Jim expects spending the holidays with his parents to be a nice distraction from his problems. Karen is in Connecticut visiting her own family, and it’s the first time in weeks he’s been alone with his thoughts for an extended period of time.

Unfortunately, alone with his thoughts is not the best place for Jim to be. Alone with his thoughts only makes him realize he misses Pam more than he misses Karen. Alone with his thoughts only reminds him that he’s no better off now than he was last May.

He’s eager to get back into the swing of things, but that means once again being thrust back into his new normal: smack dab between the two women in his life. By the time the holidays are over, he’s dreading the return to work. 

Michael is still out of the office and Karen isn’t due back until after the new year. It’s odd being in the bullpen with Pam again without his girlfriend there as a buffer, but he smiles at her each day as he walks past reception to his desk, wishes her a happy new year when the time comes, and she responds in kind. They’re cordial, which is better than nothing. She also looks like herself again, the way he remembers from before… is it her hair? He can’t quite put his finger on it but for a moment he has to remind himself which year it is. 

He keeps his head down and tries his best to keep his interactions with her to the bare minimum, which is thankfully easier than he’d anticipated with his back turned to her all the time. Sales are always pretty busy after the holidays anyway.

When Karen returns from vacation, other than a few work meetings, he doesn’t get much of a chance to reconnect with her. He invites her over after work to hang out, which she accepts, but she doesn’t stay for long. She claims she has unpacking to do but seems a little distant.

He isn’t quite sure if this has something to do with him, or if he’s overreacting. They hadn’t talked much while she was gone; a couple phone calls, maybe a few texts, but that was all. He was trying to do the right thing. This whole dating thing is still so new for them, and he hadn’t wanted to appear too needy. He hopes she isn’t mad at him for playing it cool. 

The next morning, he parks his car in the lot and has barely pulled his messenger bag out of the backseat when she suddenly appears right next to him.

“Oh hey,” he says, a bit startled. “You scared me.”

“Sorry.” She steps forward to hug him and he hugs her back.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “You seemed a little distracted yesterday.”

“Yeah, I’m fine… just have a lot on my mind.”

“Something… you want to talk about?”

She sighs into his chest. “I didn’t want to tell you, but it’s my parents. They think this move was so abrupt, which I guess it was. They won’t lay off and it’s kind of bumming me out.”

“Not so stoked about your current career path?” If he can keep this about work, maybe he won’t feel so guilty about being the main reason she’d derailed her entire life.

She shrugs, leaning back a bit to look up at him, but still keeping her arms around him. “Weirdly enough, they said the same thing you did. They said I should have tried transferring to New York.”

He grimaces, because she’s not wrong. “You do come across very corporate.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“...I mean that in a good way,” he grins.

She sighs, but grins back. “I think they’ll change their minds when they meet you, though. You know, someday.”

Someday. It’s only a vague allusion to the future but the word holds a lot of weight.

“Scranton’s not so bad. I promise it grows on you.”

“You said that about Michael, too,” she reminds him, her breath coming out in short puffs of fog. 

“Yeah, you’re right,” he grins. “I’m full of shit.”

She releases him, stepping back, putting her hands in her coat pockets. “How did you manage to tolerate that guy for, what? Three years?” 

“Four, actually.”

“Yikes.”

“You just have to find the fun in every situation. When it comes to Michael it works to your advantage. Because… well, there’s always a situation.” 

She shakes her head. “I still don’t know how you did it.”

He bites his lip. He can’t tell her how he did it.

“Anyway, I’m sorry I was a little distant last night. I guess I’m still sort of adjusting to being here, you know? Everything is so different.”

He pins her with a look. “Good different, I hope?”

Karen looks up at him with a shy smile. “Yeah. I think so.” He grins at her, and she shifts on her feet a bit. “You know… when I told my parents about you, I called you my boyfriend.”

“Oh yeah?” 

She nods. “How do you... feel about that?”

How does he feel about that? They haven’t discussed exclusivity yet, even though it’s obviously where they’re headed. He likes her a lot, he really does. He’d hoped he would feel more secure in their relationship before having this conversation, but it’s apparently happening right here, right now. 

She looks up at him and smiles, her freckles standing out against her rosy cheeks. She looks so hopeful, so happy, and he wants to be, too. 

Boyfriend. He likes the sound of that.

In answer, he leans down and gives her a brief kiss on the lips; nothing excessive, but certainly not something two platonic co-workers would ever be doing in the middle of the parking lot. He’s suddenly aware that it’s the first time they’ve really behaved like they’re dating in a very public area at work. 

He pulls back and she smiles at him. Then her eyes dart over his shoulder, her expression changing to one of surprise.

“Oops,” she says.

Jim turns his head to see Phyllis getting out of her car, a mischievous grin on her face, having clearly witnessed this event.

“Good morning, you two,” she says coyly, waving at them, and makes her way towards the building.

“Morning, Phyllis,” Karen calls after her politely.

Jim tightens his lips into a thin line. “Great,” he mutters.

“How bad is this?” Karen asks.

They hadn’t discussed when it would be appropriate to out themselves to everyone in the office. He still isn’t quite sure what had compelled him to reveal their relationship to Pam the day the branches merged, even though some form of undeserved and misguided revenge probably played a part. And that had certainly backfired.

“It’s not bad,” Jim insists, more to himself than to her. “The cat’s out of the bag, I guess.”

“Will Phyllis say anything?” 

“Are you kidding? I’m sure she’s told the security guard and everyone at Vance Refrigeration by now.”

Karen shakes her head. “I guess we should probably tell Toby, then. Make it official.”

Make it official.

Jim looks at her, confused. “Toby?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Um, yeah. Toby? The HR guy?”

“Why do we have to tell Toby?”

Karen shrugs. “I don’t know, I mean technically you’re my superior, right? I don’t want to get entangled in some kind of workplace romance drama.”

He feels himself nodding. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he says, omitting the fact that whether she knows it or not she’s already entangled in workplace romance drama.

“Let’s go upstairs,” she says. “It’s cold.”

He nods, following her towards the door. Workplace romance. Make it official. Someday. The words are ringing in his head like alarm bells. 

Karen reaches out to take his gloved hand in hers. Two layers of thick leather separate them, but he suddenly feels like she’s much too close.

“Speaking of adjusting and everything,” she then says. “I’ve been thinking about how I can make this move a little more… permanent.”

Jim swallows. He knew this would be coming at some point but his mouth feels like sandpaper. “Oh, uh huh?”

He opens the door and as they enter the tiny lobby, Karen pulls a piece of paper from her coat pocket. She unfolds it and shows him what appears to be an application for an apartment listing.

“I was driving back from your place yesterday and saw a For Rent sign, so I looked up this apartment. It’s available and it’s in my price range,” she says, showing him. As he looks at it she lets go of his hand to hit the elevator button.

When he sees where it’s located -- his own neighborhood -- his stomach churns. Everything feels like it’s moving so fast all of a sudden, and his hopeful attitude seems to be taking an abrupt 180. 

Why is this happening? He likes Karen. He wants to be happy. Doesn’t he deserve to be happy?

Instead of the very real future standing in front of him, his mind instead drifts to fantasy. He knows it’s just an impossible dream, but he’d imagined himself walking down his street holding hands with Pam so many times the image is just… there, still. He wishes it wasn’t, and wants to get rid of it, but what if he can’t? What if it never goes away? What if this doesn’t work out with Karen? 

What if it could still work out with Pam? 

He hates himself for thinking about this right now. The elevator door dings open, and Karen steps in. He follows, slowly, still absorbing the implications of the piece of paper in his hand. A thousand emotions must cross his face but “panic” is the one he’s apparently landed on, because she notices.

“Is there a problem?”

“Um…” he stammers. “No problem, it’s just… this is like two blocks from my place.”

“So?”

The doors shut and he can’t help it, he feels suffocated. It’s only been a month and she’s moving in right down the street? The elevator feels hot. The walls feel like they’re closing in on him. He tugs at his collar.

“It’s a little close, don’t you think? I mean, we just started dating. This feels like... we’d be practically living together.”

She gapes at him. “Are you serious?” She scoffs and turns, facing the elevator doors. “Jesus, Jim, I’m not asking to move in with you.”

Move in with you. God, even the words coming out of her mouth are making him break out into a cold sweat. The alarm bells in his head are deafening. Why is he reacting this way? Why doesn’t he want her living so close? She’s his girlfriend now, for fuck’s sake. He should be thrilled.

If Karen had already lived in Scranton, he suspects he wouldn’t be feeling this intense pressure. But she’d packed up her life and moved all the way from Connecticut. For a job, yes, but they both know it was really for him. For them. For the potential he’d made her believe was here.

Potential that he’s slowly starting to wonder if he’s trying to force.

The air in the elevator is stale and his opportunity to respond favorably to her proposal has passed its expiration date. He can feel the energy shifting between them, but he cannot say yes to this, not right now. He said yes to dating her, said yes to kissing her, said yes to her moving to Scranton, to making this official. He’s run out of yeses for the time being.

He doesn’t say anything more, because he’s afraid of what might come out if he does. Karen books it out of the elevator without even looking back at him and he can tell she’s pissed. He looks apprehensively down at the application in his hand and wonders how bad this is.

Later in the day, for the first time in a while, he finds himself alone in the break room with Pam. When she asks him what’s wrong, his first instinct is to lie, to downplay everything, to keep her out of it entirely. But the way she looks at him makes him weak. The way she looks at him always makes him weak. He spills the entire story before he even realizes he’s doing it.

“Honestly, I think you should go easy on her,” Pam suggests, which isn’t what he expects to hear. Actually, he isn’t sure what he’d expected. For her to say ‘Just dump that chick and risk your heart all over again for me?’ Dumb, Halpert. Cut it out.

Maybe he’s overthinking this. He can’t continue to interpret every action from Pam as some kind of coded overture. And he can’t continue to interpret every action from Karen as an attempt to push them forward, to make this relationship more serious than it is. 

Maybe Pam just wants to be friends. And maybe Karen just wants a place to live.

“You’re probably right,” he sighs. “I’m probably assigning all this meaning when there isn’t any.”

She shrugs. “Libra.” 

His heart thumps at her observation; that she remembers even a crumb of personal information about him and is using it to try to be helpful. 

He raises an eyebrow. “When did you get into astrology?”

She looks embarrassed. “I’m not, really. Just… I’ve been talking to my sister a lot lately. Sometimes it jumps out.”

They laugh, and it’s nice. Despite everything else going on, Pam really is easy to talk to. She always has been. 

“Hey, thanks a lot,” he says, and he really means it. 

“Oh, don't worry about it. I mean, it's better than listening to Michael play a conch shell... which is what I was doing.” He chuckles again, and they sit in a somewhat comfortable silence for a few moments, sort of staring down at the table. Then she looks up at him excitedly. 

“Oh, also... Michael went to Jamaica with Jan!”

Her comment presents an opening, an opportunity to resuscitate their long-lost dynamic. He misses it so much that he bites. 

“Oh, yeah. How have we not talked about this already?” He obviously knows how, but right now it doesn’t matter. “I mean, what happened there? Kidnapping?”

She shakes her head in amusement. “I have no idea.”

“Maybe he has some kind of secret superpower? I mean, whatever it is, he sure keeps the ladies coming back for more.”

Pam looks thoughtful. “I wonder if it has something to do with Carol. His ex.”

“It sounds so weird when you say that,” he admits. “Michael has an ex.”

“I know. But he and Jan have a history. Maybe she sees him with someone else, it makes her want him even more.” 

“But... Michael?” he reiterates, ignoring the feelings her double meaning had surely not intended to provoke. 

She shrugs. “I don’t know. He seems pretty happy, though.”

As if his ears had been burning, Michael parades through the annex playing a rousing tune (or poor excuse for one) on his conch shell, his tiny beaded braid bouncing all around, thankfully skipping right past the break room without interrupting them. 

Jim sits with his best friend — even though he can’t really call her that anymore — and they chat and joke around like they used to for a few minutes. It’s the most like himself he’s felt since he came back. Rather than see this as a problem, however, right now he decides to see it as a good sign: that maybe things are on the right track for him after all. Maybe things are playing out exactly the way they should be.

Later that afternoon, he approaches Karen with the piece of paper she’d left with him. “Uh, I think you dropped this.” 

She looks down at the application, which he’s filled out for her, and smiles. “You sure?”

He isn’t sure. “Definitely,” he says, though, because if this is all part of moving on, he’s sure as hell going to try.

“What made you change your mind?”

He doesn’t really want to mention Pam, but maybe he can get out in front of this whole thing somehow, especially if he and Pam might actually become friends again. Karen is bound to notice something's up.

“Oh, Pam made me realize I was being stupid.”

You were, Karen’s eyes say. 

“Anyway, let me know how it goes,” he continues. “If you want, I can ask Darryl to borrow his truck, you know. For the move.”

Karen grins at him. “Okay.” Then, “Pam, huh? You told her about us?” 

He bites his lip. “Oh yeah, well, I figured we were telling people now.”

“You two... are friends?” She says it curiously, without an air of suspicion. 

“Yeah,” he says as nonchalantly as possible. “I mean, we were friends when I was working here before.”

We kissed. 

I was in love with her. 

I’m probably still in love with her. 

“Oh, that’s cool.” Karen looks back down at the application, apparently done with this part of the conversation. Her lack of interest in his past with Pam annoys him for some reason. 

Maybe it’s not annoyance. Maybe it’s guilt. Because he has more to tell her about Pam — a lot more — and he doesn’t want telling her all of that to be his decision. 

“I’m gonna go call the building manager,” Karen says excitedly, kissing him on the cheek. Then she turns and is gone. 

I think you should go easy on her.

Pam’s advice was good, and it was probably the right call. But the ease with which she’s pushed him closer to Karen only serves as further evidence she’s truly not interested in him.

He sighs, staring after Karen as she heads upstairs. Hopefully this will be a good development for them, for him. But he can’t deny Pam’s presence has impacted this decision. And it isn’t healthy that every single decision he’s made since he returned has been shaped by Pam.

***

Karen kisses him first. He tries to convince himself that’s the only reason it happened at all.

He wasn’t sure if she was even into him when he’d asked her to go out for drinks after work. And he hadn’t thought it was a mistake, either: not when they’d walked into the bar, not when they’d chatted for an hour about their favorite movies and their least favorite movies and where they grew up. All of that was safe, all of that was fun. Even when he kinda-maybe started liking her a little more than he thought he did, Pam honestly hadn’t crossed his mind that much. He’d thought briefly a couple of times “I can do this, I can.” 

But one thing had led to another. After a couple of drinks, here they are at the bar engaging in rather uncharacteristic (for him, at least) PDA.

And now he’s worried he’s making a mistake.

Making out with Karen wasn’t exactly the plan. But her lips are soft and she smells so good and she likes him. She wants him. It feels so good to be wanted that for just a moment, he can almost forget that she’s not the one he wants.

After he kisses Karen for a while, however, thoughts of his kiss with Pam come screaming back into his brain. He thinks about her lips and her smile and that dress and how she didn’t want him and he wills his brain to just shut the fuck up, to leave these agonizing thoughts and memories out of every single waking moment of his life. He really tries. But he’s replayed those precious seconds over and over again in his mind so many times by now that he knows Pam's kiss like a favorite song. 

After a minute or so he pulls back to catch his breath. Karen is smiling, her eyes still closed. “So tell me, Halpert,” she says, opening them. He feels a slight pang at her comfortable utterance of his surname. “Why’d it take you so long to go out with me?”

He laughs a bit without really thinking. “Did it?”

“I’ve been sending you signals for a while now. Been wondering when you’d clue in.”

He shrugs. He hates signals. He hates them because apparently he’s only capable of sending and receiving them incorrectly. 

“Well, I’ve been wrong before,” he explains. “Very wrong. So I guess I’m a little more careful now.”

She looks curious. “Oh yeah? What happened?”

He flinches a bit. The last thing he wants to do is talk to Karen about Pam. 

“Oh, it was... a while ago.” 

It doesn’t feel like a lie. The last few months have felt longer than the four years that preceded them. 

Karen nods, mercifully taking the hint he doesn’t want to keep talking about this, and sips her beer. Then she leans in towards him a bit.

“Well, I’m glad you finally figured it out,” she says. 

He can tell she wants him to kiss her again. He wants to, but there are so many conflicting emotions bouncing around in his brain he feels like the responsible thing to do is to slow everything down.

He likes Karen. He wonders if in a different time, a different place — a different life, maybe — he could be falling head over heels for her. But he isn’t, at least not yet. He doesn’t want to lead her on, but he also doesn’t want to blow a really good opportunity to get to know someone else he could actually like. To move past all of this Pam stuff. 

To evolve.

“I’m glad, too,” he says, and he means it. 

At this precise moment his phone buzzes next to him on the table, and he jumps. Ever since he and Pam started texting again, it seems every time his phone makes a noise his heart reacts like that damn Pavlovian dog. 

He glances over, and sure enough:

Message received: Pam

I heard you’re coming back to Scranton, is it true?

He ignores it. He can’t deal with Pam right now. Just this simple harmless text is intrusive and unwelcome. It’s not her fault, of course, but he finds himself getting pissed at her anyway.

Sensing the moment has passed, Karen leans back. “Jan offered me a sales position in Scranton, by the way,” she says.

“Oh yeah?”

She eyes him, gauging his response. “I think... I’m gonna take it.”

He wonders if her timing is deliberate; if she’d waited all night to tell him this until she was certain their attraction was mutual. She gazes into his eyes, and he notices the freckles scattered across her nose for the first time. She looks so happy and hopeful and Freddie Mercury is belting out out “I want to break free” all around him in the bar and for a moment – just a moment – he entertains the possibility that all of this could be a really good thing. Karen could be a really good thing.

“Well, I guess that means we’ll be seeing a lot of each other,” he grins.

She smiles back at him. “That would be nice.”

His heart is screaming that he’s not ready but, just like the text message, he ignores it. His heart hasn’t been making the best decisions lately anyway. 

His mind flashes wildly to Michael at that paper convention in Philly, his cell phone pressed against his ear, telling Pam to have fun on her date. It hurts to think about it, still, but if Pam is out there dating already, he should certainly be doing the same.

He leans in this time, and kisses Karen again. Maybe it’s irresponsible but he decides he doesn’t care anymore. Fuck responsibility. He has to do this, he has to move on, especially if he’s going to be facing Pam again. 

He has to try.

***

“Pam-a-lam-a-ding-dong!” Michael crows as he saunters into the office. “How was your date? Did you get lucky?”

Pam sighs from her perch at reception. Everything about that date had been ill-advised. “No, Michael.”

“Aw, that’s too bad. Maybe next time.”

“It’s actually totally fine.”

She didn’t feel ready, and she’d insisted as much beforehand, but Kelly had set the date up despite her concerns. Once again, she’d felt pressure to do something she didn’t want to do and rather than advocate for herself she’d simply given in. This time it was a small thing, but she’s so tired of her own cowardice. She’d given up the person she cared about most out of fear. What will she give up next time?

Michael shrugs. In a seemingly rare moment of self-awareness, he glances surreptitiously around the bullpen and lowers his voice. 

“I saw Jim, by the way,” he says.

Pam wonders at Michael's uncharacteristic discretion. She doesn’t really want to talk to him about any of this but she’s dying for information about Jim, any information. She’s drowning in a vast, crushing sea of the unknown. 

“Oh. How is he doing?” she asks as casually as she can. Her eyes dart over to Phyllis, the closest person to them at the moment, but she doesn’t seem to be listening.

“Seems to be having a great time over there in Stamford,” Michael shakes his head and scoffs. He says the word ‘Stamford’ like something absolutely disgusting. “Josh. Blech.”

“That’s nice.”

Michael then turns to face her as if what he’s about to say is only occurring to him for the first time. “You didn’t tell me Jim left Scranton because you broke his heart,” he says somewhat curiously. He says it so unceremoniously, absolutely destroys her in such a laid-back manner, that she doesn’t quite know how to respond.

Pam feels her face get hot. “Um… I don’t… he said that?”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

She blinks. “...Should I have?”

“I mean, yeah,” he admonishes. “I thought we were friends, Pam.”

Pam nods patronizingly, realizing that anything Michael may have to say about any of this should probably be taken with an extra-large grain of salt.

“You’re right, I should have realized this is most definitely your business, Michael.”

“Anyway, that was a huge relief,” he says.

“A relief? What do you mean?” 

“Well, I thought he left because of me. So… good news.” He gives Pam two enthusiastic thumbs up.

Michael never means for his words to have the devastating effect they do at times, and Pam is well aware of this. But Michael isn’t. And it's exactly the reason she can’t possibly expect to have any sort of meaningful conversation with him about Jim. 

He turns and heads into his office and while she wants to leave this alone, she has a great desire to make Michael understand, or at least to attempt the admittedly daunting task.

She gets up and follows him into his office. “Michael?” she says quietly, shutting the door behind her.

“Yeah?”

She looks down at him as seriously as she can. “You understand that it isn’t good news for me, right?”

Michael has that look in his eye that indicates he’s experiencing a slight short-circuit in his brain. His eyes widen and he looks genuinely apologetic.

“I didn’t mean… I’m sorry,” he says. “I guess I just figured you already knew.”

She did know Jim left because of her, she does know that in her heart. But hearing it out loud and knowing Michael is aware of it is painful in a completely different way.

She can’t decide which she wants more: for him to shut up or to keep talking. Trying to get worthwhile information out of Michael Scott is like trying to squeeze a cocktail from a dry sponge. Regardless, her curiosity wins out.

“Did... did he say anything else?” 

Michael lifts his eyes to the ceiling in deep thought. “Not really,” he muses. “Actually, he told me not to say anything to you either, now that I think about it.” He grimaces slightly and zips his lips, then makes a ‘shh’ gesture. “Don’t tell him I said anything, okay?”

She shakes her head sadly. “I won’t.”

He sits down in his chair and pretends to go back to work, but she isn't quite done. 

“Hey, Michael?”

He looks up at her. She doesn’t want to hear anything else that might upset her, but she really wants to know. The idea Jim had confided in Michael, of all people, is so strange to her.

“Why... did Jim tell you all of this?”

Michael looks at her like she’s the dumbest human on the face of the planet.

“Because he’s my best friend, Pam.” 

She knows it isn’t true, but it stings.

***

She’s still trying to be his best friend. 

For the first time she thinks she knows exactly how Jim must have felt seeing her with Roy all the time, wanting to step in and shake her, to make her see what had been right in front of her all along. Because even though they’re ‘just friends,’ now all she wants to do is the same.

This doesn’t make sense, she wants to say. We make sense. You and me, that makes sense.

Everything not making sense is what’s going through her head as one of the documentary producers, Delilah, mics her up for her interview. 

“You look distracted today,” Delilah says. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, do I?” 

“Yeah, what’s going on?”

Pam wonders if the cameras are on. She never knows for sure, but she has to assume they’re always on.

“Well, I guess Michael went to Jamaica with Jan, so… there’s that.”

The producer nods, and they converse a bit about the latest Dunder Mifflin gossip. But after a couple minutes, she is still feeling uneasy and Delilah can sense it.

“Are you sure there’s… nothing else going on you want to talk about?”

Pam wonders if the crew has talked to Jim today, or Karen. If they really don’t know what’s happening, or if they’re baiting her.

She sighs. “It’s just some stuff that’s going on with Jim and Karen. You should probably talk to them.”

“Oh we have, we know all about the whole apartment situation.”

Of course they do. “Well then, you know.”

“But… what does that have to do with you?” Delilah prods.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with me,” she responds quickly. Probably too quickly. “Jim just told me about it and I gave him some advice.”

“Oh,” Delilah says, looking a little surprised. “And… you didn’t mind doing that?”

“No, I didn't mind helping Jim with his problem. That's what friends do. I help Phyllis all the time. Just yesterday, I untangled a piece of tape from her hair. So, yeah.”

Delilah looks at her skeptically. “I see.”

Over the past couple of years, Pam has caught on to the way the producer looks at her when she’s waiting for more she knows is there. Pam isn’t sure how much they know about what’s gone down between her and Jim: what they’ve seen or heard, what they’ve gleaned over all this time. But she has to keep her guard up.

“I actually don’t know if we’re even really friends anymore,” she admits. “Maybe that’s what’s bothering me.”

“Why wouldn’t you be friends anymore?” Delilah asks. 

Pam shrugs. “It’s just... things are a little weird right now. I mean, he was gone at Stamford and we didn’t really talk much. Now he’s back, and he’s got a girlfriend, so everything feels kind of different. We’re sort of just figuring things out again, I guess.”

Delilah nods. “Well, you had a boyfriend before and everything was fine, right?”

She’s so stunned by the producer’s astute comparison that she doesn’t even bother correcting her failure to refer to Roy as her fiancé. Everything was fine. She knows now, of course, that everything was not fine. Just like things are not fine again. 

“Yeah, I guess,” she says, unwilling to go into this any deeper on camera. She never knows how much to reveal to the documentary crew. She does know, however, that Delilah has made her feel very defensive and she doesn’t like it. 

Everything is fine.

They wrap up their interview and Pam hands her mic to Will, the camera guy. The “inventory luau” is supposed to be starting downstairs in a few minutes and she needs to appear as fine as possible. 

When Karen approaches her in the warehouse later with a huge, satisfied grin and an “I owe you one,” Pam hits her limit. The reality of having been the person to help orchestrate this progression in their relationship is a lot to take.

It’s too cold to go outside right now, so she goes downstairs and sits on a bench in the hallway of the floor below them, somewhere she can be alone and undisturbed. She hadn’t meant to push Jim and Karen closer together. All she wanted to do was have a chance to talk to him, to feel close to him again. To be part of his life. 

We’re friends, she’d told him weeks ago. It was reactionary and she’d said it out of hurt, but she’d also said it prematurely. And now, through her own actions, she’s once again demarcated their relationship.

What is she trying to be to Jim anymore? She can’t be his girlfriend. She can’t be his best friend. She can barely even be his friend at all, not like this.

How can she continue trying to be his friend when doing so will only break her heart? 

She’s never felt so alone in her life, so wracked with grief for something she can’t even identify, and for some reason her thoughts travel back to a few months ago, when Michael was having his grief counseling session. When he was desperately trying to find some meaning in his own life, some indication that if he were to disappear off the face of the planet he would not be completely forgotten. No one had really understood him that day, but Pam had, because she was probably the only other person in the office that day feeling just as alone.

She tries to remember the steps Michael had mentioned. Denial. That one she remembers for sure. Because the day Jim returned, she’d been so convinced everything was going to be fine that she’d been completely unprepared for the amount of fine it hadn’t been. Anger, yes… she’d lashed out at him in the parking lot for no good reason, other than she was hurt. And what the hell was that today, in the break room? Bargaining if there ever was any. She’d practically traded every last shred of hope she had left for the simple opportunity to have a conversation with him, and the consequences have such dire implications she’s now finding it difficult to breathe.

When she remembers the fourth step she breaks down, because depression is the only way to describe the way she’s feeling right now. And she thinks again of what she’d repeated to herself out in the parking lot like a mantra after she’d realized Jim had moved on with someone else:

It’s over.

Acceptance.

After this final thought, she comes to a bleak realization: she’s just grieved her friendship with Jim.