She wasn't coming back at the end of the summer.
Or, she was, but only for a weekend to settle things up, then it was back to the FBI.
He tried to feign surprise at this — an internship of the sort she'd had leading to an offer of full-time employment was an extremely rare beast — but some part of him said of course.
Of course she would excel.
Of course she would impress.
Of course she would, once finally full out of the cocoon that was Greendale, burst forth to conquer the world.
He would have been disappointed if she'd come back.
He would have been relieved, of course. Hell, he would have been thrilled, and odds were that he wouldn't have done a very good job of hiding it. Britta referred to the night Annie had made the announcement as the night he'd had a nervous breakdown, right there in front of everyone. But he would have been disappointed, too, because he expected better of her. And while he'd let her down more than once, she'd never done the same to him.
His circle of friends had pared down by the time he got the news she wouldn't be coming back: Duncan, Britta, Craig, and Frankie. She was all giddy when she told him, like it was good news. Because, of course, it was.
After he got off the phone with her he looked at himself in the mirror, and he didn't like what he saw. This was nothing new, on one level. He'd never been especially fond of himself. After a flirtation with being a professional monster, he'd settled into the role of sad sack and failure with an energy and vigor usually associated with success. He had a job he hated at a school synonymous with disappointment. He'd missed whatever shot he'd had with the woman he loved by being too far up his own ass to act, and telling himself it was noble. He'd failed at nearly everything he'd ever tried – at least, the things that had been important to him.
This is what he was thinking, when he looked at himself in the mirror the day after the news. She wasn't coming back. She was gone. He had failed at everything, up to and including ruining her life.
And in that thought he found solace. No matter what he did now, no act of his could change the fact that he'd known someone remarkable, and that she was going to be remarkable out there in the world, and even that he had, in some tiny way, been responsible for her becoming the remarkable woman she was.
Nothing he did mattered any more; she was gone.
He was free.
"…Dean dean dean went the trolley, dean dean dean went the bell…" Craig Pelton sang to himself as he filled out yet another form. At times he suspected Frankie just made up paperwork to keep him busy, because when he was filling out forms he wasn't getting in her way while she ran Greendale. But most of the forms seemed legit. The one he was filling out at that moment, for instance: a copy of the city's new twenty-part submission packet for getting permission to designate some of the parking spots in the main lot as being for the handicapped, which Frankie had dropped off that morning. The sudden uptick in elaborate documentation required by even the most banal of administrative tasks had corresponded with the start of Frankie Dart's tenure as Greendale Community College's chief operations manager, which Craig thought of as an exceptionally fortunate coincidence. Without her, he doubted he could have kept up with all of the new paperwork; even with her, it kept him busy almost all day, almost every day.
He was filling out page eight of the packet Frankie had given him for the day: listing the colors of the rainbow in order of preference. The exercise that had taken most of the morning, as he kept changing his mind as to whether orange was his fifth-favorite color, or whether it was his sixth-favorite under indigo.
Craig glanced up as Jeff Winger strode into his office, then dropped his pencil as he did a double take. Jeff had gotten a shave and a haircut. He wore a crisp blue button-down shirt, and there was a spark in his eye that Craig hadn't seen since before he'd turned forty.
"Jeffrey!" Craig cried. He started to spring up out of his chair, ready to join Jeff in whatever strange crusade he was launching, but something in Jeff's pose kept him in his seat. "What can I do for you?"
"I quit," Jeff said.
"What?" Craig was aghast. "Jeffrey, why? Do you want more money? I can't give you more money! There isn't any, and even if there was, Frankie took away the checkbook!"
Jeff snorted. "I… no, you deserve to know. You've been a good friend. Annie's not coming back. They offered her a job at the FBI."
Craig boggled. "Are you going to follow her to Washington, DC? That's insane and romantic and I'm so jealous!"
"Hell, no." Jeff shook his head. "I'll probably never see her again, just like Troy and Shirley and Abed and everyone else who leaves. But knowing she's gone forever is a wake-up call. I've been here, wallowing, in this place where aspirations go to die, eking out tiny, tiny slivers of satisfaction. I'm tired of drinking to numb myself enough to get to the point where I'm able to pretend I'm okay with my life. I quit."
Craig blinked back tears. He searched his brain for reasons Jeff couldn't do this. "But… but… the fall semester starts next week! Someone needs to teach your classes, you can't just —"
"Please." Jeff scowled, the wicked gleam still in his eye. "A monkey could teach my classes. It's all DVDs and multiple choice. Get one of the cafeteria workers to do it. Or Frankie can probably find a better-qualified law professor who actually wants to be here, maybe because of a stroke or an anxiety disorder. My point is I don't care."
"But you love Greendale!" Craig cried desperately.
"Again, hell no. I love some people who are mostly gone now, and I should follow their example. Greendale is a crutch, and if I'm ever going to regain my self-respect, step one is getting rid of the crutch."
"What… what are you going to do?" The dean whimpered like kicked puppy.
Jeff's eyes lit up even more. "I have no idea! But I know where I'm going to do it — not here!" Jeff turned to leave, but stopped… something held him back.
Specifically, Craig held him back — the dean had climbed over his desk and hugged Jeff around the waist from behind, trying to drag him down. "You can't go!"
"Stop literalizing the metaphor!" Jeff shouted.
"Where are you going to go?"
"See, that's the beautiful thing, here. It doesn't matter."
Jeff grinned wildly as he stuffed what few belongings he cared about into the trunk and back seat of his car. Duncan was, in theory, there to help him, but he'd spent most of the day shaking his head in wonder and asking the same few questions over and over.
Yes Jeff's burst of energy arose from the revelation that Annie had been offered a permanent position with the FBI.
No Jeff was not going anywhere near Washington, DC.
No Jeff had no expectation of ever seeing Annie again.
Yes Jeff was serious about leaving Colorado.
Yes Jeff had a plan.
No Jeff wasn't going to share it.
"Not right away. I've got to get my head screwed on straight," he told Duncan for the fourth or fifth time. Also the part about him having a plan was, while not exactly a lie, definitely an exaggeration. He had an idea for a plan.
"I feel like we should call Britta," Duncan suggested. "Sit down, have a few drinks, figure this whole thing out."
"I've already talked to Britta," Jeff said, as he slammed the trunk closed. "Last night. This is it. I'm going. I'll be back," he reassured Duncan. "At some point, definitely. Probably." He cackled. "Maybe."
"Jeffrey, I'm not any better a psychologist than you are a lawyer, but I am your friend. And I wholeheartedly support you making positive changes in your life, don't get me wrong. I think it's great you want to leave Greendale, I think it's great you want to take decisive action…"
"Thank you, Ian," Jeff said with genuine warmth. "I appreciate it. And I'll be in touch."
"But right this moment you seem to be suffering some kind of —"
"Suffering? No. Enjoying. I am enjoying what very probably constitutes a manic episode." Jeff grasped Duncan firmly by the shoulders and looked him in the eye. "But I have to change my life or I am going to drown in frisbees and scotch and recrimination. I need to deal with my problems."
"See, this is just you running away from your problems, not dealing with them. You think you're being proactive, but wherever you go, you're still going to be stuck with yourself."
"I liked you better when you were high all the time," Jeff grumbled. "Hand it over."
Britta squinted at him from the doorway of the apartment that had, once upon a time, been Annie's. "You need to work on you. Throwing your life into disarray is just going to… you're just making a mess."
Jeff folded his arms. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm crazy. But I need to do something. I have to do something. If I keep on my current track, I'm going to end up like Pierce, miserable and alone and deluded. Except I'm also going to be poor, so Pierce would actually have that on me. Hand it over."
"Hand what over?"
Jeff glared at her.
"Okay, fine." She turned and headed into the apartment, stomping sullenly towards a box on the kitchen counter. "I'm going to tell her you stole it, though," Britta said over her shoulder as Jeff followed her in.
"You stole it from me."
"She asked me to! And you stole it from the trophy case…"
"It's in here?" Jeff pulled the box open, ripping tape. He peered down into it, and hesitated. It was there, in the nice frame that he'd always assumed Annie had set it in: a clipping from the Greendale Gazette Journal Mirror: "Debate Team Champs!" The frame was half-hidden by photographs, mementos, pins and pens. Six years of memories, in a convenient container.
Britta scowled at him. "She also said you weren't returning her calls, which, again, super unhealthy."
"I'm cancelling my phone. Getting a new number. I'll let you know. Eventually." As though he were reaching into a vat of acid, Jeff gingerly thrust his hand into the box of history and pulled the framed clipping out.
"You're changing your number, cutting ties, moving… all to get a fresh start, and you're taking this with you?" Britta threw up her hands. "This is exactly what I'm talking about — you can't not self-sabotage!"
"This isn't self-sabotage," Jeff retorted. "This is… this," he said, holding up the clipping, "is important to me. It's…" He swallowed. "It's important."
"It's amazing!" Annie's eyes were bright. "Can you believe it?"
"Barely," Britta said. She and Annie embraced again.
Almost exactly twenty-four hours after Britta had watched Jeff drive away, Annie's flight had landed. They stood under the fluorescent lights of the baggage claim, waiting for her luggage. Annie looked lively, in a way Britta hadn't seen on her in a long time. "I can barely believe it myself, they don't usually make an offer at the end of the internship and I didn't even think I impressed them that much and in three years I can apply to the FBI Academy and God, it's just amazing!" She chuckled… no, she giggled. She giggled like a schoolgirl.
Britta laughed too, happy to see her so happy. "Yeah…"
Then Annie shifted gears with a precision that was almost chilly. "So what's the deal with Jeff?"
"Hmm?" Britta hoped she sounded more surprised than panicked.
"Jeff Winger." Annie raised an eyebrow. "Six foot four, early forties, takes his shirt off at the drop of a hat, kind of scruffy? Suddenly stopped returning my calls because he's being a baby?" There was a brittleness there, underlying Annie's jocular tone — Britta had known her for years enough to recognize when she was feigning casualness. The glee that had been so strong in her voice had vanished suddenly and completely.
"Yeah…" Britta glanced down at her shoes. "What happened there?"
Annie glanced around, as though concerned someone might be listening in. "It's stupid," she said. "I told him about the job thirty seconds after I found out. I thought he'd be happy for me. He said he was, and then he said he had to go, we'd talk later. That was the day before yesterday. I texted him, nothing. I tried to call him last night, but his phone was disconnected, which… I know he's…" She sighed. "You know how he can be."
Britta opened her mouth to reply, thought about it a moment, and closed her mouth again. She nodded.
Annie gave Britta a yeah, exactly sort of look. "I called Frankie, but she refused to say anything about Jeff. Which was weird." She made a face. "So what is it that Frankie didn't want to tell me?"
"Well…" Britta struggled to find a good way to put it, and, coming up dry, went with a bad way instead. "Jeff's gone. He went kind of crazy yesterday. He quit his job and moved out of his apartment."
Annie looked at Britta like she'd grown a second head. "What? Where is he?"
"I don't know!" Seeing Annie's expression, Britta threw up her hands in exasperation. "Honest! I don't."
Jeff had to wait almost ten minutes, but it wasn't like he had anything else to be doing. There was really just the one guy from before Greendale that he could plausibly reach out to. He lounged in a corner booth, drank coffee, and read a newspaper while he waited. Around the time he finished reading the opinion pages and grumbling at what idiots all the columnists were, he finally got the call back. The voice on the other end of the line was warm and friendly and apologetic. "Jeff Winger! Sorry to make you wait, I had a client on the land line. What the hell can I do for you?"
"Mark, hi…" Jeff tossed the newspaper down, the better to concentrate on the conversation.
"Call me Cash, Tango!" Mark sounded well. Jeff could easily imagine him, feet up on his desk, playing with his pencil the way he'd used to, ten years back when they'd shared an office. "What's the good word? It's been, what, two years? Three? Have you finally shaken that school off?"
Jeff chuckled, only slightly nervously. "Yeah, actually. That's exactly why I'm calling you. I have shaken that school off like it was a head cold and I just drank a gallon of orange juice."
"Awesome, buddy. I can guess why you're calling, and I'm sorry." Mark's tone turned apologetic. "The answer's got to be no."
Jeff winced, but his voice never wavered. "Mark, Cash, I wasn't expecting you to hire me on the basis of —"
"Wait, hire you?" Mark sounded dumbfounded. "You mean to say Tango doesn't have something lined up?"
"Of course I… wait, what did you think I was asking?"
"I figured you wanted to use my Broncos box to schmooze somebody! I gave it up when I, you know, relocated out of Denver. Who're you looking to schmooze, though," he asked seriously, "because I do know a guy and I can get you last-minute opera tickets…"
"Cash! Cash, slow down. Here's my situation. Ready?"
"Shoot."
"One. I'm unemployed as of yesterday and I need to get the hell out of Colorado. Two. There is no second thing."
Mark let out a low whistle. "Bad breakup?"
"No. Kind of. There's a woman involved, but it's all in the past."
"Well, I'm glad you thought of me, buddy."
"Great. I need a favor, if you're willing. You've got to put some feelers out on my behalf. Me cold-calling and saying 'hey, I'm that guy they wrote the magazine article about who faked his degrees and went to community college, et cetera,' that's not going to win me any points with anyone."
"Christ, Jeff, I can do better than that — you want a job?"
Jeff nearly did a spit-take with his coffee, which fortunately there was no one there to see. "What?"
"Offer I made you back in the day still stands," Mark continued. "You'd have to move, obviously, but I'm hearing some subtle indications you might be amenable to that."
Jeff sat bolt upright in his seat. "Are you serious?"
"Absolutely! Mostly. I'm not a solo boat — we'll have to convince the partners to get you on board, but we're in an expansionary phase right now anyway, we were talking about lateral hires and there's no one I'd rather bring in at the non-equity partner level…"
"Non-equity?" Jeff repeated wryly.
"Buddy. You've been out of it for years and your degree is from a community college," Mark pointed out. "But don't worry, Tango, I'll take care of you. This is me jumping at the chance to get you on my team, is what this is. How fast can you be out here?"
Jeff considered. He'd left Thursday so that he'd be well gone before her flight came in. It was Friday evening now. By this point Annie would have landed. She must know he'd fled by now. Jeff wondered whether she understood. Probably she was angry… he ruthlessly repressed that line of thought as immaterial to the matter at hand. "I'm at a restaurant in Peoria right now —"
"Peoria? Illinois? What the hell are you doing in Illinois?"
"Calling you! Sitting waiting for you to call me back." Jeff shook his head. "I needed to get distance between me and… and there. Listen, I'll drive it and be in your office, spit-shined, first thing Monday morning."
"Make it third thing — no one's in until ten. Or actually, no, come to my house when you get here. I've got a guest room you can use until you find a place."
"Cash, I don't need to…"
"I insist!" Mark said, as Jeff had known he would. "I'll text you the address. Get in early enough Sunday and I'll make you dinner, or lunch, I don't know, whatever… and Jeff? Real sorry to hear about the thing with the girl, whatever it was."