Twenty minutes later Pam still wasn't sleeping. She lay on her back under the covers with the lights off and the sun filtering in through the blinds of the high window. It was good. She didn't want it to be dark. But still she lay awake, tracing the stripes on Jim's pillow and trying hard to keep her eyes closed.

It was stupid, really. That thing at the office—that thing that she didn't want to think about—it was a once in a lifetime occurrence. She'd gotten through it. It was done. Time to stop wallowing in…whatever she was wallowing in. Self-pity? Anger? Fear? She couldn't still be afraid. It was stupid.

But she could remember exactly how the panic had struck her when she'd looked over her shoulder and seen him so close behind. And she could feel how her shoulders had jerked when he'd grabbed her collar. She could hear her blouse ripping.

The breath got heavy in her chest, liquid and suffocating like a physical weight, and she gasped shallow breaths. There were no words, no calls for help or pleas for relief, just those shallow pulls and pants. Hot tears dripped over her temples and into her hair until the weight ebbed on its own and the air came more easily again.

Two more breakdowns later, a soft knock startled her out of a half-daze and Jim poked his head inside.

"Hey," he whispered when she looked up at him, her eyes tired-heavy and fighting it.

"Hey."

He pushed the door open a little more so he could slip inside and sit at his desk. His voice was still soft when he spoke. "How's your head? Did you sleep at all?"

"Nope," she breathed, and then punctuated the statement with a wide, unladylike yawn. "Can't sleep."

He nodded like he understood, and she thought he probably did. He'd always understood her pretty well. "You want me to make you some tea or anything? I'm pretty sure we have chamomile around here somewhere."

She didn't need chamomile. Or earl gray. Or wildberry zinger, for that matter. She needed to stop thinking about canceling her credit cards and calling the landlord. Or how she would ever walk through her own work parking lot again.

"Pam," Jim prompted hesitantly, "you still with me?"

"No tea," she replied finally, staring at his eyes until they came back into focus. "Thanks, though. I just don't think it would help."

"Okay." He dragged it out like he always did when he didn't know what to say. A moment of silence followed. He stood awkwardly. "I'll just…leave you—"

"Hey, Jim?" He turned back, all ears. Sad eyes. "Could you just…" She looked away, hating her weakness. "Could you just stay here for a while? Just until I fall asleep. I just…"

His smile matched his eyes, but he closed the door and stepped toward her anyway. She scooted away, making room for him, and he took the hint. He stretched out on top of the covers and curled toward her just a tiny bit. Just enough so she could feel his weight behind her.

After a few moments, she reached back and pulled his arm over her waist like a blanket. He made a soft noise like a sigh, and she let her eyes close.

She woke some time later to an empty bed, and the disappointment was almost as heavy as the fear. He must have left her when she'd fallen asleep, just like she'd said, but she still wondered what it would feel like to wake up next to him. She'd been wondering that same thing since Michael's stupid casino, and—if she'd let herself admit it—a pretty long time before that. In the back of her mind she felt like maybe this had been her chance, and now that was gone, too.

In the silence, voices drifted through the closed door from downstairs. Just incoherent mumbling through the wood, but one of them was Jim. One of them really wasn't happy.

"I just don't understand why you can't check her into a motel," she heard as she padded barefoot down the hallway, and Karen's voice was so insultingly biting that she felt the slap of it across her face. "Why does she have to stay here? In your bedroom? Do you see where this gets weird for me?"

"I do see," Jim replied, and his voice wasn't angry. He was using his pacifying voice, the one he used on Michael and Dwight when they were being irrational, and on her when he knew he'd done something wrong. "And I'm really sorry about that. If I were in your place, I would probably think the same thing. But she's really shaken up, and I don't want to leave her alone in some strange motel room for the night."

"But why does it have to be you! Why can't she stay with family or something? She does have other friends, doesn't she?"

Pam bowed her head, feeling like the lowest creature on the face of the earth. What was she doing here? With Jim, who she was crazy about, who had a girlfriend? What kind of person was she?

"She's my best friend," Jim said softly.

"And I'm your girlfriend, Jim. Doesn't that mean something to you?"

There was a pause, and she could imagine all the different expressions he could be making. His determined look. Or maybe his helpless look. Or his epiphany look. Or his giving in look. He could be holding Karen, whispering reassurances in her ear. Pam felt so selfish for hating the mental image.

"Yeah, it does," he answered matter-of-factly, his voice just a whisper across the distance, "but she's my best friend, and right now I'm going to do what I can to help her. That's just who I am."

Pam didn't hear a reply as she walked back to his room, but she did hear the front door slam pretty loudly. It was one of the biggest guilt trips she'd ever heard.

---

Jim stood motionless in the living room for a few minutes after Karen had left, feeling all kinds of jerky. He honestly did feel bad about her jealousy, but he wasn't putting Pam in a hotel. And he wasn't going to pressure her into finding someplace else if she really felt comfortable with him. He hoped she felt comfortable.

She'd fallen asleep quickly after he'd laid down next to her. Maybe that was all she needed, to have someone looking out for her. That was no problem for him; he'd spent the best part of the last few years doing just that. He was an expert at it.

And he'd watch her while she slept, just like he'd thought about earlier. For three beautiful hours, he had just lain beside her and breathed in the scent of her shampoo. It would be on his pillow for days.

Wandering back up the stairs towards his bedroom, he wondered if Karen would forgive him, or if he wanted her to. He cared about her, wanted to see her happy. And they did have a lot of fun when she wasn't being (rightfully) insecure. But it wasn't fireworks. It wasn't grilled cheese sandwiches on rooftops or ridiculous office plots. And she couldn't make him smile just by walking into the room like…

"Pam?"

She was awake and perched on the side of the bed, which he hadn't expected. She was crying, which he really hadn't expected. The sight of it made something inside his chest tighten. Her nose was all red and she was grabbing tissue after tissue from the dispenser on his desk. And yet, he noticed, her mascara still didn't run. Maybe she didn't wear any, but her eyelashes were always so beautifully long that it seemed impossible.

"Hey, what's wrong? Did you have a nightmare?"

She was hiccupping again, which meant that it was pretty bad. And she was doing that thing where she was trying to hide behind her hands, like if he couldn't see her face he might not know she was crying.

"Come on, tell me what happened?"

She took a couple of uneven breaths and let them out in big huffs, pulling herself together. "I'll go to my mom's," she said finally, her voice wounded but resigned. "It's only a couple hours away, and I'm sure she won't mind. I just have to get my car from the office, and maybe find my keys. I think I might have left them in the elevator or…somewhere in the lobby? I don't know. But once I find them, I can go and stay with my mom and then it'll be fine again. It will be…"

"Oh man," he sighed, wiping his hands down his face. She'd heard all of that. All of what Karen had said and what he had said. This was the last thing she needed to think about. "Look, Pam, you don't have to—"

"…fine." Her words kept coming faster and faster, building momentum as her composure started to slip. "Really, Jim, thank you for finding me, and for bringing me back here and taking care of me and everything, but she was right, you know? She's your girlfriend, and she has every right to feel weird about me being here. So if I could just use your phone, I'll call my mom and then we can pick up my car, and I'll be gone. It'll be fine."

Jim crouched down in front of her as she ran out of steam. She was smiling in that way that he knew she was trying hard not to cry, even though the tear tracks were already burned into her cheeks. "Look, if you're really uncomfortable here, please, by all means, go and stay with your mom. She probably knows what to do for you much better than I do. But don't leave on my account. I'd feel better with you here."

"Why?"

And he really had to think about it. If he said what first came to mind, he'd hate himself. It would probably mean making her uncomfortable, which would negate his entire argument, and it would definitely mean he didn't want Karen to forgive him, which he knew would make him a jerk. He really was a jerk. Subconsciously, he wrapped his hands around her calves.

"Well, if you're here, I don't have to worry about you. I mean, two hours is a long drive without a cell phone, and then once you get there…do you even know my number without your phone?"

"Of course I do," she said with more composure. She was finally calming down.

"Look, Pam, all I'm saying is I don't want you to go," he said as calmly as possible while she was sniffling like that. "But I'm not going to stop you if you want to leave. That's not my call." And then as an afterthought, "And hey, either way, you should totally call your mom. I'm sure she'd want to know about this, and I think you'd probably feel much better if you talked to her."

She nodded, not looking at him, and blew her nose into a tissue. When that was all the response he was given, he stood to leave. "The phone is right there. I'm going to make a couple sandwiches. Yours will be out here when you want it." Again she just nodded, looking at the phone instead of at him.

When almost an hour had gone by and she hadn't resurfaced, he started to pace. It was strange, to be so worried about her. It wasn't like when she was with Roy, when he knew that she was miserable and that he could make her so much happier. That had been all kinds of hell, but this… No, this helplessness was something completely different. All kinds of heinous scenarios kept running through his mind, questions he would never ask her. Like how her shirt had ripped if that man hadn't caught her…

He muted the TV show he hadn't really been watching and headed upstairs, hoping maybe this time she wouldn't be crying. He hated watching her try to hide it and feeling so damned weak. Why couldn't he find something helpful to say?

In the dim of the hallway, he noticed light peeking under the bathroom door. He could hear her shuffling around in there, turning the water on and off. He knocked quietly.

"Just a second," she called, and her voice was stronger than it had been all morning.

When she opened the door, there was a half-smile on her lips. It wasn't a full smile, the kind that made the air pause for just a second in his lungs, but it was enough to let him breathe again. "Hey, you look better."

And she really did. Her hair was down, falling in front of her ears even when she tried to tuck it back. Her cheeks had color and her eyes looked more alive than they had in a while. Even before that morning, her eyes had been losing their spark, but he hadn't noticed it quite so much as he did now that they were shining again.

"Yeah," she breathed, bouncing on the balls of her bare feet. "I, uh, I talked to my mom, and you were so right. I really did need that. She was so…she just made me feel so much better about everything. And she's going to drive down and stay with me for a few days until I get used to my apartment again, so I'm really excited about that."

Jim felt his smile falter as his heart broke just a little. "Oh, wow. That's, um…that's really great. I know how happy you always are when your mom visits." Man, what was that? That sinking feeling? He thought he'd gotten over that kind of disappointment a long time ago. "So when is she getting into town?"

"About an hour and twenty minutes," she said, and this time she got close to beaming. The disappointment evaporated. He didn't care if she took a trip to the other side of the world as long as she smiled like that again. "I just wanted to get cleaned up a little. I mean, I know she's my mom and I don't have to hide it from her, but I don't want her to see me like that, you know? She'd just get more worried, and I don't want her to have to do that."

"Sure, yeah, whatever you need. I mean, I don't think I've got any makeup around here, but I could check Mark's room. You never know, right?" She laughed, and he loved it. "But there's a brush under the sink, and uh, I don't know. Clean hand towels are in the hall closet if you want to wash up a bit. You look fine, though, so…yeah. I'll just leave you to…that."

He headed back down the hall, but stopped when he felt her behind him. "Was there something else you needed?"

She nodded, tearing up a little. "Yeah, I just wanted to…um…" She reached up and hugged him hard, fitting her forehead against his neck. "Thank you," she whispered, and he let his arms settle around her back. "I don't know what I would have done…if I could have gotten through this day without you. Thank you."

He couldn't help but smile softly, closing his eyes and memorizing the exact way he was feeling just then. "You're welcome."

---

A/N: Thanks so much for all of your feedback. I'm glad you all seem to like it so far. I've said this before and I'll say it again: reviews are like pixie stix to my inner child (who is, of course, my muse). No writer can thrive without criticism, so keep it coming. Thanks.