-1

The next few minutes were absolute madness. The water was churning and people were screaming; it was like a scene from Jaws. Pam thought she heard Jim yell, "Dwight! No biting!" but she couldn't be sure of anything at the moment. At some point, Ryan and Kelly had joined the fray. It seemed that Ryan was trying to hang back, but Kelly was leaning forward, trying to get a piece of Angela. Instead, she got a piece of Pam.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow! Kelly, you've got my hair! We're on the same team!" Pam cried out, leaning heavily towards Kelly to relieve the pressure on her scalp. She felt Jim's fingers digging into her thighs, trying to keep her on his shoulders, and she forgot about the pain momentarily.

"Sorry!" Kelly yelped, trying to untangle her fingers from Pam's thick hair. Meanwhile, Angela kept up a steady attack, latching onto Kelly's arm and trying to pull her off balance.

Pam heard some muffled yelling from below them, and looked down. Dwight was trying to engage Jim in some kind of wrestling hold, but Jim was just slapping his hands away with moves that looked like they were stolen from a catfight in a teen movie. Pam realized that the yelling was coming from Ryan, who – well… was being suffocated by Kelly's thighs. Pulled to the side by Angela, Kelly had latched onto Ryan with her legs, but her grip around his neck was causing him to turn blue.

"Kelly! Just give up, for Ryan's sake!" Pam pleaded, torn between being amused and worried at the expression on Ryan's usually smug face.

"Never!" Kelly screeched, just as she lost her balance and fell into the ocean. Because of her death-grip on Ryan, he went down with her. Angela raised her hands in victory, flashing one of her rare smiles.

"Monkey! Disengage!" Dwight yelled, and the two backed off. Dwight was breathing heavily, his face bright red. Jim looked relatively unharmed and Dwight glared at him, obviously put off by the fact that he was winded and Jim wasn't. "Okay, you two, you've put up a decent fight," Dwight wheezed, "but you know that you can't -- wheeze --keep this going much longer –wheeze-- We've obviously got the upper-- wheeze --hand and you should just…surrender now," Dwight finally finished, panting.

"Do you need your inhaler?" Pam heard Angela whisper to Dwight.

"No! –wheeze—"

"We, uh, are going to consider this. We need a team huddle real quick," Jim said. He sank lower in the water so that some of Pam's weight would be relieved from his shoulders. Pam leaned forward so she could see Jim's face. Suddenly, Jim began to laugh.

"What?" Pam asked, somewhat puzzled.

Jim coughed, still laughing. "Have you ever, uh, as a little kid, done that thing where you draw eyes on your chin and then you lean off your couch upside down, so it looks like a face? But your real face is upside down, so it looks really funny?"

"Yeah, I think I've seen that," Pam shrugged.

"Well, for some reason I just imagined your chin as a face, cause you're upside down, so now every time you talk I just see the chin-face." Jim dissolved into laughter again.

Pam furrowed her eyebrows. "Jim, are you drunk?" she asked.

Jim snorted. "I'm a little tipsy at best, but I'm not drunk. I never go to war drunk. Oh, and speaking of war, I have a strategy."

"What?" Pam asked, lowering her voice.

"Sneak attack in three…two…one…NOW!" Jim yelled, suddenly running forward as Pam held on for dear life. They both attempted some sort of battle cry, but they were laughing too hard. The wide-eyed look of shock on Dwight's face was priceless anyway.

The element of surprise gave Jim and Pam the edge; they barreled into Dwight and Angela, toppling them like a tree. Unfortunately, Jim and Pam's combined momentum took them down as well. Pam's lungs emptied in shock as she hit the cold water, and she tried to disentangle herself from who she thought was Jim – or Angela, but she couldn't be sure.

She finally came to the surface, finding Jim, Dwight and Angela already standing there, coughing. Dwight plugged one of his nostrils and blew through the other, as if trying to get water out of his nose. He then sneezed at least four times, but Pam couldn't really blame him, since she felt the uncomfortable burn of salt water in the back of her throat as well.

"Truce," Jim managed to cough out, and Dwight nodded. Jim offered his hand but Dwight merely looked at it with distain.

"Truce…for now," Dwight said ominously.

"Oh my God!" Pam shouted suddenly.

Jim looked towards her, his face concerned. "What?"

Pam covered her mouth, in obvious shock. She pointed with a shaking hand. "P-please don't let that be what I think it is…" she said, horrified.

Floating helplessly in the water was a bright red piece of fabric, the label Speedo displayed prominently in white.

Jim, Pam and Angela all turned to look at Dwight, who had turned a deep purple. "Oh dear God," Dwight said.

xxxx

"What. A. Day." Jim said, shaking his head as he walked Pam back to her room. It was almost 5PM now, and after a day at the beach, everyone needed a little break before dinner.

"Definitely," Pam agreed, whole-heartedly. "Definitely full of it's ups...and downs—"

"No. No, Pam," Jim interrupted her. "We made a pact. We will never speak of that again. Ever."

Pam nodded solemnly. "Yes, I'm sorry. I forgot."

"I wish I could forget," Jim sighed, and Pam laughed. They finally reached her door, and there was a moment of awkwardness as they stood there.

Why does this feel like the end of a date or something? Pam wondered. This was the most time they had ever spent together outside of work, and honestly she'd had a better time than she had in a long while.

"Okay, well … I'll see you at dinner, Beesly," Jim smiled, almost shyly.

"See you at dinner," Pam agreed. She turned to unlock her door, but couldn't help but look over her shoulder one more time as she watched him walk down the hallway. She couldn't help the spontaneous grin that crossed her face as she walked into her room.

She could hear the shower running and knew that Angela was probably going to be a while. She sat on her bed, bouncing a little bit, before picking up her cell phone off the nightstand where it had been charging its batteries. She flipped it open to the notice "1 New Voicemail." She hit the call button and held the phone to her ear as she absentmindedly brushed the sand off her feet.

"Hey, babe. It's me." Pam stopped moving, frozen. "I just, uh, wanted to see how you were doing. I hope you're having a good time. You know, um, at first I was kinda thinking this was cool, that we could get a little break, you know, and me and Kenny could take the jet skis up to the lake and stuff. But, I don't know -- we did that, and it was fun, but now I kinda miss you. This place seems a lot emptier without you here. So, yeah, um, call me. Love you."

Pam's heart was pounding, and she could swear she heard the roar of the oncoming wave of guilt just before it hit her, crippling. She snapped the cell phone shut, not bothering to save or delete the message as she leaned forward, putting her head between her knees. She felt dizzy, and lost. So lost. How could she have done this? Running around Florida with another man, playing pretend like everything was fine, when her fiancé, a good, loyal man was waiting for her -- and missing her? Pam clenched her jaw and shut her eyes tightly. She didn't want to cry again, but as the words of Roy's message echoed in her mind, she didn't know what else to do.

AN: Whoa! I don't know where the angsty end part came from. Sorry! Don't worry though, JAM will prevail. It's like, Roy is water and Jim is oil. Cause… oil always rises above… water… Okay, I'm sorry. I promise no more oil/water metaphors if you review.

Oh, and by the way?

http://en. is a disease, in that once you picture a person's chin as a face, YOU CAN'T STOP.