"It's good to have you back."

He watched, caught off guard, as she walked away, not even looking at him.

That was when he felt the first twinges of rage climbling up from somewhere deep, low. "Yeah...good to be back."

------------------

The words "I can't" had beaten a monotonous, never-ending drum in his head for months, reverberating off the regrets and the grief and the ache that still lingered; he even dreamed regularly about that moment, his subconscious forcing him to re-live it: her ashen face, the slight chill in the air, her eyes dead as she said those words: "I can't."

He'd spent the better part of his first month at Stamford staring into a highball glass, the whiskey a honey-colored swirl of liquid that soon enough didn't burn anymore on the way down. He clung to that - told himself that eventually, hearing that "I can't" in his head wouldn't sting so much either.

After six weeks and no relief, he'd almost decided that it didn't fucking matter whether or not it still stung - he would find ways of shutting it out. He had to.

---------------------

One of the ways that he'd steeled himself for seeing her face again - and god, in that all-too familiar setting - was by telling himself that she'd already done her worst; she'd already uttered words that stung him more than any others possibly could. So nothing she could say would hurt - at least, not that much.

He told himself that he'd lived through the worst, so it didn't matter anymore - none of it really mattered. So much had changed: He had Karen with him; he technically had a "real" career now. He'd hit fucking bottom six months earlier, had climbed back from that. Ought to be fairly immune to her now - or at least, wary enough maintain his defenses in the way that he'd somehow never mastered the year before.

He'd felt a sense of accomplishment that he knew was pathetic after he'd deflected her invitation to coffee; he gave himself bonus points for shutting Michael down in the same breath, then not engaging when she so obviously wanted to giggle about the tension. (That had been the moment when he'd first felt the first rush of blinding rage - The palpable tension was funny to her?) He was in the midst of congratulating himself silently for walking out to the parking lot with Karen after Michael's tire debaucle - not even casting a second glance at Pam's desk - when he'd realized that to even think about the fact that he'd had to force himself not to seek out Pam (never mind that he'd felt something weird in his gut at the way Karen immediately caught up to him on the way out the door) - well, it chipped away at his success, negated it somehow.

And then his thoughts had taken a different turn - one that he rationalized was far more reasonable, adult, and surely an indication that he actually was almost there in terms of moving past it. It had been spurred on by the prickling feeling he felt on the back of his neck out in the parking lot as Karen affectionately rubbed his back, brought on not by her touch, but rather, by the acute awareness that Pam was watching them. He knew it; he could absolutely feel it. When they were a safe distance away, he allowed himself to let his eyes go hazy, unfocused for second, heightening his peripheral vision...and surely enough, he saw the blur of her in her blue sweater, arms crossed, stock still.

He'd realized then that maybe he was going about this all wrong; he didn't really want to hurt her...right? Because to want to hurt her the way she'd hurt him (or maybe, a fraction of the way she'd hurt him; he was convinced she'd never even begin to understand the hell she'd put him through, no matter how much regret seemed to shadow her eyes today) would be to acknowledge defeat somehow. How could he honestly say he was moving on if he was so consciously measuring his successes and failures, stacking one inane moment against another? (Turning down coffee? success; sweeping her into his arms when she leapt into his embrace, closing his eyes for a moment and inhaling the scent of her hair as she exclaimed, "It's really you!"? failure.)

So he did what he figured was the adult thing to do - the honest thing to do. Okay, so maybe he was trying to prove to himself that he could handle it, being friends with her again. All right, that was definitely it. Didn't matter - he was being brave. And attempting to be honest. Maybe testing her a little, too, just to see what she'd say in a moment of candor.

Turned out that she still wasn't able to be honest or brave, even after he'd put himself on the line for her to positively obliterate six months earlier.

"We're friends; we'll always be friends."

Suddenly "I can't" didn't seem so bad.

-----------------

He sat listening to Karen go on and on about the Scranton office, her eyes wide, taking large gulps of her wine in between exclamations. He tried to pay attention, tried to snap out of the funk.

When Karen suddenly fell silent, having asked him a question that he hadn't heard because he frankly wasn't listening, he realized that he'd failed in his attempts at following her...hearing her. The realization that he'd failed again because of Pam made him even angrier.

"I'm sorry." He gave her a wan smile. "You know what? I'm just really tired, and a little...I don't know, freaked out by being back here again. Mind if we call it a night?"

The disappointment on her face told him that she clearly did mind, and as he watched her expression, he was a little surprised to see that she seemed to be consciously debating whether or not to push him a little - ask him for more time - or whether to just let it go, bow out cooly.

The former clearly won out, as she held eye contact with him, her wineglass halfway to her lips in a gesture that made him suddenly very aware that she knew what she was doing. "We could...but would you mind if we called it a night at my place?"

He knew that a look of surprise washed over him - couldn't help it, as her innuendo was clear. They'd not had sex yet, though they'd come close once or twice before the move. For some reason, she'd seemed hesitant, and he'd picked up on her reticence, dutifully backing off immediately. But she'd never looked at him quite like this before - and he was pretty sure he wasn't misreading her.

Or "misinterpreting" things.

His smile was slow, his heart elsewhere. "That actually sounds great to me."

He couldn't have said what the cause of her sudden urgency was - she had his shirt off within ten minutes of their walking into her apartment and was working on his belt buckle before he could do more than shove her shirt up impatiently. Then she was standing there in her bra - still wearing her slacks - when she almost triumphantly slid his belt out of his belt loops, holding it up for a second, her eyes on his as she tossed it to the side. Something about this struck him as strange - sudden? More to it than just lust?

Or maybe he was reading too much into it, because he was so damned used to analyzing her every word, every expression, every move. Not that she'd ever done this - nor would she ever.

He went with the urgency, the impatience, her face a blur beneath him as her chin tilted to the ceiling, her back arching with a throaty moan. He moved faster, frantically, his breath coming in short bursts, his eyes closing when he came; the blackness dropped over him as he fell to rest on the pillow next to her, his eyes still closed. She, too, was breathing heavily, and it took her a few minutes to catch her breath, standing up to disappear into the bathroom with a murmured, "Be right back."

He still hadn't opened his eyes when she slipped back into bed, her finger silkily tracing his cheek, his jaw. "What're you thinking about over there?"

He swallowed hard, couldn't answer.

"We're friends; we'll always be friends."

He realized then with a sinking feeling that he wouldn't be able to escape it - her - that those words would take their place in his psyche, maybe burn his gut just like the other ones had. The helplessness he felt soon gave way to that biting rage.