Chapter II

There's something ugly about a pretty boy who knows he's pretty and assumes everyone else know it too.

Nova Ren Suma

Had her abilities of observation increased, like a preternatural skill, or had she simply been thinking like him again? She did that sometimes now. It had started by the slightest of efforts. She would stare at a seemingly ordinary bowl of ice cream that he had placed on the counter, simply because he was doing the same. At the beginning it was just a mere function of curiosity. A what was he thinking sort of thing. But it didn't stop there. It took no time at all for her to start to see the world through his eyes; the mechanisms of causality, the interweaving collisions of choice and behaviour, that deep unknowable void of inevitability.

Or perhaps her long hours in forensics classrooms simply started yielding real world results.

Either way it dawned on her just then, although recalling innumerable instances before without difficulty, that Jeff spoke, or rather said, a lot with his hands. She watched as he flailed them around, emphatically punctuating his point with his closed fist slamming down on an imaginary button that sat just inches above the surface of the table. There was a certain cadence to his speech; a natural rhythm to even the most unfamiliar ear, that he maintained with great efforts of constancy.

She wondered perhaps if it was from the years of courtroom theatrics, or a vestigial manifestation of an ancient trauma, or perhaps just the natural ensigns of those of his alpha-male temperament. All options seemed plausible, all seemed likely, in fact.

Regardless, if she hadn't been paying much attention to his words, it wouldn't matter much as it didn't seem likely that he was much interested in her response. To say that he spoke just to hear himself talk would be selling him a little short but one would be forgiven, if on a passing acquaintance, that was the first impression one formed of this Jeff Winger. However, he was in the end, much more than that.

But to describe him now, as he was before, as Annie once knew him, would be merely dredging up past glories. She picked at her food with her obscenely shiny fork, catching the odd buzzword, he espoused with greater than normal enthusiasm, deposition, suit, winning, blondes. She tried to smile at the things he smiled at, she feigned interest as best she could. She tried to be proud when he was, although it pained her to see him regaling in his petty courtroom victories as if they could ever rival his exploits at Greendale.

Had this been the man she had fallen in love with? Had she ever been in love with him? Was Jeff Winger merely a dream frozen in time, in the oddball fantasy she had lived in the confines of Greendale Community College? She wished desperately for him to want to be with her. Not merely to be with her, sometimes almost as if it were a mere obligation. Sometimes, she wished she could see inside his mind. She wondered if he felt as conflicted as she did. She wondered if he loved her and resented her in equal measure, the same way she did him.

Were she to describe him to a prospective friend, he would be everything a girl could want. Tall, handsome, charming, smart, ambitious (although in the wrong way), had a well-paying job, a nice car, and more caring than he would like to admit.

However, something had changed when he graduated. No one, least of all Annie herself, seemed to want to acknowledge it at the time. And on the surface, indeed it was not that different. In fact, it may have been better. At least that was the line she was feeding herself for the first few months. They went to see movies together, he even showed up at yet another one of Greendale's infamous dances just to hang out. He even took her on dinner dates (well she called them dates), the grown up kind, with mood lighting, and menus with only two options on it.

But as time wore on and each successive meeting seemed more and more token, each conversation drifted further and further away from their Greendale dynamic, she felt as if she was being filed away as just another little compartment of his life. It wasn't his fault, it was within his nature. If he could keep everything in his life separate, in a little box, there was nothing he couldn't handle. If anything was not to his liking, he could simply dump that box without it collapsing the rest of his life.

Modularity, not merely for post-modern furniture design anymore.

Had she become one of his "girls"? She wondered. Had she just become another one of Jeff Winger's worldly creature comforts? At the risk of being unfair to his character, it felt more and more to her that Jeff was merely interested in Annie as a method of obtaining his necessary dose of intimacy without commitment. They had always been close and he was the last person to deny that. But even as she threw herself at him, with the doe eyes, and the subtle hair toss, to the gentle caresses of their hands, it never seemed to go any further. She had on her occasions of good sense, been thankful that he had never taken advantage of her… vulnerability, but at the same time seemed to be hanging onto her unrequited affections for his own self-gratification.

"Am I boring you?" Jeff asked casually as he took a sip of his wine.

"No, not at all," Annie replied nervously, "just a long day."

"How are classes?" Jeff asked.

"Oh you know, fine. It's Greendale. You don't want to hear about it," Annie replied with a dismissive flick of her hand.

"No, I want to know," Jeff insisted.

"Honestly, it's a little different now that you're not around," Annie said. "I mean, nothing serious has happened, we still see each other. We just don't… see all of us that much anymore. It seems like we don't make an effort to hang out as a group much anymore."

"I'm sorry to hear that," he replied.

"No, it's okay. It's not like it is your fault or anything," Annie said. "Sometimes, I wish we could go back to the way things were before."

"I get that," Jeff said leaning back into his chair as he tossed his fork onto the plate of his mostly devoured stake. "But hey, things change."

"You say that so easily," Annie said with a despondent voice.

"Well, it's just one of those things you have to learn, Annie," Jeff replied. "Trust me, life's easier if you learn to let go sometimes."

Annie gave Jeff a sarcastic smirk.

"What?" Jeff asked, betraying his genuine perplexity.

"You know what," Annie replied with a shortness of patience in her voice.

"No, I don't, what did I do?" Jeff asked.

"Nothing, just forget it," Annie said trying to veer away from an inevitably ugly conversation.

"From my experience, just forget it, usually means, I'm mad as hell," Jeff said sitting back up as his lawyer voice returned to him.

"What's going on with us?" Annie asked bluntly as if to throw off the rhythm of his attack. That's how Jeff worked, if you let him control the pace and direction of a conversation, he would bury you.

"What?" Jeff asked dismayed. "What do you mean? We're… having dinner, like grownups. That's what you wanted right?"

"Don't be condescending," Annie replied.

"How, am I? I'm not being condescending," Jeff said trying to regain his conversational footing.

"Why this fancy restaurant, picking me up from my place, the paying for dinner…." Annie trailed off. "How long are we gonna keep doing this?"

"This is what you wanted!" Jeff replied with renewed zeal. "Right?"

"It's been four months, just hanging out, having drinks, just us…" Annie said ignoring Winger's deflections.

"Annie, we have fun together, we can talk… about anything, that's why I keep asking you out to dinner, I like that we can talk…" Jeff tried to talk to her down.

"We that's great for you, Jeff. It's always great for you, isn't it?" Annie said as her voice became more and more angry. "You know how I feel…"

"Annie, it's not that simple. I really really like what we have," Jeff continued. "I don't want to lose that."

"And what makes you think we would lose that?" Annie asked ferociously.

"I just… I don't…" He stuttered.

"Smooth Jeff Winger, the man of a thousand words, what's wrong?" Annie pressed home. "What's wrong? You can say anything but the truth. If it were up to you, you'd dance around this forever, wouldn't you?"

"Annie…" Jeff hesitated. "It's not like that."

There was a pause between the two and although she knew better, it felt like the whole restaurant was staring at them.

"No, it's not is it…" Annie continued. "I'm not a surrogate girlfriend Jeff."

"No, of course not," Jeff said.

"You can't just go and… fuck your girls," she spat out the words violently. "And use me as your emotional dump."

"That's not what I'm doing, Annie." Jeff said trying to laugh it off. "We're friends. We talk about stuff. Lighten up!"

And there it was. Jeff Winger's patented mixed of condescension and faux-levity. It baffled her that she had at all found that quality, at one point in time, attractive in him. What was she to do now? Play it off as if she were a being a petulant little girl. He'd like that; in fact that's what he was hoping for. It was just another one of his tricks for slipping out of tough conversations.

"You're an asshole, Jeff," she said as she got up.

The drink tangled in her hand, her arm stretched out ready to deliver the final blow. She could've threw it in his face, she could've displayed her displeasure right there in the room in front of everyone, she could've stormed out in a fit of rage. But she thought better of it. A drink in his face would just inflate his ego, getting a rise out of her and making her act crazy was his end goal. It meant that, despite ignoring and belittling all of her feelings, she would have to later apologize to him for her hysterics.

No, not this time.

Perhaps, something in her was changing. Perhaps it had been for a long time and she just hadn't been willing to admit it to herself. Had her childish fantasies started to fall apart? Could she see the crevices that marked its imminent destruction? Did the marble effigy of the heroic Jeff Winger in her mind begun to erode with every encounter she had with reality of its likeness? Could the hero ever truly live up to the myth?

Or perhaps, she was simply growing up.

In either case, she thought better of it and put the drink down, dropped a few bills on the table and simply left.


A single perfectly prepared emerald drink awaited her on the counter of the breakfast bar upon her return. The Appletini that she had spent so many hours trying to perfect, sat there more beautiful than any she had ever managed to concoct. It greeted her as a final conciliatory reward for all of her brave efforts during the day. She gently picked it up by the tips of her fingers as she beamed with delight and took a sip. The sweetness and flavour hit the back of her throat and sizzled a little before it went down.

The apartment was quiet, but it seemed to always be quiet now as there were only two of them left. Most nights, Annie spent working on her assignments or engaged in her own little projects. Abed done what he had always done, watched TV or simulate his famed dreamscapes in the newly reconsecrated Dreamatorium.

This night, she found him in his chair in front of the TV not with a movie playing but a book in his lap; several of them actually. She hadn't noticed until now, but it seemed like, despite his good grades, he never actually work on anything school related. This may have been the first time she had seen Abed… studying.

"What are you working on?" Annie asked as she dropped her purse on the counter.

"Researching, for a movie," Abed replied as he took a brief glance over at her.

It was yet beyond her abilities to detect, although not for long, Abed feared, but he had stolen a mental picture of her. She had always looked especially nice on the nights when she went out with Jeff. She put in such an effort to look more grown up, to look more elegant. He could hear her spending hours in her room, trying on different outfits and clumsily hopping around trying to get her uncomfortable shoes on. Occasionally she would storm out of her room with an explosion of makeup on her face, only to go to the bathroom to wash it off and start again. He wondered if Jeff had noticed. It was within his character to know the effect he had on people; indeed he took pride in it. But did he truly understand how he affected Annie? Did he mean to do it to her? If so, how could he?

She removed the trappings of her fancy façade, kicking off her heels and letting her hair down as she plopped herself down on the chair opposite Abed. Her gentle silence betrayed her stoic poker face. The way she downed the drink confirmed what he had already known. She was near her breaking point. Later tonight she would consider how he would apologize to him and as a result she would stare at her phone with her thumbs ever hovering over the touchscreen keyboard for hours and not get any sleep.

"It's not a good idea," Abed said absent-mindedly without lifting his gaze or his pen from his notebook.

"What?" She asked.

"Don't text him tonight," Abed replied simply and without hesitation.

"How did you—" Annie tried to say.

"Come on, it's not difficult. You came home, posture slumped, took to that Appletini I made you real hard, and you always just drop into the chair if you're in a bad mood…" Abed said finally looking over at her.

"You knew?" Annie asked staring at him with a puzzled expression.

Abed smiled. Because he could do that around her. He scanned the contours of her face. He noted the slightly drooped eyelids that told him of her weariness, and of her overzealous mascara, the hidden cries of her reddened eyes, the wondrous disorder of her hair. He thought to himself, of course I know. How could I not?

But instead he just smiled.