Everyone has a favourite holiday. Britta's was New Year's Eve.
After dragging herself through the ever looming cesspool of Thanksgiving in November and then, of course, Christmas—both of which she objected to in her moral, areligious core even before adding the egregious societal pressure to spend them with family and forgive or at least tolerate all of their shitty behaviour—finally, finally there was something to look forward to. A Shangri-La. A day which she was not only welcome but encouraged to spend partying with friends, getting wasted and making out with whatever (consenting) warm body took her fancy come midnight. No strings, no expectations, no judgements; just the clock striking twelve and the slate being wiped clean for the start of a new year.
Best damn day of the year.
Britta threw back another shot, face scrunching up momentarily in an involuntary response. She was beginning to lose count of how many she'd had at this point, but not the ability to count, so she figured she was still solid. Shouting an unheard 'thankyou' to the bartender over the ruckus, she snatched up the Screwdriver which had been laid out for her also and began forcing her way out of the mass of people crushing up against the bar. Scouting out the crowded room, Britta noted the sparing but festive decorations that had been hung up around the walls for the event. Gold and silver bunting draped from wall to wall, a few stupid looking party hats showing up from time to time on some young hopeful looking patrons, some strategic lighting effects, and the biggest hits of the year thumping in a seemingly endless playlist.
Finally, she spotted Jeff over near the tables on the far side of the bar, chatting up a pair of girls one of whom looked to Britta as if she had to have gotten in on a fake ID, where the music would be undisruptive enough that his silver tongue could work its magic.
Britta's smirk would've given something away if Jeff had seen her coming but, as things were, he didn't even notice her presence until it was too late. Taking as much care as she was currently capable to not spill her drink, Britta extracted one of her rings from its home on her right hand and slipped it onto her wedding finger. Sliding in next to Jeff and snaking an arm around his back so that her right hand rested on his far hip Britta cooed in a sickly sweet tone, "Naww, honey! Are you making friends?" She raised the glass in her other hand to make sure her faux symbol of the patriarchy's treatment of women as ownable, brandable objects was prominently displayed. "Did he tell you about our weekly couples book club?"
Jeff's reaction of surprise and discomfort came quickly, but not quickly enough to stop the retreat of his marks. "Wait, n— What the hell, Britta!? Not cool!"
"I'm just doing my duty as a feminist and defending my gender from men who would manipulate them and use them for their bodies." She plonked herself down at a nearby table, her satisfied giggle betraying a motive other than activism.
"Yeah. Sure." Jeff tried to ignore her chuckling but gave in. "It's not that funny."
"No, you're right, it's way funnier when they throw their drinks in your face."
"Ha."
"Twice as funny when you're the one who paid for them."
"Ha. Ha." Jeff sat across from her in a huff, picking up his mostly-finished Whisky Sour and staring at it as if trying to decide whether or not he still wanted to take a sip. Clearly Britta found herself much more amusing than Jeff did.
"Oh come on!" Britta leaned forward into his field of vision with a smile. "It's New Year's Eve! Lighten up a little!"
Jeff fixed her with an unimpressed look which somehow managed, without the aid of words, to point out the immense hypocrisy of Britta Perry telling anyone else to lighten up.
"Urgh, fine," she caved, rolling her eyes. "I'm sorry, Jeff, for ruining you're totally wizard pick up sesh with two young women who had NO idea what they were getting themselves into and for all you know could wind up—"
"Britta, don't Britta your own apology. Please. Quit while you're breaking even."
She leaned back in her chair with a scowl. At least Jeff was back in good spirits.
"I can't believe you even convinced me to come here tonight; you know there are, like, a dozen awesome parties I could be at right now? If you didn't have such good taste in bars this would have been a polite pit-stop appearance."
Britta's eyes widened as her face split into a grin. "What? What was that? You may have disguised it as an insult but you, Winger, you just paid me a compliment." Her smile disappeared into her glass as she swallowed a healthy dose of her own laughter along with the liquid.
"Let the record show that I've been drinking, that you have no proof and that if you tell anyone, I will deny it."
Sticking her tongue out at Jeff like in the good old days of the 'durr' war, Britta missed the flicker of his eyes down to the drink in her hands and the twitch of one of his eyebrows.
"So, how close are we then?" he asked, nodding generally at the watch Britta was wearing.
Britta pulled her wrist in close to her face—too close to be able to read the time all that effectively—and responded, "Uh, it's— We've got…" She licked her lips and squinted in concentration. "Look, the big one's pointed at the 10, ok! That enough information for you, Marty McFly!?"
"Alright, that's a weird thing to suddenly become hostile over, but 10 minutes, sure."
Jeff sat back easily in his chair, scrutinising his friend in silence. There was something off about the whole exchange and he couldn't quite tell what it was. Ordinarily they'd be trading jabs equally with perfect contentment right about now, in a sort of jaded, semi-meaningless flirtation. Then again, ordinarily Britta wouldn't have left him so far behind in terms of alcohol consumption.
"What?" Britta glowered, but her look swiftly changed to betray a kind of panicked insecurity at being examined so closely. "What is it?" She touched her hair self-consciously.
Jeff took a breath speak and then caught himself, opting for the ease of a lie over the risk of a genuine conversation. "Trying to crunch the numbers. Work out if that's enough time to undo the damage you did and convince those girls you're not my wife before the ball drops."
"You're disgusting," Britta scoffed, baring her teeth in something between a smile and a sneer.
"Yep!" Jeff downed the last of his drink and stood up, smacking his lips. "But I'm exactly the kind of disgusting that hot girls at New Year parties go for. Excuse me."
"No!"
A small hand caught Jeff tightly by the sleeve as he made to pass. He considered telling Britta off for creasing his jacket, but as he spun to look at her… There was that look of panic again, lighting up Britta's eyes.
"I mean…" She glanced around as if searching for a reason to explain her actions. "You wouldn't just leave me hanging here all by myself, right?" Britta bit her lip for a second and looked up at Jeff with way more meaning than he was comfortable with in his current position on the sobriety-drunkenness scale. Britta shrugged simply. "It's nearly midnight."
Jeff dropped his head with a heavy sigh. Looked like he wouldn't be avoiding that genuine conversation after all. "Alright," he commanded, not moving from where he stood. "Tell me what's wrong."
"What? Nothing! Nothing, what're you talking about?" Britta sputtered unconvincingly.
"Britta." Jeff spoke with a façade of patience that perfectly demonstrated his impatience with the situation. Like he was dealing with a child that had gotten a hold of his BlackBerry. Rather than continue to make his point with words, Jeff picked up the hand still clutching at his jacket with one of his own, lifting it gently to hover between them. Never breaking eye contact with the blonde, he moved his thumb to softly caress the ring, still sitting on Britta's wedding finger where it didn't belong.
The former lawyer raised an eyebrow and cocked his head to one side. "Now, I'm no psych major," his smirk was even more smug than usual as he spoke, "but I'd say that someone as vehemently opposed to marriage as you are forgetting to take that ring off after your hilarious gag earlier probably has some significance regarding your current mental state."
Britta's expression froze in the familiar shape of her embarrassed indignation; eyebrows knit together, lips pursed sourly, teeth obviously biting into the insides of her cheeks; refusing to back down from his gaze or look away even as the rest of her shrank. As Jeff slowly took his seat again, Britta claimed her hand back and primly switched her ring to its rightful place on her other hand.
"So," said Jeff calmly. "I'll ask again: what's wrong?"
"Nothing."
Jeff went to stand again and Britta's hands shot out to halt him. "No, nothing! It's nothing, I just— Urgh! I just want to have someone to kiss come midnight, that's all!"
He settled back in. "Good, well the first step is admitting it." Britta rolled her eyes and folded her arms defensively across her chest. "Why me?" Jeff continued, shaking his head and shrugging. "You could get any guy in this building to make out with you in less than 10 seconds without even trying! Which, incidentally, you might need to do if we drag this out much longer."
There she was. Chewing at her own mouth again. Stubbornly refusing to let herself answer his questions.
"Britta, I'm not making out with you at midnight without either a very good reason or a lot more alcohol; with us it gets way too complicated way too fast."
"Fine!" She fired, leaning toward the much taller man defiantly, her arms suddenly bursting out, hands forming fists by her sides. "I don't need you anyway! I can find someone else, like you said! Where's Annie? She said she was coming to this right?" She began twisting around in her seat, only half sitting as she looked around into the crowd.
"She— Britta? Britta. Hey, sit down already, geez!" He pulled her back down by her shoulders and she landed in her chair with a thud. "She texted to say she wouldn't make it—something about Abed locking himself in the bathroom—and I really do not have time to get into that particular cat-bag you just opened." His eyebrows raised and he shook his head again, trying to focus himself on the immediate problem. "Why do you need your kiss to be with someone from study group? You're telling me there's not a single stranger here you'd want to hook up with?" One of the best things about Britta's hipster bars was that they always attracted a good looking demographic, so that idea seemed preposterous to Jeff.
Britta took a deep breath, then sank the rest of her Screwdriver way faster than is generally advised, gulping desperately and letting a little bit dribble down her chin without stopping. Jeff waited. She finished and slammed the glass down on the table, wiping a hand across the liquid left on her face from the act. Jeff could see the panic had returned to his friend's eyes once again, but it seemed that this time she'd successfully dimmed it enough to get the words out of her mouth.
"I have to prove that I'm still Hot Blonde Spanish Class."
Jeff blinked. He'd been anticipating that after a full minute of chugging to buy time and courage and collect her thoughts that Britta's thoughts would have made more sense to him. "What?"
"You remember when you first got my number that's what you called me in your phone?"
"Yeah. You hated that."
"Shyeah, it's incredibly offensive and sexist and dehumanising—"
"So then why—"
"I don't know!" Her head landed dramatically in the nest of her folded arms on the sticky bar table beside her emptied glass.
Jeff glanced around, unsure how he was supposed to proceed or process the information he was getting.
"I used to be cool! I used to have a purpose and value in the group, I was peoples' goal!" Britta's head popped up again to lament, though still anchored low above the table top by the rest of her. "I was savvy and worldly. When did all that stuff take me from being admirable to being a joke? Not even the head of the joke, I'm the butt of the joke, I'm a joke butt."
Jeff saw over Britta's shoulder as the bar staff began turning the majority of the TVs away from the Time's Square feed to the local stations in preparation for reaching midnight in their own timezone. He was surprised the prompting didn't illicit a New York lifestyle anecdote from the woman across from him. It would have been a more obvious segue than some she'd used.
"Y'know, I haven't actually changed much" Britta was still speaking. "It's other peoples' inceptions of m— Perceptions of me." She propped her face precariously on a palm on a forearm on an elbow on the table. "Everything I did then that people thought had a point and made my place in the group make sense is the same stuff I do that makes me The Worst now. Then? You're trying to get in my pants; Annie is imitating me at every turn; Hot Blonde Spanish Class. Now? I'm The Worst; I'm The Worst; I'm The Worst. I just don't know when that happened."
Wait staff began passing out free glasses of cheap champagne from trays; it must have been getting close to midnight now and this seemed like a lot of self-doubt to try and unpack in that short an amount of time.
"You're the one I'm closest to in the group but now you've got your whole weird whatever it is going on with Annie which, look, I don't even wanna get into the psychology of that right now." Inebriated enough to take off her edges, Britta actually sounded as though she'd be capable of it. She flicked miserably at a piece of peanut shell. "I just need to know that even if I am being replaced with the younger model that I'm still wanted on some level after that comparison."
A few precious pre-New Year moments disappeared in silence as Jeff hunted for a way to respond that didn't involve resorting to sarcasm. But before he could find one Britta was piping up again, with more vigour this time.
"And you know what? It's stupid, because no matter what I do, how hard I try; doesn't matter. Still The Worst. I can pull my life together and— I am getting my life together! I declared a major! I've written New Year's revelations! Reservations?"
"Resolutions."
"At's what said, jackass; revolutions."
"Wow, yeah, getting your life together, I see that. How many drinks have you had?"
"Iunno, morean 4 lessan 12?" Britta slurred, accepting an offered glass of bubbly, cheering a little at the sight of it.
Something struck Jeff that he hadn't thought of in a long time. At the end of their first year at Greendale—just after he'd made the bad decision to walk out on Britta's and Slater's love confessions and just before he'd made the bad decision to make out with a literal teenager—Jeff had told Annie how Britta made him feel. That when he was with Britta he felt like the real him. 'The guy he was three weeks after new years', he'd said, when all his resolutions were forgotten. Britta made him feel like simply being him as the mess he was could be good enough. Remembering sent a warm wave of affection washing over him for the particular mess sitting in front of him, and suddenly he needed Britta to have that feeling too. That she, exactly as she was, was good enough.
"Britta," he said firmly, plucking the champagne flute from her hands before she could take a sip. "I doubt you'll even remember any of this in the morning thanks to your valiant effort to destroy as many of your brain cells as you can in this one night, but I think I should tell you anyway."
The TV screens around the room informed him that they had a minute left until midnight. For some reason it had become important to him that he said what he had to say in time to save the end of this year for a woman who wouldn't even remember it. It was absurd, but so was everything in his life since attending that school.
"We rag on you, and we call you The Worst when you go into activist mode because we're actually starting to understand more of your argument and that makes us think and forces us to acknowledge our privilege—yes I just said that—which is uncomfortable and scary and takes more effort than we're brave enough to invest after putting so much of our energy into just surviving Greendale. You're the only one of us passionate enough to do both. And I know Abed likes to talk as if we're in a TV show, and TV shows train us to think there's only enough room for one major female character, necessarily cast as the love interest, but you and Annie are real people and individuals. You're not competitors for the attention and affection of the men around you. That's dumb, and it's sexist, and it shouldn't be the way women are pushed to interact with one another by a patriarchal system; you taught me that and I believe it. No matter how much of an ego boost I get from being the prize. Having said all that, you will always be Hot Blonde Spanish Class, in addition to the wonderful human being you are, and if you honestly think you need to be desired by someone in the study group in order to keep your place? Then you're set because Troy looks at you like you're the fucking Sun."
"Really?"
"Really."
"And Annie isn't replacing me and dooming me to a life as a lonely spinster?" Her face was scrunching up as if it wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. She could hear the bar behind her begin its countdown from ten.
"Oh, I think your army of disabled, knit-wear covered cats is what's causing that."
She threw a few slaps to his arm.
"Ow! I'm kidding!" He laughed. "Hey. I'm kidding. You are still, misogynistic as it is to say, hot property. And here…"
He downed the champagne he'd confiscated from her in one go, just as the countdown was reaching its "three, two, one", and pulled his best friend in for a long, easy kiss through contented smiles.
As a cacophonous chorus of "happy New Year!" and an enthusiastic, if off-key, rendition of Auld Lang Syne erupted from all around them, Britta quietly confirmed to herself that New Year's Eve was definitely the best holiday. No strings; no expectations; no judgements. Just the clean slate of another year beginning, and fireworks exploding in a rainbow across a half dozen bar TV screens while she kissed someone she actually cared about.
Jeff had been right; Britta didn't remember anything much they'd talked about when she woke up the following morning. Only a blacked out haze, smudged lipstick, and a raging hangover remained to tell her that she'd enjoyed her evening. The next time she caught a glimpse of her name's entry in Jeff's phone she knew that she should find it degrading but instead, somehow, didn't feel like she minded so much. It read:
"Britta (Hot Blonde Study Group)".