Meeting, pt.3 | Community | Jeff/Annie
Meeting, pt.3
Community, jeff/annie
pt.1, pt.2
Because he is Annie Edison and she is Jeffrey Winger. He had seen her heart in that moment, had seen it in her frightened, sad eyes and realized that it was his heart, too. His scared, silly heart was just the same, his perfectionist heart, his fear of heartbreak were all very real, and they were all hers, too.
Meeting
pt. 3
I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.~Harry Burns, When Harry Met Sally
He doesn't want to admit it, but things are getting to him. Strike that. He can't admit it, even if somewhere along the line he guesses that he's consented to it inside his head. Because the inside of his head is just all her. For example: he walks through the Gap, and this is normal for Jeffrey Winger, because when the going gets tough, the tough go out and buy a new blazer. But the retail therapy's not working. All he can see in the brightly-colored lines of cardigans is the vague (but very real) shape of her body, and when he smells the petunia-y fragrance of the cheap perfumes on the store's shelves all he can imagine is her neck when she laughed and leaned towards him, and all he can see in that pretty changing-room attendant who always tries to get him to take her panties off is that her hair is almost the exact same sort of color as hers. He's just trying to buy a button-down dammit, dammit, dammit, and all he can see is Annie Edison peeking around the corner, haunting him.
“Can I get you anything else? And I mean ANYTHING?” That one changing-room girl says to him, peeking around the corner. She's wearing this blouse that looks vaguely like something she would wear. He just wants nothing more than to rip it off not so that he can ravish this annoying retail vixen, but because it's like something's drilling in his brain, these thoughts of her drilling deep into his brain.
“A lobotomy? Can you get me one of those?” He asks before digging his knuckles hard against his temples.
The girl with hair that's too-perfectly-curled stares at him, blinking. “A... lobster?” Then, she brightens. “Are you, like, asking me to dinner?”
He knows he should ruffle his feathers back up, knows he should say, “Uh, yes. That's exactly what I'm doing. Asking you to dinner.” Sure, he'd have to put up with maybe an hour or so of hearing the endless noise of “attractive woman” prattle, the kind that consists of a woman who finds herself much more interesting than she really is. Her body was often more interesting than her conversation, so Jeff Winger had learned to deal.
But that wasn't in for some reason, none of was. Not in that second, not when that wide-eyed eyeshadow-ed sales assistant looked up at him, offering him a little bit of everything. But part of him realizes in this second that getting everything is only going to leave him with this big empty nothing inside his chest.
What's crazier though, is the revelation that he, Jeffrey Winger, has not slept with anyone in... and oh God, it dawns on him. He hasn't slept with anyone since her, and it's been weeks. No, months. Months and he hadn't even noticed, because there's this ache inside him that's been too distracting. Like something sharp and heavy has been settling slowly into his stomach, weighing him down, taking up every ounce of his being.
He's got to get out, out of this mall, it's suddenly swallowing him with its button-down cardigans and wide-eyed brunettes. He stalks out of the parking lot, Orange Julius in hand, and it's starting to snow a little. He looks up in the sky to watch a heavy blanket of gray snowclouds roll above him. The radio had said something about some mountain of blizzards roaring through Colorado at some point today, but he had ignored it, taken it as an excuse to send out the mass text to the study group: I am sitting at home, watching You've Got Mail, BY MYSELF. I want it this way. And no Abed you can't watch it with me, and no Pierce, I'm not gay for enjoying a classic romcom. Britta had texted him back telling him that he was buying into commercialized gender roles, but he had promptly responded that he thought Meg Ryan was hot, how about that for gender roles? And that was that.
He could only watch so much of the film, where Meg Ryan is donning that super 90s coif and there's a quirky kitschy soundtrack and it made him want to grind his teeth. It wasn't that the movie was irritating him, with its easily predictable plot and (he hated to give Britta this) ridiculously sexist roles, but it was the idea of the movie somehow, the whole general atmosphere of would-they-won't-they, the thought that maybe these two people that should be together, these two horribly-constructed characters, wouldn't find each other in the end. And, she, hadn't texted him back, even though the rest of the group had something to say, even Shirley (Oh, isn't that nice, Jeffrey!)
But then, she was a busy woman. He had to tell himself that sometimes, chant it in his head over and over again: she was a busy woman, busy planning a wedding. He had seen the strange lines under her eyes when she met the group up for a movie (when she could), could see the way she was always distracted, always an early-leaver, always scurrying from one wedding plan to another.
“I don't get it,” Britta had said while Troy tried to adjust her snowboard - the group had decided to take advantage of some Groupon deal for snowboarding lessons just a week after finals. “You just have to pick out cake. It's cake. How bad can it be?”
Troy lifted his head and nodded. “She's got you there, Annie. Cake is, like, never wrong. It can't be.”
But she had had this look on her face like she might start crying at any second. “No! It's not just cake. There's ivory italian cream, vanilla strawberry, chocolate swirl...”
“Yes. Keep going,” Troy said, his eyes closed, his mouth a little open. Creepily open.
She had merely huffed before quickly excusing herself from them, saying she “didn't have time to cater to Troy's weird cake fetish.”
Shirley had made a little mother-hen noise in her throat before turning to Jeff, frowning. “Jeff! Go say something. Make her stay.”
He watched her stalk off - he could almost still hear her legs whoosh as she marched in her windbreaker pants, could almost still smell that light petunia scent of her freshly shampooed hair, could still feel something inside of him still with the very moment of her.
“No,” he said, watching her figure become smaller as it approached the ski lodge, watched it disappear behind the tacky fake-wooden doors. “No, let her be.”
Shirley looked at him, her eyebrows tightly drawn together. She placed her palm on his arm, her voice too sweet when she asked, “Jeff-rey. Are you okay?”
The wind was still startlingly chilly but he started to take off his jacket, shaking his head. “No, actually. I'm not okay. Not at all.” He started to walk away from the group, quickly removing his snowboarding getup as he drew closer to the ski lodge. He hadn't known what he wanted to do, but he felt himself being drawn back towards her trail even if she had already showered, had already returned all her ski equipment at the front desk, was already in her clunker of a vehicle and driving towards that... guy. But what did it matter to him, what did it matter to him really?
Which was ridiculous, he thinks as he glares at the darkening sky. This Colorado winter had been weirdly tumultuous. Which was fine with him. Jeff Winger was a creature of solitude. He was a creature of marathons. He could be fine with a stack of Diehard movies and a queue of Golden Girls on his Netflix. This, of course, was only a secret that he had shared with Abed Nadir. And, well. Her. He had shared it once with her, once when they thought they had figured out the whole friendship thing. She had laughed and said that she loved Golden Girls, that she had a VCR of a couple episodes somewhere in her apartment.
“I, um,” she had looked at him over a veil of dark lashes. “I have some scotch. Can we do that? Can we watch Golden Girls and drink scotch?”
His mouth had hung open for a second, something like a grin suspended there. Then, slowly, he said, “We ab-so-fuckin-lutely can.”
And then she had laughed, a good sort of laugh, before running off to her kitchen. She returned with two proper-sized glasses of scotch (the bad cheap kind but fuck it), and after their third glass she made him toast her and then swear that he would never tell anyone, never anyone, that she was sloppy, goofy drunk.
He had smiled and the truth was that he had been a little drunk, too. She had made the drinks strong, not on purpose but because she was still twenty-two and she had no idea what was too much, and she was wearing these pajama shorts and this t-shirt. And, now that he thinks about it, it was his t-shirt. And oh shit, she had leaned in against his neck and said, “Do you think anyone will every understand us? I mean, understand why we do this?” She had waved gratuitously towards her small, shitty living room, as to indicate that they were sort of a joke, sort of, the two of them sitting with their knees touch and her not wearing a bra and him unshaven and unshowered and for once he doesn't give a fuck where his phone is.
“No one will understand us,” he says, so close to her face. So close. “No one will know what to do with us.”
He thinks about this now, now in the mall's parking lot and he realizes what a fool he had been. She was right there, her face and her smile and her mouth, but all he had seen was this woman who, for the first time in his life, he had restrained himself from sleeping with. She wasn't that, wasn't just somebody to fuck, she was... she was Annie. She was this girl who drank scotch, and studied Biology too much, and help her lips in a pursed line, and liked Golden Girls, and did horrible impressions of people, and she was all of that. And he had ruined everything with sex, and so he was so careful with her. Until then, when he had ruined everything once again, sex included.
But it was just him now and the thick clouds above him. Snow clouds. He had seem them before, seen them many times before this winter. Hurrying to his car, he muttered curses to the gods who convinced him that a larger winter coat wasn't worth it today (“It adds bulk,” he had muttered into the mirror this morning).
He started the heat as soon as he crawled into his car. The temperature was dropping rapidly, and as he pulled out of the mall's parking lot, a overdramatic radio DJ proclaimed, “Looks like the snow's gonna come down bucket-style, folks. One second it'll be here and then it'll be gone. Better stay at home and listen to these rockin' tunes...” And then he turned it off, since he couldn't take one more song by Maroon 5, and he couldn't handle the sound of anything any more, even the sound of his own mind.
The snow started, quicker than he thought. One second he was driving up the onramp of the interstate and the next second the world was completely white. He could see the blaring red brake lights of the semi in front of him, but then it's nothing and soon he finds himself cursing, turning on the radio: “Looks like it's gonna be a white-out, folks. Best to just sit this one out at home. If anyone even thought of heading out today, well... they're regretting it now.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” he mumbles under his breath, cranking up the heat. “They should give you a show on the BBC, you're so fucking brilliant.”
He keeps driving, praying to the gods of everything holy that he won't go veering off into some ditch, only to be discovered by Starburns's ghost. No, he thinks, no... that would actually be okay, go ahead and throw him into some snowy deathtrap, because life wasn't really pro-Jeffrey Winger right now: he's going five miles-an-hour behind what he thinks is another vehicle on what he think is the highway, he didn't buy anything at the mall, and she won't get the fuck out of his brain. She was there, even through the churning whiteness around him he could see her face, and suddenly he was back in her living room, watching Golden Girls, and they're both still drunk and her face. Always her face, laughing before turning very serious and looking to him and ask, “Will this be us someday? Will our group just be a slew of bitter women who happen to love each other but really don't know how to hold down functional relationships?”
He had studied her face, trying to figure something out, like turning a puzzle piece just the right right way so that it fits. “Well, I know that I'll at least be banging the old woman when I'm wrinkled and gray.”
But she didn't laugh like he had wanted, hadn't thrown her head back and snorted like she did was she was drunk and laughing. Instead, she frowned and shrugged. Her eyes were set glumly somewhere inside her own thoughts when she said, “I guess we're never going to change, huh?”
“Hey,” he said, “hey, now.” He had scooted up closer to her, reached behind her head and cupped the nape of her neck. Gently, with the tip of his fingers, he turned her head towards him. Her eyes were glassy, and suddenly he realized how drunk she was and how drunk he was and how sad she was, how sad she really was, and he could feel this sadness inside him real and alive because it was his own. “We've changed. We're friends now. Adult friends. I mean, remember what we use to be? All weird and sexually tense? We've evolved. All that's behind us now.”
She blinked slowly before saying, her voice low, “Is it, though? Is any of it really ever going to be behind us?” There was this one tear, just one that ran down her face, rolling across her jawline, and down into his hand, in her hair.
It was her face, her face then, and her face now. And even though that conversation was cut-short by a phone call from Pierce (he was stuck in a port-o-john and he needed somebody to get him out STAT) it had been this moment where something in him flamed in his gut.
Because he knew that the alcohol hadn't help, that it could shift his perspective on anything, but now he knew why it was that this woman with tiny fists and a good strong heart and crippling fear of failure was so close to him he could never explain it.
He realized it then, and it comes to him now, as he's trying desperately to windshield wiper his way of our this clusterfuck of a storm. He realizes that he could explain it, so suddenly, and the thought comes to him so quickly it knocks the breathe out of him and all he can mutter is, “Fuck.”
Because he is Annie Edison and she is Jeffrey Winger. He had seen her heart in that moment, had seen it in her frightened, sad eyes and realized that it was his heart, too. His scared, silly heart was just the same, his perfectionist heart, his fear of heartbreak were all very real, and they were all hers, too.
“Fuck,” he says again, but this time it's a mixture of the storm of emotions and the actual, physical storm that is battering his car. He can't see the brake lights anymore and so now he's really driving blind. If he squints and sort of makes it up, he thinks he can see the lines on the road, but he's not real sure.
“Of course this would happen to you, Jeff Winger, you idiot,” he mumbles, as he tries to adjust his radio with the one hand that isn't driving. The reception is wavering, static-filled, and then suddenly it's pretty worthless. “And this is how you die. Yep. You die in a snow storm knowing what an absolute, ridiculous idiot you've been for four years to your best friend because you wanted to buy another fucking button-down at the Gap.”
But then, he sees it. At first, it's hazy and sort of surreal, like a mirage that might show in the desert when your brain has been fried into hysteria. But then, as he creeps his car closer, he knows that it's real, that this is actually happening.
It's Annie Edison. Stuck on the side of the road with her piece-of-shit vehicle. She's holding her coat together against her chest, and she's squinting against the white of the storm. Her car is almost half covered with snow and she blinking rapidly like she does when she just might cry and all he can see is her face, her face again, even through this storm.
He pulls over immediately, praying that he doesn't slam into something or someone that he can't see. He slides up as close to her car as possible. From what she can tell, he's sure, she has no idea who's stopping, or if anyone has stopped at all. But he can see her, see that her tights have been torn at the knee and he can see her white and pink skin underneath, can almost see the strips of icicles forming on her hair.
He stares into his steering wheel. Then, quickly, fumbling his gloves on, he breathes himself to get ready and then steps out of the car.
Community, jeff/annie
pt.1, pt.2
Because he is Annie Edison and she is Jeffrey Winger. He had seen her heart in that moment, had seen it in her frightened, sad eyes and realized that it was his heart, too. His scared, silly heart was just the same, his perfectionist heart, his fear of heartbreak were all very real, and they were all hers, too.
Meeting
pt. 3
I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.~Harry Burns, When Harry Met Sally
He doesn't want to admit it, but things are getting to him. Strike that. He can't admit it, even if somewhere along the line he guesses that he's consented to it inside his head. Because the inside of his head is just all her. For example: he walks through the Gap, and this is normal for Jeffrey Winger, because when the going gets tough, the tough go out and buy a new blazer. But the retail therapy's not working. All he can see in the brightly-colored lines of cardigans is the vague (but very real) shape of her body, and when he smells the petunia-y fragrance of the cheap perfumes on the store's shelves all he can imagine is her neck when she laughed and leaned towards him, and all he can see in that pretty changing-room attendant who always tries to get him to take her panties off is that her hair is almost the exact same sort of color as hers. He's just trying to buy a button-down dammit, dammit, dammit, and all he can see is Annie Edison peeking around the corner, haunting him.
“Can I get you anything else? And I mean ANYTHING?” That one changing-room girl says to him, peeking around the corner. She's wearing this blouse that looks vaguely like something she would wear. He just wants nothing more than to rip it off not so that he can ravish this annoying retail vixen, but because it's like something's drilling in his brain, these thoughts of her drilling deep into his brain.
“A lobotomy? Can you get me one of those?” He asks before digging his knuckles hard against his temples.
The girl with hair that's too-perfectly-curled stares at him, blinking. “A... lobster?” Then, she brightens. “Are you, like, asking me to dinner?”
He knows he should ruffle his feathers back up, knows he should say, “Uh, yes. That's exactly what I'm doing. Asking you to dinner.” Sure, he'd have to put up with maybe an hour or so of hearing the endless noise of “attractive woman” prattle, the kind that consists of a woman who finds herself much more interesting than she really is. Her body was often more interesting than her conversation, so Jeff Winger had learned to deal.
But that wasn't in for some reason, none of was. Not in that second, not when that wide-eyed eyeshadow-ed sales assistant looked up at him, offering him a little bit of everything. But part of him realizes in this second that getting everything is only going to leave him with this big empty nothing inside his chest.
What's crazier though, is the revelation that he, Jeffrey Winger, has not slept with anyone in... and oh God, it dawns on him. He hasn't slept with anyone since her, and it's been weeks. No, months. Months and he hadn't even noticed, because there's this ache inside him that's been too distracting. Like something sharp and heavy has been settling slowly into his stomach, weighing him down, taking up every ounce of his being.
He's got to get out, out of this mall, it's suddenly swallowing him with its button-down cardigans and wide-eyed brunettes. He stalks out of the parking lot, Orange Julius in hand, and it's starting to snow a little. He looks up in the sky to watch a heavy blanket of gray snowclouds roll above him. The radio had said something about some mountain of blizzards roaring through Colorado at some point today, but he had ignored it, taken it as an excuse to send out the mass text to the study group: I am sitting at home, watching You've Got Mail, BY MYSELF. I want it this way. And no Abed you can't watch it with me, and no Pierce, I'm not gay for enjoying a classic romcom. Britta had texted him back telling him that he was buying into commercialized gender roles, but he had promptly responded that he thought Meg Ryan was hot, how about that for gender roles? And that was that.
He could only watch so much of the film, where Meg Ryan is donning that super 90s coif and there's a quirky kitschy soundtrack and it made him want to grind his teeth. It wasn't that the movie was irritating him, with its easily predictable plot and (he hated to give Britta this) ridiculously sexist roles, but it was the idea of the movie somehow, the whole general atmosphere of would-they-won't-they, the thought that maybe these two people that should be together, these two horribly-constructed characters, wouldn't find each other in the end. And, she, hadn't texted him back, even though the rest of the group had something to say, even Shirley (Oh, isn't that nice, Jeffrey!)
But then, she was a busy woman. He had to tell himself that sometimes, chant it in his head over and over again: she was a busy woman, busy planning a wedding. He had seen the strange lines under her eyes when she met the group up for a movie (when she could), could see the way she was always distracted, always an early-leaver, always scurrying from one wedding plan to another.
“I don't get it,” Britta had said while Troy tried to adjust her snowboard - the group had decided to take advantage of some Groupon deal for snowboarding lessons just a week after finals. “You just have to pick out cake. It's cake. How bad can it be?”
Troy lifted his head and nodded. “She's got you there, Annie. Cake is, like, never wrong. It can't be.”
But she had had this look on her face like she might start crying at any second. “No! It's not just cake. There's ivory italian cream, vanilla strawberry, chocolate swirl...”
“Yes. Keep going,” Troy said, his eyes closed, his mouth a little open. Creepily open.
She had merely huffed before quickly excusing herself from them, saying she “didn't have time to cater to Troy's weird cake fetish.”
Shirley had made a little mother-hen noise in her throat before turning to Jeff, frowning. “Jeff! Go say something. Make her stay.”
He watched her stalk off - he could almost still hear her legs whoosh as she marched in her windbreaker pants, could almost still smell that light petunia scent of her freshly shampooed hair, could still feel something inside of him still with the very moment of her.
“No,” he said, watching her figure become smaller as it approached the ski lodge, watched it disappear behind the tacky fake-wooden doors. “No, let her be.”
Shirley looked at him, her eyebrows tightly drawn together. She placed her palm on his arm, her voice too sweet when she asked, “Jeff-rey. Are you okay?”
The wind was still startlingly chilly but he started to take off his jacket, shaking his head. “No, actually. I'm not okay. Not at all.” He started to walk away from the group, quickly removing his snowboarding getup as he drew closer to the ski lodge. He hadn't known what he wanted to do, but he felt himself being drawn back towards her trail even if she had already showered, had already returned all her ski equipment at the front desk, was already in her clunker of a vehicle and driving towards that... guy. But what did it matter to him, what did it matter to him really?
Which was ridiculous, he thinks as he glares at the darkening sky. This Colorado winter had been weirdly tumultuous. Which was fine with him. Jeff Winger was a creature of solitude. He was a creature of marathons. He could be fine with a stack of Diehard movies and a queue of Golden Girls on his Netflix. This, of course, was only a secret that he had shared with Abed Nadir. And, well. Her. He had shared it once with her, once when they thought they had figured out the whole friendship thing. She had laughed and said that she loved Golden Girls, that she had a VCR of a couple episodes somewhere in her apartment.
“I, um,” she had looked at him over a veil of dark lashes. “I have some scotch. Can we do that? Can we watch Golden Girls and drink scotch?”
His mouth had hung open for a second, something like a grin suspended there. Then, slowly, he said, “We ab-so-fuckin-lutely can.”
And then she had laughed, a good sort of laugh, before running off to her kitchen. She returned with two proper-sized glasses of scotch (the bad cheap kind but fuck it), and after their third glass she made him toast her and then swear that he would never tell anyone, never anyone, that she was sloppy, goofy drunk.
He had smiled and the truth was that he had been a little drunk, too. She had made the drinks strong, not on purpose but because she was still twenty-two and she had no idea what was too much, and she was wearing these pajama shorts and this t-shirt. And, now that he thinks about it, it was his t-shirt. And oh shit, she had leaned in against his neck and said, “Do you think anyone will every understand us? I mean, understand why we do this?” She had waved gratuitously towards her small, shitty living room, as to indicate that they were sort of a joke, sort of, the two of them sitting with their knees touch and her not wearing a bra and him unshaven and unshowered and for once he doesn't give a fuck where his phone is.
“No one will understand us,” he says, so close to her face. So close. “No one will know what to do with us.”
He thinks about this now, now in the mall's parking lot and he realizes what a fool he had been. She was right there, her face and her smile and her mouth, but all he had seen was this woman who, for the first time in his life, he had restrained himself from sleeping with. She wasn't that, wasn't just somebody to fuck, she was... she was Annie. She was this girl who drank scotch, and studied Biology too much, and help her lips in a pursed line, and liked Golden Girls, and did horrible impressions of people, and she was all of that. And he had ruined everything with sex, and so he was so careful with her. Until then, when he had ruined everything once again, sex included.
But it was just him now and the thick clouds above him. Snow clouds. He had seem them before, seen them many times before this winter. Hurrying to his car, he muttered curses to the gods who convinced him that a larger winter coat wasn't worth it today (“It adds bulk,” he had muttered into the mirror this morning).
He started the heat as soon as he crawled into his car. The temperature was dropping rapidly, and as he pulled out of the mall's parking lot, a overdramatic radio DJ proclaimed, “Looks like the snow's gonna come down bucket-style, folks. One second it'll be here and then it'll be gone. Better stay at home and listen to these rockin' tunes...” And then he turned it off, since he couldn't take one more song by Maroon 5, and he couldn't handle the sound of anything any more, even the sound of his own mind.
The snow started, quicker than he thought. One second he was driving up the onramp of the interstate and the next second the world was completely white. He could see the blaring red brake lights of the semi in front of him, but then it's nothing and soon he finds himself cursing, turning on the radio: “Looks like it's gonna be a white-out, folks. Best to just sit this one out at home. If anyone even thought of heading out today, well... they're regretting it now.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” he mumbles under his breath, cranking up the heat. “They should give you a show on the BBC, you're so fucking brilliant.”
He keeps driving, praying to the gods of everything holy that he won't go veering off into some ditch, only to be discovered by Starburns's ghost. No, he thinks, no... that would actually be okay, go ahead and throw him into some snowy deathtrap, because life wasn't really pro-Jeffrey Winger right now: he's going five miles-an-hour behind what he thinks is another vehicle on what he think is the highway, he didn't buy anything at the mall, and she won't get the fuck out of his brain. She was there, even through the churning whiteness around him he could see her face, and suddenly he was back in her living room, watching Golden Girls, and they're both still drunk and her face. Always her face, laughing before turning very serious and looking to him and ask, “Will this be us someday? Will our group just be a slew of bitter women who happen to love each other but really don't know how to hold down functional relationships?”
He had studied her face, trying to figure something out, like turning a puzzle piece just the right right way so that it fits. “Well, I know that I'll at least be banging the old woman when I'm wrinkled and gray.”
But she didn't laugh like he had wanted, hadn't thrown her head back and snorted like she did was she was drunk and laughing. Instead, she frowned and shrugged. Her eyes were set glumly somewhere inside her own thoughts when she said, “I guess we're never going to change, huh?”
“Hey,” he said, “hey, now.” He had scooted up closer to her, reached behind her head and cupped the nape of her neck. Gently, with the tip of his fingers, he turned her head towards him. Her eyes were glassy, and suddenly he realized how drunk she was and how drunk he was and how sad she was, how sad she really was, and he could feel this sadness inside him real and alive because it was his own. “We've changed. We're friends now. Adult friends. I mean, remember what we use to be? All weird and sexually tense? We've evolved. All that's behind us now.”
She blinked slowly before saying, her voice low, “Is it, though? Is any of it really ever going to be behind us?” There was this one tear, just one that ran down her face, rolling across her jawline, and down into his hand, in her hair.
It was her face, her face then, and her face now. And even though that conversation was cut-short by a phone call from Pierce (he was stuck in a port-o-john and he needed somebody to get him out STAT) it had been this moment where something in him flamed in his gut.
Because he knew that the alcohol hadn't help, that it could shift his perspective on anything, but now he knew why it was that this woman with tiny fists and a good strong heart and crippling fear of failure was so close to him he could never explain it.
He realized it then, and it comes to him now, as he's trying desperately to windshield wiper his way of our this clusterfuck of a storm. He realizes that he could explain it, so suddenly, and the thought comes to him so quickly it knocks the breathe out of him and all he can mutter is, “Fuck.”
Because he is Annie Edison and she is Jeffrey Winger. He had seen her heart in that moment, had seen it in her frightened, sad eyes and realized that it was his heart, too. His scared, silly heart was just the same, his perfectionist heart, his fear of heartbreak were all very real, and they were all hers, too.
“Fuck,” he says again, but this time it's a mixture of the storm of emotions and the actual, physical storm that is battering his car. He can't see the brake lights anymore and so now he's really driving blind. If he squints and sort of makes it up, he thinks he can see the lines on the road, but he's not real sure.
“Of course this would happen to you, Jeff Winger, you idiot,” he mumbles, as he tries to adjust his radio with the one hand that isn't driving. The reception is wavering, static-filled, and then suddenly it's pretty worthless. “And this is how you die. Yep. You die in a snow storm knowing what an absolute, ridiculous idiot you've been for four years to your best friend because you wanted to buy another fucking button-down at the Gap.”
But then, he sees it. At first, it's hazy and sort of surreal, like a mirage that might show in the desert when your brain has been fried into hysteria. But then, as he creeps his car closer, he knows that it's real, that this is actually happening.
It's Annie Edison. Stuck on the side of the road with her piece-of-shit vehicle. She's holding her coat together against her chest, and she's squinting against the white of the storm. Her car is almost half covered with snow and she blinking rapidly like she does when she just might cry and all he can see is her face, her face again, even through this storm.
He pulls over immediately, praying that he doesn't slam into something or someone that he can't see. He slides up as close to her car as possible. From what she can tell, he's sure, she has no idea who's stopping, or if anyone has stopped at all. But he can see her, see that her tights have been torn at the knee and he can see her white and pink skin underneath, can almost see the strips of icicles forming on her hair.
He stares into his steering wheel. Then, quickly, fumbling his gloves on, he breathes himself to get ready and then steps out of the car.