It's a date he had said. It's a date.

Pam played the scene over and over again in her head. She had been talking to the camera crew just 20 minutes ago in the conference room when Jim burst in.
Are you free for dinner? he had asked.
She said yes.
Alright. Then...it's a date.

Jim couldn't believe what he was doing. Everything up until this point had been a blur. Eating breakfast in his hotel room with Karen this morning, his brief interview with David, sprinting out of the building, hastily breaking up with Karen in a cafe, getting in his car and driving back to Scranton. The moment of clarity came when he burst into the conference room where Pam was doing a talking head with the doc crew. He didn't care. He couldn't wait anymore.
Are you free for dinner? he had asked.
She said yes.
Alright. Then...it's a date.

Pam smiled to herself. She glanced up and watched the back of Jim's head through the window in Michael's office. How well she knew the back of his head, down to the last floppy lock of hair. She didn't know what he and Michael were talking about. All she knew was that tonight, she was going on a date with Jim. Jim. She was grinning like an idiot and quickly looked back down at the paperwork she was supposed to be filling out. Dinner with Jim. It was something so simple, yet it felt like the most important event in her entire life. She had dreamed about it for so long but had never fathomed it would actually happen. Pam was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn't even see Jim walking up to her desk.
"You gonna get that?" he teased, grinning as she snapped her head up in surprise.
"What? Oh...yeah." Pam hadn't even noticed the phone had been ringing. She cleared her throat and picked up the phone.
"Dunder-Mifflin, this is Pam."
Jim was rocking back and forth awkwardly against the reception desk. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he rested his forearms on top of the desk, tapping his fingertips. Pam was jotting something down on her notepad but kept glancing up at Jim with a small, questioning smile as she finished the phone call.
"Okay, I'll have him get back to you first thing tomorrow morning. Thank you." Pam ended the call and hung up the phone, raising her eyebrow at Jim, who was still standing at her desk.
"Can I help you with something, Halpert?" she teased.

"Yeah, I just wanna make sure we're still on for dinner tonight," he said quietly, so Dwight, sitting nearby, wouldn't hear.
"You asked me literally 20 minutes ago. What would have changed?" she giggled at him.
"I dunno, that's why I'm asking. I did ask you, right? It just feels so…"
"Surreal?" Pam supplied. Jim gazed at her with those piercing green eyes and Pam felt her breath catch.
"Yeah. Surreal," he breathed. He shook his head a little and grinned at her again.

"Pick you up at 7?"
She winked at him. "Its a date."
_

Jim sat back down at his desk and took a deep breath. Whoa.

This was really happening. He was really going on a date with Pam.

Jim shook his head in disbelief and began stacking the papers on his desk, putting everything away for the weekend. Dwight glanced over and watched him organizing his things.
"What happened, idiot?" he sneered. "Did you blow the interview? Guess corporate saw how incompetent you are without your pranks and your boyish charm. Idiot," he muttered.
"Actually, I withdrew from consideration, but thanks for the support Dwight."
"What? Dammit, Jim! I was so close to getting rid of you. Arrgh!" He banged his fist on his desk. Phyllis startled and glanced over.
"Sorry, buddy," Jim said, smiling to himself.
"Why on earth would you do something like that?" Dwight scoffed.
Jim thought back on his conversation with David Wallace, sorting through the rush of the day in his head.

"Do you have your quarterly numbers?" Wallace had asked, going on about the HR guy that he hated, assuring Jim that he would hate him too.
As Jim dug the paperwork out of his bag, he noticed the note Pam had wrote him, with the yogurt lid attached.

'Don't forget us when you're famous!' it had read.
And suddenly, being there felt...wrong.
He had tried to make it through the rest of the interview. David asked him how he thought he would function at corporate, and Jim had started rambling about New York- "the buildings, the people, the 'energy'"- lame. He told David his favorite part of working at Scranton was the friendships. And that was true. For one in particular. He looked down at Pam's note again, fighting the instinct to bolt out of the room.
And then the question that changed everything.
"Where do you see yourself in ten years?" David had asked.
And all Jim could think about was Pam.

'I don't think I ever really came back from Stanford.' Jim had said on the night at the beach.
And Pam had said, 'Well, I wish you would.'

"I just...couldn't see myself there for the long haul," Jim answered honestly.

Dwight just shook his head, baffled by Jim's stupidity. Jim glanced over at Pam out of the corner of his eye. She was zoned out, chin in hand, biting her lower lip as she worked through yet another game of Freecell. He smiled to himself as he ran David's question over again in his mind.
He knew exactly where he wanted to be in 10 years.