Too Aware of the Pending
Too Aware of the Pending
Jeff/Britta
~5,000 words
Ways it doesn't happen.
For Libby and Marya; Libby because your other surprise ended up being a bust and Marya because I accidentally took a topic we talked about and did the complete opposite oops I'm sorry.
Jeff has just hit send on the text message when Troy bounds up to Britta and kisses her full on the mouth. Sophie B. Hawkins is still singing, so when Troy pulls away and says something to Britta that makes her face light up, Jeff can’t hear what it is. According to his phone, the text message has been delivered. If Britta’s phone is vibrating in the pocket of her dress, she doesn’t go to grab it. Sophie starts a slower song and Britta dances with her boyfriend, tucked neatly in his arms, his chin resting on top of her head.
It’s another instance of Jeff giving too much of himself to Britta and he goes home that night feeling stupid. He tries not to imagine Britta and Troy going home to celebrate her success; though they’ve been dating for a few months now, tonight was the first time Jeff had actually seen them kiss. It’s easy to forget about things that aren’t in front of your face, but now that he knows what it looks like, how their lips fit together, it’s hard to picture anything else.
Jeff isn’t jealous. He just doesn’t understand. There’s nothing about the two of them together that makes an iota of sense. Jeff knows Britta-better than Troy knows her, he’d bet-and he knows the kinds of things that make her happy. Troy is none of those things.
But maybe, a voice in the back of his head tells him, maybe you don’t know her as well as you think you do.
After one glass of scotch, Jeff’s ready to just go to bed and forget about it all when his phone rings. Britta’s name flashes across the screen and for a second, Jeff thinks of ignoring it and letting it go to voicemail. She’s probably calling about his pathetic text and he doesn’t really want to talk about it anymore.
It’s on the last ring when he answers anyway.
“Hey,” she says in a hushed voice.
“Why are you whispering?”
“Troy’s asleep. He’s a heavy sleeper but just in case, I don’t want to wake him up.”
“Hm, sleeping already? It’s barely midnight.”
There’s something about Britta that makes Jeff particularly petty. He cringes at himself and he can picture her face, the flinch, the eyebrow scrunch, the frown.
“Um, yeah. Anyway, I saw your text and I wanted to call and say thank you. That was really sweet of you to say.”
Her voice is sincere but he still feels belittled. It’s dumb, really, because this is what he wanted when he sent the text, for her to know how much he cares about her and that even when he’s an asshole to her it’s because of a ton of reasons that have nothing to do with her. If Troy hadn’t been there, if he had been slinking around with bags of chips and snapping pictures of himself like he had been for the entire evening leading up, things would have gone so differently.
“You did a really great job,” he says finally, swallowing his pride. “It was a good dance.”
“I just can’t believe she actually showed up. It’s insane to even think about.”
He opens his mouth to tell her the truth, but it seems too cruel. He remembers her face, how happy she looked when people were coming up to her and congratulating her instead of belittling her. He remembers the last time she looked like that, sitting in his car on Thanksgiving night, pushing hair out of her face as she looked at him.
“Hey, I’m sorry if I was a jerk today,” he says. “I shouldn’t have treated you like that.”
“It’s fine. But I appreciate your apology.”
She’s still whispering and he wonders if she’s sitting up in Troy’s bed and does he have Spiderman bedsheets or something similar? Does she have to keep quiet when they’re having sex in case Abed or Annie are in the living room watching TV? Does she have to sit through Inspector Spacetime marathons and movie nights and battle with Abed for her boyfriend’s affection?
“I should go,” she says finally. “I just… it was a really nice text to read. I looked for you, after I saw it, but you must have left already.”
“Yeah, I was kinda Sophie B’d out.”
“Troy took me out for ice cream afterward. You should’ve stuck around, you could’ve come with us.”
“Ah. Next time, maybe.”
“Okay. Goodnight, Jeff.”
“’Night.”
He hangs up the phone and pours himself another scotch.
There’s a moment where Abed stares at Jeff and Jeff thinks it’s all over. Abed isn’t stupid; he’s far from it, the most observant of them all, and Jeff knows he and Britta aren’t as sneaky and secretive as they think they are. The smile slides off Jeff’s face and he can feel himself pleading with his eyes. Because here’s the thing: as soon as the group knows, this whole thing is over. It’s not something they’ve talked about, but it’s an unspoken agreement because with the group’s knowledge comes expectations and conversations and neither of them are ready for that. It’s easier to push it all down, to deny, to ignore.
So maybe Jeff shouldn’t have called Abed a computer. It was pretty rude, now that he’s thinking about it, and Abed’s stare is boring into him and he can feel Britta go tense beside him.
“Tom Sizemore wasn’t at Pierce’s rehab,” Abed says finally, looking away from Jeff.
The group turns their attention to Pierce, exploding in simultaneous outrage and disappointment. Jeff blinks slowly and lets out a deep breath. Britta relaxes at his side and chimes in, wondering what else Pierce has lied about.
It turns into an argument about who lies the most and about what, and suddenly they’re fighting about fighting. Jeff gives a speech and settles it, though, and he catches Abed’s eye when it’s over and done with and mouths thank you. Abed nods once and Jeff looks at Britta and she gives him a relieved smile.
And so it continues and the group still doesn’t know. But suddenly, suddenly it’s summer and there’s no study group and no Greendale and it’s quiet and calm. There’s no sense of urgency; Jeff wakes up sometimes in Britta’s bed and in that moment between sleep and consciousness he feels a jolt of panic because Britta and Shirley often carpool to school and what if this is one of those moments where Shirley’s going to knock on the door and discover Jeff in his underwear? Then he realizes that no, there’s no class to go to, no plans to be had.
It’s strange, in a leisurely, comfortable way, to wake up curled around her on a Wednesday morning and have nowhere to go. It’s also strange in a scary, comfortable way, because he’s waking up curled around her on a Wednesday morning and there’s nothing keeping them from staying there all day.
There’s an entire three months stretched out before them and they take advantage of it: they sleep late and see movies in the afternoon and Britta takes a long weekend off of work and they drive to Boulder and spend three days at the Reservoir, laying in the sand and getting drunk off fishbowl cocktails and having sex in a sleazy motel bed. It’s not a couple’s getaway, Jeff tells himself, because they argue almost the entire time, bickering about who’s the better swimmer, who can handle their alcohol better (Jeff, Britta says, has a very unfair advantage, as he has at least ninety pounds on her, a figure Jeff argues against vehemently), who should control the air conditioner.
On the way back Jeff drops Britta off at her apartment and goes home to his own because seventy-two hours with only each other for company is overwhelming to him in a lot of ways, mostly because of how completely not-overwhelming it is.
In July three things happen:
Britta goes on a date with a guy she met at Starbucks. His name is-get this-Dale and he teaches music to orphans or something like that. But they have dinner and drinks and Britta tells Jeff about it because that’s how not together the two of them are. She gets this look on her face when she talks about him, like Dale is the greatest thing since free-range eggs. Jeff’s not jealous, per say, but it’s definitely a mood-killer for her to prattle on about this other guy and then expect Jeff to give a very good bedroom performance.
“Does Dale know about me?” Jeff asks one night, even though he isn’t sure if he wants to know the answer.
“Not yet,” Britta answers. “We’re just casual. You know.”
Casual or not, they continue hanging out and even once or twice Jeff texts Britta to see what she’s up to and he receives in response: Sry with Dale call u tmrrw.
So Jeff spends the night at some shitty bar and gets the number of a girl who can’t be older than twenty-two. He calls her the next day-Melissa, a nice, average name, not like Dale or even Britta, if Jeff’s honest with himself-and they make a date for dinner. It’s the first real date Jeff’s been on in a long time, so he goes all out: pressed button-down, new jeans that are stiff and form-fitting, expensive cologne. He gets the Lexus washed and detailed and is seven minutes late picking her up-the perfect balance between too eager and too disinterested.
Only.
Melissa is kind of perfect. She’s beautiful and smart and funny. She matches Jeff wit for wit, she has interesting opinions about basically everything, and she’s like-a real adult, a real person, someone who hasn’t been addled by the sometimes-black hole that is Greendale.
But.
He spends the entire date texting Britta underneath the table. He feels sort of bad about it at the end of the night, when he heads back toward Melissa’s house and says goodnight with an overtone of finality and her face falls a little bit. But his phone buzzes in his pocket when he walks her to the door and he knows it’s from Britta and suddenly he has the thought that the sooner he says goodnight to Melissa the sooner he can get over to Britta’s. This, he admits to himself and only himself as he drives to Britta’s apartment, is not the normal way one reacts to a date, especially a good one. This is not the normal way Jeff Winger reacts to a date.
Dale is still in the picture when Jeff and Britta run into Abed, Troy, and Annie at the mall. Jeff wants new bedsheets and Britta tags along because the mall is air conditioned, unlike her apartment. After Jeff gets his sheets they amuse themselves by trying on the ugliest sunglasses they can find. Britta puts on this pair that are bigger than her entire face and she looks so small and so silly that Jeff bends down to kiss her and it’s at that moment that Troy spots them.
Abed still doesn’t say anything but it’s an awkward encounter because Annie’s wearing an expression Jeff isn’t able to define but is afraid of anyway and Troy yells at them for breaking the “no intimacy” pact.
“What do you think?” Britta says in the car on the way home, after they’ve finally escaped from the questioning and the accusations (they manage to avoid and evade answering and explaining; Jeff tells them all to shut up and forget about it and Britta protests that it doesn’t matter because it’s just sex).
Her phone beeps before he can answer and out of the corner of his eye he sees her smile at the screen. “Dale?” he asks.
“Yup.”
“I think,” he says, knuckles whitening on the steering wheel, “that I’m tired of this half-relationship we have.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you and I spend most of our time together. We sleep together like five nights a week. We’re…” He trails off.
“So you want to stop?”
“No.”
“So what do you want?” Her voice is small and quiet, as if she speaks too loudly he won’t answer.
He keeps his eyes on the road. “I want you to stop hanging out with Dale.” She scoffs and starts to speak but he cuts her off. “Because I want to be a little more… exclusive.”
“Oh.”
She reaches over and places a hand on his arm. “Everyone’s gonna know.”
“I know.”
“They’re gonna have all sorts of things to say and expectations.”
“I know.”
“It’s basically like dating six people.”
“Britta.”
“Sorry, but this is a big deal, okay? I’m not doing this half-assed, like you said.”
“So you’re saying…?”
“Yeah, I’m saying,” she says and he turns to smile at her.
“Either you want me or you don’t.”
“I… I do.”
---
Britta’s not upset about being dumped for Annie because it’s not even technically being dumped, since she and Jeff were never dating in the first place. She’s more embarrassed than anything else because she’s never had a conversation as awkward as the one she has with Jeff, when he emerges from the men’s bathroom to find her in the study room eating kettle corn with Abed.
“Hey can I talk to you for a second?”
He looks weird, his eyes shifting all over the room. Abed is watching them curiously so Britta brushes the crumbs from her hands and follows him out into the hallway.
“Are you okay? Look, Shirley will forgive you, you should just go talk to-”
“I need to call this off.”
She’s taken aback; she blinks and then feels her eyes widen and her heart sputters a bit and her stomach drops out. “Oh. Did something happen?”
He looks at the floor. “Annie and I,” he mutters, “are going to give things a try.”
It’s like: if it was anyone but Annie, Britta might not mind so much. But the sting of two public humiliations is still fresh, and it’s going to be quite a long time before she forgets the sight of Jeff walking out on her or the bile that rose in her throat when she found out in front of the entire group that Jeff waited approximately five seconds after rejecting her to make out with Annie. And Annie is: she is all curves and soft, rounded edges where Britta is sharp points and angles. She and Jeff are seamless sometimes-the perfect debate team, the undercover conspirators, the aggressive hotheads overflowing with sexual tension. It makes sense, more sense than Britta and Jeff most days.
But Britta’s been sleeping with Jeff for over three months now and it’s starting to feel normal and natural. For the first time in a long time, Britta feels in control of every aspect of her life; after the events of the end of last spring semester, and the first week of fall semester, she was beginning to get the itch to run. But after a month of sleeping with Jeff-of having a secret, of paying her bills on time, of spending more and more time with Jeff and more and more of that time not being taken up by sex-Britta settled back into place, content.
“What does that mean, exactly?” she asks, finally, stupidly.
“We’re going to, you know, date.”
She inhales sharply and Jeff clucks his tongue. “Look, we said right from the beginning that we could call this off at anytime. We both agreed. You agreed.”
“I know,” she bites. She feels her face burn red. “Does Annie know?”
“No,” he says pleadingly. “And I want to be the one to tell her so please, don’t say anything okay?”
Britta remembers: Vaughn and Annie holding hands on the quad, the sad look she shared with Michelle as the door closed behind Jeff, pretending to listen intently to Annie speak as Jeff texted her nonstop Where are you I thought we were meeting in the women’s locker room?
She has the power to hurt Annie and ruin things between her and Jeff. But she won’t.
“I won’t.”
Jeff must never tell Annie because she never mentions it. Study group becomes almost unbearable because Jeff and Annie actually hold hands on the way in and he walks her to her classes and it’s like some warped version of middle school where one member of the relationship is approaching middle age instead of puberty. Shirley, disapproving at first, now awwws at them constantly and in a high-pitched tone that makes Britta’s skin crawl.
And it’s Abed that notices, of course. Britta’s usually the first one out these days: of study group, of Anthropology, of the entire school. One afternoon in March (Let’s not talk about Valentine’s Day, okay? About how Britta kissed a girl she thought was a lesbian while Jeff and Annie slow-danced in the corner, looking on with faces of pity (Annie) and wicked amusement (Jeff) and Britta went home alone and ate a pound of chocolate and drank way too much vodka and had a very long therapy session with her cat.) Britta gets outside to her car to find Abed standing beside it. How he got there before her, she’ll never know, because the second Duncan dismissed them she was out the door, practically sprinting for the weekend.
“Hi Britta.”
“Hi Abed.”
“Things have been weird. Something’s going on.”
Britta sighs and then looks up at him. “Get in. We’re going to need milkshakes for this conversation.”
“You and Jeff were sleeping together, weren’t you?” Abed asks after swallowing a large gulp of milkshake. Britta bought larges for both of them-chocolate-milkshakes so big that Britta can already feel herself getting jittery from the sugar.
“Was it obvious?”
“I had my suspicions,” he says. “I needed another piece of evidence to confirm, but I was pretty sure.”
Britta doesn’t say anything, chews on her straw a little bit.
“You weren’t that obvious,” Abed assures, “I’m just more observant than the others.”
“Annie doesn’t know. Jeff said he was going to tell her but I know he never did. Do you think she’ll be upset?”
“She might. It’s plausible that they break up over it.”
Britta sighs. “I don’t want that. They seem happy.”
“But you’re in love with Jeff.”
“No,” she says quickly. “I’m not. Really. It’s just… we had finally got to a point where it wasn’t weird, you know? We were together, like, almost all the time and I… miss him, I guess.”
“Ah. I see.”
“If it was anyone but Annie we could still be friends. But there’s-”
“A history,” Abed finishes.
She nods sadly and they finish their milkshakes in relative silence. When Britta drops Abed back off at the dorms, he reaches over to pat her shoulder consolingly.
“Sorry I was wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was banking on the fact that the first girl always wins,” he says. “But, like you always say, life isn’t TV.”
“Look, Britta,” Shirley says as she comes out of the stall and turns on the faucet to wash her hands, “it’s obvious you and Jeff have feelings for each other. You need to say something, like an adult.”
Britta shrugs in the mirror and hands Shirley a paper towel. “It’s not that easy.”
“But it is. You go up to him and you say, ‘Jeffrey, every since we rudely had sex in a public area that people use every day without any regard for their personal space and hygiene, I’ve been thinking that we should go out sometime.’ There! It’s as simple as that!”
“Shirley,” Britta admonishes. “But what if that’s not what I want?”
“Then you won’t have a problem watching him get back together with Professor Short Skirt.”
Britta fluffs her hair a little and then follows Shirley out of the bathroom. It’s not-it’s not that she wants Jeff to, like, pick her up and take her to dinner or anything. She’s not entirely sure what she does want, only that she knows the thought of Jeff and Slater getting back together makes her stomach feel kinda queasy.
But Slater is a lot of things Britta is not: she is an adult in every sense of the word instead of just a few, she is calm and cool and there’s a slickness about her-not the creepy kind or the sleazy kind, but the sexy, seductive kind Britta’s always been secretly envious of. Yeah, she’s a little pretentious, but Jeff sure as hell isn’t perfect. Maybe these are the things that Jeff wants, things that slot neatly into place instead of being strewn around haphazardly, things that will lead somewhere instead of constantly stopping and stalling and sputtering and maybe eventually getting somewhere.
And then.
If Britta can win Transfer Queen and get that sort of validation that unfortunately one can only get when a group of people think you’re hot, maybe she can beat not only Danielle and Christine and those other girls nominated for Queen, but Slater, too, somehow; Britta can prove that she’s worth something, at least in the eyes of people who want to give her a crown and a sash. At least she’s worth that.
She steps off the stage and there’s Slater, kissing Jeff. They look good together, Britta thinks suddenly. Some people just look good when they kiss each other.
Britta’s having an out-of-body type experience because she jumps back up on stage and grabs the microphone back from the dean. She’s going to do it, she’s going to stop this from happening because she’s in love with Jeff and suddenly she realizes that to lose him would be to lose a lot. And Britta hates to lose.
Wait, what?
“Britta, what are you doing?” Dean Pelton hisses.
Jeff’s looking up at her with some kind of confused curiosity. Slater is at his side, glaring up at Britta, but there’s a nervousness behind her eyes, like she knows how desperate Britta feels. Maybe she feels the same way.
“I-” Britta starts, her mouth opening and closing like a fish. Suddenly she comes back to herself and realizes what a stupid idea this is. “I love you”s are not sticks of gum that you give away without thinking. They have weight and consequences. Britta has never said it before and this is not going to be the first time.
“I reject the idea of judging and valuing women based solely on their appearance!” she shouts, an arm in the air.
Dean Pelton wretches the microphone from her grasp and shoves her aside. “All right, we get it. You’re not going to win anyway.”
She inhales a deep breath, holds her head high, and marches outside, where she’s ninety-nine percent sure there’s an emergency cigarette in her glovebox.
---
“Smoking again?”
Britta starts and drops the cigarette in the process. She stubs it out with her shoe and it flares and then dies, smoke billowing up. “Just one.”
Jeff sits down on the sidewalk next to her, his hip almost touching hers. “So, uh. Sorry you didn’t win Transfer Queen.”
She waves a hand. “Don’t believe in it anyway.”
“Thought it was empowering?”
“There are other ways to be empowered,” she says with a shrug.
He flexes his fingers in front of him before scratching at his jaw distractedly. “Michelle wants to give things another try.”
“Oh. That’s… that’s nice. Are you going to?”
“I think so. It’ll be different, you know, during the summer. No Greendale or paperwork to fill out or expectations.”
Britta nods and forces a smile. Maybe she’d thought the same thing about dating Jeff over the summer. Maybe things happen for a reason.
“Look, I’m happy for you. Really. You guys are good together.”
“Thanks,” Jeff says, surprised. “I hope things won’t be weird-”
“What?” she interrupts. “You mean because we slept together once? No way. Not weird at all.”
“Technically it was twice,” he says, nudging her shoulder with his.
She rolls her eyes. “You’re gross.”
“I should go back inside. Michelle and I are going to grab some food on the way home. I’ll see you around, though, okay? Since we have cell phones and all.” He stands up and smiles down at her.
“Not a Jane Austen novel,” she says again as she returns his smile.
The door closes behind him and Britta sighs, but it’s not a heavy sigh. It’s better this way, she thinks.
Study group meets at four. Britta never shows. Jeff waits alone in the library for forty-five minutes before he goes home.
Jeff sits behind her in Spanish the next day. Abed, for some reason, sits to his left and eavesdrops. “Hey,” he whispers, poking her in the back with a pen, “thanks for ditching me yesterday.”
“I didn’t ditch you,” she whispers back. She pretends to dig something out of her bag hanging on the back of her chair. “I know your “study group” was just you sitting in the library pretending there’s such a thing as a board-certified tutor.”
For some reason Jeff suspects Abed has something to do with this, so he turns to his left and glares a bit. “We still coulda studied together. It’s rude not to show up.”
She raises an eyebrow before turning back to face front, and Señor Chang begins passing out the quiz.
They’re paired up for a project about short conversations and when she looks at their matching cards with disdain, he shrugs with his mouth pulled into a smirk. So maybe he gave Abed his shirt so he could be her partner, maybe Abed’s shirt is about four sizes too small and half of Jeff’s stomach is sticking out. Britta doesn’t need to know these things.
They meet in the cafeteria for lunch and Britta wastes no time spreading her books and notes in front of her. “Okay, so I think it’s best if we pick some key phrases from chapter two-”
“Wait, wait. Slow it down. At least let me buy you lunch.”
“No, thanks. I can buy my own lunch.”
“A cup of coffee, then.”
She looks up from her notebook and narrows her eyes. “What’s your angle?”
He places a hand to his heart in mock-injury. “I’m insulted that you think I have an angle. Can’t a guy buy his pretty partner a sandwich without it being suspicious?”
She studies him for a minute before turning back to what she was writing. “A salad. Oil and vinegar dressing.”
He thinks this might be his in. So after the project is done (they get a B+ which is pretty damn good for only knowing a handful of insults in Spanish) he asks her out. She turns him down.
“Why?”
“Look, you’re cute but narcissistic to the point of near-delusion. You don’t want to date me, you want to sleep with me. There are a hundred other girls on this campus with less brains who will give you exactly what you want. Go find them.”
He still asks her out four more times. She says no so he sleeps with his hot Statistics professor instead.
Michelle is great: her face is great, the sex is great, even the conversation is great. But then Dean Pelton gets wind of it and when he asks them if they’re boyfriend and girlfriend, Jeff says no at the same time Michelle says yes. She gets angry-understandably so, he must admit, even if it’s just to himself-and that’s the end of that. She doesn’t fail him, but he does get a D on his next Stats test.
(He fails Accounting, though. Jeff has seized many things in his life, but the day has never been one of them.)
He continues to flirt with Britta, although after Michelle won’t speak to him anymore, he doesn’t go back to asking her out. He sits behind her every class and sometimes they have lunch together with Abed. It’s… nice.
After the Spanish final, Jeff walks out of the classroom with a crick in his neck and relief to be Greendale-free for the next month. Britta’s leaning against the wall outside the door. “How’d you do?” she asks.
He shrugs. “I think I managed a C. What, are you waiting for me?”
“I guess. I can’t believe I’m about to say this but… do you wanna grab a drink? To celebrate the end of 101?”
He laughs. “You’re asking me out.”
She shrugs, a smirk on her face. “Maybe I am.” She pushes off the wall and up onto her tiptoes to kiss him, something small and hesitant. She tastes like chapstick and peppermint from the candy canes Annie Edison handed out to each person in the class, and he cups the back of her head with his hand and it’s a perfect fit, everything about her against him is a perfect fit. When she pulls away, “There’s this place, have you heard of it? The Red Door?”
“Ugh,” he says, making a face. “That place is the worst. I’m taking you to L Street.”
“First of all, you’re not taking me anywhere,” she says as they begin to walk. His hand hovers over the small of her back and she leans into it a bit. “Second of all, that place is douchey.”
He rolls his eyes but smiles as they make their way to the parking lot.
Jeff/Britta
~5,000 words
Ways it doesn't happen.
For Libby and Marya; Libby because your other surprise ended up being a bust and Marya because I accidentally took a topic we talked about and did the complete opposite oops I'm sorry.
Jeff has just hit send on the text message when Troy bounds up to Britta and kisses her full on the mouth. Sophie B. Hawkins is still singing, so when Troy pulls away and says something to Britta that makes her face light up, Jeff can’t hear what it is. According to his phone, the text message has been delivered. If Britta’s phone is vibrating in the pocket of her dress, she doesn’t go to grab it. Sophie starts a slower song and Britta dances with her boyfriend, tucked neatly in his arms, his chin resting on top of her head.
It’s another instance of Jeff giving too much of himself to Britta and he goes home that night feeling stupid. He tries not to imagine Britta and Troy going home to celebrate her success; though they’ve been dating for a few months now, tonight was the first time Jeff had actually seen them kiss. It’s easy to forget about things that aren’t in front of your face, but now that he knows what it looks like, how their lips fit together, it’s hard to picture anything else.
Jeff isn’t jealous. He just doesn’t understand. There’s nothing about the two of them together that makes an iota of sense. Jeff knows Britta-better than Troy knows her, he’d bet-and he knows the kinds of things that make her happy. Troy is none of those things.
But maybe, a voice in the back of his head tells him, maybe you don’t know her as well as you think you do.
After one glass of scotch, Jeff’s ready to just go to bed and forget about it all when his phone rings. Britta’s name flashes across the screen and for a second, Jeff thinks of ignoring it and letting it go to voicemail. She’s probably calling about his pathetic text and he doesn’t really want to talk about it anymore.
It’s on the last ring when he answers anyway.
“Hey,” she says in a hushed voice.
“Why are you whispering?”
“Troy’s asleep. He’s a heavy sleeper but just in case, I don’t want to wake him up.”
“Hm, sleeping already? It’s barely midnight.”
There’s something about Britta that makes Jeff particularly petty. He cringes at himself and he can picture her face, the flinch, the eyebrow scrunch, the frown.
“Um, yeah. Anyway, I saw your text and I wanted to call and say thank you. That was really sweet of you to say.”
Her voice is sincere but he still feels belittled. It’s dumb, really, because this is what he wanted when he sent the text, for her to know how much he cares about her and that even when he’s an asshole to her it’s because of a ton of reasons that have nothing to do with her. If Troy hadn’t been there, if he had been slinking around with bags of chips and snapping pictures of himself like he had been for the entire evening leading up, things would have gone so differently.
“You did a really great job,” he says finally, swallowing his pride. “It was a good dance.”
“I just can’t believe she actually showed up. It’s insane to even think about.”
He opens his mouth to tell her the truth, but it seems too cruel. He remembers her face, how happy she looked when people were coming up to her and congratulating her instead of belittling her. He remembers the last time she looked like that, sitting in his car on Thanksgiving night, pushing hair out of her face as she looked at him.
“Hey, I’m sorry if I was a jerk today,” he says. “I shouldn’t have treated you like that.”
“It’s fine. But I appreciate your apology.”
She’s still whispering and he wonders if she’s sitting up in Troy’s bed and does he have Spiderman bedsheets or something similar? Does she have to keep quiet when they’re having sex in case Abed or Annie are in the living room watching TV? Does she have to sit through Inspector Spacetime marathons and movie nights and battle with Abed for her boyfriend’s affection?
“I should go,” she says finally. “I just… it was a really nice text to read. I looked for you, after I saw it, but you must have left already.”
“Yeah, I was kinda Sophie B’d out.”
“Troy took me out for ice cream afterward. You should’ve stuck around, you could’ve come with us.”
“Ah. Next time, maybe.”
“Okay. Goodnight, Jeff.”
“’Night.”
He hangs up the phone and pours himself another scotch.
There’s a moment where Abed stares at Jeff and Jeff thinks it’s all over. Abed isn’t stupid; he’s far from it, the most observant of them all, and Jeff knows he and Britta aren’t as sneaky and secretive as they think they are. The smile slides off Jeff’s face and he can feel himself pleading with his eyes. Because here’s the thing: as soon as the group knows, this whole thing is over. It’s not something they’ve talked about, but it’s an unspoken agreement because with the group’s knowledge comes expectations and conversations and neither of them are ready for that. It’s easier to push it all down, to deny, to ignore.
So maybe Jeff shouldn’t have called Abed a computer. It was pretty rude, now that he’s thinking about it, and Abed’s stare is boring into him and he can feel Britta go tense beside him.
“Tom Sizemore wasn’t at Pierce’s rehab,” Abed says finally, looking away from Jeff.
The group turns their attention to Pierce, exploding in simultaneous outrage and disappointment. Jeff blinks slowly and lets out a deep breath. Britta relaxes at his side and chimes in, wondering what else Pierce has lied about.
It turns into an argument about who lies the most and about what, and suddenly they’re fighting about fighting. Jeff gives a speech and settles it, though, and he catches Abed’s eye when it’s over and done with and mouths thank you. Abed nods once and Jeff looks at Britta and she gives him a relieved smile.
And so it continues and the group still doesn’t know. But suddenly, suddenly it’s summer and there’s no study group and no Greendale and it’s quiet and calm. There’s no sense of urgency; Jeff wakes up sometimes in Britta’s bed and in that moment between sleep and consciousness he feels a jolt of panic because Britta and Shirley often carpool to school and what if this is one of those moments where Shirley’s going to knock on the door and discover Jeff in his underwear? Then he realizes that no, there’s no class to go to, no plans to be had.
It’s strange, in a leisurely, comfortable way, to wake up curled around her on a Wednesday morning and have nowhere to go. It’s also strange in a scary, comfortable way, because he’s waking up curled around her on a Wednesday morning and there’s nothing keeping them from staying there all day.
There’s an entire three months stretched out before them and they take advantage of it: they sleep late and see movies in the afternoon and Britta takes a long weekend off of work and they drive to Boulder and spend three days at the Reservoir, laying in the sand and getting drunk off fishbowl cocktails and having sex in a sleazy motel bed. It’s not a couple’s getaway, Jeff tells himself, because they argue almost the entire time, bickering about who’s the better swimmer, who can handle their alcohol better (Jeff, Britta says, has a very unfair advantage, as he has at least ninety pounds on her, a figure Jeff argues against vehemently), who should control the air conditioner.
On the way back Jeff drops Britta off at her apartment and goes home to his own because seventy-two hours with only each other for company is overwhelming to him in a lot of ways, mostly because of how completely not-overwhelming it is.
In July three things happen:
Britta goes on a date with a guy she met at Starbucks. His name is-get this-Dale and he teaches music to orphans or something like that. But they have dinner and drinks and Britta tells Jeff about it because that’s how not together the two of them are. She gets this look on her face when she talks about him, like Dale is the greatest thing since free-range eggs. Jeff’s not jealous, per say, but it’s definitely a mood-killer for her to prattle on about this other guy and then expect Jeff to give a very good bedroom performance.
“Does Dale know about me?” Jeff asks one night, even though he isn’t sure if he wants to know the answer.
“Not yet,” Britta answers. “We’re just casual. You know.”
Casual or not, they continue hanging out and even once or twice Jeff texts Britta to see what she’s up to and he receives in response: Sry with Dale call u tmrrw.
So Jeff spends the night at some shitty bar and gets the number of a girl who can’t be older than twenty-two. He calls her the next day-Melissa, a nice, average name, not like Dale or even Britta, if Jeff’s honest with himself-and they make a date for dinner. It’s the first real date Jeff’s been on in a long time, so he goes all out: pressed button-down, new jeans that are stiff and form-fitting, expensive cologne. He gets the Lexus washed and detailed and is seven minutes late picking her up-the perfect balance between too eager and too disinterested.
Only.
Melissa is kind of perfect. She’s beautiful and smart and funny. She matches Jeff wit for wit, she has interesting opinions about basically everything, and she’s like-a real adult, a real person, someone who hasn’t been addled by the sometimes-black hole that is Greendale.
But.
He spends the entire date texting Britta underneath the table. He feels sort of bad about it at the end of the night, when he heads back toward Melissa’s house and says goodnight with an overtone of finality and her face falls a little bit. But his phone buzzes in his pocket when he walks her to the door and he knows it’s from Britta and suddenly he has the thought that the sooner he says goodnight to Melissa the sooner he can get over to Britta’s. This, he admits to himself and only himself as he drives to Britta’s apartment, is not the normal way one reacts to a date, especially a good one. This is not the normal way Jeff Winger reacts to a date.
Dale is still in the picture when Jeff and Britta run into Abed, Troy, and Annie at the mall. Jeff wants new bedsheets and Britta tags along because the mall is air conditioned, unlike her apartment. After Jeff gets his sheets they amuse themselves by trying on the ugliest sunglasses they can find. Britta puts on this pair that are bigger than her entire face and she looks so small and so silly that Jeff bends down to kiss her and it’s at that moment that Troy spots them.
Abed still doesn’t say anything but it’s an awkward encounter because Annie’s wearing an expression Jeff isn’t able to define but is afraid of anyway and Troy yells at them for breaking the “no intimacy” pact.
“What do you think?” Britta says in the car on the way home, after they’ve finally escaped from the questioning and the accusations (they manage to avoid and evade answering and explaining; Jeff tells them all to shut up and forget about it and Britta protests that it doesn’t matter because it’s just sex).
Her phone beeps before he can answer and out of the corner of his eye he sees her smile at the screen. “Dale?” he asks.
“Yup.”
“I think,” he says, knuckles whitening on the steering wheel, “that I’m tired of this half-relationship we have.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you and I spend most of our time together. We sleep together like five nights a week. We’re…” He trails off.
“So you want to stop?”
“No.”
“So what do you want?” Her voice is small and quiet, as if she speaks too loudly he won’t answer.
He keeps his eyes on the road. “I want you to stop hanging out with Dale.” She scoffs and starts to speak but he cuts her off. “Because I want to be a little more… exclusive.”
“Oh.”
She reaches over and places a hand on his arm. “Everyone’s gonna know.”
“I know.”
“They’re gonna have all sorts of things to say and expectations.”
“I know.”
“It’s basically like dating six people.”
“Britta.”
“Sorry, but this is a big deal, okay? I’m not doing this half-assed, like you said.”
“So you’re saying…?”
“Yeah, I’m saying,” she says and he turns to smile at her.
“Either you want me or you don’t.”
“I… I do.”
---
Britta’s not upset about being dumped for Annie because it’s not even technically being dumped, since she and Jeff were never dating in the first place. She’s more embarrassed than anything else because she’s never had a conversation as awkward as the one she has with Jeff, when he emerges from the men’s bathroom to find her in the study room eating kettle corn with Abed.
“Hey can I talk to you for a second?”
He looks weird, his eyes shifting all over the room. Abed is watching them curiously so Britta brushes the crumbs from her hands and follows him out into the hallway.
“Are you okay? Look, Shirley will forgive you, you should just go talk to-”
“I need to call this off.”
She’s taken aback; she blinks and then feels her eyes widen and her heart sputters a bit and her stomach drops out. “Oh. Did something happen?”
He looks at the floor. “Annie and I,” he mutters, “are going to give things a try.”
It’s like: if it was anyone but Annie, Britta might not mind so much. But the sting of two public humiliations is still fresh, and it’s going to be quite a long time before she forgets the sight of Jeff walking out on her or the bile that rose in her throat when she found out in front of the entire group that Jeff waited approximately five seconds after rejecting her to make out with Annie. And Annie is: she is all curves and soft, rounded edges where Britta is sharp points and angles. She and Jeff are seamless sometimes-the perfect debate team, the undercover conspirators, the aggressive hotheads overflowing with sexual tension. It makes sense, more sense than Britta and Jeff most days.
But Britta’s been sleeping with Jeff for over three months now and it’s starting to feel normal and natural. For the first time in a long time, Britta feels in control of every aspect of her life; after the events of the end of last spring semester, and the first week of fall semester, she was beginning to get the itch to run. But after a month of sleeping with Jeff-of having a secret, of paying her bills on time, of spending more and more time with Jeff and more and more of that time not being taken up by sex-Britta settled back into place, content.
“What does that mean, exactly?” she asks, finally, stupidly.
“We’re going to, you know, date.”
She inhales sharply and Jeff clucks his tongue. “Look, we said right from the beginning that we could call this off at anytime. We both agreed. You agreed.”
“I know,” she bites. She feels her face burn red. “Does Annie know?”
“No,” he says pleadingly. “And I want to be the one to tell her so please, don’t say anything okay?”
Britta remembers: Vaughn and Annie holding hands on the quad, the sad look she shared with Michelle as the door closed behind Jeff, pretending to listen intently to Annie speak as Jeff texted her nonstop Where are you I thought we were meeting in the women’s locker room?
She has the power to hurt Annie and ruin things between her and Jeff. But she won’t.
“I won’t.”
Jeff must never tell Annie because she never mentions it. Study group becomes almost unbearable because Jeff and Annie actually hold hands on the way in and he walks her to her classes and it’s like some warped version of middle school where one member of the relationship is approaching middle age instead of puberty. Shirley, disapproving at first, now awwws at them constantly and in a high-pitched tone that makes Britta’s skin crawl.
And it’s Abed that notices, of course. Britta’s usually the first one out these days: of study group, of Anthropology, of the entire school. One afternoon in March (Let’s not talk about Valentine’s Day, okay? About how Britta kissed a girl she thought was a lesbian while Jeff and Annie slow-danced in the corner, looking on with faces of pity (Annie) and wicked amusement (Jeff) and Britta went home alone and ate a pound of chocolate and drank way too much vodka and had a very long therapy session with her cat.) Britta gets outside to her car to find Abed standing beside it. How he got there before her, she’ll never know, because the second Duncan dismissed them she was out the door, practically sprinting for the weekend.
“Hi Britta.”
“Hi Abed.”
“Things have been weird. Something’s going on.”
Britta sighs and then looks up at him. “Get in. We’re going to need milkshakes for this conversation.”
“You and Jeff were sleeping together, weren’t you?” Abed asks after swallowing a large gulp of milkshake. Britta bought larges for both of them-chocolate-milkshakes so big that Britta can already feel herself getting jittery from the sugar.
“Was it obvious?”
“I had my suspicions,” he says. “I needed another piece of evidence to confirm, but I was pretty sure.”
Britta doesn’t say anything, chews on her straw a little bit.
“You weren’t that obvious,” Abed assures, “I’m just more observant than the others.”
“Annie doesn’t know. Jeff said he was going to tell her but I know he never did. Do you think she’ll be upset?”
“She might. It’s plausible that they break up over it.”
Britta sighs. “I don’t want that. They seem happy.”
“But you’re in love with Jeff.”
“No,” she says quickly. “I’m not. Really. It’s just… we had finally got to a point where it wasn’t weird, you know? We were together, like, almost all the time and I… miss him, I guess.”
“Ah. I see.”
“If it was anyone but Annie we could still be friends. But there’s-”
“A history,” Abed finishes.
She nods sadly and they finish their milkshakes in relative silence. When Britta drops Abed back off at the dorms, he reaches over to pat her shoulder consolingly.
“Sorry I was wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was banking on the fact that the first girl always wins,” he says. “But, like you always say, life isn’t TV.”
“Look, Britta,” Shirley says as she comes out of the stall and turns on the faucet to wash her hands, “it’s obvious you and Jeff have feelings for each other. You need to say something, like an adult.”
Britta shrugs in the mirror and hands Shirley a paper towel. “It’s not that easy.”
“But it is. You go up to him and you say, ‘Jeffrey, every since we rudely had sex in a public area that people use every day without any regard for their personal space and hygiene, I’ve been thinking that we should go out sometime.’ There! It’s as simple as that!”
“Shirley,” Britta admonishes. “But what if that’s not what I want?”
“Then you won’t have a problem watching him get back together with Professor Short Skirt.”
Britta fluffs her hair a little and then follows Shirley out of the bathroom. It’s not-it’s not that she wants Jeff to, like, pick her up and take her to dinner or anything. She’s not entirely sure what she does want, only that she knows the thought of Jeff and Slater getting back together makes her stomach feel kinda queasy.
But Slater is a lot of things Britta is not: she is an adult in every sense of the word instead of just a few, she is calm and cool and there’s a slickness about her-not the creepy kind or the sleazy kind, but the sexy, seductive kind Britta’s always been secretly envious of. Yeah, she’s a little pretentious, but Jeff sure as hell isn’t perfect. Maybe these are the things that Jeff wants, things that slot neatly into place instead of being strewn around haphazardly, things that will lead somewhere instead of constantly stopping and stalling and sputtering and maybe eventually getting somewhere.
And then.
If Britta can win Transfer Queen and get that sort of validation that unfortunately one can only get when a group of people think you’re hot, maybe she can beat not only Danielle and Christine and those other girls nominated for Queen, but Slater, too, somehow; Britta can prove that she’s worth something, at least in the eyes of people who want to give her a crown and a sash. At least she’s worth that.
She steps off the stage and there’s Slater, kissing Jeff. They look good together, Britta thinks suddenly. Some people just look good when they kiss each other.
Britta’s having an out-of-body type experience because she jumps back up on stage and grabs the microphone back from the dean. She’s going to do it, she’s going to stop this from happening because she’s in love with Jeff and suddenly she realizes that to lose him would be to lose a lot. And Britta hates to lose.
Wait, what?
“Britta, what are you doing?” Dean Pelton hisses.
Jeff’s looking up at her with some kind of confused curiosity. Slater is at his side, glaring up at Britta, but there’s a nervousness behind her eyes, like she knows how desperate Britta feels. Maybe she feels the same way.
“I-” Britta starts, her mouth opening and closing like a fish. Suddenly she comes back to herself and realizes what a stupid idea this is. “I love you”s are not sticks of gum that you give away without thinking. They have weight and consequences. Britta has never said it before and this is not going to be the first time.
“I reject the idea of judging and valuing women based solely on their appearance!” she shouts, an arm in the air.
Dean Pelton wretches the microphone from her grasp and shoves her aside. “All right, we get it. You’re not going to win anyway.”
She inhales a deep breath, holds her head high, and marches outside, where she’s ninety-nine percent sure there’s an emergency cigarette in her glovebox.
---
“Smoking again?”
Britta starts and drops the cigarette in the process. She stubs it out with her shoe and it flares and then dies, smoke billowing up. “Just one.”
Jeff sits down on the sidewalk next to her, his hip almost touching hers. “So, uh. Sorry you didn’t win Transfer Queen.”
She waves a hand. “Don’t believe in it anyway.”
“Thought it was empowering?”
“There are other ways to be empowered,” she says with a shrug.
He flexes his fingers in front of him before scratching at his jaw distractedly. “Michelle wants to give things another try.”
“Oh. That’s… that’s nice. Are you going to?”
“I think so. It’ll be different, you know, during the summer. No Greendale or paperwork to fill out or expectations.”
Britta nods and forces a smile. Maybe she’d thought the same thing about dating Jeff over the summer. Maybe things happen for a reason.
“Look, I’m happy for you. Really. You guys are good together.”
“Thanks,” Jeff says, surprised. “I hope things won’t be weird-”
“What?” she interrupts. “You mean because we slept together once? No way. Not weird at all.”
“Technically it was twice,” he says, nudging her shoulder with his.
She rolls her eyes. “You’re gross.”
“I should go back inside. Michelle and I are going to grab some food on the way home. I’ll see you around, though, okay? Since we have cell phones and all.” He stands up and smiles down at her.
“Not a Jane Austen novel,” she says again as she returns his smile.
The door closes behind him and Britta sighs, but it’s not a heavy sigh. It’s better this way, she thinks.
Study group meets at four. Britta never shows. Jeff waits alone in the library for forty-five minutes before he goes home.
Jeff sits behind her in Spanish the next day. Abed, for some reason, sits to his left and eavesdrops. “Hey,” he whispers, poking her in the back with a pen, “thanks for ditching me yesterday.”
“I didn’t ditch you,” she whispers back. She pretends to dig something out of her bag hanging on the back of her chair. “I know your “study group” was just you sitting in the library pretending there’s such a thing as a board-certified tutor.”
For some reason Jeff suspects Abed has something to do with this, so he turns to his left and glares a bit. “We still coulda studied together. It’s rude not to show up.”
She raises an eyebrow before turning back to face front, and Señor Chang begins passing out the quiz.
They’re paired up for a project about short conversations and when she looks at their matching cards with disdain, he shrugs with his mouth pulled into a smirk. So maybe he gave Abed his shirt so he could be her partner, maybe Abed’s shirt is about four sizes too small and half of Jeff’s stomach is sticking out. Britta doesn’t need to know these things.
They meet in the cafeteria for lunch and Britta wastes no time spreading her books and notes in front of her. “Okay, so I think it’s best if we pick some key phrases from chapter two-”
“Wait, wait. Slow it down. At least let me buy you lunch.”
“No, thanks. I can buy my own lunch.”
“A cup of coffee, then.”
She looks up from her notebook and narrows her eyes. “What’s your angle?”
He places a hand to his heart in mock-injury. “I’m insulted that you think I have an angle. Can’t a guy buy his pretty partner a sandwich without it being suspicious?”
She studies him for a minute before turning back to what she was writing. “A salad. Oil and vinegar dressing.”
He thinks this might be his in. So after the project is done (they get a B+ which is pretty damn good for only knowing a handful of insults in Spanish) he asks her out. She turns him down.
“Why?”
“Look, you’re cute but narcissistic to the point of near-delusion. You don’t want to date me, you want to sleep with me. There are a hundred other girls on this campus with less brains who will give you exactly what you want. Go find them.”
He still asks her out four more times. She says no so he sleeps with his hot Statistics professor instead.
Michelle is great: her face is great, the sex is great, even the conversation is great. But then Dean Pelton gets wind of it and when he asks them if they’re boyfriend and girlfriend, Jeff says no at the same time Michelle says yes. She gets angry-understandably so, he must admit, even if it’s just to himself-and that’s the end of that. She doesn’t fail him, but he does get a D on his next Stats test.
(He fails Accounting, though. Jeff has seized many things in his life, but the day has never been one of them.)
He continues to flirt with Britta, although after Michelle won’t speak to him anymore, he doesn’t go back to asking her out. He sits behind her every class and sometimes they have lunch together with Abed. It’s… nice.
After the Spanish final, Jeff walks out of the classroom with a crick in his neck and relief to be Greendale-free for the next month. Britta’s leaning against the wall outside the door. “How’d you do?” she asks.
He shrugs. “I think I managed a C. What, are you waiting for me?”
“I guess. I can’t believe I’m about to say this but… do you wanna grab a drink? To celebrate the end of 101?”
He laughs. “You’re asking me out.”
She shrugs, a smirk on her face. “Maybe I am.” She pushes off the wall and up onto her tiptoes to kiss him, something small and hesitant. She tastes like chapstick and peppermint from the candy canes Annie Edison handed out to each person in the class, and he cups the back of her head with his hand and it’s a perfect fit, everything about her against him is a perfect fit. When she pulls away, “There’s this place, have you heard of it? The Red Door?”
“Ugh,” he says, making a face. “That place is the worst. I’m taking you to L Street.”
“First of all, you’re not taking me anywhere,” she says as they begin to walk. His hand hovers over the small of her back and she leans into it a bit. “Second of all, that place is douchey.”
He rolls his eyes but smiles as they make their way to the parking lot.