fic: There is a time and place for this sort of thing. 1/3
Title: There is a time and place for this sort of thing. Part 1.
Author: umeko_star
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,306
Disclaimer: to love something, you have to set it free, therefore i can't own NBC/Community
Summary: Jeff and Annie journey through self discovery, and what they mean to themselves before they evaluate what they mean to each other.
Author's Note: this is something i just concocted after I watched 3.02. it does jump narrative and isn't just through Annie and Jeff but other members of their study group as well. I was left feeling empty after 3.02 and while the shipper in me was happy, the analyst in me was not. so i had to dissect it even further. here's what i came up with. i am still writing Ploys of Domesticity, but the ADD I am, I have about three different J/A fics going at the same time...and sometimes i have them all opened. this one, by chance, just advanced further than the others. please enjoy. i hope you will like it.
They decide not to spend any more time together.
At times he would absent mindedly rub his thumb and index finger together when he’d be lost in his thought. Or when he’d turn towards her when they were all in the study room in a moment of communal laughter; their eyes would meet and for a flickering moment they would both forget their agreement. But then her eyes would widen slightly, and he’d drop his gaze until they fell to her chin. He’ll remember the softness of her skin when he had tilted her head towards him. He’ll remember the quiet smile they shared before the absurdity for their relationship enveloped them once again, forcing them to break apart - like an unwanted house guest that penetrated their domestic harmony.
So they agree to wean themselves of each other’s company. They promise each other that it was for the best, that for the sake of her and their group or whatever they think they’re trying to protect, that it was better for them to keep their distance. He grips her hand in his, marvels how his fingers swallowed hers as if a monstrous, looming shadow was threatening to consume her. He drops her off at the entrance of her apartment building and had turned off the engine. There were drunken shouts that came through his car windows in muffled waves - evidence that life went on when theirs came to an abrupt conclusion. She stares out of his passenger window, he wonders if she even notices the pressure of his hand increased with every minute, and every breath. He finally whispers her name. It hangs in the air, drapes over them and echoes through his mind. She turns her head to face him. The neon lights of blue, red and green dance recklessly over her pale skin but could not even compare to the blaze he saw in her eyes. He realizes they were tears.
They sit there in the darkness. He thinks of all the lines in the movies his past girlfriends forced him to watch. He wonders if he should be promising her anything.
In another life, maybe.
You had me had hello.
As you wish m’lady.
Here’s looking at you, kid.
But as he rallies through those ridiculous quotes in his head, he's suddenly seeing the determined look in her eyes before her lips engulfs his. He lifts her from the passenger seat and she scrambles with him and finally straddles him on his lap. Her fingers desperately gripping the lengths of his hair, their breaths shallow and forced. Her skirt soon rides up her milky white legs as she settles more forcefully down on him and he is soon traveling the length of her thighs, nearly chokes against her with lust and temptation.
Then he tastes her tears and he stops. He pulls away from their embrace and she, feeling the sudden withdrawal from his warmth, gasps a sobbing cry and burrows her face against his chest, her body crashing against his in painful waves as her cries courses through her. She weeps, gripping his shirt to her face, not caring to regain control. For once just allowing the little girl she tries too hard to repress, overpower her.
The moon slips from behind the silver clouds. Her fluorescent rays penetrates his windshield, clearly illuminating a couple accustomed to shadows and confusion.
He lets her go, and she lets him leave.
===================================
He spends his weekends at Britta’s.
It started when he showed up at her door on a Friday evening with a bottle of whiskey in his hand. He had shouldered his way into her small apartment and declared he will be a bachelor until his body drops dead because women were nothing but buckets of hormonal stress. Her quirked eyebrow reminded him that she was a woman, and he quickly muttered that he didn’t think of her as a woman - not anymore anyway.
To her credit, she let that remark pass and she knew Jeff’s bullshit too well to take any real offense. Instead she closed the door, confused more than anything else about his sudden appearance. She wondered when they had reached the point in their friendship where they could come crying on one another’s shoulders when their lives had hit rock bottom, which was what she assumed he had hit as she took in his dishevelled manner. His hair was flattened in a way that he would normally dub “boring”; his shirt was creased and she noted a coffee stain near the collar; and he was wearing crocs for god’s sake. Britta didn’t exactly pride herself in her fashion sense, but even she knew to stay away from those.
She never questioned him about what made him come over that night. She had wordlessly produced two glasses from the kitchen and settled down across from him. Her orange tabby, Gerald, had curled up at Jeff’s feet and he was stroking the ginger fur with a faraway look in his eye. They talked of school, and work. He described his latest projects as a consultant at Ted’s firm. He never held her gaze for too long, preferring to speak into his drink rather than at her. It was only after the fifth shot of whiskey and he had thrown the glass to the side that he raised his eyes blearily to hers. They held an emptiness that she had seen only a few times in her life. Once when she was six and her mother had told her that Dad had been in a car accident, and another when she broke up with Daniel, her high school sweetheart - the look on his face when she told him she was going to Ghana instead of marrying him after graduation.
It was the look of a breaking heart.
So she never pressed. Though she did try to piece everything together; Troy had informed her of Annie’s meltdown and Jeff’s subsequent confession during her tantrum but he didn’t know what came of it after they both ran off. She was going through her own identity crisis at that point so she never put too much thought into the situation. But Jeff had began showing up at her doorstep the weekend right after first week of term, so if her, albeit introductory, classes helped with any indication, Jeff was going through the phases of grief. The question was what he lost exactly. Britta hadn’t thought to venture too deeply into the depths of Annie and Jeff’s relationship; Jeff had always been a sensitive, nay, a sore spot for her. As much as they did joke around about their platonic relationship, she still had harboured feelings for the man, no matter how shallow.
But after the fourth weekend, Britta knew to seek the advice of other people. She wasn’t helping him because she could not pinpoint the source of the problem - not when he was so clammed up. She found Abed in the corner of the library one evening, perusing the comment section of a Cougar Town forum - he had just been appointed moderator a few weeks before. Abed listened to her with the curious expression that had become his signature, and he remained silent until she had exhausted her attempts in making him understand the depths of Jeff’s depression, because let’s face it, Britta likes to digress.
With a slight twist of his head, Abed began explaining the preconceived theories of a “May-December relationship”. Society tended to put number barriers on romance because they held dangerous tensions between pedophilia and the disruption of youthful innocence - especially when sex is involved. He pointed out that there was nothing wrong with the love, it was the age that got people riled up, people tended to believe the numerical evidence rather than qualitative - that when love is present, there isn’t room for numbers. When the numerical difference becomes too extreme, there is a worry of corruption and exploitation.
Bewildered, Britta interrupted him with a sputter, “Hold on, Nadir. You’re telling me that Jeff and Annie are in love? Or at least Jeff is? And if I can safely assume the direction you’re trying to go, Jeff is suffering from a broken heart because he is too immersed in the social rejection of his ‘love’ for Annie?”
He looked at her, clearly underwhelmed by her astonishment and confusion and simply replied.
“Yes.” As if it was obvious. And she really didn’t need him to explain any further.
Jeff was suffering from a broken heart because he was in love.
She went home that night rather numb with shock…and a slight disappointment. Gerald greeted her at the door with his normal affection and she set about preparing his dinner while he twirled around her ankles. The clock on her stove said it was half past nine. It was a Friday night so she knew Jeff would be arriving shortly. He usually made his rounds at a couple of divy bars before showing up in a haggard state at her doorstep.
Jeff and Annie.
Jeff and Annie.
Jeff and Annie.
Jeff and Annie.
Round and round their names chanted in her head, as if trying to beat her into submission, into acceptance. She wondered why it was so obvious to Abed and yet she never even considered the notion before. Then again, she was questioning the observational powers of Abed - he acknowledges things he knows people refuse to admit because the level of discomfort it brings. She snorted as she spooned the contents of Fancy Feast into Gerald’s bowl; here she was paying full tuition to incorporate a skill Abed was born with, and will probably exploit into millions of dollars with filmmaking while she will probably graduate tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
But there, at least now she has a source of the problem. She has what Abed lacks: empathy. She will at least try to help him. So that night she sits and anticipates the impatient knock that echoes through her small apartment and that used to scare Gerald into hiding. Around ten thirty, his fists bang against the other side of the front door and she invites him in. As always, he smells of a toxic concoction of cigars and scotch, but she’s grown used to the stench and had bought an incense diffuser to put on the corner living room table. Settling down across from him, she handed him a cup of coffee which he gratefully accepted. She had rehearsed what she would say to him for an hour. She knew not to beat around the bush about it; he was too skilled in rhetoric to be backed into a corner. Jeff was not one to readily admit - plausible deniability was something he backed faithfully, as much as his agnostic self would allow anyway. So she knew she had to spring it out, surprise him into admission. So the moment she sees him settle back against the armchair cushions, and close his eyes as he sips the coffee, she attacks.
“You’re in love with Annie.”
Maybe she was hoping for a rebuttal. Maybe she was hoping for open denial. But even as she waited for him to react, she knew it was true. She had been unwilling to see it up until now; Abed was right - as he always was. They never questioned him because they knew he was right, and he never forced it upon them because television and movies had instructed him otherwise because how else would they keep viewers watching?
So when Jeff set his coffee cup down on the table and proceeded to throw on his suit jacket to exit her apartment without a word, all she could marvel was how her curiosity intensified at his silence. All of a sudden she wanted to know When? Why? Where? How?
Gerald pawed at his pant leg as he bent down to tie his shoes. She watched him as he paused in his attempts to escape to give a soft pat to the yellow, furry head. It was this display of gentle affection that prompted her to speak again.
“I don’t know what happened between you two. But I know this: love can exist in any world, in any society - so long as it’s real. If it’s real then there should be no question. You can either die trying to please the world and be miserable, or live in happiness and without regret. It’s your call, Winger. The jury’s out on this one, it’s only you.”
The door slammed and Gerald yowled.
She wonders if she did the right thing.
****
Annie tries dating other men.
There was Cliff, whom she met in her creative writing class. He was twenty nine and said his favourite author was Cormac McCarthy. He wore sensible colours like brown and forest green and drove a beat up Honda Civic. He asked her out after their third class together and she readily agreed. She thought this was the time to explore and maybe finally establish a more grounded relationship with a normal, intelligent man for once.
But time revealed she wasn’t ready for that either. Cliff took her to expensive restaurants that required her to go through tormenting afternoons of scavenging through her closet trying to find something decent to wear which she hadn’t worn already. She found herself longing for milkshakes and hot dogs as she perused through the menus of filet mignons and steak tartars. While they did have challenging conversations, a quiet voice in her head whispered a longing to talk of last week’s Gossip Girl. And God forbid she mention the word “Twitter”in front of him - the eye roll she was subjected to when she announced the latest “OldWhiteManSays” tweet spoke volumes of his opinion on new media.
So after Cliff, she took a break from the dating aspect of her life and threw herself in reckless abandon into her studies. She tutored Troy and Abed in the middle of the semester, after both came crying to her about their midterm results. They had only managed to pass because each one committed themselves to study and memorize one half of the tested portion, but didn’t think far enough to teach each other what they had learned. Every Tuesday they would gather at Troy and Abed’s apartment and bury themselves in flash cards and crushed cans of energy drinks. She found they were surprisingly willing to learn and that made them easy to teach. She’d sit in maternal satisfaction as they scribbled answers on the mock quizzes she made for them. Sometimes she’d have to prod Abed back to reality; he had a tendency to gaze at her quizzically and lose himself to whatever was going through his mind. She’d snap at him seemingly out of annoyance, but really it was out of uneasiness. She hated it whenever he looked at her that way, like he knew something about her that even she didn’t.
But her extended periods of time with the two helped her realize she didn’t like dating younger guys either. Maybe it was her rush to grow up as a child, with the constant grievances of her parents. Maybe it was her time in rehab that forced her to mature and take on an expedited journey toward adulthood. As much fun as she had with the two boys, she tired easy when she was with them. She could find no happy medium and was beginning to think there was no such thing in love.
She stops dating altogether, and learns to say no to Troy and Abed every other time they invited her to do something. She begins filling her schedule with a balanced mixture of extracurricular and recreational activities. She finds that she could unwind and enjoy it. All she has to do was really find out what she likes doing. Therefore, when she doesn't have the strength or motivation to put up with Troy and Abed on the weekends, she spends the hours bent over her desk with a hot glue gun in one hand and colourful crystals and beads in the other. She finds she had the patience and a steady hand for crafts and soon she gifts numerous earrings and bracelets to Britta and Shirley, taking time to personalize each accessory according to individual taste.
It takes her mind of schoolwork, transferring, model UN, work, and the people wandering around Dildopolis beneath her. It forces her to think and consider her relationships with her friends and put value in herself and their connections. She learns she likes valuing other people first for once when Pierce quietly came up to her one time after Biology and asked if she would be willing to make a necklace for his ten year old niece. The warmth that blossoms in her chest was a rush she never felt before, a source of internal energy that was organic and sustainable in a way that Adderall never was. She takes a step back from herself at this point and realizes for once in her life, she likes the person she’s becoming.
Of course she thinks about Jeff. She doubts there was any activity in the world that would prevent her thoughts from straying to him. But she doesn’t allow the thoughts to linger. The vision of his face made her hands shake, and she needed them steady lest she burned them with her glue gun. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to think about him, it was just painful.
One weekend at Troy and Abed’s house, they were taking a bathroom break from a Jason Bourne marathon; it was Abed’s turn to use the john which left Annie and Troy in the living room. Matt Damon’s frozen face served as a backdrop as they devoured Abed’s share of the popcorn. She had stuffed a handful of popcorn in her mouth and was making a visible effort to keep them in there while she chewed when Troy spoke of a ‘dude’ named Lance in his Mechanics of Plumbing class expressing an interest in her. She took the time to swallow with dignity before asking him to remind her who Lance was again.
You know, reddish brown hair? Brown eyes, really muscular and tall? Kind of looks like Jeff?
She choked a bit at that, and pretended it was from a residual kernel stuck in her throat. She remembered him now. He did look a little like Jeff; she had seen him walking out with Troy from their classroom on her way to her calculus class. Her eyes had lingered on Lance’s form a bit too long for a stranger and he had noticed and gave her a tentative smile. She remembered thinking Jeff would never do that, and feeling disappointed in herself for using him a gauge of attraction. Annie shook her head and smiled at Troy. Thanks but no thanks, she wasn’t interested. Troy shrugged and Abed returned to the living room. She scooted over on the couch to make room for him again and the threesome settled back together.
Abed makes a stray comment about Jason Bourne and Pamela Landy twenty minutes after they resumed the movie, that a lot of people believe the chemistry between the two even though they never meet, simply because their relationship was based on mutual understanding. It’s a tragic sort of relationship, he mused, something that their world denied them simply because of circumstance. They could only communicate in disjointed phone calls and it’s just enough to keep them going.
Troy, in a rare moment of poignancy, speaks up and says maybe they’re just waiting for the right time. When the world is ready for them.
She gets a lump in her throat and she stands up abruptly. She announces that she has to go to the washroom even though she just went half an hour ago and brusquely walks away toward the bathroom. She could feel Abed’s eyes on hers and she walks a little faster, just as the tears begin to fall.
Stupid Jason Bourne. Stupid movie. Stupid Abed. Stupid Troy.
Gripping the edge of the bathroom sink, she counted backwards from thirty in effort to steady her breathing. She must wait for control. She’ll just have to wait for when the time was right. This was what life was about, wasn’t it? You pay your dues and you’ll get your payoff. All she needed to do was wait.
Author: umeko_star
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,306
Disclaimer: to love something, you have to set it free, therefore i can't own NBC/Community
Summary: Jeff and Annie journey through self discovery, and what they mean to themselves before they evaluate what they mean to each other.
Author's Note: this is something i just concocted after I watched 3.02. it does jump narrative and isn't just through Annie and Jeff but other members of their study group as well. I was left feeling empty after 3.02 and while the shipper in me was happy, the analyst in me was not. so i had to dissect it even further. here's what i came up with. i am still writing Ploys of Domesticity, but the ADD I am, I have about three different J/A fics going at the same time...and sometimes i have them all opened. this one, by chance, just advanced further than the others. please enjoy. i hope you will like it.
They decide not to spend any more time together.
At times he would absent mindedly rub his thumb and index finger together when he’d be lost in his thought. Or when he’d turn towards her when they were all in the study room in a moment of communal laughter; their eyes would meet and for a flickering moment they would both forget their agreement. But then her eyes would widen slightly, and he’d drop his gaze until they fell to her chin. He’ll remember the softness of her skin when he had tilted her head towards him. He’ll remember the quiet smile they shared before the absurdity for their relationship enveloped them once again, forcing them to break apart - like an unwanted house guest that penetrated their domestic harmony.
So they agree to wean themselves of each other’s company. They promise each other that it was for the best, that for the sake of her and their group or whatever they think they’re trying to protect, that it was better for them to keep their distance. He grips her hand in his, marvels how his fingers swallowed hers as if a monstrous, looming shadow was threatening to consume her. He drops her off at the entrance of her apartment building and had turned off the engine. There were drunken shouts that came through his car windows in muffled waves - evidence that life went on when theirs came to an abrupt conclusion. She stares out of his passenger window, he wonders if she even notices the pressure of his hand increased with every minute, and every breath. He finally whispers her name. It hangs in the air, drapes over them and echoes through his mind. She turns her head to face him. The neon lights of blue, red and green dance recklessly over her pale skin but could not even compare to the blaze he saw in her eyes. He realizes they were tears.
They sit there in the darkness. He thinks of all the lines in the movies his past girlfriends forced him to watch. He wonders if he should be promising her anything.
In another life, maybe.
You had me had hello.
As you wish m’lady.
Here’s looking at you, kid.
But as he rallies through those ridiculous quotes in his head, he's suddenly seeing the determined look in her eyes before her lips engulfs his. He lifts her from the passenger seat and she scrambles with him and finally straddles him on his lap. Her fingers desperately gripping the lengths of his hair, their breaths shallow and forced. Her skirt soon rides up her milky white legs as she settles more forcefully down on him and he is soon traveling the length of her thighs, nearly chokes against her with lust and temptation.
Then he tastes her tears and he stops. He pulls away from their embrace and she, feeling the sudden withdrawal from his warmth, gasps a sobbing cry and burrows her face against his chest, her body crashing against his in painful waves as her cries courses through her. She weeps, gripping his shirt to her face, not caring to regain control. For once just allowing the little girl she tries too hard to repress, overpower her.
The moon slips from behind the silver clouds. Her fluorescent rays penetrates his windshield, clearly illuminating a couple accustomed to shadows and confusion.
He lets her go, and she lets him leave.
===================================
He spends his weekends at Britta’s.
It started when he showed up at her door on a Friday evening with a bottle of whiskey in his hand. He had shouldered his way into her small apartment and declared he will be a bachelor until his body drops dead because women were nothing but buckets of hormonal stress. Her quirked eyebrow reminded him that she was a woman, and he quickly muttered that he didn’t think of her as a woman - not anymore anyway.
To her credit, she let that remark pass and she knew Jeff’s bullshit too well to take any real offense. Instead she closed the door, confused more than anything else about his sudden appearance. She wondered when they had reached the point in their friendship where they could come crying on one another’s shoulders when their lives had hit rock bottom, which was what she assumed he had hit as she took in his dishevelled manner. His hair was flattened in a way that he would normally dub “boring”; his shirt was creased and she noted a coffee stain near the collar; and he was wearing crocs for god’s sake. Britta didn’t exactly pride herself in her fashion sense, but even she knew to stay away from those.
She never questioned him about what made him come over that night. She had wordlessly produced two glasses from the kitchen and settled down across from him. Her orange tabby, Gerald, had curled up at Jeff’s feet and he was stroking the ginger fur with a faraway look in his eye. They talked of school, and work. He described his latest projects as a consultant at Ted’s firm. He never held her gaze for too long, preferring to speak into his drink rather than at her. It was only after the fifth shot of whiskey and he had thrown the glass to the side that he raised his eyes blearily to hers. They held an emptiness that she had seen only a few times in her life. Once when she was six and her mother had told her that Dad had been in a car accident, and another when she broke up with Daniel, her high school sweetheart - the look on his face when she told him she was going to Ghana instead of marrying him after graduation.
It was the look of a breaking heart.
So she never pressed. Though she did try to piece everything together; Troy had informed her of Annie’s meltdown and Jeff’s subsequent confession during her tantrum but he didn’t know what came of it after they both ran off. She was going through her own identity crisis at that point so she never put too much thought into the situation. But Jeff had began showing up at her doorstep the weekend right after first week of term, so if her, albeit introductory, classes helped with any indication, Jeff was going through the phases of grief. The question was what he lost exactly. Britta hadn’t thought to venture too deeply into the depths of Annie and Jeff’s relationship; Jeff had always been a sensitive, nay, a sore spot for her. As much as they did joke around about their platonic relationship, she still had harboured feelings for the man, no matter how shallow.
But after the fourth weekend, Britta knew to seek the advice of other people. She wasn’t helping him because she could not pinpoint the source of the problem - not when he was so clammed up. She found Abed in the corner of the library one evening, perusing the comment section of a Cougar Town forum - he had just been appointed moderator a few weeks before. Abed listened to her with the curious expression that had become his signature, and he remained silent until she had exhausted her attempts in making him understand the depths of Jeff’s depression, because let’s face it, Britta likes to digress.
With a slight twist of his head, Abed began explaining the preconceived theories of a “May-December relationship”. Society tended to put number barriers on romance because they held dangerous tensions between pedophilia and the disruption of youthful innocence - especially when sex is involved. He pointed out that there was nothing wrong with the love, it was the age that got people riled up, people tended to believe the numerical evidence rather than qualitative - that when love is present, there isn’t room for numbers. When the numerical difference becomes too extreme, there is a worry of corruption and exploitation.
Bewildered, Britta interrupted him with a sputter, “Hold on, Nadir. You’re telling me that Jeff and Annie are in love? Or at least Jeff is? And if I can safely assume the direction you’re trying to go, Jeff is suffering from a broken heart because he is too immersed in the social rejection of his ‘love’ for Annie?”
He looked at her, clearly underwhelmed by her astonishment and confusion and simply replied.
“Yes.” As if it was obvious. And she really didn’t need him to explain any further.
Jeff was suffering from a broken heart because he was in love.
She went home that night rather numb with shock…and a slight disappointment. Gerald greeted her at the door with his normal affection and she set about preparing his dinner while he twirled around her ankles. The clock on her stove said it was half past nine. It was a Friday night so she knew Jeff would be arriving shortly. He usually made his rounds at a couple of divy bars before showing up in a haggard state at her doorstep.
Jeff and Annie.
Jeff and Annie.
Jeff and Annie.
Jeff and Annie.
Round and round their names chanted in her head, as if trying to beat her into submission, into acceptance. She wondered why it was so obvious to Abed and yet she never even considered the notion before. Then again, she was questioning the observational powers of Abed - he acknowledges things he knows people refuse to admit because the level of discomfort it brings. She snorted as she spooned the contents of Fancy Feast into Gerald’s bowl; here she was paying full tuition to incorporate a skill Abed was born with, and will probably exploit into millions of dollars with filmmaking while she will probably graduate tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
But there, at least now she has a source of the problem. She has what Abed lacks: empathy. She will at least try to help him. So that night she sits and anticipates the impatient knock that echoes through her small apartment and that used to scare Gerald into hiding. Around ten thirty, his fists bang against the other side of the front door and she invites him in. As always, he smells of a toxic concoction of cigars and scotch, but she’s grown used to the stench and had bought an incense diffuser to put on the corner living room table. Settling down across from him, she handed him a cup of coffee which he gratefully accepted. She had rehearsed what she would say to him for an hour. She knew not to beat around the bush about it; he was too skilled in rhetoric to be backed into a corner. Jeff was not one to readily admit - plausible deniability was something he backed faithfully, as much as his agnostic self would allow anyway. So she knew she had to spring it out, surprise him into admission. So the moment she sees him settle back against the armchair cushions, and close his eyes as he sips the coffee, she attacks.
“You’re in love with Annie.”
Maybe she was hoping for a rebuttal. Maybe she was hoping for open denial. But even as she waited for him to react, she knew it was true. She had been unwilling to see it up until now; Abed was right - as he always was. They never questioned him because they knew he was right, and he never forced it upon them because television and movies had instructed him otherwise because how else would they keep viewers watching?
So when Jeff set his coffee cup down on the table and proceeded to throw on his suit jacket to exit her apartment without a word, all she could marvel was how her curiosity intensified at his silence. All of a sudden she wanted to know When? Why? Where? How?
Gerald pawed at his pant leg as he bent down to tie his shoes. She watched him as he paused in his attempts to escape to give a soft pat to the yellow, furry head. It was this display of gentle affection that prompted her to speak again.
“I don’t know what happened between you two. But I know this: love can exist in any world, in any society - so long as it’s real. If it’s real then there should be no question. You can either die trying to please the world and be miserable, or live in happiness and without regret. It’s your call, Winger. The jury’s out on this one, it’s only you.”
The door slammed and Gerald yowled.
She wonders if she did the right thing.
****
Annie tries dating other men.
There was Cliff, whom she met in her creative writing class. He was twenty nine and said his favourite author was Cormac McCarthy. He wore sensible colours like brown and forest green and drove a beat up Honda Civic. He asked her out after their third class together and she readily agreed. She thought this was the time to explore and maybe finally establish a more grounded relationship with a normal, intelligent man for once.
But time revealed she wasn’t ready for that either. Cliff took her to expensive restaurants that required her to go through tormenting afternoons of scavenging through her closet trying to find something decent to wear which she hadn’t worn already. She found herself longing for milkshakes and hot dogs as she perused through the menus of filet mignons and steak tartars. While they did have challenging conversations, a quiet voice in her head whispered a longing to talk of last week’s Gossip Girl. And God forbid she mention the word “Twitter”in front of him - the eye roll she was subjected to when she announced the latest “OldWhiteManSays” tweet spoke volumes of his opinion on new media.
So after Cliff, she took a break from the dating aspect of her life and threw herself in reckless abandon into her studies. She tutored Troy and Abed in the middle of the semester, after both came crying to her about their midterm results. They had only managed to pass because each one committed themselves to study and memorize one half of the tested portion, but didn’t think far enough to teach each other what they had learned. Every Tuesday they would gather at Troy and Abed’s apartment and bury themselves in flash cards and crushed cans of energy drinks. She found they were surprisingly willing to learn and that made them easy to teach. She’d sit in maternal satisfaction as they scribbled answers on the mock quizzes she made for them. Sometimes she’d have to prod Abed back to reality; he had a tendency to gaze at her quizzically and lose himself to whatever was going through his mind. She’d snap at him seemingly out of annoyance, but really it was out of uneasiness. She hated it whenever he looked at her that way, like he knew something about her that even she didn’t.
But her extended periods of time with the two helped her realize she didn’t like dating younger guys either. Maybe it was her rush to grow up as a child, with the constant grievances of her parents. Maybe it was her time in rehab that forced her to mature and take on an expedited journey toward adulthood. As much fun as she had with the two boys, she tired easy when she was with them. She could find no happy medium and was beginning to think there was no such thing in love.
She stops dating altogether, and learns to say no to Troy and Abed every other time they invited her to do something. She begins filling her schedule with a balanced mixture of extracurricular and recreational activities. She finds that she could unwind and enjoy it. All she has to do was really find out what she likes doing. Therefore, when she doesn't have the strength or motivation to put up with Troy and Abed on the weekends, she spends the hours bent over her desk with a hot glue gun in one hand and colourful crystals and beads in the other. She finds she had the patience and a steady hand for crafts and soon she gifts numerous earrings and bracelets to Britta and Shirley, taking time to personalize each accessory according to individual taste.
It takes her mind of schoolwork, transferring, model UN, work, and the people wandering around Dildopolis beneath her. It forces her to think and consider her relationships with her friends and put value in herself and their connections. She learns she likes valuing other people first for once when Pierce quietly came up to her one time after Biology and asked if she would be willing to make a necklace for his ten year old niece. The warmth that blossoms in her chest was a rush she never felt before, a source of internal energy that was organic and sustainable in a way that Adderall never was. She takes a step back from herself at this point and realizes for once in her life, she likes the person she’s becoming.
Of course she thinks about Jeff. She doubts there was any activity in the world that would prevent her thoughts from straying to him. But she doesn’t allow the thoughts to linger. The vision of his face made her hands shake, and she needed them steady lest she burned them with her glue gun. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to think about him, it was just painful.
One weekend at Troy and Abed’s house, they were taking a bathroom break from a Jason Bourne marathon; it was Abed’s turn to use the john which left Annie and Troy in the living room. Matt Damon’s frozen face served as a backdrop as they devoured Abed’s share of the popcorn. She had stuffed a handful of popcorn in her mouth and was making a visible effort to keep them in there while she chewed when Troy spoke of a ‘dude’ named Lance in his Mechanics of Plumbing class expressing an interest in her. She took the time to swallow with dignity before asking him to remind her who Lance was again.
You know, reddish brown hair? Brown eyes, really muscular and tall? Kind of looks like Jeff?
She choked a bit at that, and pretended it was from a residual kernel stuck in her throat. She remembered him now. He did look a little like Jeff; she had seen him walking out with Troy from their classroom on her way to her calculus class. Her eyes had lingered on Lance’s form a bit too long for a stranger and he had noticed and gave her a tentative smile. She remembered thinking Jeff would never do that, and feeling disappointed in herself for using him a gauge of attraction. Annie shook her head and smiled at Troy. Thanks but no thanks, she wasn’t interested. Troy shrugged and Abed returned to the living room. She scooted over on the couch to make room for him again and the threesome settled back together.
Abed makes a stray comment about Jason Bourne and Pamela Landy twenty minutes after they resumed the movie, that a lot of people believe the chemistry between the two even though they never meet, simply because their relationship was based on mutual understanding. It’s a tragic sort of relationship, he mused, something that their world denied them simply because of circumstance. They could only communicate in disjointed phone calls and it’s just enough to keep them going.
Troy, in a rare moment of poignancy, speaks up and says maybe they’re just waiting for the right time. When the world is ready for them.
She gets a lump in her throat and she stands up abruptly. She announces that she has to go to the washroom even though she just went half an hour ago and brusquely walks away toward the bathroom. She could feel Abed’s eyes on hers and she walks a little faster, just as the tears begin to fall.
Stupid Jason Bourne. Stupid movie. Stupid Abed. Stupid Troy.
Gripping the edge of the bathroom sink, she counted backwards from thirty in effort to steady her breathing. She must wait for control. She’ll just have to wait for when the time was right. This was what life was about, wasn’t it? You pay your dues and you’ll get your payoff. All she needed to do was wait.