community fic! part one
This comes out of nowhere.
Yesterday there was nothing, and today there is something.
In the Northeast, where she used to be, where she belonged, fall comes one day with the flip of a switch. Yesterday there was sun and today there is a damp wind and the smell of rain with leaves dancing all around the sky.
In Colorado, in the study room, on some sort of instinct, Britta turns her head to smile at Jeff.
-
She doesn't mean to end up spending time with him. It's just, Annie's suddenly doubled down on studying because her parents have doubled down on her after she apparently spent her entire summer acting like an actual teenager, raising her stress levels to obscene amounts (and boy, Britta's suddenly glad her parents never cared very much about her grades after deal with her brothers) and Shirley spends most of her extra time with her children after some teacher made a bitchy remark at their parent-teacher conferences. Britta understands, she does, but most- the rest- of her few friends are across the country. Or in other countries.
And even though he would probably never, ever admit it, he's lonely too.
He comes over to her apartment with a veggie pizza and a couple bottles of mid-priced red wine. She opens the door and reaches out a hand to touch his arm, to show that she appreciates this, this surprisingly lovely gesture, then drops her arm and invites Jeff in.
-
They pull an all-nighter. It's like they're really in college.
They watch the Daily Show, and then the Colbert Report and Jeff teases her about her crush on Jon Stewart so she teases him about his crush on Samantha Bee. Eventually they watch Youtube clips of kittens and some local reporter from New York saying inappropriate things like nipple on air and getting caught on fire.
They talk. She only calls him a tool twice, and he bites himself back from snapping at her.
Britta finally relaxes, knowing how nice this is.
They fall asleep on her couch at 7 am. Jeff slides down, his body long and stretched out and most of him on the floor. Britta curls into a ball on one cushion, leaning against his shoulder, blonde curls falling across her face.
They wake up two hours later when her phone rings, loudly and obnoxiously. Sun spills into the living room, hot and golden, and it's far too bright. It's Annie calling: she has a reprieve and would Britta like to go to the mall with her?
Britta says yes automatically, because this is what they do, every weekend after the other, and then she looks over at Jeff. He nods blearily. When she's done talking to Annie, he's up and in the kitchen making coffee and eggs.
-
"I should go,"
"It doesn't matter. You can hang out here if you want."
"No, it's your place, it'd be weird."
"You're here, and I actually have food, plus we drank enough that your hangover's gotta be just as bad as mine."
A sigh, then- "yeah, okay. Are we at the point where I can use your shower?"
"Um- okay. That's fine. Use whatever stuff you find in there. I'll see you in a bit."
-
She picks up Annie. They go to Starbucks and then the mall. There's some fancy lingerie store than Annie pulls her into and then blushes pinker and pinker each time her eyes fall on anything slightly racy. It’s definitely adorable, in that same category of Annie-isms like the doe eyes and the Disney face and the mild crazy.
Britta rolls her eyes and grins and dares her to buy the red leopard-print bra and underwear set.
While Annie is sputtering and laughing and then eventually paying, she picks out something pink and pretty for herself.
They go to another store and Annie convinces Britta to buy three cardigans and a pencil skirt. She's not quite sure how that happened, though she's pretty impaired from last night, still she’s kind of glad it did.
-
Jeff's there when she gets back. She didn't expect that, to find him sprawled on the floor because he doesn't fit on her couch, her cat napping on top of him.
"What'd you get?" he asks. She shrugs and figures asking him why he's on her floor is moot, then he lifts the cat off of him to paw through the bags.
"I see a clear influence of Annie here," he mentions, tossing through the cardigans, and then: "what's this?"
It's the lingerie, shit, and Britta bites her lip and winces.
He looks inside the bag again and then glances up at her, making eye contact that makes her squirm even though it's so ridiculously adolescent of her to be embarrassed. His eyes have darkened a little bit and she licks her lips. Her mouth is dry.
What is it that Abed is always saying about sexual tension?
"Pretty," Jeff murmurs.
"I thought so," Britta manages to respond.
His next look is inquisitive and she's seen it on him before, at paintball, even on their first day back sophomore year. It says 'can I kiss you', it says 'if you don't say anything really, really soon I'm going to kiss you now'. She dips her head in the quickest consent she can give , then tips up her chin and his mouth is on hers.
They make out on the living room floor, leaning against the couch with his legs wrapped around her and his hands cupping her shoulders. It's sloppy and slow; unexpected but not unwelcome, because his hands are gentle and she fits into the curve his legs form around her and so when Jeff starts tugging at her bra and sliding his hand up her ribs, trailing his fingers across her stomach and she’s messing with the buttons on his shirt so she can fucking feel him, feel his skin and warmth against hers- he gets into her bra, pinches a nipple and she exclaims “shit, your hands are freezing-“ and so she gets up and pulls him into the bedroom.
“I don’t get to see you in that pink getup?” he asks once they’re in there, him splayed across her bed with his elbows behind his head, and Britta laughs and shimmies out of her pants.
-
“I don’t suppose it would entirely be an imposition for me to stay for dinner at this point.”
“Not really, no.”
“So, should we get Chinese food then?”
“That sounds good. So long as you pay.”
-
They have sex one more time on her bed, his hands grasping her hips tightly, almost uncomfortably so in return her nails press into his arms and leave red moon-shaped marks (and wow it's fucked up that she's proud of that, that she's left her mark on him like the indents in her hips mean he's left his mark on her) and then in the shower where after Jeff makes fun of Britta’s brand of hair care product because apparently it isn’t the sort that adds volume and calms frizziness or something hilariously specific like that. She groans, says “you’re such a girl,” and pokes him in the stomach, smirking while he doubles over because it turns out he is ridiculously ticklish, like obscenely and of course she doesn't take advantage of that at all.
This time they fall asleep in her bed. He curls up around her and she leans back into him, oddly grateful for the warmth.
-
She kicks him out the next morning so she can go to the gym (and sneak a cigarette in her backyard, okay fine, busted.)
"We're okay, right?" Jeff checks as he goes out the door.
"Yeah no of course we are," she responds. It’s going to be easy this time, because there were no ridiculous circumstances surrounding them this time, plus they actually didn't argue for the whole weekend. Maybe the Greendale campus just brings it out in them.
At school the next week after they're basically at each other's throats for an hour over the interpretation of some literary essay (Abed says something about one-upmanship and predictability, but Britta' so used to tuning out those comments by now that she doesn’t even filter it in), they spend forty-five minutes making out in an empty history classroom, sweeping stuff off the professor's desk like they're in some kind of big-budget movie until Britta remembers she was supposed to have lunch off-campus with Shirley.
"Later," she says, tugging her shirt into place as she rushes out the door.
-
It's about three weeks later when Shirley's eating cheese fries and Britta throws up. Really. She pukes all over the table since she can't even manage to make it to the bathroom. It is probably one of the grossest things she’s ever done, and she once made vegan pot-enhanced goulash (the recipe was from the internet, okay.)
"Ugh," she says, looking down at the mess, and discreetly burping. Her mouth tastes absolutely vile. "Shirley, I am so, so sorry about this. Let me get some napkins clean it up?"
"No baby, you're probably getting sick," Shirley says, avoiding the mess to pat her hand as Britta presses a hand to her stomach, because the nausea is at a rollicking, rolling boil. "You should go home. I'll bring you some soup when I’m done with my classes for the day."
Britta hiccups and agrees. She has to pull over twice on the way home. It's probably food poisoning- god only know what goes into that cafeteria food anyways, she’s never quite worked up the nerve to ask Abed if he knows. She could have, like, e-coli or salmonella or something terrible like that.
Shirley brings her homemade vegetable soup and ginger ale. It helps her stomach and makes her grin, even if it's only a little before she pukes again.
-
It's when she's out jogging that it clicks. Well, it’s that and the mysterious sign from above of her sports bra not fitting comfortably, but suddenly she knows. Call it women's intuition, call it something else, but Britta runs to the drugstore near the park and buys a pregnancy test.
It turns positive while she's leaning against the wall in the bathroom of a Starbucks, counting down the seconds under her breath so she doesn’t have to hear, even if she has to see.
She doesn't know what to do, because this is real, this is a very real thing that she needs to deal with. She calls Shirley.
-
"Come to my place," Shirley says. "I'll make you some cookies and a nice hot cup of tea."
Britta breathes out once twice three times, and then gets in her car. It takes her five minutes to actually start the engine and drive.
-
“It’s Jeff’s, isn’t it?”
“What- seriously, are you psychic or something, how would you know that?”
“You two make eyes at each other all the time, plus we knew all that bickering had to be covering something up because if you argued any more you would just be married already. Which I might add you should seriously consider because Jesus looks down upon those who have babies out of wedlock even more than he looks down upon those who have premarital sex, though at least you're being consistent-“
“I don’t even believe in marriage, Shirley.”
“What about your immortal soul? And what about the tax benefits? Because I am not kidding about those.”
“…where’s the bathroom? I’m going to throw up. Again.”
“It’s a sign, baby! I’ll make you some more tea and we’re gonna figure out what you’re going to say to Jeff.”
“Oh god, I can't even-“
“Don’t hurl on the bath mat, okay there Britta? It’s brand new!”
“I feel terrible.”
“That’s how it goes, sweetie, that’s how it goes.”
-
Shirley tells her that she needs to tell Jeff, and she needs to tell him soon because otherwise she never will and as her friend, Shirley has a god-given duty to make sure that she doesn’t chicken out.
Britta’s one hundred percent positive that Shirley’s psychic at this point in the conversation.
When she hears a car pulling up outside the house and knows that it has to be Jeff because seriously, her life is a sitcom, she knows that in addition to being psychic Shirley is also pure, sweet-natured evil. And that isn’t an oxymoron in the least.
-
Jeff walks up to Shirley’s house with a wrench. He’s not sure why she called him to fix her sink (and he doesn’t really know when and where he picked up the wrench either, probably around the whole chicken fingers thing when he was going to dismantle the deep-fryer) because Troy is a much better plumber than any of the study group, but maybe Troy’s just still weird about stuff because half the time he feels like Shirley is his mom.
He’s not sure why Britta’s car is also in the driveway, but hey, girls hang out, right?
What he does not expect to is see Britta sitting in the kitchen, a couple of balled up tissues by her side while Shirley stands in the doorway like a prison warden.
“Um,” Jeff stops short in the doorway. The wrench drops and clatters to the floor. “What. The hell?”
“Britta needs to talk to you, Jeffrey.” Shirley flutters around to him and picks up the wrench, waving it in a way that could definitely be construed as threateningly. He remembers how specific that jukebox comment was and while he isn't scared, he's just- yeah. “I’ll just leave you alone for a few minutes, shall I?”
She closes the door, then locks it.
Britta’s stare at her retreating back is hostile.
“Britta?” Jeff asks.
She presses her lips together. “I’m think I’m going to start by saying that this is all your fault.”
-
Britta’s had this conversation before. She’s had it when she was nineteen and was just a kid who had absolutely no fucking clue what she was doing, but she’s had it before. This time, it won’t be as painless, because this time, there’s a guy who she maybe (really) likes a lot. This time she isn’t nineteen, she’s twenty-nine. But the thing is, this time the conversation’s might go a whole lot worse.
She breathes in.
“I’m pregnant.”
“I… uh. Whoa.” Jeff sits down hard. “Really?”
Britta exhales. “…yeah. Really.”
“You’re sure?”
“I took a pee-stick test and everything.”
Jeff runs a hand through his hair. “Okay.” He looks at her, startled. “You. What about you. Are you okay?”
She doesn’t really know. “I’m okay,” she smiles tentatively, a quick twist of her lips. Jeff raises an eyebrow.
“Right,” he says. A beat, a pause, a lull where all she can hear is their breathing.
“Let’s get out of here-“ she blurts, quick and sudden. They get to the door and there’s another something, jerky motions and bumping hips until he takes her hand and leads her to his car.
-
He drives to a diner off the highway that she's never been to before, not even on her most insomniac nights: one of the ones with a squeeze ketchup bottle and ten variations of pancake on the menu, with sticky tabletops and plastic glasses of tap water delivered when they slide into a booth.
Britta's kind of surprised Jeff would know about this place at all.
He's sitting across from her, and he's doing this super-focused thing which is good because her brain is in a million little pieces in a million little places, and she's barely at the point of coherence.
"You're going to have a baby," he says, and for a split-second there's this blinding grin on his face, a blink and you miss it kind of thing, but she knows it was there and something inside her chest warms at little because of that look.
"Yes, I think so," Britta says.
Jeff's turned serious again. "If you don't want to have it, I- um. I'm not going to stop you from making whatever decision you think is best for you. You should know that."
She scrubs a hand across her face. She can't remember ever having been this tired before, even when she was driving across the country by herself and didn't have enough money for a motel if she wanted to be able to buy gas. "I don't know. Like, in my perfect world I would be having kids later if I was going to have them at all, but I like kids and usually I don't hate you, or at least I don't think I do and sometimes I think you're kinda cool, whatever, and the thought of- you know, our kid? It isn't abhorrent."
"Well that's good," Jeff grins, and suddenly they're laughing in this weird way she's really grateful for, in this way that reminds her of all the times they've gotten along really well (like against that dumb-ass kids).
"There's so much to think about," Britta says. "Like, being responsible adults stuff. Doctors and names and getting a bigger apartment, and what everyone else is going to say-"
"That doesn't matter. Matter as much," he amends. "You haven't been to a doctor yet?"
"I just found out I was pregnant when I was jogging," Britta says, gesturing to her getup. "Which was only a couple of hours ago. So no, I haven't managed to go to the doctor yet. Or anything else besides talk to Shirley and then have her ambush me with you. And ambush you with news. Yeah."
"Then how did you know that you were pregnant?" Jeff looks interested.
"My bra wasn't fitting right."
"Ah," and there's a look on his face that says he's kind of going to be focusing on her boobs for the next minute and a half, so Britta rolls her eyes and opens the menu to peruse the pancake selection.
-
She goes to the doctor. Jeff comes. Britta's exactly eight weeks pregnant and probably due in the late spring. Lines up with the end of school, isn't that perfect. The doctor remarks that it couldn’t have gone any better if they had planned it and they both snort at exactly the same time.
After the appointment, when she's getting dressed again in her fat jeans and a loose t-shirt, Jeff winks at her. She kind of has no clue what that means.
-
They've- okay. Being pregnant kind of freaks her out once she's had a week to think about it. Like, there's another thing with her body to stress out about besides her boobs and her thighs and her cycling zits and also there’s an added layer of she should never had gone with Abed to watch Alien kind of freakedness.
Because also as much as it's Jeff, and as much as he’s being kind of great about the whole thing so far, it's Jeff and he's kind of even more freaked out over this whole thing than she is. Considering themselves 'Greendale parents' is so not anything significant in comparison to actually being parents, to actually having a living, breathing, squalling baby with spiky blonde hair and a ridiculously turned-up nose in their lives. Her waistline is expanding, just enough that she has to go up a size or two and has to pop open the button on her jeans, and while it seems like something small it's another one of those things that makes her realize that this is real.
And yeah, it isn't helping that they keep sleeping together. Like, he'll come over with ginger ale because he noticed she didn't eat anything at lunch and she'll totally jump him, hands all over him as soon as she walks into the kitchen and then they bang on the table, which is definitely not good because it’s too wobbly for that kind of thing and one of these days they’re going to go crashing to the floor. Or she'll go over his place to watch a movie and they'll end up screwing on the couch with her shirt pushed up to her collarbone and his pants down around his ankles (these hormones are turning her back into herself at nineteen. Which, this regressing? Not good at all.)
But in between this, there's always an undercurrent of something. They're trying to get to each other but to do it they have to tiptoe between shards of sharp, broken glass and neither wants to be the first to slice themselves open and bleed out. They’re both avoiding catharsis.
He's in her bed again, tangled up in the sheets and one of his arms is flung across her. Britta's sleeping lightly, on her way to waking up, and she squirms out from under it. He finds her again, pulls her tight, but she slides out of his grasp and turns her back.
She stretches out a little and her foot touches his. She falls back to sleep.
-
Troy comes up to her before tap class one day.
"Britta," he says, his hands on his hips. "I have a question for you. And I totally understand if you don't want to answer, because it might come at little out of left field."
"Okay," Britta says, eyeing him. "What's up?"
Troy nods to himself. "Yo," he says, and then shakes his head. "Wait, that sounded not at all like I wanted it to. Okay. Look, are you like.. pregnant or something? Because if you are I'm going to feel way more uncomfortable with thinking you're hot."
"Right." She blinks. "Um. First of all, yes I'm pregnant. And second, Troy, you think I'm hot? Really? That’s so sweet."
Troy tips his head back and stares daggers at the ceiling. "Why does Jeff have to win everything? How is that even legit? Is he like a magic man or something?"
Her eyebrows go straight up. "Um, if that's how you feel-"
Troy is still looking up at the ceiling. "It's isn't FAIR, whoever's up there. It isn’t fair. This shit is not down with the T-Bone!"
Britta thinks at this point she might need to walk away quietly and find Annie to come up with a nice distraction for Troy while he calms down.
"I need to go find Abed," Troy sniffles, and then rushes away.
"Why does everyone always assume it's Jeff's?" Britta says to no one in particular.
-
By the end of her first trimester, well, it's pretty damn obvious what's going on.
When Annie takes her shopping again, she pulls her around to a maternity store. She doesn't need maternity clothes yet, not really, because while the bump is there it's not giant and she's more or less stealing all of Jeff's shirts very slowly- soon she’ll have about half his wardrobe in her closet- but still. This is basically the kindest way Annie could have noticed.
Britta smiles: kind of awkwardly, kind of shamefaced, but Annie hugs her and squeals about how excited she is (and there's something in there about becoming an aunt, which: okay, cool, because someone needs to install a decent work ethic in this kid) so she hugs her back.
Annie's asking all sorts of questions about names and gender, the answer to both of which is no idea, and she talks about plans and childcare and how she has references saying that she's one of the top people to entrust with your children, and Britta can't help it because she's a mushy mess right now, but she's a little teary.
"What is it?" Annie asks, and she places a hand on Britta’s arm, like they’re not having this little heart-to-heart in the middle of the mall walkway.
"I'm sorry," Britta says. "I know that you liked- like? Jeff, and even though he was being a total ass when you guys confronted your attraction, I'm so, so sorry."
When Annie pulls away her eyes are kind of wet too. "It was always going to be you," she says. "I always knew it. He has this thing with you that he doesn't have with me and that he just… won’t, I guess. He wants you. He's always wanted you. You were the reason he formed the study group, you were the person he turned to for scheming, you were the person he defended during paintball and drunk-dialed. And now he has you, even though don’t take offense at this, but even though both of you guys are kind of giant messes- I mean that in the best way possible- and I think maybe he's actually kind of happy that this has happened, even if how it's happened isn't necessarily... organic, because he gets you. And that’s what he’s wanted all along. Besides, you guys are practically the same person."
There's a joke in there somewhere with the whole organic thing but she doesn't go for it. "I know." Britta sighs. "It used to freak me out."
"Yeah, you were kind of mean," Annie giggles a little.
"It doesn't freak me out as much now," Britta says. "I mean, there are like a thousand other things to obsess over, commitment issues notwithstanding but... I don't know. He's Jeff."
"Yeah," Annie says. "He’s Jeff. I know exactly what you mean." She hugs her again.
Britta wants to say 'you're a good friend', but she can't quite find the words that will make it less cheesy and less weird, so she just hugs her a little tighter than before and buys Annie a frappe when they get to the food court.
-
“I’m pregnant,” Britta says one day in the library.
“Old news, sweetie,” Shirley says while Troy nods and Abed smiles in that way he does when he’s predicted something accurately. Annie smiles, and Jeff squeezes her hand. She looks over at him, and his eyes crinkle up.
“So I was the only one who didn’t know?” Pierce complains. “Come on, guys, it's cool to keep me in the loop.”
“Actually Pierce, it really says more about your powers of observation,” Abed says. “As you can see from Britta’s waistline and breasts-“
“I’m going to stop you there,” Jeff interjects. “Let’s get back to studying.”
Pierce scratches his head. “Wait, so her baby is Jeff’s?”
-
It turns out that it's a good thing she got all those maternity clothes (they were having a really good sale and they had a maternity Pixies shirt, okay) because she’s getting rounder. Not even her stretchy elastic-waist pants fit, she’s way beyond just leaving open the top button of her jeans, and because she and Annie mostly got winter clothes, she walks into one of Duncan’s classes wearing Jeff’s sweatpants, which she has to roll the legs up a ton before she can walk without tripping, and his long-sleeved black thermal.
“Winger making a claim?” Duncan says, eyes sharp behind his glasses. “Is this his way of pissing a circle around you to mark his territory?”
“That’s gross,” Britta says, adjusting the shirt so it doesn’t ride up anymore. “Please stop talking.”
“Although he’s clearly done that already by inseminating you, so the rest is just overkill as you might expect.” Britta groans- and honestly, how does every single person who knows she’s pregnant know that the baby is Jeff’s?
Behind her, Shirley is eyeing Duncan with the kind of look that says she’s going to do something illegal to his car later.
-
Most of the way through her second trimester, Jeff starts to talk about moving in together. She has a nice apartment, he has a nicer one, and if they combined the money they pay on rent they could afford at least a two-bedroom. Maybe even a house, if he dips into his stash of lawyer money and they get a decent mortgage- entirely possible, he says, he knows a guy.
“I have issues with your décor,” Britta mutters one morning when she wakes up in his bed, entwined with him in a way that’s becoming increasingly common. He’s hogging the blankets like usual, and the comforter is this weirdly textured fabric that isn’t soft at all. “It’s minimalistic in this kind of dickish way. Plus I’m afraid your chin-up bar is going to fall and hit me in the head every time I walk under it.”
“That’s ridiculously irrational,” Jeff points out. “Are you having crazy hormones? Because while I enjoyed the ones that made you horny, I don’t like the mood swing ones. Or the cravings- seriously, who needs pickles at three in the morning?”
“Your unborn child,” she says, and crosses her arms over her chest. Pregnancy has given her totally impressive knockers. “And you ate like half of those pickles. With mustard, and just when I thought that my constant nausea was over too.”
Jeff shakes his head. “Okay, well I apologized like five times for that while I was holding your hair back from falling into the toilet. And look, I can take down the chin-up bar if it freaks you out.”
“Right,” Britta says. “Even though I’m being totally irrational?”
“You kind of are, actually, okay? It’s a part of my morning routine, just like yours is to complain about how your butt keeps getting larger- I’ve told you, I don’t mind at all, seriously.”
“Stop mentioning my butt.” She pulls the sheet up to her collarbone and squinches up her nose at him. Jeff sighs.
“So do you want to look in the paper for a place today?”
Britta bites her lip. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
His forehead creases. “You don’t know? We’ve been talking about this for two weeks. If we want to move before the baby comes, we should have gotten started weeks ago.”
“I told you, I don’t know.” She turns to stare at the dresser. “Okay?”
His arms encircle her, one hand sliding up towards her breast until she slaps it away. “It’s not okay, because there’s something this is about.”
It’s kind of hard to squirm in this position, especially when you’re not wearing clothes, but Britta pushes him away and finds her bathrobe, tying it off securely over the swell of her stomach. “It’s about me not wanting to move right now. It’s about me not wanting to deal with this right now, at 7 in the morning. It’s about me liking this the way they’ve been going until you brought up all this shit.”
“You’re six months pregnant! This is something we need to talk about!”
“Not now it isn’t.”
“Britta-“ his tone has turned pleading now, hinting that there’s something this is about for him even more so than there is for her. “I’m not going anywhere. You know that.”
He’s sitting upright on the bed now, the sheet twisted in his lap, and dear god Jeff looks ridiculous, but his face is sincere and that’s what makes her terrified, that’s what makes her want to run all the way back to her apartment to wrap herself in more familiar-smelling sheets and bury her face in a pillow that fits the indents of her head.
“Yeah. I know that.”
“Britta.” There it is again, and he’s facing her dead-on and just fuck all this, fuck early morning confessions and earnestness and honesty, because she so isn’t prepared to deal with any of this right now at all. “Britta look, I love you, and if you don’t know that you should.”
There it is: he says it, and she knows that he’s saying it for real. This isn’t like the transfer dance. There’s not anyone to beat here, there’s just her to win.
She breathes in and counts to ten until the silence becomes too strange. “Thanks.”
His eyes are pleading with her to say something, to recite back what he said but she simply can’t do it. She can’t, because she’s never been this person before- Jeff hasn’t been this person before, and it’s all too weird; it’s too new, newly birthed sentiment and she can’t say what she’s supposed to say.
Britta tugs her fingers through her hair, catching at tugging at the snarled curls. “Look, I- I have to go, okay? I need to go.”
“What are you talking about- it’s seven in the morning, you crazy person- where are you even going to go anyways?”
“I’m going to go out,” she says, searching for some sort of underwear and dress from the clothes in the heap by the closet door. It’s getting harder to bend over but she’s not going to ask him for help (and he probably wouldn’t give it to her. There’s that too). She manages to pull something out and yanks it over her head, putting her hair up in a messy bun. “I guess I’ll see you at school.”
“It’s Saturday,” Jeff says.
She slips on her shoes. “Whatever,” she says, then pulls on a sweatshirt and leaves the room.
-
Yesterday there was nothing, and today there is something.
In the Northeast, where she used to be, where she belonged, fall comes one day with the flip of a switch. Yesterday there was sun and today there is a damp wind and the smell of rain with leaves dancing all around the sky.
In Colorado, in the study room, on some sort of instinct, Britta turns her head to smile at Jeff.
-
She doesn't mean to end up spending time with him. It's just, Annie's suddenly doubled down on studying because her parents have doubled down on her after she apparently spent her entire summer acting like an actual teenager, raising her stress levels to obscene amounts (and boy, Britta's suddenly glad her parents never cared very much about her grades after deal with her brothers) and Shirley spends most of her extra time with her children after some teacher made a bitchy remark at their parent-teacher conferences. Britta understands, she does, but most- the rest- of her few friends are across the country. Or in other countries.
And even though he would probably never, ever admit it, he's lonely too.
He comes over to her apartment with a veggie pizza and a couple bottles of mid-priced red wine. She opens the door and reaches out a hand to touch his arm, to show that she appreciates this, this surprisingly lovely gesture, then drops her arm and invites Jeff in.
-
They pull an all-nighter. It's like they're really in college.
They watch the Daily Show, and then the Colbert Report and Jeff teases her about her crush on Jon Stewart so she teases him about his crush on Samantha Bee. Eventually they watch Youtube clips of kittens and some local reporter from New York saying inappropriate things like nipple on air and getting caught on fire.
They talk. She only calls him a tool twice, and he bites himself back from snapping at her.
Britta finally relaxes, knowing how nice this is.
They fall asleep on her couch at 7 am. Jeff slides down, his body long and stretched out and most of him on the floor. Britta curls into a ball on one cushion, leaning against his shoulder, blonde curls falling across her face.
They wake up two hours later when her phone rings, loudly and obnoxiously. Sun spills into the living room, hot and golden, and it's far too bright. It's Annie calling: she has a reprieve and would Britta like to go to the mall with her?
Britta says yes automatically, because this is what they do, every weekend after the other, and then she looks over at Jeff. He nods blearily. When she's done talking to Annie, he's up and in the kitchen making coffee and eggs.
-
"I should go,"
"It doesn't matter. You can hang out here if you want."
"No, it's your place, it'd be weird."
"You're here, and I actually have food, plus we drank enough that your hangover's gotta be just as bad as mine."
A sigh, then- "yeah, okay. Are we at the point where I can use your shower?"
"Um- okay. That's fine. Use whatever stuff you find in there. I'll see you in a bit."
-
She picks up Annie. They go to Starbucks and then the mall. There's some fancy lingerie store than Annie pulls her into and then blushes pinker and pinker each time her eyes fall on anything slightly racy. It’s definitely adorable, in that same category of Annie-isms like the doe eyes and the Disney face and the mild crazy.
Britta rolls her eyes and grins and dares her to buy the red leopard-print bra and underwear set.
While Annie is sputtering and laughing and then eventually paying, she picks out something pink and pretty for herself.
They go to another store and Annie convinces Britta to buy three cardigans and a pencil skirt. She's not quite sure how that happened, though she's pretty impaired from last night, still she’s kind of glad it did.
-
Jeff's there when she gets back. She didn't expect that, to find him sprawled on the floor because he doesn't fit on her couch, her cat napping on top of him.
"What'd you get?" he asks. She shrugs and figures asking him why he's on her floor is moot, then he lifts the cat off of him to paw through the bags.
"I see a clear influence of Annie here," he mentions, tossing through the cardigans, and then: "what's this?"
It's the lingerie, shit, and Britta bites her lip and winces.
He looks inside the bag again and then glances up at her, making eye contact that makes her squirm even though it's so ridiculously adolescent of her to be embarrassed. His eyes have darkened a little bit and she licks her lips. Her mouth is dry.
What is it that Abed is always saying about sexual tension?
"Pretty," Jeff murmurs.
"I thought so," Britta manages to respond.
His next look is inquisitive and she's seen it on him before, at paintball, even on their first day back sophomore year. It says 'can I kiss you', it says 'if you don't say anything really, really soon I'm going to kiss you now'. She dips her head in the quickest consent she can give , then tips up her chin and his mouth is on hers.
They make out on the living room floor, leaning against the couch with his legs wrapped around her and his hands cupping her shoulders. It's sloppy and slow; unexpected but not unwelcome, because his hands are gentle and she fits into the curve his legs form around her and so when Jeff starts tugging at her bra and sliding his hand up her ribs, trailing his fingers across her stomach and she’s messing with the buttons on his shirt so she can fucking feel him, feel his skin and warmth against hers- he gets into her bra, pinches a nipple and she exclaims “shit, your hands are freezing-“ and so she gets up and pulls him into the bedroom.
“I don’t get to see you in that pink getup?” he asks once they’re in there, him splayed across her bed with his elbows behind his head, and Britta laughs and shimmies out of her pants.
-
“I don’t suppose it would entirely be an imposition for me to stay for dinner at this point.”
“Not really, no.”
“So, should we get Chinese food then?”
“That sounds good. So long as you pay.”
-
They have sex one more time on her bed, his hands grasping her hips tightly, almost uncomfortably so in return her nails press into his arms and leave red moon-shaped marks (and wow it's fucked up that she's proud of that, that she's left her mark on him like the indents in her hips mean he's left his mark on her) and then in the shower where after Jeff makes fun of Britta’s brand of hair care product because apparently it isn’t the sort that adds volume and calms frizziness or something hilariously specific like that. She groans, says “you’re such a girl,” and pokes him in the stomach, smirking while he doubles over because it turns out he is ridiculously ticklish, like obscenely and of course she doesn't take advantage of that at all.
This time they fall asleep in her bed. He curls up around her and she leans back into him, oddly grateful for the warmth.
-
She kicks him out the next morning so she can go to the gym (and sneak a cigarette in her backyard, okay fine, busted.)
"We're okay, right?" Jeff checks as he goes out the door.
"Yeah no of course we are," she responds. It’s going to be easy this time, because there were no ridiculous circumstances surrounding them this time, plus they actually didn't argue for the whole weekend. Maybe the Greendale campus just brings it out in them.
At school the next week after they're basically at each other's throats for an hour over the interpretation of some literary essay (Abed says something about one-upmanship and predictability, but Britta' so used to tuning out those comments by now that she doesn’t even filter it in), they spend forty-five minutes making out in an empty history classroom, sweeping stuff off the professor's desk like they're in some kind of big-budget movie until Britta remembers she was supposed to have lunch off-campus with Shirley.
"Later," she says, tugging her shirt into place as she rushes out the door.
-
It's about three weeks later when Shirley's eating cheese fries and Britta throws up. Really. She pukes all over the table since she can't even manage to make it to the bathroom. It is probably one of the grossest things she’s ever done, and she once made vegan pot-enhanced goulash (the recipe was from the internet, okay.)
"Ugh," she says, looking down at the mess, and discreetly burping. Her mouth tastes absolutely vile. "Shirley, I am so, so sorry about this. Let me get some napkins clean it up?"
"No baby, you're probably getting sick," Shirley says, avoiding the mess to pat her hand as Britta presses a hand to her stomach, because the nausea is at a rollicking, rolling boil. "You should go home. I'll bring you some soup when I’m done with my classes for the day."
Britta hiccups and agrees. She has to pull over twice on the way home. It's probably food poisoning- god only know what goes into that cafeteria food anyways, she’s never quite worked up the nerve to ask Abed if he knows. She could have, like, e-coli or salmonella or something terrible like that.
Shirley brings her homemade vegetable soup and ginger ale. It helps her stomach and makes her grin, even if it's only a little before she pukes again.
-
It's when she's out jogging that it clicks. Well, it’s that and the mysterious sign from above of her sports bra not fitting comfortably, but suddenly she knows. Call it women's intuition, call it something else, but Britta runs to the drugstore near the park and buys a pregnancy test.
It turns positive while she's leaning against the wall in the bathroom of a Starbucks, counting down the seconds under her breath so she doesn’t have to hear, even if she has to see.
She doesn't know what to do, because this is real, this is a very real thing that she needs to deal with. She calls Shirley.
-
"Come to my place," Shirley says. "I'll make you some cookies and a nice hot cup of tea."
Britta breathes out once twice three times, and then gets in her car. It takes her five minutes to actually start the engine and drive.
-
“It’s Jeff’s, isn’t it?”
“What- seriously, are you psychic or something, how would you know that?”
“You two make eyes at each other all the time, plus we knew all that bickering had to be covering something up because if you argued any more you would just be married already. Which I might add you should seriously consider because Jesus looks down upon those who have babies out of wedlock even more than he looks down upon those who have premarital sex, though at least you're being consistent-“
“I don’t even believe in marriage, Shirley.”
“What about your immortal soul? And what about the tax benefits? Because I am not kidding about those.”
“…where’s the bathroom? I’m going to throw up. Again.”
“It’s a sign, baby! I’ll make you some more tea and we’re gonna figure out what you’re going to say to Jeff.”
“Oh god, I can't even-“
“Don’t hurl on the bath mat, okay there Britta? It’s brand new!”
“I feel terrible.”
“That’s how it goes, sweetie, that’s how it goes.”
-
Shirley tells her that she needs to tell Jeff, and she needs to tell him soon because otherwise she never will and as her friend, Shirley has a god-given duty to make sure that she doesn’t chicken out.
Britta’s one hundred percent positive that Shirley’s psychic at this point in the conversation.
When she hears a car pulling up outside the house and knows that it has to be Jeff because seriously, her life is a sitcom, she knows that in addition to being psychic Shirley is also pure, sweet-natured evil. And that isn’t an oxymoron in the least.
-
Jeff walks up to Shirley’s house with a wrench. He’s not sure why she called him to fix her sink (and he doesn’t really know when and where he picked up the wrench either, probably around the whole chicken fingers thing when he was going to dismantle the deep-fryer) because Troy is a much better plumber than any of the study group, but maybe Troy’s just still weird about stuff because half the time he feels like Shirley is his mom.
He’s not sure why Britta’s car is also in the driveway, but hey, girls hang out, right?
What he does not expect to is see Britta sitting in the kitchen, a couple of balled up tissues by her side while Shirley stands in the doorway like a prison warden.
“Um,” Jeff stops short in the doorway. The wrench drops and clatters to the floor. “What. The hell?”
“Britta needs to talk to you, Jeffrey.” Shirley flutters around to him and picks up the wrench, waving it in a way that could definitely be construed as threateningly. He remembers how specific that jukebox comment was and while he isn't scared, he's just- yeah. “I’ll just leave you alone for a few minutes, shall I?”
She closes the door, then locks it.
Britta’s stare at her retreating back is hostile.
“Britta?” Jeff asks.
She presses her lips together. “I’m think I’m going to start by saying that this is all your fault.”
-
Britta’s had this conversation before. She’s had it when she was nineteen and was just a kid who had absolutely no fucking clue what she was doing, but she’s had it before. This time, it won’t be as painless, because this time, there’s a guy who she maybe (really) likes a lot. This time she isn’t nineteen, she’s twenty-nine. But the thing is, this time the conversation’s might go a whole lot worse.
She breathes in.
“I’m pregnant.”
“I… uh. Whoa.” Jeff sits down hard. “Really?”
Britta exhales. “…yeah. Really.”
“You’re sure?”
“I took a pee-stick test and everything.”
Jeff runs a hand through his hair. “Okay.” He looks at her, startled. “You. What about you. Are you okay?”
She doesn’t really know. “I’m okay,” she smiles tentatively, a quick twist of her lips. Jeff raises an eyebrow.
“Right,” he says. A beat, a pause, a lull where all she can hear is their breathing.
“Let’s get out of here-“ she blurts, quick and sudden. They get to the door and there’s another something, jerky motions and bumping hips until he takes her hand and leads her to his car.
-
He drives to a diner off the highway that she's never been to before, not even on her most insomniac nights: one of the ones with a squeeze ketchup bottle and ten variations of pancake on the menu, with sticky tabletops and plastic glasses of tap water delivered when they slide into a booth.
Britta's kind of surprised Jeff would know about this place at all.
He's sitting across from her, and he's doing this super-focused thing which is good because her brain is in a million little pieces in a million little places, and she's barely at the point of coherence.
"You're going to have a baby," he says, and for a split-second there's this blinding grin on his face, a blink and you miss it kind of thing, but she knows it was there and something inside her chest warms at little because of that look.
"Yes, I think so," Britta says.
Jeff's turned serious again. "If you don't want to have it, I- um. I'm not going to stop you from making whatever decision you think is best for you. You should know that."
She scrubs a hand across her face. She can't remember ever having been this tired before, even when she was driving across the country by herself and didn't have enough money for a motel if she wanted to be able to buy gas. "I don't know. Like, in my perfect world I would be having kids later if I was going to have them at all, but I like kids and usually I don't hate you, or at least I don't think I do and sometimes I think you're kinda cool, whatever, and the thought of- you know, our kid? It isn't abhorrent."
"Well that's good," Jeff grins, and suddenly they're laughing in this weird way she's really grateful for, in this way that reminds her of all the times they've gotten along really well (like against that dumb-ass kids).
"There's so much to think about," Britta says. "Like, being responsible adults stuff. Doctors and names and getting a bigger apartment, and what everyone else is going to say-"
"That doesn't matter. Matter as much," he amends. "You haven't been to a doctor yet?"
"I just found out I was pregnant when I was jogging," Britta says, gesturing to her getup. "Which was only a couple of hours ago. So no, I haven't managed to go to the doctor yet. Or anything else besides talk to Shirley and then have her ambush me with you. And ambush you with news. Yeah."
"Then how did you know that you were pregnant?" Jeff looks interested.
"My bra wasn't fitting right."
"Ah," and there's a look on his face that says he's kind of going to be focusing on her boobs for the next minute and a half, so Britta rolls her eyes and opens the menu to peruse the pancake selection.
-
She goes to the doctor. Jeff comes. Britta's exactly eight weeks pregnant and probably due in the late spring. Lines up with the end of school, isn't that perfect. The doctor remarks that it couldn’t have gone any better if they had planned it and they both snort at exactly the same time.
After the appointment, when she's getting dressed again in her fat jeans and a loose t-shirt, Jeff winks at her. She kind of has no clue what that means.
-
They've- okay. Being pregnant kind of freaks her out once she's had a week to think about it. Like, there's another thing with her body to stress out about besides her boobs and her thighs and her cycling zits and also there’s an added layer of she should never had gone with Abed to watch Alien kind of freakedness.
Because also as much as it's Jeff, and as much as he’s being kind of great about the whole thing so far, it's Jeff and he's kind of even more freaked out over this whole thing than she is. Considering themselves 'Greendale parents' is so not anything significant in comparison to actually being parents, to actually having a living, breathing, squalling baby with spiky blonde hair and a ridiculously turned-up nose in their lives. Her waistline is expanding, just enough that she has to go up a size or two and has to pop open the button on her jeans, and while it seems like something small it's another one of those things that makes her realize that this is real.
And yeah, it isn't helping that they keep sleeping together. Like, he'll come over with ginger ale because he noticed she didn't eat anything at lunch and she'll totally jump him, hands all over him as soon as she walks into the kitchen and then they bang on the table, which is definitely not good because it’s too wobbly for that kind of thing and one of these days they’re going to go crashing to the floor. Or she'll go over his place to watch a movie and they'll end up screwing on the couch with her shirt pushed up to her collarbone and his pants down around his ankles (these hormones are turning her back into herself at nineteen. Which, this regressing? Not good at all.)
But in between this, there's always an undercurrent of something. They're trying to get to each other but to do it they have to tiptoe between shards of sharp, broken glass and neither wants to be the first to slice themselves open and bleed out. They’re both avoiding catharsis.
He's in her bed again, tangled up in the sheets and one of his arms is flung across her. Britta's sleeping lightly, on her way to waking up, and she squirms out from under it. He finds her again, pulls her tight, but she slides out of his grasp and turns her back.
She stretches out a little and her foot touches his. She falls back to sleep.
-
Troy comes up to her before tap class one day.
"Britta," he says, his hands on his hips. "I have a question for you. And I totally understand if you don't want to answer, because it might come at little out of left field."
"Okay," Britta says, eyeing him. "What's up?"
Troy nods to himself. "Yo," he says, and then shakes his head. "Wait, that sounded not at all like I wanted it to. Okay. Look, are you like.. pregnant or something? Because if you are I'm going to feel way more uncomfortable with thinking you're hot."
"Right." She blinks. "Um. First of all, yes I'm pregnant. And second, Troy, you think I'm hot? Really? That’s so sweet."
Troy tips his head back and stares daggers at the ceiling. "Why does Jeff have to win everything? How is that even legit? Is he like a magic man or something?"
Her eyebrows go straight up. "Um, if that's how you feel-"
Troy is still looking up at the ceiling. "It's isn't FAIR, whoever's up there. It isn’t fair. This shit is not down with the T-Bone!"
Britta thinks at this point she might need to walk away quietly and find Annie to come up with a nice distraction for Troy while he calms down.
"I need to go find Abed," Troy sniffles, and then rushes away.
"Why does everyone always assume it's Jeff's?" Britta says to no one in particular.
-
By the end of her first trimester, well, it's pretty damn obvious what's going on.
When Annie takes her shopping again, she pulls her around to a maternity store. She doesn't need maternity clothes yet, not really, because while the bump is there it's not giant and she's more or less stealing all of Jeff's shirts very slowly- soon she’ll have about half his wardrobe in her closet- but still. This is basically the kindest way Annie could have noticed.
Britta smiles: kind of awkwardly, kind of shamefaced, but Annie hugs her and squeals about how excited she is (and there's something in there about becoming an aunt, which: okay, cool, because someone needs to install a decent work ethic in this kid) so she hugs her back.
Annie's asking all sorts of questions about names and gender, the answer to both of which is no idea, and she talks about plans and childcare and how she has references saying that she's one of the top people to entrust with your children, and Britta can't help it because she's a mushy mess right now, but she's a little teary.
"What is it?" Annie asks, and she places a hand on Britta’s arm, like they’re not having this little heart-to-heart in the middle of the mall walkway.
"I'm sorry," Britta says. "I know that you liked- like? Jeff, and even though he was being a total ass when you guys confronted your attraction, I'm so, so sorry."
When Annie pulls away her eyes are kind of wet too. "It was always going to be you," she says. "I always knew it. He has this thing with you that he doesn't have with me and that he just… won’t, I guess. He wants you. He's always wanted you. You were the reason he formed the study group, you were the person he turned to for scheming, you were the person he defended during paintball and drunk-dialed. And now he has you, even though don’t take offense at this, but even though both of you guys are kind of giant messes- I mean that in the best way possible- and I think maybe he's actually kind of happy that this has happened, even if how it's happened isn't necessarily... organic, because he gets you. And that’s what he’s wanted all along. Besides, you guys are practically the same person."
There's a joke in there somewhere with the whole organic thing but she doesn't go for it. "I know." Britta sighs. "It used to freak me out."
"Yeah, you were kind of mean," Annie giggles a little.
"It doesn't freak me out as much now," Britta says. "I mean, there are like a thousand other things to obsess over, commitment issues notwithstanding but... I don't know. He's Jeff."
"Yeah," Annie says. "He’s Jeff. I know exactly what you mean." She hugs her again.
Britta wants to say 'you're a good friend', but she can't quite find the words that will make it less cheesy and less weird, so she just hugs her a little tighter than before and buys Annie a frappe when they get to the food court.
-
“I’m pregnant,” Britta says one day in the library.
“Old news, sweetie,” Shirley says while Troy nods and Abed smiles in that way he does when he’s predicted something accurately. Annie smiles, and Jeff squeezes her hand. She looks over at him, and his eyes crinkle up.
“So I was the only one who didn’t know?” Pierce complains. “Come on, guys, it's cool to keep me in the loop.”
“Actually Pierce, it really says more about your powers of observation,” Abed says. “As you can see from Britta’s waistline and breasts-“
“I’m going to stop you there,” Jeff interjects. “Let’s get back to studying.”
Pierce scratches his head. “Wait, so her baby is Jeff’s?”
-
It turns out that it's a good thing she got all those maternity clothes (they were having a really good sale and they had a maternity Pixies shirt, okay) because she’s getting rounder. Not even her stretchy elastic-waist pants fit, she’s way beyond just leaving open the top button of her jeans, and because she and Annie mostly got winter clothes, she walks into one of Duncan’s classes wearing Jeff’s sweatpants, which she has to roll the legs up a ton before she can walk without tripping, and his long-sleeved black thermal.
“Winger making a claim?” Duncan says, eyes sharp behind his glasses. “Is this his way of pissing a circle around you to mark his territory?”
“That’s gross,” Britta says, adjusting the shirt so it doesn’t ride up anymore. “Please stop talking.”
“Although he’s clearly done that already by inseminating you, so the rest is just overkill as you might expect.” Britta groans- and honestly, how does every single person who knows she’s pregnant know that the baby is Jeff’s?
Behind her, Shirley is eyeing Duncan with the kind of look that says she’s going to do something illegal to his car later.
-
Most of the way through her second trimester, Jeff starts to talk about moving in together. She has a nice apartment, he has a nicer one, and if they combined the money they pay on rent they could afford at least a two-bedroom. Maybe even a house, if he dips into his stash of lawyer money and they get a decent mortgage- entirely possible, he says, he knows a guy.
“I have issues with your décor,” Britta mutters one morning when she wakes up in his bed, entwined with him in a way that’s becoming increasingly common. He’s hogging the blankets like usual, and the comforter is this weirdly textured fabric that isn’t soft at all. “It’s minimalistic in this kind of dickish way. Plus I’m afraid your chin-up bar is going to fall and hit me in the head every time I walk under it.”
“That’s ridiculously irrational,” Jeff points out. “Are you having crazy hormones? Because while I enjoyed the ones that made you horny, I don’t like the mood swing ones. Or the cravings- seriously, who needs pickles at three in the morning?”
“Your unborn child,” she says, and crosses her arms over her chest. Pregnancy has given her totally impressive knockers. “And you ate like half of those pickles. With mustard, and just when I thought that my constant nausea was over too.”
Jeff shakes his head. “Okay, well I apologized like five times for that while I was holding your hair back from falling into the toilet. And look, I can take down the chin-up bar if it freaks you out.”
“Right,” Britta says. “Even though I’m being totally irrational?”
“You kind of are, actually, okay? It’s a part of my morning routine, just like yours is to complain about how your butt keeps getting larger- I’ve told you, I don’t mind at all, seriously.”
“Stop mentioning my butt.” She pulls the sheet up to her collarbone and squinches up her nose at him. Jeff sighs.
“So do you want to look in the paper for a place today?”
Britta bites her lip. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
His forehead creases. “You don’t know? We’ve been talking about this for two weeks. If we want to move before the baby comes, we should have gotten started weeks ago.”
“I told you, I don’t know.” She turns to stare at the dresser. “Okay?”
His arms encircle her, one hand sliding up towards her breast until she slaps it away. “It’s not okay, because there’s something this is about.”
It’s kind of hard to squirm in this position, especially when you’re not wearing clothes, but Britta pushes him away and finds her bathrobe, tying it off securely over the swell of her stomach. “It’s about me not wanting to move right now. It’s about me not wanting to deal with this right now, at 7 in the morning. It’s about me liking this the way they’ve been going until you brought up all this shit.”
“You’re six months pregnant! This is something we need to talk about!”
“Not now it isn’t.”
“Britta-“ his tone has turned pleading now, hinting that there’s something this is about for him even more so than there is for her. “I’m not going anywhere. You know that.”
He’s sitting upright on the bed now, the sheet twisted in his lap, and dear god Jeff looks ridiculous, but his face is sincere and that’s what makes her terrified, that’s what makes her want to run all the way back to her apartment to wrap herself in more familiar-smelling sheets and bury her face in a pillow that fits the indents of her head.
“Yeah. I know that.”
“Britta.” There it is again, and he’s facing her dead-on and just fuck all this, fuck early morning confessions and earnestness and honesty, because she so isn’t prepared to deal with any of this right now at all. “Britta look, I love you, and if you don’t know that you should.”
There it is: he says it, and she knows that he’s saying it for real. This isn’t like the transfer dance. There’s not anyone to beat here, there’s just her to win.
She breathes in and counts to ten until the silence becomes too strange. “Thanks.”
His eyes are pleading with her to say something, to recite back what he said but she simply can’t do it. She can’t, because she’s never been this person before- Jeff hasn’t been this person before, and it’s all too weird; it’s too new, newly birthed sentiment and she can’t say what she’s supposed to say.
Britta tugs her fingers through her hair, catching at tugging at the snarled curls. “Look, I- I have to go, okay? I need to go.”
“What are you talking about- it’s seven in the morning, you crazy person- where are you even going to go anyways?”
“I’m going to go out,” she says, searching for some sort of underwear and dress from the clothes in the heap by the closet door. It’s getting harder to bend over but she’s not going to ask him for help (and he probably wouldn’t give it to her. There’s that too). She manages to pull something out and yanks it over her head, putting her hair up in a messy bun. “I guess I’ll see you at school.”
“It’s Saturday,” Jeff says.
She slips on her shoes. “Whatever,” she says, then pulls on a sweatshirt and leaves the room.
-