When Jim comes back out from the back, Pam is nowhere to be seen, and he spirals again.

He’s just finished calming himself down from before, and now his worries have gone off in another direction entirely. Before, he was worried that his presence was causing Pam awkwardness: that her friend had clearly caught onto his increasingly obvious interest in Pam, and was using it to tease her in a way that was making her uncomfortable.

A small part of him was, of course, hopeful. Maybe it wasn’t his interest (painted across his face as he was sure it was) that Pam’s friend had been picking up on, but something from Pam. After all, she’d been talking mostly about what Pam wanted, what Pam thought, what Pam was doing. So there was room there, he had thought, for this to be not entirely in his head.

But he had had to admit to himself that this was probably wishful thinking, and that even if it wasn’t, Pam sitting there with her head in her hands was not exactly the reaction he’d have hoped for. He could hope that this was just embarrassment—a friend pushing her buttons the way that Larissa would definitely be making fun of him tonight if he was fool enough to tell his little sister what had happened—but there was also the chance that it was an aversion to having him around with her friend around, or that she didn’t want to look at the way he was looking at her.

He’s spent the last ten minutes in the back restocking things that were already properly stocked before but that Michael had messed up (he insisted for some reason on stocking everything alphabetically, which was extremely confusing when they disagreed about whether “filters” were “filters, F” or “coffee filters, C” from day to day). He’s calm. He’s collected. He’s accepted that he can’t control whether it was Pam’s friend’s assumptions about Pam or about him that motivated her extremely pointed language. He’s ready to go forward to wherever that means they’re going: whether that’s him backing off and just serving her steamers and (eventually, someday, come on Michael) tea, or continuing whatever sort-of friendship they’ve worked their way into, or going (as he’d really like to) further. He’ll follow her lead. If she doesn’t lead, he’ll just…stay. In stasis. There are worse places to be than across a counter from her—even if she can’t look at him if he sits down at the same table.

But now—she’s gone. Has he really run her off? He can’t believe he’s screwed this up so badly. All he wanted to do was to get her and her friend away from Dwight, and then to learn a little more about her, and now…now Dwight is at their table, and Pam isn’t, and he can just see everything he’s been quietly hoping and wishing for falling apart.

It’s not that it’s not her fault. He probably screwed it up, with his overeagerness and his excitement to meet one of her actual friends, one of the people she sees somewhere other than across a counter or at a table in a coffeeshop she only comes into to do her work. Someone who knows who Pam is beyond her avoidance of coffee and her easy laugh (and her own good sense of humor). Someone who’s probably been there for the hard parts of her life, the ones he knows deep inside that he’d like to share with her but doesn’t feel like he can suggest he should.

And now instead of getting that, he’s driven the friend towards Dwight Schrute of all people (and it’s rather distressing that they seem to be hitting it off, if he’s honest) and apparently driven Pam out of the shop entirely.

Well, not entirely. Her bag is still here, and her laptop is still open. But for a moment he’s sure that that’s just a sign of how badly he’s freaked her out: she’s run all the way out without any of her stuff.

Then it hits him. That’s not Pam. Pam isn’t the most prepared or organized person he’s ever met, but she’s not Michael. If she felt the need to get out of there, after he’d already left, she’d at the very least have taken her laptop with her. She does all her work on it. It’s probably more precious to her than her own self. There’s no way she left it, unless she was actively dying—and he’s pretty sure that her friend would not be flirting with Dwight Godforsaken Schrute if that were the case.

And indeed, here comes Pam back out of the bathroom. Her eyes flit across Dwight and Izzy and then—blessedly, thankfully, heartstoppingly—over to him, and she gestures with her head and rolls her eyes at him, and he can breathe again.

She trots over to the counter and he slumps against it slightly. She’s not mad at him. She didn’t run away from him. She’s avoiding Dwight. That makes perfect sense. How could he ever have doubted that their connection was real, even if he still suspects that it may be, well, more real on his end?

She leans up against the counter, grabs a candy, and nods towards her friend and Dwight. “So. Do you think he’s getting her number, or just trying to sell her more beets?”

It’s not that funny, but the relief means that Jim may never have laughed harder in his entire life.