Archive of Our Own

“So you’ll look after him?”

“Mr. Nadir, with all due respect, I don’t think your seventeen year old son needs a babysitter,” Jeff says carefully as he follows Gobi out the front door.

“Not a babysitter,” Gobi corrects. “Just a lookout. Make sure he doesn’t get into trouble or spend the entire summer watching television.”

“But I—”

Gobi turns around on Jeff’s front stoop and jabs one finger into his chest. “Look, Winger, you and I both know that you will be doing nothing all summer except drinking scotch and seducing women. I heard about your disbarment. I know you faked that law degree. So you can repent for lying by spending some time with Abed and keeping an eye on him. Okay?”

Jeff raises his hands in surrender. “Fine. I’ll... check in on him.”

“Thank you,” Gobi says. Jeff watches from the doorway as he makes his way back across the street and into his house without a second glance behind him.

Upstairs, through the window, Jeff sees Abed watching, holding the curtain back with one hand. Jeff can’t tell from this far away, but it looks like Abed’s frowning. Jeff raises a hand in greeting and waits a few seconds before turning back inside. Abed doesn’t wave back.

---

There’s a girl sitting alone in the corner. She has brown hair and blue eyes and she looks incredibly nervous, like someone’s going to come attack her or something. She keeps looking around the room, eyes darting, as if she’s keeping track of everyone’s hands.

“Excuse me,” Britta says, and the girl gasps and jumps out of her seat.

“Sorry,” she says breathlessly, holding a hand over her heart. “You just... you scared me.”

Britta thinks she wasn’t doing a very good job of being observant because Britta’s boots make pretty loud clicking noises on the linoleum. “Are you Annie Edison?”

The girl nods, eyes wide, and she tucks her hair behind her ears. “Yes.”

Britta plasters a smile on her face and holds out her hand. “Hi! I’m Britta Perry and I guess I’ll be your Big Sister!”

Annie looks Britta up and down, her eyebrows knitting together in concern. And okay, maybe Britta should have worn jeans that didn’t have a falafel stain on the knee or a denim jacket because they’re apparently totally out of style now, but the air conditioning in her apartment building is controlled remotely and even though it’s early June, Britta has no concept of the temperature outside. So she walks around in pants and jackets even when it’s eighty degrees outside and people look at her funny but whatever.

Annie’s wearing season-appropriate clothing: a skirt and a short-sleeved peasant top. She looks incredibly put-together for fifteen, not like the kids Britta imagined she’d be working with when she first decided to volunteer for Greendale Community College’s version of Big Brothers, Big Sisters. Not that she’d had an image in her head of who’d she be working with or anything, but if she did, it certainly wasn’t Annie Edison.

Britta runs a hand over her hair self-consciously and feels the knot she hadn’t had time to work out because she’d woken up late after the cat unplugged the alarm clock in the middle of the night. Or something like that. Maybe the alarm clock was never actually set.

“So, you wanna tell me a little bit about yourself?” Britta asks unsurely. She sits in the chair next to where Annie had been perched and ignores the laughter coming from other brother or sister pairs. There’s an old guy in the corner talking to a kid who looks almost as uncomfortable as Annie does, and the kid keeps shooting looks over in their direction.

“Do you know that guy over there?” Britta asks when Annie wrings her hands instead of answering her previous question.

Annie clears her throat and nods. “That’s Troy. He’s my best friend. He lives in the apartment across the hall from me.”

“Oh, is he your boyfr—”

“What?” Annie interjects. “No, Troy is super popular at school. He’s quarterback of the football team.”

“So? Popularity in high school is totally and completely overrated. It means nothing when you get to the real world. That’s why I dropped out,” Britta says dismissively, and then realizes her error. “Not that you should do that. I shouldn’t have dropped out. You should definitely stay in school.”

Annie narrows her eyes and purses her lips and it’s the first time Britta’s seen her look anything but nervous. “Oh, I don’t intend to... drop out. I have a 4.0 GPA.”

Britta nods and tries to look impressed.

“My mom signed me up for this,” Annie says quietly, looking at the floor. “Because I got into some trouble at school and, well, in life, I guess. And she doesn’t trust me to be alone all summer while she works and I’m not allowed to get a part-time job and I don’t have a driver’s license. And she told Troy’s mom and well, he’s here, too, now.”

“Oh,” Britta says. This is more along the lines of what she’d been expecting. “Can I ask—”

“Adderall,” Annie answers quickly, as if she says it fast enough it won’t be true. “To help me study.”

“I see.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-five,” Britta answers, sitting up a little straighter.

“And what—what do you do?”

“I’m, um, I’m between jobs right now. Just got back from a stint in the Peace Corps. Moved back to town to figure it out and instead of rotting in my apartment all summer, I thought I’d try and help out where I can.”

Annie nods, but there’s still something in her face that’s a bit judgmental. Britta hastily changes the subject.

“So what do you want to do this summer? I know there’s not much around here, but maybe we can hang out outside, soak up the sun, go to the mall? Stuff like that?”

“Oh, I don’t really have any ideas, usually I just—”

“Annie!”

The boy from across the room, Troy, bolts over to where Annie and Britta are sitting. The old man he was talking to is nowhere to be found. He eyes Britta appraisingly and she crosses her legs to hide the falafel stain.

“Okay, so my Big Brother already bailed. I think he’s in a cult. Wanna go hang out at the park? Or we could go home and play video games.”

Annie looks nervously over at Britta who smiles up at Troy. “Hi, I’m Britta. Troy, right? Annie and I were just trying to figure out something fun to do today. You’re more than welcome to come with us. We can go hang out in the park, if you guys want, maybe have a picnic lunch or something?”

Troy raises an eyebrow at Annie, whose mouth spreads into a small smile. “That sounds nice,” she says.

Britta grins.

---

Jeff thinks that if he buries his head deeper underneath the pillow the banging noise will go away. He knows it’s morning and that theoretically he should be awake, but he’s not a lawyer and he has nowhere to go. So sleeping all day with the shades pulled down seems like the best way to go about this whole thing until he figures out what the hell he’s supposed to do now.

But the banging doesn’t stop and Jeff takes a deep breath before he rolls out of bed and to the front door, wearing nothing but his underwear. “What do you want?” he growls as he pulls the door open.

Abed stands on his stoop, one hand raised in mid-knock and the other holding an expensive-looking camera. “Your car’s in the driveway so I figured you were home,” he says.

Jeff moved in across the street from the Nadirs two years ago. If he’s honest with himself, Mr. Nadir scares him a little, with his intense look and tone and the way he never smiles, not when Jeff waves when he brings in his garbage cans or returns the mail he receives by accident. His son, and the only other resident of the house, Abed, is a different story: intense, but the weird kind, the kind that probably gets him beat up in school. Jeff’s never had much contact with either of them (Jeff makes it a rule not to socialize too much with the neighbors, something it seems he and Mr. Nadir agree on) so when Jeff was asked to keep an eye on Abed for the summer, he was surprised, but figured he wouldn’t have to take it seriously.

After all, what kind of seventeen year old kid needs supervision from a neighbor?

“I’m home,” Jeff says, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. “What’s up, Abed?”

Abed holds up the camera. “I’m making a movie. It’s a summer narrative, maybe about love or finding yourself, I haven’t decided yet. I’m going to the park to film. I think you, as someone older and with interesting life experience, would be a good addition. Will you come?”

Jeff squints a little in the sunlight and sighs. “Yeah, I’ll come. Just lemme get dressed first.” He opens the door wider and motions for Abed to come inside. “You can have a seat while you’re waiting, just don’t touch anything, okay?”

“Cool,” Abed says and sits down on the couch, looking around the room. Jeff leaves him there for the bathroom where he brushes his teeth and arranges his bedhead into a style that only looks like bedhead. He throws on clothes and meets Abed back in the living room.

“Let’s do this.”

The park is on the other side of town so they drive, Abed talking about his ideas for his film and about other movies and about summer and film school and his dad and the falafel shop his dad runs and a lot of other things Jeff just doesn’t really care about. When they pull into the parking lot Jeff turns off the ignition and looks at Abed.

“Abed. What exactly are we doing here?”

“Looking for potential storylines. Were you not paying attention this whole time?” Abed gets out of the car and scans the area. “It’s the first day of summer vacation so there should be enough people here to talk to or observe. Maybe middle school kids. They usually have interesting stories.”

Jeff adjusts his sunglasses and follows Abed. There are a lot of younger kids running around, maybe seven and eight, playing tag and a kickball game and a sprinkler. It’s a big, nice park, something that belongs in a different, more idyllic town than Greendale.

Abed takes a few sweeping shots and Jeff stands next to him awkwardly, not sure of what his role is supposed to be. He watches a group of boys run through the sprinkler, shrieking every time they get close, and thinks of how cold that water must be so early in the summer. It’s barely eighty degrees outside, not warm enough for bathing suits or to be drenched in cold water.

But it’s not cool outside, either, Jeff thinks as he spots a woman sitting alone on the steps of the gazebo in the center of the park. She’s wearing a denim jacket and jeans, clothes for April and not June. She turns her head to scan the park, as if she’s looking for someone and Jeff sees her face.

“Abed, zoom in on that girl there.”

Abed turns the camera toward her and hits one of the many buttons on top. “Oh, you mean Britta?”

“You know her?”

“Kind of. She comes into the falafel shop a lot and argues with my dad about politics. She’s a vegetarian and she moved back into town six months ago and she seems angry a lot of the time but so does my dad and sometimes she pays for her falafel with quarters and nickels.”

“Holy crap.” Jeff looks to Abed, who is fiddling with the camera again. “I’m going to go talk to her.”

“She’s going to turn you down,” Abed deadpans.

“Abed,” Jeff drawls. “Here’s the first lesson for your movie. Jeff Winger does not get turned down.” He leaved Abed standing on the sidewalk and heads over the gazebo, where Britta is looking nervously at cell phone.

“Hi,” he says.

“Don’t hit on me, okay?” she mutters without even looking up from her phone.

Jeff frowns and waits a minute before sitting next to her. “I just wanted to introduce myself and since you look so concerned, I wanted to make sure everything was okay. I’m Jeff Winger, and is everything okay?”

She finally looks up and shifts to put some space between them. “Everything’s fine, I’m just waiting for someone. Someones. And I’m kind of responsible for them.”

“Want me to wait with you?”

“What are you even doing at a park on a Monday afternoon? Shouldn’t you be at work or not at a place filled with young children?”

“Tell me your name first,” Jeff says, shrugging. “And then I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

She stares at him and he holds her gaze even though his eyes are starting to water. He wishes he hadn’t taken off his sunglasses to see her better. “Britta. Perry.”

He holds out his hand and she shakes it cautiously. “Britta Perry. I’m helping my friend Abed over there make a movie. It’s a summer narrative, you know, about life and love and sunshine.”

Britta looks across the park. “Oh, you know Abed? His dad makes the best falafel in town.”

“He’s my neighbor. Hey, Abed! Come here!”

Abed, camera perched on shoulder, comes over to where they’re sitting. “Hi, Britta. Do you want to be part of my movie? Are you going to have a summer romance with Jeff?”

Britta laughs. “I’ll be in your movie, but definitely sans-romance.” Something catches her eye and she stands up. “Oh good, there they are.”

Two teenagers, a boy and a girl, make their way up the path to the gazebo, each holding a paper bag. “Sorry that took so long,” the girl says, handing Britta one of the bags. “There was a long line.” She pulls three bottles of water out of her purse and distributes them.

“I know you guys,” Abed says. “You go to Riverside High.”

“Cavorting with teenagers?” Jeff mutters in Britta’s ear.

She glares at him. “This is my Little Sister Annie Edison and her friend Troy Barnes. Do you go to Riverside, too, Abed?”

“I’ll be a senior,” he says.

“We’re sophomores,” Annie says proudly.

“What’s with the camera?” Troy asks.

“These two are making a movie,” Britta says, smirking at Jeff. “About—what was it?—life and love and sunshine.”

Jeff rolls his eyes.

“Do you guys want to help?” Abed asks. “You could be my crew. And I could interview you.”

Annie looks to Troy. “That sounds fun! Doesn’t it?”

Troy shrugs. “Sure.”

Britta looks a little relieved, although Jeff isn’t sure why. “Looks like we found something fun to do this summer!”

“Great,” Abed says. “I’m going to go home and storyboard and then we can maybe meet up tomorrow? Jeff, can we use your backyard?”

“Yeah, Jeff, can we use your backyard?” Britta asks. She’s not even trying not to look gleeful.

Jeff grits his teeth. “Of course you can use my backyard. What could possibly be better?”

“Great. Tomorrow at eleven o’clock then,” Abed says. “Drive me home, Jeff?” He takes off for the car without so much as a goodbye and Troy and Annie look at each other and shrug.

“Well,” Jeff says, standing up. “I guess I’ll see all of you tomorrow morning, bright and early. Britta, if you give me your number I can text you my address.” He raises an eyebrow and she purses her lips and sizes him up for a minute.

“Fine.” She rattles it off and he types it in.

“You should probably wear a bikini,” he says seriously. “This is a movie about summer, after all.”

Britta raises an eyebrow and tips her head toward Troy and Annie. “Hopefully you’ll wake up tomorrow and learn how to be appropriate in front of children,” she says.

He waves at Troy and Annie and as he walks away he hears Troy ask, “You gonna bang that guy? He kinda sucks.”

---

Jeff lives in one of those perfectly square neighborhoods, where the sidewalks are flat and straight and everyone’s lawn is mown into neat lines and children ride their bikes in the streets until their parents turn on the porch lights. Britta’s a little impressed and a little confused, because he seemed like he would live in a bachelor pad condo somewhere, a high-rise where he could stand on a balcony and drink whiskey or something and watch over the poor plebeians on the street.

Not that Britta put too much thought in it or anything.

But really, she had to think about who the hell this Jeff guy was and why he was hanging out with a high schooler in the middle of a weekday because she was bringing two fifteen year old kids to his house to make a film and oh god, this is how Lifetime movies start, isn’t it?

“So you guys know Abed from school?” Britta asks as she pulls the car into Jeff’s driveway. Troy and Annie had been waiting for her on the sidewalk outside their apartment building, Annie blushing and giggling at something Troy said and Troy looking oblivious.

“Um, not really,” Annie says. She’s riding shotgun, a Ziploc bag filled with homemade chocolate chip cookies on her lap. “I know who he is because a lot of kids, um, make fun of him, you know? But he seems really nice. We had biology together last year because I was in the accelerated class with a bunch of juniors.”

“Annie’s a brain,” Troy pipes up from the backseat. His mouth is full of cookie.

Annie clucks her tongue and flips her hair a little. “Troy,” she protests half-heartedly.

Abed meets them in the driveway, a camera bag slung over one shoulder and a bulging notebook under one arm. “Hi, guys. I have a bunch of ideas. Let’s go around back.”

He leads them around the side of the house and Britta tries to peek through the windows to see inside. She’s disgustingly curious to know more about this guy, how he lives in this decent-sized house with no job, if he’s married or has kids or what. She should have Googled him.

There’s a set of patio furniture in the grass, a little worn and rusty, as if it’s secondhand. Abed spreads papers over the surface of the table and he, Troy, and Annie hover over them, muttering excitedly to each other. Abed talks and gestures as if he’s never had anyone listen to him so intently, and Britta grins to herself as Annie nods in all the right places and her eyes widen and a smile stays plastered to her face, small and private. Troy looks more and more impressed as he flips through the papers and more and more comfortable as each moment passes.

They seem to have forgotten Britta entirely, and she tries the back door and it’s unlocked, so she slips inside. She’s in a living room, big and bright and messy. There’s a few empty beer bottles on the coffee table and a pair of sweatpants on the floor. The large entertainment center holds no photographs—or anything much, really—just a handful of DVDs and piles of what looks like unopened mail.

“Snooping?”

Britta spins around and finds Jeff standing in the doorway, barefoot and with wet hair, a pair of socks in one hand. “Just trying to get some evidence that you’re not a serial killer before I continue to bring children that I’m responsible for to your house.”

He plops onto the couch and pulls the socks onto his feet. “No murdering done here, kitten. Although I must say, I’m surprised you actually showed up.”

She looks down at him and likes the feeling of towering over him. “Well, I ended up with two teenagers on my hands and absolutely no way to entertain them all summer, so Abed’s pretty much my favorite person right now.”

“Ah, so you’re into younger men. That’s why you won’t go out with me.”

She shifts her weight to one leg and crosses her arms. “First of all, no. Second of all, you never even asked me out, so how do you know I won’t go out with you?”

“Will you go out with me?”

“No.”

He stands up and suddenly he’s really close. Like, really really close. And he’s so tall and he smells like nice cologne and soap and Britta thinks for one crazy second that he’s going to kiss her, just lean in and do it, and she can’t decide if that would be a bad thing or a good thing.

But he doesn’t, just smirks at her and leaves her standing there, a little dazed for a moment.

“Shall we go check on the kids, dear?” he asks, that stupid smug look still on his face. He holds the door open for her and follows her outside, where Troy, Abed, and Annie are sitting around the table, eating cookies and laughing.

---

They go back for the next two weeks. Annie brings a new baked good or snack each day and Britta debates with herself over whether Annie just spends her evenings in the kitchen or if her mother has really good manners. Britta hasn’t met her mother yet, or Troy’s mother, or Abed’s dad, but she’s learned enough to know that there’s only three parents in the picture between the three of them.

And suddenly they’re like, some kind of super trio and they’re always laughing and Annie and Troy make silly faces into the camera sometimes and Abed brings over movies and they cram onto Jeff’s couch when it gets too hot outside and watch them while Jeff and Britta sit on the loveseat trying too hard not to touch.

It’s weird how attached Britta feels to the three of them, like she’s their actual big sister, and she watches Abed’s small smiles and the weird handshake he starts doing with Troy and feels like she’s actually done some good with her time. She’s helping three kids, not just one, three kids who—judging by the fact that they don’t receive any text messages or phone calls from other friends—would have had lonely summers without Britta to push them together. She feels good, feels needed.

But Jeff’s still this giant question mark to her. She has no idea how he got involved in this whole thing, or why he doesn’t seem to have anything else to do. He hits on her almost constantly but he’s not necessarily a bad guy. He pays attention when Abed shows him camera settings and he listen when Troy tries to talk to him about football and he doesn’t leer at Annie no matter how short her skirts are. He cooks them all lunch or orders them pizza.

And they supervise and give advice and make sure everyone’s home in time for dinner. Britta herds Annie and Troy into the car and watches Abed walk across the street and Jeff stands at the door and watches them all leave. It’s dumb but she feels like they’re a family and she’s taking the kids home after a visitation and now he’s going to eat a ham sandwich for dinner while sitting on the couch and watching trashy TV.

But he doesn’t ask her out again and he has her number but doesn’t text her and sometimes, after she’s dropped Troy and Annie off, she goes home and sits on her own couch and thinks about him.

---

“Tell me about your favorite summer,” Abed says.

They’ve dragged two chairs over to the back corner of the yard and they’re sitting, facing each other and Britta is suddenly really aware of her hands and what she should and shouldn’t be doing with them.

“Probably... when I was seventeen. I had just dropped out of high school and my best friend and I were following Radiohead around the country. We went everywhere, saw them play like thirty times, and for the first time in my life, I wasn’t under my mother’s thumb or my father’s stupidity. I did whatever I wanted whenever I wanted with whoever I wanted and I stalked Thom Yorke and I did drugs and I got drunk on Tuesday nights. And it was just fun. That’s a dumb answer, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s good. What about love?”

“What about it?”

“What do you think about it?”

“It’s unnecessary.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“Look, Abed, you’re young and you have your entire life ahead of you to believe in love and fall in love. You don’t need me ruining it all for you before it can even begin.”

“I’m impartial. As a filmmaker I need to learn to separate myself from my subject. So your failed romantic past has nothing to do with how I will eventually view love as an adult.”

“Oh.”

“So, have you ever been in love?”

“Let me tell you something about women. From the time we are little girls we are taught that we are worthless unless we are loved by a man. Our whole society bases the worth of a woman on her ability to be attractive to men and to reproduce. Her individual accomplishments do not matter if she’s isn’t married or a mother.”

“So you’ve never been in love. Or you have, and it didn’t end well and now you’re a bit jaded by the whole thing.”

“Are you sure you’re only seventeen?”

“Positive.”

“I think—there were a lot of times I thought I was in love but I always kept it to myself because feelings only end up getting you hurt. Relationships are weird and complicated and it’s hard. It’s hard enough to know yourself and what you need and who you are and then to attach yourself to someone else? It’s scary and it’s easier to just not care. Because then you don’t get hurt and when you end up alone it’s on your terms, not someone else’s.”

“Anything else?”

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Go ahead.”

“I don’t really have anything else to say.”

“Okay. Camera’s off. Thank you.”

---

By July it’s too hot to sit in Jeff’s backyard and too boring to watch TV inside.

“I want to go swimming,” Troy whines. “I wish one of us had a pool.”

“We could to go the public pool,” Annie suggests. “It might be a little crowded, but it’s better than nothing.”

“If it’s crowded we could find some people to interview,” Abed says.

“Can we, Britta?” Annie asks. “Please?”

“Yeah, can we, Britta?” Jeff echoes. He tries very hard not to imagine what kind of bathing suit she owns, how much of her skin he’s going to see. He remembers the kids.

“Okay, this is what we’ll do. I’ll drop Troy and Annie off at home to get their stuff and then I’ll run over to my place and change. Then I’ll pick them back up and we’ll meet Jeff and Abed here and we can all go together,” Britta says.

“That’s a terrible plan,” Jeff says. “We can all go in my car and make stops on the way. That way you don’t have to backtrack a million times.”

Britta glares a little bit up at him but Troy, Abed, and Annie are all looking at her expectantly and Jeff can tell she’s going to give in about two seconds before she does. “Fine. We’ll wait outside for you and Abed.”

The four of them head toward the front door, Britta bringing up the rear. He grabs her wrist. “You don’t have to wait outside, you know.”

“You’re gross.”

“Hey, I’m just saying.”

"I'll meet you outside."

"What's your bathing suit look like?" he calls as she walks out the door.

---

“You like Troy, don’t you?”

Annie looks affronted for a minute and then shrugs her shoulders. “He’s like, the only friend I have. My mom and I moved into his building after my parents got divorced and then our moms became friends and we started hanging out a lot after school. He’s on the football team, and a lot of the guys he’s friends with in school are big jerks, so I stay away from them.”

She looks to the pool, where Jeff and Troy are playing water basketball with two little boys, Abed filming from the sidelines. “I had a crush on him for a really long time, but I know nothing’s ever going to happen between us.”

“Boys are dumb anyway,” Britta says, adjusting her sunglasses. “You’re smart and pretty and if Troy doesn’t see that, he’s an idiot.”

“Thanks, Britta,” Annie says with a smile. “What about you? Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Men,” Britta says sagely, “are complicated. They never know what they want and all they do is weigh you down and make you feel bad about yourself.”

“Oh,” Annie says in a small voice.

Suddenly there’s a shadow blocking Britta’s sun and she pulls her sunglasses down to the edge of her nose. Jeff stares down at her. “Hi.”

“Do you mind? I’m trying to get a tan.”

“The sun is too afraid of the glare your pale skin is making,” Jeff says. “Hey, Annie, sub in for me, will you?”

She gets up and jumps into the pool, taking Jeff’s place as Troy’s teammate against the two boys. Jeff stretches out on her towel and Britta turns her head back to the sky to avoid his wet chest glistening in the sun because this is not a porn, thank you very much.

“You know Abed has a crush on Annie, right?” Jeff says.

“Did he tell you that?”

“He doesn’t have to. That camera is pointed at her more than the rest of us combined. He likes her.”

Britta looks over to where Abed is filming Troy and Annie in the pool. His face—the part not obscured by the camera—is still and intent, as if he’s concentrating too hard, harder than the task requires.

“How did you end up involved with Abed?” she asks. “You don’t seem like the kind of guy who spends his free time with lonely kids if there’s nothing in it for him.”

Jeff shifts so he’s leaning on his elbow, facing her. “Honestly? His dad asked me to keep an eye on him this summer. And frankly, his dad is pretty terrifying and Abed’s a good kid, so I’m doing it.”

“Don’t... take this the wrong way or anything. But don’t you have like, a job or something?”

He frowns and it’s like a dark cloud passes over his face. He looks almost sad, or like he just got punched in the gut, and Britta backtracks. “Never mind. I’m sorry, that was a personal question and you don’t have to answer that.”

“Have dinner with me,” he says. It’s just shy of desperate, no sarcasm or smugness to be found.

“I grew up here,” Britta says instead of answering. “And I dropped out of high school and I did a bunch of stupid shit and I forged a diploma to get into the Peace Corps but now I’m twenty-five with no marketable skills so I became a Big Sister instead of drinking myself to death in my apartment. Troy’s Big Brother is this old guy who we think is in a cult so I inherited him, too. They’re great. They’re what I wish I was like when I was fifteen.”

She’s babbling and she knows it but it’s better than looking at Jeff’s sad face or his half-naked body or listening to the way his voice gets low when he asks her out. Because he is not the kind of guy she goes out with: the one who probably woos women everywhere he goes and sleeps with them and forgets about them.

But.

He’s also spending his summer hanging out with a bunch of teenagers and not for creepy reasons. He has feelings and he’s cute and she just told him a whole bunch of stuff about her and he hasn’t run away yet. Beneath her sunglasses, Britta screws her eyes shut and takes a deep breath.

“Hey guys.”

Abed’s standing over them and Britta sits up and smiles. “Hey, Abed.”

Jeff’s still staring at her, not in a leering way, but like he she’s a math problem he can’t quite figure out.

“You know those two kids Troy and Annie are playing with?” Abed points to the pool. “They’re Elijah and Jordan and their mom, Shirley, is going to come over tomorrow to be interviewed. That’s cool, right?”

“Yeah, that’s cool,” he says, finally taking his eyes off Britta.

“Abed, why don’t you leave your camera here and go swimming? You can take a little break from filming,” Britta suggests.

Abed considers it and hands her the camera carefully. “Okay. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.”

Britta puts the camera into its bag and lies back down. She and Jeff are silent for the rest of the afternoon but she can feel him next to her, even with her eyes closed.

---

“Can you just say your name, for the record?”

“Shirley Bennett. Edwards. Shirley Edwards. Shirley Bennett.”

“Which one?”

“Bennett is my married name, but...”

“Are you divorced?”

“Separated.”

“Can I ask what happened?”

“My husband, he... left me. For a stripper named Valerie. He hasn’t seen the boys in two months.”

“What was your marriage like?”

“Marriage is hard. It’s a struggle and a challenge but you wake up and you do it because you love your spouse and your children. You don’t give up and you don’t cheat and you don’t leave when things get tough. You stay and you fight.”

“How old are your sons?”

“Elijah is seven and Jordan is five.”

“Do they miss their dad?”

“They ask about him every once in a while. I try to keep them busy and occupied so they don’t have to think about it too much.”

“Is that harder, now that it’s summer?”

“Definitely. I wanted to send them to Bible camp, but money’s too tight this year. Maybe next year they can go. I’m trying to start my own brownie business. Maybe one day open up a bakery.”

“You should do it.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“You seem like a really strong person. I bet you could.”

“Thank you. That’s very sweet of you to say.”

“You’re welcome. Do you have anything else to say about love?”

“Love is a gamble always, but waiting won't change the dice. Either you roll them or you lose your turn. You remember that, won’t you, Abed?”

“I will. Thank you.”

---

Greendale holds a Fourth of July party for all the Brothers and Sisters to “come and enjoy some delicious barbeque, good music, and fun!!” Only, it’s held the second week of July, almost an entire week after the Fourth, just long enough after that no one seems to care anymore. But Britta asks Troy and Annie if they want to go anyway, because she figures it might be good to get out of Jeff’s backyard for a day.

“Can Abed come, too?” Troy asks.

Britta doesn’t have a problem bringing all three of them herself, but once Jeff gets wind of it he seems to take it quite personally that he wasn’t invited.

“You’re trying to get rid of me,” he accuses Britta with a faux-incredulous look on his face. “It starts with a simple barbeque but before you know it I’ll be kicked out of my own house and the four of you will just be hanging out here without me.”

Britta rolls her eyes and the five of them pile into her car and drive to Greendale.

The barbeque is on the quad and there are a lot of people milling around. Picnic tables are set up with what are obviously discounted red, white, and blue paper tablecloths left over from the actual Fourth of July. The food looks a little worse for the wear and Britta sighs in relief as she realizes there’s no vegetarian option. Potato chips are not dangerous.

They’ve all just finished eating when someone comes up to their table and claps Troy on the shoulder. Britta recognizes him from somewhere, but she can’t think of where.

“Roy! There you are, my little bro!”

Troy grimaces and corrects him in a very strained voice and Britta remembers back to that first day, the old man Troy had been talking to in the corner of the room.

“Pierce Hawthorne,” he says, sticking his hand out to Jeff. “And yes, that is Hawthorne as in Hawthorne Wipes, the award-winning moist towelette.”

Jeff shakes his hand warily and introduces himself, and then the rest of the group. Pierce shrugs them off like an afterthought and sits down next to Troy.

“Troy, I apologize that you haven’t been able to reap the benefits from my guidance this summer but I’ve been away at a spiritual retreat where I learned to get in touch with my inner self,” Pierce says.

“Oh, you’re religious?” Annie asks politely.

Pierce nods solemnly. “I’m a very proud Reformed Neo Buddhist. I’ve only been a member of the church for a few years now and already I’ve managed to become a Level Five Laser Lotus!” He pulls an outdated cell phone out of his pocket. “See, here are some images of my hive at our ascension ceremony...”

“Whoa!” Jeff yells as he grabs the phone from Pierce’s hand and snaps it shut. Britta, on the other side of the table with Annie and Abed, gives him a confused look, but Troy stifles a giggle behind his hand.

“Look, there are children at this table. You can’t just whip out pictures of naked women,” Jeff says.

Pierce holds up his hands in surrender. “Just trying to educate about my religion.” He claps Troy on the shoulder again and stands up. “Well, I have to be in court in an hour, so we’ll have to plan some bonding time in the future.”

“Court?” Jeff asks. His entire face sort of perks up a little and Britta cocks her head to the side and watches intently.

“Divorce court,” Pierce answers with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Lucky number seven.”

“Seven?” Abed repeats. “Would you be interested in—”

Britta stomps on his foot with her own and shakes her head violently in his direction. He looks confused for a minute but Annie mimics her look and he deflates a little bit. “Never mind.”

Pierce leaves with a “see ya!” and everyone sits, silent and with wide eyes.

“Oh... my god,” Troy says finally. “I need to tweet about everything that guy just said.”

“Reformed Neo Buddhism?” Annie asks. “That’s not real, is it?”

“Definitely not,” Britta and Jeff say in unison.

“He would have been a really interesting subject for the film,” Abed laments. “Why did you stop me from asking him?”

Jeff scoffs. “Because I do not want him to know where I live. Or remember that I’m a person.” He turns to Troy. “You sure lucked out on that one, huh? Coulda been stuck with that all summer and instead you managed to land Britta.”

Troy’s fingers move quickly over the keyboard on his phone. “Britta,” he says seriously. “Thank you for rescuing me.”

Britta smiles smugly and pops a chip into her mouth. “All in a day’s work.”

---

It’s early August when they sit down in the grass to eat lunch (grilled cheese sandwiches and cheese puffs and pink lemonade) and Annie exhales sharply and takes a long gulp of lemonade. “I have to talk to Britta about something.”

Jeff glances at the boys uncomfortably. “Do you want us to leave, or—”

“No,” Annie says. “I’ll just... okay. Britta?”

“Yes, Annie?”

“My mom has to go out of town this weekend on business. And she won’t let me stay home alone and she doesn’t want me to stay with Troy because she thinks that would be inappropriate so I was wondering if maybe I could stay with you this weekend.”

Britta’s face softens and, okay, it’s stupid, but Jeff thinks she looks extra pretty when she gets caught off-guard. “Of course you can stay with me. It’ll be like a slumber party!”

“We should all have a slumber party,” Abed says. “We could build a blanket fort and watch movies and play Truth or Dare.”

“Eat pizza at three in the morning,” Troy pipes in.

“Oh, that would be so much fun!” Annie exclaims. “Britta, can the boys sleep over this weekend, too? Just for one night?”

“Uh, my apartment isn’t really big enough for four people...” Britta says.

Jeff waits for it, and sure enough, Abed turns his head in Jeff’s direction. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. Jeff sighs, tries not to think about what Britta looks like in pajamas, her face blurry with sleep, and cuts in. “You could all stay here, if you wanted to.”

Britta stares at him for a minute, that way she does, as if she’s trying to read his mind. It’s an unnerving look, because for a crazy second, he’s afraid it might actually work even though he knows that’s impossible. “If Jeff’s okay with it, and if your parents are okay with it, then I’m okay with it, too.”

Troy and Annie cheer and, with Abed, the three of them begin making plans for snacks and movies and games.

Jeff finishes his sandwich silently but he feels Britta’s gaze on him the whole time.

Later that night, after everyone’s gone home and Jeff’s sitting on the couch with a beer and a bad reality show, his phone buzzes and he’s surprised to see Britta’s name flashing across the screen.

“Okay, dude, if you’ve been some kind of creepy pervert pedophile this whole time I’m going to be really pissed off.”

“Uh, hello to you, too,” he says. “What are you talking about?”

“A slumber party? At your house? Please tell me this isn’t something weird like you being attracted to fifteen year old girls and I’m going to have to tell Annie to start wearing turtleneck sweaters.”

“Are you serious? What about you? It was originally going to be at your apartment. Are you attracted to fifteen year old boys? Jesus, Britta, this has nothing to do with that and everything to do with the fact that the three of them might like to hang out at some point not between the hours of eleven and five-thirty.”

“They’re people, Jeff,” she says. “They do have lives outside of the time they spend with us. I’m sure they hang out when we’re not around.”

“Abed doesn’t,” he says. “And I promised Abed’s dad I’d look after him and I don’t want to renege. Abed needs a push to understand that Troy and Annie are his friends and that he can call them at night or on the weekends.”

“I’m not going to have sex with you,” she says after a long pause. “I’ll be on the couch all night and I will go nowhere near your bedroom. You will turn up your air conditioner and I will sleep in a sweatshirt and long pants and you will wear clothes on every part of your body at all times. You will lock the door when you shower. If you have a key to said door, you will not go anywhere near it while I shower. And I am not going to have sex with you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” He rolls his eyes. “Just remember, you’re the one who keeps bringing it up, not me.”

“Shut up,” she says and then hangs up on him.

---

“Have you ever had a girlfriend?”

“Of course. All the girls at Riverside High line up for a cut of the T-Bone Steak.”

“Documentaries don’t really work if the subject is lying. Unless the filmmaker can catch them in the lie, but that would be too hard for me to do since I can’t exactly call up every female student at Riverside and ask them about you.”

“You’re too smart, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told. Have you ever had a girlfriend?”

“Who’s going to see this movie?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Could you do that thing where you blur my face and give me a creepy deep robot voice?”

“Sure.”

“Okay cool.”

“So?”

“Well... it’s a lot of pressure to be on the football team, especially as an underclassman. Those guys, they’re all cool and confident and they walk around the school like they own the place because they do. And they date all the cheerleaders. Those girls just like, fall at their feet. It’s ridiculous because... You promise you’ll give me robot voice?”

“Promise.”

“Those guys are all assholes. I don’t even like them and I hang out with them every day anyway. Because that’s what you gotta do to stay cool. I love football and I’m good at it. And maybe I can get a scholarship one day. But I gotta put in all this time with these jerks first.”

“Tell me about Annie.”

“What about her?”

“Do you like her?”

“Aw, man, not like that. She’s nice and funny and she bakes really good cookies. She didn’t make fun of me when I cried at the end of Titanic and she helps me with my math homework. She’s like my sister.”

“And you’ve never felt anything more for her? Even though she’s smart and pretty and smells good?”

“Smells good?”

“You’ve never felt anything more for her?”

“Why are you so interested in Annie?’

“Not in all the time you’ve known her?”

“You like Annie! You like her!”

“Okay, that’s all the footage I need. Thank you.”

---

Britta’s been doing much better about not smoking (three cigarettes all summer!) but sitting in Jeff’s dark living room in her pajamas makes her crave one like there’s no tomorrow. She tries to concentrate on the TV but Star Wars has never interested her and despite the fact that Troy, Abed, and Annie are all completely engrossed to the point they’ve stopped digging into the giant popcorn bowl, Britta keeps changing positions and Jeff’s playing with his phone, the backlight glowing eerily on his face.

She gets up and mutters something about having to pee, but no one pays her any attention. She shuts herself in the bathroom and starts rooting through the medicine cabinet. Jeff has a lot of hair product, even more skin product, and not one single embarrassing prescription bottle anywhere to be found. He uses fancy whitening toothpaste as well as mouthwash. His shampoo looks expensive although the bottle stands upside-down in the shower, as if he’s trying to squeeze out every last drop. His towels are hung neatly on the racks. This isn’t the first time she’s been in his bathroom, but it’s the first time she’s allowed herself to snoop.

Something—and she hasn’t yet been able to pinpoint it exactly—about Jeff Winger unnerves her. She’s spent an obscene amount of time with him this summer and yet what she knows about him can fit in the palm of her hand. She sits on the edge of the tub and takes a few deep breaths. A slumber party. Stupidest idea ever.

There’s a quiet knock on the door and Britta jumps at the sound. She flushes the toilet and opens the door a tiny crack. Jeff’s standing there, phone in hand, looking unsure.

“You seem weird. Is everything okay?”

“No,” she says. She reaches up and fists his shirt, pulling him into the room.

“Wha—?”

She slowly and quietly closes the door and then shoves him against it. She pulls his face down to hers and kisses him angrily, all teeth and tongue.

He’s frozen at first, but it doesn’t take long for him to respond. His phone clatters to the floor as he brings his arms up and his hands splay across her back, slide across to her shoulders, then frame her face and tangle in her hair. He kisses back just as angrily, as if he’s mad at her for something more than throwing him against a door.

Her legs are starting to cramp from standing on her tiptoes and she can hear the seconds tick by on his watch. There are three kids in the living room so she pulls away and wipes her mouth on her sleeve. He looks a little bit like he got hit in the head.

“Can you, um, move?” she asks, not looking him in the eye.

“Huh? Oh, yeah.” He steps to the side and she opens the door. He doesn’t follow her out so she takes a minute to stand in the hallway and untangle the knots he made in her hair and take a few deep breaths. She goes back into the living room where it seems Troy, Abed, and Annie haven’t even noticed their absence. She sits on the couch and runs her fingers over her lips. He tasted like Diet Coke and popcorn.

---

“Britta?” The whisper comes from the pink sleeping bag on the floor and Britta rolls over on the couch to find Annie’s face in the dark.

“Yeah?”

“Do you like Jeff?”

Britta runs her tongue over her teeth and remembers Jeff’s doing the same. “He’s okay.”

“It would be kind of funny, wouldn’t it?” Annie asks. “If we met up with Jeff and Abed to make a movie about love and summer and you two end up together?”

“Don’t bet on it, Annie. Worry about your own summer romance.”

There’s a pause and then, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Britta laughs quietly. “Goodnight, Annie.”

“‘Night.”

---

“Things have been weird, don’t you think?” Abed asks. “Off a little.” He holds out his bag of cracker jack to Troy, who scoops up a handful.

“Nope, everything’s been fine,” Jeff says beneath his sunglasses. The guy on second base looks like he’s going to steal and the crowd hushes, but nothing happens.

Abed shrugs. “It’s like something happened that we don’t know about. Or, at least, I don’t know about. Do you know, Troy?”

“Nope,” Troy says around a mouthful of cracker jack. “But sometimes I miss things. I didn’t even know Abed was in love with Annie until he practically let it slip.”

Jeff snickers and Abed leans back a little in his seat. “You’re inferring,” he says. “And I edited that part out just in case anyone takes it the wrong way.”

“Let’s hope Annie doesn’t take it the wrong way, if you know what I mean!” Troy says with a grin.

“Dude,” Jeff says. “That’s pretty gross.”

Troy just shrugs half-heartedly and turns his attention back to the game.

Colorado minor league baseball isn’t the most fascinating thing in the world, but when an ex-colleague of Jeff’s offered him three tickets for the game out of some misguided pity, Jeff snatched them up and declared a Man’s Day. Anything to get him away from another day of avoiding eye contact and over-making polite conversation with Britta.

It’s been over a week since they kissed and they have not talked about it. In fact, they don’t really talk to each other at all. She comes over every day and they let the kids steer the conversations. She says things like “Good morning” and “Have a good night” but never do her sentences start with “So this is the reason I shoved my tongue down your throat in your bathroom.”

He spends a lot of time thinking about texting her or calling her or driving over to apartment and pushing her up against a door and finishing what they started. When she leaves every afternoon, he watches the clock and times her trip: from his house to Troy and Annie’s apartment complex, to her own apartment. If he calls now she’ll just be walking in the door. He could catch her alone.

But he never actually hits the dial button and instead just drinks a lot of scotch and has to ignore his hangover when the four of them bound through his front door in the morning.

The batter strikes out and everyone heads to the dugout as the inning ends. The announcer starts rattling off names of sponsors and Jeff turns to the boys. “Here’s a hypothetical for you, Abed. What if Annie just walked up to you and kissed you, like really kissed you, and walked away without saying anything. What would you do?”

Abed waits a minute before he answers. “So that’s what happened. You and Britta kissed.”

“What!” Troy exclaims, eyes wide. “Britta’s hot, man. Good job.”

“No, not good job,” Jeff says. “Now it’s awkward and weird and I don’t know how to deal with it. So, naturally, I have to ask teenagers for advice because I’m only a grown man.”

The Sky Sox take the field and the three of them watch as the pitcher throws a strike at the first batter. “You could just talk to her,” Troy offers simply. “Britta doesn’t seem like the kind of girl who wants all sorts of bells and whistles, you know? I say go simple.”

“Jeff,” Abed begins. “I think it’s time for your interview.”

---

“Have you ever been in love?”

“What? No. Love’s for suckers.”

“How so?”

“Because once someone finds out who you really are, they run away. They turn around and bolt and never come back. People don’t want to find out the awful, gritty things about a person. They want to see the outside, nice hair and clothes and a good job and a house with a big backyard. No one wants a mess.”

“Are you a mess?”

“Of course not.”

“Okay.”

“Except... okay, so maybe faking a college degree to be a lawyer isn’t something a non-mess of a person would do. And maybe non-messes don’t end up disbarred after only two years of practicing law with no idea what to do next. Maybe they don’t spend an entire summer with a rag-tag bunch of teenagers and a girl who—by pure, unadulterated coincidence—faked her own degree to get into the Peace Corps. Maybe they wake up and go to work at jobs they’ve earned and come home and kiss their wives and they’re normal.”

“And you don’t think you’re normal?”

“I don’t know. Does anything about me seem normal to you?”

“You have a house. And you took us all in and helped me make this film. And I know it’s because my dad told you to, but you still did it. Is that normal?”

“What happened to your mom, Abed?”

“She left. Why?”

“So did my dad. Do you ever feel like it messed you up? Made you into someone you weren’t before?”

“Sometimes. My dad’s more angry now. I see her once a year, at Christmas, even though my dad decided to raise me Muslim. We watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer together.”

“I haven’t seen my dad since I was eight. I don’t know where he is, or if he’s even alive. It’s stupid, the way they can do that to you, isn’t it? If he had stuck around I might have just gone to college and done it all right.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because people take the easy way out all the time, don’t they? They lie and they cheat and they leave when things get bad. And it always works out for them. So I thought, why bother? Why bother caring so much about something that has the potential to go bad? I could have flunked out of school. I could have not even gotten in. But by skipping all those steps I made sure I was in the courtroom practicing law without suffering any sort of disappointment.”

“But wasn’t it a disappointment when you got caught?”

“Yes. But only because I cared about it. See, that was my mistake. I wanted it too bad. I wanted to be a lawyer my entire life. If it had been just another job, just something I did to make money and sleep with women, it wouldn’t have mattered when it was over.”

“And that’s the way you handle your relationships with women.”

“Exactly. With anyone, really. Because if you don’t care, you don’t get hurt. You pick up and you move on and that’s that.”

“Tell me about Britta.”

“What about her?”

“Well, you say that you don’t care about people. But I think you care about her. You wouldn’t have come to me and Troy for advice after she kissed you if you didn’t.”

“Have you done Britta’s interview yet?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“You’ll see when it’s finished.”

“Can you just tell me?”

“Her view on love is eerily similar to your own.”

“Hm.”

“What do you think about that?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you like her, don’t you? And it’s more than just wanting to sleep with her, which is why you did this whole thing in the first place. It would have been me and you making this film if it wasn’t for Britta.”

“She—is so much more than I thought she would be. Does that make sense? She acts like she’s so tough but she desperately wants the three of you to like her and think she’s cool. And she’s good with all of you. She didn’t have to give two shits about any of us, and yet she does.”

“Sounds to me like you care about her. Isn’t that against the rules?”

“Yeah, it is. But I don’t want to not care about her. You know what I mean? And then, god, she kissed me, she just threw me against a door and went for it and it’s awkward, like we’re in high school or something. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“And I can’t mess this up. Because of you guys. Because the three of you are... you’re important to me. If it wasn’t for you guys, I would have sat here in the dark in my underwear and drank a lot of scotch. Did you know Britta said the same thing to me? She said that if she hadn’t volunteered to be a Big Sister she’d have spent the summer in her apartment drinking? That we would have been doing the same exact thing and not knowing it?”

“So you’re saying a movie about summer gave your summer purpose.”

“Yes! I am! I’ll tell you something, Abed. When your dad came to me and asked me to keep an eye on you, I spent a long time trying to figure out how to get out of it. I thought of going on vacation, getting a job at WalMart, of selling my house. Anything to not have to hang out with you all summer. And that sounds bad, I know. But—and maybe this is creepy or inappropriate—I have had so much fun with you these last few months. I really have.”

“You’re having an epiphany. This is good stuff.”

“Because sitting around and feeling sorry for myself is stupid. I shouldn’t have faked that degree. I should have said something to Britta after we kissed. And maybe I can’t fix it all. Maybe I’ll get a law degree and no one will hire me because they’ll know what I did. Maybe Britta hates me. But maybe I need to grow up.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I have a couple things to think about. Hey, thanks Abed. You’re really cool.”

“I know.”

---

There’s a knock on Britta’s door and she holds her breath for about fifteen seconds until she opens it to find Annie. “Hey! What are you doing here?”

“I rode my bike over. I hope that’s okay.”

“Of course!” Britta opens the door wider and gestures for her to come inside. “What’s up? Do you want something? I think I have Diet Coke.”

“Sure.” Annie sits on the couch and the cat climbs into her lap. She scratches him behind the ears and laughs a little when he starts purring.

Britta sits next to her with two cans of soda in her hands and sets them on the coffee table. “So, what’s going on?”

“I know you’re supposed to be my Big Sister and I’m supposed to come to you for advice, but...” She reaches over the cat and takes a gulp of soda. “Well, you’ve been kinda quiet lately and it seems like something’s wrong. Did something happen with Jeff at our sleepover? Because you two disappeared for a couple minutes and, well, you don’t have to tell me if something did, but if you wanted to, I would listen.”

Britta smiles and puts her arm around Annie for a quick squeeze. “Thanks, Annie. I think one day you’re going to be a really good Big Sister.”

“But you can talk to me you know,” Annie says, still beaming. “I know I’m only fifteen, but I’ve gone through a lot of stuff this year and I’m much more mature than most fifteen year olds.”

“Okay,” Britta nods. “But can we talk about you, first? Can you tell me about the Adderall?”

Annie takes a visible deep breath and wrings her hands together. “Um. Yeah. My parents got divorced and my mom just sort of... freaked out, you know? And she was on me about being the best at everything and getting really high grades. She wants me to go to a good college. And I do, too, I want to be the best at things. I just couldn’t do it on my own with my mom breathing down my back. And this girl I knew from Hebrew School, her cousin knew someone who could get some Adderall to help me focus more. My grades were slipping because there just weren’t enough hours in the day.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen. This was the beginning of last year.”

Britta looks horrified for a second but quickly rearranges her face into a more neutral expression. “So you just—started taking it?”

“Yeah. And it helped. My grades went up, I was involved in more activities, my mom was happier. But then I started taking it so much that I slept for about twenty minutes a night and I gained all sorts of weight and was what my doctor called manic.”

“And then what happened?”

“I was in the cafeteria and I was carrying my tray to a table. And I tripped and my purse dumped over and my pills fell all over the floor. A teacher came over and saw the bottle and it obviously wasn’t prescribed to me, so I ran. Right to the back of the cafeteria and through a plate-glass window.”

Britta freezes and then squirms a little, unsure how to respond. And this is the kind of thing she should be prepared for because it’s the kind of thing she’d been expecting as a Big Sister. Annie’s middle-class apartment complex is as inner-city as it gets in Greendale, and her pill addiction is straight from a Lifetime movie, but it’s real life.

“I left school for three months to go into rehab. I missed almost the entire spring semester and I had to work twice as hard to keep up with everyone else,” Annie continues. “But I’m clean and Troy is my friend again and I’m ready to go back to school in September and try to put it all behind me.”

She looks at Britta anxiously, as if Britta’s suddenly going to tell her to leave, as if Britta’s going to want nothing to do with her anymore. So Britta leans in and gathers Annie up in her arms, pulls her close against her. “You are incredible,” Britta says.

“Thank you,” Annie says as she pulls away with a watery smile. “Now, let’s talk about you.”

“I kissed Jeff,” Britta admits, scrunching her face up. “And now it’s kind of awkward.”

“Do you like him?” Annie’s voice goes up a register and she repositions herself on the couch, tucking her legs beneath her. “Because you should ask him out. How cute would that be!”

Britta gives her a look. “Annie, that’s not how things work.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s just not. Look, the film is almost finished. Summer’s almost over. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to do in September, and—”

“But you can still be my Big Sister!” Annie interrupts. “We can hang out after school and on weekends and you can come to my Debate Club meets!”

Britta smiles sadly. “Of course, Annie. But my friend is going to build a school in Haiti and she asked me to come and I...”

“That’s so typical!” Annie yells, jumping up. “You’re going to leave and then Jeff won’t want to talk to us and Troy will be the stupid quarterback and Abed will be too busy with his senior year and none of us will see each other again! Why did you even volunteer to do this if you were going to bail?”

“Annie, that’s not what’s going to happen!”

Annie shakes her head and stomps toward the door and leaves.

---

On Monday Annie texts Britta to say (very matter-of-factly, no smiley faces or exclamation points to be found) she’s not feeling well and won’t be going to Jeff’s house. Then Troy texts her and says he has to bail, too, because football practice is starting up and he has to spend the day in the weight room. Then Abed texts her to tell her he’s going out of town to visit his cousin Abra. Britta assumes they’ve all texted Jeff, too, so she doesn’t bother. Instead she makes herself coffee and eats a stale bagel and takes a long shower.

But by the early afternoon she’s run out of things to do at home and soap operas aren’t holding her attention. So she stops overthinking it, gets in her car, and drives to Jeff’s house.

He opens the door with a look of mixed concern and confusion. “Uh, hi?”

“Hi.” Britta looks down at her beat-up sneakers. “Can we talk?”

“Sure.” He opens the door wider and she follows him inside. Instead of going for the couch, he leads her through the house to the backyard and the patio furniture. They sit across the table from each other and he looks to her expectantly. “What’s up?”

Britta runs her finger through the groove in the table. It’s strange, without the buffer of Troy/Annie/Abed between them. It’s just the two of them, just Jeff and Britta, they’ve never been this alone before.

“I’m sorry I kissed you,” she says finally. “It was uncalled for and it made everything uncomfortable and I shouldn’t have invaded your personal space like that.”

“My personal space?” Jeff laughs. He actually laughs and Britta wants the backyard to become a sinkhole and swallow her alive because this is crazy and humiliating. “Britta, you are insane.”

“You don’t have to be rude about it, okay?” she snaps. “I’m trying to be an adult here and apologize to you.” She stands up and tries to remember how Annie stormed out of her apartment yesterday because Annie has an incredible talent for leaving in a huff. She only makes it one step, however, before Jeff grabs her wrist and pulls her back gently.

“I’m not trying to be rude,” he says. Only he’s standing up now, too. And his voice is all low and Britta is taken aback again by how tall he is and his t-shirt is really thin and she can see the outline of his muscles and she remembers that day they went swimming and what he looks like without a shirt on and he leans in and her legs are working without her even telling them to and she pushes up onto her tiptoes to meet him halfway and—

He kisses her softly, almost hesitantly, slides his hands up her sides and then down again to rest on her waist. He’s an annoyingly good kisser, the right amount of lips and tongue, fresh breath, and now that she can pay attention this time she laments that she wasted an entire summer not kissing him.

He pulls away and she braces herself, waits for him to be the one to apologize, for him to tell her to leave. He kisses the corner of her mouth, then her jaw, then rests his forehead against hers and sighs a little.

“It’s really hot out here,” he says and she laughs shakily.

“We could, um,” she swallows hard, “go inside. If you want.”

“I want to.”

“Okay.”

---

It’s much later when he tells her. She’s wrapped up in his bedsheet and her hair is knotty and she has a smudge of mascara underneath her left eye. He plays with her hand while he says it, eyes on the thumbnail she must have bitten on the drive over.

“I used to be a lawyer.”

“Hmm?” She sounds sleepy and her eyes are half-closed.

“I was disbarred, at the beginning of June. My bachelor’s degree was fake and I cheated on the LSATs. Made it two years without getting caught. But I did, and that’s why I own my own home but still have time to spend every weekday with a group of teenagers. Because I was fired in the most embarrassing way possible and I don’t know how I’m going to recover.”

He holds his breath after he says it and her whole body stills. Her fingers wrap around his and her eyes fly open. “Oh.”

“When you told me about the Peace Corps I felt even worse about it, you know?” he says. “Because you did the same thing I did, but you did it to help other people and I did it to help myself.”

“Please,” she says darkly. “I was eighteen with no skills and no knowledge of anything. I went out there and tried to do good things to convince myself that I wasn’t so terrible.”

Jeff doesn’t say anything, just kisses her instead. Because he’s a little overwhelmed with it all and he’s only been kissing her for a few hours but it already feels like the easiest, most natural thing in the world. He’s been on edge ever since his conversation with Abed the other day; it’s all too much to take in, realizing that he’s been going about his entire life in the wrong way. But he has Britta in his bed and she’s naked and her nails are pressing into his back and he thinks maybe realizations aren’t actually the worst.

---

“I should probably get going,” Britta says as she slips out of bed. Her shirt and underwear are on the floor by the bed but her jeans are nowhere to be found.

“Stay,” Jeff says. He tugs on her hand and she gives his a squeeze before pulling away.

“No, it’s getting late.” She steps into her underwear and manages to locate one of her shoes sticking out from underneath the bed. It’s half-hidden by Jeff’s briefs.

“Britta, it’s six o’clock. Come on. I’ll cook dinner. Or we can go out. Whatever you want.”

She shakes her head and takes a few deep, quiet breaths. She feels his eyes on her as she pulls her shirt over her head and combs her hair back into a ponytail. And she’s trying not to freak out because she’s just had sex with Jeff Winger (twice) and the summer isn’t quite over yet. Jeff Winger, who lied about so many things and told her about them, who touches her like she’s made of porcelain, who she’s spent almost three whole months with and likes more and more every day. And it can’t stay like this. It can’t be good sex and pizza nights with the three kids and revealing themselves to each other slowly but surely until there’s nothing left to hide under.

Can it?

She’s been in Greendale for almost nine months now. There’s something else waiting for her out there, but for the first time in a long time, there’s something keeping her here.

Jeff stands up and tugs on a pair of sweatpants. “So you think this was a mistake.” It’s not a question.

She looks up at him and her shoulders slump. “No. Of course not. I just—”

“You’re just running out of here. Your jeans are here, by the way.”

He holds them out to her and she takes them but sets them on the bed. She reaches up to kiss him, hands tangling in his hair. He pulls away and buries his face in the crook of her neck. “Stay,” he whispers again.

He doesn’t know how many meanings that one word has. She thinks about Annie, who wants to be good and loved so desperately that she did whatever she could to be the best. She thinks about Troy, who pretends to be a jerk to fit in with the other football players. She thinks about Abed, who is now so loved by four different people that he brought together. She thinks about Haiti and a life waiting for her there. She thinks about running away, about staying, about Jeff and his voice when he told her about being a lawyer. He sounded so sad and scared and now he’s holding her against him so tightly, as if she’s going to disappear and Britta relents.

“Okay,” she says. “Can we go somewhere, though? Just drive around?”

He pulls back and smiles at her. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

Jeff drives with one hand on the steering wheel and one hand in Britta’s, their fingers tangled together. It’s so cheesy and overly sentimental and something Britta is positive neither of them has done before. But she has a smile on her face she can’t shake as she looks out the window and watches Greendale pass by.

“Think Annie will still be sick tomorrow?” Jeff asks. “Because Abed’s coming home tonight and Troy only has an early practice.”

Britta squirms in her seat a little bit. “Annie’s not really sick.”

“What?”

“She’s faking it because she’s mad at me.”

“Why?”

Britta rolls her window up and the car gets quiet. “She came over yesterday because she knew something was weird between you and me and she wanted to know if I needed to talk about it. And then she mentioned that she and I could still hang out a lot even when she went back to school and I told her that might not be a possibility.”

“But even if the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program ends you can still see her, can’t you?”

“Um. Well, I told her I might not be around.”

His left hand tightens on the steering wheel and she watches as his knuckles turn white. She can feel his right hand starting to pull away but she maintains her grip. “Oh?”

“My friend is going to build a school in Haiti. She’s leaving in September. And she asked if I would go with her.”

“So you’re going to go to Haiti. In two weeks.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”

“Hmmm.”

Silence stretches out between them and Britta crosses her right arm over her stomach. Her left hand is still holding Jeff’s, squeezing so he won’t pull away.

“What do you want?” she asks finally.

“What do you mean?”

“Like,” she pauses to lick her lips nervously, “from me. From us.”

He shrugs, eyes straight ahead, over concentrating on the road.

“Because I’m not the kind of person who can go from zero to one hundred. I can’t... deal with that.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to not feel like such a failure all the time. I want to be able to stay in bed with you without feeling like the ceiling is going to fall in and crush me. I want Annie not to be disappointed in me. I want to know what I’m doing with my life but feel confident in whatever decision I make. I want to keep spending every day with you and Annie and Abed and Troy because I’m good at it and because it’s comfortable and it makes me happy.”

She sinks back into her seat and rips her hand out of Jeff’s so she can cover her face with both hands. She’s a little out of breath, like confessing all of that was the same as running a mile. She remembers the last time she said as much about herself to him, back at the pool, laying side by side and distracting him with things about herself she thought would scare him away.

“Annie’s not disappointed in you,” he says finally, quietly.

Britta shrugs and folds her arms tightly over her chest.

He flips on the turn signal and guides the car over the side of the road. She watches as he shifts into park and turns the ignition off. The whole car shakes a little as trucks pass them on the road.

“Okay, I’m sorry,” he says, angling his body to face her. “Can we just forget about all of this?”

“All of it?”

“Not all of it,” he says. He leans in and she meets him halfway over the gearshift to kiss him. And they sit there, in the parked car, and make out for a while like teenagers. And they drive back to his house and he asks her again to stay and she still feels like the ceiling might cave in but she says yes anyway.

---

“Have you ever had a boyfriend?”

“No. First of all, I’m not allowed to date. Second of all, um, boys aren’t really interested in someone who had a breakdown and ran through a plate-glass window.”

“Is there anyone you’ve been interested in?”

“There was a guy... and I liked him for a long time but we’re just friends now. We’re better as friends.”

“What’s your indicator? How do you tell if someone is better as just your friend, even when you have feelings for them?”

“Because I knew he would never like me that way. You reach a point, when you’re friends with someone you also have romantic feelings for, when you get tired of hoping that they’re going to notice you as something more. And you know that you’d rather have them in your life as something rather than nothing.”

“But there’s not even a little part of you that thinks ‘maybe one day?’”

“Not anymore.”

“What changed?”

“There are other people in the world. Other people I might... like.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“And about summer...”

“What about it?”

“Any opinions? What’s been your favorite summer ever?”

“Abed...”

“Yes?”

“It’s this one. This is my favorite summer ever.”

“Oh. Is this a social cue?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to turn the camera off now.”

“Please do.”

---

When Abed gets back from visiting Abra, he claims that they’re finished. He locks himself in his house for five days claiming he needs to edit. Troy is allowed to sit in and help during these editing sessions. The rest of them are not.

So Britta doesn’t see Annie, and Annie won’t respond to Britta’s text messages. Britta thinks about driving over to her apartment and banging on the door until Annie talks to her, but instead she camps out at Jeff’s house. They spend the week having sex and eating take-out and not talking about the fact that Britta needs to make a decision as to what she’s going to do.

On Friday night Abed and Troy knock on Jeff’s front door and Troy does a horrible job of not looking shocked to find Britta sitting on the couch in running shorts and a tank top.

“The film’s done,” Abed announces. Troy grins next to him.

“That’s awesome!” Britta exclaims, holding out her hand for a high-five. “Can we see it?”

“That’s why we’re here,” Abed says. “We thought it would be fun to have a big premiere. Invite our families, friends, anyone who’s contributed to the film. And we were wondering if we could have it here, in the backyard, next weekend, since it’s Labor Day. It would be a really appropriate weekend for the premiere.”

“We’re going to hook up a projector and a screen and get all kinds of good snacks!” Troy says excitedly. “So can we do it? Are you guys free?”

Jeff looks over at Britta. “Next weekend, huh? Well, I’m free. Will you be around, Britta?”

She rolls her eyes at him and turns to Troy and Abed. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. In fact, I would love to help you guys plan it.”

“Nice,” Abed says. “We can meet here tomorrow and start making arrangements. I’ll call Annie and see if she’s free, too.”

Britta nods but tries to keep a neutral facial expression. She can see Jeff watching her out of the corner of her eye.

Troy looks down at his watch. “Hey, we better get going if we’re going to catch that movie. See you tomorrow!”

The boys leave and Britta looks over to Jeff. He raises an eyebrow. “So. You plan on being in town next weekend.”

“Yes. I do.”

“What does that mean?” His voice is tight, like he’s trying too hard to sound nonchalant.

“It means that the flight doesn’t leave until next Tuesday.”

“So you plan on being on the flight.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Are we ever going to talk about what’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, okay, Jeff? I don’t know. And don’t act like you’ve been trying to talk about it because I don’t even know what’s going on between us and when I asked you what you wanted you deflected.”

“Because this is hard for me! You walk into my house and all of the sudden we’re sleeping together and now you’re leaving? Jesus Christ, Britta, I don’t know what you want me to do.” He actually throws up his hands, and it would be comical if it wasn’t so terrifying.

She shakes her head. “I need to go. I’ll see you tomorrow, but I need to go.” She stands up and looks around. Her things are everywhere: two pairs of shoes by the door, clothes in the bedroom, toothbrush in the bathroom. She leaves them all and grabs just her purse instead, fishing her car keys out from its depths.

“Good. Run away. It was really stupid for me to believe that you wanted to be with me.”

She doesn’t reply to that because she doesn’t know how. Instead, she leaves, slams the front door behind her, drives away, and doesn’t cry. Instead, she takes out her phone and calls Abed.

“Is there any way we can add something to the film? I have something else to say.”

---

The next day is the most awkward they’ve had all summer. Britta isn’t talking to Jeff, Annie isn’t talking to Britta, Jeff isn’t talking at all, and Troy and Abed look between the three of them warily.

Jeff packed all of Britta’s things up in a grocery bag and left them on the kitchen table. She saw the bag when she came in and, without a word, put the bag next to her purse on the living room floor.

Abed has a notebook full of ideas for the premiere: guest list, menu, audio/video equipment. He’s thought about almost every single last detail, and Jeff can’t help but be impressed by him. He won’t let them see a cut of the film, though, but says they should all probably wait to see the final version at the premiere. Troy hasn’t even seen the whole thing.

Jeff orders a couple of pizzas for lunch and they eat in mostly silence, Troy piping up once in a while to tell a too-loud story about football practice. And after lunch, Annie asks Jeff to drive her home.

“My mom dropped me off, but she was going to have lunch with my aunt and she’s still there.”

Jeff dares a glance over to Britta, whose jaw is clenched tightly. She’s staring at her phone and typing something with way too much force. “Yeah, I can drive you home,” Jeff says. “Troy? You need a ride?”

Troy’s eyes widen and he turns to Britta helplessly.

“It’s fine, Troy,” Britta says tonelessly without looking up. “I have something to do now anyway. Jeff can take you home.”

Jeff bites his tongue to keep from retorting. He grabs his keys off the counter and tosses them in the air. “Want to come for a ride, Abed?”

“No, thank you,” Abed replies. “I have some more editing to do. Last minute addition.” He locks eyes with Jeff and tilts his head imperceptibly in Britta’s direction.

Annie, who spent the morning sitting with her arms and legs tightly crossed, relaxes a little bit in the car. She slumps in Jeff’s passenger seat and stares out the window with a frown on her face.

“Look, Annie,” Jeff starts. Through the rearview mirror he can see Troy glance at Annie nervously from the backseat. “Don’t you think you should... lighten up on Britta a little bit?”

“Don’t you think you should?” she bites back. Then she sighs. “I’m sorry. But the thought of the five of us not hanging out anymore makes me really upset. I don’t want this summer to be over and I don’t want Britta to leave. I know I’m being a baby.”

“You’re not being a baby,” Jeff says. “You’re allowed to be upset.”

“Besides,” Troy says, “we’re still going to hang out all the time. We can have lunch with Abed everyday and we can take over Jeff’s giant TV for movie nights on the weekends. It’s going to be fine. I promise.” He leans forward and lays a hand on Annie’s shoulder.

“But what if Britta leaves?” she asks, her voice small.

Jeff doesn’t answer, just grips the steering wheel tighter and locks his elbows.

“She won’t,” Troy assures. “She loves us too much to leave us.”

Annie turns around to smile at Troy but Jeff stays quiet.

---

Abed really goes all out. There are at least twenty people in Jeff's backyard, everyone from Mr. Nadir to Annie's mom to Shirley and her two kids to Pierce Hawthorne. There are rows of chairs set up, facing a giant projector screen. There's food and drinks and even programs, handed out by Troy and Annie as people walk into the backyard.

Britta's one of the last people to show up. Jeff thought for a while that she wasn't coming but five minutes before the movie starts, she rounds the corner into the yard, dressed in a blue sundress and strappy sandals. She takes the program from Troy with a small smile and sits in a chair in the back row.

Jeff tries to catch her eye from his chair in the front row. He's not sure why, because he still doesn't know what to say to her. But she doesn't look in his direction, maybe on purpose, but soon Abed makes his way to the front of the crowd and everyone goes silent and Jeff has to turn around to face front.

“Thank you all for coming,” Abed says. “This was initially a film about summer romance, and finding out if that’s a concept that only exists in movies. But it ended up being about something else. It’s about five people who became friends over the course of one summer. Kind of like The Real World but with no alcohol. Enjoy.”

Jeff laughs as the crowd breaks into nervous applause and Troy hits the button on the projector. He watches their summer replay before him but he gets to see it differently: he watches the three kids grow closer, into one unit. He watches himself lighten up and laugh more. He watches Britta become more comfortable, more relaxed. He watches himself watch her when she’s not looking. He watches her looks toward him become softer.

“It’s hard enough to know yourself and what you need and who you are and then to attach yourself to someone else? It’s scary and it’s easier to just not care. Because then you don’t get hurt and when you end up alone it’s on your terms, not someone else’s,” she tells the camera. She lights a cigarette with shaky hands and asks Abed to turn the camera off.

Then the scene changes and Britta’s sitting on a bed in what looks like Abed’s room. She’s wearing shorts and a tank top, the same outfit she was wearing last week when she left Jeff’s house. She bites her thumbnail and doesn’t say anything for a few minutes.

“Do you—have you ever felt like you messed everything up? And you don’t know how to fix it?”

“What did you mess up?”

“I can get on a plane in a week and a half and I can go back to doing something meaningful with my life. Or, I can stay here. Staying here means having to figure it all out but it also means you and Troy and Annie. And Jeff.”

“I think the only reason you’re thinking about going is because you want to leave us before we can leave you. I’m graduating from high school in June and then who knows where I’ll be. And Troy and Annie might go back to school and get busy with their own things and they won’t have time for you anymore. And you might give things a go with Jeff and they might not work out. You’ll have put yourself out there for nothing.”

Britta looks like she’s going to cry and Jeff stays perfectly still in his seat.

“Will you show me Jeff’s interview?” she asks quietly. The camera cuts off and when it comes back Britta is wiping her eyes. Jeff turns around to see Britta stand up and walk into the house but he can’t get up to go after her. Abed had told him there was something he needed to see.

“Britta, I don’t have to film this,” Abed says. “I can turn the camera off.”

“No, I want you to,” she says. “Because I have to tell you all how much I love you guys and how much you mean to me. And I have to apologize to Annie because I want to be her Big Sister forever. And...” She trails off and pulls her legs up onto the bed.

“And you want to stay because you want to be with Jeff,” Abed finishes. “I think it might mean more if it comes from you than from me, though.”

Britta laughs. “You’re the best, Abed. You really are.” She takes a deep breath and Jeff holds his. He can see Annie and Troy and Abed watching him from the corner of his eye but he doesn’t dare look away from the screen.

“I want to stay because I want to be with Jeff.”

The audience, to Jeff’s horror, claps and cheers and Jeff rolls his eyes sheepishly. Troy plops into the seat behind Jeff and leans in. “Hey, buddy. I think that’s your cue to go find Britta. We’ll show you the rest of the movie later.”

“I know that,” Jeff lies in a harsh whisper. Britta and Abed are still talking on the screen but Jeff gets up anyway and, hunched over, makes his way to the back of the crowd and goes inside.

Britta is sitting on the couch with a bottle of beer in her hand. She looks up as Jeff slides the door shut but doesn’t say anything.

“It’s like a romcom out there,” Jeff says. He sits down next to her and takes the beer from her hand, guzzling half of it in one go.

She plays with the hem of her dress. “Yeah, well, the movie got kind of romcom-y at the end. I blame Abed.”

“You look really pretty, by the way.” He finishes the beer and sets the empty bottle on the coffee table. “Sorry I drank your beer.”

“It was from your fridge anyway,” she shrugs. “And thank you.”

“So. What you said...”

“I didn’t say it to make Abed’s film end better,” she says.

“I didn’t think you did.” He shifts so he’s sitting closer to her. “I do think, however, that you and I could figure things out together. Because we’re both kind of a mess and, for me at least, it would be nice to be a mess with another mess to hang out with.”

“Hang out?” Britta echoes, a smirk playing on her lips. “You wanna be bros?”

Jeff laughs. “Yeah, something like that.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Will you kiss me anyway? Or should we go to the bathroom so you can throw me against a door first?”

She hits his shoulder. “Shut up! You’re never going to—”

He cuts her off with his lips. The audience cheers outside and Jeff knows it’s because the movie must be over but there’s a little part of him that thinks it’s because he got the girl. Romcom ending.

---

“Ugh, I can’t believe I have gym class second period this year,” Annie complains. “That’s the worst time to have it!”

“Wait,” Abed says. He untangles his hand from hers to pull a paper out of his pocket. “I think I’m in that class, too.”

They compare their schedules and Troy turns to Jeff and Britta. “So the first football game is on Friday night. You two will be there?”

“Of course!” Britta says. “Do I have to know stuff about football? Because I don’t.”

“Just cheer when everyone else cheers,” Jeff suggests. “That’s what I do.”

Troy shakes his head and grabs another handful of chips out of the bowl on the table. “By the end of the season, you guys are going to know what’s going on if I have to teach you myself.”

“Now that’s a movie I want to make,” Abed says and Annie laughs.

“No more movies,” Jeff and Britta say in unison.

At the airport a plane is taking off, headed east where it will stop in New York City before making its way south to Port-au-Prince. Britta looks at her cell phone and watches the clock change from 1:34 to 1:35 and she can almost hear the engines rev, the click of seatbelts. There’s a pack of chewing gum in her purse she bought far in advance so she wouldn’t forget.

Troy names all his favorite football movies and Annie and Abed pipe in with suggestions. Jeff’s hand slides into hers and when she looks up, his eyes are on her lit-up phone.

“You missed your flight,” he says quietly.

“I did.”

“And?”

“And what?”

He looks up but the kids aren’t paying them any attention. “Regret it yet?”

She smiles. “I really hate flying. I always get stuck next to some creepy old guy or near the bathrooms.”

“Yeah, that’s the worst.”

She leans into him a little bit, resting her head on his upper arm. “I don’t regret it,” she says.

He presses his lips to her temple. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Gross!”

The three of them groan but they’re smiling and Annie’s smile brightens her entire face. Britta takes her hand out of Jeff’s to run her fingers over the bracelet on her wrist, the one Annie made for her as an apology.

“Oh, shut up, all of you,” Jeff says. “Now stop complaining and get in the car so we can go get ice cream.”

They jump up and bound for the driveway. Britta grabs Jeff’s hand as he starts to walk away and stops him. “Hey.”

He looks down at her curiously, eyebrow cocked.

“This is the only place I want to be,” she says seriously. She bites her lip and looks at the ground. Getting used to this whole thing, this telling the truth and being honest with her feelings thing, it’s going to take time and one day maybe she’ll be able to tell him how she feels without her heart tripping and falling over itself.

But for now he leans down to kiss her and she can feel his pulse, just as fast as hers, and she wraps her hands around his neck and runs her thumbs over his jaw as it moves with his mouth. For now the plane is rising, rising, rising, gaining altitude, and Britta stays on the ground, her shoes and her feet rooting themselves into Jeff’s backyard. For now there are threads coming out of her chest tying her to Annie and Troy and Abed.

Jeff pulls away but pulls her in close, his chin resting on her head. Someone beeps the car horn and Troy shouts.

“The children are waiting,” she says.

He laughs and she listens to it rumble in his chest. “Tomorrow,” he says wickedly as they start toward the driveway, “they’ll be in school all day long.”