It was weird that Roy was trying to comfort her, right?

She'd come home, showered, changed into the first pair of sweats she could find, thrown her hair into a messy bun, slipped her glasses behind her ears, and taken up residence on the couch, her knees tucked up under her chin as a House marathon played in the background. Her thoughts had filtered into the doltish realm of, "How does Hugh Laurie mask his true British accent?" in her attempt to prohibit her thoughts from running twelve hours into the past.

She'd wanted him to use his words, the truth for once, but once again he was dancing around the subject in a way that put her own dorky moves to shame. She'd all but asked him flat out, all but said the words, "Just tell me you love me already!" Hadn't, "Tell me what you want," been enough? Clearly, it hadn't been. But what was the threshold of giving up? She was the one with the issue. She was the one with the impending marriage. Maybe that was the problem.

Maybe she was misinterpreting things.

No.

She shook her head, banishing that thought from existence.

There was no realm of possibility that he didn't have this aching in his heart, this burning in his chest, this tightening in his throat every time they so much as glanced too long at one another, too. He had to be sick and tired of the jelly beans by now. His true craving was the eyes and curls that sat just beyond.

So why couldn't he just say it?

Unless it was just a crush.

A harmless little crush.

He wanted to call her his best friend and cuddle and have a relationship without really having a relationship until the right girl came along.

The right girl.

Who was she kidding?

How could frumpy Pam Beesly be the right girl for the tall, quirky but handsome, Jim Halpert? He'd bagged Katy, for god's sake. Maybe that was it. What was it the kids were calling it these days? Friends with benefits? But Katy had certainly gotten more on the benefits end. Friends who pretend to date each other?

Friends who are more of a couple than the engaged parties?

God she hated this. Every overthought, every eggshell that she'd been walking on. She wanted this to be done and over with.

She had a wedding in a month's time, and unless he grew a set of balls in the next thirty days, she was going through with it.

She chuckled that how cynical that sounded.

Go through with it?

A wedding wasn't something you just "got through." A wedding was a celebration, a sacrament, a promise in the eyes of God and the ones you loved that you were pledging your lives eternally to one another. But all of a sudden, eternity sounded like an awfully big commitment.

The chill in her body settled as her image of eternity shifted from jet skits and weekend ragers well into their forties to picnics and parks and basketball games in the driveway. But how could she be certain of this, of any of this, if he wouldn't open up his goddamn mouth?

When he'd found her on the couch, stomping in the house not too long after she'd finally gotten to a good place in beating the dead horse of her relationship drama, her eyes were hollow, and her brow seemed fixed into a permanent furrow. He had approached her tentatively, still skating on the thin ice from the night before.

"Hey baby, is everything okay?"

Her gaze remained ridgid on the television set as if nothing new had entered her environment, but her lips told a different story, one lined with the newfound honesty she'd warmed up to as of late.

"No, Roy. Everything isn't okay."

It wasn't sarcasm or bitterness, but flatness that buttered her words, which put him that much more on edge. Almost immediately, he found himself on one knee in front of the couch. He hadn't been in this position for almost three years when he'd half-assedly asked her to marry him. With a large hand softly covering her knee, he whispered, "Is there anything I can do? Anything I can help with?"

It was then that she finally cracked, the dam bursting, emotions flooding from every pore in her head. She was nestled against his chest before the first bout of tears could find the floor, her head fitting in the palm of his hand. His quiet Shhh's and muttered It's okay, Pammy, I've got you's vibrated ironically in her ears.

It was satirical, the way that he made them dinner so she could be alone in her conflicting thoughts about leaving him to be with another man. The mockery screamed as he drew her a bubble bath so that she could have a sanctuary dedicated to the tall and lanky rather than the stout and stocky. It was paradoxical that he cradled her so gently against him when they went to bed that night, his rough stubble not so coarse tonight when his cheek hugged hers, while she squeezed her eyes tightly, doing her damndest to conjure the feeling of someone else wrapped around her.

"I can't wait to be married to you," he whispered sweetly in her ear, the gravel in his voice unexpectedly warming. "We'll finally be husband and wife. Together forever, baby. Just you and me."

Eventually his breathing became heavy, slow against her back. She squeezed the last remaining tears from her eyes, and against every screaming fiber in her body, snuggled deeper into his embrace.

This was it. This was certain. This was real.

She was marrying Roy.

If Jim had a backbone, he sure wasn't making it evident. But Roy? Roy had taken that chance, had stuck with her for almost a decade, and wasn't letting go. Jim was her best friend. Would always be her best friend.

The reality of that slammed right into her gut, and stole her breath as she twisted into another sleepless night.


"You know mom and dad would kill you, right?"

It was Sunday afternoon at the Halpert house. Pete, Tom, their wives and children, along with both Halpert parents, were cramped in the living room, the noise deadened by the closed off kitchen walls. He'd been playing an endless game of go-fish with his not-so-kid sister Larisa for the past forty-five minutes, and within the first round of cards being exchanged, she'd weaseled every detail of his love life out into the open. She'd been calm and complacent, nodding and scrunching her eyebrows at all the appropriate times, as he lay down pairs of matching numbers. Though she was the youngest, Larisa was undoubtedly the smartest of the Halpert crew, and his go-to when he just didn't know what to do anymore. He'd gotten to the point in the story where he was considering a literal out-of-state transfer just to put some distance between himself and the girl who had stolen his heart, and his sister sat across from him-rightfully so-shaking her head.

He threw down three two's, released a huffy breath, and avoided her grin, the one that mirrored his own typical lopsided smugness.

"Yeah, I do. But what do you expect me to do at this point, Riss?"

"Uhm, I don't know Jimmy. Probably not move to Connecticut just to get away from her? Maybe try telling the poor girl how you feel?"

She was smirking at him over her cards in that I know you're not really this thick, brother look that she gave him when it was obvious that he knew better. He rolled his eyes, annoyed, but simultaneously knowing that had literally asked for her help not an hour ago. Still, annoyance and frustration were the safer route when compared to breaking down, something he rarely allowed himself to do, especially when his older brothers were yards away in the other room. He chucked his cards down and folded his head into his hands as his fingertips massaged the dull throbbing at the top of his skull.

"Why does this have to be so hard?"

The heels of his hands pushed into his cheeks, discombobulating his features into a mushy mess that urged Larisa's chuckles. Setting down her cards, she pulled her brother's hands into her own and squeezed gently.

"It doesn't, Jimmy. I promise you, it doesn't. Now, do you want my honest opinion, or are you going to stay crabby with me all night?"

He crinkled his eyebrows and pursed his lips at her, feigning the best crabby look in his reservoir.

"I want your opinion, but I also reserve the right to stay crabby because I'm on the brink of misery here and I deserve to have feelings, too, damnit."

They were a mirror image as eyes momentarily lit up with silent laughter, the calm before the storm, so to speak, but synchronously dropping to a more serious gaze. Jim's eyes screamed Help me while Larisa's whispered I'll do my best.

"Listen, Jimmy. I don't do the whole 'girl world' thing very often. But from what I've been through, and from what I understand, this Pam chick feels a whole lot more for you than she's letting on."

His eyes lifted from where they had been resting on the table, urging her to continue, but so glassy and hoping, pleading that her words echoed his own thoughts so that he wasn't the only one in the world with this feeling, that it sent her back to their childhood days when he would fall down and get hurt and she'd run go get mommy. Mommy couldn't help them right now.

"But you have to see her side of things, too. She's engaged, Jim. She's getting married next month."

"Don't you think I know tha-"

"I'm not done."

She edged her hand out to stop his words, and he rolled his eyes, the annoyance settling up permanent residence in his brows, wishing he hadn't gotten her started in the first place. He didn't want to hear for the thousandth time how Pam was engaged, how Pam was getting married, how Pam was in no place to be falling in love with other men. He knew that. God, did he know that by now.

"Put yourself in her shoes. If you were engaged to someone you'd been with for years, and you all of a sudden started having feelings for her because you thought she liked you back, do you think you'd ruin what you already had going for you, what was already so permanent, for a what if? God, Jim, she doesn't even know you love her! What if she was the one misinterpreting things, thinking you had feelings for her, and she called off a wedding when you only really wanted her friendship?"

"Okay, but I wouldn't have allowed myself to be in a toxic relationship with such a shit for brains piece of-"

"Stop. James Halpert. Stop that right now. I see exactly what you're doing and I won't allow it."

She had that look on her face, the one that looked exactly like his mother when she'd caught him sneaking out to go to Dustin McDermott's rager back in eleventh grade instead of going to his Spanish tutor's house like he'd said he would. That you've been caught and I'm not even going to stand for excuses look. With no other options, he surrendered.

"That's now what I mean and you know it."

He did. He knew exactly what she meant, and exactly what she didn't mean. He mirrored the words in his head for confirmation as she said them aloud.

"If you were in a relationship, you know for damn sure you'd want some sort of confirmation that you weren't throwing everything you knew to be true in the trash. Tell her, Jim. Tell the poor girl how you feel. God knows she's probably dying inside just as much as you are. Put yourself in her shoes."

He was suddenly overwhelmed with the image of his size eleven feet squeezing into her tiny white Keds. It was comedic, really, with a cartoonish humor. But those Keds, those stupid white shoes, brought back so much more than the laugh that had been almost immediately stifled by the onslaught of memories: her drunken speech, her passionate shouts and whoops and hollers, her lips crashing into his. Whether under the guise of alcohol or not, she had made the choice to embrace him that night, for however brief a time. She had tasted of salt and lime and tequila, her lips a little chapped, but soft all the same. It had been chaste and celebratory and on the edge of laughter, but those small seconds in his world had lasted an hour. Her tentative questioning when they had left the building later that evening-would he ever find out what she'd wanted to ask him?-stirred up an urgency in his chest that he hadn't felt since that night on the boat.

"Alright. Fine. You win. I'll tell her."

His head was spinning as those words rolled off his tongue. He'd made it a reality, had effectively signed a contract with his little sister. There was no turning back now.

"Good." She was sporting that classic triumphant smirk, eyebrows raised high, arms crossed atop her chest. He could only sigh and chuckle in return, running his hands through the mop of hair on top of his head. Their game having long since ended, he boxed up the cards, pushing back from the kitchen table to head into the living room and make one last appearance before heading home when she stopped him one last time.

"And, big brother?"

"Mhm?"

"Do it before you have to make a decision about the job, okay? Don't make this your ultimate deciding factor. I know you love her, but don't let this ruin you. I can't sit back and watch this ruin you."

His sheepish smile was more hurt than hope, and Larisa's heart ached for her brother as she watched him pat the doorway into their living room, nod curtly, and disappear into their chaotic Sunday traditions.