The Conundrum
Jeff ponders his Annie predicament

After yet another crazy, unpredictable day at Greendale, Jeff finds himself sitting on his couch, eating muffin tops – Rich had insisted he take some home, what a guy – and thinking about Annie. He had once accused her of becoming dangerous. Now she was a puzzle, which was ironic given her love of puzzles.

The thing is: he has no idea what to do with her. He can't figure out where she fits in his life.

Before the Debate Team, Annie was just a source for class notes, a sweet kid with a past pill addiction. Then she was this shockingly hot girl who was slowly becoming a good friend. After their kiss at the Transfer Dance, it all got jumbled in his head.

Instead of trying to un-jumble things, he instead chose to ignore her all summer. When they came back for the fall semester, he pretended the kiss never mattered, acted as if it never happened. Annie had come around to his way of thinking and showed no signs that she was still pining away for him; that is until their prop gun showdown with the dean. Still, they seemed better after that night, laughing as they climbed out of a crazy maze of fallen blankets.

They were friends again, and she maybe was or wasn't pining, but she was doing it in secret and that was good enough for him.

Her "I love butterflies" voice this morning caught him off guard. He didn't want to hear about her new crush; didn't want to think that she had really forgotten about their kiss and…whatever…else had been between them. Finding out that crush was Rich, someone he already hated, had sent him into orbit. Hell, he was so desperate he was willing to get Chang voted into their group.

It shouldn't have bothered him, but it did. And she sure as hell wasn't supposed to call him out on it, in the men's bathroom of all places. When he told her, "I wish I could give you an answer that makes sense," he was telling the truth. It might have been the only truth he had told her all day.

So here he sits, working through the arguments, listing the facts as he sees them.

Fact A: If Annie were older, he would have already hit that.

Fact B: If she weren't a friend, he would have left her in his dust and long forgotten about it.

Fact C: When she was obviously willing to be with him, he shut her down, hard, and more than once.

Fact D: If she tried accepting his limits and moving on with her life…then he acted like an ass and kept her from voting the guy into the group.

Shit. He had been telling himself he was trying to do the right thing by Annie, which meant leaving her alone. But why couldn't he leave the Rich situation alone?

(Sidebar: If he had known Rich was going to turn her down, he would have shut the hell up and just waited it out.)

So why couldn't he take it? He knows the answer; it's staring him as plainly in the face as Annie did earlier tonight. But what does he do about it? What can he do?

What does he do with unwanted, irrational, sort of icky and almost illegal feelings toward a 20-year-old who happens to be a close friend?

Push, pull. Push, pull. Another muffin top goes down the hatch; cholesterol levels be damned.

He can't have her, but he doesn't really want anyone else to have her, either. And if he's completely honest, he doesn't want her to want anyone else.

See the problem here? Shit.

He had warned Britta that Vaughn would be Annie's "gateway douchebag," and he was right. Now all the other douchebags in the world would think she was viable, and Annie just might latch onto one of them.

He just wasn't expecting the next douchebag to be him.

What Jeff had here was a Gateway Douchebag Conundrum*. And the only thing he could think to do about it was have another muffin top, get some sleep, go to school tomorrow and keep up the charade that Little Annie Adderall hadn't wormed her way into his itty, bitty, douchebag heart.

*The term "Gateway Douchebag Conundrum" came from blixie2, a poster at TWOP, and it's brilliant.