Fic: Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste, part two (Jeff/Britta)
Title: Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste (part two)
Rating: R
Word Count: this part is about 4300, total is 14,000
Spoilers: The entire series, although it goes AU after Accounting for Lawyers. Begins in early December 2010 and covers several years.
Characters: Britta/Philip, Jeff/Britta, ensemble
Notes: Best to read part one first, it is available here.
Around April Fool’s Day, it’s a prank, of all things, that finally gets Shirley and Abed to accept Jeff’s apologies. None of them will tell Britta what exactly the prank entailed, but one day she’s reading the paper and the headline of a brief sidebar article gives her a clue: Local Man Accidentally Marries Prize-Winning Dalmatian at County Dog Show.
* * *
It’s a rainy April night and they are in her tiny kitchen, listening to one of Philip’s old Galaxie 500 records (their cover of Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste, to be precise) and picking at the remains of one of Shirley’s giant cookies. Sometimes there are these weird little reminders of her Greendale interlude, and Britta supposes that having Jeff in her kitchen, eating a giant cookie, is one of them.
“Do you remember when I brought Philip to Shirley’s Christmas party, that first year we were together, and you told me that if he hurt me, you would fuck him up?”
Jeff nods.
“Well, he hurt me. A lot. And as far as I know, none of you guys who said you would fuck him up actually did,”
“Britta. Did you really want us to beat up the father of your child?”
“No. I hurt him plenty on my own. Philip and I are in an okay place now and it needs to stay that way for the rest of Maggie’s life, I know that.” She winds the string of her teabag around one finger, lets it unwind, then winds it up again. “I’m just wondering, why would you guys say that? What did it mean?”
“Did you like that we said that? Or do you wish we hadn’t?”
Something is weird here. Jeff Winger sounds like a therapist. She glances up at him.
“Look,” Jeff continues. His right hand is resting on the table, close to her left hand, and it kind of reminds her of the study group. Them, at a table, but not right next to each other. Never right next to each other. “You used to be my best friend,” he says.
Oh. A very tiny sharp needle to the heart, that. “You used to be my best friend, too,”
He gives her a strange half-smile, a lawyerly kind of look she recognizes from too many drinks with the partners. It’s the sort of indulgent look you give to a dimwitted child. “You don’t get to play that game with me, Britta. If I had to apologize to the He-Man Woman Haters Club and their Ladies’ Auxiliary, then you have to apologize to me,”
“Apologize to you for what?”
He throws up his hands in this funny little-boy gesture of frustration. “For leaving us!”
“Leaving you? I was married and had a baby on the way, I couldn’t hang around on campus hatching schemes and cracking wise with you guys forever!”
“What did you think we were going to be able to do without you? Everything fell apart,”
“Remember that time you said I was the dark cloud that unites us? Well, that remains one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me, but you’re the one who always united us, Jeff. You were always the leader,”
Jeff frowns down into his tea. The frown and the beard are the strangest combination on his face that she’s seen in…in all the time that she’s ever known him. “Being the leader is not all it’s cracked up to be,” She starts to speak but he continues: “It’s goddamn difficult, okay? Everybody wants you to have all the answers. You guys always wanted me to have all the answers,”
She thinks about that, trying to trace the pain in it to its very beginning. “I didn’t mean to hurt you guys. I didn’t mean to hurt you-you understand that, right?” The conversation feels like it’s slipping away from her, she can’t stop her voice from cracking at the end of her sentence.
“I understand that, but it doesn’t mean that it didn’t hurt. How are we supposed to be friends again? You messed me up, Britta. I never used to care if girls didn’t talk to me anymore, I could always get more ass than a toilet seat,”
She can’t stop herself: “You realize nobody else has ever said that like it’s a good thing before?”
He pulls a face. “Just be quiet for like thirty seconds of your life, okay? You screwed me up. Now I want to be friends with people. What the hell, Britta? I was perfectly happy to be floating along in the toilet of life, because you know what floating things do? They rise to the top!”
“What is the deal with these toilet metaphors?”
“The first one was a comparison, not a metaphor. Jesus, did you never graduate from community college? Focus, Britta. The point is, you left, and now look at you. You got a kid, you got a business, you got everything,”
“I think you mean, ‘You have everything,’ Professor Jeremiah Johnson. And I thought the point was that I hurt you, not that I have ‘everything.’” She tries to inject her finger quotes with as much sarcasm as is physically possible.
“Two sides of the same coin. You left. I stuck around. I got treated like shit by you and all my other friends-yeah, I said it, abandoning a friendship works both ways, even Abed knows that-and now my annual GDP is the same as Afghanistan’s. But I’m not even bothered by that. I actually like Cup Noodles. Do you want to guess what the worst part of all this is, Britta?”
“I think you’re just going to tell me, anyway,”
“The worst part is that now I actually missed those friendships when they were gone. Now, I have feelings. And they are hurt,”
“Look, Slater told me that you got this way when things got serious, but I had no idea that was true for platonic relationships, too,”
“Slater said that? To you? When?”
“We’re in the same babysitting co-op, okay, sometimes we get coffee. Jesus, Jeff. It won’t feel this bad forever,” Britta pushes stray hair back behind her ears. She’s been maintaining eye contact the whole time, but this is hard. It is really hard. He seems on the edge of something here, alone and lonely, on a plateau of his own making. He doesn’t have anything like tapdancing or, God forbid, an unplanned-for-but-incredibly-loved child to push off from, either. “No one is going to hurt you forever. I am never going to hurt you forever,” she finishes, more gently.
He is Jeff Winger, and it has to be killing him that someone is talking to him like this, patiently and kindly. It has to be killing him that everybody somehow figured this out before him, that love hurts and life sucks and that love is amazing and life is amazing, and that it all happens at once and you miss it if you’re spending the whole time in front of a mirror. He sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair. “I’m happy that you’re happy,” he says, finally. “But I gotta be honest with you. I have no idea how someone who has been through what you’ve been through can be happy at all, let alone as happy as you seem to be,” Finally he looks up at her again. “This is the most sincere thing I have ever said, so make a note of it, because you will probably never hear it again: you seem complete, and right now I am really jealous of that.”
Britta takes a deep breath. “Firstly, thank you, and secondly, I do feel…well, I don’t know if ‘complete’ is the right word. I’ve never really felt like I was missing anything, to begin with. But I am really happy. And the things that I have in my life now, that make me the most happy? They’re all the things that I thought would most break my heart,” She takes in another deep breath, and does that thing with her feet, imagining the roots growing, spreading down the block to where Maggie is asleep in her father’s apartment, across town to where her friends and their families are sleeping, too, and right back here, to her home, to this space they are sharing.
Jeff shakes his head a little, chagrined. “You sound like a greeting card,”
Britta’s glad for the roots that hold her steady. “Dear Jeff, happy National It’s Time To Be A Man And Grow Some Testicles Day. Stop being afraid to live your own life. No love, Britta,”
“Aww, no love?” He makes a Winger Face, mouth pursed, eyebrows high.
“No, you asshole. Grow up. Be a man. Get hurt and then…get better,” She sweeps crumbs off the table and carries their empty teacups to the sink, the blood high in her face. What, is he twelve? Change is hard and everything-if anyone knows that, it’s someone who got on a whaling boat pregnant and got off it with a screaming infant-but sometimes you just have to deal.
When she comes back to the table and sits down, Britta looks up at Jeff expectantly, but he doesn’t say anything for a Greendale moment.
Then: “I forgive you,”
She lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. “I forgive you, too,”
And, surprising her utterly, he reaches out for her hand, folds his around it and presses her fingers hard against his own. She feels the pulses in their wrists beating against each other. The air is still thick with their arguing.
The moment stretches out and is tense and Jeff has to break it. “God, what the hell are we listening to? Did the guy playing guitar just have an orgasm?”
“Why, are you jealous?”
“Shut up, Perry,” he says. “Or is it Walton, still?”
“It’s Perry,” she says. “That’s one thing that never changed,”
* * *
Britta’s invitation to Pierce’s First Annual May Day May Pole Maynia is printed, the very tiniest of fonts informs her, on 15% post-consumer recycled moist towelettes. Larger type says she should bring a picnic blanket, a dish to pass, any dependent children she may have, and that the dress code is Pagan Casual. Whatever the hell that means.
When the first of May dawns drizzly and cold, she decides to ditch the blanket, fill up the slow cooker with leftover vegetarian chili, and that Pagan Casual means wellies and outerwear for her and her dependent child. On the bus on the way over to Pierce’s she starts to question the wisdom of taking a slow cooker on public transportation, but they arrive in one piece and only slightly rumpled.
“Oh, your mother-daughter dresses are so cute!” Annie exclaims, meeting them at the door.
Britta looks down. Maggie insisted on wearing her very favorite white dress with the blue polka dots and the eyelet trim, and totally unconsciously Britta picked a navy dress with tiny white dots for herself. Shit. Well, at least one of them is wearing a cardigan and the other a denim jacket. “Um, thank you, you look really cute too!”
“Hi Auntie Annie!” Maggie reaches up for a hug and is instantly indulged and then covered in noisy kisses, two adorable people being so adorably affectionate that it’s the human equivalent of a basketful of puppies.
Britta has gotten way used to Pierce’s weird house by now-the uniformed manservants, the room with the shrine to Kathleen Turner, the heated floors in the bathrooms-but today it’s also Pierce’s yard that’s weird: there’s a huge, beribboned pole set up in the middle of it. There’s also a trampoline and a petting zoo and a dunk tank, all of which are enthusiastically being patronized by a crowd of damp children. Maggie runs off the second she sees Shirley’s boys. Her wellies are a little too big and she skids in the first mud puddle she hits, and that’s the end of the white dress. Britta is incredibly proud that her little girl barely blinks at the fall, just gets to her feet and keeps on running.
Annie slides an arm through one of Britta’s, crooking their elbows together as they make their way more sedately across the wet grass.
“Everybody’s here, over by the firepit, where it’s a little warmer,” she says. “We’re all back together again,”
“Good,” Britta takes a deep breath. “It’s about time,”
“Yeah. Oh, careful, this puddle looks deep,” They step around it, leaning on each other, and reach the buffet table. With a sigh of relief Britta sets down her slow cooker, which an attendant grimly plugs into a power strip. At least there’s an awning mostly over the food, which there is a lot of, because by the number of robed, barefoot people around, it appears Pierce invited his entire hive.
Annie takes her arm again, and it’s nice, sisterly, which makes what Annie says next more than a little mind-boggling. “You know, Britta, it was really strange, when you left and then Jeff left. I know it was always this joke that you guys were like the Greendale mom and dad, but I don’t think we realized how true it was. We all had to make our own way again. It kind of sucked,”
Britta stops and looks over at Annie, who looks even younger and more worried than usual. “But you guys are all doing okay now, you would say, right? At least it looks like that to me,”
“Oh, yeah! I mean, I’m great! I love my job and I love my roller derby weekends and I am going on a date with that cute guy from the bookstore next week, and I never thought I would ever have a life like that, you know? That sounds like a real life, a healthy life. And it’s mine!”
“And you did it all on your own, Annie. You made that life yourself. This is a total mom thing to say, and it makes me feel really old, but I’m proud of you!” They hug, and it clicks into place for Britta that what she missed during her whole Southern Hemisphere Adventure was actual friends.
And it seems kind of selfish to think that just one guy who was totally in love with her was not enough, but it was not.
Arms around each other’s waists, she and Annie find the rest of the study group, sans Pierce, nibbling cocktail wienies-scratch that, Tiny Penises. That’s actually what it says on the placard in front of the dish.
“It’s because May Day is a fertility festival,” Abed explains-apparently Britta didn’t even need to have to open her mouth to ask the question, he must have read it on her face.
“Charming,” she pronounces. “I can’t wait to see what the after-dinner entertainment is going to be,”
“Strippers!” Troy exclaims.
“Not the good kind, though,” Jeff says. “Apparently they are actually wood strippers, and they’re going to get all the paint off the May Pole. I’m sure Pierce will find some way to make it sexy or at least grossly inappropriate, though,”
Britta looks him up and down. “The prodigal returns,”
Shirley tsks. “I know you did not just compare Jeffrey to the prodigal son, Britta!” Something in her tone makes it clear that a little more bridge-mending needs to go on between those two before she’ll be completely satisfied.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your angle of viewing, Pierce chooses that moment to emerge from behind a shrub, totally naked except for some strategic ivy leaves. There is a lot of cringing from the study group and other assorted hangers-on and applause from the hive members.
“That is ill!” Troy says, apparently without irony.
“It’s making me ill,” Shirley, with Abed nodding beside her.
Annie, meanwhile, has pulled the drawstring of her raincoat’s hood so tight that only one eye is visible, and it is not pointed anywhere near Pierce’s direction.
Britta looks over at Jeff, expecting a quip, but he is scratching at his bearded chin contemplatively. “You know, if that’s what I’m going to look like in thirty years, I’m okay with that. He’s got great forearm and thigh definition,”
Britta rolls her eyes.
“Welcome!” Pierce booms. “To the first annual May Day May Pole Maynia celebration spectacular event! We will begin with the traditional feast! Only one hardboiled egg per person, please!”
* * *
Later, as they are all crowding under one of the too-few patio umbrellas, stuffed to the gills with a variety of foods, Britta asks Annie if hardboiled eggs are a traditional May Day food.
“Not according to Wikipedia, which, to be honest, was the only place I even felt like researching it,” she says, and behind them Troy whips out his phone and taps it a few times, checking. “To be honest, I think Pierce just likes throwing parties. His house is really big, it’s probably lonely here without all these people around,”
“Guess you should’ve looked at Wikipedia a little closer,” Troy interjects. “Look right here, ‘Gross boiled eggs are the official food of May Day.’”
Abed is peering over his shoulder at the screen. “The last person to edit the May Day entry was someone named ‘Disco Spider 3000.’”
“Sloppy, Troy, very sloppy,” Jeff says.
“Dude, boiled eggs are gross,”
“So just don’t eat them,” Annie shakes her head at him.
“I didn’t want to hurt Pierce’s feelings,”
“You could never hurt my feelings!” Pierce, now swaddled in a florid purple velvet robe, pops up right in the middle of their little huddle. “I’m wearing a charm against that,”
There’s a beat of silence, which Jeff of course jumps into. “Um, Pierce, two things. First, did you say, a charm against getting your feelings hurt, and second, can I see it?”
Personally Britta thinks that sort of statement is playing with fire, but Pierce’s face lights up. “You’re in luck, Jeffrey. I got each of you one of your own!”
From beneath the robe he produces a shoebox, which he opens with a flourish. Inside is a clutter of twigs, yarn, pipe cleaners, and other grade-school craft accoutrements.
“Did my boys make these?” Shirley asks, as Pierce extracts a giant hot pink pompom with googly eyes glued onto it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pierce says, handing her the pompom. Annie’s charm is a green plastic soda bottle with sparkly stickers all over it. Abed’s is blue and square and paperback-sized, with a lot of wings and glitter. Troy’s is a rock, painted dark red, wearing the kind of novelty baseball cap that usually comes with ice cream inside it. Jeff’s is an old-fashioned clothespin painted black and studded with what look like paper-fastening brads. Britta’s is simply a long, tie-dyed scarf, tied to paint-stirring stick.
It is one of those ultra-rare moments when every single one of them is rendered speechless.
Pierce overhands the empty box into a nearby garbage can. “This is mine,” he says, and pulls a chain with a dog whistle on it out from under the robe. Also on the chain-taped to it-is what appears to be a genuine fortune cookie; one end is chipped, and Britta can see a piece of paper inside it.
Pierce suddenly blows on the whistle. “The feast is now over! Everyone please join hands with your neighbor and raise your voice to sing along to the classic May Day song, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, by the incomparable Gordon Lightfoot,”
Abed stoops to whisper in Britta’s ear. “I think Pierce might be on some new medication,”
* * *
After the feats of strength, the sacrifice of a goat (relax: it’s a papier-mache goat, thrown onto a bonfire), the pouring out of shots in honor of the goat, and the drum circle that accompanies the sunset, they all stand in a circle around the pole, watching the wood strippers do their thing (which is definitely inappropriate, but not at all sexy). Maggie runs up, covered in mud, her teeth chattering. Britta wraps her daughter tight in her own dry-ish jean jacket and sends her inside with Elijah and Jordan-they’ve all had overnights here before; since Pierce is basically a giant-sized child, of course they love it here. The room they sleep in has a huge TV on the ceiling and is furnished entirely with beanbags and a carnival-style popcorn machine. It’s pretty much heaven on earth, whether you’re five or fifty.
This leaves Britta shivering, her wet socks scrunched down at the bottom of her boots like used tissues. Next to her, Jeff has been watching the whole exchange, and now without preamble he takes off his own jacket and sets it over her shoulders. She looks over at him, the light poor enough that she can hardly make out his face. He’s not smiling or sneering or smirking, he is just…existing beside her. Arrayed on either side of them is the rest of the study group, Pierce included and now fully clothed.
“What are you doing?” Britta whispers at Jeff, not wanting to disturb the intense silence that has built up around the spectacle of the wood stripping.
“You looked cold,” he whispers back, and shrugs.
His jacket is big and warm around her, like wings or a hug or something else cheesily symbolic. She adjusts her shoulders inside of it, looking away for a second. When she looks back he actually is grinning. Tiki-torchlight shines off his teeth. Shirley is watching them, her face wistful and also somehow happy. Jeff sees it and his grin broadens.
Britta blows air through her own teeth and lowers her voice a register: “Doesn’t mean we’re engaged or anything,”
Jeff blinks rapidly. “Did you…did you just quote Aliens at me?”
Britta nods, biting her lip to keep from laughing at his wide eyes. “It’s only one of my favorite movies of all time, dummy,”
Jeff laughs, one of those rare genuine laughs they can only elicit from him on days with certain favorable astrological alignments. “It is pretty good,” he says. “I think I’ve seen it probably fifty times,”
“Even I haven’t seen the Twin Peaks series finale that much, Jeff,” Abed says.
“Nerd!” Troy says, quite happily.
Now Shirley laughs. “Don’t feel bad, Jeff. I’ve seen that movie a lot, too,”
“I absolutely do not feel bad about it. The cinematography is amazing, every performance is stellar, and do not even get me started about the special effects!” Jeff looks like he’s building up a good head of steam, and there’s something kind of charming about it, something nostalgic, maybe. Them winding him up and vice versa. He’s about to go on, but suddenly there’s a crunching sound behind them.
“You guys want to hear my fortune?”
“Pierce! You ate your charm!” Annie, who is holding her own tightly in the crook of her arm, looks aghast.
He uncurls the tiny slip of paper, adjusting his glasses so he can read it in the bad light. “’Practice makes perfect.’ Lame!”
“You’re supposed to put ‘in bed’ on the end of it,” Troy tells him.
“Huh?”
“It’s a game. It makes all fortunes naughty. Your fortune would be, ‘Practice makes perfect in bed,’” Abed explains gently.
Pierce snorts laughter. “That’s so true!”
One of the wood strippers glances over at them and coughs, looking very irritated.
Jeff bends to whisper in Britta’s ear: “Do you ever think to yourself, is this really my life, and what did I ever do in a past life to deserve this?”
She goes up on her tiptoes to whisper back: “Yep. I guess we just have to keep practicing,”
And as long as she’s up there, she plants a kiss on his stubbly chin. He stands still for a moment, then turns just enough for their mouths to meet.
Shirley awwws, Pierce mimes barfing, Annie beams at them, and Troy and Abed each give her two big thumbs up.
* * *
The café is home to several thrift store couches, and all around them, for the Mother’s Day exhibition, Britta has hung Abed’s photographs. They are black and white, but that doesn’t make them any less abstract. They could be seashells or hard drives or the manes of wild horses. They could be close-ups of Abed’s eyelashes. Every photograph is named, but every name is a number. The juxtaposition of the ambiguous photos and the straightforward shabbiness of the couches is what Britta likes about them: their contradiction. She knows it is pretentious, but she doesn’t care.
Britta and Jeff sit on the most comfortable couch, drinking tea.
“In the interest of honesty, and for the sake of our friendship, I have to tell you something that is true but that will also probably hurt you a little,”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,”
“Well, go ahead. I’m a manly man, I can take it,”
She smiles. “I’m really, really glad that you shaved your beard,”
He carefully sets his teacup on the side table, takes her cup and does the same. She is grinning. “Traditionally, Britta, spring is a time for new beginnings. My face is just a symbol of how I feel about the future,”
“I don’t get it. You think the future is pointy?” Her smile broadens as he reaches for her, as she reaches back. “Or are you saying you think the future read in Men’s Health that facial hair is out this year?”
“Shut up, Britta,” He gathers her into his lap, and making out like teenagers on a couch in front of all the world and her employees is unseemly, but Britta doesn’t care. Sometimes human beings are unseemly, and she and Jeff are nothing-literally nothing-if they are not human beings.
* END *
Rating: R
Word Count: this part is about 4300, total is 14,000
Spoilers: The entire series, although it goes AU after Accounting for Lawyers. Begins in early December 2010 and covers several years.
Characters: Britta/Philip, Jeff/Britta, ensemble
Notes: Best to read part one first, it is available here.
Around April Fool’s Day, it’s a prank, of all things, that finally gets Shirley and Abed to accept Jeff’s apologies. None of them will tell Britta what exactly the prank entailed, but one day she’s reading the paper and the headline of a brief sidebar article gives her a clue: Local Man Accidentally Marries Prize-Winning Dalmatian at County Dog Show.
* * *
It’s a rainy April night and they are in her tiny kitchen, listening to one of Philip’s old Galaxie 500 records (their cover of Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste, to be precise) and picking at the remains of one of Shirley’s giant cookies. Sometimes there are these weird little reminders of her Greendale interlude, and Britta supposes that having Jeff in her kitchen, eating a giant cookie, is one of them.
“Do you remember when I brought Philip to Shirley’s Christmas party, that first year we were together, and you told me that if he hurt me, you would fuck him up?”
Jeff nods.
“Well, he hurt me. A lot. And as far as I know, none of you guys who said you would fuck him up actually did,”
“Britta. Did you really want us to beat up the father of your child?”
“No. I hurt him plenty on my own. Philip and I are in an okay place now and it needs to stay that way for the rest of Maggie’s life, I know that.” She winds the string of her teabag around one finger, lets it unwind, then winds it up again. “I’m just wondering, why would you guys say that? What did it mean?”
“Did you like that we said that? Or do you wish we hadn’t?”
Something is weird here. Jeff Winger sounds like a therapist. She glances up at him.
“Look,” Jeff continues. His right hand is resting on the table, close to her left hand, and it kind of reminds her of the study group. Them, at a table, but not right next to each other. Never right next to each other. “You used to be my best friend,” he says.
Oh. A very tiny sharp needle to the heart, that. “You used to be my best friend, too,”
He gives her a strange half-smile, a lawyerly kind of look she recognizes from too many drinks with the partners. It’s the sort of indulgent look you give to a dimwitted child. “You don’t get to play that game with me, Britta. If I had to apologize to the He-Man Woman Haters Club and their Ladies’ Auxiliary, then you have to apologize to me,”
“Apologize to you for what?”
He throws up his hands in this funny little-boy gesture of frustration. “For leaving us!”
“Leaving you? I was married and had a baby on the way, I couldn’t hang around on campus hatching schemes and cracking wise with you guys forever!”
“What did you think we were going to be able to do without you? Everything fell apart,”
“Remember that time you said I was the dark cloud that unites us? Well, that remains one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me, but you’re the one who always united us, Jeff. You were always the leader,”
Jeff frowns down into his tea. The frown and the beard are the strangest combination on his face that she’s seen in…in all the time that she’s ever known him. “Being the leader is not all it’s cracked up to be,” She starts to speak but he continues: “It’s goddamn difficult, okay? Everybody wants you to have all the answers. You guys always wanted me to have all the answers,”
She thinks about that, trying to trace the pain in it to its very beginning. “I didn’t mean to hurt you guys. I didn’t mean to hurt you-you understand that, right?” The conversation feels like it’s slipping away from her, she can’t stop her voice from cracking at the end of her sentence.
“I understand that, but it doesn’t mean that it didn’t hurt. How are we supposed to be friends again? You messed me up, Britta. I never used to care if girls didn’t talk to me anymore, I could always get more ass than a toilet seat,”
She can’t stop herself: “You realize nobody else has ever said that like it’s a good thing before?”
He pulls a face. “Just be quiet for like thirty seconds of your life, okay? You screwed me up. Now I want to be friends with people. What the hell, Britta? I was perfectly happy to be floating along in the toilet of life, because you know what floating things do? They rise to the top!”
“What is the deal with these toilet metaphors?”
“The first one was a comparison, not a metaphor. Jesus, did you never graduate from community college? Focus, Britta. The point is, you left, and now look at you. You got a kid, you got a business, you got everything,”
“I think you mean, ‘You have everything,’ Professor Jeremiah Johnson. And I thought the point was that I hurt you, not that I have ‘everything.’” She tries to inject her finger quotes with as much sarcasm as is physically possible.
“Two sides of the same coin. You left. I stuck around. I got treated like shit by you and all my other friends-yeah, I said it, abandoning a friendship works both ways, even Abed knows that-and now my annual GDP is the same as Afghanistan’s. But I’m not even bothered by that. I actually like Cup Noodles. Do you want to guess what the worst part of all this is, Britta?”
“I think you’re just going to tell me, anyway,”
“The worst part is that now I actually missed those friendships when they were gone. Now, I have feelings. And they are hurt,”
“Look, Slater told me that you got this way when things got serious, but I had no idea that was true for platonic relationships, too,”
“Slater said that? To you? When?”
“We’re in the same babysitting co-op, okay, sometimes we get coffee. Jesus, Jeff. It won’t feel this bad forever,” Britta pushes stray hair back behind her ears. She’s been maintaining eye contact the whole time, but this is hard. It is really hard. He seems on the edge of something here, alone and lonely, on a plateau of his own making. He doesn’t have anything like tapdancing or, God forbid, an unplanned-for-but-incredibly-loved child to push off from, either. “No one is going to hurt you forever. I am never going to hurt you forever,” she finishes, more gently.
He is Jeff Winger, and it has to be killing him that someone is talking to him like this, patiently and kindly. It has to be killing him that everybody somehow figured this out before him, that love hurts and life sucks and that love is amazing and life is amazing, and that it all happens at once and you miss it if you’re spending the whole time in front of a mirror. He sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair. “I’m happy that you’re happy,” he says, finally. “But I gotta be honest with you. I have no idea how someone who has been through what you’ve been through can be happy at all, let alone as happy as you seem to be,” Finally he looks up at her again. “This is the most sincere thing I have ever said, so make a note of it, because you will probably never hear it again: you seem complete, and right now I am really jealous of that.”
Britta takes a deep breath. “Firstly, thank you, and secondly, I do feel…well, I don’t know if ‘complete’ is the right word. I’ve never really felt like I was missing anything, to begin with. But I am really happy. And the things that I have in my life now, that make me the most happy? They’re all the things that I thought would most break my heart,” She takes in another deep breath, and does that thing with her feet, imagining the roots growing, spreading down the block to where Maggie is asleep in her father’s apartment, across town to where her friends and their families are sleeping, too, and right back here, to her home, to this space they are sharing.
Jeff shakes his head a little, chagrined. “You sound like a greeting card,”
Britta’s glad for the roots that hold her steady. “Dear Jeff, happy National It’s Time To Be A Man And Grow Some Testicles Day. Stop being afraid to live your own life. No love, Britta,”
“Aww, no love?” He makes a Winger Face, mouth pursed, eyebrows high.
“No, you asshole. Grow up. Be a man. Get hurt and then…get better,” She sweeps crumbs off the table and carries their empty teacups to the sink, the blood high in her face. What, is he twelve? Change is hard and everything-if anyone knows that, it’s someone who got on a whaling boat pregnant and got off it with a screaming infant-but sometimes you just have to deal.
When she comes back to the table and sits down, Britta looks up at Jeff expectantly, but he doesn’t say anything for a Greendale moment.
Then: “I forgive you,”
She lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. “I forgive you, too,”
And, surprising her utterly, he reaches out for her hand, folds his around it and presses her fingers hard against his own. She feels the pulses in their wrists beating against each other. The air is still thick with their arguing.
The moment stretches out and is tense and Jeff has to break it. “God, what the hell are we listening to? Did the guy playing guitar just have an orgasm?”
“Why, are you jealous?”
“Shut up, Perry,” he says. “Or is it Walton, still?”
“It’s Perry,” she says. “That’s one thing that never changed,”
* * *
Britta’s invitation to Pierce’s First Annual May Day May Pole Maynia is printed, the very tiniest of fonts informs her, on 15% post-consumer recycled moist towelettes. Larger type says she should bring a picnic blanket, a dish to pass, any dependent children she may have, and that the dress code is Pagan Casual. Whatever the hell that means.
When the first of May dawns drizzly and cold, she decides to ditch the blanket, fill up the slow cooker with leftover vegetarian chili, and that Pagan Casual means wellies and outerwear for her and her dependent child. On the bus on the way over to Pierce’s she starts to question the wisdom of taking a slow cooker on public transportation, but they arrive in one piece and only slightly rumpled.
“Oh, your mother-daughter dresses are so cute!” Annie exclaims, meeting them at the door.
Britta looks down. Maggie insisted on wearing her very favorite white dress with the blue polka dots and the eyelet trim, and totally unconsciously Britta picked a navy dress with tiny white dots for herself. Shit. Well, at least one of them is wearing a cardigan and the other a denim jacket. “Um, thank you, you look really cute too!”
“Hi Auntie Annie!” Maggie reaches up for a hug and is instantly indulged and then covered in noisy kisses, two adorable people being so adorably affectionate that it’s the human equivalent of a basketful of puppies.
Britta has gotten way used to Pierce’s weird house by now-the uniformed manservants, the room with the shrine to Kathleen Turner, the heated floors in the bathrooms-but today it’s also Pierce’s yard that’s weird: there’s a huge, beribboned pole set up in the middle of it. There’s also a trampoline and a petting zoo and a dunk tank, all of which are enthusiastically being patronized by a crowd of damp children. Maggie runs off the second she sees Shirley’s boys. Her wellies are a little too big and she skids in the first mud puddle she hits, and that’s the end of the white dress. Britta is incredibly proud that her little girl barely blinks at the fall, just gets to her feet and keeps on running.
Annie slides an arm through one of Britta’s, crooking their elbows together as they make their way more sedately across the wet grass.
“Everybody’s here, over by the firepit, where it’s a little warmer,” she says. “We’re all back together again,”
“Good,” Britta takes a deep breath. “It’s about time,”
“Yeah. Oh, careful, this puddle looks deep,” They step around it, leaning on each other, and reach the buffet table. With a sigh of relief Britta sets down her slow cooker, which an attendant grimly plugs into a power strip. At least there’s an awning mostly over the food, which there is a lot of, because by the number of robed, barefoot people around, it appears Pierce invited his entire hive.
Annie takes her arm again, and it’s nice, sisterly, which makes what Annie says next more than a little mind-boggling. “You know, Britta, it was really strange, when you left and then Jeff left. I know it was always this joke that you guys were like the Greendale mom and dad, but I don’t think we realized how true it was. We all had to make our own way again. It kind of sucked,”
Britta stops and looks over at Annie, who looks even younger and more worried than usual. “But you guys are all doing okay now, you would say, right? At least it looks like that to me,”
“Oh, yeah! I mean, I’m great! I love my job and I love my roller derby weekends and I am going on a date with that cute guy from the bookstore next week, and I never thought I would ever have a life like that, you know? That sounds like a real life, a healthy life. And it’s mine!”
“And you did it all on your own, Annie. You made that life yourself. This is a total mom thing to say, and it makes me feel really old, but I’m proud of you!” They hug, and it clicks into place for Britta that what she missed during her whole Southern Hemisphere Adventure was actual friends.
And it seems kind of selfish to think that just one guy who was totally in love with her was not enough, but it was not.
Arms around each other’s waists, she and Annie find the rest of the study group, sans Pierce, nibbling cocktail wienies-scratch that, Tiny Penises. That’s actually what it says on the placard in front of the dish.
“It’s because May Day is a fertility festival,” Abed explains-apparently Britta didn’t even need to have to open her mouth to ask the question, he must have read it on her face.
“Charming,” she pronounces. “I can’t wait to see what the after-dinner entertainment is going to be,”
“Strippers!” Troy exclaims.
“Not the good kind, though,” Jeff says. “Apparently they are actually wood strippers, and they’re going to get all the paint off the May Pole. I’m sure Pierce will find some way to make it sexy or at least grossly inappropriate, though,”
Britta looks him up and down. “The prodigal returns,”
Shirley tsks. “I know you did not just compare Jeffrey to the prodigal son, Britta!” Something in her tone makes it clear that a little more bridge-mending needs to go on between those two before she’ll be completely satisfied.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your angle of viewing, Pierce chooses that moment to emerge from behind a shrub, totally naked except for some strategic ivy leaves. There is a lot of cringing from the study group and other assorted hangers-on and applause from the hive members.
“That is ill!” Troy says, apparently without irony.
“It’s making me ill,” Shirley, with Abed nodding beside her.
Annie, meanwhile, has pulled the drawstring of her raincoat’s hood so tight that only one eye is visible, and it is not pointed anywhere near Pierce’s direction.
Britta looks over at Jeff, expecting a quip, but he is scratching at his bearded chin contemplatively. “You know, if that’s what I’m going to look like in thirty years, I’m okay with that. He’s got great forearm and thigh definition,”
Britta rolls her eyes.
“Welcome!” Pierce booms. “To the first annual May Day May Pole Maynia celebration spectacular event! We will begin with the traditional feast! Only one hardboiled egg per person, please!”
* * *
Later, as they are all crowding under one of the too-few patio umbrellas, stuffed to the gills with a variety of foods, Britta asks Annie if hardboiled eggs are a traditional May Day food.
“Not according to Wikipedia, which, to be honest, was the only place I even felt like researching it,” she says, and behind them Troy whips out his phone and taps it a few times, checking. “To be honest, I think Pierce just likes throwing parties. His house is really big, it’s probably lonely here without all these people around,”
“Guess you should’ve looked at Wikipedia a little closer,” Troy interjects. “Look right here, ‘Gross boiled eggs are the official food of May Day.’”
Abed is peering over his shoulder at the screen. “The last person to edit the May Day entry was someone named ‘Disco Spider 3000.’”
“Sloppy, Troy, very sloppy,” Jeff says.
“Dude, boiled eggs are gross,”
“So just don’t eat them,” Annie shakes her head at him.
“I didn’t want to hurt Pierce’s feelings,”
“You could never hurt my feelings!” Pierce, now swaddled in a florid purple velvet robe, pops up right in the middle of their little huddle. “I’m wearing a charm against that,”
There’s a beat of silence, which Jeff of course jumps into. “Um, Pierce, two things. First, did you say, a charm against getting your feelings hurt, and second, can I see it?”
Personally Britta thinks that sort of statement is playing with fire, but Pierce’s face lights up. “You’re in luck, Jeffrey. I got each of you one of your own!”
From beneath the robe he produces a shoebox, which he opens with a flourish. Inside is a clutter of twigs, yarn, pipe cleaners, and other grade-school craft accoutrements.
“Did my boys make these?” Shirley asks, as Pierce extracts a giant hot pink pompom with googly eyes glued onto it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pierce says, handing her the pompom. Annie’s charm is a green plastic soda bottle with sparkly stickers all over it. Abed’s is blue and square and paperback-sized, with a lot of wings and glitter. Troy’s is a rock, painted dark red, wearing the kind of novelty baseball cap that usually comes with ice cream inside it. Jeff’s is an old-fashioned clothespin painted black and studded with what look like paper-fastening brads. Britta’s is simply a long, tie-dyed scarf, tied to paint-stirring stick.
It is one of those ultra-rare moments when every single one of them is rendered speechless.
Pierce overhands the empty box into a nearby garbage can. “This is mine,” he says, and pulls a chain with a dog whistle on it out from under the robe. Also on the chain-taped to it-is what appears to be a genuine fortune cookie; one end is chipped, and Britta can see a piece of paper inside it.
Pierce suddenly blows on the whistle. “The feast is now over! Everyone please join hands with your neighbor and raise your voice to sing along to the classic May Day song, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, by the incomparable Gordon Lightfoot,”
Abed stoops to whisper in Britta’s ear. “I think Pierce might be on some new medication,”
* * *
After the feats of strength, the sacrifice of a goat (relax: it’s a papier-mache goat, thrown onto a bonfire), the pouring out of shots in honor of the goat, and the drum circle that accompanies the sunset, they all stand in a circle around the pole, watching the wood strippers do their thing (which is definitely inappropriate, but not at all sexy). Maggie runs up, covered in mud, her teeth chattering. Britta wraps her daughter tight in her own dry-ish jean jacket and sends her inside with Elijah and Jordan-they’ve all had overnights here before; since Pierce is basically a giant-sized child, of course they love it here. The room they sleep in has a huge TV on the ceiling and is furnished entirely with beanbags and a carnival-style popcorn machine. It’s pretty much heaven on earth, whether you’re five or fifty.
This leaves Britta shivering, her wet socks scrunched down at the bottom of her boots like used tissues. Next to her, Jeff has been watching the whole exchange, and now without preamble he takes off his own jacket and sets it over her shoulders. She looks over at him, the light poor enough that she can hardly make out his face. He’s not smiling or sneering or smirking, he is just…existing beside her. Arrayed on either side of them is the rest of the study group, Pierce included and now fully clothed.
“What are you doing?” Britta whispers at Jeff, not wanting to disturb the intense silence that has built up around the spectacle of the wood stripping.
“You looked cold,” he whispers back, and shrugs.
His jacket is big and warm around her, like wings or a hug or something else cheesily symbolic. She adjusts her shoulders inside of it, looking away for a second. When she looks back he actually is grinning. Tiki-torchlight shines off his teeth. Shirley is watching them, her face wistful and also somehow happy. Jeff sees it and his grin broadens.
Britta blows air through her own teeth and lowers her voice a register: “Doesn’t mean we’re engaged or anything,”
Jeff blinks rapidly. “Did you…did you just quote Aliens at me?”
Britta nods, biting her lip to keep from laughing at his wide eyes. “It’s only one of my favorite movies of all time, dummy,”
Jeff laughs, one of those rare genuine laughs they can only elicit from him on days with certain favorable astrological alignments. “It is pretty good,” he says. “I think I’ve seen it probably fifty times,”
“Even I haven’t seen the Twin Peaks series finale that much, Jeff,” Abed says.
“Nerd!” Troy says, quite happily.
Now Shirley laughs. “Don’t feel bad, Jeff. I’ve seen that movie a lot, too,”
“I absolutely do not feel bad about it. The cinematography is amazing, every performance is stellar, and do not even get me started about the special effects!” Jeff looks like he’s building up a good head of steam, and there’s something kind of charming about it, something nostalgic, maybe. Them winding him up and vice versa. He’s about to go on, but suddenly there’s a crunching sound behind them.
“You guys want to hear my fortune?”
“Pierce! You ate your charm!” Annie, who is holding her own tightly in the crook of her arm, looks aghast.
He uncurls the tiny slip of paper, adjusting his glasses so he can read it in the bad light. “’Practice makes perfect.’ Lame!”
“You’re supposed to put ‘in bed’ on the end of it,” Troy tells him.
“Huh?”
“It’s a game. It makes all fortunes naughty. Your fortune would be, ‘Practice makes perfect in bed,’” Abed explains gently.
Pierce snorts laughter. “That’s so true!”
One of the wood strippers glances over at them and coughs, looking very irritated.
Jeff bends to whisper in Britta’s ear: “Do you ever think to yourself, is this really my life, and what did I ever do in a past life to deserve this?”
She goes up on her tiptoes to whisper back: “Yep. I guess we just have to keep practicing,”
And as long as she’s up there, she plants a kiss on his stubbly chin. He stands still for a moment, then turns just enough for their mouths to meet.
Shirley awwws, Pierce mimes barfing, Annie beams at them, and Troy and Abed each give her two big thumbs up.
* * *
The café is home to several thrift store couches, and all around them, for the Mother’s Day exhibition, Britta has hung Abed’s photographs. They are black and white, but that doesn’t make them any less abstract. They could be seashells or hard drives or the manes of wild horses. They could be close-ups of Abed’s eyelashes. Every photograph is named, but every name is a number. The juxtaposition of the ambiguous photos and the straightforward shabbiness of the couches is what Britta likes about them: their contradiction. She knows it is pretentious, but she doesn’t care.
Britta and Jeff sit on the most comfortable couch, drinking tea.
“In the interest of honesty, and for the sake of our friendship, I have to tell you something that is true but that will also probably hurt you a little,”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,”
“Well, go ahead. I’m a manly man, I can take it,”
She smiles. “I’m really, really glad that you shaved your beard,”
He carefully sets his teacup on the side table, takes her cup and does the same. She is grinning. “Traditionally, Britta, spring is a time for new beginnings. My face is just a symbol of how I feel about the future,”
“I don’t get it. You think the future is pointy?” Her smile broadens as he reaches for her, as she reaches back. “Or are you saying you think the future read in Men’s Health that facial hair is out this year?”
“Shut up, Britta,” He gathers her into his lap, and making out like teenagers on a couch in front of all the world and her employees is unseemly, but Britta doesn’t care. Sometimes human beings are unseemly, and she and Jeff are nothing-literally nothing-if they are not human beings.
* END *