Pam went back to her desk and stared at her reflection in the monitor. She was thinking things she shouldn't have been, hateful things about her lack of fidelity to the man she'd spent the last ten years of her life with. Couldn't she have at least broken things off with him before practically crawling into the lap of another guy?
Jim walked back to her, glanced quickly at the clock, and muttered, "It's gonna be okay. Kelly says she won't tell anyone."
Pam looked up at him with tears in her eyes. "I give her ten minutes."
"Heh," he said. "Yeah. Me too. But you never know. We could get lucky." He paused. "I mean…wow, do I know how to say the wrong thing."
Pam laughed a little, and that made him feel better. He patted her hand. "We're going to be fine, okay?"
"Okay." She'd never said anything with so little conviction in her whole life.
"Here." He grabbed her a tissue. "Don't freak out, Pam. Be strong for me."
She nodded, dabbed at her eyes. "Yeah, okay."
"Everyone's going to be back in a minute, and then we've just got a few hours until…"
Until what? He wasn't sure what he was thinking. Until he could take her away on a white horse or something? The end of the workday was still the end of the workday, and they'd still be in Scranton and they'd still have to go home to their respective and oh-so-separate houses. Looking at Pam's expression, he suddenly knew exactly what she was thinking.
…until I have to tell Roy.
Jim took her hand in his own and was relieved when she didn't yank it back. "I'm really sorry, just so you know."
"Me too…for a lot of things. But none of them are really your fault."
There was a long silence. "I'm sorry," he said again.
She looked up at him, then back at her monitor. "I need to be alone now."
"Yeah," he said. "Okay." And he went to his desk to do his job, which had always seemed soul-sucking and pointless but had never seemed so completely so as it did that afternoon. A day without Pam laughing at his jokes and sending him goofy emails was a thousand years long, and it seemed longer still when he looked over at her and she very purposely did not look back. He wondered what she was thinking about, if she was able to think of anything without the risk of crumbling to her desk and sobbing like she had in his arms just yesterday.
An hour before work ended, she stood up and went into Michael's office, shut the door. Her voice was low and Jim couldn't make out what she was saying.
Michael opened his door for her as she left. "Don't worry, I'm hip—I had a mother!" He paused. "And two sisters! That was some house, believe me!"
"Uh, thanks, Michael," Pam mumbled under her breath. Jim watched as she grabbed her purse off her desk and marched out without even glancing in his direction. Kelly's mouth opened in a "o" and she shot him several sympathetic looks. At her own desk, meanwhile, Angela raised her eyebrows and scribbled something down on a notepad.
That's nice, KellyJim thought. Real subtle. At least she wasn't talking.