Title: Punishment.

Continuity: 'Phyllis' Wedding.' (Season Three's 15th episode.)

Song: -

Feedback: Of course, reviews are highly appreciated.

Warning/Comments: Pam's POV. Slightly A/U. Let's just pretend this chapter is not as awful as it is, shall we? I'm completely disappointed about myself right now. I did not do a good job writing about Pam's feelings during this episode. The next chapter will be about the wedding too, but I promise it'll be much better. I'll work harder. Also, I'm sorry about the delay.


I'm getting a déjà vu. Phyllis just had to steal all of the ideas from my wedding. She couldn't think of anything original.

Okay, I'm overreacting. Normally I wouldn't mind – I really don't care that much about these things and besides, my wedding was called off. But this is a reminder of the fact that everything that I had planned got completely out of control and everything that I had hoped for disappeared before I had the chance to lay my hands on it.

I remember being so happy when Roy finally set a date for our wedding after all those years of an apparently never-ending engagement. I mean, I thought I loved him. And I guess I did, back in a time. But then that love kind of… faded. We had met such a long time ago, we had both changed a lot – I think there might have been signs of change, but I mostly ignored them, until one day I realized that I didn't get him anymore. I realized that I was sharing my life with someone who was nearly a stranger to me – because he certainly wasn't the man I had once fell in love with.

Yet as the optimistic girl I am, when I started planning the wedding I was excited and couldn't wait for June to arrive. I think it was because I thought things would change, that Roy would be nicer to me, that he would go back to being the man he was when we first met. But instead he remained the same, and I was, once again, disappointed.

I remember thinking Okay, so this is it. This is what my life will be like. Dull, and grey. Even if we get married he'll still be the same, and I'll work as a receptionist at Dunder Mifflin forever. And just when I was trying to come to terms with those facts, I witnessed one of life's typical yet unexpected twists, something I had secretly, guiltily dreamed of many times but never considered possible: Jim, my best friend, confessing that he loved me.

Somehow I simply knew he wasn't lying – maybe the tears that welled up in his eyes when I said I can't gave me a hint.

He transferred to Stamford while I panicked and called off my wedding, unable to face the fact that I had to marry a man I didn't love, and I waited for him to come back, so we could work things out. He did come back, after some (terribly painful) time, bringing his girlfriend along, not realizing (or not giving a damn) about how that fact shattered my heart to pieces.

It's been months since then, and here I am at the reception of a wedding that should have been mine, watching everybody but me having a good time, and being incapable of shaking the I should be happy right now kind of feeling off of me.

This was supposed to be my wedding, the happiest day of my life, something I'd remember for as long as I lived. But instead, I'm sitting here listening to a The Police cover band while my (ex?) best friend and his girlfriend dance along to the music, and thinking that I must have done something really awful to be punished this way.

Maybe I did.

But I don't think I deserve this.