My Old Clothes Don't Fit Me Now | Community | Jeff/Britta (Part 2)
My Old Clothes Don't Fit Me Now (Part 2)
Jeff/Britta (background Abed/Annie)
~16,000 words
AU: When Britta Perry signs up to be Annie Edison's Big Sister, she doesn't anticipate getting Troy Barnes and Abed Nadir as part of the deal. Or Abed's neighbor, Jeff Winger.
PART 1
---
Britta’s been doing much better about not smoking (three cigarettes all summer!) but sitting in Jeff’s dark living room in her pajamas makes her crave one like there’s no tomorrow. She tries to concentrate on the TV but Star Wars has never interested her and despite the fact that Troy, Abed, and Annie are all completely engrossed to the point they’ve stopped digging into the giant popcorn bowl, Britta keeps changing positions and Jeff’s playing with his phone, the backlight glowing eerily on his face.
She gets up and mutters something about having to pee, but no one pays her any attention. She shuts herself in the bathroom and starts rooting through the medicine cabinet. Jeff has a lot of hair product, even more skin product, and not one single embarrassing prescription bottle anywhere to be found. He uses fancy whitening toothpaste as well as mouthwash. His shampoo looks expensive although the bottle stands upside-down in the shower, as if he’s trying to squeeze out every last drop. His towels are hung neatly on the racks. This isn’t the first time she’s been in his bathroom, but it’s the first time she’s allowed herself to snoop.
Something-and she hasn’t yet been able to pinpoint it exactly-about Jeff Winger unnerves her. She’s spent an obscene amount of time with him this summer and yet what she knows about him can fit in the palm of her hand. She sits on the edge of the tub and takes a few deep breaths. A slumber party. Stupidest idea ever.
There’s a quiet knock on the door and Britta jumps at the sound. She flushes the toilet and opens the door a tiny crack. Jeff’s standing there, phone in hand, looking unsure.
“You seem weird. Is everything okay?”
“No,” she says. She reaches up and fists his shirt, pulling him into the room.
“Wha-?”
She slowly and quietly closes the door and then shoves him against it. She pulls his face down to hers and kisses him angrily, all teeth and tongue.
He’s frozen at first, but it doesn’t take long for him to respond. His phone clatters to the floor as he brings his arms up and his hands splay across her back, slide across to her shoulders, then frame her face and tangle in her hair. He kisses back just as angrily, as if he’s mad at her for something more than throwing him against a door.
Her legs are starting to cramp from standing on her tiptoes and she can hear the seconds tick by on his watch. There are three kids in the living room so she pulls away and wipes her mouth on her sleeve. He looks a little bit like he got hit in the head.
“Can you, um, move?” she asks, not looking him in the eye.
“Huh? Oh, yeah.” He steps to the side and she opens the door. He doesn’t follow her out so she takes a minute to stand in the hallway and untangle the knots he made in her hair and take a few deep breaths. She goes back into the living room where it seems Troy, Abed, and Annie haven’t even noticed their absence. She sits on the couch and runs her fingers over her lips. He tasted like Diet Coke and popcorn.
---
“Britta?” The whisper comes from the pink sleeping bag on the floor and Britta rolls over on the couch to find Annie’s face in the dark.
“Yeah?”
“Do you like Jeff?”
Britta runs her tongue over her teeth and remembers Jeff’s doing the same. “He’s okay.”
“It would be kind of funny, wouldn’t it?” Annie asks. “If we met up with Jeff and Abed to make a movie about love and summer and you two end up together?”
“Don’t bet on it, Annie. Worry about your own summer romance.”
There’s a pause and then, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Britta laughs quietly. “Goodnight, Annie.”
“‘Night.”
---
“Things have been weird, don’t you think?” Abed asks. “Off a little.” He holds out his bag of cracker jack to Troy, who scoops up a handful.
“Nope, everything’s been fine,” Jeff says beneath his sunglasses. The guy on second base looks like he’s going to steal and the crowd hushes, but nothing happens.
Abed shrugs. “It’s like something happened that we don’t know about. Or, at least, I don’t know about. Do you know, Troy?”
“Nope,” Troy says around a mouthful of cracker jack. “But sometimes I miss things. I didn’t even know Abed was in love with Annie until he practically let it slip.”
Jeff snickers and Abed leans back a little in his seat. “You’re inferring,” he says. “And I edited that part out just in case anyone takes it the wrong way.”
“Let’s hope Annie doesn’t take it the wrong way, if you know what I mean!” Troy says with a grin.
“Dude,” Jeff says. “That’s pretty gross.”
Troy just shrugs half-heartedly and turns his attention back to the game.
Colorado minor league baseball isn’t the most fascinating thing in the world, but when an ex-colleague of Jeff’s offered him three tickets for the game out of some misguided pity, Jeff snatched them up and declared a Man’s Day. Anything to get him away from another day of avoiding eye contact and over-making polite conversation with Britta.
It’s been over a week since they kissed and they have not talked about it. In fact, they don’t really talk to each other at all. She comes over every day and they let the kids steer the conversations. She says things like “Good morning” and “Have a good night” but never do her sentences start with “So this is the reason I shoved my tongue down your throat in your bathroom.”
He spends a lot of time thinking about texting her or calling her or driving over to apartment and pushing her up against a door and finishing what they started. When she leaves every afternoon, he watches the clock and times her trip: from his house to Troy and Annie’s apartment complex, to her own apartment. If he calls now she’ll just be walking in the door. He could catch her alone.
But he never actually hits the dial button and instead just drinks a lot of scotch and has to ignore his hangover when the four of them bound through his front door in the morning.
The batter strikes out and everyone heads to the dugout as the inning ends. The announcer starts rattling off names of sponsors and Jeff turns to the boys. “Here’s a hypothetical for you, Abed. What if Annie just walked up to you and kissed you, like really kissed you, and walked away without saying anything. What would you do?”
Abed waits a minute before he answers. “So that’s what happened. You and Britta kissed.”
“What!” Troy exclaims, eyes wide. “Britta’s hot, man. Good job.”
“No, not good job,” Jeff says. “Now it’s awkward and weird and I don’t know how to deal with it. So, naturally, I have to ask teenagers for advice because I’m only a grown man.”
The Sky Sox take the field and the three of them watch as the pitcher throws a strike at the first batter. “You could just talk to her,” Troy offers simply. “Britta doesn’t seem like the kind of girl who wants all sorts of bells and whistles, you know? I say go simple.”
“Jeff,” Abed begins. “I think it’s time for your interview.”
---
“Have you ever been in love?”
“What? No. Love’s for suckers.”
“How so?”
“Because once someone finds out who you really are, they run away. They turn around and bolt and never come back. People don’t want to find out the awful, gritty things about a person. They want to see the outside, nice hair and clothes and a good job and a house with a big backyard. No one wants a mess.”
“Are you a mess?”
“Of course not.”
“Okay.”
“Except... okay, so maybe faking a college degree to be a lawyer isn’t something a non-mess of a person would do. And maybe non-messes don’t end up disbarred after only two years of practicing law with no idea what to do next. Maybe they don’t spend an entire summer with a rag-tag bunch of teenagers and a girl who-by pure, unadulterated coincidence-faked her own degree to get into the Peace Corps. Maybe they wake up and go to work at jobs they’ve earned and come home and kiss their wives and they’re normal.”
“And you don’t think you’re normal?”
“I don’t know. Does anything about me seem normal to you?”
“You have a house. And you took us all in and helped me make this film. And I know it’s because my dad told you to, but you still did it. Is that normal?”
“What happened to your mom, Abed?”
“She left. Why?”
“So did my dad. Do you ever feel like it messed you up? Made you into someone you weren’t before?”
“Sometimes. My dad’s more angry now. I see her once a year, at Christmas, even though my dad decided to raise me Muslim. We watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer together.”
“I haven’t seen my dad since I was eight. I don’t know where he is, or if he’s even alive. It’s stupid, the way they can do that to you, isn’t it? If he had stuck around I might have just gone to college and done it all right.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because people take the easy way out all the time, don’t they? They lie and they cheat and they leave when things get bad. And it always works out for them. So I thought, why bother? Why bother caring so much about something that has the potential to go bad? I could have flunked out of school. I could have not even gotten in. But by skipping all those steps I made sure I was in the courtroom practicing law without suffering any sort of disappointment.”
“But wasn’t it a disappointment when you got caught?”
“Yes. But only because I cared about it. See, that was my mistake. I wanted it too bad. I wanted to be a lawyer my entire life. If it had been just another job, just something I did to make money and sleep with women, it wouldn’t have mattered when it was over.”
“And that’s the way you handle your relationships with women.”
“Exactly. With anyone, really. Because if you don’t care, you don’t get hurt. You pick up and you move on and that’s that.”
“Tell me about Britta.”
“What about her?”
“Well, you say that you don’t care about people. But I think you care about her. You wouldn’t have come to me and Troy for advice after she kissed you if you didn’t.”
“Have you done Britta’s interview yet?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“You’ll see when it’s finished.”
“Can you just tell me?”
“Her view on love is eerily similar to your own.”
“Hm.”
“What do you think about that?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you like her, don’t you? And it’s more than just wanting to sleep with her, which is why you did this whole thing in the first place. It would have been me and you making this film if it wasn’t for Britta.”
“She-is so much more than I thought she would be. Does that make sense? She acts like she’s so tough but she desperately wants the three of you to like her and think she’s cool. And she’s good with all of you. She didn’t have to give two shits about any of us, and yet she does.”
“Sounds to me like you care about her. Isn’t that against the rules?”
“Yeah, it is. But I don’t want to not care about her. You know what I mean? And then, god, she kissed me, she just threw me against a door and went for it and it’s awkward, like we’re in high school or something. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“And I can’t mess this up. Because of you guys. Because the three of you are... you’re important to me. If it wasn’t for you guys, I would have sat here in the dark in my underwear and drank a lot of scotch. Did you know Britta said the same thing to me? She said that if she hadn’t volunteered to be a Big Sister she’d have spent the summer in her apartment drinking? That we would have been doing the same exact thing and not knowing it?”
“So you’re saying a movie about summer gave your summer purpose.”
“Yes! I am! I’ll tell you something, Abed. When your dad came to me and asked me to keep an eye on you, I spent a long time trying to figure out how to get out of it. I thought of going on vacation, getting a job at WalMart, of selling my house. Anything to not have to hang out with you all summer. And that sounds bad, I know. But-and maybe this is creepy or inappropriate-I have had so much fun with you these last few months. I really have.”
“You’re having an epiphany. This is good stuff.”
“Because sitting around and feeling sorry for myself is stupid. I shouldn’t have faked that degree. I should have said something to Britta after we kissed. And maybe I can’t fix it all. Maybe I’ll get a law degree and no one will hire me because they’ll know what I did. Maybe Britta hates me. But maybe I need to grow up.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I have a couple things to think about. Hey, thanks Abed. You’re really cool.”
“I know.”
---
There’s a knock on Britta’s door and she holds her breath for about fifteen seconds until she opens it to find Annie. “Hey! What are you doing here?”
“I rode my bike over. I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course!” Britta opens the door wider and gestures for her to come inside. “What’s up? Do you want something? I think I have Diet Coke.”
“Sure.” Annie sits on the couch and the cat climbs into her lap. She scratches him behind the ears and laughs a little when he starts purring.
Britta sits next to her with two cans of soda in her hands and sets them on the coffee table. “So, what’s going on?”
“I know you’re supposed to be my Big Sister and I’m supposed to come to you for advice, but...” She reaches over the cat and takes a gulp of soda. “Well, you’ve been kinda quiet lately and it seems like something’s wrong. Did something happen with Jeff at our sleepover? Because you two disappeared for a couple minutes and, well, you don’t have to tell me if something did, but if you wanted to, I would listen.”
Britta smiles and puts her arm around Annie for a quick squeeze. “Thanks, Annie. I think one day you’re going to be a really good Big Sister.”
“But you can talk to me you know,” Annie says, still beaming. “I know I’m only fifteen, but I’ve gone through a lot of stuff this year and I’m much more mature than most fifteen year olds.”
“Okay,” Britta nods. “But can we talk about you, first? Can you tell me about the Adderall?”
Annie takes a visible deep breath and wrings her hands together. “Um. Yeah. My parents got divorced and my mom just sort of... freaked out, you know? And she was on me about being the best at everything and getting really high grades. She wants me to go to a good college. And I do, too, I want to be the best at things. I just couldn’t do it on my own with my mom breathing down my back. And this girl I knew from Hebrew School, her cousin knew someone who could get some Adderall to help me focus more. My grades were slipping because there just weren’t enough hours in the day.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen. This was the beginning of last year.”
Britta looks horrified for a second but quickly rearranges her face into a more neutral expression. “So you just-started taking it?”
“Yeah. And it helped. My grades went up, I was involved in more activities, my mom was happier. But then I started taking it so much that I slept for about twenty minutes a night and I gained all sorts of weight and was what my doctor called manic.”
“And then what happened?”
“I was in the cafeteria and I was carrying my tray to a table. And I tripped and my purse dumped over and my pills fell all over the floor. A teacher came over and saw the bottle and it obviously wasn’t prescribed to me, so I ran. Right to the back of the cafeteria and through a plate-glass window.”
Britta freezes and then squirms a little, unsure how to respond. And this is the kind of thing she should be prepared for because it’s the kind of thing she’d been expecting as a Big Sister. Annie’s middle-class apartment complex is as inner-city as it gets in Greendale, and her pill addiction is straight from a Lifetime movie, but it’s real life.
“I left school for three months to go into rehab. I missed almost the entire spring semester and I had to work twice as hard to keep up with everyone else,” Annie continues. “But I’m clean and Troy is my friend again and I’m ready to go back to school in September and try to put it all behind me.”
She looks at Britta anxiously, as if Britta’s suddenly going to tell her to leave, as if Britta’s going to want nothing to do with her anymore. So Britta leans in and gathers Annie up in her arms, pulls her close against her. “You are incredible,” Britta says.
“Thank you,” Annie says as she pulls away with a watery smile. “Now, let’s talk about you.”
“I kissed Jeff,” Britta admits, scrunching her face up. “And now it’s kind of awkward.”
“Do you like him?” Annie’s voice goes up a register and she repositions herself on the couch, tucking her legs beneath her. “Because you should ask him out. How cute would that be!”
Britta gives her a look. “Annie, that’s not how things work.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s just not. Look, the film is almost finished. Summer’s almost over. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to do in September, and-”
“But you can still be my Big Sister!” Annie interrupts. “We can hang out after school and on weekends and you can come to my Debate Club meets!”
Britta smiles sadly. “Of course, Annie. But my friend is going to build a school in Haiti and she asked me to come and I...”
“That’s so typical!” Annie yells, jumping up. “You’re going to leave and then Jeff won’t want to talk to us and Troy will be the stupid quarterback and Abed will be too busy with his senior year and none of us will see each other again! Why did you even volunteer to do this if you were going to bail?”
“Annie, that’s not what’s going to happen!”
Annie shakes her head and stomps toward the door and leaves.
---
On Monday Annie texts Britta to say (very matter-of-factly, no smiley faces or exclamation points to be found) she’s not feeling well and won’t be going to Jeff’s house. Then Troy texts her and says he has to bail, too, because football practice is starting up and he has to spend the day in the weight room. Then Abed texts her to tell her he’s going out of town to visit his cousin Abra. Britta assumes they’ve all texted Jeff, too, so she doesn’t bother. Instead she makes herself coffee and eats a stale bagel and takes a long shower.
But by the early afternoon she’s run out of things to do at home and soap operas aren’t holding her attention. So she stops overthinking it, gets in her car, and drives to Jeff’s house.
He opens the door with a look of mixed concern and confusion. “Uh, hi?”
“Hi.” Britta looks down at her beat-up sneakers. “Can we talk?”
“Sure.” He opens the door wider and she follows him inside. Instead of going for the couch, he leads her through the house to the backyard and the patio furniture. They sit across the table from each other and he looks to her expectantly. “What’s up?”
Britta runs her finger through the groove in the table. It’s strange, without the buffer of Troy/Annie/Abed between them. It’s just the two of them, just Jeff and Britta, they’ve never been this alone before.
“I’m sorry I kissed you,” she says finally. “It was uncalled for and it made everything uncomfortable and I shouldn’t have invaded your personal space like that.”
“My personal space?” Jeff laughs. He actually laughs and Britta wants the backyard to become a sinkhole and swallow her alive because this is crazy and humiliating. “Britta, you are insane.”
“You don’t have to be rude about it, okay?” she snaps. “I’m trying to be an adult here and apologize to you.” She stands up and tries to remember how Annie stormed out of her apartment yesterday because Annie has an incredible talent for leaving in a huff. She only makes it one step, however, before Jeff grabs her wrist and pulls her back gently.
“I’m not trying to be rude,” he says. Only he’s standing up now, too. And his voice is all low and Britta is taken aback again by how tall he is and his t-shirt is really thin and she can see the outline of his muscles and she remembers that day they went swimming and what he looks like without a shirt on and he leans in and her legs are working without her even telling them to and she pushes up onto her tiptoes to meet him halfway and-
He kisses her softly, almost hesitantly, slides his hands up her sides and then down again to rest on her waist. He’s an annoyingly good kisser, the right amount of lips and tongue, fresh breath, and now that she can pay attention this time she laments that she wasted an entire summer not kissing him.
He pulls away and she braces herself, waits for him to be the one to apologize, for him to tell her to leave. He kisses the corner of her mouth, then her jaw, then rests his forehead against hers and sighs a little.
“It’s really hot out here,” he says and she laughs shakily.
“We could, um,” she swallows hard, “go inside. If you want.”
“I want to.”
“Okay.”
---
It’s much later when he tells her. She’s wrapped up in his bedsheet and her hair is knotty and she has a smudge of mascara underneath her left eye. He plays with her hand while he says it, eyes on the thumbnail she must have bitten on the drive over.
“I used to be a lawyer.”
“Hmm?” She sounds sleepy and her eyes are half-closed.
“I was disbarred, at the beginning of June. My bachelor’s degree was fake and I cheated on the LSATs. Made it two years without getting caught. But I did, and that’s why I own my own home but still have time to spend every weekday with a group of teenagers. Because I was fired in the most embarrassing way possible and I don’t know how I’m going to recover.”
He holds his breath after he says it and her whole body stills. Her fingers wrap around his and her eyes fly open. “Oh.”
“When you told me about the Peace Corps I felt even worse about it, you know?” he says. “Because you did the same thing I did, but you did it to help other people and I did it to help myself.”
“Please,” she says darkly. “I was eighteen with no skills and no knowledge of anything. I went out there and tried to do good things to convince myself that I wasn’t so terrible.”
Jeff doesn’t say anything, just kisses her instead. Because he’s a little overwhelmed with it all and he’s only been kissing her for a few hours but it already feels like the easiest, most natural thing in the world. He’s been on edge ever since his conversation with Abed the other day; it’s all too much to take in, realizing that he’s been going about his entire life in the wrong way. But he has Britta in his bed and she’s naked and her nails are pressing into his back and he thinks maybe realizations aren’t actually the worst.
---
“I should probably get going,” Britta says as she slips out of bed. Her shirt and underwear are on the floor by the bed but her jeans are nowhere to be found.
“Stay,” Jeff says. He tugs on her hand and she gives his a squeeze before pulling away.
“No, it’s getting late.” She steps into her underwear and manages to locate one of her shoes sticking out from underneath the bed. It’s half-hidden by Jeff’s briefs.
“Britta, it’s six o’clock. Come on. I’ll cook dinner. Or we can go out. Whatever you want.”
She shakes her head and takes a few deep, quiet breaths. She feels his eyes on her as she pulls her shirt over her head and combs her hair back into a ponytail. And she’s trying not to freak out because she’s just had sex with Jeff Winger (twice) and the summer isn’t quite over yet. Jeff Winger, who lied about so many things and told her about them, who touches her like she’s made of porcelain, who she’s spent almost three whole months with and likes more and more every day. And it can’t stay like this. It can’t be good sex and pizza nights with the three kids and revealing themselves to each other slowly but surely until there’s nothing left to hide under.
Can it?
She’s been in Greendale for almost nine months now. There’s something else waiting for her out there, but for the first time in a long time, there’s something keeping her here.
Jeff stands up and tugs on a pair of sweatpants. “So you think this was a mistake.” It’s not a question.
She looks up at him and her shoulders slump. “No. Of course not. I just-”
“You’re just running out of here. Your jeans are here, by the way.”
He holds them out to her and she takes them but sets them on the bed. She reaches up to kiss him, hands tangling in his hair. He pulls away and buries his face in the crook of her neck. “Stay,” he whispers again.
He doesn’t know how many meanings that one word has. She thinks about Annie, who wants to be good and loved so desperately that she did whatever she could to be the best. She thinks about Troy, who pretends to be a jerk to fit in with the other football players. She thinks about Abed, who is now so loved by four different people that he brought together. She thinks about Haiti and a life waiting for her there. She thinks about running away, about staying, about Jeff and his voice when he told her about being a lawyer. He sounded so sad and scared and now he’s holding her against him so tightly, as if she’s going to disappear and Britta relents.
“Okay,” she says. “Can we go somewhere, though? Just drive around?”
He pulls back and smiles at her. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
Jeff drives with one hand on the steering wheel and one hand in Britta’s, their fingers tangled together. It’s so cheesy and overly sentimental and something Britta is positive neither of them has done before. But she has a smile on her face she can’t shake as she looks out the window and watches Greendale pass by.
“Think Annie will still be sick tomorrow?” Jeff asks. “Because Abed’s coming home tonight and Troy only has an early practice.”
Britta squirms in her seat a little bit. “Annie’s not really sick.”
“What?”
“She’s faking it because she’s mad at me.”
“Why?”
Britta rolls her window up and the car gets quiet. “She came over yesterday because she knew something was weird between you and me and she wanted to know if I needed to talk about it. And then she mentioned that she and I could still hang out a lot even when she went back to school and I told her that might not be a possibility.”
“But even if the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program ends you can still see her, can’t you?”
“Um. Well, I told her I might not be around.”
His left hand tightens on the steering wheel and she watches as his knuckles turn white. She can feel his right hand starting to pull away but she maintains her grip. “Oh?”
“My friend is going to build a school in Haiti. She’s leaving in September. And she asked if I would go with her.”
“So you’re going to go to Haiti. In two weeks.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”
“Hmmm.”
Silence stretches out between them and Britta crosses her right arm over her stomach. Her left hand is still holding Jeff’s, squeezing so he won’t pull away.
“What do you want?” she asks finally.
“What do you mean?”
“Like,” she pauses to lick her lips nervously, “from me. From us.”
He shrugs, eyes straight ahead, over concentrating on the road.
“Because I’m not the kind of person who can go from zero to one hundred. I can’t... deal with that.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to not feel like such a failure all the time. I want to be able to stay in bed with you without feeling like the ceiling is going to fall in and crush me. I want Annie not to be disappointed in me. I want to know what I’m doing with my life but feel confident in whatever decision I make. I want to keep spending every day with you and Annie and Abed and Troy because I’m good at it and because it’s comfortable and it makes me happy.”
She sinks back into her seat and rips her hand out of Jeff’s so she can cover her face with both hands. She’s a little out of breath, like confessing all of that was the same as running a mile. She remembers the last time she said as much about herself to him, back at the pool, laying side by side and distracting him with things about herself she thought would scare him away.
“Annie’s not disappointed in you,” he says finally, quietly.
Britta shrugs and folds her arms tightly over her chest.
He flips on the turn signal and guides the car over the side of the road. She watches as he shifts into park and turns the ignition off. The whole car shakes a little as trucks pass them on the road.
“Okay, I’m sorry,” he says, angling his body to face her. “Can we just forget about all of this?”
“All of it?”
“Not all of it,” he says. He leans in and she meets him halfway over the gearshift to kiss him. And they sit there, in the parked car, and make out for a while like teenagers. And they drive back to his house and he asks her again to stay and she still feels like the ceiling might cave in but she says yes anyway.
---
“Have you ever had a boyfriend?”
“No. First of all, I’m not allowed to date. Second of all, um, boys aren’t really interested in someone who had a breakdown and ran through a plate-glass window.”
“Is there anyone you’ve been interested in?”
“There was a guy... and I liked him for a long time but we’re just friends now. We’re better as friends.”
“What’s your indicator? How do you tell if someone is better as just your friend, even when you have feelings for them?”
“Because I knew he would never like me that way. You reach a point, when you’re friends with someone you also have romantic feelings for, when you get tired of hoping that they’re going to notice you as something more. And you know that you’d rather have them in your life as something rather than nothing.”
“But there’s not even a little part of you that thinks ‘maybe one day?’”
“Not anymore.”
“What changed?”
“There are other people in the world. Other people I might... like.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“And about summer...”
“What about it?”
“Any opinions? What’s been your favorite summer ever?”
“Abed...”
“Yes?”
“It’s this one. This is my favorite summer ever.”
“Oh. Is this a social cue?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to turn the camera off now.”
“Please do.”
---
When Abed gets back from visiting Abra, he claims that they’re finished. He locks himself in his house for five days claiming he needs to edit. Troy is allowed to sit in and help during these editing sessions. The rest of them are not.
So Britta doesn’t see Annie, and Annie won’t respond to Britta’s text messages. Britta thinks about driving over to her apartment and banging on the door until Annie talks to her, but instead she camps out at Jeff’s house. They spend the week having sex and eating take-out and not talking about the fact that Britta needs to make a decision as to what she’s going to do.
On Friday night Abed and Troy knock on Jeff’s front door and Troy does a horrible job of not looking shocked to find Britta sitting on the couch in running shorts and a tank top.
“The film’s done,” Abed announces. Troy grins next to him.
“That’s awesome!” Britta exclaims, holding out her hand for a high-five. “Can we see it?”
“That’s why we’re here,” Abed says. “We thought it would be fun to have a big premiere. Invite our families, friends, anyone who’s contributed to the film. And we were wondering if we could have it here, in the backyard, next weekend, since it’s Labor Day. It would be a really appropriate weekend for the premiere.”
“We’re going to hook up a projector and a screen and get all kinds of good snacks!” Troy says excitedly. “So can we do it? Are you guys free?”
Jeff looks over at Britta. “Next weekend, huh? Well, I’m free. Will you be around, Britta?”
She rolls her eyes at him and turns to Troy and Abed. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. In fact, I would love to help you guys plan it.”
“Nice,” Abed says. “We can meet here tomorrow and start making arrangements. I’ll call Annie and see if she’s free, too.”
Britta nods but tries to keep a neutral facial expression. She can see Jeff watching her out of the corner of her eye.
Troy looks down at his watch. “Hey, we better get going if we’re going to catch that movie. See you tomorrow!”
The boys leave and Britta looks over to Jeff. He raises an eyebrow. “So. You plan on being in town next weekend.”
“Yes. I do.”
“What does that mean?” His voice is tight, like he’s trying too hard to sound nonchalant.
“It means that the flight doesn’t leave until next Tuesday.”
“So you plan on being on the flight.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Are we ever going to talk about what’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, okay, Jeff? I don’t know. And don’t act like you’ve been trying to talk about it because I don’t even know what’s going on between us and when I asked you what you wanted you deflected.”
“Because this is hard for me! You walk into my house and all of the sudden we’re sleeping together and now you’re leaving? Jesus Christ, Britta, I don’t know what you want me to do.” He actually throws up his hands, and it would be comical if it wasn’t so terrifying.
She shakes her head. “I need to go. I’ll see you tomorrow, but I need to go.” She stands up and looks around. Her things are everywhere: two pairs of shoes by the door, clothes in the bedroom, toothbrush in the bathroom. She leaves them all and grabs just her purse instead, fishing her car keys out from its depths.
“Good. Run away. It was really stupid for me to believe that you wanted to be with me.”
She doesn’t reply to that because she doesn’t know how. Instead, she leaves, slams the front door behind her, drives away, and doesn’t cry. Instead, she takes out her phone and calls Abed.
“Is there any way we can add something to the film? I have something else to say.”
---
The next day is the most awkward they’ve had all summer. Britta isn’t talking to Jeff, Annie isn’t talking to Britta, Jeff isn’t talking at all, and Troy and Abed look between the three of them warily.
Jeff packed all of Britta’s things up in a grocery bag and left them on the kitchen table. She saw the bag when she came in and, without a word, put the bag next to her purse on the living room floor.
Abed has a notebook full of ideas for the premiere: guest list, menu, audio/video equipment. He’s thought about almost every single last detail, and Jeff can’t help but be impressed by him. He won’t let them see a cut of the film, though, but says they should all probably wait to see the final version at the premiere. Troy hasn’t even seen the whole thing.
Jeff orders a couple of pizzas for lunch and they eat in mostly silence, Troy piping up once in a while to tell a too-loud story about football practice. And after lunch, Annie asks Jeff to drive her home.
“My mom dropped me off, but she was going to have lunch with my aunt and she’s still there.”
Jeff dares a glance over to Britta, whose jaw is clenched tightly. She’s staring at her phone and typing something with way too much force. “Yeah, I can drive you home,” Jeff says. “Troy? You need a ride?”
Troy’s eyes widen and he turns to Britta helplessly.
“It’s fine, Troy,” Britta says tonelessly without looking up. “I have something to do now anyway. Jeff can take you home.”
Jeff bites his tongue to keep from retorting. He grabs his keys off the counter and tosses them in the air. “Want to come for a ride, Abed?”
“No, thank you,” Abed replies. “I have some more editing to do. Last minute addition.” He locks eyes with Jeff and tilts his head imperceptibly in Britta’s direction.
Annie, who spent the morning sitting with her arms and legs tightly crossed, relaxes a little bit in the car. She slumps in Jeff’s passenger seat and stares out the window with a frown on her face.
“Look, Annie,” Jeff starts. Through the rearview mirror he can see Troy glance at Annie nervously from the backseat. “Don’t you think you should... lighten up on Britta a little bit?”
“Don’t you think you should?” she bites back. Then she sighs. “I’m sorry. But the thought of the five of us not hanging out anymore makes me really upset. I don’t want this summer to be over and I don’t want Britta to leave. I know I’m being a baby.”
“You’re not being a baby,” Jeff says. “You’re allowed to be upset.”
“Besides,” Troy says, “we’re still going to hang out all the time. We can have lunch with Abed everyday and we can take over Jeff’s giant TV for movie nights on the weekends. It’s going to be fine. I promise.” He leans forward and lays a hand on Annie’s shoulder.
“But what if Britta leaves?” she asks, her voice small.
Jeff doesn’t answer, just grips the steering wheel tighter and locks his elbows.
“She won’t,” Troy assures. “She loves us too much to leave us.”
Annie turns around to smile at Troy but Jeff stays quiet.
---
Abed really goes all out. There are at least twenty people in Jeff's backyard, everyone from Mr. Nadir to Annie's mom to Shirley and her two kids to Pierce Hawthorne. There are rows of chairs set up, facing a giant projector screen. There's food and drinks and even programs, handed out by Troy and Annie as people walk into the backyard.
Britta's one of the last people to show up. Jeff thought for a while that she wasn't coming but five minutes before the movie starts, she rounds the corner into the yard, dressed in a blue sundress and strappy sandals. She takes the program from Troy with a small smile and sits in a chair in the back row.
Jeff tries to catch her eye from his chair in the front row. He's not sure why, because he still doesn't know what to say to her. But she doesn't look in his direction, maybe on purpose, but soon Abed makes his way to the front of the crowd and everyone goes silent and Jeff has to turn around to face front.
“Thank you all for coming,” Abed says. “This was initially a film about summer romance, and finding out if that’s a concept that only exists in movies. But it ended up being about something else. It’s about five people who became friends over the course of one summer. Kind of like The Real World but with no alcohol. Enjoy.”
Jeff laughs as the crowd breaks into nervous applause and Troy hits the button on the projector. He watches their summer replay before him but he gets to see it differently: he watches the three kids grow closer, into one unit. He watches himself lighten up and laugh more. He watches Britta become more comfortable, more relaxed. He watches himself watch her when she’s not looking. He watches her looks toward him become softer.
“It’s hard enough to know yourself and what you need and who you are and then to attach yourself to someone else? It’s scary and it’s easier to just not care. Because then you don’t get hurt and when you end up alone it’s on your terms, not someone else’s,” she tells the camera. She lights a cigarette with shaky hands and asks Abed to turn the camera off.
Then the scene changes and Britta’s sitting on a bed in what looks like Abed’s room. She’s wearing shorts and a tank top, the same outfit she was wearing last week when she left Jeff’s house. She bites her thumbnail and doesn’t say anything for a few minutes.
“Do you-have you ever felt like you messed everything up? And you don’t know how to fix it?”
“What did you mess up?”
“I can get on a plane in a week and a half and I can go back to doing something meaningful with my life. Or, I can stay here. Staying here means having to figure it all out but it also means you and Troy and Annie. And Jeff.”
“I think the only reason you’re thinking about going is because you want to leave us before we can leave you. I’m graduating from high school in June and then who knows where I’ll be. And Troy and Annie might go back to school and get busy with their own things and they won’t have time for you anymore. And you might give things a go with Jeff and they might not work out. You’ll have put yourself out there for nothing.”
Britta looks like she’s going to cry and Jeff stays perfectly still in his seat.
“Will you show me Jeff’s interview?” she asks quietly. The camera cuts off and when it comes back Britta is wiping her eyes. Jeff turns around to see Britta stand up and walk into the house but he can’t get up to go after her. Abed had told him there was something he needed to see.
“Britta, I don’t have to film this,” Abed says. “I can turn the camera off.”
“No, I want you to,” she says. “Because I have to tell you all how much I love you guys and how much you mean to me. And I have to apologize to Annie because I want to be her Big Sister forever. And...” She trails off and pulls her legs up onto the bed.
“And you want to stay because you want to be with Jeff,” Abed finishes. “I think it might mean more if it comes from you than from me, though.”
Britta laughs. “You’re the best, Abed. You really are.” She takes a deep breath and Jeff holds his. He can see Annie and Troy and Abed watching him from the corner of his eye but he doesn’t dare look away from the screen.
“I want to stay because I want to be with Jeff.”
The audience, to Jeff’s horror, claps and cheers and Jeff rolls his eyes sheepishly. Troy plops into the seat behind Jeff and leans in. “Hey, buddy. I think that’s your cue to go find Britta. We’ll show you the rest of the movie later.”
“I know that,” Jeff lies in a harsh whisper. Britta and Abed are still talking on the screen but Jeff gets up anyway and, hunched over, makes his way to the back of the crowd and goes inside.
Britta is sitting on the couch with a bottle of beer in her hand. She looks up as Jeff slides the door shut but doesn’t say anything.
“It’s like a romcom out there,” Jeff says. He sits down next to her and takes the beer from her hand, guzzling half of it in one go.
She plays with the hem of her dress. “Yeah, well, the movie got kind of romcom-y at the end. I blame Abed.”
“You look really pretty, by the way.” He finishes the beer and sets the empty bottle on the coffee table. “Sorry I drank your beer.”
“It was from your fridge anyway,” she shrugs. “And thank you.”
“So. What you said...”
“I didn’t say it to make Abed’s film end better,” she says.
“I didn’t think you did.” He shifts so he’s sitting closer to her. “I do think, however, that you and I could figure things out together. Because we’re both kind of a mess and, for me at least, it would be nice to be a mess with another mess to hang out with.”
“Hang out?” Britta echoes, a smirk playing on her lips. “You wanna be bros?”
Jeff laughs. “Yeah, something like that.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Will you kiss me anyway? Or should we go to the bathroom so you can throw me against a door first?”
She hits his shoulder. “Shut up! You’re never going to-”
He cuts her off with his lips. The audience cheers outside and Jeff knows it’s because the movie must be over but there’s a little part of him that thinks it’s because he got the girl. Romcom ending.
---
“Ugh, I can’t believe I have gym class second period this year,” Annie complains. “That’s the worst time to have it!”
“Wait,” Abed says. He untangles his hand from hers to pull a paper out of his pocket. “I think I’m in that class, too.”
They compare their schedules and Troy turns to Jeff and Britta. “So the first football game is on Friday night. You two will be there?”
“Of course!” Britta says. “Do I have to know stuff about football? Because I don’t.”
“Just cheer when everyone else cheers,” Jeff suggests. “That’s what I do.”
Troy shakes his head and grabs another handful of chips out of the bowl on the table. “By the end of the season, you guys are going to know what’s going on if I have to teach you myself.”
“Now that’s a movie I want to make,” Abed says and Annie laughs.
“No more movies,” Jeff and Britta say in unison.
At the airport a plane is taking off, headed east where it will stop in New York City before making its way south to Port-au-Prince. Britta looks at her cell phone and watches the clock change from 1:34 to 1:35 and she can almost hear the engines rev, the click of seatbelts. There’s a pack of chewing gum in her purse she bought far in advance so she wouldn’t forget.
Troy names all his favorite football movies and Annie and Abed pipe in with suggestions. Jeff’s hand slides into hers and when she looks up, his eyes are on her lit-up phone.
“You missed your flight,” he says quietly.
“I did.”
“And?”
“And what?”
He looks up but the kids aren’t paying them any attention. “Regret it yet?”
She smiles. “I really hate flying. I always get stuck next to some creepy old guy or near the bathrooms.”
“Yeah, that’s the worst.”
She leans into him a little bit, resting her head on his upper arm. “I don’t regret it,” she says.
He presses his lips to her temple. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Gross!”
The three of them groan but they’re smiling and Annie’s smile brightens her entire face. Britta takes her hand out of Jeff’s to run her fingers over the bracelet on her wrist, the one Annie made for her as an apology.
“Oh, shut up, all of you,” Jeff says. “Now stop complaining and get in the car so we can go get ice cream.”
They jump up and bound for the driveway. Britta grabs Jeff’s hand as he starts to walk away and stops him. “Hey.”
He looks down at her curiously, eyebrow cocked.
“This is the only place I want to be,” she says seriously. She bites her lip and looks at the ground. Getting used to this whole thing, this telling the truth and being honest with her feelings thing, it’s going to take time and one day maybe she’ll be able to tell him how she feels without her heart tripping and falling over itself.
But for now he leans down to kiss her and she can feel his pulse, just as fast as hers, and she wraps her hands around his neck and runs her thumbs over his jaw as it moves with his mouth. For now the plane is rising, rising, rising, gaining altitude, and Britta stays on the ground, her shoes and her feet rooting themselves into Jeff’s backyard. For now there are threads coming out of her chest tying her to Annie and Troy and Abed.
Jeff pulls away but pulls her in close, his chin resting on her head. Someone beeps the car horn and Troy shouts.
“The children are waiting,” she says.
He laughs and she listens to it rumble in his chest. “Tomorrow,” he says wickedly as they start toward the driveway, “they’ll be in school all day long.”
Jeff/Britta (background Abed/Annie)
~16,000 words
AU: When Britta Perry signs up to be Annie Edison's Big Sister, she doesn't anticipate getting Troy Barnes and Abed Nadir as part of the deal. Or Abed's neighbor, Jeff Winger.
PART 1
---
Britta’s been doing much better about not smoking (three cigarettes all summer!) but sitting in Jeff’s dark living room in her pajamas makes her crave one like there’s no tomorrow. She tries to concentrate on the TV but Star Wars has never interested her and despite the fact that Troy, Abed, and Annie are all completely engrossed to the point they’ve stopped digging into the giant popcorn bowl, Britta keeps changing positions and Jeff’s playing with his phone, the backlight glowing eerily on his face.
She gets up and mutters something about having to pee, but no one pays her any attention. She shuts herself in the bathroom and starts rooting through the medicine cabinet. Jeff has a lot of hair product, even more skin product, and not one single embarrassing prescription bottle anywhere to be found. He uses fancy whitening toothpaste as well as mouthwash. His shampoo looks expensive although the bottle stands upside-down in the shower, as if he’s trying to squeeze out every last drop. His towels are hung neatly on the racks. This isn’t the first time she’s been in his bathroom, but it’s the first time she’s allowed herself to snoop.
Something-and she hasn’t yet been able to pinpoint it exactly-about Jeff Winger unnerves her. She’s spent an obscene amount of time with him this summer and yet what she knows about him can fit in the palm of her hand. She sits on the edge of the tub and takes a few deep breaths. A slumber party. Stupidest idea ever.
There’s a quiet knock on the door and Britta jumps at the sound. She flushes the toilet and opens the door a tiny crack. Jeff’s standing there, phone in hand, looking unsure.
“You seem weird. Is everything okay?”
“No,” she says. She reaches up and fists his shirt, pulling him into the room.
“Wha-?”
She slowly and quietly closes the door and then shoves him against it. She pulls his face down to hers and kisses him angrily, all teeth and tongue.
He’s frozen at first, but it doesn’t take long for him to respond. His phone clatters to the floor as he brings his arms up and his hands splay across her back, slide across to her shoulders, then frame her face and tangle in her hair. He kisses back just as angrily, as if he’s mad at her for something more than throwing him against a door.
Her legs are starting to cramp from standing on her tiptoes and she can hear the seconds tick by on his watch. There are three kids in the living room so she pulls away and wipes her mouth on her sleeve. He looks a little bit like he got hit in the head.
“Can you, um, move?” she asks, not looking him in the eye.
“Huh? Oh, yeah.” He steps to the side and she opens the door. He doesn’t follow her out so she takes a minute to stand in the hallway and untangle the knots he made in her hair and take a few deep breaths. She goes back into the living room where it seems Troy, Abed, and Annie haven’t even noticed their absence. She sits on the couch and runs her fingers over her lips. He tasted like Diet Coke and popcorn.
---
“Britta?” The whisper comes from the pink sleeping bag on the floor and Britta rolls over on the couch to find Annie’s face in the dark.
“Yeah?”
“Do you like Jeff?”
Britta runs her tongue over her teeth and remembers Jeff’s doing the same. “He’s okay.”
“It would be kind of funny, wouldn’t it?” Annie asks. “If we met up with Jeff and Abed to make a movie about love and summer and you two end up together?”
“Don’t bet on it, Annie. Worry about your own summer romance.”
There’s a pause and then, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Britta laughs quietly. “Goodnight, Annie.”
“‘Night.”
---
“Things have been weird, don’t you think?” Abed asks. “Off a little.” He holds out his bag of cracker jack to Troy, who scoops up a handful.
“Nope, everything’s been fine,” Jeff says beneath his sunglasses. The guy on second base looks like he’s going to steal and the crowd hushes, but nothing happens.
Abed shrugs. “It’s like something happened that we don’t know about. Or, at least, I don’t know about. Do you know, Troy?”
“Nope,” Troy says around a mouthful of cracker jack. “But sometimes I miss things. I didn’t even know Abed was in love with Annie until he practically let it slip.”
Jeff snickers and Abed leans back a little in his seat. “You’re inferring,” he says. “And I edited that part out just in case anyone takes it the wrong way.”
“Let’s hope Annie doesn’t take it the wrong way, if you know what I mean!” Troy says with a grin.
“Dude,” Jeff says. “That’s pretty gross.”
Troy just shrugs half-heartedly and turns his attention back to the game.
Colorado minor league baseball isn’t the most fascinating thing in the world, but when an ex-colleague of Jeff’s offered him three tickets for the game out of some misguided pity, Jeff snatched them up and declared a Man’s Day. Anything to get him away from another day of avoiding eye contact and over-making polite conversation with Britta.
It’s been over a week since they kissed and they have not talked about it. In fact, they don’t really talk to each other at all. She comes over every day and they let the kids steer the conversations. She says things like “Good morning” and “Have a good night” but never do her sentences start with “So this is the reason I shoved my tongue down your throat in your bathroom.”
He spends a lot of time thinking about texting her or calling her or driving over to apartment and pushing her up against a door and finishing what they started. When she leaves every afternoon, he watches the clock and times her trip: from his house to Troy and Annie’s apartment complex, to her own apartment. If he calls now she’ll just be walking in the door. He could catch her alone.
But he never actually hits the dial button and instead just drinks a lot of scotch and has to ignore his hangover when the four of them bound through his front door in the morning.
The batter strikes out and everyone heads to the dugout as the inning ends. The announcer starts rattling off names of sponsors and Jeff turns to the boys. “Here’s a hypothetical for you, Abed. What if Annie just walked up to you and kissed you, like really kissed you, and walked away without saying anything. What would you do?”
Abed waits a minute before he answers. “So that’s what happened. You and Britta kissed.”
“What!” Troy exclaims, eyes wide. “Britta’s hot, man. Good job.”
“No, not good job,” Jeff says. “Now it’s awkward and weird and I don’t know how to deal with it. So, naturally, I have to ask teenagers for advice because I’m only a grown man.”
The Sky Sox take the field and the three of them watch as the pitcher throws a strike at the first batter. “You could just talk to her,” Troy offers simply. “Britta doesn’t seem like the kind of girl who wants all sorts of bells and whistles, you know? I say go simple.”
“Jeff,” Abed begins. “I think it’s time for your interview.”
---
“Have you ever been in love?”
“What? No. Love’s for suckers.”
“How so?”
“Because once someone finds out who you really are, they run away. They turn around and bolt and never come back. People don’t want to find out the awful, gritty things about a person. They want to see the outside, nice hair and clothes and a good job and a house with a big backyard. No one wants a mess.”
“Are you a mess?”
“Of course not.”
“Okay.”
“Except... okay, so maybe faking a college degree to be a lawyer isn’t something a non-mess of a person would do. And maybe non-messes don’t end up disbarred after only two years of practicing law with no idea what to do next. Maybe they don’t spend an entire summer with a rag-tag bunch of teenagers and a girl who-by pure, unadulterated coincidence-faked her own degree to get into the Peace Corps. Maybe they wake up and go to work at jobs they’ve earned and come home and kiss their wives and they’re normal.”
“And you don’t think you’re normal?”
“I don’t know. Does anything about me seem normal to you?”
“You have a house. And you took us all in and helped me make this film. And I know it’s because my dad told you to, but you still did it. Is that normal?”
“What happened to your mom, Abed?”
“She left. Why?”
“So did my dad. Do you ever feel like it messed you up? Made you into someone you weren’t before?”
“Sometimes. My dad’s more angry now. I see her once a year, at Christmas, even though my dad decided to raise me Muslim. We watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer together.”
“I haven’t seen my dad since I was eight. I don’t know where he is, or if he’s even alive. It’s stupid, the way they can do that to you, isn’t it? If he had stuck around I might have just gone to college and done it all right.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because people take the easy way out all the time, don’t they? They lie and they cheat and they leave when things get bad. And it always works out for them. So I thought, why bother? Why bother caring so much about something that has the potential to go bad? I could have flunked out of school. I could have not even gotten in. But by skipping all those steps I made sure I was in the courtroom practicing law without suffering any sort of disappointment.”
“But wasn’t it a disappointment when you got caught?”
“Yes. But only because I cared about it. See, that was my mistake. I wanted it too bad. I wanted to be a lawyer my entire life. If it had been just another job, just something I did to make money and sleep with women, it wouldn’t have mattered when it was over.”
“And that’s the way you handle your relationships with women.”
“Exactly. With anyone, really. Because if you don’t care, you don’t get hurt. You pick up and you move on and that’s that.”
“Tell me about Britta.”
“What about her?”
“Well, you say that you don’t care about people. But I think you care about her. You wouldn’t have come to me and Troy for advice after she kissed you if you didn’t.”
“Have you done Britta’s interview yet?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“You’ll see when it’s finished.”
“Can you just tell me?”
“Her view on love is eerily similar to your own.”
“Hm.”
“What do you think about that?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you like her, don’t you? And it’s more than just wanting to sleep with her, which is why you did this whole thing in the first place. It would have been me and you making this film if it wasn’t for Britta.”
“She-is so much more than I thought she would be. Does that make sense? She acts like she’s so tough but she desperately wants the three of you to like her and think she’s cool. And she’s good with all of you. She didn’t have to give two shits about any of us, and yet she does.”
“Sounds to me like you care about her. Isn’t that against the rules?”
“Yeah, it is. But I don’t want to not care about her. You know what I mean? And then, god, she kissed me, she just threw me against a door and went for it and it’s awkward, like we’re in high school or something. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“And I can’t mess this up. Because of you guys. Because the three of you are... you’re important to me. If it wasn’t for you guys, I would have sat here in the dark in my underwear and drank a lot of scotch. Did you know Britta said the same thing to me? She said that if she hadn’t volunteered to be a Big Sister she’d have spent the summer in her apartment drinking? That we would have been doing the same exact thing and not knowing it?”
“So you’re saying a movie about summer gave your summer purpose.”
“Yes! I am! I’ll tell you something, Abed. When your dad came to me and asked me to keep an eye on you, I spent a long time trying to figure out how to get out of it. I thought of going on vacation, getting a job at WalMart, of selling my house. Anything to not have to hang out with you all summer. And that sounds bad, I know. But-and maybe this is creepy or inappropriate-I have had so much fun with you these last few months. I really have.”
“You’re having an epiphany. This is good stuff.”
“Because sitting around and feeling sorry for myself is stupid. I shouldn’t have faked that degree. I should have said something to Britta after we kissed. And maybe I can’t fix it all. Maybe I’ll get a law degree and no one will hire me because they’ll know what I did. Maybe Britta hates me. But maybe I need to grow up.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I have a couple things to think about. Hey, thanks Abed. You’re really cool.”
“I know.”
---
There’s a knock on Britta’s door and she holds her breath for about fifteen seconds until she opens it to find Annie. “Hey! What are you doing here?”
“I rode my bike over. I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course!” Britta opens the door wider and gestures for her to come inside. “What’s up? Do you want something? I think I have Diet Coke.”
“Sure.” Annie sits on the couch and the cat climbs into her lap. She scratches him behind the ears and laughs a little when he starts purring.
Britta sits next to her with two cans of soda in her hands and sets them on the coffee table. “So, what’s going on?”
“I know you’re supposed to be my Big Sister and I’m supposed to come to you for advice, but...” She reaches over the cat and takes a gulp of soda. “Well, you’ve been kinda quiet lately and it seems like something’s wrong. Did something happen with Jeff at our sleepover? Because you two disappeared for a couple minutes and, well, you don’t have to tell me if something did, but if you wanted to, I would listen.”
Britta smiles and puts her arm around Annie for a quick squeeze. “Thanks, Annie. I think one day you’re going to be a really good Big Sister.”
“But you can talk to me you know,” Annie says, still beaming. “I know I’m only fifteen, but I’ve gone through a lot of stuff this year and I’m much more mature than most fifteen year olds.”
“Okay,” Britta nods. “But can we talk about you, first? Can you tell me about the Adderall?”
Annie takes a visible deep breath and wrings her hands together. “Um. Yeah. My parents got divorced and my mom just sort of... freaked out, you know? And she was on me about being the best at everything and getting really high grades. She wants me to go to a good college. And I do, too, I want to be the best at things. I just couldn’t do it on my own with my mom breathing down my back. And this girl I knew from Hebrew School, her cousin knew someone who could get some Adderall to help me focus more. My grades were slipping because there just weren’t enough hours in the day.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen. This was the beginning of last year.”
Britta looks horrified for a second but quickly rearranges her face into a more neutral expression. “So you just-started taking it?”
“Yeah. And it helped. My grades went up, I was involved in more activities, my mom was happier. But then I started taking it so much that I slept for about twenty minutes a night and I gained all sorts of weight and was what my doctor called manic.”
“And then what happened?”
“I was in the cafeteria and I was carrying my tray to a table. And I tripped and my purse dumped over and my pills fell all over the floor. A teacher came over and saw the bottle and it obviously wasn’t prescribed to me, so I ran. Right to the back of the cafeteria and through a plate-glass window.”
Britta freezes and then squirms a little, unsure how to respond. And this is the kind of thing she should be prepared for because it’s the kind of thing she’d been expecting as a Big Sister. Annie’s middle-class apartment complex is as inner-city as it gets in Greendale, and her pill addiction is straight from a Lifetime movie, but it’s real life.
“I left school for three months to go into rehab. I missed almost the entire spring semester and I had to work twice as hard to keep up with everyone else,” Annie continues. “But I’m clean and Troy is my friend again and I’m ready to go back to school in September and try to put it all behind me.”
She looks at Britta anxiously, as if Britta’s suddenly going to tell her to leave, as if Britta’s going to want nothing to do with her anymore. So Britta leans in and gathers Annie up in her arms, pulls her close against her. “You are incredible,” Britta says.
“Thank you,” Annie says as she pulls away with a watery smile. “Now, let’s talk about you.”
“I kissed Jeff,” Britta admits, scrunching her face up. “And now it’s kind of awkward.”
“Do you like him?” Annie’s voice goes up a register and she repositions herself on the couch, tucking her legs beneath her. “Because you should ask him out. How cute would that be!”
Britta gives her a look. “Annie, that’s not how things work.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s just not. Look, the film is almost finished. Summer’s almost over. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to do in September, and-”
“But you can still be my Big Sister!” Annie interrupts. “We can hang out after school and on weekends and you can come to my Debate Club meets!”
Britta smiles sadly. “Of course, Annie. But my friend is going to build a school in Haiti and she asked me to come and I...”
“That’s so typical!” Annie yells, jumping up. “You’re going to leave and then Jeff won’t want to talk to us and Troy will be the stupid quarterback and Abed will be too busy with his senior year and none of us will see each other again! Why did you even volunteer to do this if you were going to bail?”
“Annie, that’s not what’s going to happen!”
Annie shakes her head and stomps toward the door and leaves.
---
On Monday Annie texts Britta to say (very matter-of-factly, no smiley faces or exclamation points to be found) she’s not feeling well and won’t be going to Jeff’s house. Then Troy texts her and says he has to bail, too, because football practice is starting up and he has to spend the day in the weight room. Then Abed texts her to tell her he’s going out of town to visit his cousin Abra. Britta assumes they’ve all texted Jeff, too, so she doesn’t bother. Instead she makes herself coffee and eats a stale bagel and takes a long shower.
But by the early afternoon she’s run out of things to do at home and soap operas aren’t holding her attention. So she stops overthinking it, gets in her car, and drives to Jeff’s house.
He opens the door with a look of mixed concern and confusion. “Uh, hi?”
“Hi.” Britta looks down at her beat-up sneakers. “Can we talk?”
“Sure.” He opens the door wider and she follows him inside. Instead of going for the couch, he leads her through the house to the backyard and the patio furniture. They sit across the table from each other and he looks to her expectantly. “What’s up?”
Britta runs her finger through the groove in the table. It’s strange, without the buffer of Troy/Annie/Abed between them. It’s just the two of them, just Jeff and Britta, they’ve never been this alone before.
“I’m sorry I kissed you,” she says finally. “It was uncalled for and it made everything uncomfortable and I shouldn’t have invaded your personal space like that.”
“My personal space?” Jeff laughs. He actually laughs and Britta wants the backyard to become a sinkhole and swallow her alive because this is crazy and humiliating. “Britta, you are insane.”
“You don’t have to be rude about it, okay?” she snaps. “I’m trying to be an adult here and apologize to you.” She stands up and tries to remember how Annie stormed out of her apartment yesterday because Annie has an incredible talent for leaving in a huff. She only makes it one step, however, before Jeff grabs her wrist and pulls her back gently.
“I’m not trying to be rude,” he says. Only he’s standing up now, too. And his voice is all low and Britta is taken aback again by how tall he is and his t-shirt is really thin and she can see the outline of his muscles and she remembers that day they went swimming and what he looks like without a shirt on and he leans in and her legs are working without her even telling them to and she pushes up onto her tiptoes to meet him halfway and-
He kisses her softly, almost hesitantly, slides his hands up her sides and then down again to rest on her waist. He’s an annoyingly good kisser, the right amount of lips and tongue, fresh breath, and now that she can pay attention this time she laments that she wasted an entire summer not kissing him.
He pulls away and she braces herself, waits for him to be the one to apologize, for him to tell her to leave. He kisses the corner of her mouth, then her jaw, then rests his forehead against hers and sighs a little.
“It’s really hot out here,” he says and she laughs shakily.
“We could, um,” she swallows hard, “go inside. If you want.”
“I want to.”
“Okay.”
---
It’s much later when he tells her. She’s wrapped up in his bedsheet and her hair is knotty and she has a smudge of mascara underneath her left eye. He plays with her hand while he says it, eyes on the thumbnail she must have bitten on the drive over.
“I used to be a lawyer.”
“Hmm?” She sounds sleepy and her eyes are half-closed.
“I was disbarred, at the beginning of June. My bachelor’s degree was fake and I cheated on the LSATs. Made it two years without getting caught. But I did, and that’s why I own my own home but still have time to spend every weekday with a group of teenagers. Because I was fired in the most embarrassing way possible and I don’t know how I’m going to recover.”
He holds his breath after he says it and her whole body stills. Her fingers wrap around his and her eyes fly open. “Oh.”
“When you told me about the Peace Corps I felt even worse about it, you know?” he says. “Because you did the same thing I did, but you did it to help other people and I did it to help myself.”
“Please,” she says darkly. “I was eighteen with no skills and no knowledge of anything. I went out there and tried to do good things to convince myself that I wasn’t so terrible.”
Jeff doesn’t say anything, just kisses her instead. Because he’s a little overwhelmed with it all and he’s only been kissing her for a few hours but it already feels like the easiest, most natural thing in the world. He’s been on edge ever since his conversation with Abed the other day; it’s all too much to take in, realizing that he’s been going about his entire life in the wrong way. But he has Britta in his bed and she’s naked and her nails are pressing into his back and he thinks maybe realizations aren’t actually the worst.
---
“I should probably get going,” Britta says as she slips out of bed. Her shirt and underwear are on the floor by the bed but her jeans are nowhere to be found.
“Stay,” Jeff says. He tugs on her hand and she gives his a squeeze before pulling away.
“No, it’s getting late.” She steps into her underwear and manages to locate one of her shoes sticking out from underneath the bed. It’s half-hidden by Jeff’s briefs.
“Britta, it’s six o’clock. Come on. I’ll cook dinner. Or we can go out. Whatever you want.”
She shakes her head and takes a few deep, quiet breaths. She feels his eyes on her as she pulls her shirt over her head and combs her hair back into a ponytail. And she’s trying not to freak out because she’s just had sex with Jeff Winger (twice) and the summer isn’t quite over yet. Jeff Winger, who lied about so many things and told her about them, who touches her like she’s made of porcelain, who she’s spent almost three whole months with and likes more and more every day. And it can’t stay like this. It can’t be good sex and pizza nights with the three kids and revealing themselves to each other slowly but surely until there’s nothing left to hide under.
Can it?
She’s been in Greendale for almost nine months now. There’s something else waiting for her out there, but for the first time in a long time, there’s something keeping her here.
Jeff stands up and tugs on a pair of sweatpants. “So you think this was a mistake.” It’s not a question.
She looks up at him and her shoulders slump. “No. Of course not. I just-”
“You’re just running out of here. Your jeans are here, by the way.”
He holds them out to her and she takes them but sets them on the bed. She reaches up to kiss him, hands tangling in his hair. He pulls away and buries his face in the crook of her neck. “Stay,” he whispers again.
He doesn’t know how many meanings that one word has. She thinks about Annie, who wants to be good and loved so desperately that she did whatever she could to be the best. She thinks about Troy, who pretends to be a jerk to fit in with the other football players. She thinks about Abed, who is now so loved by four different people that he brought together. She thinks about Haiti and a life waiting for her there. She thinks about running away, about staying, about Jeff and his voice when he told her about being a lawyer. He sounded so sad and scared and now he’s holding her against him so tightly, as if she’s going to disappear and Britta relents.
“Okay,” she says. “Can we go somewhere, though? Just drive around?”
He pulls back and smiles at her. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
Jeff drives with one hand on the steering wheel and one hand in Britta’s, their fingers tangled together. It’s so cheesy and overly sentimental and something Britta is positive neither of them has done before. But she has a smile on her face she can’t shake as she looks out the window and watches Greendale pass by.
“Think Annie will still be sick tomorrow?” Jeff asks. “Because Abed’s coming home tonight and Troy only has an early practice.”
Britta squirms in her seat a little bit. “Annie’s not really sick.”
“What?”
“She’s faking it because she’s mad at me.”
“Why?”
Britta rolls her window up and the car gets quiet. “She came over yesterday because she knew something was weird between you and me and she wanted to know if I needed to talk about it. And then she mentioned that she and I could still hang out a lot even when she went back to school and I told her that might not be a possibility.”
“But even if the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program ends you can still see her, can’t you?”
“Um. Well, I told her I might not be around.”
His left hand tightens on the steering wheel and she watches as his knuckles turn white. She can feel his right hand starting to pull away but she maintains her grip. “Oh?”
“My friend is going to build a school in Haiti. She’s leaving in September. And she asked if I would go with her.”
“So you’re going to go to Haiti. In two weeks.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”
“Hmmm.”
Silence stretches out between them and Britta crosses her right arm over her stomach. Her left hand is still holding Jeff’s, squeezing so he won’t pull away.
“What do you want?” she asks finally.
“What do you mean?”
“Like,” she pauses to lick her lips nervously, “from me. From us.”
He shrugs, eyes straight ahead, over concentrating on the road.
“Because I’m not the kind of person who can go from zero to one hundred. I can’t... deal with that.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to not feel like such a failure all the time. I want to be able to stay in bed with you without feeling like the ceiling is going to fall in and crush me. I want Annie not to be disappointed in me. I want to know what I’m doing with my life but feel confident in whatever decision I make. I want to keep spending every day with you and Annie and Abed and Troy because I’m good at it and because it’s comfortable and it makes me happy.”
She sinks back into her seat and rips her hand out of Jeff’s so she can cover her face with both hands. She’s a little out of breath, like confessing all of that was the same as running a mile. She remembers the last time she said as much about herself to him, back at the pool, laying side by side and distracting him with things about herself she thought would scare him away.
“Annie’s not disappointed in you,” he says finally, quietly.
Britta shrugs and folds her arms tightly over her chest.
He flips on the turn signal and guides the car over the side of the road. She watches as he shifts into park and turns the ignition off. The whole car shakes a little as trucks pass them on the road.
“Okay, I’m sorry,” he says, angling his body to face her. “Can we just forget about all of this?”
“All of it?”
“Not all of it,” he says. He leans in and she meets him halfway over the gearshift to kiss him. And they sit there, in the parked car, and make out for a while like teenagers. And they drive back to his house and he asks her again to stay and she still feels like the ceiling might cave in but she says yes anyway.
---
“Have you ever had a boyfriend?”
“No. First of all, I’m not allowed to date. Second of all, um, boys aren’t really interested in someone who had a breakdown and ran through a plate-glass window.”
“Is there anyone you’ve been interested in?”
“There was a guy... and I liked him for a long time but we’re just friends now. We’re better as friends.”
“What’s your indicator? How do you tell if someone is better as just your friend, even when you have feelings for them?”
“Because I knew he would never like me that way. You reach a point, when you’re friends with someone you also have romantic feelings for, when you get tired of hoping that they’re going to notice you as something more. And you know that you’d rather have them in your life as something rather than nothing.”
“But there’s not even a little part of you that thinks ‘maybe one day?’”
“Not anymore.”
“What changed?”
“There are other people in the world. Other people I might... like.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“And about summer...”
“What about it?”
“Any opinions? What’s been your favorite summer ever?”
“Abed...”
“Yes?”
“It’s this one. This is my favorite summer ever.”
“Oh. Is this a social cue?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to turn the camera off now.”
“Please do.”
---
When Abed gets back from visiting Abra, he claims that they’re finished. He locks himself in his house for five days claiming he needs to edit. Troy is allowed to sit in and help during these editing sessions. The rest of them are not.
So Britta doesn’t see Annie, and Annie won’t respond to Britta’s text messages. Britta thinks about driving over to her apartment and banging on the door until Annie talks to her, but instead she camps out at Jeff’s house. They spend the week having sex and eating take-out and not talking about the fact that Britta needs to make a decision as to what she’s going to do.
On Friday night Abed and Troy knock on Jeff’s front door and Troy does a horrible job of not looking shocked to find Britta sitting on the couch in running shorts and a tank top.
“The film’s done,” Abed announces. Troy grins next to him.
“That’s awesome!” Britta exclaims, holding out her hand for a high-five. “Can we see it?”
“That’s why we’re here,” Abed says. “We thought it would be fun to have a big premiere. Invite our families, friends, anyone who’s contributed to the film. And we were wondering if we could have it here, in the backyard, next weekend, since it’s Labor Day. It would be a really appropriate weekend for the premiere.”
“We’re going to hook up a projector and a screen and get all kinds of good snacks!” Troy says excitedly. “So can we do it? Are you guys free?”
Jeff looks over at Britta. “Next weekend, huh? Well, I’m free. Will you be around, Britta?”
She rolls her eyes at him and turns to Troy and Abed. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. In fact, I would love to help you guys plan it.”
“Nice,” Abed says. “We can meet here tomorrow and start making arrangements. I’ll call Annie and see if she’s free, too.”
Britta nods but tries to keep a neutral facial expression. She can see Jeff watching her out of the corner of her eye.
Troy looks down at his watch. “Hey, we better get going if we’re going to catch that movie. See you tomorrow!”
The boys leave and Britta looks over to Jeff. He raises an eyebrow. “So. You plan on being in town next weekend.”
“Yes. I do.”
“What does that mean?” His voice is tight, like he’s trying too hard to sound nonchalant.
“It means that the flight doesn’t leave until next Tuesday.”
“So you plan on being on the flight.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Are we ever going to talk about what’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, okay, Jeff? I don’t know. And don’t act like you’ve been trying to talk about it because I don’t even know what’s going on between us and when I asked you what you wanted you deflected.”
“Because this is hard for me! You walk into my house and all of the sudden we’re sleeping together and now you’re leaving? Jesus Christ, Britta, I don’t know what you want me to do.” He actually throws up his hands, and it would be comical if it wasn’t so terrifying.
She shakes her head. “I need to go. I’ll see you tomorrow, but I need to go.” She stands up and looks around. Her things are everywhere: two pairs of shoes by the door, clothes in the bedroom, toothbrush in the bathroom. She leaves them all and grabs just her purse instead, fishing her car keys out from its depths.
“Good. Run away. It was really stupid for me to believe that you wanted to be with me.”
She doesn’t reply to that because she doesn’t know how. Instead, she leaves, slams the front door behind her, drives away, and doesn’t cry. Instead, she takes out her phone and calls Abed.
“Is there any way we can add something to the film? I have something else to say.”
---
The next day is the most awkward they’ve had all summer. Britta isn’t talking to Jeff, Annie isn’t talking to Britta, Jeff isn’t talking at all, and Troy and Abed look between the three of them warily.
Jeff packed all of Britta’s things up in a grocery bag and left them on the kitchen table. She saw the bag when she came in and, without a word, put the bag next to her purse on the living room floor.
Abed has a notebook full of ideas for the premiere: guest list, menu, audio/video equipment. He’s thought about almost every single last detail, and Jeff can’t help but be impressed by him. He won’t let them see a cut of the film, though, but says they should all probably wait to see the final version at the premiere. Troy hasn’t even seen the whole thing.
Jeff orders a couple of pizzas for lunch and they eat in mostly silence, Troy piping up once in a while to tell a too-loud story about football practice. And after lunch, Annie asks Jeff to drive her home.
“My mom dropped me off, but she was going to have lunch with my aunt and she’s still there.”
Jeff dares a glance over to Britta, whose jaw is clenched tightly. She’s staring at her phone and typing something with way too much force. “Yeah, I can drive you home,” Jeff says. “Troy? You need a ride?”
Troy’s eyes widen and he turns to Britta helplessly.
“It’s fine, Troy,” Britta says tonelessly without looking up. “I have something to do now anyway. Jeff can take you home.”
Jeff bites his tongue to keep from retorting. He grabs his keys off the counter and tosses them in the air. “Want to come for a ride, Abed?”
“No, thank you,” Abed replies. “I have some more editing to do. Last minute addition.” He locks eyes with Jeff and tilts his head imperceptibly in Britta’s direction.
Annie, who spent the morning sitting with her arms and legs tightly crossed, relaxes a little bit in the car. She slumps in Jeff’s passenger seat and stares out the window with a frown on her face.
“Look, Annie,” Jeff starts. Through the rearview mirror he can see Troy glance at Annie nervously from the backseat. “Don’t you think you should... lighten up on Britta a little bit?”
“Don’t you think you should?” she bites back. Then she sighs. “I’m sorry. But the thought of the five of us not hanging out anymore makes me really upset. I don’t want this summer to be over and I don’t want Britta to leave. I know I’m being a baby.”
“You’re not being a baby,” Jeff says. “You’re allowed to be upset.”
“Besides,” Troy says, “we’re still going to hang out all the time. We can have lunch with Abed everyday and we can take over Jeff’s giant TV for movie nights on the weekends. It’s going to be fine. I promise.” He leans forward and lays a hand on Annie’s shoulder.
“But what if Britta leaves?” she asks, her voice small.
Jeff doesn’t answer, just grips the steering wheel tighter and locks his elbows.
“She won’t,” Troy assures. “She loves us too much to leave us.”
Annie turns around to smile at Troy but Jeff stays quiet.
---
Abed really goes all out. There are at least twenty people in Jeff's backyard, everyone from Mr. Nadir to Annie's mom to Shirley and her two kids to Pierce Hawthorne. There are rows of chairs set up, facing a giant projector screen. There's food and drinks and even programs, handed out by Troy and Annie as people walk into the backyard.
Britta's one of the last people to show up. Jeff thought for a while that she wasn't coming but five minutes before the movie starts, she rounds the corner into the yard, dressed in a blue sundress and strappy sandals. She takes the program from Troy with a small smile and sits in a chair in the back row.
Jeff tries to catch her eye from his chair in the front row. He's not sure why, because he still doesn't know what to say to her. But she doesn't look in his direction, maybe on purpose, but soon Abed makes his way to the front of the crowd and everyone goes silent and Jeff has to turn around to face front.
“Thank you all for coming,” Abed says. “This was initially a film about summer romance, and finding out if that’s a concept that only exists in movies. But it ended up being about something else. It’s about five people who became friends over the course of one summer. Kind of like The Real World but with no alcohol. Enjoy.”
Jeff laughs as the crowd breaks into nervous applause and Troy hits the button on the projector. He watches their summer replay before him but he gets to see it differently: he watches the three kids grow closer, into one unit. He watches himself lighten up and laugh more. He watches Britta become more comfortable, more relaxed. He watches himself watch her when she’s not looking. He watches her looks toward him become softer.
“It’s hard enough to know yourself and what you need and who you are and then to attach yourself to someone else? It’s scary and it’s easier to just not care. Because then you don’t get hurt and when you end up alone it’s on your terms, not someone else’s,” she tells the camera. She lights a cigarette with shaky hands and asks Abed to turn the camera off.
Then the scene changes and Britta’s sitting on a bed in what looks like Abed’s room. She’s wearing shorts and a tank top, the same outfit she was wearing last week when she left Jeff’s house. She bites her thumbnail and doesn’t say anything for a few minutes.
“Do you-have you ever felt like you messed everything up? And you don’t know how to fix it?”
“What did you mess up?”
“I can get on a plane in a week and a half and I can go back to doing something meaningful with my life. Or, I can stay here. Staying here means having to figure it all out but it also means you and Troy and Annie. And Jeff.”
“I think the only reason you’re thinking about going is because you want to leave us before we can leave you. I’m graduating from high school in June and then who knows where I’ll be. And Troy and Annie might go back to school and get busy with their own things and they won’t have time for you anymore. And you might give things a go with Jeff and they might not work out. You’ll have put yourself out there for nothing.”
Britta looks like she’s going to cry and Jeff stays perfectly still in his seat.
“Will you show me Jeff’s interview?” she asks quietly. The camera cuts off and when it comes back Britta is wiping her eyes. Jeff turns around to see Britta stand up and walk into the house but he can’t get up to go after her. Abed had told him there was something he needed to see.
“Britta, I don’t have to film this,” Abed says. “I can turn the camera off.”
“No, I want you to,” she says. “Because I have to tell you all how much I love you guys and how much you mean to me. And I have to apologize to Annie because I want to be her Big Sister forever. And...” She trails off and pulls her legs up onto the bed.
“And you want to stay because you want to be with Jeff,” Abed finishes. “I think it might mean more if it comes from you than from me, though.”
Britta laughs. “You’re the best, Abed. You really are.” She takes a deep breath and Jeff holds his. He can see Annie and Troy and Abed watching him from the corner of his eye but he doesn’t dare look away from the screen.
“I want to stay because I want to be with Jeff.”
The audience, to Jeff’s horror, claps and cheers and Jeff rolls his eyes sheepishly. Troy plops into the seat behind Jeff and leans in. “Hey, buddy. I think that’s your cue to go find Britta. We’ll show you the rest of the movie later.”
“I know that,” Jeff lies in a harsh whisper. Britta and Abed are still talking on the screen but Jeff gets up anyway and, hunched over, makes his way to the back of the crowd and goes inside.
Britta is sitting on the couch with a bottle of beer in her hand. She looks up as Jeff slides the door shut but doesn’t say anything.
“It’s like a romcom out there,” Jeff says. He sits down next to her and takes the beer from her hand, guzzling half of it in one go.
She plays with the hem of her dress. “Yeah, well, the movie got kind of romcom-y at the end. I blame Abed.”
“You look really pretty, by the way.” He finishes the beer and sets the empty bottle on the coffee table. “Sorry I drank your beer.”
“It was from your fridge anyway,” she shrugs. “And thank you.”
“So. What you said...”
“I didn’t say it to make Abed’s film end better,” she says.
“I didn’t think you did.” He shifts so he’s sitting closer to her. “I do think, however, that you and I could figure things out together. Because we’re both kind of a mess and, for me at least, it would be nice to be a mess with another mess to hang out with.”
“Hang out?” Britta echoes, a smirk playing on her lips. “You wanna be bros?”
Jeff laughs. “Yeah, something like that.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Will you kiss me anyway? Or should we go to the bathroom so you can throw me against a door first?”
She hits his shoulder. “Shut up! You’re never going to-”
He cuts her off with his lips. The audience cheers outside and Jeff knows it’s because the movie must be over but there’s a little part of him that thinks it’s because he got the girl. Romcom ending.
---
“Ugh, I can’t believe I have gym class second period this year,” Annie complains. “That’s the worst time to have it!”
“Wait,” Abed says. He untangles his hand from hers to pull a paper out of his pocket. “I think I’m in that class, too.”
They compare their schedules and Troy turns to Jeff and Britta. “So the first football game is on Friday night. You two will be there?”
“Of course!” Britta says. “Do I have to know stuff about football? Because I don’t.”
“Just cheer when everyone else cheers,” Jeff suggests. “That’s what I do.”
Troy shakes his head and grabs another handful of chips out of the bowl on the table. “By the end of the season, you guys are going to know what’s going on if I have to teach you myself.”
“Now that’s a movie I want to make,” Abed says and Annie laughs.
“No more movies,” Jeff and Britta say in unison.
At the airport a plane is taking off, headed east where it will stop in New York City before making its way south to Port-au-Prince. Britta looks at her cell phone and watches the clock change from 1:34 to 1:35 and she can almost hear the engines rev, the click of seatbelts. There’s a pack of chewing gum in her purse she bought far in advance so she wouldn’t forget.
Troy names all his favorite football movies and Annie and Abed pipe in with suggestions. Jeff’s hand slides into hers and when she looks up, his eyes are on her lit-up phone.
“You missed your flight,” he says quietly.
“I did.”
“And?”
“And what?”
He looks up but the kids aren’t paying them any attention. “Regret it yet?”
She smiles. “I really hate flying. I always get stuck next to some creepy old guy or near the bathrooms.”
“Yeah, that’s the worst.”
She leans into him a little bit, resting her head on his upper arm. “I don’t regret it,” she says.
He presses his lips to her temple. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Gross!”
The three of them groan but they’re smiling and Annie’s smile brightens her entire face. Britta takes her hand out of Jeff’s to run her fingers over the bracelet on her wrist, the one Annie made for her as an apology.
“Oh, shut up, all of you,” Jeff says. “Now stop complaining and get in the car so we can go get ice cream.”
They jump up and bound for the driveway. Britta grabs Jeff’s hand as he starts to walk away and stops him. “Hey.”
He looks down at her curiously, eyebrow cocked.
“This is the only place I want to be,” she says seriously. She bites her lip and looks at the ground. Getting used to this whole thing, this telling the truth and being honest with her feelings thing, it’s going to take time and one day maybe she’ll be able to tell him how she feels without her heart tripping and falling over itself.
But for now he leans down to kiss her and she can feel his pulse, just as fast as hers, and she wraps her hands around his neck and runs her thumbs over his jaw as it moves with his mouth. For now the plane is rising, rising, rising, gaining altitude, and Britta stays on the ground, her shoes and her feet rooting themselves into Jeff’s backyard. For now there are threads coming out of her chest tying her to Annie and Troy and Abed.
Jeff pulls away but pulls her in close, his chin resting on her head. Someone beeps the car horn and Troy shouts.
“The children are waiting,” she says.
He laughs and she listens to it rumble in his chest. “Tomorrow,” he says wickedly as they start toward the driveway, “they’ll be in school all day long.”