"So, what did you do when Michael sent you home four hours early?"
"Ugh, you think I would get used to being embarrassed in front of everyone by now," Pam groaned, leaning her face into her hand, remembering how Michael had stood them both in front of the entire office, announcing that they had been a couple for a year now, and proceeded to shoo her off home early to 'make herself really hot' and some other standard innuendo. "But – I made the best of it. I went home and shaved my legs, which, by the way you should be thankful for—"
"Hey, prickles don't bother me that much," he added.
"You're so lying, but anyway, I took a long shower, and wrapped your present."
"That took you four hours?"
"Ok, so there was some Judge Judy and Oprah here and there," she mentioned flatly, then beamed back at him coyly. "How much longer did it take for him to let your leave?"
"Well, technically a half an hour, but I took fifteen minutes to make Dwight's "Get Out of One Prank Free" card. You'd be proud of my details, I even laminated it," he said, a bit of Dwight-fun pride brightening his face as he turned the steering wheel over and over to get into a tight parking space.
"Did you stay to see a reaction?" she asked, grabbing her handbag off of the floor.
"I didn't stay after I put it on his desk," he began, getting out of the door and hurrying over to the passenger door to open it for Pam. "But I dropped by because I forgot my wallet, of all things, in my desk drawer."
He stopped there, mid-thought, to give her his hand out of the seat. She pulled herself up, straightened out her dress a little self-consciously and looked up at him. He was fixated on her, taking in every detail of how she looked: her black satin dress with a playful halter top, simple high heeled sandals, her hair up in an easy twist with careless curls trailing out here and there.
"You're so beautiful," he told her, still taking in every little detail.
Pam blushed a little and smiled again, "You always make me feel beautiful, you know that," she told him, reaching up to his shoulders and bringing him in for a quick kiss and a nose rub. She took him by the hand and began walking.
"Anyway, as I was saying earlier, I came back for my wallet and Dwight was still there – and did I mention this was right before I came to pick you up?" Pam turned to him with her jaw open a bit. "He was all frazzled. When I came in I asked him if I could help him with anything, and he told me 'I know you've put something somewhere, don't think I'm not onto you by now!' I said I really meant it when there was no prank or joke or anything, that we were just being nice to him for once."
"And then?"
"And then he stared at me with his Dwight stare and went back to looking under every desk and chair for whatever he had imagined we had set up for him," he paused, looking thoughtful, "if only I could have known what perfect crime he had imagined – Dwight's own fantasy prank on himself! But still, I really must be off my game to think that he would have seen that card as sincere."
"And after all you did for him," Pam mused playfully, pausing in their conversation while Jim talked to the maitre'd about their reservations. He came back and sat with her on a bench, waiting for their table to come up.
"Who knew that creating an elaborate website dictating how to posthumously get a euthanized cat-soul into kitty heaven would have worked out the way it did," Jim said casually, perhaps moreso than he actually felt about the manner. Pam gave him a wry gaze.
"Who knew that you actually cared about Dwight that much," she said back to him, parroting his blasé tone.
"It is unsubstantiated that this whole thing did not begin as an elaborate prank. In fact," he sat up and tried to look very serious, "I rarely work that hard on anything that is not a prank. Therefore, my goal backfired and got Dwight and Angela back together and Dwight is now happier instead of being frustrated."
"Whatever," Pam quipped back, "I may have believed you if you had said that it was all to make Dwight suffer for the rest of his life at the hands of Angela. That may border on a cruel and unusual punishment."
Jim laughed, and then put his arm around her, her hand reaching up to mingle fingers with him. She turned her head to find him gazing at her, his eyes lost in his internal musings, then focused in on hers when he was nearly startled out of his thoughts by her.
"I love you, Pam," he said after what seemed like a long while of staring, his face still cocked with his crooked, endearing smile. She leaned her head down onto his shoulder and enjoyed his closeness until they were seated for dinner.