Fic: If At First You Don't Succeed (Jeff/Britta)
TITLE: If At First You Don't Succeed
PAIRING: Jeff/Britta, very brief mentions of Jeff/Annie and unrequited Troy/Britta
RATING: R
WORD COUNT: Around 3,000
SPOILERS: All episodes. Begins in October 2010 and ends in August 2012. Goes AU around Regional Holiday Music.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This was based on a prompt from faded_facade in my Open J/B Prompt Post and was originally posted at the linked thread in a slightly different form. I've edited it and reposted it here because it's really too long to be posted in comments.
October 2010
"I don't know why you insisted on coming with me. You're the least athletic person I've ever slept with and those shoes are entirely wrong for running anyway."
Britta stops, bending over to wheeze in the direction of her Chuck Taylors. "I just wanted to see what running is like."
"I assume you were forced to run in grade school like the rest of us," Jeff says, jogging in place. The park is nice and shady and the breeze that cools them smells like fall in a way that doesn't awaken his sleeping allergies. "It hasn't changed much since then."
"I wanted to see what running is like for you," she clarifies, straightening. "I just happened to forget that your legs are roughly a mile long."
"Here, have some water." He unclips his water bottle from his running belt, and even though she made endless fun of the belt (and his shorts) back at his place, she takes it and drinks deeply, getting water all over herself.
"Thanks. Can we turn around and go back now?"
"No, we're not even a quarter of the way done."
She makes a noise, more of a whine than anything else, and sits down right in the middle of the trail. "No way. My legs are about to fall off. You keep going and I'll meet you back at your apartment. Give me your key." She holds up one hand expectantly.
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely. I'm an ex-smoker, Jeff, I can't do this. I should be, like, doing yoga or something. Or sleeping with a Pilates instructor. Do you think that would count as exercise?"
"Depends on who's doing the counting." Rolling his eyes, he fishes his key out of one of his running belt's other pockets and hands it to her. "You're absolutely sure you're okay? You don't want me to walk you home or anything?"
She waves him off, her body language saying she's too tired to even talk. Jeff shrugs, slots his earplugs back in, and takes off. After a hundred yards or so he looks back: she's dragged herself to the side of the path, is slumped there like a snail, massaging her calves. Her tank and shorts are plastered to her with sweat, her hair dark with it. He shakes his head and keeps going.
About half a mile later the trail meets a road, and Jeff turns off it to make a quick stop at a convenience store to pick up Gatorade, bananas, and two huge breakfast sandwiches, intending to turn around and bring them to her back at his apartment. He's jogging along the trail, hampered by the plastic bag, when he rounds a curve and there she is, plodding slowly toward him. She smiles, her face shinier than one of Abed's vintage Laserdiscs. "What's this?"
"Recovery fuel." He pushes it at her. "Electrolytes and American cheese."
"Breakfast of champions." She inspects the bag briefly, then pushes it back. "Are you trying to rescue me?"
"What? No. I know Britta Perry needs no man to rescue her. She only needs herself and a debit card hooked up to her trust fund."
For someone who claimed she was exhausted, she sure manages to run fast when she's chasing him home.
April 2011
"Brown Betty finally bit the big one, huh?"
"Uggh, I hate it when you call my car that. It makes her sound like a giant turd. And you already know her name is Terry Gross Jr."
"You're gonna have to change her name to Ex-Terry Gross Jr., Britta. This car is officially dead." Jeff slams the hood shut and starts to wipe his hands on his pants until he remembers that they're covered in oil.
"What do you know about cars? You're a lawyer." Britta hands him a handkerchief--an honest-to-goodness cloth handkerchief, because they're more environmentally friendly than Kleenex. He sighs but uses it anyway.
"I'm an ex-lawyer who couldn't afford to buy a Lexus until he turned twenty-seven. So yeah, I've seen some dead cars, and this is a dead car. Do you have Triple A?"
"No, but my friend Razor has a pickup truck he uses to tow his boat sometimes." She reaches for her phone, ignoring the dirty handkerchief he offers to her.
"No way, we are not waiting around in this dark alley for some guy who probably needs to bail out of jail before he can get down here. Let me call my Triple A."
"Way to assume someone's in jail just based on their name, jerkwad. Razor's a dad. And a teacher. You can have a weird name and still be a good person, you know." She crosses her arms, glaring at him in the flickering orange glow of the streetlight.
"I know, Britta," he says, pointedly. "So what do you want to do, if you won't let me rescue you. Walk home? Push this thing to a junkyard? Send up a signal flare and hope the Coast Guard can spot us?"
"We're thousands of miles from an ocean." Britta retorts, fingers flying over her phone's keyboard. "I'll text Annie. She'll come get us."
"Yeah, I'm sure Annie wants to be driving around this armpit of a neighborhood late at night." Jeff shoves the handkerchief in his pocket, making a mental note to spot-treat it when he gets home.
Britta grins, and Jeff knows that grin: he's going to lose this one, and they are going to have to skulk around her lightly-smoking car like incompetent drug dealers while they wait for Annie. "Didn't you notice? We're like three blocks from Dildopolis."
"Oh great! Maybe she can pick us up there."
"Why, are you running low on dildos?"
"The only think I'm running low on is patience," he says, but by the time Annie pulls up, already reaching for the fire extinguisher in her emergency preparedness kit, Britta has gotten to second base and Jeff is ready to wait forever.
February 2012
Valentine’s Day he’s folding laundry in front of the TV, bored and a little hungry and kind of angry at himself for not being out on Valentine’s Day (because let’s face it, this shrink-mandated dry spell is getting ridiculous) when his phone chirps. It’s an Instagram from Britta: a feathered and filtered shot of her reflection in a mirror surrounded by liquor bottles. She’s holding her phone right in front of her face so all he sees is sepia hair, slightly blurry, and the space she’s carved for herself in the crowd at what’s unmistakably the L Street’s bar. It’s funny how no one touches her, no one approaches her.
Happy Holiday Invented By The Greeting Card Industrial Complex, she texts a moment later.
The same to you.
What are you doing tonight? You and Annie finally sealing the deal?
Are you drunk?
She Instagrams the empty shotglasses in front of her on the bar, blows them out with a ridiculous filter that reminds him of the few remaining Polaroids that document his childhood. What do you think?
I think you’re drunk.
I think you should sleep with Annie.
Okay? What am I supposed to say to that?
There’s a long pause, but the second he puts his phone down it’s buzzing. You should be thankful for my blessing.
Why do I need your blessing to sleep with Annie?
You don’t. You should just sleep with her because obviously that’s what you want to do. Dubai.
Dubai?
Fucking autocorrect. Duhdoy. Obviously you want to sleep with her. So just do it. Rub your manhood all over her.
Were you ever actually paying attention when we had sex?
She Instagrams herself mock-asleep at the bar, head pillowed on jacketed arm while behind her people mingle and laugh. You want her and she wants you.
And no one, no one, no one ever, is to blame, he texts back, not sure if she’ll get the reference.
She Instagrams herself laughing, at least he supposes it’s laughter, but it could be a scream or a yell. It’s hard to tell because of all the filters, and because she’s very, very drunk.
Do you want a ride home? I’ll come pick you up. I’m fifteen minutes away.
I don’t need rescuing, Jeffrey. I’ve got a ride. she replies, and half an hour later, when he’s putting his clothes away, she Instagrams it: a fratty-looking guy and his Hemi, compete with sexy-lady-silhouette mudflaps. Swag.
You know the kind of emissions that thing’s pumping into the air we’re all supposed to breathe?
Fuck you, Winger. she texts, and that’s the end of that conversation.
May 2012
“School’s out for summer!” Dean Pelton shrieks, doing his best to look and sound like Alice Cooper. “Dean’s out forever!”
Pierce shakes his head. “I hope he stocked up on Hawthorne Wipes, because he’s obviously going to need them this summer. Lots of them,” he says, waggling his eyebrows.
“Eww, Pierce,” Shirley chides, pursing her lips. “That’s not the kind of image I want in my head when I say goodbye to you all for the summer.”
“It’s not goodbye,” Troy says. “Abed and I are taking your boys to Blazer Tag next week.”
“And we’re meeting the week after that to go over your financial plan for Shirley’s Sandwiches,” Annie says. “So you’ll be ready to open as soon as they’re done repairing all the riot damage in the cafeteria.”
“It’s goodbye from me,” Pierce says, hefting the tactical duffle bag he’s been carrying around all day. “I’m off to the Fifteenth Annual Reformed Neo-Buddhist Paramilitary Games and Team-Building Luau. Later, nerds.” He strides down the library steps and disappears into the post-finals crowd surprisingly quickly for a sixty-five-year-old man dressed like the lovechild of Rambo and Magnum P.I.
Shirley chuckles her I cannot believe that man chuckle and suddenly grabs Jeff around the waist, hugging him fiercely. “Make sure I see you some time this summer, Jeffrey.”
“I’ll come over and teach Elijah and Jordan how to lose gracefully at ping pong.”
“It’s a date,” Shirley grins, giving him an extra squeeze, and then she moves on to Annie and Britta, gathering one under each arm. “Be good, pumpkins!”
They both pull faces at him over Shirley’s shoulders, but neither holds eye contact for very long. Shirley sweeps them over to Troy and Abed, turning the tri-hug into a penta-hug, and Jeff would have to be blind to not notice the way Troy touches Britta: like she is made out of glass. The Dean, attracted by the multi-sex, multi-race touchy-feelyness, scampers closer, now singing about how he’s hot for teacher and therefore totally mixing his metaphors. The hug breaks up in the general confusion, and Annie drifts in Jeff’s direction.
“So bye for the summer?” she says, looking up at him, a look of innocence and experience that only Annie can muster, but that thing that’s been in her eyes since their disastrous one night stand is still there: disappointment.
“We should get lunch sometime,” Jeff says, hugging her quickly, and actually meaning it even though he’s sure it comes out totally douchey and even though he has no right to still claim her friendship, because leading on a girl for literally years and then having a drunken one night stand with her, and then having a breakthrough in your very next therapy session that sleeping with her was more about running away from yourself than it ever was about running toward her, is really the sort of Grade A Tool move that has led him to swear off women for a while, at least until he works through a few more things.
“You okay, Jeff?” Annie asks, pulling away from him, lifting her chin.
“Yeah, I’m fine. And thanks, Annie, for not hating me.”
“I was mad for a while, but I could never hate you. Just-“ She fiddles with her bookbag strap, then straightens her spine and continues. “Just let’s keep some distance, okay?”
“Deal.” They shake on it and she heads off with Shirley, giving a last little wave before they disappear into the sunset, which is, conveniently, taking place directly behind the parking lot.
“So we’ll see you at the stadium on Sunday, right, Jeff? For half-off admission day?” Abed says, as Jeff walks down the stairs to meet him, Troy, and Britta near the fountain.
“Absolutely. I wouldn’t miss a minor league baseball game between the Greendale Gizmos and the Riverside Falls Falls for anything.”
“’Riverside Falls Falls?’” Britta echoes.
“Yeah, their team mascot is a dude in a foam waterfall suit,” Troy explains. “He kind of looks like the ‘after’ shot in a maxi pad commercial, but he’s a waterfall.”
Britta rolls her eyes. “Sounds delightful.”
“Minor league baseball games are the best!” Troy says, looking over at Abed, who nods sagely. “There are gimmicks after every inning and if you catch a home run in the stands you get to watch the rest of the game from the hot tub in left field.”
“Welcome to Obama’s America,” Jeff cracks, mostly for Britta’s benefit, because Troy and Abed are already absorbed in each other, muttering baseball statistics and something about the Dreamatorium’s as-yet untested Major League module.
Britta grins at him briefly, then turns and claps Troy and Abed on the shoulders. “I’ll give you a call when I get to Occupy Burning Man, okay?”
“Yeah, you let us know when you stop them from burning down that dude. That just does not seem fair at all.”
“Oh, Troy.” She hugs him, fiercely, and the surprise that registers in Troy’s face-mostly in his eyebrows-makes Jeff stifle his own laughter. Troy lets her go with alacrity, and it occurs to Jeff that Britta is better at this than he is, at telling someone an emotional truth without saying anything at all. He makes a mental note to tell his shrink that, even though his shrink hates value judgments-which is kind of ironic.
She’s hugging Abed now, kissing his cheek. “Have a great summer, Abed. I’ll see you when I get home.”
“Be good,” Abed tells her, and then he and Troy throw pennies in water at Luis Guzman’s feet and are on their way.
“So,” Jeff says, feeling off-balance for a moment, now that it’s just the two of them and the sunset…and the hippies under the hacky sack tree and Leonard on a bench, cursing at his iPad as he uses it to take a picture of a frozen lasagna. “Occupy Burning Man, huh?”
“It’s just regular Burning Man. I wanted to make it sound more hardcore.” She looks up when he laughs, and it’s a long moment before a smile makes its way onto her face. “What?”
“What’s not hardcore enough about regular Burning Man?”
She shifts the weight of her backpack, which is more full than normal. “I don’t know. I’ve never been. But some of my old anarchist buddies live out there in the desert and I thought I’d go see them. It’s been a while.”
“How are you getting there?” She doesn’t have a car, there’s no way she can afford airfare when she can barely afford rent.
Britta looks around at the darkening campus and then back at him. “I’m taking a train from Denver to Elko, Nevada, and then I’m hitchhiking. The festival doesn’t start for a few weeks so I can really take my time, check out the land and the people, really get into things.”
“Britta…”
“No. You don’t get to tell me that’s stupid, or a bad idea, or whatever. You don’t get to rescue me from myself. Only I get to do that. And my train leaves in an hour so I need to go catch a bus to the train station so can we just say goodbye?” It all blurs together and it takes him a moment to realize that she’s scrunched up her face to keep from crying.
He sort of crashes into her and it becomes a hug despite her giant backpack and the miserable tension in his throat. “Text me when you get there,” he says. “I’ll want to know that you’re safe.”
August 2012
It’s 1,086 miles from Jeff’s condo in Greendale to the playa in Gerlach, Nevada, and his Lexus craps out in the bumper-to-bumper traffic outside the parking lot. He’s trying to simultaneously roll up his shirtcuffs, pop the hood, and flip off the trust-fund hippies honking their horns when a golf cart pulls up beside him.
“Howdy, city slicker. You got anything other than Scotch to put in that radiator?” the driver asks. She’s a dreadlocked blond girl in a blindingly white sundress, cowboy boots, and mirrored aviator shades.
Jeff shadows his eyes with one hand. “Britta? You made it!” Instinctively he reaches out for her, for his friend, and after a moment she steps near.
She gets even closer then, tucks her head under his chin, steps within the hesitant circle of his arms. He smells sunblock and the beeswax in her dreads. She lets out a sigh that he feels in his whole body. “Of course I made it,” Britta says. “But why are you here?”
“Because I missed you.”
Someone starts honking their horn in tune with a Phish song, and someone with a Brooklyn accent who claims to be a witch doctor puts a curse on Britta’s golf cart, but they empty a bottle of Evian into his radiator and go and make their temporary home, high on the desert plain.
PAIRING: Jeff/Britta, very brief mentions of Jeff/Annie and unrequited Troy/Britta
RATING: R
WORD COUNT: Around 3,000
SPOILERS: All episodes. Begins in October 2010 and ends in August 2012. Goes AU around Regional Holiday Music.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This was based on a prompt from faded_facade in my Open J/B Prompt Post and was originally posted at the linked thread in a slightly different form. I've edited it and reposted it here because it's really too long to be posted in comments.
October 2010
"I don't know why you insisted on coming with me. You're the least athletic person I've ever slept with and those shoes are entirely wrong for running anyway."
Britta stops, bending over to wheeze in the direction of her Chuck Taylors. "I just wanted to see what running is like."
"I assume you were forced to run in grade school like the rest of us," Jeff says, jogging in place. The park is nice and shady and the breeze that cools them smells like fall in a way that doesn't awaken his sleeping allergies. "It hasn't changed much since then."
"I wanted to see what running is like for you," she clarifies, straightening. "I just happened to forget that your legs are roughly a mile long."
"Here, have some water." He unclips his water bottle from his running belt, and even though she made endless fun of the belt (and his shorts) back at his place, she takes it and drinks deeply, getting water all over herself.
"Thanks. Can we turn around and go back now?"
"No, we're not even a quarter of the way done."
She makes a noise, more of a whine than anything else, and sits down right in the middle of the trail. "No way. My legs are about to fall off. You keep going and I'll meet you back at your apartment. Give me your key." She holds up one hand expectantly.
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely. I'm an ex-smoker, Jeff, I can't do this. I should be, like, doing yoga or something. Or sleeping with a Pilates instructor. Do you think that would count as exercise?"
"Depends on who's doing the counting." Rolling his eyes, he fishes his key out of one of his running belt's other pockets and hands it to her. "You're absolutely sure you're okay? You don't want me to walk you home or anything?"
She waves him off, her body language saying she's too tired to even talk. Jeff shrugs, slots his earplugs back in, and takes off. After a hundred yards or so he looks back: she's dragged herself to the side of the path, is slumped there like a snail, massaging her calves. Her tank and shorts are plastered to her with sweat, her hair dark with it. He shakes his head and keeps going.
About half a mile later the trail meets a road, and Jeff turns off it to make a quick stop at a convenience store to pick up Gatorade, bananas, and two huge breakfast sandwiches, intending to turn around and bring them to her back at his apartment. He's jogging along the trail, hampered by the plastic bag, when he rounds a curve and there she is, plodding slowly toward him. She smiles, her face shinier than one of Abed's vintage Laserdiscs. "What's this?"
"Recovery fuel." He pushes it at her. "Electrolytes and American cheese."
"Breakfast of champions." She inspects the bag briefly, then pushes it back. "Are you trying to rescue me?"
"What? No. I know Britta Perry needs no man to rescue her. She only needs herself and a debit card hooked up to her trust fund."
For someone who claimed she was exhausted, she sure manages to run fast when she's chasing him home.
April 2011
"Brown Betty finally bit the big one, huh?"
"Uggh, I hate it when you call my car that. It makes her sound like a giant turd. And you already know her name is Terry Gross Jr."
"You're gonna have to change her name to Ex-Terry Gross Jr., Britta. This car is officially dead." Jeff slams the hood shut and starts to wipe his hands on his pants until he remembers that they're covered in oil.
"What do you know about cars? You're a lawyer." Britta hands him a handkerchief--an honest-to-goodness cloth handkerchief, because they're more environmentally friendly than Kleenex. He sighs but uses it anyway.
"I'm an ex-lawyer who couldn't afford to buy a Lexus until he turned twenty-seven. So yeah, I've seen some dead cars, and this is a dead car. Do you have Triple A?"
"No, but my friend Razor has a pickup truck he uses to tow his boat sometimes." She reaches for her phone, ignoring the dirty handkerchief he offers to her.
"No way, we are not waiting around in this dark alley for some guy who probably needs to bail out of jail before he can get down here. Let me call my Triple A."
"Way to assume someone's in jail just based on their name, jerkwad. Razor's a dad. And a teacher. You can have a weird name and still be a good person, you know." She crosses her arms, glaring at him in the flickering orange glow of the streetlight.
"I know, Britta," he says, pointedly. "So what do you want to do, if you won't let me rescue you. Walk home? Push this thing to a junkyard? Send up a signal flare and hope the Coast Guard can spot us?"
"We're thousands of miles from an ocean." Britta retorts, fingers flying over her phone's keyboard. "I'll text Annie. She'll come get us."
"Yeah, I'm sure Annie wants to be driving around this armpit of a neighborhood late at night." Jeff shoves the handkerchief in his pocket, making a mental note to spot-treat it when he gets home.
Britta grins, and Jeff knows that grin: he's going to lose this one, and they are going to have to skulk around her lightly-smoking car like incompetent drug dealers while they wait for Annie. "Didn't you notice? We're like three blocks from Dildopolis."
"Oh great! Maybe she can pick us up there."
"Why, are you running low on dildos?"
"The only think I'm running low on is patience," he says, but by the time Annie pulls up, already reaching for the fire extinguisher in her emergency preparedness kit, Britta has gotten to second base and Jeff is ready to wait forever.
February 2012
Valentine’s Day he’s folding laundry in front of the TV, bored and a little hungry and kind of angry at himself for not being out on Valentine’s Day (because let’s face it, this shrink-mandated dry spell is getting ridiculous) when his phone chirps. It’s an Instagram from Britta: a feathered and filtered shot of her reflection in a mirror surrounded by liquor bottles. She’s holding her phone right in front of her face so all he sees is sepia hair, slightly blurry, and the space she’s carved for herself in the crowd at what’s unmistakably the L Street’s bar. It’s funny how no one touches her, no one approaches her.
Happy Holiday Invented By The Greeting Card Industrial Complex, she texts a moment later.
The same to you.
What are you doing tonight? You and Annie finally sealing the deal?
Are you drunk?
She Instagrams the empty shotglasses in front of her on the bar, blows them out with a ridiculous filter that reminds him of the few remaining Polaroids that document his childhood. What do you think?
I think you’re drunk.
I think you should sleep with Annie.
Okay? What am I supposed to say to that?
There’s a long pause, but the second he puts his phone down it’s buzzing. You should be thankful for my blessing.
Why do I need your blessing to sleep with Annie?
You don’t. You should just sleep with her because obviously that’s what you want to do. Dubai.
Dubai?
Fucking autocorrect. Duhdoy. Obviously you want to sleep with her. So just do it. Rub your manhood all over her.
Were you ever actually paying attention when we had sex?
She Instagrams herself mock-asleep at the bar, head pillowed on jacketed arm while behind her people mingle and laugh. You want her and she wants you.
And no one, no one, no one ever, is to blame, he texts back, not sure if she’ll get the reference.
She Instagrams herself laughing, at least he supposes it’s laughter, but it could be a scream or a yell. It’s hard to tell because of all the filters, and because she’s very, very drunk.
Do you want a ride home? I’ll come pick you up. I’m fifteen minutes away.
I don’t need rescuing, Jeffrey. I’ve got a ride. she replies, and half an hour later, when he’s putting his clothes away, she Instagrams it: a fratty-looking guy and his Hemi, compete with sexy-lady-silhouette mudflaps. Swag.
You know the kind of emissions that thing’s pumping into the air we’re all supposed to breathe?
Fuck you, Winger. she texts, and that’s the end of that conversation.
May 2012
“School’s out for summer!” Dean Pelton shrieks, doing his best to look and sound like Alice Cooper. “Dean’s out forever!”
Pierce shakes his head. “I hope he stocked up on Hawthorne Wipes, because he’s obviously going to need them this summer. Lots of them,” he says, waggling his eyebrows.
“Eww, Pierce,” Shirley chides, pursing her lips. “That’s not the kind of image I want in my head when I say goodbye to you all for the summer.”
“It’s not goodbye,” Troy says. “Abed and I are taking your boys to Blazer Tag next week.”
“And we’re meeting the week after that to go over your financial plan for Shirley’s Sandwiches,” Annie says. “So you’ll be ready to open as soon as they’re done repairing all the riot damage in the cafeteria.”
“It’s goodbye from me,” Pierce says, hefting the tactical duffle bag he’s been carrying around all day. “I’m off to the Fifteenth Annual Reformed Neo-Buddhist Paramilitary Games and Team-Building Luau. Later, nerds.” He strides down the library steps and disappears into the post-finals crowd surprisingly quickly for a sixty-five-year-old man dressed like the lovechild of Rambo and Magnum P.I.
Shirley chuckles her I cannot believe that man chuckle and suddenly grabs Jeff around the waist, hugging him fiercely. “Make sure I see you some time this summer, Jeffrey.”
“I’ll come over and teach Elijah and Jordan how to lose gracefully at ping pong.”
“It’s a date,” Shirley grins, giving him an extra squeeze, and then she moves on to Annie and Britta, gathering one under each arm. “Be good, pumpkins!”
They both pull faces at him over Shirley’s shoulders, but neither holds eye contact for very long. Shirley sweeps them over to Troy and Abed, turning the tri-hug into a penta-hug, and Jeff would have to be blind to not notice the way Troy touches Britta: like she is made out of glass. The Dean, attracted by the multi-sex, multi-race touchy-feelyness, scampers closer, now singing about how he’s hot for teacher and therefore totally mixing his metaphors. The hug breaks up in the general confusion, and Annie drifts in Jeff’s direction.
“So bye for the summer?” she says, looking up at him, a look of innocence and experience that only Annie can muster, but that thing that’s been in her eyes since their disastrous one night stand is still there: disappointment.
“We should get lunch sometime,” Jeff says, hugging her quickly, and actually meaning it even though he’s sure it comes out totally douchey and even though he has no right to still claim her friendship, because leading on a girl for literally years and then having a drunken one night stand with her, and then having a breakthrough in your very next therapy session that sleeping with her was more about running away from yourself than it ever was about running toward her, is really the sort of Grade A Tool move that has led him to swear off women for a while, at least until he works through a few more things.
“You okay, Jeff?” Annie asks, pulling away from him, lifting her chin.
“Yeah, I’m fine. And thanks, Annie, for not hating me.”
“I was mad for a while, but I could never hate you. Just-“ She fiddles with her bookbag strap, then straightens her spine and continues. “Just let’s keep some distance, okay?”
“Deal.” They shake on it and she heads off with Shirley, giving a last little wave before they disappear into the sunset, which is, conveniently, taking place directly behind the parking lot.
“So we’ll see you at the stadium on Sunday, right, Jeff? For half-off admission day?” Abed says, as Jeff walks down the stairs to meet him, Troy, and Britta near the fountain.
“Absolutely. I wouldn’t miss a minor league baseball game between the Greendale Gizmos and the Riverside Falls Falls for anything.”
“’Riverside Falls Falls?’” Britta echoes.
“Yeah, their team mascot is a dude in a foam waterfall suit,” Troy explains. “He kind of looks like the ‘after’ shot in a maxi pad commercial, but he’s a waterfall.”
Britta rolls her eyes. “Sounds delightful.”
“Minor league baseball games are the best!” Troy says, looking over at Abed, who nods sagely. “There are gimmicks after every inning and if you catch a home run in the stands you get to watch the rest of the game from the hot tub in left field.”
“Welcome to Obama’s America,” Jeff cracks, mostly for Britta’s benefit, because Troy and Abed are already absorbed in each other, muttering baseball statistics and something about the Dreamatorium’s as-yet untested Major League module.
Britta grins at him briefly, then turns and claps Troy and Abed on the shoulders. “I’ll give you a call when I get to Occupy Burning Man, okay?”
“Yeah, you let us know when you stop them from burning down that dude. That just does not seem fair at all.”
“Oh, Troy.” She hugs him, fiercely, and the surprise that registers in Troy’s face-mostly in his eyebrows-makes Jeff stifle his own laughter. Troy lets her go with alacrity, and it occurs to Jeff that Britta is better at this than he is, at telling someone an emotional truth without saying anything at all. He makes a mental note to tell his shrink that, even though his shrink hates value judgments-which is kind of ironic.
She’s hugging Abed now, kissing his cheek. “Have a great summer, Abed. I’ll see you when I get home.”
“Be good,” Abed tells her, and then he and Troy throw pennies in water at Luis Guzman’s feet and are on their way.
“So,” Jeff says, feeling off-balance for a moment, now that it’s just the two of them and the sunset…and the hippies under the hacky sack tree and Leonard on a bench, cursing at his iPad as he uses it to take a picture of a frozen lasagna. “Occupy Burning Man, huh?”
“It’s just regular Burning Man. I wanted to make it sound more hardcore.” She looks up when he laughs, and it’s a long moment before a smile makes its way onto her face. “What?”
“What’s not hardcore enough about regular Burning Man?”
She shifts the weight of her backpack, which is more full than normal. “I don’t know. I’ve never been. But some of my old anarchist buddies live out there in the desert and I thought I’d go see them. It’s been a while.”
“How are you getting there?” She doesn’t have a car, there’s no way she can afford airfare when she can barely afford rent.
Britta looks around at the darkening campus and then back at him. “I’m taking a train from Denver to Elko, Nevada, and then I’m hitchhiking. The festival doesn’t start for a few weeks so I can really take my time, check out the land and the people, really get into things.”
“Britta…”
“No. You don’t get to tell me that’s stupid, or a bad idea, or whatever. You don’t get to rescue me from myself. Only I get to do that. And my train leaves in an hour so I need to go catch a bus to the train station so can we just say goodbye?” It all blurs together and it takes him a moment to realize that she’s scrunched up her face to keep from crying.
He sort of crashes into her and it becomes a hug despite her giant backpack and the miserable tension in his throat. “Text me when you get there,” he says. “I’ll want to know that you’re safe.”
August 2012
It’s 1,086 miles from Jeff’s condo in Greendale to the playa in Gerlach, Nevada, and his Lexus craps out in the bumper-to-bumper traffic outside the parking lot. He’s trying to simultaneously roll up his shirtcuffs, pop the hood, and flip off the trust-fund hippies honking their horns when a golf cart pulls up beside him.
“Howdy, city slicker. You got anything other than Scotch to put in that radiator?” the driver asks. She’s a dreadlocked blond girl in a blindingly white sundress, cowboy boots, and mirrored aviator shades.
Jeff shadows his eyes with one hand. “Britta? You made it!” Instinctively he reaches out for her, for his friend, and after a moment she steps near.
She gets even closer then, tucks her head under his chin, steps within the hesitant circle of his arms. He smells sunblock and the beeswax in her dreads. She lets out a sigh that he feels in his whole body. “Of course I made it,” Britta says. “But why are you here?”
“Because I missed you.”
Someone starts honking their horn in tune with a Phish song, and someone with a Brooklyn accent who claims to be a witch doctor puts a curse on Britta’s golf cart, but they empty a bottle of Evian into his radiator and go and make their temporary home, high on the desert plain.