Even after a week, Pam finds herself looking up at where Jim used to sit. The sales rep that has replaced Jim fills the space. He's nice enough and actually gets along with Dwight, but she can tell that he's a little unnerved by the way she keeps looking at him.

"Sorry," she whispers across the reception desk when Dwight's not around to hear. "My best friend used to sit there. It's a habit."

Rob nods, but doesn't really get it. He goes back to punching numbers on Jim's phone No, Rob's phone, Pam, and tries to ignore the sad girl who keeps looking at him.

She thinks about emailing Jim or calling him every day, but she doesn't. She doesn't know his number in Stamford, and she doesn't have his new email address. It would be easy enough to get either from Michael, and he's dropped enough hints that he'd give them to her, but she's not ready to ask. And even though she knows his cell phone number, she can't figure out what she'd say to him. Jim, I think I made the biggest mistake of my life. No. Jim, please come back, the wedding's off. Ugh! Jim, if I haven't already done too much damage would you ever think of…

She bites her lip until she tastes blood and tries to focus back on work. Since Jim left she's discovered a new word game, Text Twist, and has been playing that until her eyes can't focus on the screen anymore.

Every time the phone rings she hopes it's him, even if it's only because he needs to talk to Michael about something he's left behind. But she knows the only thing he left behind is her, and that he won't be calling to get that back any time soon. So when Roy comes up and asks her to go to lunch with him, she agrees. It eases her guilt a little to spend time with him, after she broke his heart, too. Good job, Pam. Kill two birds with one stone, or whatever it is they say. Nobody who went to high school with me would ever have thought I could reduce two men to tears in the same month.

He didn't really believe she was leaving until she started hauling boxes out to her car. He asked her if it was Halpert, and she said honestly that it wasn't, because thinks she'd have left him even if Jim hadn't pushed her. And then he cried, and she held his head on her lap and cried with him, but she still couldn't stay. And so she got up and left her key on the table and drove off to her new apartment, only one mile away from the old one but a million miles away from her old life.

It's a mistake to spend time with Roy, because it gives him hope that they can maybe stay together. She goes to lunch with him anyway, and they fall back into their old pattern of not talking much while they eat and he watches whatever game is on the television at the bar. She thinks that if he really wanted her back, maybe he'd try harder. But still, when he asks her to come home with him after work and spend the night, she's lonely enough to agree. She keeps her eyes closed the entire time she's with him, and when he pushes hopefully down on her shoulders she doesn't refuse. She sneaks out in the morning, ashamed that she's not strong enough to say no.

The next afternoon, she applies for a graphic arts class offered by the company, and when she calls Jan to ask for a recommendation to get her in, Jan is thrilled at her interest.

"Finally," she breathes happily into the phone. " Someone at the Scranton branch worth mentoring."

"Uh, yeah," Pam says, never sure how to react to Jan. "Thanks, I, uh, appreciate the help."

She's not surprised when she gets accepted into the graphic arts program. She adjusts quickly to the added demands of spending her Fridays and Saturdays in NYC in class. Jan makes sure that she's set up in the corporate apartment so that she doesn't have to drive home or stay in a hotel, and Jan also runs interference when Michael complains about having to make Ryan handle reception on Fridays. Occasionally she'll have a roommate, always female because Dunder-Mifflin keeps two corporate condos just in case there are women and men who come into town at the same time for meetings.

One Saturday, three weeks into the class, she comes home from NYC to find a small mailer shoved under her door.

Your copy of the show. It starts airing next week. Michael asked me to drop it off. I've already seen it. Hope you enjoy it, superstar. Ryan.

It feels for a moment like her heart is beating loudly enough to be heard. The blood rushes through her ears and pounds and throbs so insistently that she feels like she might faint. Quickly, she shoves her key in the lock and pushes into her apartment, throwing her bags on the floor and tearing open the envelope.

She shoves the DVD into her player and sits on the couch, teeth tightly clenched.

Six hours later she picks up the phone.