Archive of Our Own ^beta

2010

Jeff Winger had been pretty damn sure he was never going to see Britta Perry again.

Not after the stunt she pulled at the Transfer Dance and definitely not after how he handled it. Over a month has passed since they’ve spoken or texted or acknowledged each other’s existence at all and, even though he probably wouldn’t admit it out loud, Jeff has really been counting on her moving back to New York. At least then she could slowly revert back to Hot Blonde Spanish Class in his brain and he could repress everything that’s happened over the past nine months.

It's a shitty thing to hope for. Really shitty, considering the things Britta said (or, more accurately, confessed) in front of the entire student body. But knowing that you’re being an asshole and actively trying not to be one aren’t mutually exclusive, which is why Jeff is left to spin his wheels in the frozen aisle of the grocery store, staring at a mess of blonde curls he’d have to have his brain chemically wiped to ever forget.

Britta Perry, committed to wearing jeans despite the nearly ninety-five degree heat, turns around just seconds after Jeff spots her. Her face drops in an instant, contorting into a strange, mangled expression he struggles to comprehend. It’s clear that neither one of them is sure what the protocol is. Act normal, like they’re still friends and everything is totally fine? Exchange niceties and then part ways as quickly as possible? Pretend they never saw each other in the first place? Jeff decides that it’s probably up to him to make the move, since he’d been the one to do the rejecting. If it can even be called that. In reality, he’d just… neglected to choose. 

It is possible that he comes off worse in the story that way than if he’d just let her down easy. Not that he wanted to do that. Not that he had been sure what he wanted, period.

Not that he’s sure what he wants now.

“Jeans?” he says finally, raising an eyebrow. “It’s July. That pretty much makes you a psychopath.”

The corner of Britta’s lip twitches upwards, almost imperceptibly.

“There’s this invention called shorts I think you would really get a kick out of,” Jeff continues, walking over to the wall of popsicles she’s standing beside. “But you’ve gotta be willing to cross into the 20th century.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” Britta says, rolling her eyes. “They’re all in the wash.” She gestures towards the bag of ice he’s tucked under the crook of his arm. “You going to a party?”

“Uh, yeah, kinda,” he replies, feeling strangely exposed. “Friend invited me over to his place. I guess a bunch of the guys from the old firm are gonna be there…”

“Ah. Cool.” It comes out with a forced flatness, like she’s trying to maintain a level of neutrality.

Jeff shifts his weight, very aware of the way the ice is beginning to sweat through the bag and soak the side of his shirt. He should probably head to the checkout, but he’s feeling a little reluctant. Probably because Britta seems so determined to give him nothing, which makes him increasingly desperate to elicit any kind of a reaction.

“What about you?” he asks, jerking his chin towards the rainbow of popsicles. “Stocking up before you lock yourself inside to protest the concept of fireworks?”

“The AC in my place is broken and the Super is out until Tuesday. Holiday weekend and everything.” She shrugs.

“Wow, that’s horrible timing. I’d be pissed.”

“Thanks, Jeff, that’s really helpful,” she says, not quite able to keep the flicker of amusement out of her voice.

He smirks, encouraged. “You know, some people might call this karma.”

“Oh, yeah?” Britta raises an eyebrow, reaching into the freezer for a second box of ice pops. “For what, exactly?”

“Whatever you’ve done recently to offend the spirit of America.”

“Exist?” she offers flatly. “Be a woman with opinions?”

“You said it, not me.”

She shuts the door with her hip, juggling the boxes between her hands. “Well, don’t worry, I’m not planning to get in the way of your bros and their freedom-themed keg stands.”

Jeff chuckles. “I’ll let everyone know, they’ll be thrilled.”

The wave of awkwardness returns and the moment resets. Like they’re both remembering that there’s a reason they haven’t spoken in weeks.

“I should go,” Britta says. “These’ll melt.”

“Yeah,” he nods. “And I should—”

“Go honor the freedom of the richest 1%?” she supplies. 

“If that’s what the kids are calling getting drunk in someone else’s backyard these days, then yeah, sure.”

Britta laughs—a real, unguarded one—and Jeff feels a familiar rush of something like triumph. Which might be why he‘s emboldened as she turns her back to him.

“I’m glad you’re good. You look good. For no AC.”

She stiffens (just barely, but he catches it, because no one is more well-versed in observing Britta Perry than Jeff Winger) before looking back at him over her shoulder.

“So do you.” She’s going for casual, but the words land like they cost her something.

Jeff thinks, fleetingly, about not going to the party. About following her out into the heat, helping her carry her groceries up to that suffocating studio apartment, and listening to her rant about how he’s setting a precedent that she needs help with things she’s absolutely capable of doing alone. 

About cutting the crap so that they can both stop pretending they weren’t one toe on the line away from becoming something.

Instead, he just shifts the ice to his other arm and says, “See you around.”

She shoots him a tight-lipped smile. “Yeah. Happy Fourth.”

“Fight the power,” he adds, holding up a fist.

Britta shakes her head, biting her bottom lip to suppress a smirk, and he watches as she disappears around an endcap.

2011

He’s not sure if it’s the cheap beer, the slip-n-slide, or the fact that Shirley is running around with a tray of carefully baked, mini cherry pies, but this will go down in history as the most stereotypical Fourth of July barbecue Jeff has ever been to.

When he mentions this to Britta, she launches into a relentless tirade about how something is only truly American if it glorifies colonization and puts a paywall in front of vital social services. Which, yeah, sure, if you want to get technical about it (and she always does). 

Shirley’s backyard is totally decked out in red, white, and blue, with festive paper plates, balloons, and bunting lining the fences. Elijah and Jordan take turns running through the spray of water spouting out of the slip-n-slide as Troy and Abed look on almost wistfully, clearly disappointed that no one told them to bring their bathing suits. Annie is busy cooing over baby Ben, bouncing him on her knee and chatting with Shirley about the plan for fireworks. And Pierce, whose invite was rescinded and then reinstated three separate times, has already passed out on a lawn chair, his head hanging back and his mouth gaping open. 

It’s a far cry from the booze-y, lawyer-filled party Jeff went to last year.

Meanwhile, he and Britta sit perched, shoulder-to-shoulder, on the edge of a folding table that Shirley’s stocked with snacks. They’re surveying the yard with the kind of unearned authority they often radiate, pretending they have their shit together enough to call themselves the parents of the group. Jeff watches as a plume of smoke curls up from the grill, thin and wispy, and disappears into the sky; peaceful in a suburban way, one he’s never cared for until now. And when Shirley walks over and plants a kiss on Andre’s cheek, he’s struck, hard and sudden, with the realization of just how much has changed in a year. How different the Jeff and Britta drinking beer out of plastic cups and shooting the shit are to the Jeff and Britta who were avoiding each other in the checkout line.

Two months ago, the epic friends-with-benefits contract (which really should go down in Greendale history, by the way) was officially dissolved. Not that there was a literal contract, obviously. More a metaphorical one. A series of unspoken rules and amendments they‘d drafted under shared sheets. It had been fun while it lasted at least, if not always in the ways Jeff had expected. Because as enjoyable as sleeping with Britta was in the low-effort-booty-call way (which was kind of the whole point), somewhere in between kicking each other under the study table to initiate car sex and investing in extra toothbrushes to keep at each other’s places, Jeff started to really like having her around.

Of course, they had been friends before. There was even a stretch during freshman year when Jeff would’ve called Britta his best friend, if someone had forced him to admit he had one at all. But it was never this, never close in the way they are now. He didn’t know that she sleeps diagonally in bed, takes absurdly long showers, or insists on playing music all throughout the apartment in the morning. He didn’t know that she talks through movies regardless of how much she enjoys them and hates when he chews wintermint-flavored gum because she thinks it makes his tongue taste like chemicals.

A lot has changed in a year.

Because, as much as Jeff was chasing Britta before, he had still been sleeping with other people. He still took opportunities when they were presented to him. For better or for worse, he can’t say the same about the past ten months.

“Okay, group photo as soon as the sun goes down!” Annie calls out from the patio. “Shirley, can you grab the sparklers? We need seven or the symmetry will be off.”

“You sure you wanna give Pierce a sparkler?” Jeff asks, looking at Annie over the top of his sunglasses. “Last time we trusted him with something flammable, he had to spend the last three weeks of class sharing a Spanish textbook with Troy.”

“It was cultural appreciation!” Pierce says defensively, wide awake at the mention of his name. “I was honoring Dia de los Fuegos.” 

Britta makes a face. “Not a thing.”

“Pierce, we shouldn’t have to—” Shirley stops mid-sentence, as Jordan shrieks from across the yard. “Elijah! I told you not to spray him in the face!”

“I didn’t!” Elijah calls back. “He ran into the water face-first!”

Amidst the chaos, Britta’s hand nudges Jeff’s knee and she leans in, voice low. “You wanna get out of here for a bit?”

It’s a familiar question, one they’ve both asked their fair share of times at Halloween parties and nights out and study group meetings. But it throws him now, considering how they left things in April. Not that he’s opposed. He’d just expected them to have a little more willpower; to go a little bit longer before backsliding.

Jeff glances sideways. “In what way?”

Britta realizes the implication and backpedals. “No no no, not like that.” She taps her pocket. “I brought something better than sparklers.”

He deadpans. “A copy of The Communist Manifesto on audiobook?”

“Hilarious. You’ve got a real career ahead of you in standup,” she says, rolling her eyes, and pushes up off the edge of the table. “You coming or not?”

They duck out quietly, unnoticed by the rest of the group aside from Abed, who watches them go with a tiny nod like he’s logging it for a later cut of the story.

Britta’s car is parked halfway down the block, baking in the heat. She examines the exterior as they approach, its chipping blue paint and slightly cracked windshield, and then gestures for Jeff to toss her his keys. The towels in the trunk of his Lexus—the ones he uses to maintain its expensive leather seats, which Britta resentfully coined his intercourse towels (“I’m a human being, not a dog that just jumped into a creek”)—will work well enough to protect their legs from sizzling on impact.

Britta hops up onto the hood like it’s routine and fishes a joint and her lighter out of the pocket of her cutoffs. Jeff settles beside her, slouching back with practiced ease. He’s never been much of a smoker, but you don’t spend an entire school year’s worth of free time with Britta Perry without getting high at least once. The first time he gave into her prodding, they’d been on the roof of the cafeteria, the whole thing feeling remarkably like high school. Sneaking around, coughing after inhaling wrong, collapsing into laughter over nothing and then, two minutes later, solemnly realizing how small the campus looked and how much bigger the world was in comparison.

She lights up and takes a steady drag, passing it over a second later without a word. There’s a slight breeze and the sound of kids playing down the street is interrupted every few minutes by the occasional bang of a firework going off early, too far away to be dangerous.

Jeff takes the joint and squints up at the sky. “God, it feels like the sun is trying to kill me.”

“It is,” Britta says. “That’s climate collapse, baby.”

He rolls his eyes, ignoring the comment. “I can’t believe I left my air conditioned apartment for this.” Sweat is already beading up on the back of his neck.

“Thank god you did. No one else at this party is anal-retentive enough to keep towels in the back of their car three states away from the beach. What would I have sat on?”

“I keep towels in my trunk,” he corrects, “because I care about my car’s resale value. Not so you can get high on top of your youth-in-revolt Corolla.”

She shrugs. “You could’ve said no.”

He waves her off. “You played into my nostalgia with your peer pressure. I never stood a chance.”

Britta chuckles and swipes the joint back from him with two fingers. He lets her.

“You know,” he says after a beat, “this might be the most patriotic thing I’ve ever seen you do.”

“What, smoking weed? I do that, like, every day.”

“Smoking weed on the Fourth of July while wearing a tank top with a hole in the exact shape of Delaware.”

She follows his gaze down to a rip just above the hem of her shirt. “That’s not Delaware. It’s just a tear. How are you already high?”

“Right. Just a tear in the exact proportions of America’s first state,” he says sarcastically. “Real subtle messaging, Perry.”

She suppresses a smirk. “Not everything I do is a statement, you know.”

“Says the woman who once protested the vegan bake sale she organized.”

“People ignored the no honey rule, someone had to step in!”

“Oh no,” he says flatly. “Bees.”

Britta blows a puff of smoke at him, unimpressed. “You’re lucky Star-Burns gave me a holiday discount or I wouldn’t be sharing this.”

“You say that every time, but look at where we are. I’ve got a joint in my hand and you’re wearing a shirt from the Carter administration.”

“It’s vintage!”

“It’s threadbare.”

Britta hums and leans back onto her palms. “You’re such a snob.”

The sun is finally starting to sink in the sky, coating the neighborhood in an orange hue that sticks to the sidewalks and the rooftops; suburbia at its prettiest. It’s not long before Jeff finds his gaze traveling over the lines of Britta’s collarbone, her skin slightly pink and splotchy, courtesy of a sunburn that wasn’t there this morning. She’s preoccupied with the feeling of smoke leaving her lungs and doesn’t seem to notice him staring.

Backsliding is an evil word made up by someone who’s clearly never done anything spontaneous or fun in their life. At least, that’s what he tells himself as he pretends he’s not desperate to pull Britta into his lap and put his tongue in her mouth. 

It’s not just the weed, although that definitely doesn’t help; she’s always had that effect on him. There’s something about her particular brand of lawlessness—messy curls, loud opinions, legs she insists on tucking up underneath her like a teenager—that’s always short-circuited his ability to act like an adult. Even when they were sleeping together every other night like clockwork, he always came away feeling a little unbalanced. Like she’d loosened something in him that he didn’t know how to tighten back up.

If he pulls the thread now, it all unravels. He could lean over and kiss her, because she looks a little too good in the heat and isn’t wearing sunscreen again and keeps smirking at him like she knows exactly what she’s doing, but then he’d have to admit that maybe he’s never stopped wanting her the way he had last spring. That maybe wanting her is the most consistent part of all of it.

“We’re in college,” Jeff says finally, changing the subject completely. “We’re supposed to spend the Fourth at some rooftop frat party with real drinks and zero lawn chairs. Instead, we’re thirty feet from a slip-n-slide and getting stoned on the hood of a car that looks like the cover of a Nirvana B-side.”

“Don’t pretend you’re not enjoying it,” she replies. “I saw you singing along to Springsteen earlier.”

He scoffs. “I was mouthing the words. Barely.”

“You knew all the lyrics.”

“Born in the USA is a classic, Britta. Everyone knows it.”

She smirks, pleased with her ability to elicit a reaction, and twirls what’s left of the joint between her fingertips. “What a complainer.”

Jeff shoots her a look that says, Seriously? You're calling me a complainer?, and then exhales heavily. “Wow. This is a real wake-up call. I’m gonna go home and think about that.”

2012

The drive to Grand Lake, Colorado takes three and a half hours, and Shirley insists on leading the caravan with Annie navigating from the passenger seat. Troy and Abed claim control over the DVD player that folds down from the minivan’s ceiling and Pierce demands the entire third row to himself, which leaves Jeff and Britta trailing behind in her twenty-year-old Toyota that sputters with every other key turn. All because Jeff won’t drive his Lexus on anything other than pavement or asphalt.

It had been Annie’s idea to do a group trip for their final summer as Greendale students. Something wholesome that they’d be able to look back on years from now to mark this period of their lives. Not unusually, she’d done all the work of pinpointing a destination, finding a house, and making an itinerary. All the group had to do was show up.

Jeff had initially rolled his eyes at the idea, but ultimately failed to come up with a strong enough excuse to skip out. Part of him is dying to get out of Greendale, anyway, after all the brushes he’s had with death this year. Chang can blow up the school all he wants, just as long as Jeff is tanning on a dock somewhere far, far away when he lights the fuse.

This is how he ends up sitting shotgun, white-knuckling the passenger side door every time Britta takes a curve too fast on a mountain road and wondering if this trip will be the relaxing escape Annie promised or the beginning of a slow, oxygen-thin descent into madness for all of them.

Room assignments are left up to chance, with the seven of them drawing straws for four beds and one couch. Shirley and Annie pull for the twin beds, then Jeff for the couch, but it quickly becomes clear when Abed and Troy end up with the biggest room that the whole thing was rigged in their favor. As soon as Britta realizes she’s left to share with Pierce, all hell breaks loose. 

“You can just build a pillow wall, Britta,” Troy insists, determined to keep the primary bedroom he’s just scored. “That’s what we did at my cousin's wedding.”

“I’m not building a pillow wall, I’m staging a coup,” she huffs, crossing her arms.

Jeff leans against the back of Shirley’s van as the argument breaks out, snacking on pretzel thins and waiting for someone else to step in. There are, in this case, considerable pros to scoring the couch: he can hog the blankets all he wants, he gets free reign over the living room, and he has uninterrupted access to a TV.

The only real con is throwing her hands in the air and accusing Abed of voter suppression, prepared to make the weekend hell for everyone else if they don’t start over.

“I know that draw was rigged,” Britta snaps. “There’s no way you and Troy just happened to win the only room with a DVD player and a king bed.”

Abed shrugs. “Statistically speaking, all outcomes were possible. You’re just being a sore loser.”

“Which is what someone who cheated would say.”

Shirley, who up until this moment has been firm in her decision to not get involved, finally speaks up. “Alright, Pierce is not sharing a bed with a young woman. I don’t care what the straws say, he’ll take the couch.”

“What?!” Jeff and Pierce both object in unison.

“You’re out of line!” Pierce exclaims. “I need lumbar support!”

The gears in Abed’s head are visibly turning as he tucks the straws into his pocket. “If Pierce is on the couch, then that just leaves the bed in the second room. Jeff and Britta are the only ones left.”

“No way,” Jeff says reflexively, at the exact same time as Britta says, “Absolutely not.”

Annie groans. “You guys, it’s been thirty minutes, can we just go inside already?”

Jeff ignores her. “Come on, Abed, work with me here,” he pleads.

“You could always sleep on the floor in our bedroom, Jeffrey,” Shirley says sweetly. “Or we could push the twin beds together and squeeze in like we’re at sleepaway camp!”

Jeff stares at her incredulously. “Those are my only options? Seriously?”

“We all agreed to this system,” Troy points out.

“That was before I realized it was stupid. I mean, why are we still drawing straws for things? This isn’t The Goonies, we’re all adults.”

“And yet here you are,” Britta chimes in, “complaining like a child.”

Jeff narrows his eyes at her as if to say whose side are you on? and she holds up her hands in mock arrest.

They’re at a complete standstill for about forty-five seconds, until Jeff finally groans and grabs his bag, slinging it over his shoulder.

“No stealing the blankets,” he huffs, shooting Britta a look.

She makes a face. “When have I ever—”

“Great!” Annie interrupts, clapping her hands together. “That’s settled!”

It isn’t, but Jeff doesn’t have the energy to keep fighting it. Not when the sun’s starting to dip behind the trees and someone still has to figure out how to light the fire pit without burning down the deck. He stalks off towards the house, Britta trailing behind him like a shadow.

Night one is a trip to the grocery store in town, pizza on the floor, and an enthusiastic game of Cards Against Humanity that Pierce is banned from within the first five minutes. By ten o’clock, the air has cooled enough to put on hoodies and Jeff is stretched out on a deck chair with a half-empty diet coke sitting at his feet. He tries not to think about how smoky his clothes are going to smell or how sore his back is going to be after three nights of sharing a bed.

Thankfully, it’s not hard to push the negativity away because when Troy’s turn rolls around, he gives a dramatic reading of a card combination so crass that Shirley’s hands fly to her ears and Annie squeals like a schoolgirl. The mountain air is sharp in his lungs and there’s no wifi strong enough to check his email, which means no responsibility. No school. No Dean Pelton in an American flag-themed speedo. Just the seven of them, like it has been for the past three years and will continue to be, at least until next May.

Shirley’s the first to yawn and announce she’s turning in, around midnight. Annie follows soon after, dragging Pierce with her and lecturing him about taking his pills. Troy and Abed raid the vacation rental’s DVD collection, trying to decide which one to watch in their room (assholes), and Britta announces she’s off to take a shower, which just leaves Jeff to gather everyone’s empties before ducking into the house.

Their bed is a double, the textbook definition being, “barely large enough for two people—who are actively pretending they didn’t once spend an entire year sleeping together—to get comfortable”. Jeff settles in stiffly, trying to minimize any contact. Britta flips the light off and flops onto her side, muttering something about the air being too dry. 

Silence stretches out between them in the dark for an hour or so, aside from the faint sound of Toy Story 3 playing through the wall. Jeff stares at the clock blinking on the nightstand, half-listening and half-counting down the minutes until this moment is a memory. 

At around 2am, the muted crack of fireworks sounds off in the distance, just loud enough to echo through the mountains.

“Jeff,” Britta whispers, her voice low and scratchy from the altitude. “You awake?”

He sighs, voice low. “Unfortunately.”

She shifts. “Wanna go figure out where those fireworks are coming from?”

“Yeah,” he says after a beat. “Why not.”

They grab the bottle of whiskey from the group’s stock of groceries and sneak out their bedroom window like they’re seventeen. It’s more about not waking Pierce up so he doesn’t ask to come with them than anything else, although Jeff suspects Britta also just likes the drama of a window exit. She climbs out first, gracelessly, almost falling face-first into a bush before steadying herself. Jeff follows, even less agile but more practiced at pretending he meant to stumble.

It’s dark and the lightposts are few and far between, so they walk slowly, trying not to trip over themselves. The crunch of gravel and pine needles underscore the expedition, for which they have absolutely no plan. Britta leads the way like she knows where she’s going, cutting across a patch of unlit road and into a field that, as it turns out, opens up onto a golf course.

“Are we allowed to be here?” Jeff asks, eyeing the green like an alarm’s about to go off and report them to the cops.

“I don’t know,” she says, hopping over a wooden divider. “But I’m not gonna let the richest 1% of the country tell me if I can or cannot walk around on this massive waste of water.”

Jeff rolls his eyes but follows. “You know this is why people don’t invite you to things.”

“Well, I was invited on this trip, so.”

“And look how well that’s going.”

Britta flips him off over her shoulder, but it’s lazy and fond. She walks a little further before plopping down on the edge of the ninth green, where the grass is so perfect it looks fake.

They pass the bottle back and forth in silence, listening to the rustling of trees and the far off echo of music across the lake. Jeff tips his head back to look at the stars (too many of them, like nature’s being showy) and just as he starts to speak, a firework goes off in the distance.

It comes from across the water, blooming in the sky above a massive chalet. More follow: bursts of red and gold that flicker in the lake’s reflection, big enough to see even from where they’re sitting.

“God,” Britta says. “So gross.”

Jeff blinks at her. “What?”

“It’s so terrible for the environment,” she sighs. “Plus the sound freaks out animals and triggers people with PTSD.”

The look on his face is completely incredulous. “And yet you dragged me across a golf course in the dark to see it.”

She doesn’t answer, just pulls her knees up and leans her chin on them, gaze fixed on the display. The bursts keep coming, louder now, one after the other. The lake shimmers like it’s catching fire, and Jeff can’t help thinking it’s the kind of thing he would’ve rolled his eyes at a couple years ago. Too overblown, too theatrical. But Britta’s beside him, and she’s quiet for once, her face softened by the glow. And for all his shit, he doesn’t really want to be anywhere else.

“You owe me for giving up the couch for you, by the way,” he says, taking a swig from the bottle.

Britta laughs. “Oh, please. You were this close to offering before Shirley even said anything.”

“I was not!”

“You were,” she insists. “I saw your face. You’re forgetting how well I know you.”

The fireworks taper off after a while, but the two of them stay put, lying back on the damp grass and talking in lazy spirals about stupid stuff, like who in the group would snap first in a Shining situation (unanimously, Annie). At one point, Britta points up at a cluster of stars and says it looks like a uterus. They argue about it for a full ten minutes.

By the time the sky starts to bleed into a pale gray, the bottle is mostly gone, and they’ve somehow migrated closer, shoulders pressed together, legs crossed at odd angles. The world is quiet in the way it only ever is between 4 and 5am, like it’s holding its breath before it has to get up and go to work. Jeff watches as the first hint of sun reaches over the lake and thinks shit, we should probably go back. 

He doesn’t say it.

Instead, Britta stretches her arms above her head and groans. “My ass is numb.”

“Great,” Jeff mutters. “Add that to the list of things I didn’t need to know.”

“We should head back.”

“Yeah.”

Neither of them move.

It’s not until a pair of flashlight beams slice through the morning mist and a voice calls out, “Hey! You aren’t supposed to be out here!” that they scramble to their feet.

Britta bolts towards the trees without hesitation. “Run!”

Jeff curses, scoops up the whiskey bottle, and takes off after her.

They don’t stop until they’re back at the house, gasping for air and covered in grass stains. Britta clicks the window shut behind them as Jeff collapses on the bed, panting and trying to pretend that wasn’t the most fun he’s had all year.

They get maybe four hours of sleep, tops.

After dragging themselves out of bed, swapping their conspicuously dirty sleepwear for fresh clothes, and fighting over the mirror to make sure they look somewhat presentable, Jeff and Britta shuffle out of their room, the smell of scrambled eggs and toast hitting them almost immediately. Shirley flutters between burners like a one-woman bed and breakfast. Annie brews coffee, humming under her breath. Troy and Abed are looking through a stack of board games, and Pierce is sipping orange juice like he didn’t just mistake mouthwash for it ten minutes earlier.

“Morning!” Annie chirps. “You missed the sunrise! It was so beautiful, Abed got a timelapse.”

“Oh,” Britta says, blinking. “Darn.”

“You two look…” Shirley trails off, trying to find a nice way to say ‘like roadkill’. 

“Tired,” Jeff finishes for her, stealing a piece of toast from the plate. “We couldn’t sleep. Britta was tossing around like she was reenacting a car crash.”

She elbows him in the ribs, but it doesn’t have the desired umph. She’s too exhausted to commit to full force.

The house, according to the informational pamphlet left on the coffee table, has beach access down a winding dirt path that leaves them all sweaty and dusty once they reach the bottom. Of course, it doesn’t help that they’re carrying enough supplies to last them a week: inflatables, towels, umbrellas, a cooler, snacks, sunscreen. Troy spends the whole walk trying to blow up the inner tubes, but Jeff cuts him off after watching as he sways slightly to the left and almost passes out into a bush halfway down.

The sun is shining and the UV is high, so high that Jeff can practically feel it seeping into his skin. By one o’clock, he’s claimed one of the bottles of sunscreen for himself, because there’s no way in hell he’s getting skin cancer for this, as much as he might be reluctantly enjoying himself so far. He looks on as Troy and Abed launch themselves off the edge of the dock, attempting to land in the center of their inner tubes. Annie and Britta shout scores from the water, assigning extra points for flair and pizazz.

But then Jeff starts to notice things. The way Britta and Troy always make lingering eye contact before he starts to jump. The way she claps a little bit harder when he nails the landing, or how her laugh sticks around longer when it’s Troy who bellyflops instead of Abed.

It’s nothing, probably. Britta will laugh at anything. She’s obnoxiously supportive. She’s also drunk off exactly two and a half hard seltzers, because she’s been “trying to pace herself” but accidentally skipped lunch. Still, Jeff finds himself tracing the pattern more than he means to.

She catches him staring once and makes a face, furrowed brows and mocking suspicion, like he’s the one acting weird. He throws a handful of Goldfish crackers at her head in retaliation and she ducks underwater to avoid it, resurfacing with a triumphant yell and immediately roping Annie into a splash war.

By the time everyone is clean and sun-dazed, the sky’s gone slightly pink and Shirley’s taken charge of the grill, apron tied around her sundress like she’s hosting a daytime cooking show. Jeff mans the drink cooler, a role he didn’t volunteer for but accepted because it means he can plant himself in one of the deck chairs with a beer and judge everyone else. Britta’s perched on the porch railing, hair still wet from the shower, arguing with Troy about how to pronounce “charcuterie”. It’s not exactly high-stakes, but they’re animated, leaning in close and bumping shoulders slightly. Jeff watches for a while before realizing what he’s doing.

They eat dinner off paper plates, sprawled in a loose circle around the fire pit as the flames crackle and the bugs start to hum. Abed commandeers the outdoor speakers and queues up a playlist of ‘90s classics, the kind they can’t help but sing along to. By nine o’clock, they’ve already burned through the two boxes of graham crackers, partly because Troy and Abed keep trying to stack them up into stable structures that topple over onto the ground after a few seconds.

“I think there’s another box in the pantry,” Troy says, finishing off the s’more in his hand. “Maybe. I saw something in there earlier, it could’ve been Wheat Thins.”

“I’ll help you look,” Britta offers, already getting to her feet.

It’s not exactly a two-person job, but they’re already disappearing through the screen door before anyone can say anything about it. Abed, who’s been half-listening to Annie as she recounts a Girl Scout camping trip from her childhood, shifts slightly to watch them go, his expression concealing a hint of severity.

Jeff takes a page out of Abed’s book and tries to look like he doesn’t care, because he doesn’t. He just leans back in his chair and pokes at the fire with his roasting stick. The flames crackle. Annie giggles about something. Shirley’s explaining her marshmallow roasting technique. All normal.

Except they’re gone kind of a while. 

So ten minutes later, Jeff gets up under the guise of heading to the bathroom and finds himself wandering into the kitchen like it’s nothing. Just a coincidence. 

They’re standing near the counter, Britta on one side, Troy on the other. Not touching, but close. There’s a box of unopened graham crackers between them, and she’s absently toying with the top flap as they speak in hushed tones. Jeff takes in the scene—the low light from the pendant lamp overhead, the barely perceptible shift in Britta’s posture when she finally sees him—and feels something tighten low in his chest.

Troy, oblivious as ever, gestures to the box. “We found ‘em!” he announces. “Crisis averted.”

“Oh, good,” he says flatly.

Troy smiles at Britta and then heads for the door, humming a song under his breath. The second he’s gone, she opens the box and grabs a cracker without looking at Jeff.

“You looking for something?” she asks, her voice a little too casual. “I think there’s another bag of ice in the freezer.”

Jeff doesn’t answer right away. Just walks to the sink and rinses the stickiness of the marshmallows off of his hands.

“You and Troy have been talking a lot,” he says finally, pivoting around to face her.

Britta glances up. “Okay, Captain Obvious.”

Jeff shoots her a look, but she just shrugs, biting into the cracker like she doesn’t have anything to explain. Which, of course, she doesn’t.

“I was just helping him look,” she adds, brushing crumbs off her hands.

He nods. “Sure.”

“Jeff.” She says his name like she’s warning him not to go where he’s about to go.

He doesn’t. Not directly, anyway. “I’m just saying, if there’s something there, Abed might have feelings about it. That’s all.”

“Abed might have feelings about it?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

Britta gives him a long look. Not hostile, just knowing. Like she’s already figured him out and she’s waiting for him to catch up.

And Jeff knows exactly what she’s thinking, because he’s thinking it too. How he always wants the thing he can’t have, because he knows the win is sweeter that way, if he can manage it. He’s had countless opportunities to pull this thing with Britta out of the friendship category they’d shoved it into a year ago. He could’ve kissed her on the golf course, buzzed and tired and shoulder-to-shoulder. He could’ve given up the couch as soon as she’d ended up with Pierce. Hell, even the car ride here had kept them sequestered from the rest of the group.

Jeff knows that he takes Britta for granted, because then moments like this come around and his rank drops and he starts to get wistful for things he once had that he doesn’t anymore. There’s a version of her that’s his; wearing his sweatshirt and sitting on his couch, deleting things from his DVR without asking. She has a toothbrush in his bathroom and extra underwear in his drawer and she falls asleep with one leg hitched up over his hips every night while the TV plays muffled reruns neither of them care about. But that version hasn’t existed since 2011 and Jeff is starting to forget what it once felt like to have her.

He takes the non-option again and again, having his cake and eating it too. Sneaking around in the dark with Britta and then pushing her away. He knows it’s not technically sustainable, but Jeff has never really been concerned about that part because he’s never been particularly concerned that he’s going to lose it. But then the element of competition is introduced, and the non-option is as good as backing down, which Jeff hates to do. What he wants gets tangled with ego and suddenly not having Britta means letting Troy win. The whole thing is bullshit, and he wishes he could flip a switch to turn it all off; let the two of them give things a shot in peace and get on with his life. It’s ridiculous, he thinks, that he’s still hung up on someone he never really dated. But then he realizes that, in reality, Britta Perry is his longest, most consistent relationship, despite them never having been in a relationship at all.

After three years, it’s becoming harder to decide what parts of her he actually wants and what parts he’s still just trying to win.

“This isn’t fair, Jeff,” Britta says, breaking through his train of thought.

He focuses hard on a vein in the granite. “What isn’t fair?”

“You, coming in here and being pissy about Troy when you and I haven’t…” she trails off, trying to find the words. “Anything. In a long time.”

“Right,” he says, finally meeting her eyes. “We haven’t.”

There’s a palpable tension in the room now that both of them are actively trying to ignore. Britta leans her hip against the edge of the counter.

“Why do you think Abed might have feelings about it?” she asks. “You think he likes Troy?”

Jeff shrugs, the irritation in his chest melting slightly as the subject shifts. “I don’t know, maybe. Abed’s hard to read sometimes.”

Britta nods for a moment, taking in his answer. “So, just to be clear, it’s Abed who cares, not you?”

“Why would I care?”

“I don’t know,” she says, shifting a little closer. “You tell me.”

He doesn’t answer right away. Mostly because there is no answer that doesn’t give something away, and he’s always been better at posturing than honesty. Especially with her.

“Look,” he says finally, a little hoarse. “If you and Troy want to flirt over cocktail names and graham crackers, I’m not gonna stop you.”

“Oh, how generous,” she deadpans.

“Just saying. I don’t have any claim.”

“No,” she says quietly, her eyes trained on him. “You don’t.”

The words hold no malice, just fact. It should make him feel better, that they’ve settled it and drawn the line.

Britta moves again, small and subtle, until they’re side by side, facing the counter but not really looking at anything. Jeff can feel the heat from her arm. Smell the shampoo from the shower and the faint trace of alcohol on her breath.

“I should probably go back outside,” she says.

Jeff glances at her, his mouth suddenly dry. “Yeah.”

They stay like that for another few seconds, just long enough for something to almost happen. The kind of moment that hangs in the air like a wire pulled too tight, waiting to snap or unravel or shift into some other shape entirely.

And then Britta takes a step back, breaking the tension before it breaks them.

2013

“You know,” Jeff says, sipping flat soda out of a red solo cup, “when I pictured my life post-graduation, I always thought it would look a little less… county-fair-patrioric.”

It’s barely eleven thirty and the campus is already sweltering. Dean Pelton, darting around like he’s running for office, is visibly sweating through his sister’s Uncle Sam outfit again, megaphone clutched firmly in hand. Technically, they’re all here for Grad Bash—an event Jeff’s pretty sure the Dean invented to celebrate their graduation under the guise of recognizing the entire class. Well, five out of seven of them, anyway, since he and Pierce finished in January. 

The fact that the party just so happened to fall on the Fourth only gave the Dean more excuses. What was once supposed to be a “tasteful sendoff” (relative to Greendale) now looks like a tailgate held in a Party City clearance aisle; half caps and gowns, half stars and stripes.

“Could be worse,” Britta says, shielding her eyes from the sun. “We could’ve not graduated.”

Jeff hums in agreement, scanning the quad like it might offer an escape route. The crowd is bigger than expected, filled with students and recent grads in varying degrees of ironic patriotism, most of them looking slightly damp in their regalia. The banner hanging above the library steps reads Land of the Free, Home of the Alumni.

Shirley’s stationed at one of the food tables, policing her sandwich trays. Annie’s helping Dean Pelton hand out festive cake pops while gently trying to stop him from serenading people with This Dean is Your Dean. Troy and Abed, who fashioned Inspector Spacetime costumes out of their graduation gowns, are filming man-on-the-street style interviews for some web bit that won’t be funny until it’s edited.

Jeff takes another sip of his drink and grimaces. “This stuff is disgusting without carbonation.”

“What did you expect?” Britta chuckles. “You’re drinking sugar syrup and water.”

She’s wearing a denim skirt with a fraying hem and beat-up boots, her curls already starting to unravel in the heat. She looks… well, she looks like Britta. Looser than she’s been in months, or maybe just trying harder to seem that way.

“Remind me why we’re here again?” Jeff asks.

“Because Greendale doesn’t let you leave without at least one guilt-tripped victory lap.”

He squints towards the library, where the Dean has somehow procured a glitter cannon. “Okay, we need to get as far away as possible before that explodes.”

“Deal,” she says. “But I want to grab a popsicle first. These boots were not made for standing on hot concrete.”

They set up camp under a tree near the edge of the east parking lot, just far enough from the main quad that the music and shouting melts into background noise. There are still a few people milling around nearby, but no one’s really paying attention to them.

Britta leans back on her elbows, popsicle loose in one hand and her boots kicked out in front of her, the scuffed toes pointing towards the tree line.

“You think we’re actually done?” she asks suddenly, not looking at him.

Jeff frowns. “With Greendale?”

“Yeah. With school. With… whatever this was.”

He follows her gaze out to the main quad, where a small group has started a tug-of-war with the flag they’d designed a lifetime ago as a joke. Jeff thinks about how that’s the legacy they’re leaving behind here: an anus to represent the crossroads of ideas. Stupidly fitting.

“I think it’s like quitting cigarettes,” he says, after some deliberation. “Technically, yeah. But every now and then, you still get the urge to light one up.”

Britta huffs a laugh. “That’s bleak.” She’s quiet for a moment, then glances over at him. “Do you miss it yet? You’ve been gone longer.”

It’s a loaded question, because the truth has layers to it that Jeff is trying to avoid. He’s been out for five months now, long enough to pretend he’s adjusted, short enough that he still catches himself circling the campus on days when he’s got nowhere to be. And yeah, his law practice is technically off the ground, but it’s barely holding together. He’s genuinely trying to do right by the version of himself Greendale helped shape by taking on the kinds of cases that pay in small, bitter victories instead of hefty billable hours, but the calls don’t come often and the money is thinner than he’s willing to admit. All the while, Shirley and Annie and Troy and Abed and Britta have still been here without him, in the place that made them all matter to each other in the first place. 

So yeah, he misses it. More than he’s ever missed anything, maybe. But he also knows that saying it out loud makes it real, and Jeff doesn’t do real unless he’s cornered.

“Define miss,” he says.

“Wow. You’re really putting that community college degree to good use.”

“I’m just saying, it’s complicated.” He swirls what’s left of his drink and watches a couple of bubbles collapse. “Greendale was a disaster. Half the time I felt like I was trapped in a cartoon written by people on drugs.”

She snorts, shaking her head at the comparison. “And the other half?”

The breeze shifts, warm and lazy, fluttering the ends of her hair. She leans a little more into the shade and glances over at him. Jeff keeps his eyes on the horizon and thinks about saying something honest.

Instead, he tips his cup towards her. “You want the rest of this?”

Britta raises an eyebrow. “Are you trying to poison me?”

“So dramatic. You could’ve just said no.” He dumps it into the grass on the other side of the tree.

“Oh hey, I’ve been meaning to ask,” she says, taking a lick of her popsicle. “How’re things lawyer-wise? Got any good cases?”

Jeff shrugs, casual to the point of suspicion. “You know. Here and there.”

“That’s vague even for you.”

“I’m just easing back into it,” he says, twisting the truth like it’s no big deal. “Keeping things small.”

“Well, I think it’s awesome you’re not doing corporate stuff anymore,” Britta declares.

Jeff picks at a blade of grass. “Yeah.”

“No, seriously,” she continues, in full soapbox mode now. “I didn’t think you had it in you. Working for next to nothing, doing the right thing for once.”

He laughs once, hollow. “Okay, don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“Oh, come on,” Britta nudges him encouragingly. “You used to brag about billing hedge funds by the minute and now you’re out here standing up for people who don’t have a voice. It’s actually really—”

Jeff stands up suddenly, brushing his hands off on his jeans like something urgent just occurred to him. “I, uh, forgot I left something in my car.”

She squints up at him in confusion. “What?”

“My sunglasses,” he says, too quickly. “Or maybe it was my charger. I don’t know. Doesn’t matter.”

Britta watches him for a second, suspicious. “Didn’t you walk here from Shirley’s?”

Jeff doesn’t answer, just pivots on his heel and starts walking towards the parking lot without looking back.

“You know, leaving mid-conversation is a classic defense mechanism,” she calls after him, already trailing behind. “Do you want to talk about that?” Beat. “No? Okay, let’s walk in silence while you pretend I’m not psychoanalyzing you!”

Jeff keeps walking, but the set of his shoulders says he’s listening. She jogs to catch up with him, grabbing his arm and forcing him to stop.

“Hey. I’m being serious.”

Jeff exhales sharply. “Yes, Britta. I know.”

“I mean it,” she says, stepping in front of him now, forcing eye contact. “You freaked out the second I said something remotely positive about your life, so either things are going really badly or you still think caring about things makes you weak.”

He shakes his head, laughing once under his breath, bitter. “I freaked out because you started giving me a standing ovation for a career I’m not actually having.”

Britta pauses, thrown for just a second.

Jeff runs a hand down his face. “I’m not defending the underprivileged, Britta. I’m not… standing up in court with a copy of the Constitution and righteous tears in my eyes. I’m barely scraping by. I’ve had, like, two cases in five months and neither of them made it to trial.”

She frowns. “Then why didn’t you just say that?”

“Because I don’t want to be that guy,” he snaps, the words cutting sharper than he means them to. “I don’t want to be a sad, thirty-five year old failure who hangs around his community college campus like some washed-up mentor archetype.”

“Jeff—”

“I thought I’d feel better once I was out. I thought this place was the problem. But it turns out Greendale was the one place where things actually worked. And I don’t really know what to do now.”

Britta looks at him for a long moment. Not with pity, or even sympathy exactly, but with that same frustrating, unwavering focus she always gets when she sees through him.

“I wish you didn’t always wait until you were falling apart to say stuff like that,” she says finally. “You know you can just… tell me things, right?”

Jeff doesn’t answer. His throat’s tight and his pride’s doing laps around whatever part of his brain wants to respond. But it doesn’t matter because Britta steps forward and wraps her arms around him before he has the chance. There’s no fanfare, just a gesture that’s quiet and certain, expecting nothing in return. Jeff stands there for a moment not moving, unsure what version of himself this hug is supposed to belong to. But the longer it lasts, the less he feels like he needs to figure it out, because none of it is performative, which means Britta is breaking form, so why can’t he?

So Jeff exhales, just a little, and lets his hands settle against her back, enough to say yes, I’m here, thank you for giving a fuck about me. His head tips forward without meaning to, chin brushing the edge of her temple, and for a second he doesn’t feel like a disaster. They stay like that longer than they should. Not long enough for anyone to notice, but enough that when she finally pulls back, there’s a flicker of something in her eyes; recognition, maybe, or history. Or both. She steps away like it’s no big deal and Jeff lets her.

“For the record,” she says. “I don’t think you’re failing.”

“Yeah, well… thanks, I guess.”

She leans back against the side of the closest car. “I mean, I have no idea what I’m gonna do either. I’m pretty sure I need, like, a masters degree to actually become a therapist and we both know that’s probably never gonna happen.”

Jeff detects a hint of something in her voice, like she’s letting herself think about this for the first time.

“You’re not gonna go for the degree?” he asks carefully.

Britta shrugs, but it’s defensive. “I mean, I could. In theory. If I had money. Or focus. Or, I don’t know, no issues with commitment.”

“That last one’s gonna be a barrier.”

She exhales heavily, kicking a rock with the toe of her boot. “I don’t know. I really want to make shit happen for myself, but sometimes I worry I’m destined to just be a bartender forever. And if that’s true, then what, this was it? I peaked at a school that offers a degree in Theoretical Phys Ed?”

Jeff can sense the oncoming spiral, and tries to get ahead of it with an, “Okay, hold on—” but he’s too late.

“I mean, I didn't even finish in the top ten percent of our class!” she groans, burying her head in her hands. 

“Britta,” he says flatly, “we didn’t have a top ten percent.”

She slides down the side of the car into a crouch, popsicle stick still in one hand, now reduced to a blue smear on her fingers. “Oh my God… I wasted so much time… I picked one of the only majors that forces you to get a postgrad degree to do anything! What the hell was I thinking?”

He hesitates before awkwardly lowering himself to sit next to her. “Do you need me to say your whole thing back to you? About not failing?”

“That was about your life,” she mutters. “Now I’m thinking about mine.”

Jeff rests his arms on his knees and lets out a slow breath. “Okay, look. You’re not a model of traditional success.”

Britta glares sideways. “Wow. Really inspiring so far.”

He ignores her. 

“But you’re also one of the only people I’ve ever met who actually tries. I mean, you throw yourself at things even when you’re clearly unqualified. You care too much, you overcommit, and sure, you under-deliver, but you also somehow still find your way to the forefront of every important conversation and make sure things don’t just… stall out.”

It’s clear Jeff’s words are getting through, because Britta’s face scrunches up in the way it usually does when she’s really thinking, like she’s trying to squint her way into emotional clarity. And he isn’t just blowing smoke. He could, easily. He’s done it before to worse people for dumber reasons, but this isn’t that. Because for all her reckless idealism, for all the times she’s tripped over her own moral compass or rammed headfirst into a situation without asking for context or bothering with preparation, Britta Perry is one of the most unrelentingly earnest people Jeff has ever met. Her heart is always, unfailingly in the right place. It’s one of the reasons he’s so begrudgingly certain she’ll make a great therapist. 

Not that he’d tell her that without a gun to his head (or maybe several drinks in his system).

“Was that a compliment?” Britta asks, searching his expression for a clue.

“Don’t interrupt me, I’m building momentum,” he insists, waving her off. She huffs a laugh.

“My point is,” he continues, “yeah, you’re a mess. But you’re a mess who keeps going. And you’re self-aware enough to know when you’ve screwed up, which already puts you ahead of 90% of the population, including me. So if you really want to be a therapist, figure it out. Or don’t. But don’t sit here acting like it’s over just because you didn’t do all of this at twenty-two.”

Britta stares at him, dumbfounded, and Jeff has to fight the urge to look away. They’ve had a couple of moments of sincerity this year; Halloween, Thanksgiving, the Sophie B. Hawkins dance… you know, all the major holidays. But still, Jeff is disillusioned enough to know that he’s always better when he’s deflecting or teasing or tossing out just enough sincerity to get the credit without actually risking anything. But Britta deserves more than that, even if she rarely gives herself the same credit. She always has. 

2014

Jeff is the last one to arrive because he’d spent the entire afternoon going back and forth about whether he wanted to come at all. 

With the semester finally done, the idea of doing anything even adjacent to Greendale sounds genuinely exhausting. Mainly because the entire year has felt like emotional whiplash, up until a couple of weeks ago—the failure of Jeff’s legal practice, the teaching job he had no choice but to take, Pierce’s death, Troy leaving, almost losing the school, not losing the school… Any relief they’d gotten had been short-lived, eventually all swallowed up by the realization that saving Greendale didn't magically fix anyone’s lives, it just stopped them from changing any more than they already had for a little while. A band aid on a bullet hole.

Lately, Jeff has been using the excuse of summer break to go more MIA than he has in years. He still texts in the group chat every so often and interacts with what everyone is posting online, but for the most part, he’s been purposefully laying low. He watches TV that he’s already seen. He walks to the bar down the street to meet people who feel anxiety-inducingly normal. He tries to pretend that the next thirty-something years of his life aren’t stretched out in front of him, taking the shape of one big loop.

The beer garden—which Annie had texted him the name of earlier that day in a very pointed way, as if to say we better see you tonight or you’ll have to answer to me—isn’t very crowded, which makes the group pretty easy to spot. They’ve commandeered one of the longer picnic tables, under an umbrella and zig-zagging fairy lights that glow faintly against the slowly darkening sky. Shirley and Britta sit across from Annie, the three of them caught up in casual conversation with a big pitcher of something and a cluster of glasses between them. Abed lingers near the end of the bench, scanning the crowd like he’s expecting someone else to walk in. 

No one wants to say it, but the absence seeps in regardless. It’s their first Fourth of July without Troy. Without Pierce, too, but they’d all come to terms with the fact that Pierce wouldn’t be around forever long before he masturbated himself to death. Troy leaving wasn’t just unexpected, it was jarring. They’re five now, not seven, and the two empty spots at the table demand attention, even if no one is brave enough to ask what they should do with them.

Jeff drops into the open seat beside Annie without fanfare, offering a tired nod towards Shirley, who returns it with a warm and quiet smile. Britta meets his eyes for a moment over the rim of her glass before looking away. Everyone laughs at something Annie says, some story she’d been telling when he sat down about the Dean and the school. Abed doesn’t even smile.

“Oh come on, that’s funny,” Troy would’ve said. But Troy isn’t here.

Jeff absently taps his fingers on the table. “So what are we celebrating again? Institutional mediocrity?”

Annie lightly swats his shoulder. “We’re celebrating the fact that Greendale still exists and that you’re still employed.”

“Lucky me,” he says, deadpan.

“Hey, at least you’re getting paid to be there,” Britta points out. “The rest of us are just going deeper into debt.”

Everyone murmurs in resigned, melancholic agreement, and all Jeff can think about is how this isn’t what this day is supposed to feel like. All the wrong things are changing and none of the things he wants to change are doing anything but staying exactly, infuriatingly the same.

Annie pours what’s left of the pitcher into his pint glass and passes it over. “It’s not just about Greendale, you guys. It’s also about us! Making it through another year, being together. I mean, when you think about the odds–”

“Don’t,” Abed interrupts, finally speaking up for the first time.

They all look at him.

He pauses, trying to find the words. “We’re already five instead of seven, and if you give it a name, it starts to sound like an ending.”

There’s a pause, and then Shirley reaches over, touching his hand gently. “Endings don’t always mean goodbye, pumpkin.”

Abed stares at her for a moment and then nods, looking somewhat distracted. As soon as she pulls away, he goes back to scanning the crowd; as if Troy is going to burst onto the patio at any second and buy them all a round. But his attention is pointless, because Jeff knows and Britta knows and Annie knows and Shirley knows that this story doesn’t end that way. He suspects that Abed knows too, but hope is a silent killer. That’s why Jeff steered clear of it for so long.

“I think we should do something!” Annie says brightly, with that specific pitch in her voice that always means she’s trying to steer them into some kind of structured activity. “Like a game. Or we could go around and say what we’re grateful for this year–”

“Nope,” Britta says immediately.

“Seconded,” Jeff adds.

“I’m just saying,” Annie frowns, “It would be nice to mark the moment.”

“We did mark the moment,” Britta says. “Jeff insulted the institution, I reminded everyone of our crushing student debt, and Abed invoked the metaphysical terror of impermanence. All pretty par for the course, don’t you think?”

Shirley chuckles into her water. “Well, it’s nice to know some things don’t change.”

Jeff lets the sentiment wash over him. The stilted laughter. The clink of glasses. The way Britta’s foot bounces under the table, restless like it always is when she’s fighting the urge to blow up a moment for no reason other than her discomfort with sustained peace. He compares it to years’ past, sitting at more crowded tables with more noise to talk over and more things to talk about. Two summers ago, his biggest source of anxiety was the visible push and pull between Troy and Britta, but now Troy is on a boat, floating somewhere off the coast of some place Jeff has never seen. It feels stupid that he never appreciated they all were together until they suddenly never could be again.

As if he can read Jeff’s thoughts, Abed stands up, grabs his empty can, and starts towards the outdoor bar without a word. Jeff watches him go for a second, then steps out of the picnic table and follows.

“Didn’t peg you for a seltzer guy,” he says as he catches up, mostly just to announce his presence.

“I’m not,” Abed replies. “But Shirley doesn’t drink, and I didn’t want her to be the only one ordering water.”

He nods, pretending to understand the impulse. The two of them wait in line side by side, watching the bartender lazily slice limes behind the counter with the same level of urgency Jeff usually reserves for folding laundry. Abed bounces lightly on the balls of his feet, staring out past the patio, eyes unfocused.

Jeff waits a beat. Then another.

“You know,” he says casually, “for a guy who doesn’t like when stories get too self-aware, you’ve been pretty heavy on the symbolism tonight.”

Abed doesn’t answer right away. Then, quietly, he says, “I thought he might come back. Just for the weekend.”

Jeff glances over. “Troy?”

He nods. “Not for good. Just a visit. Something short and dramatic, like a cameo. It would’ve made sense.”

Jeff exhales slowly. “Yeah. I can see that.”

“We always spend the Fourth together,” Abed says. “Every year. I thought maybe… I don’t know.”

The image Jeff has in his head of Troy, partying on a boat in some nondescript tropical location, slowly melts into something different; a memory. Sitting around the study table, Britta’s face screwed up in fearful concentration, Duncan pushing and pushing and pushing until Abed cracked, disassociating in his chair. The quiet revelation about another person who didn’t show up when Abed had been counting on them to.

The bartender waves them forward. Jeff lets Abed order first, then points to the same thing without really paying attention.

“Not everything’s a three-act structure,” he says as they wait for their drinks. “Sometimes people just… don’t show up.”

Jeff knows this better than anyone.

“That’s what worries me,” Abed replies, eyes trained on the bar. “Because if this isn’t a story, then what is it?”

Jeff doesn’t answer right away. He just watches the bartender methodically pour seltzer over ice, pretending the question doesn’t make his skin itch.

“It’s something,” he says finally. “Just might not be the kind of thing you can outline.”

Abed picks up his glass and stares into it like he’s waiting for another revelation to come.

“You know,” Jeff adds, a little more gently. “he wouldn’t want you just… freezing.”

“I’m not freezing,” he says after a beat. “I’m just waiting to see where the next part starts.”

On their way back to the table, Abed doesn’t scan the crowd. Jeff notices, but doesn’t say a word. He just sits down beside him and takes a steady sip of his drink, watching as Shirley moves to show Annie a picture on her phone, the world still spinning around all of them.

It’s not until nine o’clock that the sun dips below the horizon completely. The fairy lights overhead have grown brighter in contrast with the inky sky, humming quietly above half-finished drinks and the last scraps of some shared appetizer no one really touched.

Shirley checks her watch with a quiet sigh. “Alright, I better head out. I have to pick up the boys from Andre’s before they go to camp tomorrow morning.”

Annie stands too, already halfway gathering her things. “Me too. My brother’s picking me up on his way back from Boulder. I told him I’d meet him out front.”

Shirley leans over to squeeze Annie’s arm. “Text when you’re home, I want to know he didn’t leave you stranded.”

“I will,” Annie promises, then turns to Britta. “You too?”

Britta blinks, confused. “What?”

Annie smiles gently. “Text me when you get home.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” She doesn’t move to stand.

“I should go too,” Abed says, sliding his glass towards the end of the table. “Rachel’s having a thing. She made firework cupcakes.”

He hugs Shirley with surprising tenderness, gives Annie a little half-wave that says I’ll see you at home, and touches Britta’s shoulder briefly on his way out. Jeff he just nods at, mutual understanding already exchanged.

They leave in a quiet wave; Shirley fussing over Annie’s hair, Annie reminding Britta (again) to text her, Abed pulling up his hoodie.

And then it’s just Jeff and Britta.

The sudden absence of voices makes it feel colder than it is. A breeze rustles the corner of a collapsed umbrella, and the beer garden’s playlist switches to some Ed Sheeran song Jeff recognizes from the radio that’s all acoustic guitar and lyrics about time passing. A little too on the nose.

Being alone with Britta is whatever the opposite of ‘unfamiliar territory’ is for Jeff. He doesn’t have the stats stacked up, but if he had to guess, he’d say he’s probably spent the most one-on-one time with her over anyone else in the group. And it doesn’t exactly hurt their score on familiarity that some of that one-on-one time was spent doing other things he’s obviously never done with the rest of the group. But it’s been a while since they’ve communicated in more than just quick bursts of wit and bickering. Eighty-five days exactly. 

But who’s counting?

Britta shifts on the bench across from him, crossing her legs and adjusting the strap of her bag even though she’s not leaving. Her glass is empty, but she swirls it absently like there’s something left to finish.

Jeff clears his throat. “So.”

“So,” she echoes, dry.

He runs a thumb along the condensation of his glass. She kicks lightly at the base of the table with her shoe.

“Kinda surprised you showed up,” Britta says finally.

He shrugs. “Annie threatened me.”

“Yeah, she texted me too. Three times. Used a lot of exclamation points.”

“She’s getting aggressive in her old age.”

Britta huffs a quiet laugh.

“I thought about not coming too,” she admits.

Jeff looks up from his pint at her. “Why did you?”

“Didn’t have anything else to do.”

There’s nothing pathetic in the way she says it, just matter-of-fact. Still, Jeff feels it land somewhere under his ribs

“Same,” he says.

Britta leans forward slightly, one leather jacket-clad arm resting on the splintering surface of the table. “This is kinda bleak, huh? The two of us. Left at the end.”

He tilts his head back slightly, watching the faint outlines of stars through the canopy of wires and lights. “Not really,” he says eventually. “We’re kind of built for last place.”

“Wow. How morbidly poetic.”

“I’ll add it to my vows,” he mutters, before he can stop himself.

There’s a shift in the air as soon as the words land and part of him wishes he hadn’t said it. But a stronger part of him has been terrified that if he doesn’t bring it up now, they’ll never talk about it at all and it will always just be there between them, lingering in the background and clinging to every interaction for the rest of time.

Britta blinks. “Yikes.”

“Too soon?” He smirks wearily.

“Well, we were engaged for what, like… five hours?”

“Four and a half. Let’s not exaggerate.”

The corners of her mouth twitch. “Everyone was so dramatic about it.”

“Annie nearly had an aneurysm,” he chuckles.

“I still can’t believe she said we were ridiculous together. We were ridiculous. While we were playing chaperones and following them all around the school to find a trapdoor and buried treasure.”

Neither of them mentions that the trapdoor and buried treasure turned out to be real in the end, because that would imply some semblance of truth behind the judgement made. Or at least assign some credibility to Annie, which Jeff isn’t particularly eager to do.

“It is kind of impressive, though,” Britta says. “Three almost-weddings in five years. That’s gotta be some kind of record.”

“Three?”

She starts counting on her fingers. “First day of sophomore year—one. Shirley’s rehearsal dinner—two.”

He winces. “We don’t talk about Shirley’s rehearsal dinner. I still have a lingering champagne headache two years later.”

“God, I know,” Britta groans. “I barely even remember anything past Abed and Troy ‘being normal.’”

“Ironically, the weirdest they’ve ever seemed.”

The two of them lapse into a beat of near-silence, broken only by a whoop coming from a nearby table. The whole thing would be kind of funny, if there wasn’t such a heavy sense of foreboding rising around them like high tide.

Jeff knows Britta well. Too well. Every micro-expression, every tone of voice, all the ways she fidgets with her hands when she’s nervous or excited or pissed. He can see straight through her head to where the wheels are spinning as she contemplates whatever she’s about to say next, and he knows it must be bad because, in all the years he’s known Britta Perry, he’s rarely known her to think before she speaks. 

“Did this one feel more real?” she asks finally. 

And then Jeff’s ears start to ring, because he knows they both know the answer.

Proposal #1 had been competitive—a spiteful, ego-driven battle with guns drawn. The whole wedding aspect had been completely orchestrated by Abed and sure, maybe (definitely) they would’ve gone through with it to prove a point, but eventually one of them would have cracked and they’d have gotten it annulled. Not hard to brush under the rug.

Proposal #2 had been tragic—a mutual spiral disguised as commitment. Both of them too drunk to even stand upright and slurring sarcastic, thinly veiled jabs as vows in front of a horrified minister from Shirley’s church. Britta because she’d decided to throw in the towel on her whole belief system and Jeff because he’d accidentally unearthed over a decade’s worth of abandonment issues. They may have been nearly blacked-out, but he remembers the looks on everyone’s faces as Shirley shut the whole thing down; pity, horror, shock, the whole nine yards. No explanation needed.

But Proposal #3 had been… quiet. No substances, no fight to the death, no one else around at all. Just the two of them in an almost-empty study room with five years of history looming overhead.

What are either of us gonna be leaving with?

Jeff could write it off as pure, unadulterated panic, but lately he’s been trying out this new thing called Not Lying To Himself. Some of what happened had been a byproduct of dread over the future, obviously. Proposing marriage had been impulsive and insane and a little ridiculous, but the sentiment still remains that, as he combs back through memories, he keeps coming to the conclusion that Britta has been at the crest of every good thing that’s happened to him in the past five years.

Which is annoying. And inconvenient. And entirely beside the point, because things being true doesn’t automatically make them useful… or easy. Or sustainable.

It’s not like Jeff had planned any of this or even wanted it to happen. He hadn’t walked onto campus his first day thinking you know what I need? a codependent, co-evolving situationship with someone who challenges every instinct I have and makes me feel like maybe I’m not the sociopath I’ve been fronting as. The assignment was to get in, get his degree, get out. But it didn’t matter, because there she was, sitting on the steps, totally unaware of how catastrophically she was about to blow up his life.

But if that’s all true—if it had been real, and not some panic response—then calling it off means he lost something. They lost something.

They’re at a crossroads now, the kind of moment Jeff knows he’ll look back at in ten years with hindsight that he would slash some throats to gain early. He could say no. That it was just another Greendale fever dream, like paintball or space simulators or that time Chang was a dictator. He doesn’t doubt that she would believe him, she might even thank him for the out.

But he could also tell the truth. The messy, unfixable, and inconvenient truth that his life had flashed before his eyes as soon as Britta stood up from the table. Greendale ending meant they might be ending too, and if Jeff didn’t open his mouth and finally fucking choose her, he was going to lose her.

So yeah, maybe it wasn’t about marriage. Maybe it wasn’t even about love, at least not the traditional, romanticized kind with joint tax returns and his-and-hers towels. Maybe it was just about not wanting the person who had been there, cracking jokes and pushing back through everything, to suddenly not be anymore. About reaching across the wreckage and saying, I don’t know what I’m doing either, but if you stay, I’ll figure it out.

Britta hasn’t moved. She’s still watching him and pretending she’s not waiting for his answer like it might ruin her.

He swallows. And then, because he’s tired of pretending he doesn’t care, because he’d promised he’d try to become the version of himself who does, he opens his mouth. 

“Yeah,” Jeff says, his voice a little hoarse. He clears his throat. “It did.”

Britta doesn’t say anything right away. She just blinks and Jeff can practically see the filing system in her brain glitching, trying to reconcile the fact that he didn’t dodge or give her a get-out-of-feelings-free card. He gave her an answer. A real one.

“Oh,” she says, voice thinner than he’s used to hearing it.

“Yeah.”

Britta glances down at her empty pint glass like it might have answers written in it. “Cool,” she says finally, in the same strained tone someone might use after watching a dog get hit by a car. “Good to know.”

Jeff almost laughs. “You asked.”

“I know.” She pulls a long, deliberate shred of paper off a cocktail napkin. “I just didn’t think you’d… agree with me.”

“I mean, was it a little insane of me to propose a legal commitment to you when we’ve never successfully kept up a casual one? Yeah, I’ll cop to that,” he says, his delivery a little stilted. “But when I said it—when I asked—I wasn’t fucking around.”

She finally looks back up at him and their eyes connect like magnets, sharp and searching. “Yeah,” she says. “Me neither.”

Suddenly everything feels too quiet.

Britta swallows. “I keep thinking about after.”

“The proposal?”

“And the calling it off part,” she answers. “Mostly the calling it off part.” She picks at the zipper on the sleeve of her jacket. “I talked myself into believing none of it meant anything. Because if it did, we might have to do something about it. And I didn’t–” she stops herself. “I didn’t want to ruin it.”

His brow furrows. “Ruin what?”

“This.” She gestures vaguely. “Our thing, our back-and-forth.”

Jeff smiles, a little crooked, a little sad. “We’re not that fragile, Britta.”

“Aren’t we?”

He thinks about all the versions of jeffandbritta they’ve tried on over the years; friends, enemies, lovers, overzealous psych student and begrudging patient. All the times they’ve gone from nearly killing each other sleeping together to swapping inside jokes the rest of the group isn’t privy to.

“You ever think it’s kind of messed up how often we try to prove we don’t believe in marriage by almost doing it?” he asks, instead of answering.

“I know,” Britta laughs. “It’s like our version of performance art.”

They both smile, but it fades quickly as more silence settles around them. Jeff isn’t sure where they go from here. He gets the sense Britta’s thinking the same thing.

“It’s inconvenient that we’re still so good at this,” she says, not looking away.

“At what?”

“Talking around things,” she clarifies. “Flirting with disaster.”

He lifts his glass and shrugs. “You say that like we haven’t already slept together in basically every emotional state known to man.”

“We’ve never tried grief.”

Jeff holds her gaze for a moment too long. The table between them feels suddenly narrow.

She pushes back from the bench and stands, grabbing her empty glass. “Come with me to the bar?”

Jeff doesn’t ask why. Just follows.

Although the patio is packed, there’s hardly any line for drinks. Britta slides her glass across the counter and orders something cheap and fast for both of them, not even bothering to glance at Jeff when he steps beside her. He doesn’t say anything either, just mimics her posture, one elbow on the bar, the other hand shoved in his pocket. They stand like that for a minute, not touching, not speaking, their shoulders barely inches apart.

When their drinks come, Britta takes a sip and winces. “God. This tastes like floor cleaner.”

Jeff glances at her. “You ordered it.”

“Yeah, well. Some of us cope with discomfort by making impulsive choices. What’s your strategy?”

He takes a slow pull from his glass. “Lately I’m just hoping it all blurs together.”

She hums in acknowledgement, letting the silence stretch again. They both itch to fill it. They always do. That’s part of the problem.

Finally, she turns to him. “Remember that night during the first paintball game?”

Jeff raises an eyebrow. “You mean the one where you seduced me and then tried to gaslight me into thinking you didn’t?”

“Oh, please, I didn’t seduce you. It takes two to tango.”

“Clearly.”

There’s a small smile playing at her lips. “I remember thinking afterwards that everything was going to change. And then I kind of panicked. Because it felt like if we let it change, we wouldn’t survive it.”

He studies her face, the curve of her jaw, the soft flush rising in her cheeks. “Did we?”

“Survive?”

He nods.

“I don’t know.” She sips her drink, slower this time. “We’re still here. Is that the same thing?”

Jeff doesn’t answer right away, he just keeps looking at her, trying to puzzle her out so he can genuinely understand her for the first time in a long time.

And then, with no real warning, Britta leans in and kisses him.

It’s not sweet. It’s not even romantic. It’s charged and aching and familiar in a way that hits like muscle memory, the kind they’ve spent nearly three years pretending they don’t still have. Her hand slowly curls into the front of his shirt and Jeff, after one stunned beat, kisses her back.

It starts like a dare and ends like a confession. 

At first, her mouth is warm and insistent, like she’s trying to make up for every almost and almost-not over the last five years. But then it twists into something fervent, almost bruising. Jeff grounds himself in the pressure of her body and the way she leans into him like she has a thousand times before, like she's been starving for him since the first.

Britta’s fingers cling to the fabric of his shirt as an anchor, but her lips keep moving; open-mouthed now, messier, more desperate, like she’s trying to climb inside his skin. Jeff pulls her flush against him, not trusting she won’t disappear if there’s even an inch of space between them.

When they finally come up for air, Britta pulls back just slightly. “Your place?” she says, low.

Jeff’s lips twitch. “Obviously.”

What happens next is a fitting conclusion to an exhaustingly drawn out back and forth. Stumbling through the apartment, Britta pushes him backwards until his knees hit the mattress and he pulls her with him, fingers tangled in blonde curls that are only slightly darker now than they were when he’d spotted them in the frozen aisle of the grocery store a few summers back. Jeff’s head swims with the memory, with all of the context that’s led them to this point now, and thinks (not for the first time) that gravity must really have it out for them.

The whole thing is messy and hot and uncoordinated, but not rushed, as they try to get to something they can’t say out loud. Britta shrugs off her jacket. Jeff fumbles with the buttons of his shirt. Her mouth is hot against his jaw, her hands familiar as they dip past his waistband. When she moans against his skin, a dangerous impulse sparks in his chest. One that rears its ugly head almost every time they do this, which isn’t often anymore but used to be the most consistent part of his life.

There’s a beat, somewhere in the middle of it all, where he catches her face in his hands without considering the implications and looks at her like he’s trying to commit something to memory. When he thinks about it later, the instinct scares him; how easy it had been, for a moment, to forget how he might be perceived and just do the thing he wanted to do. Britta doesn’t say anything about it. She just leans in and kisses him harder.

The sex is mindblowingly great, because it always is. They’ve never had to work at chemistry, it’s the one part of this entire, ridiculous saga that hasn’t required translation or negotiation or pretending not to care. The rest of it is a mess—timing, circumstance, whatever broken wiring they each have that keeps shorting out—but this is clean.

Well, mostly clean.

Because even when he’s inside her, moving with a rhythm he could find in his sleep, there’s a part of him cataloguing every flicker of her mouth, every sound she makes, like he’s taking notes for a test he knows he’s going to fail anyway. He can’t stop thinking about how it’s been months since they’ve touched like this and yet his body still remembers exactly where she likes his hands, exactly when to ease back and when to push harder. Like muscle memory that’s somehow been stored in both of them, waiting for a crack in the dam. 

She comes first, her breath hitching in a way that makes his chest tighten. Jeff follows a minute later, her name caught in his throat but never making it out. Even after everything, he knows that letting it slip would make it sound like… something.

After, they sprawl out in the wreckage of twisted sheets and damp skin. Jeff props himself up on one elbow and takes in the curve of Britta’s shoulder, the faint bruise blooming at her collarbone. She catches him looking, but doesn’t call him on it; just rolls onto her stomach, cheek pressed into the pillow, and breathes like she’s already half-asleep.

He should get up. He should grab water, find his briefs, make some stupid joke that steers them back toward safer territory. But he doesn’t. Instead, he shifts onto his back, starting at a hairline crack in the ceiling like it might offer instructions.

“You’re thinking too loud,” Britta says finally, voice low and rough around the edges.

Jeff glances over. “That’s not possible.”

“It is,” she mumbles into the pillow. “You do this… starey, tense thing. Like you’re trying to decide if you regret it already.”

“I don’t,” he says, quicker than he means to.

Britta’s eyes flick open at that, finding his in the half-light. “Yeah?”

Jeff shrugs. “Yeah.”

She studies him for a moment, like she’s waiting for the punchline. When it doesn’t come, something in her eases. “Okay.”

The sentiment settles between them like a truce.

After a beat, Britta adds, “Can you consummate a marriage that never officially happened?”

He huffs out something halfway between a laugh and a sigh. “Pretty sure the statute of limitations ran out on that one.”

The corner of her mouth quirks up. “Figures.”

2015

In the same way a person gets used to a faucet dripping or the fridge humming, Jeff has gotten used to Britta in his apartment.

This morning, she’s on his couch, a cereal bowl balanced on her knee like a disaster waiting to happen. Her boots are by the door, one tipped on its side like she’d kicked it off mid-step. There’s an open jar of peanut butter on the counter that he didn’t put there, and the faint smell of her shampoo hangs in the steam from the bathroom because she took a shower without asking.

A year ago, this would’ve felt like a stunt. A trespass. Now, it’s just Saturday. 

Or, as his phone screen reminds him when he finally checks the date: the Fourth of July.

Britta glances over when he shuffles out of his bedroom. “You’re up.”

“You’re still here,” he says, because he hasn’t decided how much effort he’s putting into conversation yet.

“I figured you’d try to bail if I gave you time to think about it.”

“Bail on what?”

“You’ll see.” 

Jeff detours into the kitchen, leaning on the counter next to the open jar of peanut butter and staring at it like it’s going to explain itself. She’s left the knife in there. He’s pretty sure it’s one of his good knives, too, one of the ones that survived six years of dishwasher purgatory without getting all fucked up. He should say something, make a point about boundaries, but it feels performative now.

Instead, he makes coffee and pours it into a travel mug. That earns him a raised eyebrow from the couch.

“Going somewhere?”

“Apparently.”

She grins victoriously and walks over, setting her bowl in the sink. “Road trip. Grab your keys.”

Jeff looks at her for a beat too long, weighing the pros and cons of whatever the hell this is. His weekend plans currently involve ignoring the fact that everyone he used to see every day is scattered across the country. 

The pros win. Barely.

Britta doesn’t tell him where they’re going until they’re already in the car, engine running, her feet up on the dash.

“The Rockies,” she says, like it’s obvious. “It’s the Fourth. We always do something monumental.”

“Right,” Jeff mutters, shifting into reverse. “Because nothing says ‘independence’ like overpriced gas and bad cell service.”

She shoots him a look over the top of her sunglasses. “God, you’re fun.”

The highway out of Riverside isn’t much to look at: flat stretches of brown and green, broken up by gas stations that don’t attract much attention. Jeff drives with one hand on the wheel, the other draped over the armrest between them. Britta spends the first twenty minutes fiddling with his stereo, vetoing every station until she lands on a crackly 90s channel and cranks up the volume to make a point. He considers making some snarky comment about her music taste, but rules in favor of keeping the peace instead.

Lately, Jeff has become more comfortable with silence. After all, there’s no one left to perform for. Abed’s gone, Annie’s gone, Shirley’s gone… The rest of the school still hums along without them, but the study group was the scaffolding that always kept him upright. Without them, it’s just Britta. Which sounds like the setup to a punchline, but hasn’t been one for a while. She’s the last person who knows him the way they did. Who saw the whole arc and didn’t leave before the end credits.

It’s not that they actively decided to start this up again, whatever “this” is. It’s that she started staying over, first by accident and then by habit, until it was easier to just assume she’d be there and neither of them saw the point in pretending it was temporary. And it was somewhere in that shift that the summer stopped feeling like something he had to get through and started feeling like something he could maybe actually enjoy again.

When they pass the faded green sign signaling that they’re approaching their destination, Jeff glances over at her. “So what’s the plan? Hiking? Picnicking? Staring at trees until we achieve enlightenment?”

Britta shrugs, licking french fry salt from her thumb. “We get there, we see what feels right.”

“That’s not an itinerary.”

“Duh,” she says, like that’s the whole point.

They cross into higher ground without ceremony. The air changes first (thinner, sharper, smelling faintly of pine) and then the road starts to coil like it’s second-guessing itself. Jeff shifts his grip on the wheel, eyes on the curve ahead. 

It’s been years since he came up here. The last time was probably as a kid, crammed into the backseat of his mom’s rusted sedan with a cooler full of store-brand soda and bologna sandwiches. They couldn’t afford a hotel, so it was a day trip: drive up, take a picture, drive back before dark. His dad was already gone by then. 

What stuck with him wasn’t so much the view as it was the quiet in the car. Even at ten years old, Jeff could tell his mom was trying to give him something, anything, to fill the father-shaped crater inside of him. This trip already feels different. Maybe because there’s nothing to prove. Maybe because Britta isn’t pretending it’s about anything but the drive and the view and whatever happens next.

They stop at the first scenic overlook they come across, hopping out of the car and feeling the crunch of gravel underneath their shoes. The silence is immediately louder without the hum of the engine, and the view is all jagged green and sky. The kind of thing that looks like a desktop screensaver. Britta stands near the edge, hands in her pockets, squinting like she’s trying to commit it to memory. Jeff hangs back, leaning against the hood, watching her instead.

It’s not that she’s changed. Britta Perry is still Britta Perry: half impulse, half disjointed ideology, entirely too confident for someone who’s wrong as often as she is. But in the absence of the rest of the group, without the chorus of commentary and teasing, it’s easier to see the parts of her that aren’t just setups for punchlines.

She turns and catches him looking, eyebrow raised. “What?”

Jeff shakes his head, pushing off the car. “Nothing. Just waiting for you to start quoting Thoreau.”

“Please. I’m more of a Kerouac girl.”

“God help me.”

By late afternoon, they’ve ditched the car and are wandering a main street so quaint it might as well have been plucked straight from one of Annie’s travel brochures. Wooden facades, painted shutters, a candy store that smells like artificial sugar and homemade fudge. Every other storefront sells antiques or novelties or both. Vacationing families stretch across outdoor tables, sunburned and content, like background actors in a tourism ad.

And, for someone who’s made a whole identity out of railing against capitalism, Britta sure does beeline straight for a souvenir rack of cheaply constructed snow globes.

“Think it’s ethical to buy one of these if it was made in China?” she asks, shaking one so the glitter storms around the miniature lake inside.

Jeff takes it from her hand, inspecting it like he’s considering a diagnosis. “No. But that’s never stopped you before.”

Britta frowns. “That’s unfair. I’ve been a very conscious consumer lately.”

“Yeah?” He sets it back on the rack. “How’s that going?”

She counts off her fingers. “I haven’t ordered anything on Amazon since March. I use reusable cotton pads now. I only steal from big corporations.”

“Wow. Truly the face of progress.”

They waste the afternoon in the way only people with no pressing responsibilities can. Britta drifts in and out of shops, touching everything she shouldn’t—artfully woven blankets, ceramic mugs, wind chimes that clatter like they’re fighting back. Jeff trails behind her with a patience that surprises even him, hands in his pockets, sunglasses balanced low on his nose. Every so often, she calls him over to show him something. Once, it's a rack of leather bracelets engraved with things like Courage and Peace and World’s Best Grandmother. When she implies he could use the one that says Balance, Jeff rolls his eyes and says the only thing he’d want engraved is Do Not Resuscitate.

The ice cream shop that swears everything is homemade—though Jeff swears he spots a discarded Häagen-Dazs lid behind the counter—leaves them about ten bucks poorer. Jeff orders chocolate; Britta gets something bright pink that stains her tongue. They eat perched on the curb, basking in the warm quiet of a tourist trap town that doesn’t know their names.

“This place is so fake,” she says finally, licking a drip from her wrist.

Jeff shrugs. “All places are fake. All people are fake. Including us.”

Britta shoots him a look over her sunglasses. “That’s bleak, even for you.”

“Realistic,” he corrects.

“You ever get tired of calling cynicism realism?”

“Not yet.”

She snorts and takes another bite of ice cream. “You’d be a terrible philosopher.”

“I’d be a great philosopher.”

“Not if you keep giving interviews about how nothing matters.”

“Please. That’s the only thing people agree on anymore.”

The sun slides lower, spilling orange light onto the shopfronts, and Britta threads her arm through his without ceremony. It’s just the most efficient way to move through the crowd as it thickens with people waiting for fireworks or sparklers or bonfires by the lake. When her hair catches in the breeze, brushing his shoulder, he can smell the lingering sugar from her ice cream cone and the faint coconut of her shampoo. It makes him feel vaguely nostalgic.

By the time they park on the lookout, the sun’s mostly swallowed by the horizon. Jeff pulls the car up to the edge, and they climb onto the hood without talking, legs stretched out, the valley spilling wide beneath them. From this distance, everything looks miniature; lights like tiny pinpricks, moving slowly in the dark.

Britta cracks open a bottle of water and passes it over. “You think the others are watching fireworks right now?”

“Shirley definitely is,” Jeff says. “Annie’s probably pretending she’s too busy, but she’ll cave. Abed’ll buy sparklers and do some kind of artistic film shoot. Troy… depends on whatever country he’s docked in these days.”

She smiles faintly at the thought. “God. We really are the only ones left.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s so weird. Everyone’s out there doing… I don’t know, something.”

Jeff takes a drink and passes the bottle back. “Well. Some of us peaked early.”

“Speak for yourself. I’m still in my experimental phase.”

“Pretty sure you’ve been in that phase since 1998.”

“Consistency is a virtue,” she says, and he can’t tell if she’s serious or not.

They lapse into silence. Somewhere below, a firework goes off early. Britta winces.

“So illegal,” she mutters.

Jeff shrugs. “Eh. Let the suburbs have their little rebellions.”

She leans back on her hands and tips her head to look at him. “You ever think about that? Like, what if you’d married someone with a Peloton and a mini-van?”

Jeff snorts. “Please. I’d be dead. Or worse, moderating a neighborhood Facebook group.”

Britta grins. “Homeowners Association homicide. I’d watch that documentary.”

“You’d be in on it,” he says, and she accepts this as fair.

Another firework pops. The sky flashes blue and then goes gray again.

“You know what’s weird?” she says finally. “I keep thinking someone’s gonna text. Like we forgot someone or there’s still some other party we’re supposed to show up at.”

Jeff toys with the label on the bottle. “I keep expecting Troy to crash through a fence.”

“Or Annie to call with some deeply unfun itinerary.”

“Or Abed to narrate this exact moment.”

Britta very deliberately fixes her eyes on the mountains. “Would’ve been fun to have one more year with all of us.”

“Yeah,” Jeff says, quiet now. “Would’ve.”

They sit there until the sky goes fully dark, the horizon swallowed. Her shoulder brushes his. He doesn’t move.

The thing no one tells you about sticking around is that it’s harder than leaving.

It’s harder than drifting or self-destructing in a blaze of justifiable drama. Leaving is easy. Leaving grants a clean slate; staying means living with the wreckage in plain sight. And Jeff’s got so much Greendale wreckage that it might as well be tattooed across his forehead.

A few years ago, this would’ve panicked him. The idea of sitting too close to Britta in comfortable silence, watching fireworks without needing to fill the air. There was a time where he clung desperately to the idea that every interaction was a performance; charm as armor, detachment as showmanship. And Britta… Britta has always been a magnet for chaos with a god complex and a busted sense of timing. A fight he couldn’t win and didn’t know how to stop having.

But, against all odds, they got older. Not wiser, necessarily. Just tired enough to make room for a certain degree of softness. Or maybe they just ran out of excuses.

She shifts slightly, her knee bumping his. Still no eye contact. Still no commentary. He thinks, stupidly, that this might be what growing up feels like. Not the mortgage or the morning jog or the life insurance folder he opened once and never touched again, but this. The quiet. The same person, shoulder-to-shoulder, after everything.

Eventually, when the air gets too breezy and the cliffside gets too dark, Jeff will drive them down the hill. Britta will complain that the aux cord is shitty. They’ll split something cheap and greasy by a rest stop, pretending they’re not full of feelings neither of them are prepared to define.

And Britta will probably spend the night. 

She usually does.