LATER THAT NIGHT
Afterwards Annie lay on her bed and tried to decide what she thought about it.
In the moment there hadn't been time to process Jeff's words and actions. It had been considerate of Abed to give her a heads-up that the rest of the group was following her into the library, but thirty seconds of lead time wasn't enough to even begin to assemble a coherent response to his whole 'I let you go' freakout. Impulsively, she'd kissed him. Told him to kiss her, which amounted to the same thing. Because, despite him looking so sad and broken, some part of her still wanted him to kiss her. Some part of her had wanted that for years and years. Or maybe it was because he'd looked so sad and broken. Maybe it was because she'd wanted, just once, to feel like she had the power in their relationship. That if she couldn't have the affection of the real Jeff - the strong, confident, handsome wit whom she'd known for so long - then she could at least confirm that this washed-out version of him wasn't too much man for her.
But on the other hand, did it really speak well of either of them that it took the threat of her leaving and their comfortable Greendale rut getting disrupted, for him to say anything? He was a guy that she had used to have a crush on, was all. He was her friend and she didn't like the way he was going to seed, but she didn't have any right to demand he change and he didn't have any right to ask that of her, and these were thoughts that she'd thought so many times that they were a well-worn track.
She didn't have to think anything about it. Annie could just pretend that confession, the outbreak of nerves that prompted it, the kiss that it led to… she could just pretend that none of it had happened. It wasn't like Jeff was going to do anything more. He'd said his piece and now he'd move on, just as she'd moved on, and they'd both be happier for it, eventually. They wanted different things, didn't they? She was leaving Greendale and he was going to end up either running the place or quitting and returning to his law practice, probably. The way he'd looked at her when they kissed, the way he'd touched her cheek, the way she'd leaned into him, the way they'd only pulled apart when their friends interrupted them, none of that meant anything.
What would the two of them getting together now even look like? At this late date, with all their baggage, what would Annie even want for it to look like? Earlier Jeff had spun out a bunch of crazy fantasies, all of which involved Annie staying at Greendale for one reason or another, but that wasn't what she wanted. If she said that if Jeff wanted to be with her, he'd have to leave Greendale and move to Washington, DC, or something crazy like that, and if Jeff decided to take her up on it, and he picked her up and carried her off and after they'd worked off six or so years of sexual tension, then what? How could that even work?
Annie sighed, and tried to imagine them both in ten years - her the sharp-dressed FBI agent, him the whisky-soaked washed-up community college teacher. No, him the aging-gracefully dapper law professor. After years apart, they'd be suddenly face to face at some legal conference, or something, and there would be sparks so intense they blew the convention center's circuit breakers. Then he'd leave his wife for her (not Britta, some other woman). Or, no, he'd be single, because if he couldn't make it work with her, he wouldn't even want to try with anyone else. And she'd be single, still, too. Or maybe she'd have a boyfriend, some tall dishy guy she hadn't realized she felt nothing for, and seeing Jeff would be the shock she needed to see that there was no future with anyone but him, and then…
Stupid. Silly. More likely she'd go to DC and when her internship was finished she'd come back to Colorado and find a job in the city, and see him sometimes. Him and Britta, and Craig, maybe Frankie. Once a month for a few months, then at holidays for a couple of years, and then she'd get an invitation to Elroy's wedding or something in the mail, forwarded from her old address before she'd moved from the little apartment near her new job to the little house on the other side of the city. She'd realize she hadn't talked to any of them for three years. She'd meet some other guy and she'd be into him and he'd be into her and he wouldn't have all of Jeff's hang-ups, and that'd be that. Or maybe she'd meet some nice girl, experiment, and it'd turn out she'd been bisexual this whole time. Or maybe she'd get a dog and join a book club.
It would have been easier to convince herself she'd moved on from Jeff Winger a long time ago if she could so much as visualize herself being happy in a relationship with another man. In the last year she'd given it a shot: she'd been on five first dates, arranged in secret. Britta or Abed might have told Jeff, even though it was none of his business. She'd even kept her personal life in a separate, secret email address, which had proved prudent. No one but her knew she'd spent five very boring evenings failing to connect to any one of the five earnest young men who had started out the night wondering why no one had already snapped up the "sweetheart girl-next-door" "brunette with the diamond smile" (here Annie was quoting from two of the pre-first-date messages) and finished it with five distinct mixes of resentment, defensiveness, and hostility at her evident disinterest and/or "crazy eyes."
Her disinterest because, for so long, she'd been focused on Jeff. The way he grinned when he knew he'd talked you into something. The way he scowled when he pretended he had to be talked into something. The way his shoulders flexed when he stretched. The way she could have utter confidence that he would back her up a hundred and ten percent when it really mattered, the way she could have utter confidence that he would fight her tooth and nail when it didn't. The way they both always knew, without talking about it, which mode they were in. His eyes and his arms and his scraggly nearly-a-beard that she didn't really like. The way he smelled, even, sometimes, not to be indelicate. She didn't like to dwell on it, but for years he'd been a central pillar in her life. She'd had a crush on him and she'd gotten over that, and then she'd fallen in love with him... and she'd gotten over that, she had. But she'd never stopped being attracted to him.
She'd liked guys besides Jeff. Even discounting fantasy objects like Mark Ruffalo and Troy before she knew him, there were other guys. Not many. But she'd liked Rich, after she'd gotten to know him a little. She'd been attracted to Rich, even if she'd pursued him partly - mostly - to make Jeff jealous. She'd even experienced very occasional flashes of attraction to Abed. Abed!
She could just get a dog. It would be fine, Annie decided, and tried again to go to sleep.
Five minutes later she'd thrown a sweatshirt on, and was knocking lightly on Abed's door, hoping he was still up. And that Britta was asleep. Annie wasn't up for Britta, at the moment.
Abed answered his door still fully dressed, despite the lateness of the hour. He didn't look surprised to see her, but then he rarely looked surprised about anything.
"What's up? Was I being too loud?"
Annie shook her head as she pushed past him into his bedroom. "No, and hush, I don't want to wake up Britta. I needed to talk to somebody."
Abed nodded absently, as though she were confirming some long-held suspicion of his, and sat down on his bed, leaving her the room's sole chair. "Okay."
"It's about Jeff." Annie sat down opposite him. She expected Abed to have some reaction, but he just stared blankly at her. "We kissed," she added. "Just before you guys came in."
Abed nodded again, this time a little more present. "We all saw you standing close together. I assumed you were kissing. I think everybody did."
Annie winced. "Well, at least nobody said anything."
"Except Chang."
"Who ever knows what Chang is talking about?" It came out more defensive than Annie had intended. "It's Chang," she added.
They sat looking at one another for a few seconds, then Abed spoke. "Should I be congratulating you, or congratulating Jeff? Or telling him that if he ever hurts you, I'll kill him?" This last was delivered in an atrocious accent it took Annie a moment to place as 'faux-hillbilly.'
"What? No!"
"Okay."
They lapsed back into silence, and Abed probably would have just let her sit there all night, saying nothing. "Why would you be congratulating either of us?"
Abed's eyes narrowed slightly, like she was asking a stupid question. "You love Jeff. Jeff loves you. I've been expecting it to happen for years."
"I don't - Jeff doesn't love me! And I-I don't love Jeff! I mean, I do, and he does, but it's not like that!" Annie shuddered involuntarily. "We talked about this, that weird day in the Dreamatorium."
"You were in the Dreamatorium with Jeff? When?"
"No! You and me. Back when Troy and Britta started dating. You remember."
Abed hummed. "That was a long time ago. People change and grow."
Sometimes. Sometimes they changed and grew, and sometimes they just sat in neutral, gunning the engine and burning gas and slowly aging. Annie considered her words carefully. "For a while Jeff and I had a thing, and eventually instead of moving forward, it didn't move forward, and he ended it, and I moved on."
"I don't think so." Abed shook his head slowly. "When people move on they start a new relationship and then the old love interest confronts the new love interest and the protagonist has to make a definitive choice between the two. The confrontation could be purely symbolic or exist only within the context of the protagonist's perceptions, but you can't have a confrontation without two parties. You never dated anyone else. And neither has Jeff."
"First off, you don't know that." Annie was fairly sure, from a handful of clues and dropped hints, that Jeff hadn't pursued anyone between his breakup with Professor Slater and his graduation. Except Britta, who kind of didn't count. But kind of did. And she certainly didn't know what he'd been doing between his leaving Greendale and return. Even if when they'd all come back he'd seemed very much alone, in the past year Jeff could have been sleeping with a different woman every Friday and Saturday night, it wasn't like Annie was paying attention, keeping tabs on him. "And secondly, that isn't always how real life works."
"I know that stories aren't the same as reality, Annie. But we tell ourselves stories to make sense of reality." Abed's tone was slowly drifting into condescension. "And I know that how Jeff looks at you, and how he talks about you when you aren't around, I know that those things haven't changed."
She almost bit her tongue to stop herself from asking him to elaborate on how Jeff talked about her when she wasn't around. "Yeah, well, maybe the way I look at and talk about him has changed."
"And why is that?"
"Because he rejected me, over and over again, and he only stopped when I stopped giving him chances! Because the only thing that could make him even try to talk to me about his feelings was the threat of me leaving!" She was shaking a little, as she pulled out her phone. "You see this? He could have tried to text me, or call me, or email me, or anything, after we all split up. He could have been, like, let's get together and actually talk about this for more than forty seconds before Chang comes in-" Annie broke off, before she started to seriously lose her composure.
"He just wanted to get it off his chest," she said, more slowly. "He doesn't really care what I think about it. I mean, maybe he thinks he does, but he isn't letting that affect his actions at all. And I'm not going to go chasing after him again! I've moved on! It's over! Jeff missed his chance! This isn't his show, this is my show! I get to decide how my show ends!"
She realized she was raising her voice again, and stopped herself. "It would take more from Jeff Winger than what he's… it would take more than nothing. Him doing nothing isn't going to make some future where we're together. We're not on that path."
Abed nodded, but said nothing.
"A year from now, we're not going to be, I don't know, making love in a high rise and sipping watermelon margaritas," Annie said. "We're not… we're not going to be teaming up together with Frankie to turn Greendale into an actual good school. We're not going to have a baby or adopt a chimpanzee or start a law practice or private investigation firm together."
"Some of those premises are stronger than others."
"There's not a 'we.' He let me go. I let him go. I've seen less of Jeff in the last year than I did in the year before that. I'm going to see less of him next year than I did this year, and the year after that I'm probably not going to see him at all. And that's my choice. And that's... okay." She took a ragged breath. "I love him and I wish him all the happiness in the world." Her voice cracked, but damn it, she wasn't going to cry. "That's it."
Abed looked thoughtful. "You know I still have a girlfriend."
"What?"
"Rachel. I know you haven't seen me with her in a while. She's really busy and when she's not I go to her, she doesn't come here..." He trailed off as Annie glared. "I thought you might have been about to come onto me, seeking reassurance that you're attractive, and I just wanted to head that off, because the last year has really emphasized the sibling-like nature of our relationship. Plus we're doing this whole callbacks thing..."
Annie rose. "Good night, Abed."
AND MEANWHILE
"I don't want to talk about it." Jeff knocked back another shot.
"So you keep saying," Duncan grumbled. It was only the fourth shot he'd seen Jeff down since he'd arrived at the bar, but Jeff had been there for hours already when Duncan arrived.
"You don't need to be mad about it."
"I'm not. I'm annoyed because you waited until after everyone left to text me. And by everyone I mean Britta."
Jeff shrugged. "You know what, you ask me, Britta should date you. That would be about perfect, my only two friends from season one still around coupling up and excluding me."
"I don't want to date Britta, I want to shag Britta. And are you saying you want to be included?" Duncan asked. "Is she into threesomes, then?"
The way that Jeff stared off into space, mulling his question over, told Duncan the man was considerably more shedded than was implied by his ability to remain balanced on a barstool. "Probably not."
"Also, what do you mean, season one?"
"Season one. First year. Freshman year. Season one." Jeff poured himself another scotch from the half-empty bottle in front of him. "Season one is where it all went wrong. She was eighteen. How was I supposed to deal with that?"
"She was never eighteen," Duncan snorted. "Or, hang on, you're not talking about Britta any more, are you?"
"I was supposed to deal with it like an adult, is what I was supposed to do. Date someone else. Not care that she's dating someone else. I'm usually really good at that, the not caring."
Duncan nodded cautiously. "Pass me a glass, would you?" He indicated the bottle, which he presumed Jeff had paid for.
"And, you know, she was supposed to wise up and decide I was old and gross," Jeff continued, as though Duncan hadn't spoken. "That's what she said. Old and gross. Gross."
"Jeff, bottle."
Jeff blinked, and seemed to notice the bottle in front of him for the first time. He slid the bottle in Duncan's direction, and cleared his throat. "But, you know, she just kept being hotter and... more good. And then she turned twenty-one and I was going to do something, you know? I couldn't stop myself any more."
Duncan grunted affirmatively while helping himself to some of Jeff's scotch.
"And then, God, we were expelled and Chang tried to murder Craig and replaced him with an imposter… you remember, you were there."
Duncan took a swig of scotch. "Season two," he agreed.
"Season three," Jeff corrected. "The end of season three. We were distracted and then, I don't know, I chickened out, I guess. I don't know what happened."
"You're talking about Annie, right?" Duncan asked. "Just so we're clear?"
"Annie," Jeff repeated mournfully. "Wingman's Girlfriend, Tight Ship."
"What?"
"I should have… I just… I tried to do the right thing."
"Yes, yes, breaking the heart of the legally-adult woman who inexplicably loved your sorry arse, which, by the by, we pronounce it the same but in England we spell it F-A-N-N-Y."
"I love her," Jeff continued, ignoring Duncan. "And our love opened the door, and that would have been great if I hadn't screwed it all up with Britta."
Duncan perked up. "What's this about Britta?"
"She was done. I could see that she was done. I couldn't blame her, but it was…" Jeff sighed. "It's been hard."
"Britta's done? Done with what? With you?" Duncan asked hopefully.
Jeff shook his head. "Annie's going to go off to be president and I'll be here. With you, and Britta, and your weird half-English kids that get picked on because of their weird glasses you make them wear."
There was a long pause, during which time both men drank scotch. Jeff looked about in confusion for the bottle he'd slid towards Duncan, then snatched it up and refilled his glass.
"You should talk to her," Duncan advised. He was feeling magnanimous enough to appreciate, rather than feel threatened by, Jeff's assertion that he and Britta would one day reproduce. "Annie, I mean. Not Britta. Don't talk to Britta. Ever again, ideally."
"I did."
"If you talk to Britta, then naturally she's going to start comparing us, and - you did? You did what did?"
"I did what did talk to Annie." Jeff sighed. "Told her I loved her. Mostly. Laid it all out. She deserved to know."
Duncan grunted. "When was this?"
Jeff shrugged. "Couple of hours ago. More, probably, now."
"She didn't take it well?" Duncan guessed. If she'd taken it well, presumably Jeff would be off making love with her somewhere, instead of drinking with him.
A long pause, and then Jeff's voice was hollow. "She told me to kiss her goodbye."
Eventually Duncan felt he had to say something. "Kiss, eh? Well, that's something. Goodbye, though, that's something. Kiss goodbye. Bottle?" he added, hopefully.
Jeff passed him the bottle without looking at him. "She's been distancing herself from me for months. Didn't even dance at the wedding. Didn't know she was going until she told everybody. No capers since the bandit."
It seemed to Duncan that Jeff was just saying random words, now. "Bandit?"
"No capers. No secrets. No games or fun. Not even paintball, not really. She's been shutting me out. Ever since Raquel. Stupid Raquel."
"There's a Raquel now, too?"
"But it's good. It's good that she can leave. I mean, Greendale is a toilet and almost nobody makes it out. It turns us all into losers and failures."
"Hmm. I think you underestimate the extent to which losers and failures are attracted to Greendale."
"I'd burn the whole school down before I let it do that to her." Jeff sighed. "She'll go, she'll light the world on fire, she'll be glorious and amazing and I'll be glad to know she lives happily ever after. Without me."
"Less arson, more drinking," Duncan suggested.
Chapter 2
Chapter Text
BUT THEN
The next day the college was technically closed, as the summer session wouldn't begin for a week. Annie went in anyway, to obtain an official transcript from the office. "For applications and things," she told Frankie. "I can scan it and attach, as needed."
"I can give you an official transcript, but if you scan it, that won't be official," Frankie warned her. "An official copy of your transcript must be signed by the dean and stamped with the seal of the college." She looked down at the rubber stamp in her hand. "This looks like an anus, right? It's not just me?"
Annie glanced away. "There was a design-the-seal contest our sophomore year. All the submissions were anonymous."
"Uh-huh." Frankie rose and stepped to a filing cabinet. "Greendale Community College will be sad to see you go," she said. "I mean, it's a sorrow tempered with pride, because that is the goal of a school, after all: for its students to matriculate and go on to accomplish great deeds in the world. Ideally great deeds."
"Thanks."
"It wouldn't make for a very good recruitment video, if that weren't the case. 'Enroll at Greendale Community College, where we hope our very best students go on to careers at Greendale Community College and all the rest continue to take classes indefinitely!' I can't see that bringing in many prospective accounting majors, but then, I wouldn't give a degree to a dog, either, so what do I know?"
Annie smiled.
Frankie turned away from her, busying herself with something in the filing cabinet drawer. "So that is the decision you've made, then? That regardless of whether your internship leads to a permanent job offer, you won't be coming back to enroll in the fall semester?"
"I don't expect the internship to lead to a permanent job offer," Annie said. "That's just not realistic. But yes, I want to actually start my career. The internship on my CV should help with that. The FBI may be out of my reach, right now, but there's the state police, the CBI… and there's St. Louis, or Minneapolis, or Kansas City… less glamorous than Washington, but still something. And don't worry, even if I do end up moving out of state I'll be back to visit all the time." she added, though she knew that probably wasn't true. "You and Britta and Abed and Craig. And Jeff."
Frankie hesitated before closing the filing cabinet drawer and turning to face Annie. "I realize it's none of my business," she began, then turned back towards her desk and started sorting paperwork.
Annie waited for Frankie to continue speaking, but the woman instead lapsed into silence. She cleared her throat.
"Your private life is yours and also private, hence the name," Frankie continued. "I don't run around sharing details of my personal time all willy-nilly. It's important to keep your professional life separate from your private life. That's why I never commit anything to email these days."
"Uh-huh?"
"Too risky. You remember what happened. It's a topic which, now that I think about it, provides a second entry into the topic I'm even now dancing around explicitly inquiring after. I'm referring now to the email exchange between Jeff Winger and Benjamin Chang. Do you recall that?"
Annie didn't, at least not immediately. Then it came back to her - some kind of daily relative-hotness ranking between her and Britta, that Chang had been emailing Jeff for years without Jeff ever acknowledging, except one time during their fourth year, when he sent back agreement that on that day, Britta was hotter than Annie.
That whole year was kind of a blur, but in retrospect Annie was willing to ascribe Jeff's judgement less to his genuinely thinking she was less hot than Britta and more to his reflexive denial of his attraction to her. Maybe that was arrogant of her.
Frankie had gone back to her paperwork and Annie realized she hadn't responded to the question. "I remember that," she said weakly.
"The impression I had at the time was that there was something shameful about Jeff declaring Britta to be more attractive than you, above and beyond the inherent misogynistic framework of ranking women by hotness and pitting us against each other within the patriarchal system. Also," Frankie added, "you're much more attractive than Britta. That probably goes without saying."
"Huh?"
"It's none of my business, which I've already admitted, but it bears repeating. However, especially given his odd behavior of last night, which I've been trying to contextualize from my outsider position of limited knowledge… did you and Jeff used to date, or something? This has never been clear to me and I haven't gotten a straight answer from Abed."
"Oh! Um." Annie glanced around and pondered sitting down. The door to Frankie's office was open. Anyone might have been in the hallway, listening in.
"I don't mean to pry, and I'm not accusing you, a student, of seducing him, an instructor, in exchange for higher grades or other illegal and unethical favors, let me assure you. But you knew one another when he was also a student, yes?"
"I guess. I mean, yes." Annie knew she could just declare the topic off-limits and Frankie would respect that. But she trusted Frankie… nevertheless Annie took pains to turn and close the office door before sitting down.
Frankie seemed slightly nonplussed at Annie's action. "Your transcripts indicate that between 2009 and 2013 you had at least one and often as many as three classes together, every semester, despite your being a healthcare admin major and him an education major. The two of you shared more classes than either of you did with Abed, or with Britta. Or Troy Barnes, Shirley Bennett, or Pierce Hawthorne."
"Yes, well, you know we used to be a study group…" Annie sighed. "But you're asking about me and Jeff specifically. We… kind of. We kind of dated. The kind of dating where you don't admit to each other or yourselves that you're dating, because he'd be so quick to deny it, and where you barely touch each other, unless there's something else going on that makes it okay, like… like glee club."
"Glee club. Okay." Frankie's eyes narrowed slightly.
Annie was almost positive she and Jeff hadn't swung well past second base, during the glee club thing. The lap dance had been real, but the rest of it had probably been a dream.
She sighed. "It was the kind of dating where you're each other's emergency contacts." Annie closed her eyes, remembering. "Where he's the guy who you turn to when you need affirmation or support, who just smiles at you when you tell him you hit his car, who you find out half the school thinks is your husband because of this one time in the cafeteria. Who you're always looking for fun things to do with, and who you can trust to have your back, and who looks at you sometimes like you're the only person in the world."
"I understand," said Frankie, although her tone suggested she really didn't.
"And it's like a soap bubble, and you aren't really a couple, but you aren't seeing anybody else and you know for a fact he isn't seeing anybody else and neither of you are looking. But you weren't really dating so you don't really break up, you just stop spending so much time together, when things change and he graduates and leaves. And it breaks your heart and you don't know why he pushed you away, and then you get a job you hate and you don't like the person you've become and you miss him but you're kind of glad he isn't there to see it and you wonder if he felt the same way when his law firm failed."
Annie was breathing heavily, now, her pulse thumping in her ears. She knew she should stop talking, stop remembering, before she burst into tears or started screaming and throwing furniture, but she couldn't help herself.
"And sometimes you lie in bed and you start to imagine what it would be like now if things hadn't gone the way they did. If he'd been willing to open up to you when he graduated, or at one of all those openings you tried to give him. You wonder what you would have had to do different, for him to have come right out and said he wanted to do a sexy couples costume because he wanted to be sexy with you. If there was something you should have said or done, and didn't. You think that by then you'd have moved out of the apartment with Britta and Abed, and found a new place with him. And you'd decorate it together and play house, and he'd scowl, all cute and petulant, but he'd still have opinions about colors and fabrics, he wouldn't just check out. You would share your bed with him and at night when it was cold instead of tossing on another blanket you would snuggle up to his back, and he'd roll over sleepily and put his arms around you, and you'd just be inundated with the nearness of him…"
Frankie was saying something, but Annie barely heard her. She had to finish the thought. "But instead he's distant and barely returning your calls, and months go by and… And then you almost get it all back, and for real, because you've both grown, but there's still something stopping him and you don't know, maybe it's all in your head. And then he changes his mind or decides you're not worth the trouble or something, you don't know and of course he won't talk about it. And you realize you've put all this energy into him and gotten nothing back from him." She winced, remembering. "Not nothing. He would do almost anything for you, you know that. But there's one thing he won't do, so, it's not enough. Not enough." Annie let out a ragged sigh, and sank backwards against the office chair, eyes closed. Hot cheeks, more than a little embarrassment, but no tears. No tears.
"Can I offer you a tissue?"
Annie shook her head. "I'm fine."
"That sounds... very codependent." Frankie cleared her throat. "I don't recall the specific circumstances but I do feel like I've characterized your relationships with Britta, Abed, and especially Jeff as codependent before. And that was before I became apprised of all these new glee-club, soap-bubble facts."
Annie blinked a few times, but definitely didn't tear up. "That's not really fair. We were close, and yes, I let my relationship with him partially define me, but he let his relationship with me partially define him, and that's just what being in a... what being close with someone is like. You're your own person but you're also part of a... a study group."
Frankie shrugged. "If you say so."
"And it was nice while it lasted," she added, her voice thick. "But it's done."
"Well, regardless, I for one am glad you're leaving," Frankie said. "For your sake."
ROUGHLY SIMULTANEOUSLY
The college was technically closed - it was a Saturday and the first summer session wouldn't start until the next week - but Jeff sat in his office and sulked, because the alternative was sulking in his apartment. In his hand was half a glass of scotch, and a treasonously empty bottle sat on the desk in front of him, next to where he'd put his feet up.
He'd done it, finally. The thing he'd spent a year avoiding, the thing where he told Annie how he felt about her. And as he'd known would be the case, she hadn't really been surprised. She'd been gentle, and warm, and reassuring. She'd tried to make him feel better, and then everyone else came in and they were surrounded by friends and Chang. They'd returned to the bar and she'd smiled at him a lot… but she'd also taken pains, he was pretty certain, to make sure that Abed or Britta or Frankie was always within a few feet of them. And then she'd left, with everybody else, and he'd texted Duncan because he wasn't done drinking, and none of that, none of what had happened after, negated the fact that he'd done it.
He shouldn't have done it. The only effect was going to be that Annie was going to feel bad for a few days. She was, as she'd pointed out, in her twenties, and able to bounce back; but still, he'd inflicted that on her and he hadn't had to. Now she was leaving to become an FBI agent, and he was left to sulk and remember all his past mistakes.
The first summer, when he'd dodged her texts and calls and emails and her showing up unexpectedly at his apartment with an armful of Chinese food. He'd seen it was her, and he'd ignored her knocking and ringing and calling. He'd hid until she finally gave up and left him a note and a lot of cold General Tso's Chicken. Hid in his closet like a coward. He should have opened the door and let her in and explained to her that he wasn't the guy she imagined him to be.
Instead he waited until the last possible minute - a few days before the start of classes in the fall - and bought her a latte in a coffee shop. A public place, so she wouldn't make a scene. And he'd blathered some bullshit about discretion and pretended he didn't notice she was willfully misunderstanding him, which is why he deserved it when she punched him in the face a week later.
He should have given her a straight answer at the start of the next semester, when she'd cornered him in the men's room and demanded to know why he refused to act on his desire for her. He should have said that he wasn't the guy she imagined him to be, that he was having pointless lousy sex with Britta, that he knew the right thing to do was to push her away but he just didn't have the strength to reject her outright.
He should have been a damn adult the night of her twenty-first birthday, when the group took her out to a bar and she had three strawberry daiquiris (in December! In Colorado! But it was her day). She'd waited until they were more or less alone, sidled up to him and leaned against the bar next to where he sat. Her head artlessly fell onto his shoulder, and she'd told him that she was legally old enough for pretty much anything, and she'd sounded both well-rehearsed and more than a little sloshed, like she'd practiced the speech and visualized the scene many times, and she'd had to get drunk to work up the courage to do it, but now, finally, he was going to be the man she knew he was… and he'd been so, so tempted. It wasn't like she hadn't made her desires clear while sober many times before… but instead he'd pretended not to understand her, and she'd crumpled and retreated to the ladies' room, an embarrassed mess.
Or, no, the real screwup then had been the next day, when she'd apologized to him for drunkenly coming on to him, and instead of telling her that she had nothing to apologize for, that it had been all he'd been able to do to avoid grabbing her and pawing at her right there in the bar, that all she needed to do was ask him again while sober... he'd shrugged and called her kiddo and pretended that he didn't even remember the incident.
A few weeks after that, she'd texted him - what he'd thought was a probably-drunken invitation to a tryst on campus - and he'd decided to finally do it. "Decided" was the wrong word - he'd decided to confront her the way the barrel decided to go over the falls, the way the ship reached out for the iceberg, the way the gas leak craved the spark.
He'd put it off for too long. He told himself he was going to go to the Biology lab, and find her there, all shine and youth and glisten. He told himself he'd explain to her that he wasn't the man she thought he was, that he would only hurt her, that he was a monster and she deserved better. He told himself he wouldn't take her in his arms and kiss her and kiss her and never let her go.
Before he'd even left his apartment he'd known that he was going to fail. He knew it before he put on a fresh ironed shirt, before he checked and rechecked his hair. He knew he would stumble and fall and hurt her. It had almost been a relief, the knowing. He'd tried his best, anyone could see that. He was only human.
But that time it had been him who'd misunderstood, him who'd come running when she'd snapped her fingers.
In retrospect there'd been an arc to their roundabout path, a time when it would have made sense for them to get together, and that time was their fourth year at Greendale. Looking back it was all a miasma of furtive longing and hazy memories. Despite his best efforts they'd started to drift into couplehood. He couldn't help it, he couldn't stop it, he couldn't refuse her. They'd had a couples costume for Halloween, almost. Gone on a ski weekend, just the two of them, almost. Thrown a holiday party together, almost. They'd had dinner with his mother - he couldn't even remember, now, the pretext. They'd gone grocery shopping together, they'd gone to movies together, they'd sat up way too late together talking about nothing. He knew that he was going to hurt her - that he was hurting her already, somehow - but he couldn't make it stop until he'd graduated, left Greendale, and not seen her every day.
He'd stopped it, and contained the damage, and gone off to fail while she conquered the world of pharmaceutical supply. And then somehow Greendale had ensnared them both again. What was he going to do, refuse to play hot lava with her? Refuse to help her investigate the ass-crack bandit? Decline to offer her his arm and cheer her up with a well-timed inside joke, when she was feeling low? He kept telling himself that he was her friend, that was why he kept clinging to her, and he just about made himself believe it…
Until that day, a year ago now, when he'd looked at her as she talked about dreams and responsibility and adulthood, and suddenly he knew two things. One, he'd been lying to both of them for years. That one wasn't much of a revelation. But two, she was finally out of patience with him. He wasn't the man she'd thought he was, and she'd finally seen it. She let him go, and he, idiot that he was, had let her, and here it was a year later and he was still suffering from that blow. But at least it was over, now. She was leaving, and he would stay here and fail some more. She would shine, and he would dim. She would fly, and he would sink. He would fill the hole in his heart with liquor and grow old and die. God, he was lucky no one was there inside his brain to hear him, he sounded like a melodramatic idiot.
Whatever happened to him didn't matter - not in terms of affecting Annie's future, and that was the most important thing. Jeff would carve out a nice little spot at Greendale, and maybe he'd end up the head of a Sustain Greendale Committee and maybe he'd quit day drinking, but Annie would be okay regardless. And he'd be fine. The only thing he could do to her was weigh her down with guilt or sympathy. He just needed to leave her be.
Jeff drained the remainder of his glass, filled with fresh resolve. She'd only be around for another week, then she was leaving to become an FBI agent. Just leave her alone until then. Technically it was an internship but Jeff figured there was at least an eighty percent chance of Annie never coming back… Then he saw her, briefly, through the open doorway of his office, walking down the hall.
WHEN SUDDENLY
"Annie!"
And there he was, popping out of a doorway — the door to his office. She'd forgotten that Jeff's office was down this hallway, and anyway she'd had no idea he'd be around campus on a Saturday, and that was the story she'd stick to, if it came up. And even while she lied, she'd get indignant that he'd even accuse her of deliberately walking by in hopes of seeing him. She could play that game too, after all. It was just one of the things she'd learned from him.
"Jeff, hi," she said, smiling but resisting the urge to reach up and pat his arm. Greeting him with physical contact wasn't a good plan.
"Annie," he repeated. He was blinking a lot and his breathing was very slightly ragged.
"Are you okay?" Before she even realized what she was doing she was giving his arm a reassuring squeeze. Annie drew back and tried to cover for her sudden embarrassment.
He didn't seem to notice, but then, he never did. "Yeah. I mean, I'm stunningly good-looking and I've recently demonstrated to myself that I'm capable of personal growth, so yeah. I'm okay."
When he grinned his insouciant grin, Annie couldn't help the way her pulse quickened, or the way she could feel her shoulders grow tense, or the way her eyes were drawn to his lips. But she could ignore the intrusive thoughts, and did so. "I'm glad."
"We didn't really have a lot of time to talk last night."
"No, we didn't," she agreed. Was there a hunger, in the way he was looking at her now? A hunger that she'd only seen in him before a few times? Or was she imagining it?
"So, maybe now…?"
Annie checked to make sure there was no one else in the hallway. All clear in both directions. "Sure, if you want."
Jeff waited for her to say something, but Annie wasn't going to play that game. Finally he cleared his throat. "Okay, I'll start, I guess. I mean, this is my fault. It's just, I don't have any idea what you want." He didn't look her in the eye. "I realize that, now."
As always, his beaten-down expression evaporated her reluctance, spurred Annie to try to help Jeff. For a year she'd minimized it, by avoiding being alone with him, but now she'd gone and asked for it. Annie found herself reciting a familiar litany of reassurances. "Jeff, it's okay, I'm going to be fine, you're going to be fine…" Then what he had said sunk in. "Wait, really?"
"You're very important to me," Jeff said earnestly, "and I care a lot about —"
"Yes, shut up, do you really not know what I want? No idea?" Annie stared at him a moment. "Not a clue?"
"I just want —"
"I'm asking you questions about me and you're making a lot of 'I' statements."
"Annie, I… you…" He seemed, for once, at a loss for words.
"That's a good start." Annie straightened up and looked him hard in the eye. She was tired, suddenly, of always working to prop up his ego. She'd spent a year trying to break that habit, damned if she was going to start it up again a week before she left Greendale. "Say it. 'Annie, you…' and then finish the sentence."
"Annie, you… are confusing me?" The bafflement in his eyes seemed genuine.
"Oh my God! Seriously?" Annie threw up her hands and turned away from him. Her official copy of her transcript fell to the hallway floor, forgotten. "I'm confusing you? I'm confusing you?"
Behind her, Jeff bent down, scooped up the transcript. "You dropped —"
She spun back around and shoved the transcript he offered away. "When have I ever been ambiguous about what I wanted from you? I think I've been very clear for years at this point. Should I have gotten a t-shirt that says 'DATE ME JEFF WINGER' with an arrow pointing up at my face so you know who the 'me' is supposed to be?"
Jeff was grimacing like a boy who'd stuck his hand in scalding water on a dare. "Do you want to —"
"No, no!" Annie knew she was getting loud but she didn't care. It was Saturday anyway. "Don't do that! Don't you dare! You had your chance. You had all the chances! What makes you think you can pick now, when I'm leaving? What makes you think this is the time to start something?"
"I don't want to — see, this is what I was afraid of," Jeff snapped. "You're taking this the wrong way."
"How am I supposed to take it?"
"I don't know! You're supposed to tell me you're fine, or you'll be fine, and I can keep being your friend!" Jeff glanced around, as though he'd suddenly remembered they were in a more or less public place. "Or if I can't keep being your friend, which is probably the smart move on your part, then this is when you tell me so. Which I don't think you're going to do. Didn't think, anyway. I mean, if you need time, take all the time you need..."
"You want me to, what, forgive you? You want me to tell you that I'm chill about it all? That you haven't been making me miserable for years? That I had a stupid schoolgirl crush on you but it's long gone? That I like plenty of other guys, that it's not just you, you aren't central to anything about me, when you left me you didn't leave a big hole in my..." she paused to swallow and choke back tears, "in my life that nobody else can fill? That it's okay we never talked about it? That it didn't hurt me when you graduated and just vanished? That it didn't kill me when you got engaged to Britta? That whatever we were doing senior year, it was all just fine and dandy and peachy-keen?"
Jeff flinched, stung by her words. But it was hardly the first time she'd railed at him for breaking her heart, and he'd stood there with a guilty grimace on his face. Next he would say something ambiguous about how much he cared about her, and then nothing would change. "Annie…"
"Do you think that I've been totally cool with watching you sulk and drink for the last year? That I don't miss you every day? That I don't love you, and hate you for how you've treated me? What you've done to me?"
"I'm sorry," he said in a small voice. It seemed impossibly small given that he was the world's largest human.
"Well, I'm not. I'm not fine. I haven't been fine in a long time."
"I'm sorry," he repeated. "If I had it to do over again… it's too late now, I get that. I do. We should have gotten together years ago. Before I graduated."
"Yeah, well, we didn't."
"I'm sorry," Jeff said a third time.
He looked at her and she looked at him. He looked twenty years older than she remembered him, in that moment, weighed down with guilt and regret. She felt twenty years older. "Well, I'm sorry too. But that doesn't change anything."
Chapter 3
Chapter Text
NEVERTHELESS
Annie sat in her room in the dark and stewed, which was not her idea of a good time. She was not, by nature, a stewer. When she was upset she expressed herself, got it out in the open, and moved on. That was, she felt, key to her self-identity.
Of course this was contradicted, at least a little, by her having screamed at Jeff about five or six years of mistreatment. That had been bottled-up frustration boiling over, and it had been disproportionate to the situation, which was him trying to apologize. She regretted it.
She had every right to be upset, but she regretted it.
Jeff had immediately texted her another apology, about how he hoped they could continue to be friends but if he'd ruined things irrevocably he'd accept that, and how he wished her the best, and how there were a lot of things he wished he could do over again, differently.
Annie had read the texts a dozen times, and a dozen times she'd come up blank when trying to fathom a response. She closed her eyes and tried, again, to visualize a route to a conclusion where she was happy. A version of her story's end (this chapter, anyway) that was optimistic and left the audience smiling and knowing everything would be all right, not a version where she stomped off mad and heartbroken and spent the first act of the sequel getting over it...
Annie's eyes flew open as a sudden flash of memory overwhelmed her.
AROUND TWO AND A HALF YEARS EARLIER
"So if the Greendale movie is ending, what's the sequel going to look like?"
It had been a Friday afternoon in… November? Their senior year. The week before Thanksgiving, or maybe the week after. Fridays at Greendale had a feel all uniquely their own, she remembered telling Jeff at the time. He'd disagreed, said that it was Mondays that had a feel, or at least a scent, that started strong in the morning and faded with time, but she'd thought it was Fridays. Fridays were hazy. Hazy and dreamy and sleepy, when all you wanted to do was cuddle on the couch under the air vent.
That's what they'd been doing, drowsily cuddling on the couch. At the time Annie hadn't even questioned it, it just seemed natural. Sometime after lunch on Friday she'd invariably find herself snuggled up against Jeff - sometimes their arms were entwined, sometimes she was on his lap - and it didn't mean anything, it was just the way it was.
There was a long pause before Jeff answered her question, but that was fine, they weren't in any rush. "Abed said it was a television show, not a movie," he'd finally said.
"Well, Abed isn't the boss of us. It's a movie, and it's ending."
"But we get a sequel?"
"Of course we get a sequel!" Annie might have playfully grabbed at his knee, or maybe she snuggled into his sweater more closely, until she could feel his heartbeat. "Next semester we can get senioritis, and pull a bunch of pranks." Of course Jeff wasn't going to be there next semester, but at the time Annie had forgotten that. "I wanted to do pranks before, you were busy."
"Oh, yeah, I… I think I remember."
"So the movie ends on an up note. Optimistic, audience smiling and knowing everything works out for our plucky heroine and her big hunk of a love interest…"
"Britta would hate to hear you call her plucky. And he's not a small guy but I wouldn't call Troy big. I've got like six inches on him." Jeff's tone had been sleepy, and Annie couldn't tell whether he was teasing her or not.
"Jeff!" Annie must have been in his lap, because she remembered climbing out of it and back onto the couch next to him, at this point.
"What?" Jeff had opened his eyes and scowled.
"You know I'm not talking about Britta and Troy."
"Yeah?"
"I'm talking about you and me."
"Okay."
"I'm plucky and you're big."
"Yeah."
They'd sat and looked at one another for a few moments, and at the time Annie hadn't been sure whether they were going to fall asleep in one another's arms, again, or make out (wait, had that happened?), or go get tacos, or what. In retrospect Annie felt she should have suspected that there was a gas leak in the ventilation system. When it was finally discovered, several months later, she'd bullied Craig into getting the college to foot the bill for a whole flotilla of tests and examinations, confirming that there'd been no long-term damage. No physiological long-term damage, anyway.
"I'm sorry Annie," Jeff had said suddenly. "I don't think I can do pranks with you next semester. I'm really sorry."
"What? Why not?" Annie's eyes had widened. "You aren't going to do pranks with someone else, are you?"
He'd snorted derisively at the very idea. "Course not. But… what if I wasn't around next semester?" She must have reacted badly to that, because he'd immediately started to walk it back. "I'm not saying I'm secretly graduating early or anything! I mean, I'm not saying that I'm not doing that. I can't lie to you."
Due perhaps to the cloud of invisible, odorless monkey gas even then filling the study room, Jeff had also forgotten he'd already told her he was graduating early. "What?"
"What I'm saying is... what if I was just really busy and I couldn't do pranks with you? There's no one else I want to do pranks with. You're the best for doing pranks. You're the best for everything, I'm nuts about you," he'd said, as though this weren't an unprecedented admission. Due to the gas leak it slipped by both of them. "I used to do pranks with other women, I mean, you know that, but you… you..."
He'd trailed off, then, and Annie had said "I know that. I know, you used to do pranks with Britta." Which at the time had seemed like a very reasonable and grown-up thing to say.
Jeff had snorted derisively at that, too, though. "That wasn't anything. That was nothing. And it was a long time ago. I just… God, Annie, you know?"
She'd nodded, though she hadn't understood at all. "I know."
"There's a lot I wish we… I wish I could do over again."
"I know."
"I really wish I could do it, I could be evil and have one arm and do pranks with you…"
"You can!" Annie remembered bouncing up off of the couch and back into his lap. The one arm bit, which should have been some kind of warning sign, had gone completely over her head. "We can totally do pranks, next semester!"
"We can't. I can't. I'm sorry. Don't be mad at me."
And he'd looked so miserable that even through the gas-addled fog in her mind, Annie had felt the need to back off, to reassure him. "It's okay. I'm not mad. It's okay," she'd cooed. Probably she'd stroked his chest, that seemed like the kind of thing she'd have done. "We don't have to do pranks. We can just keep doing this forever."
Jeff's eyes had fluttered shut.
"Can't we?"
FOLLOWING WHICH
Eventually Jeff went home, because he might have had nothing better to do on a Saturday than sit in his office and sulk, and he might have broken Annie's heart and compounded his error by asking for forgiveness he didn't deserve, but he wasn't the kind of loser who spent Saturday night at Greendale.
(Except he had, of course, a dozen or more times over the years. With the study group, or just with Annie.)
He'd composed a thoughtful and sincere apology text message and sent it to her, but she hadn't responded. Which was fair: he'd said his piece, she'd said her piece, they didn't have anything else to say to one another. The long and unhappy story of Jeff and Annie was, at last, ended.
If he hadn't ambushed her in the hallway it would at least have ended on an up note.
The first two times Britta called him, he hit ignore and went back to his game, but the third time he answered just so she'd quit it.
"Hey, jag, get over here."
"Britta?"
"Just come on, okay?"
Jeff sighed. "Where are you? Which precinct?"
"I haven't been arrested, Jeff, jeez! Come to the apartment!"
"Terrific as that invite sounds, I have a whole evening of House Hunters planned, so, no thanks."
"What? No, this isn't optional. You're being summoned."
"I don't recall giving you the power to conjure me like I was some kind of genie -"
"Ugh. It's not me telling you, it's Annie."
Jeff was on his feet before he knew what was happening. "Is she okay?" Suddenly he was haunted by visions of Annie crushed by a runaway train, her last thoughts all about what a jerk he was.
"She's fine, dumbass."
"Why are you calling, then?" Did Annie not want to talk to him? Reasonable, Jeff supposed, but then, why demand he come see her in person? Maybe she had some physical object she wanted to give him, or wanted him to watch her slowly destroy. Or maybe Annie really had been in some kind of accident and Britta was trying to be funny.
"She says she deleted your number from her phone and I said I could just give it to her again and she said that she had it memorized anyway but -"
"So Annie's all right?" Jeff interrupted, because Britta was prattling on about a lot of unimportant stuff.
"Yes! God! Get over here ASAP, okay?"
THUS
Britta and Abed weren't there. The apartment door swung open when he knocked, and within he found Annie, sitting primly on the couch.
"I had a thought," she said by way of greeting, as though this were a perfectly normal meeting between them, as though that afternoon she hadn't told him off and tossed her hair and left him alone in the hallway outside his office.
"It couldn't wait until Monday?" Jeff asked, because he figured casual and jocular was the way to go.
"It really couldn't." Annie cleared her throat and sat up a little straighter. She took a deep breath and when next she spoke it was in a cold, stentorian tone. "I've decided what we're going to do now."
"You've decided?"
"You told me, take as much time as I needed. I needed about four hours. I've decided to forgive you."
Jeff blinked. Casual and jocular failed him. "Forgive me?" he repeated stupidly.
"Yes." She was nodding now, in that tight way she did sometimes, that made her long hair ripple. "Forgive you for telling me over and over again that you weren't in love with me." And there was a sparkle in her eyes, a smile that didn't reach her mouth. "That you weren't crazy about me. That I'm unlike anyone you've ever met," and at this point the smile finally broke through and she was grinning at him, "and I dominate your every waking thought. Also your dreams."
"Did I say that?" Jeff didn't think he'd been that drunk. On the one hand, it didn't sound like him. On the other, she wasn't wrong.
"It was implied." Her grin was supplemented by a subtle eyeroll.
Jeff took a step towards her and almost fell over, he was so lightheaded. It was hard to believe that this was actually happening, that it wasn't yet another fantasy scenario drummed up by his subconscious. "You said you weren't mad at me, that there wasn't anything to forgive." He steadied himself with one hand on a countertop. "Then you got mad, which some might construe as a mixed message."
She laughed, which helped him immensely. "Oh, so now it's me who's giving out mixed messages?"
"It's okay, though." Jeff took a deep breath and cleared his throat, in imitation of her. "I'm willing to forgive you." He joined her on the couch.
ABOUT AN HOUR LATER
Annie nestled up against Jeff and rested her head on his chest. Her legs were curled up under her and he had one arm slung over her back, the other hand on her thigh. "I was so, so mad at you."
"Yeah, I could tell."
"Not just today. Years. Years I was mad at you, because I knew that I was right — that you were in love with me — and you kept refusing to admit it. Out of stubbornness."
"Out of thinking that it was impossible, and that I'd only hurt you."
She gave a skeptical little sigh. "I was mad at you for so long that I forgot I was mad at you. It was just the baseline. Look, there's Jeff, he's hot and I'm mad at him. I want to touch him and I want his hands on me and also I am really irritated by him. I ache for him, I yearn -"
She broke off, and smiled at a memory. "I get turned on by anyone doing a halfway decent Jeff Winger impression, for crying out loud! There's Jeff and I'm pissed at him. That was the default situation, for years. Even after I thought I'd given up and moved from you and put all those feelings in the past, there was still this little core of resentment, wrapped around thinking you were just the best guy. Or a coating of resentment on a core of love, I don't know how that metaphor shakes out."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"Me neither! But after you ambushed me in the hallway outside your office and asked me to forgive you for being so in love with me that you can't think straight -"
Jeff's smile tightened. "Objection."
"Overruled. I started thinking, about you and me and how we almost… we almost did something, before you graduated, but there was the gas leak."
"I don't want to blame a gas leak for my bad choices -"
"I know, I know. But I was there too. There were circumstances beyond your control. And there was a lot that you did that I have every right to be mad at you about, but there was other stuff, too."
"Hmm."
"And then I imagined what it would be like not to be mad at you any more. To let that go, the years of frustration. To say, 'hey, he was suffering too, and he meant well in his own twisted way, and it's over now, he's finally being honest'…to not see a man who I deep-down knew was lying to me whenever he said he just wanted to be friends. Which he said a lot."
Jeff cleared his throat, for once unsure of what to say.
"I just… I imagined not being mad at you, and I was happy."
"I don't want you to be mad at me, which probably goes without saying, but I can understand why…" He trailed off as Annie rose, smiling at him like she knew something he didn't.
"Listen. I want to go back with you to your place. And when we get there, I want to play a game."
"Okay…"
"I want to pretend it's our senior year. Halloween's coming up, and you texted me about doing a, and I'm quoting from memory, 'pairs costume,' because you weren't up for using the word couple, God forbid!" She threw her hands up theatrically. "And I texted you back and said let's talk about it after our next study session, and you texted me back —"
He winced. "I remember. That was the gas, okay? That was definitely the gas."
"But this time, there's no gas. Instead you texted me back and said no, come over to my place tonight and let's talk about costumes." She tilted her head at him, and the manic gleam in her eye was enough to kill whatever protest he might have mounted. "Can you do that for me, Jeff? Can you play that game with me? Can you be that guy?"
"I can try."
AND SO
That was Saturday. On Sunday, they drove two hours and got a room at the hotel where there'd once been an Inspector Spacetime convention and snowed-out skiing. Monday night, Annie cornered Jeff outside the small party the study group had thrown to celebrate Jeff's graduating a semester early. Tuesday night Jeff surprised Annie with a celebratory dinner for two, at Morty's Steakhouse, on the occasion of her graduating with honors. Wednesday night he admitted to a taunting recording that yes, he and Annie were more than friends, and Annie revealed that it had been she who'd cracked Troy and made the recording, and Jeff claimed he'd known that all along.
Thursday night they snuck into the old computer science department and tried to seal themselves in Borchert's bunker, but Frankie had dismantled the locking system as a fire safety hazard and the bunker had been filled with old textbooks that predicted a Mars colony by the year 2000, so they went to the bar he'd taken her to after the Karate Kid premiere instead.
Then on Friday, Jeff drove her and Abed to the airport, and he kissed her hello when he picked them up, and another quick peck goodbye when he dropped them off. By the time her flight had landed Jeff had done the homework she'd jokingly assigned him for the ten weeks she'd be gone, and emailed her another half-dozen scenarios for when she got back and they were together again.