“Okay.” Her hands are cold against his skin and the sensation is like a secret, like an illegal substance, a moment in time that only they have shared and only they will remember. He hesitates, runs his eyes over her slight frame shrouded in satin and shivering in this dimly lit office space. He thinks for a moment that maybe she doesn’t want him to go, but she nodded and didn’t let him kiss her a second time and this feeling of breathlessness and despair overwhelming him tells him that at last his hopes have been proven fruitless.

He runs his thumb over her knuckles, memorises in that instant the feeling of the ridges of her body against his own, then turns and leaves.

It is the hardest thing he has ever had to do, and he takes the stairs so that the elevator will never remind him of the way she nodded and didn’t hesitate and refused him again. He feels stupid, so stupid, for climbing those stairs in the first place and thinking that anything could have changed since she said those two words with what he now knows was imagined uncertainty. But he is still in love with her and with each shaking breath he is reminded that to love and to feel is to be human, but right now humanity feels overrated. What he wants, what he needs, is to be numb, to be completely oblivious to the pounding in his chest and the way his fingers are buzzing with the thrill of having touched her. Not for the first time since he has known her, but for the first time without the facade of friendship masking his intentions. He wonders how she could have been surprised by his parking lot declaration, then remembers that for all the things he loves about her, Pam is not brave. And for a moment he allows the spite to rise and fill him with anger and indignation. But in an instant it is gone, because she is Pam and he is in love with her.

He knows that now he should just go home, but he also knows that all that waits for him is a dark and cold house and a roommate who will want human interaction and a bed that is empty and enormous and the place where he has dreamt about her too many times before. He knows that she will follow him wherever he goes, maybe forever. So instead he moves towards the warehouse, to the sounds and the smells and the too many people who are hopefully too intoxicated to notice him.

Maybe getting too intoxicated himself and stumbling into a taxi to take him home after everyone else has left is the one thing he really should do tonight. Maybe it will heal his soul and brick up his heart and protect him from the way he feels whenever she looks at him. Maybe it will help him to forget the sight of her euphoria in the parking lot, taunting him and flirting with him and giving him a reason to hope. He entertains his crazed thoughts for all of two seconds before he remembers the way her vodka tasted on his mouth and he feels his own drink stir in his stomach and knows that tonight, alcohol is definitely not the answer.

He is at the warehouse door and he has lingered long enough that Toby has found him and is moving in his direction. This is a Toby he has never seen before, shrouded in the unmistakeable glow of success and prompted to give sloppy smiles to whoever catches his eye by what Jim assumes was in the empty glass Toby now clutches in his right hand.

“Hey, Jim.” Toby slings an arm across his broad shoulders and he can’t help but notice the way the difference in their heights is just large enough that the gesture feels uncomfortable. “Having a good night?”

He hesitates for a moment, crafting some kind of elaborate lie in the seconds he has before his delay becomes rude. But the lie is too complex and he is so tired and Toby smells like alcohol and other people’s cigarette smoke so he tells the truth. “I was. But I think I’ve had enough for one night.”

“I’m having a great night.” Toby gestures with his empty glass, covers the room with his hand. “I’m on a winning streak. Chasing that feeling.” He is leaning too heavily into Jim and his speech is just a little too slow, even for Toby. “I heard Pam won all your money. Gonna come back in and win it back?”

“Thanks for the offer, but I think I’m just going to head home.” He gently leans away from Toby, forcing him to remove his arm from across Jim’s shoulders. “Have a good night, Toby.”

“Thanks. I think I will.”

He watches as Toby disappears behind Meredith at the blackjack table, watches as Kevin deals another hand in those incredibly obnoxious glasses, watches as Michael says something predictably inappropriate to Carol and earns an eye roll and crossed arms. His hands are in his pockets and he is standing in the doorway so the chill of the night is on his back and he thinks that sometimes Scranton isn’t so bad, when he is forced to remember that his colleagues are humans too and some of them aren’t even that abhorrent. For a moment the pounding in his chest slows and he really takes in the sights and smells and feelings of this scene in front of him. For a moment he thinks that maybe he can do this, maybe he can stay here and miss her and be surrounded by these people until the day he retires. And then he realises that on that day he will be alone and still in love with her and she will have children and grandchildren and a house and a family. Without him.

He turns around and moves back towards the parking lot. He hears voices, and for a moment he is terrified of being pulled into a never-ending conversation about the intensely personal details of one of his co-worker’s lives outside the office. But he rounds the corner and he can see two figures, female, half concealed behind a car. And he hates himself for the way his body reacts but the shot of adrenaline that brings the flush to his face tells him that one of these figures is her, Pam, and he finds himself taking too long to find the keys to his own car because he can’t move on and he is afraid to lose her.

“Let me talk to Josh, and I’ll get back to you on Monday.” The other woman reaches out a hand, and in the light of the streetlamp he knows it is Jan. He is confused, he is panicked, he is completely out of the loop and thinks that something very significant is unfolding before him. “I’m impressed, Pam. And not a little surprised.”

“Me too.” Pam’s voice is strong, completely certain, like the way she nodded at him in the dark.

“I know Scranton will miss you. You’ve been here for a while, haven’t you?” Jan leans into her car and looks up. He can see a cigarette in her hand, feels a twinge of concern for the mental state of his boss. Realises what she has just said. Tries to understand why Scranton would need to miss Pam if she is standing right there.

“Four years.” He sees them like they are the only years he has ever lived. He sees her and the way she looked at him on his first day, the way she smelled when she walked him to his desk even though she could have just as easily gestured in its general direction from reception. He sees her in the artificial lights and hears her answer the phone and feels her arm against his in the chairs in the conference room. He sees the top of her head from where it rests against his shoulder and feels the slight pressure of her hand against his thigh as she pushes herself to her feet against him. For four years this is all he has had. And he tries to be content with that but he is not.

“Aren’t you engaged?” The word spikes a shot of adrenaline through him, brings a flush to his face. Jan is looking at Pam again. “Will he come with you? I’m not sure if I have room for another warehouse guy in Stamford.”

He is holding his breath even though he suspects the answer. It hurts him more than he can say, more than he can ever admit even to himself, to imagine them together, married, permanently intertwined, living a life that doesn’t include him. After four years, is this the way he will remember her? Will she remember him at all?

“No, he won’t come with me.”

“Long distance? Good luck.”

“Thanks, Jan.”

He thinks that maybe he is brave enough to call out to her from across the parking lot, steel himself against the force of her gaze, demand answers as if he deserves them. But he lets her move away from him, call a cab, climb inside and vanish into the dark. And now he is truly alone because she is no longer near him, and his only options are a warehouse full of drunk office workers or his boss, so he gets into his car and pulls out of the lot before Jan can notice him.

He tries to focus on the way the steering wheel feels underneath his hands, the exact amount of pressure required to accelerate up this hill, the way the houses look as they blur past him in a smear of televisions seen through living room windows and streetlamps illuminating front lawns. The sounds of whatever radio station he happens to be tuned into are filling the car but they cannot reach him. He can feel the seatbelt against his chest, the car seat beneath him, the gentle caress of the air conditioning aimed at his face. But all he can hear are the words “long distance” and his pulse.

He can see the kitchen light through the living room window when he turns off the ignition and sits in the driveway in silence. He sits until the air from outside has infiltrated the heat he tried to cultivate and is raising the hairs on his arms. He climbs out, opens the front door, enters this familiar and comfortable and normal place that he has occupied for so long, hears the noises of cutlery against the kitchen bench and the obnoxious beeping of the microwave, too loud in the peace of suburbia at night.

“Jim?” Mark’s voice reaches him as he drops his keys into the bowl by the front door and moves into the kitchen. “I didn’t think you’d be back for hours.” He is not really paying attention. He has the fridge door open and is leaning against it with one hand, head protruding at an uncomfortable angle from his neck as he tries to conjure some kind of edible substance using only his willpower. Jim doesn’t need to look to know that the fridge has been close to empty for days.

“Yeah, it got boring pretty quickly.” He reaches over Mark, pulls out a beer and leans against the counter to drink it. “Looks like you’ve had a pretty exciting night, too.” He takes in the empty pizza box on the counter and the three empty bottles of beer. Locates a dirty spoon in the sink and imagines the carton of ice-cream that matches.

“Well, I don’t have a fancy office job that requires me to attend fancy casino nights in fancy warehouses.” Mark turns to him, winks, as if he didn’t get the joke. But he cannot joke right now, just sips his beer too quickly and concentrates on the way the angles of the counter feel against the small of his back. “Hey, man, are you alright? You look... pale.” Mark closes the fridge and the absence of that extra light is confusing for a moment. Jim turns his attention to the bottle in his hand, tries to ignore the feeling of Mark’s eyes on him. But there is nowhere else to go and nothing else to do and Mark is his roommate and a good guy.

“Tonight didn’t really go how I expected it to,” he begins. Takes another swig of beer to stall the inevitable. “I just heard some news I wasn’t prepared for.”

The microwave beeps and he jumps. Mark turns, removes a drooping slice of pizza and tears off a bite immediately. Notices Jim noticing him. “Did you want some?” His offer is half-hearted and has the feel of something compulsory, but Jim smiles anyway.

“No thanks, I’m fine.”

Mark inhales what looks to be a third of the pizza in his next bite. “So, what was the news?” His words are barely intelligible around the mess of bread and pepperoni and cheese in his mouth.

“Just that someone I work with might be leaving.” Might be. Maybe she will stay. Maybe.

Mark doesn’t answer, and it looks like he is trying to determine why it is so devastating that someone who sits a couple of feet away in the same office building may be getting a different job. Jim tries to look at it that way, too, tries to see it in a way that doesn’t feel like open heart surgery with no anaesthetic. But as he finishes his beer and sets it down on the counter with a clink, all he can see is her and all he do is wonder if that was the last time.

“But, you’ll keep in touch, right? You can grab their number, or email...” Mark is so clearly out of his depth and floundering in his lack of knowledge about the situation that Jim just smiles and shakes his head.

“It’s not quite like that.” And briefly he considers sharing everything, telling his roommate about the love of his life, but Mark is already taking his pizza back to the living room as if he knows what Jim is thinking and is actively avoiding it. But he knows that’s his imagination. Just like he knows that most of what he has thought to be true about other people has turned out to be his imagination. Misunderstood. Misinterpreted.

“I’ve got the DVD of that zombie apocalypse movie,” Mark offers through the wall.

“I think I’m just going to head to bed.”

“Okay.”

His room is dark like it always is and there are still clothes on the floor and his bed is a tangle of dirty sheets. He falls onto his back in his clothes and shoes and stares at the ceiling, stares at the peeling paint and the lines where the ceiling meets the walls and the metallic circle of the light in the centre. He holds his hand in front of his face and tries to outline his fingers in the darkness. He arranges the pillows underneath his head in what he hopes is the perfect configuration for maximum comfort. He looks over to where he knows his bookshelf is and where the yearbook is and where she sat on this same bed and looked at it and smiled and called him dorky and looked so normal in this, the most personal of spaces. He holds that memory that a butterfly on his finger and turns it over, admires it from every angle, solidifies it so that it will never fade. And then the butterfly is gone and he is still alone in the dark lying on his bed fully clothed and the pounding has returned to his chest and he has never felt so lonely.