The door seemed to open in slow motion. Pam's heartbeat was not natural; she felt sure she would pass out if she did not see Jim's face.

She couldn't contain the look of excitement and happiness on her face when Jim came into the office. And honestly, she didn't care. Pam stood up to greet him, but of course, Michael got to him first.

"Uh-oh, get him out of here!" Michael yelled jokingly, shoving Jim with a playful fist. Jim gave the camera one of his classic faces, and Pam's heart melted just a little more.

Finally, Michael left Jim alone. This was Pam's chance. She ran to him, holding nothing back.

"Hi, I'm Jim. I'm new here," he joked.

"Oh my god, it's really you." She hugged him, laughing in disbelief. After so long, she couldn't even describe how amazing it felt to once again be in his arms.

"I was just making a little joke —" Jim said, trying to spare them an awkward moment.

But she didn't care. And she made this very clear. "I know, I don't care."

Jim laughed and smiled that sexy smile. "The place looks great."

"It's really good to see you." Pam's cheeks hurt from smiling so big.

*****

"Damn it," Pam thought. Stupid Ryan and his stupid pride over that stupid desk. That was JIM'S desk. Jim had sat there since his first day. How would he and Pam be able to exchange awkward glances? And what about their classic air high fives? Instant messaging would mean nothing if Pam couldn't see the assorted smiles on Jim's face when she forwarded eccentric emoticons his way.

Oh well. She would have to make do with adoring the contours of the back of him neck. The way his perfect muscles accenting his perfect broad shoulders….

Pam quickly snapped out of this reverie. Jim had only been here an hour, and already Pam was acting like a giddy school girl with an insane crush. How long would it be until she started doodling "Mrs. Pam Halpert" all over the Dunder Mifflin faxes and files?

Suddenly Michael walked out of his office and announced, "Okay everybody settled in? Good. Why don't we all proceed into the conference room, or should I say, the banquet hall. For, drumroll, please… Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr………

Oh poor, hopeless Michael.

"…. The official Merger Day all family breakfast! Come on in. Don't be shy."

As everybody filed into the conference room timidly, already doubting their inane boss, Pam saw this as the perfect chance.

She made sure she timed it perfectly so that she walked into the room at exactly the same time as Jim. She smiled at him again, and he smiled back. She may have been imaging it, but he seemed genuinely happy as well to be back at Scranton.

Jim and Pam sat next to each other. As Michael shot down Toby's idea of introducing everybody to the office with the orientation folder, Jim leaned over and whispered to Pam, "Oh, this looks promising."

"You won't be disappointed." Already, she was starting to feel like herself again.

Then, Pam saw a hand tap Jim on the shoulder. It was Karen. She handed him a stick of gum, and willingly, he accepted it.

"That was weird," Pam thought. But she tried not to let it bother her too much.

She didn't have a chance to think about it anyway, because suddenly Michael got that mischievous grin on his face, and Pam knew that this should be interesting. The words "Lazy Scranton" came on the screen. "Oh no," Pam thought. "Here we go."

*****

After the video, things seemed to go by pretty quickly. But every time Pam thought she had a chance to talk to Jim, Karen happened to be in her way. When Jim was looking through some files near the conference room, Pam was about to get up and ask Jim if he wanted to talk, but Jim started flirting—was it flirting?—with Karen. And the rest of the time, he was at his desk, busy with clients and important business salesman things.

Finally, she saw him get up and walk into the break room. Seeing that Karen was not following him, she jumped at the chance and practically chased after Jim into the room.

He was getting a soda from the vending machine.

"Hey," she said timorously.

"Hey," he said back.

She looked at the drink he had pulled out of the machine. It was water. Since when had Jim drunk water?

"Um, what happened to grape soda?"

"Oh yeah, I'm trying to move away from that. I'm getting into more of a bottled-water phase." He chuckled. Wow, Pam mused. He's changed.

But she didn't let any of this on. "Oh," she said, acting interested. Oh, why not? "You've changed so much." She said it almost sarcastically, but it came off as a bit more than that.

"Well, I'm evolving, Pam," he commented back.

She laughed, although she did not really find this conversation appealing. Pam tried to move away from that topic. "Um, so, when do I get to hear everything? Are you still getting unpacked, or you want to grab a coffee or something, after work?" She got a little quiet at the end of the sentence, suddenly shy again.

"Oh, um, tonight, actually no," he stammered. "I'm still getting settled in."

"Oh yeah. No, you know, I mean, whenever." Pam was beginning to feel really uncomfortable.

Suddenly Michael walked in. "Oh crap," Pam thought.

Michael's eyes widened, obviously trying to make everyone feel uncomfortable. "Oooh, okay. Sorry to interrupt—"

Jim, in an effort to save some face, said "Nope, you're not interrupting anything."

Yet, still, Michael didn't take the hint. He nodded at Jim and gave him a perverted, boyish smile.

"No—" Jim tried again.

"Alright…" Michael walked out of the room.

Pam tried to force a laugh, maybe salvage some of Jim and her old times together when they made fun of the silly things Michael would say and do.

But, strangely, Jim didn't smile back. He just looked up at her and said "I should probably get back to work."

"Yeah, no, me too," Pam said, putting on her best fake smile.

"Alright." He left.

Pam stood there, facing the vending machines. What the hell was that? Where did her Jim go? This guy was anything but that fun-loving guy who took nothing but her seriously. She wanted him back. But she was beginning to feel like it was too late.

*****

The cameramen wanted to interview her. She didn't know if she could do it. Could she lie through her teeth?

"What has the day been like?" asked the impartial cameraman.

"The day's going fine. It's been… a little chaotic, but it's fine." There she went again, saying everything was fine. God, Pam thought, I could just cry right now. But, to reassure the camera, she reinstated, "It's great. A lot of distractions, but it's good."

Distraction was hardly the word for her. Karen seemed to be all over Jim, Pam couldn't help but notice. Jim never really made any serious moves on her, but he kept laughing and joking with her, like he used to with Pam.

At one point, Karen started making a fuss about a bad smell. Pam smiled internally, much to her own surprise. She was about to get it.

Phyllis automatically offered to help Karen find the smell. Soon enough, Karen realized her mistake. The smell was Phyllis. When the sweet, but terrible-smelling woman realized that she had been the subject of Karen's disgust, she gave Karen a short scolding. Karen's scared face seemed to lighten Pam's mood a little. She didn't like that she had such angry feelings toward the girl, but she was making obvious moves on Jim, and that was like stabbing Pam in the heart.

*****

Later on in the day, when Pam thought she couldn't take much more of this torture, Michael herded the office once again into the conference room, where he put on an interesting performance. When it was obvious that no one was finding his and Andy's dance moves very interesting, Michael had yet another brilliant idea.

Michael made Dwight drag the large table in the conference to the corner, where he put up five chairs and forced the new Scrantonians—except Jim—to get on the table. Some bull about how we are all equal. Things got rough because Tony, a man clearly self-conscious about his weight, wouldn't get on the table. Tensions escalated and Tony quit. Pam would probably have been a bit more interested, if she hadn't been consumed with thoughts of this "new Jim" that had appeared in the office.

Pam would sneak a few glances at Jim every now and then, and she was beginning to not recognize him. This was not her Jim. And she wanted him back.

*****

When Pam had had just about enough, Michael ran into the office, out of breath. Pam had been in the office so long, she did not even bother asking how he had gotten out of his office. It was just something you went along with after a while.

"Hey, everybody," Michael shouted, in between heavy breaths, "the guys from Vance Refrigeration have let the air out of all our tires. They punked us! They punked us good. Come on, come on!" When Dwight ran after him, Pam immediately detected a Michael scheme coming on, and glanced in Jim's direction, ready to make a joke about it with him while walking out into the parking lot. But, when she grabbed her coat, she saw that Karen had already beaten her to it. They were walking together, smiling and laughing. She tried her hardest not to let the disappointment show on her face as she walked out with Phyllis.

When they reached the parking lot, it was clear that Michael had planned this. He was all riled up, and this almost never happened, unless he was hatching a plot. Michael shouted, "All right. We've got to get them back. We need to steal their refrigerators."

"Yeah!" shouted Dwight, pumping him fist in the air.

Everyone seemed to believe Michael's lie, until Martin Nash pointed out that Michael's car was the only one who's tired had not been aired out. Angry and annoyed, everyone began walking back into the office. Pam was about to follow, when she once again saw Karen and Jim together, and they were seeming to share an intimate moment as she was rubbing his back. Pam could hardly contain her… what was this feeling? Jealousy? Wistfullness? Anger? All of them?

*****

When the miserable day had finally ended, Pam was more than grateful. Twenty four hours ago, she could hardly wait to see Jim and talk to him. But now, she kind of wished he hadn't come back. Or had, but that he was the same person he was when he left. This new Jim seemed to be putting up a front. She understood that he may have been holding back all day because of what had happened that last night that she saw him. But it didn't mean that he had to neglect her completely. He didn't even joke around anymore.

While Jim had been working, Pam would scrutinize the back of his neck, and wonder incessantly why he wouldn't go into the kitchen and freeze Dwight's lunch, or get up to come talk to her at the reception desk. He didn't log on to his instant messenger all day, and Pam received no cute emails from him, not that she had been checking every 15 minutes.

It was 5:00 on the dot. Jim had just left, and Karen about 20 minutes before him. Wanting to avoid any contact with a human, Pam had waited until most of the office had cleared out. She then grabbed her bag and jacket, logged off her computer, and walked out the door.

Maybe it had just been a bad first day. Maybe Jim was still Jim, he had just lost himself a little along the way. Maybe being back in Scranton would turn him back into that easy going guy that Pam had loved. Yes, loved. But now, as she was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that, every time that statement ran through her head, it was in the past tense.

Pam walked out of the office slowly, hugging herself to fight away the cold. In the parking lot, she spotted her car and thought that if she could just get to it, she'd be safe. She could go home and drown her sorrows in a big bowl of ice cream.

And then she saw Jim.

He was talking and laughing into his cell phone, probably to Karen. Not wanting to deal with him at the moment, Pam began to walk a little faster. But it was too late. He saw her.

"Hey," he said, coming out of his car and hanging up his phone.

Pam looked up, pretending that she had not yet noticed him. "Hey," she said, a little too brightly.

"I thought you had already… left." Jim seemed to dote on the last word, like there was some hidden meaning behind it.

"Uh, no," she tried to explain. "I just had some stuff to finish. What's up?"

"Oh, nothing. I just feel bad. I feel like things were a little weird today." How did he always have the power to soften her up? So she had been right. His behavior had nothing to do with him.

Trying to seem like it hadn't bothered her, Pam asked, "What do you mean?"

Jim paused. He looked at her for a minute, then scratched his nose. "I just think I should tell you that I've sort of started seeing someone."

"Oh." Pam smiled, even though she thought that after today she could bury this fake grin and replace it with a real one. "That's totally cool. You can do whatever you want."

Jim looked at her, confused. "O-okay…. Good." He laughed awkwardly.

Then she gave him the line that even hurt her a little. "We're friends. We'll always be friends."

He looked at her for a second more. "Right," he said. He looked like he was giving up. Like she wasn't worth the fight.

"It's, uh, it's good to have you back." Pam stated this half-heartedly and began walking again to her car.

"Yeah, good to be back."

Pam felt like she had been punched in the stomach. Much like, she thought, Jim must have felt when he walked away from her so many months ago. She couldn't believe it. After all this time, after all her dreams, her hypothetical situations, and her hopes that she would finally be able to have the only thing she ever wanted, this was what she got. How could she have allowed things to fall apart like this? She should have just been with him when things were simpler.

Well, one thing was clear. If she was going to be in this situation, seeing Jim and his quite obvious girlfriend, it was a grand blessing from God that "stupid" Ryan had forced Jim to move seats. For once, the heavens were smiling upon her, having placed Jim strategically so that she wouldn't have to look at his face every time she looked up. It would hurt too much. Luckily, she would only have to worry about his neck, and how, even that would be a challenge to bear.

It seemed like Pam's life was, once again, falling apart.