Jim Halpert, Human Paper Mache Model, and the interior of his car looks like a natural disaster hit it. Which he supposes it did. He gets into the car (why bother cleaning it if his whole body is just going to repaper it anyway) and drives home through the terrible traffic. At home he cleans out the car as best he can, changes into casual clothes (super casual, the kind where the paper mache layer he recently acquired would be a distinct improvement), and heats up a frozen dinner. It burns his mouth. Typical.
He watches Wheel and Jeopardy, crowing to himself when he gets Final Jeopardy right immediately (“What is Fifth Avenue?”). He imagines himself chatting with Alex right after (“What will I do with the winnings? Well, you can believe I won’t be shilling paper anytime soon.”). Then he returns to the reality of his actual life, where the frozen dinner, in addition to burning his mouth, isn’t sitting too well in other parts of his body, and along the way realizes he’s out of toilet paper. He takes a quick gander around the apartment, jots a few mental notes of other things he’s out of (bread, better frozen dinners, paper towels) and things he wants (he would kill for some Moose Tracks right now) and heads out the door. Wegmans is the nearest grocery store, so Wegmans it is. As he gets in the car, he remembers that he didn’t exactly dress to go out, but who’s going to see him? He drives off, mentally rechecking the grocery list on his way to the store.
At Wegmans he grabs as shopping basket and heads for the paper goods. On the way he figures he’ll grab the bread when he notices a familiar face (well, more accurately, the back of a familiar head). He sneaks up behind her without thinking and thinks of how nice it would be if they were there shopping together. His mouth moves on autopilot (he needs to break that habit; there are definitely things he should not be saying to her without thinking them through all the way) and makes the suggestion he would have made if they were together (not in that way. Well, also in that way, but that’s beside the point).
She spins around. He’s hit by the same emotion he’s always hit with. Holy shit. She’s gorgeous. She’s staring up at him from a little closer than he realized he had gotten, and he really just wants to lean down and kiss her. He pushes that back (not out of his mind, it’s never out of his mind, but back) and tries to have a normal conversation. But it’s hard. Harder even than at work, where there’s always the veneer of professionalism—a thin veneer, but present—to make sure he behaves himself. And the cameras. His eyes shift left and right and he realizes this is the first time he’s seen her in forever without cameras around. Now he’s really worried.
She’s making a joke about Bimbo bread and his mind is racing trying to parse it. It’s racing so fast he almost doesn’t notice how red she is—but he does, and that makes him even more desperate to figure out what’s going on. Did she call him a bimbo? Insulting, sure, but aren’t bimbos supposed to be…like…attractive? Does she think of him that way? Or is she still teasing him about Katy? He’s not sure he’s actually told her they broke up, and she was definitely amused to find out she’d been a cheerleader…Or is there no message here at all and he’s just overanalyzing as always? He can practically feel his autopilot kick in, and he’s teasing her about her pronunciation, and he can see something in her eyes drain away as she registers the joke. Something he wasn’t even fully aware was there before it left. He thinks its some kind of stress, but what kind? He’s not sure he wants the answer to that, actually.
The rest of the conversation moves into a less tense register, but he can’t help but hope she’s flirting when she calls him a Giant. After all, he’s seen Roy. But he pushes that back too, and as he turns to walk away she turns to walk beside him as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. He can see she’s already finished most of her shopping, but she seems content to walk the same aisles with him that she’s already been through, and he’s absurdly pleased at the opportunity to pretend they’re just doing the weekly shopping—together. She tells him a story about the office when he was out and he can just imagine all the things he could do with the knowledge that Dwight is making jam, but he keeps listening. When she gets to the error code he pulls out his Blackberry (he keeps it on him even when he’s not at work, not because he’s a workaholic but because there are definitely times when the ability to respond to an email immediately has allowed him to prank or otherwise inconvenience Dwight, and he doesn’t want to miss those chances. Also, sometimes she emails him after he’s out of the office, and he definitely doesn’t want to miss those). He follows her direction and sees what she saw
ERROR: ACCESS DENIED. ERROR CODE 4178
He’s immediately laughing, and then so is she, and he’s looking over at her laughing and she’s just so damn beautiful. She’s redder than red again, this time with glee, and he vows at this moment that he’s going to figure this out for her, whatever it is, just to see her laugh like this again. As her laughter subsides, he can’t help himself from trying to start it up again by joking about what kinds of jam this could refer to: maybe Kevin’s music career is taking off, or Corporate has devised a plan to simultaneously jam all the copiers in the world so everyone needs to buy replacement paper, or it’s meant to block searches for Jan and someone messed up. She’s not guffawing anymore, but she’s giggling like a five-year-old, and he can’t help it, she’s just too adorable. He bangs his head against the endcap of the aisle to dislodge those thoughts. She looks up at him with a strange expression on her face.
“What are you doing?”
Shoot. He’s violated self-preservation rule #1: don’t let Pam notice you’re going crazy about her. He flails around for an excuse, and ends up going with a partial truth.
“I’m just trying to get myself to think clearly” about something other than you.
“What, is your mind jammed?” She grins up at him and he can’t help but flick his eyes to her lips and back up again into those eyes and then up further so he’s not even looking at her because otherwise he’s going to betray himself right the hell now.
“Um…something like that, yeah.”
“Well, you better be sure it’s not Janned. Don’t want to see you going the Michael route here.”
Thank God she didn’t say Pammed. He’s not sure he could have autopiloted his way out of that, and he’s definitely not up to anything more than autopilot right now, because all his brain cells and nerves and everything are focused on her.
And she’s still talking.
“I’m just kidding” (she swats him) “I don’t really see you going for that kind of awkward interoffice romance thing anyway.”
He wishes she’d just said Pammed.
