It would not be accurate to say that Pam doesn’t notice the effect her words have on Jim. It would also not be accurate to say she does. It’s more like her brain shuts down, because she honestly can’t believe she’s said the words “interoffice romance thing” to Jim, of all people. She was going for light, airy, fun. She’s pretty sure she only hit awkward. She doesn’t really want to admit why it felt so awkward, she just knows it did, and now she’s desperately trying to backpedal. The two of them manage to find some new, much safer ground to talk about (he makes some kind of crack about having jam on his mind, demonstrating with a jar from the shelf) but the moment is definitely broken (not that she’d admit there was a moment) and she finds herself at her car without really knowing how. She’s pretty sure she paid for her groceries—they’re definitely in sacks, so she probably did?—but she has no recollection of it. She turns to him, trudging out to his own car a few spots away, and waves.

“See you Monday.”

“Bye, Pam.” She can’t be sure, but he seems about as out of it as she feels.

“Bye, Jim.” She watches as he sketches a final short hand gesture, almost too small to be a wave (but not too small to raise up his shirt a little) and gets into the car.

She gets into hers, and drives home.

Home is boring. The PB&J is good (the Bimbo is surprisingly tasty bread) and she feels better once she’s restocked the fridge with at least a few of the things she wanted. Her phone buzzes and she has a text from Roy. Once she decodes the typoes (which are their own kind of evidence of how he’s doing), she figures out that he’s not coming home tonight. Sometimes she thinks Darryl’s couch gets more action than she does, not that she particularly minds tonight. She sits up for a while eating sandwich after sandwich—most of the jam is gone by the time she lets herself go to bed and sink into a food-coma-assisted sleep alone. She does not remember her dreams.

She wakes up early the next morning, which she did not expect. Usually when Roy is away she sleeps in, but she got a surprisingly early night last night because of the jam. Jam! She sits up with a start. Glancing at her phone, she realizes she’s up so early that Roy probably won’t be back for several hours—assuming he and Darryl don’t just start up a game of Madden as soon as they’re both awake. But the local library is open early on Saturdays (just don’t try to go after noon, when they’re closed) and she has an idea brewing in her mind.

She pulls up to the library and logs into one of the public computers. She doesn’t usually do this, because they have perfectly good internet at home, but she remembers letting those IT guys install that monitoring software on her home computer just like the office ones. She’ll just have to chance it that they didn’t think of the library, just as she wouldn’t have until now. She sneaks a glance around her to check for cameras. Just her, a couple of kids clearly working on a homework assignment, and…is that Creed? She can’t quite be sure, but she’s not really concerned anyway. She takes a deep breath and opens the browser, typing in “jam” into the search bar. A large part of her expects to see another 4178, but the search actually loads. She looks with increasing disappointment at the first page of results.

Jam recipe.

Jam for sale.

Jam recipe.

Review of first jam recipe.

Nothing of any interest that she can tell. Why is this a blocked search? She clicks around almost randomly, and clicks over to Google Image Search. She accidentally double-clicks, so the first image in the results immediately pops up to fullscreen size.

Suddenly, she can’t breathe.

That’s because, suddenly, she’s looking at a very familiar face, at a very familiar desk, as well as at a somewhat unfamiliar but still recognizable back of a head.

“Is that really what my hair looks like from the back?”

She knows it’s an inane thing to think, but it’s the first thing that comes into her mind. Then she glances around to make sure no one is watching her screen, and starts clicking through the images. It occurs to her that she could make this faster by making them go back to thumbnails, but she doesn’t want to. She wants to see, and seeing and believing are both easier when the pictures are full size. She hurries past the ones of actual jam (oh look, strawberries!) but an alarming percentage of them are her. Or him. Or usually her AND him. They’re clearly still shots from the show—but why are they jam? Her head clears enough to realize she can actually click through to the origin page for a given image. She does this to the next image she recognizes (Jim, hanging over the corner of her reception desk, his hand in her candy dish, as she looks up at him) and she tries very hard not to let her brain process what she sees on that page.

Jam.

Jim and Pam.

JAM.

She immediately closes the window, like that will help anything, and sits in shocked silence.

JAM?