The next couple of years were really good for Pam. Or at least she thought so. Things with Roy got pretty serious pretty fast; they were dating seriously enough that his opinion mattered when she was deciding on colleges, and he was one of the major reasons she stayed local at Marywood. He really improved from their first date—although a little part of her always wondered if that just set the bar so low he couldn’t help it—and she just felt incredibly comfortable with him. Well, except when they were at the bar. At first this was because she wasn’t of age, and sneaking in with a fake ID felt wrong even if she was the designated driver; later it was because of how he got when he drank. But she was happy with him. Content with him. Roy was her man, and she was his woman, and that was how the world should work.

It helped a lot that she didn’t have to actually talk to him about much. After the talk about colleges he hadn’t been much help on the big stuff. They did talk, of course, but mostly about day to day things, sports, beer…Roy’s interests, basically. She didn’t mind, though. It wasn’t like she didn’t get to talk about her hopes, her dreams, her interests. She just poured it all out online.

WScranton8 wasn’t always on, and neither was she, but whenever she really needed to talk she would be, and she always seemed to find him available. They had gotten really good at talking about what really mattered without talking about it: she never said “Marywood,” he never said…whatever school he’d gone to; she never said “Roy,” he never explicitly mentioned a girlfriend; she never said “Scranton,” and neither did he. But they talked about life, and love, and art, and friendship—and silly things like their favorite pizza toppings and children’s TV shows and what color he should call the weird stain in his dorm room. She never really thought about how much she talked to him about that she didn’t talk to Roy about; after all, they were different parts of her life. She’d never met WScranton8. She didn’t have an image in her head of him smiling, his shirt off and his hands on her waist, as he leaned down to kiss her, or of his dimples when she accepted an art award at their high school, or of him sitting with her family on Christmas opening presents with childlike gusto. She just had words. Lovely, important words, but words on a screen. He was necessary to her, but also not quite real.

They had their fights, of course, like any couple. Not that they were a couple. But they still did have their fights. The first big one, after Roy, was when she decided not to major in art. She figured it wasn’t practical, he reminded her that college was about doing what you loved and finding out who you were and what you could do with your passion. That one ended when she threatened not to talk about school at all and he promised to stop lecturing her. Their second was when he almost majored in business; she threw all his words about passion and enthusiasm back in his face, he used hers about practicality, and he ended up an English major. But both of those fights paled in comparison to the day she dropped out.

WScranton8: so how’re classes?

MorganLaFey: fine

MorganLaFey: ok, actually not fine

WScranton8: what’s up?

MorganLaFey: well, class is fine

MorganLaFey: but school…kinda sucks

MorganLaFey: like, I don’t have time for myself or for my art or my relationship

MorganLaFey: and I just feel like it’s all pointless

WScranton8: ookkkk…

WScranton8: I thought you were in that art club

WScranton8: and…everything else I want to say is mom-stuff

WScranton8: but I’m pretty sure you know what it is

She did. He had scrupulously avoided talking about Roy even in their earlier fights, but she knew he knew she was still dating the guy who’d left her at the hockey game. And he never said it but she knew he didn’t trust Roy to have her back. Which he did, she quickly reminded herself. Roy wasn’t telling her she had to drop out. He had just suggested that there was this job at his workplace that might help her with her debt, and that if she was hating being a communications major she didn’t have to keep on doing it, and if they worked together he might get to see her a little more often and…

OK, so maybe Roy was trying to get her to drop out. But that wasn’t something she wanted to admit to WScranton8.

She wasn’t really sure how she felt about it herself. Marywood was lovely, and she’d really enjoyed freshman year. Sophomore year had been more of a slog, though, and junior year legitimately sucked. She hated her classes, and she hated even more having to choose between her art club and her boyfriend. Roy’s job meant he was only available certain hours, since the warehouse at Dunder Mifflin, a local paper company, didn’t exactly have flex-time, and those hours happened to line up exactly with when the art club had negotiated to have studio space in the art department studios. She could still paint and bring her art in to their weekly meeting, but she missed the group dynamic of all painting alongside each other—or else she missed her boyfriend. Besides Roy got mad anyway when she said she was busy. So she hadn’t been there in weeks.

Another thing she did not particularly want to type into this particular chat.

MorganLaFey: I do

MorganLaFey: but there’s a reason that’s mom-stuff, and I’m not going into it

MorganLaFey: it just sucks

WScranton8: I’m sorry

WScranton8: you’ll pull through though

WScranton8: you’re smart and you’re dedicated and you can totally do this

MorganLaFey: I know I can

MorganLaFey: I’m just not sure I want to

And there it was, in green and gold (she’d reconfigured her AOL chat to Marywood colors when she’d enrolled, so it wasn’t black and white anymore). She knew WScranton8 was right; knew she could do this if she chose to. But she wasn’t sure it was the right option to keep going. What was the point? She wasn’t going into art. She didn’t actually want any of the “potential careers” they stuck up on the communications department bulletin boards. And there was a real job—a boring job, but a real one—that she could get right now. It was time to start her life, her real life, and she wasn’t sure she needed or wanted a college degree to do that.

But it was a hard decision. It was eating her up inside. And she had no one else to talk about it with. Her parents had already told her that they thought she should keep going but if she didn’t they’d understand; after all, neither of them had finished college either. They’d both gotten jobs, just like she was thinking of doing. And Tammy and Izzy were…just not people you talked about serious things like this about. As for Roy…it was his idea, but every time she tried to talk it out with him he took it so personally that she hadn’t dropped everything instantly to work with him (c’mon Pammy, it’ll be like a date every day when we go to work!) that she found she couldn’t even have that conversation in a serious way. So she’d come here, to see what her one serious friend might think.

WScranton8: SERIOUSLY?

WScranton8: Morgan, what are you thinking?

WScranton8: you have so much potential

MorganLaFey: you don’t even know me

MorganLaFey: you have no idea what my potential is

MorganLaFey: and I don’t have to explain myself to you

Where had that come from? WScranton8 might not know her in the flesh, as it were, but he certainly knew her—sometimes knew her better than her own boyfriend, or her mother, or anyone else she’d ever known. No one else understood how she liked sunsets better than sunrises, because they represented something finished, completed, triumphant. No one else understood why certain shades of green hurt her eyes while others gave her a sense of peace and joy. She knew she was being unfair, but she didn’t care; she needed this. She needed someone to yell at at this point, and he was the only person she knew who wouldn’t yell back, who wouldn’t hurt her back if she lashed out at him.

The fact that her long-time boyfriend didn’t fit the bill was the sort of thought she didn’t let herself think.

WScranton8: you don’t

WScranton8: but you always used to want to

WScranton8: and no matter what you think, I do know you

WScranton8: and I do know your potential

WScranton8: and I don’t want to see you give up on it

WScranton8: I haven’t

She’d hurt him because he wouldn’t hurt her back, but his very unwillingness to hurt her was painful in this moment. She slammed her laptop closed and walked away before she could say anything more cutting—or maybe before she had to admit that even if he hadn’t, she had.

That was what made the fight worse than the others, she realized later. Not that he yelled, or that they fought longer or harder than before. That she couldn’t face him and talk it through. That she’d closed the laptop and walked away instead of staying and figuring out exactly why she felt the way she did.

They didn’t talk again until her first day at her new job.