AN: Reviews are like oxygen to me! So imagine how uncomfortable I’ll be if you don’t review!

Pam awoke the day after “Girls Night Out” with the headache from hell. No more “Girls Night Out” again, ever! she thought to herself pitifully. It took her a minute to take in her surroundings and realize that she had fallen asleep on her couch. When she saw her cell phone lying on the carpet, she felt a mixture of relief and sadness. She hadn’t made a fool of herself, but now Jim might never come back to Scranton. As if she could have convinced him on sheer, drunken willpower anyway.



She shook her head, trying to rid herself of all thoughts of him, but she immediately regretted moving at all as her head began to pound more furiously. Glancing at the clock, she could at least be happy about the fact that she had woken up early enough to get a shower before work. Heaving herself up, she stumbled towards the bathroom, her eyes still half-closed.



xXxXxXxXx



Pam could swear that the fluorescent lights of the office were installed for the specific purpose of punishing anyone with a hangover. Now she knew why Meredith always looked so pained in the morning. Even the smallest noise sounded like a thunderclap, exploding at the base of her skull and resonating through her head.



Pam readied herself as Kelly walked in, worried somehow that the other woman would be as bright and chipper as every other morning. To Pam’s relief, it appeared that even Kelly was not immune to hangovers, evident with the bags under her eyes and the way she mumbled her answers to any question.



“PAM! PAM PAM! PAM!” Michael shouted, sneaking up and banging on Pam’s desk. Of all his interpretations of her name, Pam now decided that the Bam-Bam one was definitely the worst. In fact, she had decided it was the most obnoxious, excruciating thing anyone had ever done in the entire history of the world. Pam was torn between simply curling up and cradling her head in her hands, or stabbing Michael in the eye with a pencil.



Michael remained blissfully ignorant of Pam’s rather gruesome thoughts. “Any messages pour moi?” he asked in an atrocious French accent. Pam supposed it was supposed to be alluring; it just made him sound like his tongue was swollen.



She shuffled through the papers on her desk, finally removing two. “Just a fax and a message from Jan for you to call her.” she said quietly, hoping he would follow her example. But then again, Michael had never really been much for picking up on any signals.



“Goody good good…” he muttered to himself, quickly scanning the fax with his eyes and reading the message more thoroughly. “Better jump on this!” he said to Pam, indicating the note. “Jan in an impatient woman. Something I love about her.” he confided, drumming his fingers on Pam’s desk before finally waltzing into his office.



Pam sighed with relief to finally be rid of Michael, but looked up again only to see Kelly approaching her desk. “Hey Pam!” she smiled, her voice a whisper of it’s usual volume. Pam smiled back, laughing a little bit in sympathy.



“You sure feel it in the morning, don’t you?” Pam said, resting her chin in her hands.



“Oh, totally.” Kelly agreed as she started to roll her eyes, but then decided against it seeing as when she had tried it a few minutes before it had caused little fireworks in her head. “Definitely worth it though! Last night was so much fun!” Pam agreed, but slightly less enthusiastically. “Anyway, I have the most awesome surprise for you.” Kelly said, smiling secretively.



“What?” Pam asked curiously, furrowing her eyebrows. Something told her that whatever was an ‘awesome surprise’ to Kelly might not be so awesome to Pam.



Kelly bounced on her toes, excited to the point where she almost forgot about her hangover. “Well, I got home last night, and I was totally bored! I couldn’t fall asleep like, at all, so I decided to watch ‘Laguna Beach’, which is a great show by the way. Then I called Ryan a few times, but he didn’t pick up, but then, I had this awesome, awesome idea. See, I was remembering everything you told me last night, so…” Pam felt her stomach slowly sinking, as if she knew what Kelly was about to say. “I called Jim!” She said brightly, looking like a proud four year old.



Pam couldn’t even speak. “W-what?! I… I don’t even- what did you-?” Pam stopped herself, realizing she had yet to form a coherent sentence. She took a deep breath. “What did you say to him?”



Kelly was too busy patting herself on the back for her awesome match-making abilities to notice the look of horror on Pam’s face. “I told him he needs to get over himself and get his ass back to Scranton! I mean, he was totally unfair to you, putting you in that position-”



“Kelly, I had been flirting with Jim without realizing it for months, even years. Maybe sometimes I did realize it. It certainly wasn’t news to hear how he felt about me.” Pam’s fingers gripped the edge of her desk until her knuckles turned white. “I led him along and-and tortured him! We were supposed to be best friends and I treated him horribly. He had a right to ask anything he wanted of me, and the last thing he needs to hear right now is that he’s supposed to be feeling guilty for me-”



“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Kelly interrupted. “Pam, you’re just way too hard on yourself sometimes! Okay, maybe both of you can shoulder some of the blame. But you’re single now, and he’s single…do the math!”



“He’s not single.” Pam said softly.



Kelly scoffed. “Who, this Karen girl? She’s just a total rebound because he’s trying to get over you! Pam, I‘ve seen how you two act around each other, and you’re just like me and Ryan! You’re meant to be!”



Pam wouldn’t exactly compare herself and Jim to Kelly and Ryan, but she did feel remotely better. “How’d he sound?”



“I don’t really remember…” Kelly said, squinting her eyes and pursing her lips as she tried to recall. “I think I did a lot of the talking.”



Pam giggled a little at that. Just then, Michael came barging out of his office, obviously excited. Either he’s got really big news or he’s just eaten a whole bunch of sugar, Pam thought to herself.



“My loyal employees!” Michael said, grinning from ear to ear. “As you may know, we are going to be absorbing the Stamford branch, and-”



Dwight shot from his desk to stand on Michael’s right side. “Much in the way that a predator will consume a smaller animal and then feed off of it’s energy, we will consume the Stamford staff-”



Michael cut him off. “Just, shut up Dwight, shut up.” he said angrily. “You’re just stealing my thunder.” Dwight looked duly ashamed and reclaimed his seat while Michael continued. “Anyway, we are going to be receiving some of the Stamford staff, and I think you’ll all be happy to know…” Pam sat up in her seat and started to listen. “That our very own Jim Halpert will be returning to our branch!”



Pam inhaled sharply and covered her mouth. She tried to regain her composure when she noticed Phyllis watching her, but when Pam saw the understanding look on Phyllis’ face, and the smile that lurked in the corners of her mouth, Pam couldn’t help but smile back. Kelly bounced up and down while clapping her hands, thrilled that her plan worked. Dwight began to pound his desk and declare this decision “outrageous!”, while demanding to speak to Michael about it in private.



Pam just looked down at her clasped hands, and at her bare left ring finger. She didn’t realize it, but she was grinning like a fool.



xXxXxXxXx



Jim entered his front door, closed it behind him and leaned against it heavily, his eyes closed and his face turned skyward. His hands felt greasy from the popcorn at the movie theatre, and he went to his kitchen sink to wash them.



He couldn’t help but think that he had never felt like this after spending time with Pam. When he was with Pam, he never tired of her company, or thought of someone else. Stop it, stop it, STOP IT! Jim told himself furiously, splashing some water on his face. He just couldn’t keep comparing Karen to Pam, it simply wasn’t fair.



And for all intents and purposes, he and Karen should get along really well. And to be honest, they did. She laughed at all the right times, and she didn’t talk to much during the movie. When he had dropped her off and she had invited him in for some coffee and he had declined, she didn’t push it.



But while her sarcastic quips had made him smile, and sometimes grin, she had never made him laugh out loud. When he laughed genuinely, his eyes opened wide as if he was surprised by his own response, and his laughter came from deep in his diaphragm, causing his stomach muscles to clench. But Karen had yet to make him laugh like that.



Despite this, he was not ready to give up on their relationship. She had already said she was coming to Scranton. He couldn’t admit to himself that he was using her, using her as armor from what awaited him in that office in Pennsylvania.



Jim wandered over to his kitchen counter, and glanced at the calendar on the wall. There was day, a week from that night, that was circled with a red sharpie, like you saw sometimes in the movies. Always counting down to some kind of apocalypse, some kind of enormous change. He hadn’t written down what was to happen that day, because he needed no reminder. He didn’t even need the calendar, really; his mind was obsessively following the passage of time between then and “The Day” that was still a week away.



XXxXxXxXx



Roy sat in his living room (what used to be their living room), sipping on a beer. He had sat down with the intention of watching the football game that was now blaring on the TV, but he instead found himself staring at the framed picture that was propped up on the table next to him. It was of him and Pam, and he couldn’t help but try to analyze it. Was her smile genuine, or forced? He had never taken the time to notice when they were together. He stared into her eyes, hoping they would reveal to him some kind of secret. Had she still loved him then? When had she stopped?



Roy was jerked from his contemplative state when his phone rang, the bars of his ringtone jumbled and confused when thrown into the football game’s loud commentary. He set down his beer and fumbled for a moment before he managed to slip his phone from his pocket. Seeing Darryl’s number, he picked up, muttering “What’s up?”



“Yo man,” Darryl said, something in his voice strained. “I got some news for you.”



“Darryl…” Roy said, exhausted “Not right now man, I gotta just-”



“Hey, hey, just listen up man.” Darryl took a breath. “I was getting’ some coffee from up in the office earlier, and I heard that Indian chick talking to her boy toy. Yo, Halpert made a move on your girl in May, on that casino night.” Roy felt his heart begin to pound as his jaw clenched. “I just can’t help but wonder if this has got anything to do with how your wedding went down.” Darryl sighed, not enjoying the fact that he had to be the one to deliver this news. He knew Roy was still in a shaky spot, and he had really liked Pam. But it just wasn’t cool for a girl to play his boy like that.



“Roy?” Darryl asked after Roy hadn’t spoken for a minute. “I hear Halpert’s coming back in a week. You want me to get some of the guys together talk to him?”



Roy knew what Darryl meant by that, but something about just having some of his friends rough up Jim wasn’t satisfactory. Roy had trusted Jim, trusted him to take care of his fiancé. And he had abused that. “That’s okay Darryl.” Roy said in a startlingly monotone voice. “I’ll think of something.”