Danger : Contents Under Pressure
Series Title: warning_labels
Series Authors: annakovsky, honey_wheeler, kyrafic, and obsession_inc
Chapter Title: Danger : Contents Under Pressure
Chapter Authors: honey_wheeler (with an assist from annakovsky)
Fandom: The Office (US)
Pairing: Jim/Pam
Rating: NC-17
Words: 10,700
Summary: Alternate Universe series, set during season 2, from Halloween on.
Author’s Note: 12 chapters. 16 episodes. 4 authors. Over 70,000 words. 2 years and 10 months. A dash of drama. Ladies and gentlemen(man? Is there just the one of you?), after some last minute rescheduling of authors, I am happy to bring you the long-brewing, last and final installment of warning_labels. Enjoy. And the first person who asks if we’re going to continue with Season 3 is going to get pummeled. Seriously.

As always, annakovsky, kyrafic, and obsession_inc are all things bright and beautiful.



Casino Night, Part 2 : Danger : Contents Under Pressure




Four days. That’s the longest she and Roy have gone without really speaking in the past. After he left her at the hockey game on their first date, she wouldn’t take his calls for three days. He refused to say a word to her for a day after she drunkenly told him she thought his mom was tacky for wearing white to someone else’s wedding. The four-day record was hit when he, in turn, drunkenly hit on her cousin at a different wedding.

They’re going on close to a week now without saying any more than the odd hello and goodbye and whatever, tiny words that don’t even come close to covering everything they should be saying. When she’d gotten home from the Wedding Warehouse, the house had been empty. He didn’t even come home on Sunday. The first time she saw him after they fought was Monday morning when she came into the kitchen to get coffee, but they’d both just mumbled at each other and spent the ride to work in silence. Now, somehow, it’s stretched out to the next weekend. No discussion, no conversation, no confrontation. It’s not even because they’re angry at each other, she doesn’t think. They just…don’t seem to know what to say.

“Are things still bumpy between you two?” her mother asks when she calls Friday night.

“I guess.” Pam supposes bumpy is close enough. She’d only told her mother that they were having some disagreements. Telling her that they’ve barely spoken in almost a week is too daunting. “I was hoping he’d help me do stuff for the wedding this weekend, but it’s not looking like he’ll have time.” Or like we’ll be on speaking terms.

“Is there any way I can help?”

“Do you know any good seamstresses? I need to have those rips I told you about in the dress fixed.”

“Pam, don’t be silly, a seamstress will cost you an arm and a leg. Come over tomorrow and spend the night, I’ll fix it for you.”

“Oh, could you?” Pam asks in a flood of relief. “That would be fantastic, Mom.”

“Of course. What are mothers for?”

*****

Roy’s not home again. He’s been off with his brother somewhere since Thursday, his truck sitting in the driveway with the keys tucked above the driver’s side sun visor. She was supposed to leave for her parents’ house an hour ago but she didn’t want to leave without at least telling him she’d be gone for the night with the car. When noon comes and goes and he still hasn’t shown up, she starts hunting for a post-it. The note she leaves for him reads, “Gone to parents’, mother repairing dress, back tomorrow with the truck.”

It’s nice to be in the car by herself. The air blowing through the open window is cool and a little wet, definitely spring-like. Outside the car window, the trees are just starting to get leaves, their branches laced with pale green. Soon it’ll be summer. Somehow the season changing makes her feel like maybe she can change too, that this whole fall and winter were some kind of horrible aberration, a Pam she doesn’t really know making all the decisions.

Her father’s waiting for her at the curb when she pulls up. Knowing him, he puttered around in the front yard until he could hear her car turn the corner so he would know when she was there. She waves at him through the window as he lifts out her overnight bag out of the back even before she cuts the engine.

“Hi Dad,” she says. She comes around the hood of the car, the garment bag holding her new wedding dress draped over her arm, and they give each other one-armed hugs.

“Hi sweetheart, how was the drive?”

“Good.” She follows him up the walk. It’s always a little like entering a time warp when she comes home. No matter how different she feels, the house is always the same.

“Your mom’s in the kitchen,” he says as he sets her bag on the floor in front of the stairs. “We have to leave for Jersey by three so don’t you let her get too distracted.”

“Jersey?” she asks, momentarily confused. “Ohh, right, the Wiederman wedding. I forgot that was this weekend.”

“Well so did your mother,” her father grumbles good-naturedly. “The woman needs to have her datebook tattooed on her arm.”

“I heard that!” her mother’s voice calls from the kitchen. Pam’s father rolls his eyes skyward and sighs dramatically. Pam only laughs and hefts the dress in her arms on her way into the kitchen.

******

“How on earth did this happen?” her mother asks, peering through her bifocals at the biggest tear and frowning. “Wherever you got this, they don’t take very good care of their merchandise.” Pam just shrugs, trying very hard to look nonchalant.

“It was discounted,” she points out. “And I was desperate. I wasn’t about to complain.”

“That’s the problem with you,” her mother says absently. “You never complain when you should.”

The mild criticism hits home too deeply. Pam fiddles with her keys, ignores the pricking behind her eyelids. Her mother doesn’t notice, though, and keeps chattering away, telling Pam about the wedding and how scandalous it is that Amy Wiederman is marrying someone she only met two months ago and who’s clearly a mobster, ask anyone.

“I’ll tell you, it makes me glad that Roy’s a part of the family. No nasty surprises.” Pam can only smile and nod weakly. God, her mother would be disgusted with her if she knew what she was doing. And Pam would deserve it. Roy is a part of the family and she’s been treating him like garbage.

“Mom?”

“Hmm?” Her mother doesn’t look up from her needle. Pam knows she’s listening, though.

“Did you ever wonder if marrying Dad was the right thing to do?”

“Of course I did,” she says. “I almost called the whole thing off a few times. And even after we were married, I had my doubts. I went to live with my sister for four months just before you were born.” She says it all so matter-of-factly, like she isn’t completely demolishing Pam’s personal mythology where her parents never fought, never questioned, always knew they were meant to be together.

“Oh.” Pam’s not even sure what to say.

“We had to work on things,” her mother continues, knotting the thread and severing it with her teeth before tackling another rip. “We still have to work on things. Marriages are like houseplants.”

“I’m sorry, did you just compare a marriage to a fern?”

“Yes. Well, not a fern, but maybe a ficus. The point is, you grow up thinking plants just grow, but they need work. They need sunlight and food and water, and if you’re not careful you can kill them. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.”

“So my relationship with Roy is like a ficus and it won’t survive if we don’t nurture it,” she says.

“Exactly.”

Suddenly it hits Pam in a rush, how much it’s going to break her heart to call things off with Jim. The knowledge that she has to do it has been crystallizing for a while, but she’s been avoiding it, allowing herself the luxury of ignorance. It’s a luxury she doesn’t have anymore.

*****

“Now, are you sure you don’t want us to stay?” her mother is saying, even as Pam’s father holds out her coat for her to shrug into. “Thank you, dear. We can cancel, Pam, we don’t have to go.”

“No, Mom, don’t be silly.” Pam waves her hand as she trails out the door after them to stand on the front stoop. “You go. I’ll be fine here, really. I can wrestle the seating chart into submission.”

“All right, as long as you’re sure. I left a twenty on the kitchen counter so you can order a pizza.”

“Mother,” Pam says with a roll of her eyes. “I am perfectly capable of getting my own dinner.”

“I know, sweetie, the number for Palermo’s is on the fridge.”

Pam sighs in defeat. “Okay, Mom.” She wraps her sweater more tightly around her waist with both hands as she watches them climb into the car and shut the doors. The car backs up the drive and onto the street, her father driving at his usual glacial speed. “They’re going to take the entire weekend to get there,” she says to herself before turning to head inside.

She’s wrestling with the seating chart when Jim calls. It’s a deceptively complicated task requiring ridiculous levels of logic to figure out who should sit where. She’s so absorbed that the vibration of the phone startles her and she drops her pencil. She stares at the phone for a long minute, not sure whether to answer.

“Hey,” he says when she finally picks up. “What are you doing?”

“I’m at my parents’ house. My mother’s fixing the, um. The rips in the dress.”

“The dress?” he asks in confusion. “The rips in wha- Oh. Oh, the dress.”

“Yeah,” she answers. “They had a wedding in Newark today, they’re gone for the night. She’s going to finish when they get back tomorrow.”

“Oh.” He pauses on the other end of the line.

“What’s up?” she asks, after he still doesn’t say anything.

“There’s just…I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Okay. I wanted to talk to you too.” She’d been hoping to put it off, but maybe him calling now is a sign. No time like the present to dump the guy you’re cheating on your fiancé with and all that.

He inhales audibly but doesn’t speak. The silence stretches out interminably. She’s holding her breath, waiting for him to talk, to cough, to do something. A voice in her head sternly tells her to just say it, get it over with, make it clean and quick to minimize suffering. Though maybe that’s what you do when a horse has a broken leg? Good grief. Even the inside of her head has stopped making sense. It’s just that Pam’s never had to break up with anyone in her entire life so she doesn’t even know where to start. She only knows she can’t do it over the phone.

“Come over,” she says on an impulse. “We can talk here.”

“Are you sure?” he asks, surprised.

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Yeah, okay, I can do that.”

“Just take route 6 to Salem Road and call when you hit Church Street. I’ll give you directions from there.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll see you in a little bit.”

“Okay,” she says again. The phone disconnects with a beep. Hopefully in the next half hour she can figure out the best way to break up with someone.

*****

She’d planned on telling him right away. Really, she had. It’s just a hard thing to say and there’s never a good time. “I think we should stop seeing each other,” doesn’t exactly fall right into place after, “So how was the drive?”

She’d even opened her mouth intending full well to say it after they sat on the couch, but instead heard herself asking if he wanted to watch a movie or something. And once they were watching the movie, well…there wasn’t a whole lot of talking going on. It was almost like déjà vu, actually. The slouching, the touching, the arm along the back of the couch; the last time she was sitting on this couch with a boy it was pretty much the same process.

Soon the movie is drowned out by the sound of their breathing, by the rustle of fabric and the clatter of the remote hitting the floor when she accidentally kicks it off the table. She can’t remember the last time she made out like this, like a teenager, with no thought of sex, no thought of stopping, no thought of anything other than the present. But the present only lasts so long. Soon enough that voice is back in her head, reminding her of what she has to do, of what she’s been putting off because she can’t imagine not feeling the way he makes her feel just once more.

“We should probably stop,” she finally says when they come up for air. The clock on the ancient VCR is broken, blinking, but she knows they’ve been at it for hours.

“But I just got to second base,” Jim protests, burying his face against her neck. She laughs and lets herself tangle her fingers in his hair. He sighs and raises his head. “I guess I should get going if I’m gonna to make it back to Scranton tonight.”

“I guess so,” she whispers. He sighs again and bumps his nose against hers before pushing to his feet. Her knees are shaky as she stands and hits the power button on the television, plunging the house into quiet. Jim doesn’t look too steady himself. That’s the forgotten drawback to marathon make-out sessions: acute sexual frustration.

She trails after him as he moves towards the kitchen, shoes dangling from his hand. She’d switched off the light earlier and now he’s just a dark shape moving in front of her, barely illuminated by the light filtering through the curtains. When she moves in front of him to flip on the light switch, he reaches his hand over her shoulder and stops her. Frozen, she waits, half dreading what he’ll do and half aching for it. She can feel him behind her, his breath on the nape of her neck. The skin there tightens, anticipating his touch. She should stop him. This can’t go on, they have to face reality. Better to rip the bandage off all at once than inch by excruciating inch. But selfishly, she finds she can’t do it yet. She needs to feel like this just a little longer, to burn it in her memory before she gives it all up. To say goodbye. His shoes drop to the floor with a thump.

“Pam,” he breathes when she softens and leans back against his chest. The hours spent on the couch have her body humming like a plucked violin string. When he flips open the button of her pants and slides down the zipper, she’s just about ready to explode. She has to brace herself with her hands against the wall in front of her to keep from collapsing.

“Jim.” She tries to say his name but it’s only a squeak. He teases at first, his fingertip drifting in light circles over the fabric of her underwear, close enough to where she needs him to be maddening. She reaches behind her head to clutch at his hair, his ears, anything she can reach. Those maddening fingers circle, stop, torment her.

“Stop,” she begs him, desperate.

“You want me to stop?” he asks, teasing.

“I want your hands on me.”

“My hands are on you,” he reminds her.

“Don’t be a jerk,” she orders him. He doesn’t answer, just slips his fingers under the fabric and presses them into her. Her mouth is open, soundless.

Abruptly, he pulls his hand away, the pressure of his chest disappearing, and she almost collapses at the sudden lack of support. Dazed, she grabs at the wall, only to find herself being spun around, her back pressed against the wall as he kneels to yank her pants down her legs somewhat less than gently, her underwear following in short order. The sound he makes when his tongue touches her is the most erotic thing she’s ever heard in her life. And she’ll probably never hear it again.

She ignores the tears that spring to her mind at the thought, forcing herself to concentrate on the feel of his hands on her body, the rough scrape of his five o’clock shadow on the inside of her thigh. She doesn’t even notice that one leg is hooked over his back and that he’s basically supporting her weight entirely with his shoulders until she feels him hitch her up into a better position.

Last time, last time, a voice chants in her head, and it’s all she can do not to break down sobbing.

A high-pitched noise swells in her throat when she comes, shuddering so hard that she feels like she might break apart into a million pieces. Jim lets her slide down the wall to the floor as her body shakes with aftershocks. It’s too much for a second, she feels too sensitive and vulnerable to have him so close, and she pushes him away with her heel. She’s still got her shirt on. He’s fully dressed.

“Stand up,” she tells him. He only hesitates a moment before obeying. Now she’s the one on her knees, freeing the buttons on the fly of his jeans and tugging them down his legs. She covers him with her hand, rubs his dick through his boxers. He exhales unsteadily, bracing his hands against the wall above her, eyes closed in pain or pleasure or some combination of the two.

He starts trembling at the first touch of her tongue, starts shaking in earnest when she opens her mouth wide and takes as much of him in as she can manage. His hips buck once, as if he can’t quite control it. The motion forces her head back sharply; she would have smacked her head into the wall if he hadn’t shifted his hand down to cushion it. “Pam,” he says when he comes, sounding hoarse and spent and reverent as he jerks against her. “Fuck, Pam.”

She sits back on her heels, drags the back of her hand over her mouth. His arms are stretched over her head, palms flat on the wall still, breathing hard. They don’t say anything. Not when she stands, not when he lifts her up against him and carries her up the stairs and into her childhood bedroom.

Roy wasn’t allowed up here when they were in high school, through some combination of her father’s rules and her own reservations about letting him see her Anne of Green Gables books, her stuffed animals, the dolls she couldn’t bring herself to get rid off, even though she hadn’t played with them in years. She would have expected Jim to look out of place, but he doesn’t.

The bed squeaks when he sets her on it. It’s narrow and unsteady and too firm, like no one’s slept on it in years, which she supposes is true. She keeps hers eyes open the whole time, watching him strip away their clothes, rummage in his wallet for a condom. Watching his eyes go loose and unfocused when he slides into her. She keeps her eyes open for all of it. If she blinks, she might miss it.

******
******

“Is this copy of OK Computer mine or yours?”

Jim looks up at Mark, who’s holding a scuffed CD case in his hand. They’re both surrounded by packing boxes. It’s ridiculous how much stuff they’ve accumulated in the years they’ve lived here.

“Yours,” he answers. “Mine is already packed.”

“Okay,” Mark says. He tosses the CD into the open box next to him, the box marked “Keep.”

“You’re keeping a lot of stuff,” Jim warns. “I don’t think your girlfriend’s gonna like that.”

“Hey,” Mark says. “Love me, love my shit.”

“Didn’t Sarah specifically tell you that you weren’t allowed to move in unless you threw away all the ugly crap?”

“This is not ugly crap, Jim,” Mark says, holding up a chipped plaster Buddha statue with the words “Kiss me, I’m Buddhist!” scrawled in black sharpie across its round belly. “This is a precious memory. Sarah will understand. Besides, she has to take me in now that you’re abandoning me.”

“True.” Jim's copy of the lease for his new place in Stamford had come in the mail a couple of days ago. He’d unfolded it, straightened out the creases with a knuckle, and stared at it. June 1, 2006 to May 31, 2007, his name signed in black. It's official. 2007 seems so far in the future that he kind of can’t believe it exists. It almost feels fictional, like something out of a Bradbury novel.

“Have you told Pam?”

Jim inhales sharply. “No, I haven’t told her yet. I keep trying to, but…” He trails off, staring sightlessly at the half-full box in front of him. He’d meant to tell her when he called the other weekend, and then he meant to tell her when he went to her parents’ house. Hell, he practiced the whole speech on the drive there. He’d had the best of intentions. Only somewhere between his car and her parents’ couch, those intentions got lost. And now here he is, days away from moving and he still hasn’t told her.

Putting it off only makes it worse, he’s not so self-deluded he doesn’t realize that. It just never seems like the right time. Which is bullshit, he knows, there is no right time, he just knows that telling her will pull the trigger, and he won’t be able to pretend anymore that maybe, maybe…

“It doesn’t matter, we were over anyway.” He’s telling himself that as much as he’s telling Mark.

“It was for the best, Jim, you had to end things.”

Jim doesn’t bother correcting him. He doesn’t say that Pam was the one who ended things. That they’d gone to breakfast that next morning after he spent the night with her in her old bedroom. That she’d sadly, gently, apologetically ripped his heart out over black coffee and hashbrowns. That she’d cried and looked so miserable that he couldn’t even be selfishly glad about how hard it was for her, or annoyed that she’d beat him to the punch before he could break things off first. Mostly he’s been trying not to think about it at all, but he can’t seem to help himself. It’s like a bruise he can’t resist poking, a loose tooth he can’t stop wiggling with his tongue until it hurts.

“Is this trash?” Mark asks. He holds up a battered shoebox. Jim’s heart practically stops when he sees it. He has no idea how it got out here. Before he can say anything, Mark flips open the lid and paws through the contents.

“No, don’t worry about that, here, I’ll take it.” Jim crosses the room, tries to grab the box, but Mark holds it away from him as he reaches into the box and starts laughing.

“What the fuck?” Mark holds up a pair of ripped underwear. Pam’s ripped underwear. Mark arches one eyebrow. “Is there something you need to tell me, Jim? Are you really moving to Stamford to pursue your alternative lifestyle?”

“No,” Jim grits out through clenched teeth. He reaches for the fabric and pulls it away from Mark. He’s just not sure what to do with it once he’s got it. Pack it in a different box? Put it in his pocket? Wear it on his head so he can look as idiotic as he feels?

“Maybe you should go up a size next time,” Mark suggests. “So you don’t rip them.”

“Shut up,” Jim growls. He wrenches the box out of Mark’s hands and holds it protectively to his chest. Mark puts his hands on Jim’s shoulders, looks him in the eye.

“I accept you, Jim,” he intones with mock sincerity. “I accept you.”

Jim waits until Mark’s gone over to Sarah’s before he pulls the box out again. He hasn’t really looked through it in a while and he’s a little afraid of what he might find. He lifts the lid and starts sifting through the contents. There’s the underwear. The black paper circles, edges curled and crumpled, that he’d been wearing as Three-Hole-Punch Jim on Halloween when she first kissed him. Oh God, there’s even the little plastic car from the night they played Life and there was that brief shining moment when he thought she’d meant it when she said she loved him. The box is full almost to bursting, with tickets, post-its covered in her handwriting, yogurt lid medals and paper doves. A box filled with artifacts from his pathetic, lonely life.

“I’m a stalker,” he says out loud to himself, his voice filled with horror. “A creepy stalker. I might as well make a Pam suit and dance around in it.” As he sits and stares at the things spread around him on the floor, he wonders if he was ever just her friend. If there was ever a point where he wasn’t lying in wait and biding his time. The thought alone makes him feel like a complete jerk. She’s been his best friend for years and he’s been a fucking opportunist, waiting for her guard to slip, taking any swipe at Roy that he could. And now he only has a couple of weeks to see her every day before he moves three states away. He only has a couple of weeks left to really be her friend.

“Well,” he says to himself. “No time like the present.”

He gathers everything and puts it carefully back into the box and closes the lid. All of the inside trash cans are full, so he goes outside and around the side of the house to the bins. The scraps of paper flutter in little circles when he upends the box over one of the bins, like falling leaves. He tosses the box in after, tips the lid down with a bang. It’s funny, but he feels a little lighter.

*****

“So this is mostly a formality,” Toby says when Jim comes into the conference room and shuts the door behind him. “It’s not really an exit interview, but they like us to go through the motions when someone transfers, just to make sure everything’s on the level.”

“Sure,” Jim nods. He’s kind of glad of it, actually. It makes this more real. No backing out now, Jimbo. They go through Toby’s list of questions, what was most satisfying about your job, what was least satisfying about your job, what would you change about your job. Jim gives diplomatic answers where he can, keeps it short and sweet where he can’t. Toby scribbles notes and looks at him with that hangdog look on his face. It feels weird. Jim shouldn’t be able to sum up years of his life in a few simple sentences. A knock on the door makes both of them jump.

“Toby, Jan’s on line two for you, she needs those numbers she called about earlier,” Pam’s says when Toby cracks open the door. He thanks her, turns back to Jim.

“I need to go get something for Jan at my desk. Just read over the rest of the questions, I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Alright,” Jim says. He slides the paper towards him with a fingertip. Pam looks at him curiously through the glass after Toby shuts the door on his way out. Jim only gives her a noncommittal smile and looks down at the paper. Toby had clearly saved the hardest questions for last. What is your primary reason for leaving? Did anything trigger your reason to leave? Jim can’t see any diplomatic way to answer either of those and still be honest. His eyes drift up and search Pam out through the glass. She’s punching buttons on the copier, shuffling through stacks of paper. He watches her until the door opens and Toby comes back into the room.

“Okay,” he says, settling back down at the table. “Where were we?” Jim glances him, then looks back down at the paper.

“I’m not sure I really want to answer some of these questions,” he says at length.

“Sure,” Toby says quietly. Understandingly. “I think I have enough anyway, we can probably stop now. You sure you don’t want me to say something to everyone?” Jim had asked Toby not to let anyone know that he’d be leaving.

“No. I’d rather do it myself.” As soon as he figures out how to do it.

“Okay Jim. I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for in Stamford.” Toby claps him on the shoulder as he stands. Jim’s a little surprised at how sad it makes him. He’s going to miss Toby. Here he’d been going along, thinking the only thing he’d be leaving was Pam.

“Thanks, Toby.” Jim waits until Toby leaves the room. Pam’s still at the copier, a look of frustration on her face. He can’t lie, the future’s looking pretty bleak. “I hope so too,” he says under his breath.

*****

Jim nurses his beer and looks around the warehouse. The place looks like Dunder-Mifflin prom, complete with second-rate decorations and folding card tables barely disguised by cheap tablecloths. He can see Pam across the room in a blue dress, her hair done up. She's beautiful, and for a moment he has a flash of memory, her in her wedding dress, glowing, smiling at him, her skin hot against his. For the millionth time, he wishes he’d known that the last time he kissed her was the last time he’d ever get to kiss her. But then the crowd shifts and he can see Roy beside her, the two of them laughing over something. And there's reality again, hitting him like the gut punch it always is. He goes to get another beer.

He's sitting at a table with Ryan, having a distracted conversation about the Phillies, but mostly watching Pam across the room as she talks to Oscar. I am in love with you, he thinks at her. He's said this silently to her so many times, his fantasy life over the past few months going back and forth between her responding, "I love you too," and dumping Roy, or her looking embarrassed and letting him down gently, dumping him instead.

Well, she's already dumped him. So he didn't even have to say it to find out how she'd respond. It's funny how he wishes he'd said it anyway, wishes he'd had the balls.

"... don't you think?" Ryan finishes. Jim thinks he was talking about batting order.

"Oh," Jim says. "Yeah, definitely."

Ryan looks at him with that dubious tired look, like he knows Jim wasn't listening and like he knows why. It makes Jim feel squirmy. He excuses himself and goes to get another drink.

He’s settled down at a poker table, next to Bob Vance, when Michael interrupts them to introduce the evening. As Michael says, "Lady Fortune is your boss," Pam catches Jim's eye from across the table and smirks at him with suppressed amusement. He smiles at her and thinks he'll be okay soon. Soon he'll be gone. It doesn’t feel like that’ll make him okay at the moment, but it will. It has to.

*****

Jim runs into Pam and Roy in the parking lot, as Roy’s about to drive off in his truck. Roy says something about how Jim should take care of Pam, and it takes basically all of Jim’s self-restraint not to say, “You have no idea, buddy.”

After talking to Jan, Jim’s been psyching himself up to tell Pam about the transfer. He’s just got to do it right now, before he has time to lose his nerve, while he’s got her alone and the cameras don’t seem to be around. He might not get a chance, he thinks, as he watches Roy’s truck turn out of the parking lot and drive away.

“Hey, uh, can I talk to you about something?” he says to Pam. He can’t quite think how to phrase it, how to tell her he’s going to Stamford, that he already has an apartment, even.

Pam’s so happy, grinning and teasing him about taking all his money at poker. She’s glowing, all big eyes and rosy cheeks, and he loves her. He takes a step closer without meaning to, still thinking about the transfer, but instead he hears himself say, “I’m in love with you.”

Pam goes rigid with surprise, the smile fading from her face. “What?” she says.

Well, fuck, the cat’s out of the bag now, but it’s almost a relief, finally having the contents of his head out there in the open, being honest for the first time in a long time.

He keeps talking, not even totally aware of what he’s saying, hardly able to hear himself over the sound of his own heart pounding. Pam looks like she’s in shock, and says all the things he’d imagined in his worst case scenarios. She tells him she values him as a friend, for chrissakes. But what did he expect? She already dumped him. He doesn’t know why he insists in going down in so very many flames.

He walks purposefully around the side of the building, around to where the bathrooms are in the warehouse. He goes into the far stall in the men’s room and leans against the wall, closing his eyes to try to get a grip on himself. He’s shaking all over. Fuck. Fuck.

He fumbles his phone out of his pocket and texts Mark, “Told Pam I love her. She said she’s sorry.” Then he flips it closed and puts it away again. Fuck.

He takes deep breaths, counting them. One. Two. Three. Four. Then, finally feeling like he’s mostly under control, he flushes the toilet and goes to wash his hands, splashing some water on his face for good measure.

His phone beeps, and when he flips it open, there’s a text from Mark. “wtf! what! why? what happened? why do you text me these things all cryptically you asshole?” Jim flips the phone closed again.

He has to go find Pam and tell her not to worry about things being awkward, that he’s going to transfer. That should make her feel better, anyway. And anyway, he can’t leave without telling her. It feels like some weird badge of honor now, to tell her everything. He already told her he loves her. He might as well finish the job.

*****
*****

Jim told her he loves her. Jim told her he loves her. Pam can’t quite process it. What? And what did she even say? It was like she was running on autopilot for those two minutes, like some corner of her brain she wasn’t even aware existed had taken over to give replies out of habit while the rest of her brain freaked the heck out. He loves her? Since when does he love her?

And why is he telling her this now? She’s been working so hard on fixing things with Roy. Things still aren’t quite right, but they’re better and she’s almost gotten herself convinced that everything’s going to be fine, and then Jim does this? It’s like the entire last year of her life has suddenly turned one click to the right, all the pieces shifting and shuffling until nothing is what she thought it was.

Without knowing where she was going, she’s made her way up to the office where it’s quiet and dark. She stands next to Jim’s desk, looking at the picture of his nephews, all the family she’s never met. The little odds and ends of Jim’s work, one of the yogurt medals she made for the Office Olympics hanging over his lamp. Oh God, he loves her.

Eventually, she does the only thing she can think to do; she calls her mom. Because the two other people she would immediately want to talk to are…Jim and Roy. Not gonna happen.

Her mother doesn’t have anything helpful to offer when Pam gives her the short version, skipping over the secret sex and focusing instead on Jim’s declaration of love. All her mother can say is, “What are you going to do?” If Pam knew what she was going to do, she wouldn’t have needed to call in the first place. God, her brain feels like it got dropped in a blender. When she sees movement in the hallway, her heart drops. The last thing she needs is a camera crew finding her with a tear-streaked face. The fact that it’s Jim makes it ten times worse.

“Um, I have to go,” she tells her mother.

“Call me back!” her mother says.

“I will.” The phone clicks in the cradle as she sets it down. Jim is walking towards her and she has no idea what he’s going to say or do. She has no idea what she’s going to say or do. She doesn’t expect him to kiss her but that’s exactly what he’s doing.

The kiss makes her dizzy. She has to remind herself to breathe. Her hands betray her, lifting to tangle in his hair, and she lets it go on longer than she should. When they break apart there’s so much desperate hope in his face that it’s killing her.

“I thought I’d never get to do that again,” he says.

“Same here,” she has to admit.

“Pam, come away with me.” He says it in a rush, like he’s afraid he’ll chicken out if he doesn’t.

“Jim, I- wait, away?” She stares at him in confusion. This is a new wrinkle. He looks at her almost sheepishly.

“I’m moving to Stamford.”

“Stamford!” He nods. She drops her hands.

“I put in for a transfer. I figured there was…nothing for me here.” Her brows knit and she feels a pang in her ribcage. She steps back from him almost involuntarily, her hands clutched in front of her stomach.

“Was it after I…after the weekend at my parents’?” God, she’d been worried about him not wanting to speak to her afterwards, not about him fleeing the state.

“No,” he says quickly. “It was…actually it was before that. I was, um.” He laughs mirthlessly, a sharp exhalation. “I was actually going to break up with you, but you beat me to it.”

“Oh my God.” She starts laughing in earnest now, she can’t help it. Except it sounds strange and awful and completely joyless. “Jesus, this is all such a mess.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” he tells her urgently. “Come with me. I’ve got an apartment in Stamford, we can-”

“Jim,” she starts, but he obviously knows what she’s going to say, judging by the look on his face.

“You won’t do it,” he says flatly.

“I can’t.” Not right now. The words pop into her head unbidden, but she tamps them down. It’s a kneejerk reaction, she tells herself. It’s fear. That’s all. She wants to make it work with Roy. She does.

“You could,” he insists, his voice quiet and small. “You could if you wanted to.” She ignores the buzzing that starts up in her head at his words.

“Jim, you’re my best friend.”

“I guess that’s just not enough for me,” he says. “I wish it were.” He scrubs his hand across his face, wearily, apologetically. He looks like he’s aged ten years in the last half hour.

I’m sor-” she starts, but he stops her with a raised hand.

“Don’t,” he begs. “Please don’t. I get it, okay? Just… Have a good life, all right? Be happy.” The words are like a knife in her heart. And then he’s out the door and gone before she can even react. She makes it three minutes before she starts to cry.

*****

She walks through the front door in a daze. She doesn’t remember calling a cab or giving him her address, she doesn’t even remember paying. She’s just suddenly standing on the curb in front of the house, staring at the front door as the cab pulls away.

“Oh hey, you’re home.” Roy looks over his shoulder and raises his beer in greeting when she walks inside. “I picked up some take-out.”

“We ate at the casino thing,” she says dumbly. Nothing is making much sense right now.

“That frou-frou stuff they have always leaves me hungry,” Roy answers. “I got Wong’s. On the kitchen counter.” She frowns at the back of his head in confusion.

“I thought we decided not to get Wong’s anymore after it made me sick.”

“No, that was Madame Lu’s.”

“No, it was definitely Wong’s” she tells him. “I had a lot of time to think about it while I was lying on the bathroom floor praying for death.”

“Well, sorry.” She’s tired and upset and more irritated by it than she should be. It’s just…really, Wong’s? He couldn’t have remembered? She’d puked her guts out for five hours, she would have thought that might make an impression. Forget it, she tells herself. Let it go. It’s hardly the worst thing to happen tonight.

“Everything okay?” he asks. She blinks, tried to focus on his face.

“I’m fine,” she says. It feels like the biggest lie she’s ever told in her life. There aren’t many things that could make her less fine than she already is.

“Hey, I told Kevin that Scrantonicity could play the wedding.”

Except that.

“You what?”

“Scrantonicity,” he says. “I booked them for the wedding.”

“Scrantonicity,” she says. She must have misheard him. There’s no way he could have seriously suggested such a thing. He notices the edge in her voice and looks at her uneasily.

“The Police cover band.”

“I know which one it is,” she says sharply, “it was more disbelief than a question.”

“What the hell’s wrong with them?” He’s gone straight from cautious to angry in, like, sixty seconds. Good. Now they’re both upset.

“They’re a Police cover band,” she says. “I thought you’d pick something else, like the swing band or those guys who play Motown stuff.”

“Well if you knew who you wanted me to pick why didn’t you just pick the band yourself?” he demands.

“I didn’t think I would have to tell you not to pick Kevin.”

“Right, ‘cause I’m the big dummy with no taste.”

“Roy, that’s not what I-”

“Just forget it, pick whoever you want, Pam. I don’t really care anyway. I don’t care about any of this shit.” He jabs angrily at the buttons on the remote, like he’s having the fight with the television instead of her.

“You’ve made that pretty clear,” she shoots back hotly, irritation overriding guilt.

“Great, one more thing to add to the list of stuff I fuck up.” He stands, draining his beer and throwing the empty bottle down onto the table with a clatter. She wants to apologize. She wants to tell him that she’s allowed to be mad sometimes. She wants to tell him that she turned Jim down because she’s trying to make this work. She wants to scream. He stomps past her and starts yanking on his jacket at the front door.

“Could you not walk away from an argument again?” she says in frustration. Is he always just going to leave when things get bad? “Roy, stop it, where are you going?”

“To my brother’s. I’ll see you later.” A gust of cool air hits her when he jerks the door open.

“Roy, I’m-” The slam of the door cuts her off. She presses the heels of her hands into her eyelids, hard, until she sees paisley. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK,” she says, her voice rising into a shout. Why won’t anything go back to normal? Or, oh God, what if this is normal? The very thought makes her feel ill and she actually wonders for a second if she’s going to have to make a run for the bathroom. And she hasn’t even eaten the damned Chinese food this time. Conveniently, her cellphone starts ringing from the depths of her purse. “Fuck,” she says again, for good measure, then digs through everything to find it.

“Hello?”

“Hi sweetie, what happened?” Her mother’s voice is concerned on the other end of the line. Pam can barely stand it. “You didn’t call back.”

“I’m sorry, I forgot. Jim’s moving to Stamford.” Saying it out loud makes it real all over again. She fists her hand and presses it against her stomach, hard. “He wanted me to go with him. I turned him down and he left. I don’t even know when he’s moving.”

“Oh, Pam.”

“And then I came home and got in a fight with Roy, and he just stormed out,” she says. “We were having an argument and he walked out in the middle of it.” Again.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” Pam says and her voice wobbles dangerously. “We just keep fighting. All we ever do anymore is fight and I think I’ll have to kill myself if this is what my life is going to be for the next fifty years.”

“Oh, honey, you sound so unhappy.”

“I am unhappy and I don’t understand why,” Pam says, fighting to keep her voice even, to keep the tears in check. Her fingers are wrapped so tightly around her phone that her knuckles are starting to hurt. “I care about Roy. I love him. This is what I’ve been wanting for years, isn’t it? Isn’t this just cold feet? Why do I feel like I’m doing everything wrong? Why do I feel sick to my stomach every morning? What am I doing wrong?”

Her mother is quiet for a while, as if she’s trying to figure out what to say. “Pamela,” she says finally, and Pam knows she means business if she’s using her full name. “Remember what I said about relationships being like plants?”

“Yes.” Pam’s heart sinks. She knows her mother is right, that she just needs to keep working on things with Roy, she needs to make them work.

“Well sometimes plants die and all the water in the world won’t bring them back to life.” The words pull Pam up short and she blinks.

“Oh.”

“Honey, it’s okay not to have a green thumb in this case.”

“I think this metaphor may be stretched to the breaking point, Mom,” Pam says.

“I know, I know. You just…Pam, you don’t have to prove anything to anyone, least of all to yourself.” Pam feels a wild flutter in her chest, like a bird is trapped in her ribcage, desperate to escape.

“I don’t want to get married,” she says in a rush of breath. All at once she feels a million times lighter, the fluttering gone, the anxiety and unhappiness of all the past months evaporating into thin air. “I’m breaking it off with Roy and calling off the wedding.” She can’t believe how much better she feels saying it.

“I think that’s for the best, sweetie,” her mother says, relief in her voice as well.

“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Pam demands, her laugh and her legs shaky.

“Pam, you know full well how stubborn you can be. I have to let you think these things are your own ideas.” Pam’s laugh is a bit steadier this time.

“Thanks, Mom,” she says.

“And what about…”

“Jim?”

“Yes. Does this change anything?” Pam sucks in a breath and holds it. She doesn’t know what she’s going to say until she opens her mouth.

“No,” she says. The relief returns and she clings to it. “No, I need to work out my own life before I try to get involved in anyone else’s.”

“Good,” her mother says firmly. “I think that’s the right decision, Pam. And I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Pam says with a shaky sigh. “I better go.”

“Okay, sweetie. Good luck. I love you.”

“Love you too.” Pam closes her phone and presses it against her cheek. The metal case is cold. It feels good against her flushed skin. It’s kind of funny, when you think about it. She went her whole life without a single break-up. Now she’s going to have two in a matter of weeks.

“Practice makes perfect,” she says to herself.

*****

Roy doesn’t come back from his brother’s until late the next night. She’d been all ready to pull the trigger and call everything off when she hung up with her mother. Instead she spends the next day agonizing, doubting herself. It’s killing her. At midnight there’s still no sign of him. She gives up and gets ready for bed, brushing her teeth with careful deliberation. Her face in the mirror looks anxious and glassy and almost foreign, like it belongs to someone else.

She lies in the bed, staring up at the ceiling, trying to force herself into sleep. The clock on the wall sounds overly loud in the silence. Each tick reminds her of the changes creeping up on her. Tick. No Jim. Tick. No Roy. Tick. No wedding. Tick tick tick. New home, new self, new life.

The sound of the front door startles her out of half-sleep. Keys hit the hall table with a jangle, the fridge opens and closes. His shoes thud softly across the floor until he pries them off and carries them as he pads into the bedroom on stocking feet. It’s a routine she’s heard so many times by now that it usually recedes into background noise, but now she catalogs it item by item, knowing it’ll soon be gone and the only routine she’ll have is her own.

“Hey,” he says softly, the weight of his body making the mattress dip when he sits on the side of the bed. “You awake?” She rolls over to her other side to look at him.

“Yup.”

“Sorry, I tried to be quiet.” She can tell that he’s not just apologizing for waking her.

“It wasn’t you. I was waiting up.” He doesn’t say anything to that. Just sits on the side of the bed, his forearms leaning heavily on his knees. “I think we should talk.”

“Okay.” His back is to her. He’s unbuttons his shirt, shrugs it off his shoulders. The white of his undershirt is light in the darkness. She opens her mouth. She’s going to say it. She needs to say it. So why isn’t any sound coming out?

“Pam?” He turns to face her.

“What’s wrong with us, Roy?” she asks.

“Hell if I know, Pam. I wish I did.” He scrubs a weary hand across his face and suddenly looks older than she’d ever imagined he could be. Whenever she’d pictured the future, he’d always stayed the same age, no matter how far ahead she thought. God, she feels like a little girl who was never prepared for love to be more than play. She feels her face crumple.

“Could you just hold me for a little while?” she asks him.

Without saying anything, he gathers her in close in his big arms. The same arms that have brought her such safety and security for so long. It’ll be hard to adjust to life without them. She breathes in his familiar scent, a combination of aftershave and soap and this woodsy cologne he wears sometimes when he remembers. It’s never changed, not as long as she’s known him. She’s not sure if she should say something now, if she should wait until morning. She thinks to herself that it’s a good thing she hasn’t had to break up with people more often, because she sucks at it.

“Pam?”

“Hm?”

“Do you ever think we got together too young?” She freezes. She wasn’t expecting him to say something like that.

“What do you mean?” He sits up, turns to face her.

“What if we missed out on things? What if there was something else for us? And look, shit happens, right? Stuff can make you doubt the choices you’ve made. I get that. I know how it can happen.” She’s not at all sure what he’s talking about. Then a sickening notion occurs to her. Oh God, he knows, she thinks. He knows about me and Jim. She jerks into an upright position.

“Roy, I-”

“I just think we should be honest with each other.”

“Roy, I can-” she tries again.

“And the last thing I want to do is hurt you, Pam, you have to believe that.” He takes her hands, presses them between his own.

“I- wait, what are you talking about?” Her brain is swimming.

“I don’t think I’m ready to be married. And…” He trails off, raises his head to look at her with regret in his eyes. “I think we’re holding on to something that isn’t there anymore. And I’d rather confront that now than later.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” she asks in stunned disbelief. She feels like she just got hit in the face with a two by four. He looks so stricken and she should tell him that she feels the same, but she just can’t get over the irony enough to say something. Giggles start to well up in her throat.

“Pam, I’ll always love you. Wait, why are you laughing? Is this some sort of hysterical reaction?”

“You’ll never believe this,” she manages to get out, “but I was lying here trying to figure out how to break up with you.” He can only stare at her at first. Then his face cracks into a half-smile.

“Oh, thank God, I thought I was going to have to slap you.”

“I’d really prefer it if you didn’t.” He’s laughing now too, the relief in the air is palpable. “Oh Roy, how long have we both been going on not saying what we needed to say?”

“Way too long,” he says ruefully. Their giggles take on a delirious edge and it’s making her stomach hurt, how hard she’s laughing. It’s beyond weird.

“Roy,” she says after they’ve both calmed down. All that’s in her mind right now is the knowledge of how she’s carried on with Jim all these months. She doesn’t know if telling Roy is the right or wrong thing to do. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes.”

“We both have,” he says.

“But I’ve…I’ve done things that-”

“You know, Pam,” he cuts her off. “Whatever it is? I don’t want to know.”

“But you don’t even-”

“Clean break. Fresh start. I think we both deserve that.” He might, but she’s not sure if she does. It’s a shock to realize that she’s almost desperate to tell him, to unburden herself and make him share the weight of what she’s done. It feels unfair to get off this easy. But then maybe it won’t be easy at all.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

*****

He’s not there when she wakes up in the morning. For an irrational instant she thinks he’s disappeared, packed up and moved out while she was asleep, and it makes her panic. Then she hears the clink of dishes, smells coffee in the air, and she relaxes.

He’s at the stove when she wanders out, belting her robe. The counter is littered with bowls, spoons, an egg carton, a box of Bisquick. Roy is poking suspiciously at something in the pan he’s holding. For an instant she has a nostalgic flash of what their lives could have been if things had gone differently, if they’d been different people. It doesn’t make her as sad as she thought it would.

“What’s for breakfast?” she asks. Roy looks over his shoulder at her, gives her a tentative smile.

“Pancakes.” He pours some more batter out. She goes to the refrigerator and pulls out a carton of milk for her and a jug of orange juice for him.

They eat in silence, but it’s companionable and easy, worlds away from the silence of the last few weeks. She kind of can’t believe that all it took to get along with Roy was to break up with him. It seems counterintuitive.

“So I was thinking I’d move in with my brother for a while,” he says after he’s cleared his plate and helped himself to seconds. She nods. “What about you?”

“I don’t know,” she says. She actually hasn’t thought about it. She’s been so consumed with all the issues of the present that the future hasn’t even really occurred to her until now. “I guess I’ll get an apartment.” She looks around at the kitchen. She’ll need something smaller, something more affordable. Something closer to work. “And a car.”

“I can help you shop for one,” he says. “I mean, if you want.”

“Sure.” She smiles at him and he smiles back, sad and affectionate and wistful. She sighs. “Now what are we going to do with our lives?”

“I don’t know,” Roy says with a shrug. “Maybe I’ll go to Guatemala.”

She laughs. “Guatemala? Why Guatemala?”

“Dunno. ‘Cause I’ve never been there before. And it sounds cool. Hwa-te-mah-lah,” he says in a terrible Spanish accent.

“Then what, after Guatemala?”

“Hm,” he says, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe Zimbabwe. Or Portugal.”

“How about Micronesia?” she suggests.

“Thailand.”

“Easter Island.”

“The moon!” They laugh. Suddenly she’s overcome with an almost overpowering sadness.

“It’ll be weird to know that you’re out there doing things without me,” she admits, biting her lip. He reaches out to cover her hand with his.

“I know, Pammy,” he says. She has to work for a minute to keep from crying. He stands, collects their plates and takes them to the sink. Together they start washing, her soaping, him drying. They’re almost out of dishwasher liquid. She’ll have to put it on the list for the next time they- the next time she goes to the store.

“We’re going to have to start canceling all the wedding stuff,” she says when they’re almost done. Just the thought of it makes her exhausted.

“God, don’t remind me,” he groans. She smiles at him. It feels more genuine than it has in a long time. She’s starting to believe they can do this. That they can be friends. She can only hope the same is true of Jim.

*****

It’s the dingiest, most out-of-the-way diner she could find. She’d wanted somewhere the cameras wouldn’t follow them, where they wouldn’t know anyone. This conversation is going to be hard enough without witnesses. It’d be easier to just let it go, to leave things where they are. But she can’t just watch him walk out of her life without at least talking to him.

She doesn’t know when Jim’s leaving. She’d never gotten to ask when he told her, and they’re not exactly on casual conversation terms right now. He’s barely been at work the last two weeks – he’s got those vacation days stored up, after all, now that he’s not going to Australia. When he was there, he’d spent the day with his headphones on, eyes glued to his computer screen. He certainly hadn’t seemed interested in talking to her. He hadn’t even picked up the phone when she’d called to ask him to meet her and she’d had to leave a message. She’s not even sure he’s going to come, actually.

He shows up fifteen minutes late. He can only meet her eyes for a moment when slides into the booth before looking away and signaling the waitress for coffee. They sit silently as the waitress fills his mug, as she asks if they’re sure they don’t want food before she moves back to her station behind the counter. Jim’s staring at his coffee like it holds the secret to world peace.

“Hi,” she says when he finally looks up. She can’t tell if he’s angry with her, if he’s hurt, if he’s resigned to it all, if he misses her.

“Changed your mind?” he quips, then makes a face at himself. “Sorry, I meant for that to sound less bitter than it did.”

“I haven’t changed my mind,” she says softly. He only nods. She takes a deep breath. There’s so much she needs to say and it feels ridiculously important that she gets it right. It’s like she’s giving a speech. “Jim, the past year has turned me into someone I don’t even know. I cheated and lied, I broke promises. I never wanted to be that person and I got so carried away I forgot everything I believed in, everything I ever wanted for myself. I let the way I felt about you override everything else.”

“The way you felt about me?” His entire body comes to attention, every part of him focused on her like a pointer treeing a squirrel. His hands are so tight around his coffee mug that the knuckles are turning white. She’d laugh if it all weren’t so serious.

“Yes,” she says. “The way I felt about you.”

“And what way was that, exactly?” He asks the question carefully.

“The same way you felt about me,” she says.

He sucks in his breath and expels it all at once. “Pam,” he says and leans forward, his hand creeping across the surface of the table towards her. Panicked, she holds her hands up as a shield and he freezes, confused and hesitant. If he touches her, she may not be strong enough to do what she has to do.

“It doesn’t change anything,” she says, quietly. Regretfully. God, she wishes it did. His face looks anguished, like he might start crying right there in the middle of the diner.

“You’re still going to marry Roy even though-”

“I broke up with Roy,” she interrupts. She’s torn between thinking she should have told him that first and thinking that it shouldn’t matter.

“What? When?” His mouth drops open in shock.

“Does it matter?” she asks.

“It matters to me,” he tells her very seriously. She looks at his face. It’s so drawn and tense. She could end everything by just giving in, running away to Stamford with him. God, it would be so easy. But if the last year has shown her anything, it’s that the easy thing to do isn’t usually the right thing to do.

“I broke up with him way too late,” she says. “I should have done it months ago. Before I ever kissed you. And it doesn’t matter. We’ve been terrible people, Jim. We took what we wanted and didn’t care who we hurt. We haven’t earned this.” She gestures between them.

He stares at a point somewhere above her head. “So you’re saying it’s all over, no matter how we feel or whether you’re with Roy. No second chances.”

“I’m saying we need to earn the right to be together,” she says more gently. His eyes shift to hers, his hands sit slack on the tabletop. He stares at her for a long minute.

“What does that mean?” he asks.

“It means we need to start over. Blank slate, Tabula Rasa, purge the records and start clean. Getting to know each other all over again. As friends.” She can see him working to process the words.

“I’m not sure I can do that, Pam.”

“You’re going to have to. We’re going to have to.” She’s not sure what he’s going to do. He could stand up and walk out the door, walk right out of her life. And she’d have to let him. But she hopes it doesn’t come to that.

“Start over,” he says. He sounds tired. Thoughtful. He doesn’t sound like someone who’s about to walk out of her life and it heartens her. She decides to press her luck for once in her life.

“Hi,” she says, sticking her hand out between them. The action crowds him, forces him to lean back in his seat. “I’m Pam Beesly, the new receptionist.” Her hand hangs between them. He regards it warily, like it might be a snake or a trick. She waits to see what he’ll do. A hundred emotions flicker across his face. Doubt, misery, hope, all mixed up in one big jumble. She holds her breath.

Finally, he reaches out and takes her hand, squeezes it tightly in his own. Relief floods through her. She grins.

“Nice to meet you,” she says. There are so many things to say, things she needs to explain to him. But those things can wait. They have all the time in the world.