Fic: Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste, part one (Jeff/Britta)
Title: Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste (part one)
Rating: R
Word Count: about 9,500 for this part, 14,000 total
Spoilers: The entire series, although it goes AU after Accounting for Lawyers. Begins in early December 2010 and covers several years.
Characters: Britta/Philip, Jeff/Britta, ensemble
Notes: The idea of Britta and Philip was bopping around in my head for a while, but then I read a post on the Community anonymeme that read: “I kinda want a fic where Britta is a single mom who runs a pretentious cafe that doubles as an art gallery for local so-so artists” and then somebody else said they would read that if it was 10,000 words long. And so would I, but I didn’t think anyone would write it, so I did, and kind of got carried away. Apologies in advance. Also I couldn’t remember anything about Philip other than his name, so if my descriptions of him don’t jive with reality, oops.
Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste
part one
Britta doesn’t keep a journal, but in retrospect it sounds like the sort of thing that probably should have been written down, teenybopper-fashion:
Dear Diary,
Remember Philip from Jeff’s lawyer party? The guy who offered me the use of his beach house in exchange for sex? Well guess who I ran into at Whole Foods and then offered to help me carry a huge bag of birdseed to the checkout and then, after I dropped it handing it to him, totally bullshitted to the store manager that the problem was that the bag actually had a hole in it, not that I have the upper body strength of a small flightless bird? That’s right, the very same douche-with-a-beach-house, Philip! He used his lawyer powers for good and I got not only a) a free bag of birdseed, but also b) a coffee date! With a lawyer!
Will write more later but I have an appointment for a mani-pedi. Love you!
XOXO,
Brittles
In adult-fashion, Philip, it turns out, is a really cool guy. Sure, he can manipulate irate store managers, and make drunken (and, in reality, totally false) passes at pretty girls at parties, but he also does a lot of pro bono work for Amnesty International and has great taste in both independent coffee shops and early-90s shoegaze on vinyl. After they finish their sea-salted hot chocolates they walk down the block in gently-falling snow, talking and laughing, breath clouding in front of and then behind them, and it is a legitimately weird moment, like a kind-of Penthouse-y I never thought it would happen to me, but... moment, only chaste: he opens a door for her. Britta stops, confused; they hadn’t even been talking about going inside anywhere, and then she realizes they are standing in front of her very favorite record store ever, Gary’s Bargain Basement Wax (it also says ‘& Smoking Accessories’ on the tattered vinyl awning, but whatever.) Laughing, she steps inside into the hissing warmth of the radiators and that perfect smell of old vinyl and new gig posters and lung-clogging incense, Philip right behind her. He heads straight for the Slowdive and Britta cannot resist smiling into her hand-knit cowl.
And that is that. Basically from that moment surrounded by birdseed at Whole Foods on they are practically inseparable. He likes to play with her hair when they’re lying in bed and listening to records and talking about everything and nothing. She likes to play with his hair, too, clench her fingers in it when they kiss, and he starts to grow it out, even though he jokes that this will just strengthen his status as Office Hippie. She goes out to have a drink with him and his work pals, gets dressed up all in slinky black, dead set on messing with their twisted lawyer minds, and then when they get to the bar it’s a total dive, and full of guys with their ties loosened and colorful T-shirts poking out of the tops of their button-downs, and the lady-lawyers, at least at Philip’s firm, are really cool and smart and love Britta’s Free People wrap-sweater thing, and as it turns out lawyers are not all smarmy douchebags. They are human beings. She leans in to press a kiss to Philip’s cheek and feels his stubble, smells his piney cologne. “Thank you,” she tells the warm spot between the bottom of his ear and the top of his collarbone. “For making me so happy.” And Britta never ever EVER thought she would be That Girl, who blushes when she talks about her boyfriend or who texts him randomly in the middle of the day for no reason whatsoever or who is deliriously happy for long stretches of what should otherwise be boring-ass time, but that is something that Philip brings to the table. He makes her really happy. He makes amazing black bean burgers and he makes her really really happy.
***
Shirley notices first, or she’s the first one to say something about it. It is maybe three weeks after the birdseed saga. The study group is arranged around the table as usual, cramming for the Anthropology final, which is surprisingly going to be based on essays, not dioramas. Britta’s phone buzzes with a text from Philip and she must give it away somehow, because the next thing she knows Shirley is speaking in a voice that is so sweet it’s basically sound-wave-shaped marzipan.
“Oh, Britta, what a lovely smile! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile quite so big, honey,”
Jeff pounces on the end of Shirley’s pronouncement. “Did Urban Outfitters just let you know your monthly shipment of genuine imported jadedness is here?”
Britta rolls her eyes at him. “Actually, Shirley, that was a text message from…” she pauses, chides herself for feeling twelve, summons the strength that let her tapdance in a foam teapot in front of these people. “From my boyfriend,” She makes eye contact with all of them.
Shirley, Abed and Annie all smile. Troy does, too, but not as much as he could. Jeff makes his eyes wide and goes “Awww, Bwitta has a boyfwend,” in a voice almost as treacly as Shirley’s.
“You can say ‘girlfriend,’ Britta,” Pierce says. “We’re a very tolerant group. At last count nearly 33% of my stepchildren were either bi or curious or both,”
Troy nods at that, which seems odd until Britta remembers their living arrangements. “Shut up, Pierce,” she says.
“Where did you meet? Craigslist? The dog pound? Anarchist meeting?” Jeff tears a sheet out of his notebook-it’s the same notebook he’s been using since last year and Britta has never even seen him open it until today.
“What kind of places do you think I hang out at, weirdo? Also, ‘anarchist meeting’ is an oxymoron,”
“You’re an oxymoron,”
Britta just shakes her head and sort of scrunches away from his side of their corner of the table, pushing back in her chair. Abed is watching them closely, eyebrows hovering up around his hairline.
“So, Britta, how did you two meet?” Shirley asks.
“That’s kind of funny, actually. You’ve all met him before,” The happiness is warm inside her all the time now, she can practically see it shining out of her heart sometimes. It’s a Disney-stupid thought, the old her would say, but the old her wasn’t very happy. “I invited him to our holiday party this year, I hope that’s okay, Shirley,”
“Oh, of course. That’s nice! But you said we’ve all met him, is it somebody from Greendale?”
“It’s not Leonard, is it? You know Jeff hates Leonard,” Abed says, and Jeff nods vigorously.
“It’s not Leonard,” Britta is about to tell them but the warmth inside her can’t help but get wrapped in some of her own innate prankishness sometimes. She wants them to guess.
“Starburns?” Annie ventures.
“Gross,” Britta says.
“Chang? The Dean?”
“Do you guys really think my taste in men is that bad?”
Everybody nods, even Jeff, but then everybody else notices that he’s calling himself bad and they all laugh at him. He scowls. “It’s gotta be Duncan. He’s just as pretentious as you are, and you probably think his sweater vests are adorable,”
“It’s Philip, you jerk,” Five of them make blank faces at her. “From Jeff’s old law firm. Remember that party we went to back in the fall? He’s the guy who propositioned me,”
“Eww, Britta! Are you getting paid to have sex? Gross!” Annie crosses her arms and literally looks down her nose at Britta. “That’s illegal and besides, you’re way better than that!”
“It’s not like that, Annie. He’s actually a really nice guy, he was just drunk and having a bad day when he said that to me. We’ve been dating for like three weeks now,” Britta smiles, and old instincts tell her not to smile so much, but it’s that damn happiness, she can’t help it. The smile gets bigger and bigger. It’s like the Grinch’s heart has grown two sizes-and she’s the Grinch. It feels incredible-as incredible as as tapdancing.
“Oh, that’s nice!” (Shirley, of course.)
“Plot twist,” Abed comments, but the corners of his mouth have edged up a little.
“Congrats, Britta,” Troy says. “I’m glad you’re so happy. You deserve it,”
Troy doesn’t have a cynical bone in his body, and Britta can tell that this sincerity is hurting him a little. She knows about the crush, and it’s charming, and if Philip weren’t amazing and Troy wasn’t such a manchild there might’ve been something fun and airy as a funnel cake there, but. Philip. Happiness. Britta tries to put all of those complications into the face she shows Troy.
Jeff is scowling and slouching low in his seat. “That guy is a dickwad, Britta. Believe me,”
“Oh, I’m not so sure that you can be really objective about this. They don’t call it the Jeff Winger Scale of Dickwadiness for nothing,”
“’Scale of Dickwadiness?’”
“Suck it, jackass,” It is amazing how the King of All Douche Media over there can stomp on her little bubble of happiness like an angry toddler. Britta straightens, pulls her jacket tighter. “Anyway, you can all meet him at the party. And you’ll see that he’s not a dickwad, he’s a decent guy who likes me. And I like him, not that it’s any of your business,”
“Yeah, good luck keeping them out of your business, Britta,” Jeff says, quietly, as the rest of them immediately turn to each other and start discussing this most recent turn of events. “If they won’t stay out of my relationships, what makes you think they’ll stay out of yours?”
“My relationships aren’t disgusting and based purely on sex, you animal,”
He just looks over at her, eyes hooded, wearing his flat lawyer stare. She remembers that face during paintball, beneath hers, both close and closed off. Vulnerable and…not. Philip likes to talk dirty and it’s pretty hot because he looks like a slightly boho IT tech, so the dirty talk is not what you expect. Very little about Jeff was ever what Britta expected-she realizes that now, watching him, feeling a flush in her whole body that is, strictly speaking, purely animal, purely sex. He tilts his chin, just barely, and she looks away.
***
Britta is nervous about bringing Philip to the Second Annual Merry End of Semester and Happy New One Party, but Philip himself is even, erm, nervouser. Getting ready, it takes him longer to choose a tie than it does for her to shave her legs and put on tights AND the most minimal of makeup.
“Do you think this one is okay?” He turns away from the bathroom mirror to face her where she’s sitting on the bed, flipping channels for the weather report.
She looks over, takes in his dark jeans, crisp shirt, skinny tie. His hair is thick and longish and a little curly, and his face is just perfect. She uncurls from the bed and goes to wrap her arms around him and kiss him until they both start laughing. “Just relax,” she tells him. “They’re not vicious. They won’t tear you to pieces. You even know Jeff,”
“Mmm, that guy’s a douchebag, honestly,” Philip kisses her temple and they rest against each other for a long moment, and Britta can barely remember the last time there was a guy in her life she could just lean on, literally and metaphorically. Or the last time there was a guy who could lean back and not crush her-literally and metaphorically.
“This party will be fun, I promise,” she says. “You’ll love Shirley, she’s the sweetest thing ever. Annie is totally adorable and Abed has an encyclopedic knowledge of TV-you’ll finally have someone to talk to about your ridiculous love of Whoopi Goldberg on that spaceship show-“
“Could you at least try to remember that it’s called ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation?’” He lets her go and grabs his corduroy sportcoat-the effect should be twee but he’s short, and wide in the shoulders, so overall he looks like an erudite linebacker.
Britta slings her bag across her chest and loops one of her arms through one of his, dragging him toward the door. “For you? I will always try,”
***
The study group seems to love Philip, and sitting next to him on Shirley’s couch, watching Elijah and Jordan perform all of the parts in a frenetic, saccharine Christmas pageant, Britta feels like she belongs. That is it, just a feeling of belonging. A feeling that was never there when she was growing up, fatherless and mostly motherless, a feeling that was never there when she was drifting wherever the currents of indie rock and moderately-addicting substances would take her, a feeling that was totally unfamiliar until Greendale.
“Philip seems really nice,” Troy says, later, coming into the kitchen when Britta is refilling the ice bucket.
“I’m glad you like him, Troy,”
“Yeah, we bonded, I guess. He used to play football, too,”
“Really?”
“Yeah, in high school. Like twenty years ago or whatever, so it wasn’t as cool as it was in the mid-to-late-2000s,”
Britta doesn’t even know where to begin with that sentence. Does Troy really not know that high school football players have been cool since, like, caveman football days? “How many End-Of-Semester-Tinis have you had to drink tonight?”
“Only one,” Troy grabs a handful of pepperoni slices from a denuded party platter and leans against the fridge, watching Britta. “He treats you nice, right?”
“Of course!”
“’Cause if he ever hurts you, I will fuck him up. I told him that, too,”
“Troy!”
“You’re welcome!” He smiles, pops the whole handful of pepperoni in his mouth, and heads back to the living room, leaving Britta stunned. She is still gaping when Jeff comes in, carrying an empty glass.
“Cat got your tongue?”
“Um, kinda! Troy just said that he told Philip that he will fuck him up if Philip ever hurts me!”
Jeff smiles fondly in the direction of the living room. “Our little boy’s growing up,”
“What?”
“But seriously, Britta,” Jeff turns to her-it’s always his physical presence that gets her attention, as much as the force of his personality. “I told Philip the same thing, and I’m willing to bet that Abed did, too, in his own little way, and if Pierce could get his power chair over Shirley’s horribly dated shag carpet, he probably gave Philip a ‘don’t hurt Britta’ speech, too,” He reaches around her for the bottle of knockoff-Macallan that Troy brought just because he could. “Just trying to look out for you,”
“I’m a full-grown adult afforded every legal right granted to me under the U.S. Constitution, not a newborn kitten!” she retorts, after the moment or two it takes to regain her equilibrium, but he’s already got what he came for so she’s just yelling at the back of his stupid jacket as he leaves the kitchen.
Returning to the living room, Britta squeezes in beside Philip again. “What did I miss?”
“Well, they’re trying as hard as they can, but I have to say, it is really difficult for two little boys to play the Three Wise Men,”
Britta darts a kiss onto his cheek. “Thank you,” she says. “For coming here and putting up with this,”
“You,” he says, whispering, turning to look fully at her. “Are the highlight of my year. I wouldn’t miss this for anything,”
***
The next, like, eight or ten months or so go exactly the same way. Tender and blissfully happy. Britta and Philip move in together and they get a CSA membership and early that fall Shirley and Britta can way too many pickles and that is the worst thing that has happened so far that year, period. It is the longest stretch of uncontaminated bliss Britta can remember in her entire life.
Then she turns thirty-one and, as suddenly and stupidly as the punchline in a Cathy cartoon, Britta’s life starts to fall apart again-or at the very least the pieces of the puzzle rearrange themselves and the picture they started out as doesn’t make sense anymore. There’s the whole unplanned-pregnancy-that-forces-her-to-drop-out thing, and the whole shotgun-wedding-for-the-health-insurance-and-hey-they-get-along-great-anyway-so-getting-married-is-no-big-deal, right-thing, and the whole Philip’s-firm-is-sending-him-to-the-Tokyo-office-in-the-beginning-of-her-third-trimester thing.
It’s been a life full of ups and downs so far, and here comes another one: Britta’s water breaks, kind of early, on the deck of a whaling boat that’s been rejiggered into a research vessel by Philip’s present clients, disgruntled Australian expatriate subsurface volcanologists. Try saying that three times fast. Adrift in the Sea of Japan, the pain robbing her of her voice, gripping Philip’s hands so tight she can feel all his knucklebones grinding together, Britta pushes. The ocean is a gray line and the sunless sky is a white line above it, two planes gently rocking in the waves. The captain, who came with the boat, and looks it, holds up a big-ass syringe, like seriously it looks like it could be horse tranquilizer. “Do you want some drugs, lady?” he asks.
Britta laughs. That’s all she can do.
***
Back in Tokyo, in the blinking lights and chaos, Britta and Philip fumble through the early days of parenthood, lost in a baby-centered zone where their old lives seem to fade away into the massive distance between There and Here. It is beautiful and terrible. Usually it is both at the same time. The city is oppressive and gray and concrete, the smog in the air turns Britta’s snot black-she shudders to imagine what it is doing to the baby’s raw new lungs. When Philip burns out at his job they take their first chance to get the hell out of there: the Australians know a beach colony that needs a couple to be caretakers. It’s either that or choose to go home.
The colony is a scatter of bungalows on a beach in Middle of Nowhere, New Zealand and the first time they see it Britta thinks of the second season of Lost and Philip thinks of the treehouse in Swiss Family Robinson. It’s taken uncountable plane and jeep and boat rides to get here, to their home, and the baby is miserable and terrified and Britta knows exactly what that feels like. This was their choice? This toilet-free, apparently clothing-optional (which was not in the brochure) paradise?
The first weekend there Britta is helping Philip hack down some sort of sappy tree so they can build a fence somewhere and her hair gets so full of sap she has to cut it all off herself, with hedge clippers. She ends up looking like an experimental Muppet and when Philip sees her he laughs, which is like the worst thing he could do. Being a mother makes her feel naked all the time, and somehow being without her hair is worse than being naked all the time. The baby cries at the terrible haircut, too, which makes Britta cry-feeling absolutely at the end of her rope, at the end of the world.
This is all without mentioning the fact that while all of the choices she’s ever made in her life are getting rubbed up against each other, abrading each other, she falls head over heels in love with her own kid. With her daughter.
They name her Margaret after Philip’s mother, and they call her Maggie and she has her father’s dark curls and her mother’s mouth and she is just the most amazing thing. Looking at her makes Britta’s heart burst open and feel like a hundred thousand doves are flying out of it and soaring free in the open air, like she’s always falling in love. Life is constantly shitting on her-even in the middle of nowhere there are bills, there are fights, there is an endless string of miserable jobs she takes and then quits because she can’t stand not being there for Maggie-can’t stand being like her own mother-but through it all there is her daughter.
And there is Philip. And something happens, or many things happen, and their combined weight is heavy enough to take down their marriage. It should be stressed that Philip is not a douchebag. Like all of his other lawyer friends, he is human. Somewhere in their shared life, which is often not shared at all, because he is shuttling tourists along the coast or researching the proper techniques to sabotage whaling vessels without harming their crew, and she is trying to get her Montessori teacher certification and maintaining a very-highly-pageranked eco-feminist mommy blog via a capricious dialup connection (and don’t get her started on the term ‘mommy blog’) and taking what feels like millions of photos of Maggie in an effort to capture all of the things that are most intangible about being a mother-somewhere in their shared life they divide again.
In the end-stages of their marriage they abandon ship and move back to Greendale, because they’ve convinced themselves that Greendale is the Band-Aid that will work for them, even though they both know what they really need is a tourniquet.
Their first day back on the ground Britta is astonished at how different everything is-she is different and so is this place. Greendale actually has a cool little downtown now, a square acre that reminds her of Park Slope before Greenpoint became the new Park Slope and Morningside Heights became the new Greenpoint. They find a cute apartment right in the middle of downtown and Britta summons all the dignity afforded her by motherhood and goes over to GCC to try and bullshit the Dean into signing off on her transcripts so she can tell the Montessori people that no, she actually DOES have a bachelor’s degree, and what’s it to you?
While she’s on campus, constantly having to extract Maggie from the apparently-fascinating hedges, an almost nauseating wave of nostalgia swamps her and she heads for the library. Where she finds, much to her surprise, Shirley Bennett signing copies of her latest cookbook for a sizable crowd.
Maggie loves Auntie Shirley and when they’re around her Britta often finds herself audibly sighing in quiet joy. Things are so tense at home that Shirley’s generous smile and warm heart are like quilts she can wrap around herself wherever she goes. And then one day they are on a playdate at Bouncy Castle City and some skinny dillweed in overalls serves her with divorce papers and even though it is not unexpected, it’s still a knife to the gut. It’s still her poor daughter, caught up in the middle. Britta looks over at Maggie, who is holding hands with Elijah and Jordan and trying to jump as high as Miss Mary Mack-so high high high she touched the sky sky sky-and promises herself that she will always teach her daughter that pain and joy are two sides of the same coin. Sometimes you flip the coin and sometimes it balances on one edge.
It is an amicable divorce, and shared custody, and that’s fine. The whole thing breaks her heart, but it is fine. It is birds flying out of her heart all over again. She moves to the other end of the block so things aren’t so confusing for Maggie. Her apartment is a third-floor walkup with high ceilings and big windows, and Maggie’s room has a bay window that overlooks the street. The neighborhood is just beginning to gentrify, it’s very walkable and there is a dog park and an artsy-fartsy cinema and a corner store that sells both organic produce and Phillies Blunts. They’re just a quarter mile or so from the former home of Gary’s Bargain Basement Wax, which is now a Starbucks. Britta gets a miserable job as an admin assistant at the local Green Party headquarters, which is technically not miserable, and also technically not lucrative. But she walks to work, sells her car, saves her money. The good thing about the Montessori method is that Maggie is perfectly happy with, say, drums made out of oatmeal canisters.
There is a storefront for rent in the exact middle of their block. About this time, too, this blurry time in her life, when everywhere she turns there is pain, Britta’s mother passes away.
Britta takes the resulting chunk of money and turns the storefront into a little café and gallery, very consciously opening herself up to every potential disaster written in the fine print on the dozens of contracts and forms she signs. Most new businesses fail within a year, she learned, long ago, in the one practical class she took at Greendale. She is the mother of an almost-four-year-old, what is she doing? What is her plan? What are you doing, Britta? Shirley asks, almost constantly, and then she, the brownie magnate, convinces Pierce to match her own investment in the café, and in return all he asks from Britta is that she name a sandwich after him. He’s the only one who never gave her any crap for dropping out of school, so she does it, gladly.
Other than that she’s not really in touch with any of the Greendale crowd, except for Shirley. That woman is a lifesaver. She has advice on everything from purchasing used baby furniture to writing a business plan, and her brownies are like magical customer-summoning pixie dust. Elijah and Jordan are really good with Maggie, they will sit in a corner of the café and play blocks with her, and Britta never ever thought she would be a mom sipping decaf coffee at three in the afternoon and chatting about mom stuff with another mom, but here she is, and it feels good. At least she isn’t wearing elastic-waist pants. Yet.
***
Pierce comes in on opening day, tall and sort of fadedly handsome, wearing a pinstriped suit and a pinkie ring. This seems like his kind of environment, Britta realizes, a ramshackle place that brings out all of his weird competencies.
“Brittles,” he says, coming up to her at the counter. Business has been less than brisk but she puts on her brightest smile. She wants him to approve of everything, she realizes-maybe it’s some sort of weird daddy-issue thing, but she wants Pierce to like the art student-y oils she’s chosen for the first exhibition, she wants him to like the shabby furniture and the availability of thirty-five different kinds of hot tea.
“Hi, Pierce!” She rushes around the counter to give him a big hug, something she never would have done before…what can she call it? Before she cashed in the insurance on her old life to build a new one? Whatever. “I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me, you know. I never could have done this without you and Shirley believing in me,”
“Anytime,” Pierce says, smiling down on her without a hint of sexism or racism or any other ism. “Now make me a sandwich, woman!”
She serves up the café’s first Hawthorne Wrap. He spends the next hour eating it, extolling its virtues to anyone who walks in, exclaiming over photos of Maggie, and convincing Britta to sign a contract stating that he will be the café’s exclusive moist towelette provider for the next calendar year. On his way out the door, Pierce slings an arm across her shoulders and pulls her close, giving her a light peck on the forehead.
“You done good, kid” he tells her, and then she is very thoroughly goosed.
***
Annie is studying for her CPA and after the café’s been open for three or four months Shirley recruits her to help Britta with the books, and Britta finds that paying Annie is a lot cheaper than throwing away money, which is apparently what was happening when she was trying to keep the books all on her own.
“Thank you so much for your help, Annie. There’s no way I could do this without you,” Britta says, bringing a muffin and a mug full of Orange Zinger over to the corner booth where Annie has set up shop with her laptop and Post-Its and small zippered pouches full of color-coordinated highlighters.
“Oh, I should be thanking you, Britta! Straightening all this stuff out is giving me tons of experience I can add to my resume, and these muffins are really good, too. Plus I really like that little bookstore down the street. Basically it is like a vacation coming down here. The math untangles my brain, the muffins are yummy, and bookstores just make me happy, period.”
The pre-Maggie Britta probably would have had to diagram that sentence just so she could give it a proper mocking, but Not-Quite-Ready-For-Elastic-Waistbands Britta finds herself grinning back at her friend, who truly is blossoming. “I’m glad you like coming here. The café door is always open,”
“Yeah, about that. You may want to invest in some new weatherstripping,” Annie leans forward over the table, radiant with conspiratorial (and actuarial) energy. “It could really help keep your energy bills down this winter,”
***
Business picks up that fall because Greendale Community College, of all places, opens up a city campus two blocks over. At Shirley’s request, Abed’s the next one from the study group to reappear, bringing a camera crew over from his office in the Film Department to tape the café’s first commercial. He stays late with his own rickety old Pentax to shoot roll after roll of Britta, Britta and Maggie, Maggie playing alone, Maggie climbing all over her mother and the tables and the whole café, Maggie being a tiny shining masterpiece in a room full of mediocre-to-occasionally-brilliant art.
“She’s beautiful. Like her mother,” Abed pronounces, clicking away. He has a deft touch-Britta checked out his online portfolio and has already decided on which pieces she wants to display at the café. Privately she thinks his films are still a little weird, but his eye for still photography is delightful. His ability to focus on small things and gather data seems especially suited to capturing little moments, if not necessarily the big picture. She imagines he’s a hell of an adjunct professor.
“Thank you, Abed,”
“These pictures will all be black and white, but once Maggie is old enough to understand, you should tell her that life is not black and white,”
“Is anyone ever really old enough to understand that, Abed?”
He turns away from the viewfinder for once, blinking up at her. He looks exactly the same as he did all those years ago when she asked him for a pencil and ended up telling him her life story. She remembers the first of many Jeff Winger Very Special Speeches: And Abed? Abed’s a shaman.
“That’s a good point, Britta,” A pause, and she can practically see the thoughts churning over the waterfall of his mind in their many idiosyncratic barrels. “You may have inspired my next screenplay,”
Britta laughs, loud and clear and crystalline in the half-empty café, and her daughter looks up at the sound and smiles.
***
One morning a month or two later Britta is putting the sandwich board up in front of the café at opening when a blur in a tracksuit rushes by and then abruptly jogs backwards until it draws even with her again.
“Troy?”
“Britta! I thought that was you! You look great!” He gives her a fierce hug, his polyester clothes crackling. “Do you work here?”
“Yeah. Um, I own here, actually,” How weird is that to say? People truly think she is trustable with a child, with money, with anything? Growing up is weird.
“Wow, awesome! I remember Shirley saying that now, at church I think. She said you had a baby, too, and you don’t even look fat now. Well, Shirley didn’t say that last part,”
Britta errs on the side of discretion. “You go to church with Shirley?”
“Sometimes. She’s really persuasive. One time my doorbell rang and it looked like a pizza guy, and he said someone had ordered and paid for this pizza for me, and I was afraid it was gonna be like a porno situation, but when I opened the box there was a giant cookie inside! And Shirley wrote the name and address of her church on it in icing and I figured I should at least go over there to thank her,”
“That is a very Shirley thing to do,”
“Yeah! She’s awesome!”
His grin is impossible to resist. “She is! Do you want to come inside? I think we have some Gatorade somewhere,”
“I would love to but I have a split time I need to make,” He glances down at his very fancy watch and she catches a glimpse of the disciplined athlete behind the master blanket fort architect. “I’m training for a marathon. Do you want to sponsor me? We’re going to kick pancreatic cancer’s ass!”
“A marathon? Wow, that’s incredible! Sure I’ll sponsor you. Stop back whenever you get the chance, I’m basically always here,”
“Thanks, Britta! It was great to see you again!” He wraps her in a bone-crusher of a hug, gives her a peck on the cheek, and sets off down the block like a compact bolt of lightning. The strength of the hug, the light beaming out of his personality, stay with her for the rest of the day.
***
So this is the shape of her life now: Maggie, the café, her friends, her home. The older she gets the more she realizes that is more than enough, that is plenty. That is everything she needs. Every now and then Shirley will have a potluck after church and she will bring Maggie over there and her little girl will just shine for everyone and all Britta can feel is happiness: that light and warmth in her heart again. And sure, it’s a weird little family that surrounds Maggie-her Dadda and Mumsy in their different houses, her multicultural assortment of aunts and uncles and cousins-but it’s a family, and that’s what matters most.
***
Every now and then it happens: someone who clearly took a wrong turn and ended up in Hippieville shows up in the gallery. Usually they have a dead phone battery or the GPS in their Escalade is broken and they are either entitled or sheepish. This one is tall and bearded and wearing big, stupidly dark cop-style sunglasses, and Britta doesn’t even realize it’s Jeff until he opens his mouth.
“Pardon me, ma’am. I would like one poppyseed baggle, lightly toasted, with cream cheese,” He removes the sunglasses with a flourish and waggles his eyebrows. “I have to be in court in fifteen minutes so make it snappy, sunshine,”
His hairline’s gone back a little, but other than that and the frankly indescribable beard he looks the same, overdressed and overconfident and overwhelming. She scoots around the counter to hug him and finds herself swallowed up in his trench coat instead. Burberry. Of course. He smells expensive, so that hasn’t changed, either.
“So, you look great,” he says. “Great, great, great,” and she suddenly realizes that he’s nervous.
“You do, too. Going to court, you said? You on the right side or the wrong side of the law this time?” She goes back behind the counter to get his bagel. Her staff gave her quite a lot of crap for the way she pronounces it-it actually does say ‘baggle’ on the giant chalkboard that is the menu.
“Oh, Britta, when will you ever learn? I’m always on my side of the law,” Jeff leans forward, elbows on the glass case that displays Shirley’s confectionary delights, right over the sign that says Please do not lean on the glass.
“Don’t lean, please,” Britta says, gesturing with one elbow as she loads the bagel in the toaster.
“
Oh, okay,” He straightens and looks around, and a silence knits itself into uncomfortable existence between them. He asks for a black coffee, and then surprises her by fishing a reusable travel mug out of his perfectly-weathered leather messenger bag. At her raised eyebrow, he says
“You think me using a reusable cup is crazy, well, wait till you hear why I have to get to court,”
“You gotta bail out some jailbait girlfriend?” She doesn’t know why she says it, it’s assholish and dumb, but either he doesn’t react or, more likely, she doesn’t know how to read him anymore. Britta fills his mug-it’s one of those shiny aluminum bullet-like jobs, free of logos or even fingerprints.
Jeff checks his watch, fishes a business card and five bucks out of one pocket and slides them toward her across the counter. He grabs his bagel and coffee and turns to go, calling over his shoulder: “I really do have to go, I just wanted to see you for myself. Okay if I come by later?”
“Um, sure!” She calls back, and watches him go, noticing that the shop windows need to be washed. Britta adds that to her to-do list, gets distracted by a trollish comment posted to her blog, and just generally gets caught up in everything. It’s one of her employees who brings her the business card later, around lunchtime: Jeffrey R. Winger, Public Defender.
Unwittingly, Britta feels her face shape itself into a smile.
***
“So, do you know that I have a kid?” she asks Jeff, when he comes back as she’s locking up.
“Mmm, Shirley may have mentioned that in one of the ninety-four text messages she sent over the last six months, ordering me to come over here,”
“Ninety-four? That seems excessive, even for Shirley,”
“I can’t even begin to count the ones she sent saying I need to be nice and not destroy your fragile ego, but to be honest, Britta, your ego doesn’t look very fragile to me,”
Britta pauses, looking at him across the empty café. “You can see my ego?” It’s easier to joke than to remark on the fact that Shirley apparently
thinks that her ego has the tensile strength of a used coffee filter.
Jeff waves a hand dismissively. She remembers his hands, how he uses them to say things his mouth won’t. “Anyway, I know you have a kid. Congratulations, and when can I meet her? I need to see if she’s inherited your love of leather jackets.”
“Well, you’ll have to wait a bit, she’s staying with her father this week. I have her next week,”
“Poor kid,” Jeff says. He takes off his coat and sweeps two of the chairs she’s just upended onto the tables back into their normal position.
“What do you mean, ‘poor kid?’ We’re doing the best we can, okay? I’m doing the best I can. And what are you doing, I spend twelve hours a day here, I don’t want to be here any longer,”
“Sheesh,” he puts his hands up, palms toward her. His cuffs are rolled up and he is wearing a sweater vest that makes his facial hair look even more professorial and bizarre. “I’m just saying, I’ve been that kid with divorced parents, and it sucks. I’m sure you and Philip are trying a lot harder than my parents ever did, but it’s still going to suck for her. Did you want to go to a bar or something?”
“What are you doing? Are you hitting on me?” It happens a lot still, but Britta doesn’t have her radar out for it most times and honestly she’s not as interested in dating now, and doesn’t have the energy, between Maggie and the café-that boring mom cliché is true for her, at least. She narrows her eyes at him. “And second of all, you don’t have any business telling me that things are going to suck for my kid. You’ve never even met her, you shithead!”
He has the grace to not reply to that right away, and Britta plops herself down in the chair across from him. “Jeff. What is going on here? Why are you here, now, today?”
“There was just something about that ninety-fourth text message that I couldn’t ignore,” Abruptly he looks away from her. “All I’m trying to say is welcome back, okay? Forget all that stuff about how much your kid sucks or whatever. Just…welcome back, Britta. We missed you,”
Britta rubs at a smudge on the table. “So who is ‘we?’” she asks, because she knows he’s never there at Shirley’s potlucks or Troy’s lacrosse games or Abed’s movie nights or any of the other times they all get together and try to ignore the tall, spiky-haired hole in most conversations and every misadventure.
He still won’t look at her. Maybe Jeff is now a little bit of a coward; Britta feels it too, a lot, this sense that strength needs to be saved for the fights that matter. “It’s just me,” he says. “Just me. I missed you, okay?”
“I missed you, too,” And she doesn’t smile like she might’ve once-but he looks up at her, and that releases a little bit of the pressure on her heart.
***
The next week Jeff stops in on Monday night, and after she closes they walk down the block to her place in silence and snow, and it’s the shortest Britta’s ever felt walking beside Jeff, since she gave up stripper heels around the end of her second trimester. She has a vague memory of her last class at Greendale-something about semiotics or gender or both, or maybe it was air-conditioner repair-and of walking out of that class, tottering and awkward, and seeing Jeff leaning in a very Jeff way against the wall outside. He’d grabbed her bag and textbook and walked with her to the study room, exercising his special gift for maintaining inconsequential patter. She remembers thinking then that this was the sweetest thing he’d ever done for her, erecting a bulwark of bullshit around them to keep her from crying. She remembers thinking then that they had been best friends once, but she had Philip now, and a baby, and a life ahead of her.
Britta bumps Jeff’s arm with her shoulder, struck by the sense memory of how many times she did the exact same thing in her old life, which feels like three or four lifetimes ago, now. There is something comforting about slipping back into an old familiar habit-she supposes it’s the faint glamour nostalgia casts over everything. It’s not like their friendship was a bed of roses, but it was a big part of her life for a long time.
“I’m glad you’re back in my life,” she tells him. “But you seem kind of, um, out of it, I guess. You seem like…not you,”
Snow catches in his hair as he looks down and over at her. “You’re just not used to me. This is New Jeff. I’m a public defender now, remember. I’m humbled. I serve mankind,”
“Humankind,” she says, automatically, and he laughs. “That does seem like an odd job for you, honestly,”
“I owed the D.A. a favor,”
“I’m sure there’s a story there,”
They pause at a curb, waiting for traffic to slow, and he looks over and down at her. “Not a very good one. He’s yet another dirtbag I busted out of a DWI conviction on a technicality,”
“Jeff Winger, keeping the streets safe for everyone,” Britta murmurs, but she’s the one who flips off the car that honks at them as they jaywalk across the street.
***
When they get to her place, Britta’s sitter makes a very surprised face when she sees Jeff, and Britta has to wonder how long it will take for an ugly rumor to spread over her building and then down the block-the sitter is a neighbor girl who loves to gossip. Britta tips extra and hurries the girl out the door.
Jeff’s face when he sees Maggie is something Britta knows she will try to remember forever. Her daughter is sleeping, which if that adorable sight doesn’t elicit some sort of instinctive emotional response in you means you should probably get your vital signs checked by a professional.
The sight of Maggie sleeping has been known to raise the blood sugar of diabetics to dangerous levels. No really, she’s that adorable.
“Nicely done, Perry,” Jeff whispers. “Your kid hit it big in the genetic lottery, that’s for sure,”
“She is kinda cute, isn’t she?”
“As a button. I can’t wait until she starts getting way into princesses and unicorns and you have to try and explain to her that royalty only exists to oppress the working classes and unicorns are about as real as Social Security will be twenty years,”
Britta laughs and quickly ushers Jeff out of Maggie’s room before she wakes up. The hallway light is much brighter than Maggie’s nightlight and they stand there blinking at each other for a moment.
“Twenty years. That’s about when you’ll be needing Social Security, right?” Jeff continues, and it’s almost like something slides back into place or an out-of-time drummer finally quits zoning out and starts playing with the band again.
“You’ll need it before I do. And you work for the government now, which basically means you’ll never retire,”
That’s the way the rest of the evening goes, as they share a pot of tea in her tiny kitchen: banter. Britta supposes it is Jeff’s real way of saying Welcome home.
***
Britta has a New Year’s open house for the café, and invites all the study group. Even Jeff, without telling everyone else. Which feels stupid and sitcom-y and ridiculous, but she does it anyway, because it needs to be done.
People are there, friends and customers and artists and people walking in off the street, and Britta is having to be a social butterfly-which, to be honest, is not the easiest thing for her-and then she is mid-sentence with her local councilwoman, trying to convince her that the block needs more streetlights, when a small, sturdy body impacts with her legs.
“Hi, Mumsy!”
“Hi, Sweetie!” Britta sweeps Maggie up into her arms and drops a kiss on her cheek, searching for Philip. He smiles over from where he’s stationed himself at the cheese platter.
“Dadda got me a bunny!”
“Can I see it? Did you leave it in the car?”
“No, it’s a real bunny! Her name is Floppa!”
What? Britta begs the councilwoman’s pardon and sets Maggie down-she’s getting heavy, when did her baby get this old? “I need to talk to your father about this, okay, sweetie? Will you go color with Elijah and Jordan?”
“ELIJAHANDJORDAN!” She goes running off like she just found out that they’re made of candy or something. Of course she’ll go color with them, they’re her favorite playthings. Well, that was before Floppa.
“A bunny? Really?” She’s so irked she can’t even say hello-where does he think that rodent is going to stay, at her place? Or is it going to get shunted back and forth down the block, too?
“Relax, Britta, just breathe,” Philip holds up both hands, palms outward. “I had a bunny when I was a kid, too. They’re no big deal. It’s not like I bought her a dog,”
“It better be staying at your house, and you better be the one to explain that to her,”
“Already did, okay? I know you’re all tense because of this big party but trust me, I’m handling it. You look great, by the way. Thanks for inviting me,”
He can do this, he’s always been able to do this, send her all over the emotional map. It’s a talent not a lot of people have and she mentally chastises herself, absently smoothing her dress over her hips. It’s boatnecked organic linen, with tights and tall, ass-kicking boots that cost way too much but were totally worth it. Philip looks good, too, in his rumpled shirt and tie, suit jacket slung over one arm. He bounced back faster from the divorce than she did, Britta supposes-he’s even been on a few dates, but nothing’s taken. She doesn’t quite know what or how to feel about that, about the whole divorce, really. It’s much better that they’re not together all the time now, much better that they’re not stuck on an island with a crying baby and the most annoying group of tourists anyone could possible imagine-seriously, people, Crocodile Dundee impressions are not funny the first time, let alone the five-hundredth, and Crocodile Dundee was actually from Australia, not New Zealand, something Britta has pointed out approximately a million times-anyway, they are better apart. They are a team apart, if that makes any sense.
“Okay,” she says. “You’re welcome,” Should she hug him? Shake hands? Fist bump? Ugghh, this is weird. Growing up is so weird.
“Go mingle, Britta,” Philip says. “I’m perfectly fine here with the Double Gloucester,” He makes a wide, all-encompassing gesture with his cracker, and for a moment he’s kind of that goofy oddball who made her heart glow all over again. She smiles and goes in search of the councilwoman.
***
Britta is in back, hustling more twee appetizers onto trays for the waitstaff, when she hears a crash and an unmistakable scream. She rushes out into the café, expecting to see Annie and a broken wine glass. What she finds is the study group, arrayed in a semi-circle around Jeff, who is on his knees, clutching what looks like a broken nose and getting blood all over her spotless floor. Goddammit.
Pierce is cradling his left hand in his right. “You sonofabitch,” he half-growls, and it’s pitched so low Britta can barely hear it. “How dare you say that?”
People around them are staring, Philip has picked up Maggie and is looking at Britta uncertainly from across the room. “Pierce?” she asks, hesitant, afraid to break the spell.
“This douchebag,” Pierce replies, loudly this time, so everyone in the place can hear. “Says the Hawthorne Wrap sounds disgusting,”
Nobody moves for a long moment. Britta vaguely remembers the sensation-she used to tell Philip it was a Greendale moment. Annie and
Shirley are both shaking their heads at Jeff.
It’s Troy who cuts the tension. “Stating the truth is not a punching offense, man,” he tells Pierce, going to help Jeff up. “Kielbasa and sesame do not belong together,”
Pierce uses his long arms to gather them all into a semi-huddle, and Britta senses the crowd sort of start breathing and small-talking again, probably relieved Pierce isn’t moving on to critiquing their personal sandwich choices. “Irregardless of how wrong Troy is, people, are we really going to let Jeff just waltz in here like nothing’s happened?”
“I’m right here, Pierce, I can hear you,” It comes out like Elmer Fudd because he’s got napkins pressed all over his face. Jeff rolls his eyes.
“What are you doing here?” Shirley asks, straightening to her full height.
“Yeah, who said you could be here?” Annie cross her arms and stares him down.
“Britta said I could be here, jeez, relax, okay? Right, Britta?”
Five pairs of eyes swivel in her direction. Had she forgotten what this felt like, too? Something else lets go in her heart. “He’s right, you guys. I invited him,”
“Britta!” Annie looks really disappointed in her, kind of in a motherly way, actually, and it’s weird and comforting at the same time.
Abed is looking back and forth between Britta and Jeff. “Why did you invite him?”
Britta sighs, and does a thing she learned in prenatal yoga where you imagine that roots are growing down through the soles of your feet, holding you solidly down. “Because you guys need to talk to him. You need to forgive him for whatever bullshit he did to you, because I doubt it was worth all the pain you’ve put yourselves through missing him, or how much it’s hurt him to miss you, but don’t ask him to admit it or he’ll get all red in the face and we’ll all get embarrassed and it will be awkward. And as a study group we were always a little awkward, but we’re not a study group anymore, okay?” She takes a deep breath and looks around at all their dear faces. “We’re grownups now,”
There’s a moment where it seems like this Winger-esque speech might be working, but it’s Troy, dependable ol’ Troy, who shakes his head first. “Speak for yourself, lady. I may be getting older, but I refuse to grow up. And you can’t tell us what to do, you can’t tell us we have to forgive him. He was our friend! Friends don’t bail on each other.”
“He abandoned us, Britta,” Shirley says, but she’s looking at Jeff, who isn’t making eye contact with any of them. He’s staring at the tin ceiling like there might be some sort of time machine up there. “As soon as he found out he could get that job, he told us Greendale was cramping his style and got the hell out of Dodge. He just said he was gonna go travel around the world or something. To be honest, I thought he was going after you. And then the week after that Abed got jury duty and found out the truth,”
Abed nods somberly. “A Winger suit is distinctive, even from half a courthouse away,”
“Yeah, I know, my tailor’s awesome. Listen, guys, this is ridiculous. I think my nose is legitimately broken, and you are obviously not happy with me right now. So, if it’s all right with all of you, I’m just going to leave,” He doesn’t wait to see, just grabs his jacket and fumbles one-armed for the door.
“Jeff’s right,” Annie says, as they’re all standing around, just kind of staring at each other in bewilderment. “This is ridiculous. And Britta’s right. We’re grownups,”
“And Jeff is a big baby,” Pierce says.
Shirley sighs. “I thought we had moved past this, people. It was years ago that all this nonsense happened. I thought he could be the bigger man just this once. We're always the bigger man,”
Pierce snickers, but when he speaks, it’s to offer up one of his strangely lucid theories on life: “If we were all the bigger man all the time, there’d be no room for us to be together,”
***
Things are, naturally, tense for a while, and although Britta keeps going to Annie’s stitch-and-bitch nights and takes Maggie over to Pierce’s house to check out his mini-planetarium, the entire group doesn’t really get together. Their whole vibe is thrown off. Britta feels a sort of gut-level shadow emotion, telling her to start plotting to get them all back together, but she doesn’t act on it. And it hurts, not being around all of them, but she tells herself that the hurt is a wound, scarring.
***
One night in the coldest, darkest part of winter, Britta replaces one installation with another. The old paintings on display were watercolors and she really likes these heavy new abstract oils better. They look like the fingerpaintings of very serious children. She finishes with the last one, steps back to make sure it’s straight, and carries her stepladder and hammer to the back room.
When she comes back out, Jeff is at the counter, holding out a handful of rather bedraggled daffodils.
“Um, what’s this?”
“This is what’s left from the flowers I gave everybody,”
“’Everybody?’”
“Yeah, everybody. You know, those knuckleheads we used to study Spanish with back in the Dark Ages when we all minded our own business?”
Britta crosses her arms. “You were the only one who ever minded your own business, Confidentiality Spice,”
Jeff sighs. “Just take them, okay? I apologized. Like they wanted me to. I went to each of them and said, ‘I’m sorry I was an asshole.’ So here, Britta. I’m sorry I was an asshole,”
“Um,” She inspects the flowers-it’s right after St. Patrick’s Day, so she imagines they are leftovers. But it’s the thought that counts, right?
“Thank you. Apology accepted,”
“Thus ends another scintillating episode of Days of our Lives,” Jeff mutters. “Are we friends again?”
“Did all of them forgive you already?”
“Shirley and Abed are still holding out but just give me time, they’ll rejoin Team Winger one of these days,” He starts to roll his eyes but catches himself, and there’s something in the vulnerability of that gesture that reminds her of the very first day they met, they day he played the one sincere card in his deck of complete and utter bullshit.
“Okay,” Britta puts the daffodils in a handy water glass, rearranges their bruised petals. “We’re friends again,”
***END OF PART ONE***
Click this hyperlink to be whisked away to part two!
Rating: R
Word Count: about 9,500 for this part, 14,000 total
Spoilers: The entire series, although it goes AU after Accounting for Lawyers. Begins in early December 2010 and covers several years.
Characters: Britta/Philip, Jeff/Britta, ensemble
Notes: The idea of Britta and Philip was bopping around in my head for a while, but then I read a post on the Community anonymeme that read: “I kinda want a fic where Britta is a single mom who runs a pretentious cafe that doubles as an art gallery for local so-so artists” and then somebody else said they would read that if it was 10,000 words long. And so would I, but I didn’t think anyone would write it, so I did, and kind of got carried away. Apologies in advance. Also I couldn’t remember anything about Philip other than his name, so if my descriptions of him don’t jive with reality, oops.
Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste
part one
Britta doesn’t keep a journal, but in retrospect it sounds like the sort of thing that probably should have been written down, teenybopper-fashion:
Dear Diary,
Remember Philip from Jeff’s lawyer party? The guy who offered me the use of his beach house in exchange for sex? Well guess who I ran into at Whole Foods and then offered to help me carry a huge bag of birdseed to the checkout and then, after I dropped it handing it to him, totally bullshitted to the store manager that the problem was that the bag actually had a hole in it, not that I have the upper body strength of a small flightless bird? That’s right, the very same douche-with-a-beach-house, Philip! He used his lawyer powers for good and I got not only a) a free bag of birdseed, but also b) a coffee date! With a lawyer!
Will write more later but I have an appointment for a mani-pedi. Love you!
XOXO,
Brittles
In adult-fashion, Philip, it turns out, is a really cool guy. Sure, he can manipulate irate store managers, and make drunken (and, in reality, totally false) passes at pretty girls at parties, but he also does a lot of pro bono work for Amnesty International and has great taste in both independent coffee shops and early-90s shoegaze on vinyl. After they finish their sea-salted hot chocolates they walk down the block in gently-falling snow, talking and laughing, breath clouding in front of and then behind them, and it is a legitimately weird moment, like a kind-of Penthouse-y I never thought it would happen to me, but... moment, only chaste: he opens a door for her. Britta stops, confused; they hadn’t even been talking about going inside anywhere, and then she realizes they are standing in front of her very favorite record store ever, Gary’s Bargain Basement Wax (it also says ‘& Smoking Accessories’ on the tattered vinyl awning, but whatever.) Laughing, she steps inside into the hissing warmth of the radiators and that perfect smell of old vinyl and new gig posters and lung-clogging incense, Philip right behind her. He heads straight for the Slowdive and Britta cannot resist smiling into her hand-knit cowl.
And that is that. Basically from that moment surrounded by birdseed at Whole Foods on they are practically inseparable. He likes to play with her hair when they’re lying in bed and listening to records and talking about everything and nothing. She likes to play with his hair, too, clench her fingers in it when they kiss, and he starts to grow it out, even though he jokes that this will just strengthen his status as Office Hippie. She goes out to have a drink with him and his work pals, gets dressed up all in slinky black, dead set on messing with their twisted lawyer minds, and then when they get to the bar it’s a total dive, and full of guys with their ties loosened and colorful T-shirts poking out of the tops of their button-downs, and the lady-lawyers, at least at Philip’s firm, are really cool and smart and love Britta’s Free People wrap-sweater thing, and as it turns out lawyers are not all smarmy douchebags. They are human beings. She leans in to press a kiss to Philip’s cheek and feels his stubble, smells his piney cologne. “Thank you,” she tells the warm spot between the bottom of his ear and the top of his collarbone. “For making me so happy.” And Britta never ever EVER thought she would be That Girl, who blushes when she talks about her boyfriend or who texts him randomly in the middle of the day for no reason whatsoever or who is deliriously happy for long stretches of what should otherwise be boring-ass time, but that is something that Philip brings to the table. He makes her really happy. He makes amazing black bean burgers and he makes her really really happy.
***
Shirley notices first, or she’s the first one to say something about it. It is maybe three weeks after the birdseed saga. The study group is arranged around the table as usual, cramming for the Anthropology final, which is surprisingly going to be based on essays, not dioramas. Britta’s phone buzzes with a text from Philip and she must give it away somehow, because the next thing she knows Shirley is speaking in a voice that is so sweet it’s basically sound-wave-shaped marzipan.
“Oh, Britta, what a lovely smile! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile quite so big, honey,”
Jeff pounces on the end of Shirley’s pronouncement. “Did Urban Outfitters just let you know your monthly shipment of genuine imported jadedness is here?”
Britta rolls her eyes at him. “Actually, Shirley, that was a text message from…” she pauses, chides herself for feeling twelve, summons the strength that let her tapdance in a foam teapot in front of these people. “From my boyfriend,” She makes eye contact with all of them.
Shirley, Abed and Annie all smile. Troy does, too, but not as much as he could. Jeff makes his eyes wide and goes “Awww, Bwitta has a boyfwend,” in a voice almost as treacly as Shirley’s.
“You can say ‘girlfriend,’ Britta,” Pierce says. “We’re a very tolerant group. At last count nearly 33% of my stepchildren were either bi or curious or both,”
Troy nods at that, which seems odd until Britta remembers their living arrangements. “Shut up, Pierce,” she says.
“Where did you meet? Craigslist? The dog pound? Anarchist meeting?” Jeff tears a sheet out of his notebook-it’s the same notebook he’s been using since last year and Britta has never even seen him open it until today.
“What kind of places do you think I hang out at, weirdo? Also, ‘anarchist meeting’ is an oxymoron,”
“You’re an oxymoron,”
Britta just shakes her head and sort of scrunches away from his side of their corner of the table, pushing back in her chair. Abed is watching them closely, eyebrows hovering up around his hairline.
“So, Britta, how did you two meet?” Shirley asks.
“That’s kind of funny, actually. You’ve all met him before,” The happiness is warm inside her all the time now, she can practically see it shining out of her heart sometimes. It’s a Disney-stupid thought, the old her would say, but the old her wasn’t very happy. “I invited him to our holiday party this year, I hope that’s okay, Shirley,”
“Oh, of course. That’s nice! But you said we’ve all met him, is it somebody from Greendale?”
“It’s not Leonard, is it? You know Jeff hates Leonard,” Abed says, and Jeff nods vigorously.
“It’s not Leonard,” Britta is about to tell them but the warmth inside her can’t help but get wrapped in some of her own innate prankishness sometimes. She wants them to guess.
“Starburns?” Annie ventures.
“Gross,” Britta says.
“Chang? The Dean?”
“Do you guys really think my taste in men is that bad?”
Everybody nods, even Jeff, but then everybody else notices that he’s calling himself bad and they all laugh at him. He scowls. “It’s gotta be Duncan. He’s just as pretentious as you are, and you probably think his sweater vests are adorable,”
“It’s Philip, you jerk,” Five of them make blank faces at her. “From Jeff’s old law firm. Remember that party we went to back in the fall? He’s the guy who propositioned me,”
“Eww, Britta! Are you getting paid to have sex? Gross!” Annie crosses her arms and literally looks down her nose at Britta. “That’s illegal and besides, you’re way better than that!”
“It’s not like that, Annie. He’s actually a really nice guy, he was just drunk and having a bad day when he said that to me. We’ve been dating for like three weeks now,” Britta smiles, and old instincts tell her not to smile so much, but it’s that damn happiness, she can’t help it. The smile gets bigger and bigger. It’s like the Grinch’s heart has grown two sizes-and she’s the Grinch. It feels incredible-as incredible as as tapdancing.
“Oh, that’s nice!” (Shirley, of course.)
“Plot twist,” Abed comments, but the corners of his mouth have edged up a little.
“Congrats, Britta,” Troy says. “I’m glad you’re so happy. You deserve it,”
Troy doesn’t have a cynical bone in his body, and Britta can tell that this sincerity is hurting him a little. She knows about the crush, and it’s charming, and if Philip weren’t amazing and Troy wasn’t such a manchild there might’ve been something fun and airy as a funnel cake there, but. Philip. Happiness. Britta tries to put all of those complications into the face she shows Troy.
Jeff is scowling and slouching low in his seat. “That guy is a dickwad, Britta. Believe me,”
“Oh, I’m not so sure that you can be really objective about this. They don’t call it the Jeff Winger Scale of Dickwadiness for nothing,”
“’Scale of Dickwadiness?’”
“Suck it, jackass,” It is amazing how the King of All Douche Media over there can stomp on her little bubble of happiness like an angry toddler. Britta straightens, pulls her jacket tighter. “Anyway, you can all meet him at the party. And you’ll see that he’s not a dickwad, he’s a decent guy who likes me. And I like him, not that it’s any of your business,”
“Yeah, good luck keeping them out of your business, Britta,” Jeff says, quietly, as the rest of them immediately turn to each other and start discussing this most recent turn of events. “If they won’t stay out of my relationships, what makes you think they’ll stay out of yours?”
“My relationships aren’t disgusting and based purely on sex, you animal,”
He just looks over at her, eyes hooded, wearing his flat lawyer stare. She remembers that face during paintball, beneath hers, both close and closed off. Vulnerable and…not. Philip likes to talk dirty and it’s pretty hot because he looks like a slightly boho IT tech, so the dirty talk is not what you expect. Very little about Jeff was ever what Britta expected-she realizes that now, watching him, feeling a flush in her whole body that is, strictly speaking, purely animal, purely sex. He tilts his chin, just barely, and she looks away.
***
Britta is nervous about bringing Philip to the Second Annual Merry End of Semester and Happy New One Party, but Philip himself is even, erm, nervouser. Getting ready, it takes him longer to choose a tie than it does for her to shave her legs and put on tights AND the most minimal of makeup.
“Do you think this one is okay?” He turns away from the bathroom mirror to face her where she’s sitting on the bed, flipping channels for the weather report.
She looks over, takes in his dark jeans, crisp shirt, skinny tie. His hair is thick and longish and a little curly, and his face is just perfect. She uncurls from the bed and goes to wrap her arms around him and kiss him until they both start laughing. “Just relax,” she tells him. “They’re not vicious. They won’t tear you to pieces. You even know Jeff,”
“Mmm, that guy’s a douchebag, honestly,” Philip kisses her temple and they rest against each other for a long moment, and Britta can barely remember the last time there was a guy in her life she could just lean on, literally and metaphorically. Or the last time there was a guy who could lean back and not crush her-literally and metaphorically.
“This party will be fun, I promise,” she says. “You’ll love Shirley, she’s the sweetest thing ever. Annie is totally adorable and Abed has an encyclopedic knowledge of TV-you’ll finally have someone to talk to about your ridiculous love of Whoopi Goldberg on that spaceship show-“
“Could you at least try to remember that it’s called ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation?’” He lets her go and grabs his corduroy sportcoat-the effect should be twee but he’s short, and wide in the shoulders, so overall he looks like an erudite linebacker.
Britta slings her bag across her chest and loops one of her arms through one of his, dragging him toward the door. “For you? I will always try,”
***
The study group seems to love Philip, and sitting next to him on Shirley’s couch, watching Elijah and Jordan perform all of the parts in a frenetic, saccharine Christmas pageant, Britta feels like she belongs. That is it, just a feeling of belonging. A feeling that was never there when she was growing up, fatherless and mostly motherless, a feeling that was never there when she was drifting wherever the currents of indie rock and moderately-addicting substances would take her, a feeling that was totally unfamiliar until Greendale.
“Philip seems really nice,” Troy says, later, coming into the kitchen when Britta is refilling the ice bucket.
“I’m glad you like him, Troy,”
“Yeah, we bonded, I guess. He used to play football, too,”
“Really?”
“Yeah, in high school. Like twenty years ago or whatever, so it wasn’t as cool as it was in the mid-to-late-2000s,”
Britta doesn’t even know where to begin with that sentence. Does Troy really not know that high school football players have been cool since, like, caveman football days? “How many End-Of-Semester-Tinis have you had to drink tonight?”
“Only one,” Troy grabs a handful of pepperoni slices from a denuded party platter and leans against the fridge, watching Britta. “He treats you nice, right?”
“Of course!”
“’Cause if he ever hurts you, I will fuck him up. I told him that, too,”
“Troy!”
“You’re welcome!” He smiles, pops the whole handful of pepperoni in his mouth, and heads back to the living room, leaving Britta stunned. She is still gaping when Jeff comes in, carrying an empty glass.
“Cat got your tongue?”
“Um, kinda! Troy just said that he told Philip that he will fuck him up if Philip ever hurts me!”
Jeff smiles fondly in the direction of the living room. “Our little boy’s growing up,”
“What?”
“But seriously, Britta,” Jeff turns to her-it’s always his physical presence that gets her attention, as much as the force of his personality. “I told Philip the same thing, and I’m willing to bet that Abed did, too, in his own little way, and if Pierce could get his power chair over Shirley’s horribly dated shag carpet, he probably gave Philip a ‘don’t hurt Britta’ speech, too,” He reaches around her for the bottle of knockoff-Macallan that Troy brought just because he could. “Just trying to look out for you,”
“I’m a full-grown adult afforded every legal right granted to me under the U.S. Constitution, not a newborn kitten!” she retorts, after the moment or two it takes to regain her equilibrium, but he’s already got what he came for so she’s just yelling at the back of his stupid jacket as he leaves the kitchen.
Returning to the living room, Britta squeezes in beside Philip again. “What did I miss?”
“Well, they’re trying as hard as they can, but I have to say, it is really difficult for two little boys to play the Three Wise Men,”
Britta darts a kiss onto his cheek. “Thank you,” she says. “For coming here and putting up with this,”
“You,” he says, whispering, turning to look fully at her. “Are the highlight of my year. I wouldn’t miss this for anything,”
***
The next, like, eight or ten months or so go exactly the same way. Tender and blissfully happy. Britta and Philip move in together and they get a CSA membership and early that fall Shirley and Britta can way too many pickles and that is the worst thing that has happened so far that year, period. It is the longest stretch of uncontaminated bliss Britta can remember in her entire life.
Then she turns thirty-one and, as suddenly and stupidly as the punchline in a Cathy cartoon, Britta’s life starts to fall apart again-or at the very least the pieces of the puzzle rearrange themselves and the picture they started out as doesn’t make sense anymore. There’s the whole unplanned-pregnancy-that-forces-her-to-drop-out thing, and the whole shotgun-wedding-for-the-health-insurance-and-hey-they-get-along-great-anyway-so-getting-married-is-no-big-deal, right-thing, and the whole Philip’s-firm-is-sending-him-to-the-Tokyo-office-in-the-beginning-of-her-third-trimester thing.
It’s been a life full of ups and downs so far, and here comes another one: Britta’s water breaks, kind of early, on the deck of a whaling boat that’s been rejiggered into a research vessel by Philip’s present clients, disgruntled Australian expatriate subsurface volcanologists. Try saying that three times fast. Adrift in the Sea of Japan, the pain robbing her of her voice, gripping Philip’s hands so tight she can feel all his knucklebones grinding together, Britta pushes. The ocean is a gray line and the sunless sky is a white line above it, two planes gently rocking in the waves. The captain, who came with the boat, and looks it, holds up a big-ass syringe, like seriously it looks like it could be horse tranquilizer. “Do you want some drugs, lady?” he asks.
Britta laughs. That’s all she can do.
***
Back in Tokyo, in the blinking lights and chaos, Britta and Philip fumble through the early days of parenthood, lost in a baby-centered zone where their old lives seem to fade away into the massive distance between There and Here. It is beautiful and terrible. Usually it is both at the same time. The city is oppressive and gray and concrete, the smog in the air turns Britta’s snot black-she shudders to imagine what it is doing to the baby’s raw new lungs. When Philip burns out at his job they take their first chance to get the hell out of there: the Australians know a beach colony that needs a couple to be caretakers. It’s either that or choose to go home.
The colony is a scatter of bungalows on a beach in Middle of Nowhere, New Zealand and the first time they see it Britta thinks of the second season of Lost and Philip thinks of the treehouse in Swiss Family Robinson. It’s taken uncountable plane and jeep and boat rides to get here, to their home, and the baby is miserable and terrified and Britta knows exactly what that feels like. This was their choice? This toilet-free, apparently clothing-optional (which was not in the brochure) paradise?
The first weekend there Britta is helping Philip hack down some sort of sappy tree so they can build a fence somewhere and her hair gets so full of sap she has to cut it all off herself, with hedge clippers. She ends up looking like an experimental Muppet and when Philip sees her he laughs, which is like the worst thing he could do. Being a mother makes her feel naked all the time, and somehow being without her hair is worse than being naked all the time. The baby cries at the terrible haircut, too, which makes Britta cry-feeling absolutely at the end of her rope, at the end of the world.
This is all without mentioning the fact that while all of the choices she’s ever made in her life are getting rubbed up against each other, abrading each other, she falls head over heels in love with her own kid. With her daughter.
They name her Margaret after Philip’s mother, and they call her Maggie and she has her father’s dark curls and her mother’s mouth and she is just the most amazing thing. Looking at her makes Britta’s heart burst open and feel like a hundred thousand doves are flying out of it and soaring free in the open air, like she’s always falling in love. Life is constantly shitting on her-even in the middle of nowhere there are bills, there are fights, there is an endless string of miserable jobs she takes and then quits because she can’t stand not being there for Maggie-can’t stand being like her own mother-but through it all there is her daughter.
And there is Philip. And something happens, or many things happen, and their combined weight is heavy enough to take down their marriage. It should be stressed that Philip is not a douchebag. Like all of his other lawyer friends, he is human. Somewhere in their shared life, which is often not shared at all, because he is shuttling tourists along the coast or researching the proper techniques to sabotage whaling vessels without harming their crew, and she is trying to get her Montessori teacher certification and maintaining a very-highly-pageranked eco-feminist mommy blog via a capricious dialup connection (and don’t get her started on the term ‘mommy blog’) and taking what feels like millions of photos of Maggie in an effort to capture all of the things that are most intangible about being a mother-somewhere in their shared life they divide again.
In the end-stages of their marriage they abandon ship and move back to Greendale, because they’ve convinced themselves that Greendale is the Band-Aid that will work for them, even though they both know what they really need is a tourniquet.
Their first day back on the ground Britta is astonished at how different everything is-she is different and so is this place. Greendale actually has a cool little downtown now, a square acre that reminds her of Park Slope before Greenpoint became the new Park Slope and Morningside Heights became the new Greenpoint. They find a cute apartment right in the middle of downtown and Britta summons all the dignity afforded her by motherhood and goes over to GCC to try and bullshit the Dean into signing off on her transcripts so she can tell the Montessori people that no, she actually DOES have a bachelor’s degree, and what’s it to you?
While she’s on campus, constantly having to extract Maggie from the apparently-fascinating hedges, an almost nauseating wave of nostalgia swamps her and she heads for the library. Where she finds, much to her surprise, Shirley Bennett signing copies of her latest cookbook for a sizable crowd.
Maggie loves Auntie Shirley and when they’re around her Britta often finds herself audibly sighing in quiet joy. Things are so tense at home that Shirley’s generous smile and warm heart are like quilts she can wrap around herself wherever she goes. And then one day they are on a playdate at Bouncy Castle City and some skinny dillweed in overalls serves her with divorce papers and even though it is not unexpected, it’s still a knife to the gut. It’s still her poor daughter, caught up in the middle. Britta looks over at Maggie, who is holding hands with Elijah and Jordan and trying to jump as high as Miss Mary Mack-so high high high she touched the sky sky sky-and promises herself that she will always teach her daughter that pain and joy are two sides of the same coin. Sometimes you flip the coin and sometimes it balances on one edge.
It is an amicable divorce, and shared custody, and that’s fine. The whole thing breaks her heart, but it is fine. It is birds flying out of her heart all over again. She moves to the other end of the block so things aren’t so confusing for Maggie. Her apartment is a third-floor walkup with high ceilings and big windows, and Maggie’s room has a bay window that overlooks the street. The neighborhood is just beginning to gentrify, it’s very walkable and there is a dog park and an artsy-fartsy cinema and a corner store that sells both organic produce and Phillies Blunts. They’re just a quarter mile or so from the former home of Gary’s Bargain Basement Wax, which is now a Starbucks. Britta gets a miserable job as an admin assistant at the local Green Party headquarters, which is technically not miserable, and also technically not lucrative. But she walks to work, sells her car, saves her money. The good thing about the Montessori method is that Maggie is perfectly happy with, say, drums made out of oatmeal canisters.
There is a storefront for rent in the exact middle of their block. About this time, too, this blurry time in her life, when everywhere she turns there is pain, Britta’s mother passes away.
Britta takes the resulting chunk of money and turns the storefront into a little café and gallery, very consciously opening herself up to every potential disaster written in the fine print on the dozens of contracts and forms she signs. Most new businesses fail within a year, she learned, long ago, in the one practical class she took at Greendale. She is the mother of an almost-four-year-old, what is she doing? What is her plan? What are you doing, Britta? Shirley asks, almost constantly, and then she, the brownie magnate, convinces Pierce to match her own investment in the café, and in return all he asks from Britta is that she name a sandwich after him. He’s the only one who never gave her any crap for dropping out of school, so she does it, gladly.
Other than that she’s not really in touch with any of the Greendale crowd, except for Shirley. That woman is a lifesaver. She has advice on everything from purchasing used baby furniture to writing a business plan, and her brownies are like magical customer-summoning pixie dust. Elijah and Jordan are really good with Maggie, they will sit in a corner of the café and play blocks with her, and Britta never ever thought she would be a mom sipping decaf coffee at three in the afternoon and chatting about mom stuff with another mom, but here she is, and it feels good. At least she isn’t wearing elastic-waist pants. Yet.
***
Pierce comes in on opening day, tall and sort of fadedly handsome, wearing a pinstriped suit and a pinkie ring. This seems like his kind of environment, Britta realizes, a ramshackle place that brings out all of his weird competencies.
“Brittles,” he says, coming up to her at the counter. Business has been less than brisk but she puts on her brightest smile. She wants him to approve of everything, she realizes-maybe it’s some sort of weird daddy-issue thing, but she wants Pierce to like the art student-y oils she’s chosen for the first exhibition, she wants him to like the shabby furniture and the availability of thirty-five different kinds of hot tea.
“Hi, Pierce!” She rushes around the counter to give him a big hug, something she never would have done before…what can she call it? Before she cashed in the insurance on her old life to build a new one? Whatever. “I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me, you know. I never could have done this without you and Shirley believing in me,”
“Anytime,” Pierce says, smiling down on her without a hint of sexism or racism or any other ism. “Now make me a sandwich, woman!”
She serves up the café’s first Hawthorne Wrap. He spends the next hour eating it, extolling its virtues to anyone who walks in, exclaiming over photos of Maggie, and convincing Britta to sign a contract stating that he will be the café’s exclusive moist towelette provider for the next calendar year. On his way out the door, Pierce slings an arm across her shoulders and pulls her close, giving her a light peck on the forehead.
“You done good, kid” he tells her, and then she is very thoroughly goosed.
***
Annie is studying for her CPA and after the café’s been open for three or four months Shirley recruits her to help Britta with the books, and Britta finds that paying Annie is a lot cheaper than throwing away money, which is apparently what was happening when she was trying to keep the books all on her own.
“Thank you so much for your help, Annie. There’s no way I could do this without you,” Britta says, bringing a muffin and a mug full of Orange Zinger over to the corner booth where Annie has set up shop with her laptop and Post-Its and small zippered pouches full of color-coordinated highlighters.
“Oh, I should be thanking you, Britta! Straightening all this stuff out is giving me tons of experience I can add to my resume, and these muffins are really good, too. Plus I really like that little bookstore down the street. Basically it is like a vacation coming down here. The math untangles my brain, the muffins are yummy, and bookstores just make me happy, period.”
The pre-Maggie Britta probably would have had to diagram that sentence just so she could give it a proper mocking, but Not-Quite-Ready-For-Elastic-Waistbands Britta finds herself grinning back at her friend, who truly is blossoming. “I’m glad you like coming here. The café door is always open,”
“Yeah, about that. You may want to invest in some new weatherstripping,” Annie leans forward over the table, radiant with conspiratorial (and actuarial) energy. “It could really help keep your energy bills down this winter,”
***
Business picks up that fall because Greendale Community College, of all places, opens up a city campus two blocks over. At Shirley’s request, Abed’s the next one from the study group to reappear, bringing a camera crew over from his office in the Film Department to tape the café’s first commercial. He stays late with his own rickety old Pentax to shoot roll after roll of Britta, Britta and Maggie, Maggie playing alone, Maggie climbing all over her mother and the tables and the whole café, Maggie being a tiny shining masterpiece in a room full of mediocre-to-occasionally-brilliant art.
“She’s beautiful. Like her mother,” Abed pronounces, clicking away. He has a deft touch-Britta checked out his online portfolio and has already decided on which pieces she wants to display at the café. Privately she thinks his films are still a little weird, but his eye for still photography is delightful. His ability to focus on small things and gather data seems especially suited to capturing little moments, if not necessarily the big picture. She imagines he’s a hell of an adjunct professor.
“Thank you, Abed,”
“These pictures will all be black and white, but once Maggie is old enough to understand, you should tell her that life is not black and white,”
“Is anyone ever really old enough to understand that, Abed?”
He turns away from the viewfinder for once, blinking up at her. He looks exactly the same as he did all those years ago when she asked him for a pencil and ended up telling him her life story. She remembers the first of many Jeff Winger Very Special Speeches: And Abed? Abed’s a shaman.
“That’s a good point, Britta,” A pause, and she can practically see the thoughts churning over the waterfall of his mind in their many idiosyncratic barrels. “You may have inspired my next screenplay,”
Britta laughs, loud and clear and crystalline in the half-empty café, and her daughter looks up at the sound and smiles.
***
One morning a month or two later Britta is putting the sandwich board up in front of the café at opening when a blur in a tracksuit rushes by and then abruptly jogs backwards until it draws even with her again.
“Troy?”
“Britta! I thought that was you! You look great!” He gives her a fierce hug, his polyester clothes crackling. “Do you work here?”
“Yeah. Um, I own here, actually,” How weird is that to say? People truly think she is trustable with a child, with money, with anything? Growing up is weird.
“Wow, awesome! I remember Shirley saying that now, at church I think. She said you had a baby, too, and you don’t even look fat now. Well, Shirley didn’t say that last part,”
Britta errs on the side of discretion. “You go to church with Shirley?”
“Sometimes. She’s really persuasive. One time my doorbell rang and it looked like a pizza guy, and he said someone had ordered and paid for this pizza for me, and I was afraid it was gonna be like a porno situation, but when I opened the box there was a giant cookie inside! And Shirley wrote the name and address of her church on it in icing and I figured I should at least go over there to thank her,”
“That is a very Shirley thing to do,”
“Yeah! She’s awesome!”
His grin is impossible to resist. “She is! Do you want to come inside? I think we have some Gatorade somewhere,”
“I would love to but I have a split time I need to make,” He glances down at his very fancy watch and she catches a glimpse of the disciplined athlete behind the master blanket fort architect. “I’m training for a marathon. Do you want to sponsor me? We’re going to kick pancreatic cancer’s ass!”
“A marathon? Wow, that’s incredible! Sure I’ll sponsor you. Stop back whenever you get the chance, I’m basically always here,”
“Thanks, Britta! It was great to see you again!” He wraps her in a bone-crusher of a hug, gives her a peck on the cheek, and sets off down the block like a compact bolt of lightning. The strength of the hug, the light beaming out of his personality, stay with her for the rest of the day.
***
So this is the shape of her life now: Maggie, the café, her friends, her home. The older she gets the more she realizes that is more than enough, that is plenty. That is everything she needs. Every now and then Shirley will have a potluck after church and she will bring Maggie over there and her little girl will just shine for everyone and all Britta can feel is happiness: that light and warmth in her heart again. And sure, it’s a weird little family that surrounds Maggie-her Dadda and Mumsy in their different houses, her multicultural assortment of aunts and uncles and cousins-but it’s a family, and that’s what matters most.
***
Every now and then it happens: someone who clearly took a wrong turn and ended up in Hippieville shows up in the gallery. Usually they have a dead phone battery or the GPS in their Escalade is broken and they are either entitled or sheepish. This one is tall and bearded and wearing big, stupidly dark cop-style sunglasses, and Britta doesn’t even realize it’s Jeff until he opens his mouth.
“Pardon me, ma’am. I would like one poppyseed baggle, lightly toasted, with cream cheese,” He removes the sunglasses with a flourish and waggles his eyebrows. “I have to be in court in fifteen minutes so make it snappy, sunshine,”
His hairline’s gone back a little, but other than that and the frankly indescribable beard he looks the same, overdressed and overconfident and overwhelming. She scoots around the counter to hug him and finds herself swallowed up in his trench coat instead. Burberry. Of course. He smells expensive, so that hasn’t changed, either.
“So, you look great,” he says. “Great, great, great,” and she suddenly realizes that he’s nervous.
“You do, too. Going to court, you said? You on the right side or the wrong side of the law this time?” She goes back behind the counter to get his bagel. Her staff gave her quite a lot of crap for the way she pronounces it-it actually does say ‘baggle’ on the giant chalkboard that is the menu.
“Oh, Britta, when will you ever learn? I’m always on my side of the law,” Jeff leans forward, elbows on the glass case that displays Shirley’s confectionary delights, right over the sign that says Please do not lean on the glass.
“Don’t lean, please,” Britta says, gesturing with one elbow as she loads the bagel in the toaster.
“
Oh, okay,” He straightens and looks around, and a silence knits itself into uncomfortable existence between them. He asks for a black coffee, and then surprises her by fishing a reusable travel mug out of his perfectly-weathered leather messenger bag. At her raised eyebrow, he says
“You think me using a reusable cup is crazy, well, wait till you hear why I have to get to court,”
“You gotta bail out some jailbait girlfriend?” She doesn’t know why she says it, it’s assholish and dumb, but either he doesn’t react or, more likely, she doesn’t know how to read him anymore. Britta fills his mug-it’s one of those shiny aluminum bullet-like jobs, free of logos or even fingerprints.
Jeff checks his watch, fishes a business card and five bucks out of one pocket and slides them toward her across the counter. He grabs his bagel and coffee and turns to go, calling over his shoulder: “I really do have to go, I just wanted to see you for myself. Okay if I come by later?”
“Um, sure!” She calls back, and watches him go, noticing that the shop windows need to be washed. Britta adds that to her to-do list, gets distracted by a trollish comment posted to her blog, and just generally gets caught up in everything. It’s one of her employees who brings her the business card later, around lunchtime: Jeffrey R. Winger, Public Defender.
Unwittingly, Britta feels her face shape itself into a smile.
***
“So, do you know that I have a kid?” she asks Jeff, when he comes back as she’s locking up.
“Mmm, Shirley may have mentioned that in one of the ninety-four text messages she sent over the last six months, ordering me to come over here,”
“Ninety-four? That seems excessive, even for Shirley,”
“I can’t even begin to count the ones she sent saying I need to be nice and not destroy your fragile ego, but to be honest, Britta, your ego doesn’t look very fragile to me,”
Britta pauses, looking at him across the empty café. “You can see my ego?” It’s easier to joke than to remark on the fact that Shirley apparently
thinks that her ego has the tensile strength of a used coffee filter.
Jeff waves a hand dismissively. She remembers his hands, how he uses them to say things his mouth won’t. “Anyway, I know you have a kid. Congratulations, and when can I meet her? I need to see if she’s inherited your love of leather jackets.”
“Well, you’ll have to wait a bit, she’s staying with her father this week. I have her next week,”
“Poor kid,” Jeff says. He takes off his coat and sweeps two of the chairs she’s just upended onto the tables back into their normal position.
“What do you mean, ‘poor kid?’ We’re doing the best we can, okay? I’m doing the best I can. And what are you doing, I spend twelve hours a day here, I don’t want to be here any longer,”
“Sheesh,” he puts his hands up, palms toward her. His cuffs are rolled up and he is wearing a sweater vest that makes his facial hair look even more professorial and bizarre. “I’m just saying, I’ve been that kid with divorced parents, and it sucks. I’m sure you and Philip are trying a lot harder than my parents ever did, but it’s still going to suck for her. Did you want to go to a bar or something?”
“What are you doing? Are you hitting on me?” It happens a lot still, but Britta doesn’t have her radar out for it most times and honestly she’s not as interested in dating now, and doesn’t have the energy, between Maggie and the café-that boring mom cliché is true for her, at least. She narrows her eyes at him. “And second of all, you don’t have any business telling me that things are going to suck for my kid. You’ve never even met her, you shithead!”
He has the grace to not reply to that right away, and Britta plops herself down in the chair across from him. “Jeff. What is going on here? Why are you here, now, today?”
“There was just something about that ninety-fourth text message that I couldn’t ignore,” Abruptly he looks away from her. “All I’m trying to say is welcome back, okay? Forget all that stuff about how much your kid sucks or whatever. Just…welcome back, Britta. We missed you,”
Britta rubs at a smudge on the table. “So who is ‘we?’” she asks, because she knows he’s never there at Shirley’s potlucks or Troy’s lacrosse games or Abed’s movie nights or any of the other times they all get together and try to ignore the tall, spiky-haired hole in most conversations and every misadventure.
He still won’t look at her. Maybe Jeff is now a little bit of a coward; Britta feels it too, a lot, this sense that strength needs to be saved for the fights that matter. “It’s just me,” he says. “Just me. I missed you, okay?”
“I missed you, too,” And she doesn’t smile like she might’ve once-but he looks up at her, and that releases a little bit of the pressure on her heart.
***
The next week Jeff stops in on Monday night, and after she closes they walk down the block to her place in silence and snow, and it’s the shortest Britta’s ever felt walking beside Jeff, since she gave up stripper heels around the end of her second trimester. She has a vague memory of her last class at Greendale-something about semiotics or gender or both, or maybe it was air-conditioner repair-and of walking out of that class, tottering and awkward, and seeing Jeff leaning in a very Jeff way against the wall outside. He’d grabbed her bag and textbook and walked with her to the study room, exercising his special gift for maintaining inconsequential patter. She remembers thinking then that this was the sweetest thing he’d ever done for her, erecting a bulwark of bullshit around them to keep her from crying. She remembers thinking then that they had been best friends once, but she had Philip now, and a baby, and a life ahead of her.
Britta bumps Jeff’s arm with her shoulder, struck by the sense memory of how many times she did the exact same thing in her old life, which feels like three or four lifetimes ago, now. There is something comforting about slipping back into an old familiar habit-she supposes it’s the faint glamour nostalgia casts over everything. It’s not like their friendship was a bed of roses, but it was a big part of her life for a long time.
“I’m glad you’re back in my life,” she tells him. “But you seem kind of, um, out of it, I guess. You seem like…not you,”
Snow catches in his hair as he looks down and over at her. “You’re just not used to me. This is New Jeff. I’m a public defender now, remember. I’m humbled. I serve mankind,”
“Humankind,” she says, automatically, and he laughs. “That does seem like an odd job for you, honestly,”
“I owed the D.A. a favor,”
“I’m sure there’s a story there,”
They pause at a curb, waiting for traffic to slow, and he looks over and down at her. “Not a very good one. He’s yet another dirtbag I busted out of a DWI conviction on a technicality,”
“Jeff Winger, keeping the streets safe for everyone,” Britta murmurs, but she’s the one who flips off the car that honks at them as they jaywalk across the street.
***
When they get to her place, Britta’s sitter makes a very surprised face when she sees Jeff, and Britta has to wonder how long it will take for an ugly rumor to spread over her building and then down the block-the sitter is a neighbor girl who loves to gossip. Britta tips extra and hurries the girl out the door.
Jeff’s face when he sees Maggie is something Britta knows she will try to remember forever. Her daughter is sleeping, which if that adorable sight doesn’t elicit some sort of instinctive emotional response in you means you should probably get your vital signs checked by a professional.
The sight of Maggie sleeping has been known to raise the blood sugar of diabetics to dangerous levels. No really, she’s that adorable.
“Nicely done, Perry,” Jeff whispers. “Your kid hit it big in the genetic lottery, that’s for sure,”
“She is kinda cute, isn’t she?”
“As a button. I can’t wait until she starts getting way into princesses and unicorns and you have to try and explain to her that royalty only exists to oppress the working classes and unicorns are about as real as Social Security will be twenty years,”
Britta laughs and quickly ushers Jeff out of Maggie’s room before she wakes up. The hallway light is much brighter than Maggie’s nightlight and they stand there blinking at each other for a moment.
“Twenty years. That’s about when you’ll be needing Social Security, right?” Jeff continues, and it’s almost like something slides back into place or an out-of-time drummer finally quits zoning out and starts playing with the band again.
“You’ll need it before I do. And you work for the government now, which basically means you’ll never retire,”
That’s the way the rest of the evening goes, as they share a pot of tea in her tiny kitchen: banter. Britta supposes it is Jeff’s real way of saying Welcome home.
***
Britta has a New Year’s open house for the café, and invites all the study group. Even Jeff, without telling everyone else. Which feels stupid and sitcom-y and ridiculous, but she does it anyway, because it needs to be done.
People are there, friends and customers and artists and people walking in off the street, and Britta is having to be a social butterfly-which, to be honest, is not the easiest thing for her-and then she is mid-sentence with her local councilwoman, trying to convince her that the block needs more streetlights, when a small, sturdy body impacts with her legs.
“Hi, Mumsy!”
“Hi, Sweetie!” Britta sweeps Maggie up into her arms and drops a kiss on her cheek, searching for Philip. He smiles over from where he’s stationed himself at the cheese platter.
“Dadda got me a bunny!”
“Can I see it? Did you leave it in the car?”
“No, it’s a real bunny! Her name is Floppa!”
What? Britta begs the councilwoman’s pardon and sets Maggie down-she’s getting heavy, when did her baby get this old? “I need to talk to your father about this, okay, sweetie? Will you go color with Elijah and Jordan?”
“ELIJAHANDJORDAN!” She goes running off like she just found out that they’re made of candy or something. Of course she’ll go color with them, they’re her favorite playthings. Well, that was before Floppa.
“A bunny? Really?” She’s so irked she can’t even say hello-where does he think that rodent is going to stay, at her place? Or is it going to get shunted back and forth down the block, too?
“Relax, Britta, just breathe,” Philip holds up both hands, palms outward. “I had a bunny when I was a kid, too. They’re no big deal. It’s not like I bought her a dog,”
“It better be staying at your house, and you better be the one to explain that to her,”
“Already did, okay? I know you’re all tense because of this big party but trust me, I’m handling it. You look great, by the way. Thanks for inviting me,”
He can do this, he’s always been able to do this, send her all over the emotional map. It’s a talent not a lot of people have and she mentally chastises herself, absently smoothing her dress over her hips. It’s boatnecked organic linen, with tights and tall, ass-kicking boots that cost way too much but were totally worth it. Philip looks good, too, in his rumpled shirt and tie, suit jacket slung over one arm. He bounced back faster from the divorce than she did, Britta supposes-he’s even been on a few dates, but nothing’s taken. She doesn’t quite know what or how to feel about that, about the whole divorce, really. It’s much better that they’re not together all the time now, much better that they’re not stuck on an island with a crying baby and the most annoying group of tourists anyone could possible imagine-seriously, people, Crocodile Dundee impressions are not funny the first time, let alone the five-hundredth, and Crocodile Dundee was actually from Australia, not New Zealand, something Britta has pointed out approximately a million times-anyway, they are better apart. They are a team apart, if that makes any sense.
“Okay,” she says. “You’re welcome,” Should she hug him? Shake hands? Fist bump? Ugghh, this is weird. Growing up is so weird.
“Go mingle, Britta,” Philip says. “I’m perfectly fine here with the Double Gloucester,” He makes a wide, all-encompassing gesture with his cracker, and for a moment he’s kind of that goofy oddball who made her heart glow all over again. She smiles and goes in search of the councilwoman.
***
Britta is in back, hustling more twee appetizers onto trays for the waitstaff, when she hears a crash and an unmistakable scream. She rushes out into the café, expecting to see Annie and a broken wine glass. What she finds is the study group, arrayed in a semi-circle around Jeff, who is on his knees, clutching what looks like a broken nose and getting blood all over her spotless floor. Goddammit.
Pierce is cradling his left hand in his right. “You sonofabitch,” he half-growls, and it’s pitched so low Britta can barely hear it. “How dare you say that?”
People around them are staring, Philip has picked up Maggie and is looking at Britta uncertainly from across the room. “Pierce?” she asks, hesitant, afraid to break the spell.
“This douchebag,” Pierce replies, loudly this time, so everyone in the place can hear. “Says the Hawthorne Wrap sounds disgusting,”
Nobody moves for a long moment. Britta vaguely remembers the sensation-she used to tell Philip it was a Greendale moment. Annie and
Shirley are both shaking their heads at Jeff.
It’s Troy who cuts the tension. “Stating the truth is not a punching offense, man,” he tells Pierce, going to help Jeff up. “Kielbasa and sesame do not belong together,”
Pierce uses his long arms to gather them all into a semi-huddle, and Britta senses the crowd sort of start breathing and small-talking again, probably relieved Pierce isn’t moving on to critiquing their personal sandwich choices. “Irregardless of how wrong Troy is, people, are we really going to let Jeff just waltz in here like nothing’s happened?”
“I’m right here, Pierce, I can hear you,” It comes out like Elmer Fudd because he’s got napkins pressed all over his face. Jeff rolls his eyes.
“What are you doing here?” Shirley asks, straightening to her full height.
“Yeah, who said you could be here?” Annie cross her arms and stares him down.
“Britta said I could be here, jeez, relax, okay? Right, Britta?”
Five pairs of eyes swivel in her direction. Had she forgotten what this felt like, too? Something else lets go in her heart. “He’s right, you guys. I invited him,”
“Britta!” Annie looks really disappointed in her, kind of in a motherly way, actually, and it’s weird and comforting at the same time.
Abed is looking back and forth between Britta and Jeff. “Why did you invite him?”
Britta sighs, and does a thing she learned in prenatal yoga where you imagine that roots are growing down through the soles of your feet, holding you solidly down. “Because you guys need to talk to him. You need to forgive him for whatever bullshit he did to you, because I doubt it was worth all the pain you’ve put yourselves through missing him, or how much it’s hurt him to miss you, but don’t ask him to admit it or he’ll get all red in the face and we’ll all get embarrassed and it will be awkward. And as a study group we were always a little awkward, but we’re not a study group anymore, okay?” She takes a deep breath and looks around at all their dear faces. “We’re grownups now,”
There’s a moment where it seems like this Winger-esque speech might be working, but it’s Troy, dependable ol’ Troy, who shakes his head first. “Speak for yourself, lady. I may be getting older, but I refuse to grow up. And you can’t tell us what to do, you can’t tell us we have to forgive him. He was our friend! Friends don’t bail on each other.”
“He abandoned us, Britta,” Shirley says, but she’s looking at Jeff, who isn’t making eye contact with any of them. He’s staring at the tin ceiling like there might be some sort of time machine up there. “As soon as he found out he could get that job, he told us Greendale was cramping his style and got the hell out of Dodge. He just said he was gonna go travel around the world or something. To be honest, I thought he was going after you. And then the week after that Abed got jury duty and found out the truth,”
Abed nods somberly. “A Winger suit is distinctive, even from half a courthouse away,”
“Yeah, I know, my tailor’s awesome. Listen, guys, this is ridiculous. I think my nose is legitimately broken, and you are obviously not happy with me right now. So, if it’s all right with all of you, I’m just going to leave,” He doesn’t wait to see, just grabs his jacket and fumbles one-armed for the door.
“Jeff’s right,” Annie says, as they’re all standing around, just kind of staring at each other in bewilderment. “This is ridiculous. And Britta’s right. We’re grownups,”
“And Jeff is a big baby,” Pierce says.
Shirley sighs. “I thought we had moved past this, people. It was years ago that all this nonsense happened. I thought he could be the bigger man just this once. We're always the bigger man,”
Pierce snickers, but when he speaks, it’s to offer up one of his strangely lucid theories on life: “If we were all the bigger man all the time, there’d be no room for us to be together,”
***
Things are, naturally, tense for a while, and although Britta keeps going to Annie’s stitch-and-bitch nights and takes Maggie over to Pierce’s house to check out his mini-planetarium, the entire group doesn’t really get together. Their whole vibe is thrown off. Britta feels a sort of gut-level shadow emotion, telling her to start plotting to get them all back together, but she doesn’t act on it. And it hurts, not being around all of them, but she tells herself that the hurt is a wound, scarring.
***
One night in the coldest, darkest part of winter, Britta replaces one installation with another. The old paintings on display were watercolors and she really likes these heavy new abstract oils better. They look like the fingerpaintings of very serious children. She finishes with the last one, steps back to make sure it’s straight, and carries her stepladder and hammer to the back room.
When she comes back out, Jeff is at the counter, holding out a handful of rather bedraggled daffodils.
“Um, what’s this?”
“This is what’s left from the flowers I gave everybody,”
“’Everybody?’”
“Yeah, everybody. You know, those knuckleheads we used to study Spanish with back in the Dark Ages when we all minded our own business?”
Britta crosses her arms. “You were the only one who ever minded your own business, Confidentiality Spice,”
Jeff sighs. “Just take them, okay? I apologized. Like they wanted me to. I went to each of them and said, ‘I’m sorry I was an asshole.’ So here, Britta. I’m sorry I was an asshole,”
“Um,” She inspects the flowers-it’s right after St. Patrick’s Day, so she imagines they are leftovers. But it’s the thought that counts, right?
“Thank you. Apology accepted,”
“Thus ends another scintillating episode of Days of our Lives,” Jeff mutters. “Are we friends again?”
“Did all of them forgive you already?”
“Shirley and Abed are still holding out but just give me time, they’ll rejoin Team Winger one of these days,” He starts to roll his eyes but catches himself, and there’s something in the vulnerability of that gesture that reminds her of the very first day they met, they day he played the one sincere card in his deck of complete and utter bullshit.
“Okay,” Britta puts the daffodils in a handy water glass, rearranges their bruised petals. “We’re friends again,”
***END OF PART ONE***
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