CHAPTER TWO: Phone Calls and Yogurt

Jim strode into the office as though his heart wasn't broken the next day. Once again, he avoided eye contact with the receptionist. He passed his old, empty desk and continued to the Annex. [AN: I will be capitalizing Annex as I see it as a proper noun. I know that's probably not correct…] He tried to act as though it was just another day at work, but sitting next to Kelly made that difficult. She asked his so many questions:

"Hey, Jim! When did you move back here? Is it because of Pam?" Kelly had almost supernatural powers when it came to relationships, so she managed to piece together what had happened with Jim and Pam. "You so should have gone to her wedding! It was like, the most dramatic wedding I've ever seen." At this point, Jim didn't know about Roy's mishap, so he was confused.

"What do you mean, dramatic?" he asked Kelly. This, he soon realized, was a mistake.

"Well, first, Pam's dress was like, so not for her. She wore a mermaid dress, when…" Jim wasn't listening.

"Cut to the dramatic part, please…" he asked Kelly.

"Oh, yeah, right," she responded. "So Roy got totally drunk before the service, and I heard Darryl say it's because he was like, super nervous. Then, after Pam said her vows, (which were amazing, by the way), it was Roy's turn. He was stuttering a bunch and then, he threw up all over Darryl. Oh, and Pam was like, totally almost crying."

Jim was in awe; maybe if the wedding went too poorly, Pam would have bad memories with Roy, which would lead to a divorce. This seemed ridiculous. After all, Pam and Roy had been engaged for so long, they couldn't break up now, especially not for Jim. However, he could dream.

At lunch, Jim went to go buy a soda from the vending machine, when he saw Pam eating her mixed berry yogurt. He immediately turned around, hoping she hadn't seen him. Jim then decided that his lunch could wait another hour. He couldn't stand the thought of seeing Pam again.

When he returned to his desk, Kelly started blabbing on about some guy she met at a bar. Meanwhile, Jim was looking online for jobs in the area. He couldn't stand the idea of having to pass Pam every day, to have to see your yogurts in the fridge, or even to know that she was a few walls away.

"Help Wanted: Customer Service Representative, entry level full-time job. Salary Negotiable. Call 1-570-555-0983"

He rushed outside, where he called the number.

"Great! I'll see you on Monday," he said, after he hung up the phone on one of the most important calls of his life.

In only three days, he would never return to Dunder Mifflin Paper Company again.

When Pam walked into the office, she noticed that Jim's desk was clear. All that remained was his computer and his desk chair. She wondered if he had quit: she saw him walking into Michael's office the night before. These suspicions were proved wrong when Jim walked into the office two minutes later. Instead of greeting the office with a smile, he seemed to hurry towards the Annex. He seemed to be making a point not to look at anyone, but instead at the door.

Why is he going to the Annex? Pam wondered. She resolved to ask Michael about it later. In the mean time, she had just received a fax from corporate stating that all employees from the Scranton branch would have to take another seminar. After more reading, she found that it was about another of Michael's jokes: once again, racism. Pam decided that the fax would be a good way to go to Michael without seeming desperate.

"Hey, Michael? You got another fax from corporate," Pam told him.

"Lemme see that," Michael said. After examining the document, he seemed outraged. "What? My bit on Indians was hilarious! Wasn't it, Pam?"

Pam, being used to Michael's inappropriate humor, smiled faintly. She then asked, "By the way, why is Jim all the way in the Annex now?"

Michael simply said, "I don't know. He said he wanted to move there, and he seemed serious, so I let him. It's probably part of some prank he's pulling on Dwight."

Pam knew why he moved, and it wasn't because of a prank.

She went to the break room to have a snack and to clear her mind. The entire time, Pam was thinking solely on how to talk to Jim about this. He'd have to confront her eventually. She heard footsteps outside the door, and looked up from her yogurt; she saw a glimpse of Jim, walking briskly away from her. It was that moment that Pam knew she had screwed up. He wouldn't even go into the same room as her.

When she returned to her desk, she devised a plan. On Monday, she would talk to Jim about what was going on. She wrote a few lines in her notebook about what she was going to say, and then doodled for a while.

"Hey babe, you ready?" Pam looked up and saw her husband. She worried when she realized that just the sound of his voice made her flesh crawl. It must have been something else- a draft, maybe? It couldn't have been hearing her husband's voice. Why would she be engaged to him for so long if she didn't love him?

At home, she thought more about what she was going to say to Jim.

The only words that she could think of were I love you.