This is how you lose her.
Not like everyone expected it- in a burst of frantic kinetic energy, with screams and shattered glass. It's cordial, friendly even; maybe a bit too friendly, you think, as she envelops you in a tight hug and, standing on the tip of her toes, gives you a quick peck on the cheek.
It takes you aback. It's so un-Britta, but before you can call her out on it, she's gone, taking pictures with the rest of study group and posing, a grin on her face as flashes go off. You stare at her, and she seems to avoid your gaze, though you're not sure if it's intentional.
Shirley wraps you in a hug and you smile. Not the moment. Tonight is not about you. You could've left a semester ago, but you didn't, and this is for them.
You don't mind.
"Now a group picture!" calls Britta, and you're shoved in together, Shirley's arm still wrapped tightly around your waist, Annie at your elbow, her crisp valedictorian sash perched jauntily on her shoulder, Abed at her side, a rare grin on his face. Troy balancing Annie's boobs on his shoulder, Pierce watching him cautiously, lest the monkey decide to crap on him again.
"Smile!" she shouts, her ancient camera nearly sparking in her face as she clicks frantically.
And you smirk, and the flash finally goes off, nearly blinding everyone in the vicinity.
A Polaroid slides out, bright white. You all crowd around her, the picture held delicately between her fingertips (painted silver, you notice for a second). She waves it around, blowing on it as the image slowly comes into view.
She's not in the picture, you notice with a pang.
Of course, she took it.
You shake your head, turning at the sound of air horns and, somehow, vuvuzuelas. "Party at Neil's!" someone shouts above the din, to the delight of the graduates. Pierce shouts in your ear, "Dinner still on?" You nod, a small smile on your face. As people begin to swarm around, offering congratulations and heartfelt goodbyes, you feel a tug at your gown.
"I'll be there later. I have to go do something at home." Britta's voice calls softly, and before you can fully turn around, Duncan solidly in your way clapping your back, she's disappeared in the sea of scratchy black polyester.
You sit on the floor of your room- the carpet's clean for once, and you stare at the pastel green walls. Though you've scrubbed every corner of your apartment, and the house is pretty much empty of all your junk, you're back where you started at this morning, staring at the wall. Hipster scum is scrawled in messy, jumbled cursive next to where your Pixies poster was, in purple sharpie.
Jeff wrote it one night, you remember, while you were washing the dishes after he had brought Thai food. He had disappeared for a while- not wholly unexpected, you smirk, probably preening before you did anything else. That you hadn't found out until a few days later wasn't really your fault as much as his, really. He had always been good at distracting you.
Still, you hadn't erased it yet, and sitting here, you can't get yourself to get up and actually scrub it off. Instead you stand up and grab a box, lift it onto your shoulders and out the door you go, down the stairs and to your car. Just this last one for now, and you can get dressed. The back is full already, and you jam it in, wedging it in at an angle, and pulling the door down before it spills out. Before you slam it shut, you can't help but feel a pang in your stomach. Your entire life is sitting in eight U-Haul boxes and a cat carrier in the back of your old Volvo. But you can't let yourself dwell, you tell yourself.
What's done is done.
You run upstairs and into your apartment, slamming the door behind you with what may be a bit too much force, but it doesn't matter anymore, right? Time to change. You glance at the black dress on the now-bare bed, as you kick off your shoes and shimmy out of your jeans. Though it may be gorgeous, and it has to be, since you spent a week's salary on it, you can't help but question your motives- after all, Troy and you are way, way over. And things with Jeff are...
Well, he's Jeff. You glare at it, biting your lip. It's dysfunctional and all, you're sure of that (after so many psych classes, something has stuck, right?) and if it were you giving advice to someone else, you'd tell them to suck it up and cut all ties now, before it sucked them in any farther.
But you're not. You're you and you know, objectively, your emotional ties to this train-wreck of a relationship are keeping you staring at this black dress.
Your car is packed and you've paid your bills. Your degree is coming in the mail, and everything is neatly organized for you to go off and do your thing now. But your eyes keep coming back to the writing on the wall and that sinking feeling makes you wish that this was all easier, and you could be different.
You're standing in front of the mirror, pulling at the haphazard bow-tie in frustration, the silky material drooping in place as you glare at your reflection. You've been standing here a half-hour and it's starting to show. Finally, you ditch it on your dresser next to your hairspray and cologne, and go digging in your drawers, because surely there must be a clip-on somewhere in there, right?
You kneel down, tightening the straps of the heels around your ankles securely, because you're probably going to stumble and break your neck in these damn shoes. But this is the only way your dress won't drag on the ground, and though you question your sanity, and glance for a tempting second at the crumpled jeans on the floor, you get up, and instead reach for the perfume bottle on the box by the door.
Walking across the parking lot, the first thing he sees is her car. Filled with boxes, suddenly it clicks (though why he didn't figure it out before makes him feel like an idiot.) That uneasy feeling he's been blowing off all afternoon makes sense now, and he can't stifle it now- even if he tried.
When he walks up to her apartment building, he finds her outside already. She's sitting cross-legged on the ground, half-heartedly smoking a cigarette.
"Hey."
"Jeff." She looks up at him, and sighs. "I'm coming, give me a second."
She takes a long drag, and puts it out on the gravel. His eyes seem accusatory to her, and with good reason- wasn't she supposed to give up smoking? Oh well.
"You clean up well." He mutters, taking her in. Wearing a black floor length dress, definitely new, he thinks, with her hair in tousled curls, she looks…nice.
She rolls her eyes. "So charming."
"Were you planning on telling us anytime soon?" he nods towards the packed car, "Because I haven't exactly managed to read minds yet."
There it is.
"Though I bet you're trying."
"With every fiber of my being." he extends a hand, which she takes gratefully, and straightens herself up.
"I wanted it to be…a surprise." She murmurs, dusting her seat off. Though she's been sitting here a good hour trying to figure out what she was going to say, all her carefully crafted answers seem to fall apart, at the gaze of the man who is still holding her hand. Ugh.
"Right." He raises an eyebrow, an odd look on his face. She's always been incredibly easy to read; laughably easy, at times, but the look on her face seems...guarded. He's never seen her like this, and he frowns slightly, bothered.
"It's true. I got a job offer from a small firm in Boulder, as an in-house psych counsel." She grins despite herself (she hasn't told anyone else) and continues. "It's mostly family law, so I'm not going to be rich or anything-"
"Which would kill you, I know," he smirks. "I'm impressed, Britta." And he really is, despite the pang in his stomach.
"They were pretty insistent. They read my paper on the Human Rights Council in Third World countries, and were impressed. Somehow my grades didn't scare them off," she trails off.
"Why didn't you tell us?"
The question hangs in the air, and the implication is clear.
"I assumed you'd realize. I've never been the kind of person who stays somewhere for too long. Seeing as I don't have much keeping me here…"
"You have us." Even as he says it, he knows it's incredibly corny, a line almost lifted from a sappy romance novel and it's confirmed by yet another eye roll.
"Right." She scoffs. "Everyone desperately needs me to hold them together."
He's silent, staring at the slightly flat front wheels of her car. She didn't bother to take it in for a tune-up before her trip.
"Shirley and Pierce are doing good business, you're already re-certificated, Annie got like, thirty job offers, and Troy's student teaching…I'm the only one who hasn't taken that last step. And honestly…" she trails off, rubbing the back of her neck. "I don't want to lose my chance because I'm a coward."
"Feels like you're running away. Because of our thing." He blurts out before he realizes what he's said, and then shirks away, knowing her reaction before it comes, ready to feel, at the very least, a punch in the kidney or a broken nose. He's not very articulate tonight, he thinks.
"What?" she looks up at him, an incredulous look on her face, twisted into a thin smile. "I don't factor into your messes," she runs a hand through her hair. "Not anymore. I told myself I didn't want any more things stopping me, and this is me trying to end all these things."
"You're honestly not saying that to me."
She glances down at her watch, and looks up at him, cheeks flaming against her pale skin. "You're an ass, you know? Tonight's my night and somehow you've made it all about you. Let's go to dinner and forget this all happened." Jeff gazes at her, incredulous, the heat rising in his face as he glares down at her. Her effort to cut and run wasn't meant to be easy, she tells herself, steadying herself, and she swallows, a thick knot in her throat.
"Look, we've been completely avoiding this until now, and I think it'd be a good idea to get it clear before it blows up in our faces." He murmurs, throwing a glance at the next-door neighbors, who are peeking through their windows at what must seem like a spectacle. His chance is falling away like sand in an hourglass, Britta's expression a mask of pained resolution that keeps him in place. It's not him that's going to cut if off this time, and he's not going down without a fight.
"Until what blows up in our faces?" her voice breaks, and he sees her hands clench into fists at her sides. "Look, Jeff, we tried this out a long time ago and it didn't work. You obviously don't want this with me, and I'm not going to let myself fall into the same thing as always."
There it is. The mask falls, and suddenly her eyes swimming in pooled tears, and she's trembling, and damned if he's not as well, tears prickling in the corners of his eyes.
He groans, kicking at the gravel. His heart is pounding, and he feels her slipping through his fingers. "We were so close last time. I didn't know and I made out with someone, I don't even remember who. Are you really going to let this all go to hell because of that?"
"It was Quendra, Jeff!" she laughs bitterly, wiping away at tears angrily as she steps forward, eyes narrowed. "You knew it would fuck me up, and you went and did it anyway."
"We weren't together yet!" he towers over her, and resists the urge to shake her by the shoulders, anger making his chest burn even as the tightness in his throat threatens to overtake him, tears beginning to drop from his eyes, as he defends himself. "Everything was completely scrambled and I had no idea what was going on!"
"Of course you didn't." she shakes her head, "You don't want me, anyway. You're going off to be a goddamn lawyer again, and I know you're already starting to fall back into your same habits again, so why don't you spare me the breath and forget all this ever happened?" she spits, eyes boring into his, the stormy grey-blue daring him to tell her otherwise.
"I messed up once, you can't possibly be holding that against me!"
"I was ready to make it work, Jeff. I broke things off with Troy after the convention, and just when I was finally ready to take the next step, I see you doing that!" her hands tremble as she steps closer, a grimace on her lips. "We've been dancing around this for years, and nothing!"
"For all I knew you were still together! How the hell was I supposed to feel that night, after all that we talked about?" he spits back at her. "But you're the one that cuts and runs at the mention of any difficulty!" he takes a final step, pressing up against her as they glare at each other.
"And you can't get it together, even for a second, to actually start anything with me!"
Jeff stares down at Britta, and she stares back at him in silence. They're both in tears, belligerent even in that, arms tightly at their sides as moments pass.
"What do you want?" she murmurs, looking away.
"What?"
"The only way this is going to work is if we're honest." she stares at the ground, forcing herself to stay composed. "And I need to know what you think."
"I think," he lifts her chin with trembling fingers, looking into her grey eyes, "That I want to make this work. Do you?"
"Yeah, I do." she hesitates, taking a breath before continuing, her eyes trained on his. Her heart is pounding in her chest, set to burst- but she has to make sure of one thing first, "But we have to be more open with each other."
"Well, tonight was a good start." he smiles weakly, relief seeping through him- the weight suddenly lifted from him, and she rolls her eyes, and gives a small laugh. They have a lot to talk about, but for once...this seems like a step in the right direction.
"I guess screaming works."
He leans down and presses his lips against hers, light and chaste. She can't help but smile, blushing. "This seems anticlimactic."
"I could break your windows and slash your tires," she suggests, a smirk growing on her face. There are thousands of loose ends to tie up, but in this moment, everything is fixable, and resolvable and just...right. They can kiss, and tease, and it's all where she wants.
"Mmm, tempting, but I'll take anticlimactic. I actually don't mind." he extends his hand, and she takes it, interweaving her fingers with his. "Let's go see everyone."