Jim Halpert upfaked, took a half step on the dribble, and took the shot. Swish. He turned and headed back upcourt, then swiveled as if he had eyes in the back of his head. Grab. A steal of the entry pass. Dribble-drive. Lay-up. A good sequence, if he did say so himself. It wasn’t a real rec-league game (the Saturday before Christmas was a well-known lull in the schedule) but it was a pickup game with most of the same guys he played with every week, and it felt good to be moving, and even better to be dominating. Sure, it was probably because everyone else was just happy to be there, while he had some serious energy to work off, but he would take what he could get.

He squared up the guy bringing the ball up—Chris from Starbucks, dribbling this time, not giving Jim the chance to steal the long upcourt pass like on the last play—and tried to keep his focus. It was like this sometimes when he tried not to think about Pam. He’d have a good sequence or two, sometimes even a great twenty minutes at the start of the game, and then he’d start meta-thinking about why he was so focused and it would all fall apart. This time he wasn’t going to let it. She’d gotten mad at him for nothing—OK, so he’d rolled his eyes about Roy, but if she was going to blow up at him for that she shouldn’t have told him about the vacation, or about how excited she was for it, or about how lame-ass Roy was up there with his brother instead of waiting for her—and dammit he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about this at all. He recovered quickly as Chris tried to cross him over (a good idea, given that he’d zoned out for a moment, but not one Chris was quick enough to execute on him even on his worst day) and reached out to prevent the shot that he knew was coming. Chris passed back out instead and Jim concentrated on following him through a pick and back around to the three-point line.  Clang. Someone else tried a long two, one of Jim’s teammates came up with it, and it was back on offense.

He wasn’t going to think about Pam. He wasn’t. And then, as if he’d conjured her up, there she was, in the stands. What was she doing there?

Pammmm. Even the sound the ball made as it hit him in the chest was like her name. He recovered quickly, grabbed the ball before it rolled out of bounds, and passed back to Tony, who worked at Aetna and had a remarkably good hook shot—which he proceeded to demonstrate by scoring, and then waved his roommate Mark over to take his place in the lineup.

“What’s the matter man? You looked great up there right until you took your eye off the ball.” Mark slapped Jim five and jogged upcourt shaking his head in mockery of his friend, while Jim looked back up to make sure he hadn’t imagined Pam.

No, there she was. And now, because he’d tagged out of the game, she was coming down towards him.

Well, so much for not thinking about her.

Pam wasn’t sure why exactly she was there. She’d finished the painting and hung around the house a little, puttering around, torn between packing her bags to go to her parents and holding firm that Roy was the one who was with Kenny when he should have been with her so he could damn well move in with Kenny instead. She’d made French toast with the end of the loaf of challah she’d bought the week before, precisely because Roy always hated French toast (“why are you wasting the eggs on the bread, Pammy? You know I like scrambled eggs with my toast.”) and then called her mom, only to remember the reason she and Roy had planned a Christmas getaway in the first place: her parents were in Florida, revisiting their honeymoon, and her sister Penny was visiting college friends out in Colorado.

So she’d found herself with nothing to do and a whole day to do it in. She’d grabbed a blank sketchbook (she had way too many of them, since her parents kept buying them for her and she didn’t have the heart to tell them she wasn’t drawing nearly enough to fill them up) and started making a list in giant letters, titled “Things I Don’t Do Because Of Roy.”

It was distressingly long. So long she had to give up on the giant letters halfway through and it still took up more than a page in the massive sketchbook. Some of the things were minor: French toast, floral shampoo, flavored coffee. Some were mid-range: hang out with Jim outside work (she’d written Jim, then crossed it out, then rewritten it and added “talk about Jim instead of generic friends” at the end of the list), go ice-skating, spend Sundays outside instead of on the couch watching the NFL. Some were big (she still wasn’t sure if the Jim one belonged on this list, to be honest): art school, travel. The biggest one she’d written in the largest letters along the side of the rest of the list, all-caps with a bubbly flourish: PUT MYSELF FIRST.

She resolved to check off as many of these as she could today, and to at least make a start on the big ones that couldn’t be checked off that simply. She started with checkmarks next to French toast and ice-skating, then lugged the sketchbook out to the truck (oh dear, that was going to have to stay with Roy. She pulled out the book and wrote “a car I actually like” on the list, to make herself feel better about it) and drove around town working on what she could. It had snowed overnight, but she’d heard the plows going by (about when she’d finished the ringless hand in the painting) and it was easy enough to get going. A simple trip to the grocery store solved floral shampoo, flavored coffee, two-ply toilet paper (what was with Roy, she thought, looking at how basic some of the things were on the list. And what had been with her, to let this happen?) and other basics: non-sugary cereal, enough yogurt to actually last her instead of a small enough amount that it didn’t “take over the fridge” from Roy’s beer, a wine she liked instead of one he’d accept. Then she thought about the bigger items. She couldn’t spend Sundays outside until Sunday, and she wasn’t going to travel without checking her bank balance (and figuring out what she could do about disentangling her finances from Roy’s) but she could do something about the art school. They had art classes at the Y, didn’t they? She remembered Jim telling her something about that. Because Jim went to the Y, of course. But she wasn’t going there to see Jim; no, no, she was just going because she had this big list. Sure, once she’d gotten there and checked out the fliers (yes, there was an art class, Sundays at 3 starting mid-January—two birds with one stone there, since it would get her out of the house on Sundays too) she realized that “hang out with Jim” was on the list too, but it wasn’t like that was why she was there in the first place or anything. But now that she was…she might as well swing by and see whether Katy’s story about rec-league basketball had any truth to it.

And now that she was sitting in the bleachers, watching him and his friends play, with a sketchbook in her hands and everything, it really would be a shame not to capture Jim’s form in motion, just as she saw it. And see it she did. She’d really been itching to do this ever since the office basketball game—she flipped back to the list and added “draw Jim playing basketball” to the page before triumphantly checking it off—and this was a perfect time to do it, when he wasn’t even aware of her presence. And look, he was posing, like he knew what she was doing…wait, had he seen her? Before she could figure out the answer to that she saw the ball smack him right in the chest. Her hands were over her mouth and her heart in her stomach for a moment before she saw him recover, grab the ball, and then tag out of the game. No question but he’d seen her, because now he was coming over. She quickly flipped the sketchbook closed—it was one thing to resolve to draw Jim, another to show him—and stood up to go talk to him.

Was it just her, or had he grown taller since yesterday in the office? Oh god, yesterday…she remembered in a flash that the last time they’d spoken she’d been so angry at him, for no good reason (no, her mind reminded her, worse than that: for feeling the same way on your behalf that you feel right now about Roy) that he’d left the office in a huff. Before she had time to process that thought he was looming right above her, a smile on his face (god, what a face), and she had apparently lost all filter between her brain and her mouth because she was stammering an apology to him, without any context or explanation.

He shrugged and grinned. “No need to be sorry, it was my own stupidity.” He rubbed his chest and her eyes followed his hand as it pressed down on the sweaty t-shirt he was wearing. “Teach me to look up in the stands when the game’s going on.”

She hurried to correct his misperception. “Oh, no, not about that. About…yesterday. I shouldn’t have…”

But he was already shaking his head. “You don’t need to…”

“But I do.” She looked him right in the eyes—honestly, it was the only way to stop herself from staring at where his t-shirt clung to him, but it was almost equally mesmerizing. How had she not noticed this feeling before?—and squared her shoulders. “I got mad at you yesterday because you were thinking what I was thinking. And that wasn’t fair. I shouldn’t have gotten mad. I should have thanked you for understanding what I was going through.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “And what was that?”

She sighed. “Roy was being an ass, and I was letting him, and when you rolled your eyes…it was just easier to get mad at you than at myself.”

He shrugged and plopped down next to her. “Well, you know me, Beesly, always glad to be of service.”

She swiveled around on the bench to face him. “I know. And I wanted to say, in addition to I’m sorry—thanks. For having my back.”

“Anytime.”

“I know.”

They sat in silence for a moment, watching the game, but really just enjoying each others’ silent company. At length, Jim seemed to come to some decision, because he stood up and offered her a hand. “Come on Beesly. I think they can do without me, and you look like a woman on a mission,” he gestured at the grocery bags she had decided she didn’t want to leave in the unprotected back of the truck and had instead brought in with her, “so why don’t we head out?”

“That sounds great.” She took his hand—when was the last time Roy had offered her a hand up? Not that she needed it, but it was a nice gesture—and they walked out of the gym together.  Jim stopped to grab his bag and coat, one of the players looked over and Jim made some kind of complicated gesture with his hands, and then they were out of the gym and heading to her…well, Roy’s…truck.

Jim helped her toss the groceries in the back and then grinned. “Mark drove me here, so I’m afraid I’m actually going to have to beg you for a ride, Beesly.”

“Then beg.” She was astonished at her own boldness, but stood her ground, using the high step of the truck’s cab for leverage to stare down at Jim with a parody of hauteur. He looked surprised for a moment, then knelt in the pristine snow in the next parking space over and clasped his hands together.

“Oh please, Beesly, don’t leave me out here all alone! I beg of you, take me with you! Take pity on a poor paper salesman! I abase myself at your feet!” And he lowered himself into the snow, face-first.

She giggled. “Come on Jim, get in the truck.”

He flipped over on his back and smiled up at her. “Are you sure? I mean, I can manage out here if you’d rather.” He made a snow angel as she smiled down at him. “But if you insist…” She nodded. “I do.”

“Then I am, as always, at your service.” He leapt up and walked around the side of the truck as she let herself into the driver’s side.

“Where to, Beesly?”

She considered. “How about I drop these at home,” she gestured to the back “and then we go grab lunch?”

“Sounds great.”

And, she thought, it really did. She was too embarrassed to do it in front of Jim, but in her mind she pictured the list and put a big check box next to “hang out with Jim outside of work.” This was going to be fun.