Wednesday morning passed quickly for Pam, Jim had apparently done enough work yesterday that he just had to return a few calls, he then loitered near her desk or exchanged instant messages with her. For her part Pam just had a few faxes to go out and the occasional phone call to answer. Pam noticed that some of the awkwardness that had pervaded their conversations yesterday seemed to have faded, and she was grateful for that. Pam was anxious about meeting Jim’s sister tonight, but that was more of a general Pam didn’t particularly like meeting new people anxiety, as she reasoned that the sibling of her best friend shouldn’t really be that threatening. Pam was cautiously excited about the opportunity befriending Jim’s sister represented, if Larissa was anything like Jim, she would surely provide Pam with incriminating or embarrassing childhood photos to enable Pam to pull one over on him. Before Pam could conceive of further ways to embarrass Jim with his sister’s help, the phone rang.

“Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam.”

“Hey, can you put me through to Jim please,” a male voice asked.

“Sure, may I ask who’s calling?”

“Oh, yeah, this is Mark, his roommate.”

“One moment, I’ll transfer you,” Pam said as she initiated an attended transfer, causing Jim’s extension to ring on his desk.

“Jim, Mark the roommate for you,” Pam informed him as his eyes met hers over the counter.

“Great, thanks, send him through.”

Pam hit the transfer button again, and Mark was connected to Jim’s extension, Pam replaced the receiver on her phone and tried not to eavesdrop, but she really had nothing better to be doing in that moment.

“Well that’s a bummer,” Jim said into the earpiece as Pam refocused on his side of the conversation.

“Ok, we’ll try not to have too much fun without you.”

“Sure, I can do that.”

“Alright, seeya buddy,” Jim replaced the received on his phone, and spun in his chair before getting up and making his way over to the reception desk.

“That was Mark calling to say he picked up a late shift tonight,” Jim filled her in, “So looks like it’s just you, Larissa, and I for tonight. Hope that’s ok.”

“Only if you’re ok losing the vote for the movie,” Pam quipped, attempting to mask her nerves.

“You are so on Beesly, I’ll have you know my sister has my back,” he shot back with a grin.

“We’ll see,” Pam said with a playful glare and a challenging eyebrow.

“I see how it is, first you steal Nikita, and now you want to turn my own sister against me, who’s next,” Jim asked dramatically and then deadpanned, “Count Chocula?”

Jim always enjoyed making Pam laugh because of the way that her eyes lit up and was not disappointed when his comment elicited a giggle from her, breaking the straight line of his mouth into a wide smile. He was glad to see that spark back in her eyes, after the last few weeks of watching closely he had seen her eyes brightening steadily, after the first few days of despair after her breaking up with Roy they had been particularly dull. With his mission of lifting Pam’s spirits accomplished, Jim grabbed a jellybean and returned to his desk with a tap on her counter.

Jim passed the time until noon with a prank on Dwight. While Dwight was away from his desk Jim stole his stapler and twisted the crimp plate around to the flat side, and enlisted Pam’s help to superglue it in place. While not his most inspired idea, Dwight’s reaction and subsequent failed investigation was well worth it. It also helped that Dwight, instead of fixing the stapler, was now bending every staple he set manually with a pair of pliers, much to Jim and Pam’s amusement.

Jim was nervous for the evening, and as much as he kept telling himself that it wasn’t a date, there was a small part of him that suggested that if he just un-invited Larissa… – but that sounded terribly contrived and so he stopped himself there. Pam was fresh out of a long-term relationship and really needed best friend Jim right now, not awkwardly draping your arm across the back of the couch Jim. Also, Jim told himself, it wouldn’t hurt for Pam to have a friend in Larissa if they hit it off. On top of having a female friend, which Pam seemed to have lost most of over the years, it could also indicate a certain level of compatibility if one read into it – probably too far – Jim amended, chastising himself.

Again, Jim found himself taking stock of his mental ‘Is she or isn’t she’ list; She had broken up with Roy, cried on him, kissed him – on the cheek, hugged him – on several occasions, maintained their dynamic – which had inherent undertones of flirtation if he was honest with himself, and admitted under the influence – of Benadryl – that he gave ‘The best hugs’. To balance that out, in Jim’s mind, was that their dynamic hadn’t changed, except seeing each other outside of work, which admittedly had never happened when she was with Roy. The fact remained though, that Pam had not made any overt signs of more-than platonic interest, although, Jim argued with himself that neither had he, and she wasn’t really a risk taker and the fact that she had broken up with Roy was a huge deal in itself. Jim tried to put these thoughts from his mind as it came to quitting time. He was not doing himself any good by psyching himself up on ‘maybes’ and ‘what ifs’ if he was trying to be best friend Jim.

Pam checked in with Jim before she left for home to confirm what time to go over, and was told that any time was fine, as he didn’t have any other plans and they would order pizza once everyone was there. Pam had some soup for lunch and sketched for a bit in front of her tiny TV showing some reality program or another, and then took Nikita out for a jog to the park. After playing with Nikita until the dog was tuckered out, she walked her back home to feed and water her. Pam removed her contacts and took a quick shower, before toweling off and getting dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. She decided not to put her contacts back in, and after towel drying her hair as best she could, she put it up in a ponytail and glanced at the clock to see it was quarter after five. Pam figured she could probably safely head over to Jim’s now and so she grabbed her copy of The Princess Bride, as well as the two DVDs under it in the stack, and made her way out the door after slipping her Keds on.

Jim heard a knock on his door at a little past five-twenty, and was greeted with a warm smile on a face adorned with glasses belonging to Pam. He smiled widely back and ushered her in, directing her to the living room where she placed her DVDs on the coffee table.

“Larissa should be here in a few,” Jim felt the need to assure her, it hadn’t explicitly been his plan to spend time alone with her in his home.

“Cool,” Pam acknowledged, “What are your contenders for the movie battle royale,” she cocked a brow at him from the place she had claimed on the loveseat.

Before Jim could answer there was another knock at the door, with a cadence that could only be Larissa. Larissa always knocked the same way, four rapid fire knocks with increasing intensity.

“One sec,” Jim excused himself as he got up to go greet Larissa, who had let herself into the entryway.

Pam decided to remain in the living room while Jim presumably went to greet Larissa, she didn’t want to impose on the siblings. She stood when Larissa and Jim entered and walked over to introduce herself. Larissa looked to be younger than Jim by a few years, and closer to Jim than Pam in height. She had long brunette hair, a big Jim-like smile, and was wearing shorts and a burgundy hoodie with her university’s logo on it.

“Hi, I’m Pam,” she held out her hand to shake.

“Oh my gosh, the Pam?” Larissa enthused, “You didn’t tell me she was coming,” she directed at Jim as she smacked her brother on the arm.

“Oh, I’m Larissa,” she seemed to remember herself, “I am so happy to finally meet you, I feel like I already know you with how much Jim talks about you!” Larissa beamed, while shaking Pam’s hand.

“Oh, well, only good things I hope?”

“Only if you qualify being an evil prankster mastermind and enabling my brother to prank his poor innocent co-worker to be good,” she shot back with a wink.

Ok, Jim thought to himself, maybe he should have briefed his sister on the friend-zone situation before she got here, Larissa was laying it on a little thick. At the same time, maybe Pam needed some hints to put into her mind the possibility of Jim as more than just the office best friend. In the meantime, Jim chose to head off any further embarrassment and start the night off.

“So,” he butted in, “Movie then pizza, pizza then movie, or movie-pizza-movie,” he quizzed.

Jim noticed Pam and Larissa glance at each other and in an uncanny display, they both spoke at the same time.

“Pizza then movie,” they spoke in sync, Pam broke out in giggles and had sit back down on the loveseat, while Larissa flopped down in the recliner with a huge grin on her face.

“Ok, that was officially terrifying,” Jim admitted, much to their apparent delight, as the giggles only intensified from Pam’s quarter, and he earned a bark of laughter from Larissa.

“Oh man,” Larissa said, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, “This is the start of a beautiful friendship,” and Pam could only nod between giggles, not able to get any words out yet.

“Not on my watch,” Jim said, pointing at the giggling Pam, “I told you I wouldn’t allow you to corrupt Larissa too, you already have Nikita,” he accused, and saw tears trickling down Pam’s cheeks as she tried to rein in her giggles.

“Ok, I’m ordering, is one half-Hawaiian half pepperoni and a meat lover’s ok,” he asked, getting no response from Ms. Giggles and a nod from Larissa, he went to the kitchen to call it in.

Pam finally got her breathing under control and wiped the moisture from her face, sitting in silence for a minute listening to Jim order the pizza over the phone. He knew her favourite of course, it never ceased to amaze her the little things that Jim seemed to pick up on.

“So, what are you studying,” Pam asked, gesturing at Larissa’s sweater.

“I just finished my first year, so I haven’t declared a major yet,” she answered, “But I think I want to go into the faculty of engineering and do civil engineering.”

“That sounds really cool,” encouraged Pam, “What kind of work would you be looking at with that?”

“Designing roads, wastewater treatment, pretty much anything public infrastructure,” Larissa explained.

Before Pam could question her further, Jim returned to inform them that the pizza would be there in thirty minutes or less.

“So, we should pick a movie,” Jim started, “I got Pam to bring a few, and of course there is Mark and I’s collection to choose from, let’s see what Pam brought…”

“The Princess Bride, Fargo, and Edward Scissorhands,” Pam supplied.

“The Princess Bride,” Larissa blurted out, not ever waiting to hear Jim’s offerings.

“Seconded,” Pam quickly followed up.

“I guess I have no choice,” Jim said with resignation, but Pam could tell he was joking by the twinkle in his eye and so she just grinned at him.

“Face it bro, you were never going to win even if you had somehow convinced Mark to stick around for this,” Larissa said, rubbing it in.

“As you wish,” Jim said with a sigh, earning a stuck out tongue from Larissa, moving to pop the DVD in the player and then sat down on the loveseat next to Pam, repeating to himself that it was ok because it was the only place left to sit.

Pam felt Jim’s love for his sister in his joking reference and couldn’t help but recall that he had made the same reference to her the day she first got her car. Pam couldn’t escape the double meaning, did Jim love her like a sister, or was there more to it than that? Was she reading into this way too much? Maybe Jim just liked quoting The Princess Bride and it didn’t mean anything. Maybe it meant everything. Pam felt the conversation flowing past her, offering noncommittal answers and affirmations where required, content to live in her thoughts for the moment while the siblings caught up.

Maybe Jim liked her too? Wait, did that mean that she liked Jim? Pam’s mind screeched to a halt, all thoughts tumbling off the rails at the inadvertent revelation. Pam felt her face go slack and realised that she must look really stupefied right now and struggled to get out of her thoughts, putting the frightening revelation on hold to enter back into the playful banter whizzing by her head.

The pizza finally arrived, and with it a reprieve, Pam didn’t need to talk around pizza and beer. She ate to busy her hands, and she drank to try and quell the slight shake, which neither Larissa or Jim seemed to have picked up on or were just too kind to say anything about it. With the movie starting Pam sat back and mechanically quoted the right lines, and laughed at the right places to look engaged, but she wasn’t really paying attention. Pam had seen the movie enough times to quote it in her sleep.

Pam drifted back to her previous train wreck of a thought process. Did she like Jim? She decided she needed to make a list. Lists helped with every obstacle that she had ever come up against, so why stop now? One, she loves making Jim laugh; Two, she loves Jim making her laugh; Three, she loves laughing with Jim; Four, she loves when Jim encourages her; Five, she loves that Jim notices the small things… Pam stopped herself. She might like Jim, as like, more than a friend, Pam admitted to herself, and this thought terrified her.

“… You killed my father, prepare to die,” Pam heard Inigo saying on screen, startled to realise that the movie was almost over. She had just spent almost an hour and a half wrapped up in her tumultuous and traitorous thoughts.

Pam tried to refocus on the movie and took a sip of her beer only to realise it was long empty, before putting it back down in embarrassment.

‘I can’t tell Jim,’ she thought to herself in a panic, Jim was her best friend and if she ruined that by telling him that she might want to be more? She would have no one. Sure, she had some girl friends, but most had left her when she split with Roy, being the significant others of his friends. The others were out of town, not in reach. If Pam lost Jim as a friend, she would be devastated, and truly alone. Ok, she amended, not totally alone, she would still have Nikita, whatever small consolation that was, for the dog could not replace human contact.

The movie ended, and Pam dismissed herself after exchanging number with Larissa and promising to get together some weekend. She arrived home and took Nikita out, and then sat down heavily on her couch to wallow in her thoughts.

‘This is stupid,’ Pam told herself, if she was brave enough to break up with Roy in front of the cameras, surely she could be brave enough to ask Jim if maybe they could try to be more than best friends? Her thoughts from a few weeks ago come back to her, she had already given Jim half of the relationship that was supposed to be the fiancé’s, how bad could the whole package be? Pam screamed into a pillow in frustration. For as many reasons to take chance she came up with, she had another ten for why the status quo was as ambitious as she should be. Mostly revolving around how lonely she was already, and how much lonelier she would be without her best friend. She was paralysed by indecision, sitting on her couch until it got dark out and she finally just decided to give up and go to bed. She was not going to be able to figure this out tonight.

Pam got into bed and slept fitfully. Things would be so much easier if Jim would just give her a sign.

Jim wasn’t sure what to make of the movie night, it had started off great, if a little awkward. However, by the end Pam was withdrawn in her own little world. He was disappointed when she dismissed herself so soon after the movie ended, but at the very least she and Larissa had made tentative plans for the weekend, so there was that. Jim also hadn’t been able to help but notice sitting beside Pam on the loveseat how tense she had been almost the whole time and hoped that he hadn’t made her uncomfortable somehow. After talking with Larissa for a while longer, which really was more Larissa interrogating him on Pam’s personal affairs, he decided to grab another beer and finish out the night with some late show to slow down his buzzing mind.

Jim went to bed wishing that Pam would give him a sign, but even as he thought this, he knew that it wasn’t Pam’s modus operandi, and it wasn’t likely to happen. With a frustrated sigh he burrowed under the covers and attempted to sleep.