She is no longer huddled in the circle of his arms, but for the first time in her life she knows this is only temporary. She turns away from him, towards his desk, and moves his monitor to the other side, the only side it needs to be on. She is clumsy and cannot juggle all the cables, and Jim laughs at her gesture. Wraps himself around her. Kisses her cheek.

“I don’t know what I was thinking.” His voice is in her ear, his breath is on her neck.

“Neither do I. But at least I now have extensive knowledge of the back of your head.” She can feel him smiling against her cheek. She closes her eyes so she doesn’t forget the sensation. The way he fits his chin perfectly into the crook of her shoulder. The way she can feel his chest move against her back as he breathes. The way the air feels when it is full of him. Of her. Of them.

She jumps when his phone vibrates in his pocket and he releases her to the cold of the office. He pulls it out, reads the caller ID, makes a face. “It’s Karen.”

Her heart stops and her breathing stops and she steadies herself on the desk. Karen. His someone. She had allowed herself to forget in the bliss of the last five minutes but now she can see Karen hovering between them, lingering and watching and calculating and knowing. She turns away, feels her cheeks redden in front of this imaginary apparition. Guilt creeps up her stomach, twists and contorts itself and plays with the few McDonald’s fries she was able to digest in the warehouse. She never intended to be the Other Woman, but this is where her confidence has led her. She tries to feel out the regret beneath the guilt, but it isn’t there.

“Hello.” Jim holds the phone to his ear and takes a step towards reception. “I thought you said you needed space.” His hand is rubbing the back of his neck. “No, I never said that.” He turns his back to her. She swallows her panic. “Look, I meant what I said and I need you to respect that. This really isn’t the best time to do this.” There is silence and even her imaginary apparition doesn’t fill in the blanks. “I’m sorry, but leading you on wouldn’t be fair either. Karen, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He turns back to her, hides his mobile in his coat. He is uncomfortable and silent, but he crosses the carpet and kisses her like he misses her. Slow and sweet and lingering.

“I broke up with Karen,” he says, and he is breathless and so close. “I guess I should have said that earlier.” He dares to smile. She returns it.

“But when? Why?” But she knows why and she feels like she is in high school but she wants to hear him say it again. He, who is so much braver than she could ever be, who has said it too many times before, who has the courage to say it again and again and again in the face of her blind indecision.

“You said it wasn’t easy to be around me anymore.” His smile is gone. She feels the ghost of her anger dot her chest. Pushes it down. “And I guess I decided I never wanted you to say that again, even if all I could ever get was friendship. So I told Karen I was breaking up with her and drove straight home. And then I realised I forgot my phone... so I came back.”

“It’s good to have you back.” She leans into him, buries her face in his shoulder. The words are as real as when she said them in the snow and the cold, but this time he is really back and really here and really in love with her. And she is his someone.

“Can I drive you home?”

“Jim, we live in the same building. I think I can drive myself.” But she is smiling into his coat.

“I just... I just miss you already.”

He is so lame and so romantic and her heart responds with a leap. “And you really want to face everyone when we turn up to work tomorrow in the same car?” She leans back so she can look at him.

“Are you really going to say no? After four years?” He is smiling and she knows he is joking but his words hit her where the guilt rests in her stomach.

“I guess not,” she replies, thinking that of all the things she hoped would happen in the aftermath of her confidence, this was not one of them.

He lays an arm across her shoulders and tugs her into him. She wraps both arms around his torso and even though it is difficult to walk straight she leans her head into his shoulder. He kisses her hair, smiles into it. Presses the elevator button and pulls her inside. Kisses her once as the doors close. Again as they pass level one. And once before the doors open.

“I can’t breathe,” she giggles as they stumble across the parking lot to his car.

“You’re not supposed to.” He opens her door, ushers her into the passenger seat. “Not if I can help it.”

The car rumbles beneath them and the road hisses around them and their silence settles comfortably into the spaces where they are not. He is holding her hand like he doesn’t have a choice and her fingers fit so easily between his and all she can smell is Jim and she wonders if the scent will have melted into her clothes by the time they get to their building. And then she remembers that Jim is her someone and soon his smell will be following her everywhere. She smiles.

“Are you hungry?” He asks in the elevator. His arm is around her waist. “I can order pizza, or Chinese, or burgers.”

Her stomach is floating and somewhere she knows that her whole body is shaking. She remembers the two fries she has consumed this evening and feels her stomach pre-emptively reject any more. “No, I’m not hungry. Do you have any movies?”

“Beesly, you read my mind.” The elevator doors slide open and he leads her into the hallway. She images him doing the same with Karen. Closes her eyes for a moment. “There is nothing I would love more than to watch movies with you.”

He is opening his door but her nose is tingling. She sees the table and the one chair and the couch where she watched a sport she can’t remember and told him she missed having fun with him. But this time his skin is on her skin and her lips are swollen and if she closes her eyes she can still feel his hands on her spine. And there is Karen, lingering and watching and calculating and knowing.

“Beesly?” He is speaking to her but his words don’t quite make it through the haze of guilt and doubt that has settled around her. “Pam? Are you alright?”

“Karen.” She can’t articulate herself, can’t push through the fog and say it as it is. “She was here. You were together.” And she knows she is being stupid because he had to watch her plan a wedding for three years but there is a part of her that is saying this is not real, this is not happening, she does not deserve this kind of intoxicating happiness. “I don’t want to think that she got to do things with you... before I can do them with you.”

“Hey.” His voice is soft and he is pulling her close as he leans against the back of the couch. He takes her hands, places them on his chest. Holds them there and holds her eyes. “There are only two people in this room – you and me. And if I love you, and you love me, then nothing else matters. Nothing else exists.”

“But I was with Roy, and you were with Karen...” She feels so dirty, so unworthy, so damaged. So ashamed that she has let anyone else but Jim touch her, love her, be with her. She can feel the tears on her cheeks and moves to wipe them away, but he is holding her too tightly.

“And despite all of that, here we are.” He passes a thumb over each cheek, collecting her tears on his skin. “I can’t change the past, and I don’t want to because, Pam, you are more than worth the wait.”

His words tug out a smile that she didn’t know she was hiding. “I’m sorry.” She is whimpering now, blubbering like a child.

“What on earth do you have to be sorry for?” And he is genuinely perplexed, genuinely surprised, genuinely confused. Genuinely in love.

“For taking too long. For being with Roy. For lying to you. For being a bad friend.” She sniffs, looks down. “For almost going through with my wedding when you told me you loved me.”

He touches her chin, nudges her gaze up to his. “I knew from the very beginning that I was going to have to wait for you. And it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But through Katy, and Karen, and all those years of panicking about when you’d set a date, I knew I was still waiting for you. And maybe I’d have to wait forever, and watch you move on without me, but there has never been anyone else for me, Pam. Never.” He smiles with half his mouth. “I love you now, and then, and forever. And I’m sorry, but that’s just going to have to be enough for you.”

She is so embarrassed at her blatant insecurity. She leans into his chest to hide her face, to hide from him. But even now his presence is of greater comfort than anything else. “I’m literally fifteen years old,” she complains.

“Not fifteen,” he counters, “just not used to be told how wonderful you are.” He folds her into his arms and holds her for a moment, and her skin still awakens through her cardigan.

“The only that could make me happy right now is you saying you have more yearbooks that I don’t know about.” Her voice is muffled and she wonders why it is so hard for her to just let the moment see itself out when it should be so easy to stand here in the silence of his living room forever.

“I wish I could say no,” he begins, and she raises her head in hopeful disbelief, “but unfortunately there are more historically dorky Jim Halperts available for your entertainment.”

“I love you so much right now.” She grabs his hand and pulls him down the hallway to where she knows his bedroom is. And when she reaches the doorway he stops her, turns her to face him. Her hair is as neat as when she styled it this morning, but still he pushes an imaginary strand behind her ear.

“I wanted to tell you I loved you last night.” He voice is low and soft and wonderful. “I wanted to kiss you and touch you and do anything but stand here away from you.” And he places his hands on her shoulders and touches a gentle kiss to her forehead.

“You’re such a dork,” she teases, stepping into his bedroom.

“I prefer the term ‘hopeless romantic’,” he counters, but she has found his box at the end of his bed marked ‘books’ amongst all the other random boxes containing random items, and she is kneeling beside it and opening it with reckless abandon.

She sees the yearbook, gasps in delight, places it on his bed in order to appreciate it fully. “Let’s see what little Jimmy Halpert looked like in 1992. That would make you... fourteen?” She doesn’t wait for his answer and instead flips hungrily to his class page. “And you haven’t changed in the slightest. Still as dorky as ever.”

“I wish you’d stop using that word.” He leans against the doorframe. She can feel his eyes on her face. “I am much cooler than my early-90s haircut would suggest.”

“I can’t condone such falsehoods,” she retorts. “And I definitely can’t condone the continued existence of this boxes. They’re a hazard.” She reaches into the open box, scoops up as many books as can fit into her arms and dumps them with a flourish on the empty bookcase against the far wall. “Seriously, Jim, were you ever going to unpack these?”

“I was getting around to it.” He is lying and she knows it and she smiles at him.

“Well, lucky for you, I’m here to save the day.”

“Yes, lucky for me indeed.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m leaving if you’re going to be soppy and romantic all night.”

“You love it.” He smirks.

“Yes. I do.”

She turns her attention to another box, opening it without asking permission and immediately diving into its contents. She thinks she should not be rummaging through his personal possessions but then she sees a shoebox and her name is written across it and it is in her hands and she is opening it on her lap. There is a paperclip and a spoon from the office and a faded receipt and a bobby pin. There is a folded Post-It note and a rubber band and a pen and a fragment of a bright green streamer. She looks at him but can’t quite make him out through the blur in her eyes.

“It’s, uh, it’s from the teapot.” He shrugs, suddenly embarrassed. “Stuff that didn’t make the cut.” He crosses the room, crouches beside her. Touches the receipt. “This is from our first and only lunch date together, when you told me you were engaged. Rubber band from when we kept flicking Dwight in the back of the head whenever he wasn’t looking. A pen I stole from your desk when you were having Valentine’s lunch with Roy. And if you unfold this Post-It note,” and he reaches over her and does just that, “you will find the first memo you ever gave me.”

He hands it to her, and she tries to hold it still in her shaking fingers. “Welcome to DM,” it reads, “where receptionists are heroes and Dwight Schrute is king.” And beneath is a very crude drawing of Dwight wearing a beet crown and holding a beet sceptre, sitting on a beet throne. It is terrible and not very witty and she flushes at the memory.

“And I kept it because that was the moment I realised I was in love with you.”

“Jim...”

“I know you’ve spent the last ten years trying to fill someone else’s expectations of you. But every time I look at you... you are more than I could ever imagine. Pam, you are everything.”

 And she doesn’t know what else to do so she holds his face and pulls him towards her and kisses him like he kissed her when she was wearing satin and tasted like vodka. And as he holds her and loves her and gets his hands tangled in her hair, she thinks that there is no other place in the world she would rather be than on the floor surrounded by cardboard boxes.

“Jim.” She pulls away, keeps his face close. “I love you. So much.”

He smiles, kisses her nose. “And that’s all I’ll ever need to know.”