You sound so innocent, all full of good intent. You swear you know best, but you expect me to jump on board with you, ride off into your dellusional sunset.

Sara Bareilles

Kevin found Angela sitting in the stairwell at exactly 2:37 p.m. on an otherwise mundane and quiet Tuesday afternoon. His whole purpose for being out of the office was to retrieve the new package of M&Ms from his car that he picked up over lunch. Instead, he ended up with a sobbing blonde midget with her head in his lap, saying too-big words at a too-high octave. It was far from what he was used to dealing with when it came to Angela and much too close for either of their comfort.

"An-an-and then he told me that he thought that he was a homosexual," Angela explained, tears streaking mascara down her porcelain face. Her usually pristine appearance was rumpled and wrinkled from hours of crying. "Can you believe that, Kevin? He's gay! Of course, I went right to church to pray for his soul and my ability to forgive him for such a betrayal. But I am so humiliated! My boyfriend, the Senator, is gaaaay."

The last word is elongated as she started to sob again, burying her small face in her small hands. The only thing Kevin could see when he looked down was her corn-blonde hair and her shaking shoulders. Kevin was usually the last person that Angela would turn to for comfort, though he did suspect sometimes that she cared about him on some level. Still, she mostly thought he was dumb and useless and had no trouble treating him as such. Yet, there she was, falling apart in his lap and waiting for the magic words of widsom that would make all this make sense.

Kevin didn't have the heart to tell her that they had long suspected that perhaps her beloved state senator was far from straight and that Oscar had even thought about starting a pool that predicted the date Angela would figure it out. However, in her strangely innocent way, Angela had been incapable of believing "such a thing" about someone that she appeared to love quite a bit. The Senator had been good on her, bestowing her with generous gifts and doting on her in public. She made the perfect beard really, with her polite manner, active volunteerism and overall goodness in the eyes of the community.

"I'm sorry, Angela," he finally drawled, each syllable coming out as slowly as the last. Angela peered up at him with wet eyes and scowled, indicating that his response was far from sufficient. Kevin searched his mind for something, anything, that could make her feel better. "His loss is someone else's gain."

"Whose, Kevin?" she cried. Angela had loved and lost a lot over the past few years. There had been her not-so-secret relationship with Dwight that ended with a defunct child-rearing agreement. Andy had proposed to her and planned the perfect life with her at Celebration Disney, only to find out she had been cheating on her entire time with the beet farmer. Other than her crush on Charles, it wasn't really until she met the Senator that she got excited about dating again.

He had seemed perfect for her on every level. He was in the public eye, so that carried some level of prestige and decorum with it. He went to church every Sunday morning with his mother and was an active philanthropist. He understood her values and beliefs, so he never pressured her for affection or sex. There was a respect between them that she had never shared with anyone before. In her own way, Angela had loved him very much. None of that mattered though because, as it turned out, he was gay.

"I've always wanted to have a pair of well-behaved little boys. I imagined that they would have my soft blonde hair and the Senator's bone structure. We would have had very lovely children, don't you think?" she asked Kevin rhetorically. Her tears were starting to dry up a little as she shifted out of his lap and back to her side of the staircase. "I just don't understand what went wrong. I had this life planned out for myself. I even have all the cats that I dreamed of having when I was a little girl. I'm just missing the husband."

Kevin knew that he was walking a fine line here and one false step could send her back into a rage of tears. "I think those are very nice dreams, Angela," he told her, "but sometimes life doesn't turn out the way we planned. Like, it's good to have all these intentions, but that's just not the way things go. Not everyone is like you, even if you think they should be."

"I know that, Kevin," she barked automatically before softening her tone. "I'm sorry, that wasn't fair. I just think that...I don't know what to think. How did I not see it?"

He smiled genuinely then and shook his head. "Honestly, I do not know." Each word came out with that same sly, funny, slow tone that tinged nearly everything he said. It was what kept him out of trouble with most people and probably annoyed Angela the most. It was also what endeared to her sometimes when she allowed her softer side to shine through. "It was kind of obvious."

"Was it?"

"Yeah, totally," he confirmed with a wide grin. "At least you got a sparkly engagement ring..."

Angela looked down at her hand and inspected the sizable ring. "Yes, well there is that."

Kevin's stomach rumbled and he remembered his forgotten candy. "Are you okay now?"

"Yes," she said, gathering herself before standing up. She smoothed a wrinkle in her skirt and readjusted the collarof her crisp white shirt. Kevin handed her a mostly dry napkin from his pocket so that she could fix her makeup. "Um, well, thank you."

He smiled at her. He could hold this over her head or remind her that she owed him one, but really, that wouldn't be Kevin's style. Instead, he nodded quietly and smiled that big grin before watching her go back upstairs and into the office. Turning on his scuffed heel, he shrugged and reminded himself that Angela would be okay. He had candy to worry about now.