NOTES: Chapter 4, which I definite wrote before watching this week's episode. Because I am DEDICATED to my schedule, you guys. It's all for you! Well, also for me. Actually, it's mostly for me. But you're my motivators! =) I hope you enjoy this one. Feedback is always welcome, and thanks for reading.
Previously, on The Knots In Our Laces: The Dean buys a new stapler and glues it to his desk; Shirley gets into a pricing dispute with Pierce; Abed de-friends Toby on the DARSIT Forever Forum; Jeff has a minor panic attack and starts avoiding Annie; Ian Duncan checks into rehab; and Britta stubs her toe on the balcony and has to get four stitches.
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Tongue Tied
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As she tugs the metal gate to the new study room open, Annie pauses to absorb the picture before her: bright walls, a polished desk, and chairs that will stay nailed together for at least another six months. The space is cramped, but it holds new temptation and even a smidgen of mystery in its breadth. Some day a group of strangers may stumble down to lowest basement of Greendale, duck past old lockers and used lawn equipment, and find in this room their new family.
"We made this," she says to the waiting study room. Then she smiles, and picks up the sign-in sheet. Annie Edison: two hours, twice a week. She fills in the next three weeks, till the end of this month's list, and is pleased to see a smattering of other student names on the calendar. Maybe they haven't been completely forgiven by their classmates, but the reparations have been accepted and healing can begin. A tiny frown twitches at the corner of Annie's mouth when she sees Todd's name, but she swallows the irritation and chooses to smile instead.
Satisfied the room is hers for the near future (if Todd really wants to come to Greendale on Saturdays, that's on him), Annie settles her purse and backpack into a pile to her left and pulls out two notebooks. After that come her text books; her three best pens in purple, black, and red; her portable audio recorder; and lastly, her cell phone. Pursing her lips, she sets the timer on her phone and then flips her notebook open to a fresh page.
Blue lines float over white paper, and Annie begins her new routine.
This new study room, she decides later, is her favorite secret since the time she pranked Troy's ice cream without him noticing. Of course, it's not a secret secret, not when it was a gift from the study group to the protesters, but the whole point was for everyone else to use it so the Greendale Seven could have their beloved room back. Annie can make any number of rationalizations, but in her heart she knows that even signing the clipboard is tantamount to an affair. It gives her a tiny thrill when she runs her fingers over a strange table and scoots forward on an unfamiliar chair.
Here, no one will remind her that she's spent her last three years majoring health administration when she could have taken forensics. If she puts her head in her arms to take a nap, a roommate won't poke her awake to ask for a mathematical justification of the DARSIT probability drive. None of her friends will say—
"Leave one of your pens down here?"
Annie starts at the sound of his voice, which makes her elbow slip and her wrist slam painfully on the table surface. She twists to see Jeff step past the metal gate, slide behind her chair, and make his way to what would traditionally be her side of the table. Since Annie's sitting at the head, in Jeff's typical seat, she assumes this is his attempt to be cute. Slinging his book bag off his shoulder, Jeff winks. He starts to rock back on the feet of the chair, then thinks better of it and settles, tossing her a smile. "So here sits Miss Edison, studying without us. What will your friends say? Oh, the scandal."
"Jeff..." She wants the tone to be a warning, but it comes out a squeak. He's wearing his red and blue plaid shirt, the same one that sent Dean Pelton into a fit on the floor. No sunglasses, but Annie wouldn't be surprised if he's got them stashed nearby. Jeff had been wearing green in their morning history class, so obviously the habit of a midday wardrobe change is back with a vengeance. He tilts his head at the sound of his name, almost daring.
Annie turns to glance down the hall where he'd appeared, then back at the table's surface. From the corner of her eye, she can see a frown swim across Jeff's face only to sink into charm almost as quick. She says, "I've been coming here for a while, okay? It's nicer now. Kind of like having my own space."
"We have the study room, and on paper this time." His eyebrows go up halfway: a mix of classic Winger disbelief and normal Jeff curiosity. "You don't have to hide down here."
Annie plucks the cap from the bottom of her black pen and closes it over the tip. Surreptitiously, like it's any old Don't-Look-At-Me-I'm-Just-Shuffling, she gathers her homework. "That's for the group, and besides, there's too much history there. Sometimes I can't think when I'm alone. This is my compromise: I keep the study room for friend business, and do the rest of my homework here. Or, you know, The Java Cup."
Rather than clarifying her perspective to Jeff, her explanation sets off something in him. He slouches deeper and crosses his arms until he looks like a massive human origami on the brink of unfolding. He cracks, "Too much history, huh?"
That's when a wave of self-reflection hits Annie Edison, college senior: she really cannot deal with one minute more of Jeff's moodiness and insecurity. For the last month he's been a veritable ping pong: one day he's buying her an appletini and joking about chocolate cake guilt, the next day he acts as if she's contracted something virulent and maneuvers every interaction so that he doesn't stand within three feet of her. He is so subtle that Annie might not even have noticed except that standing together was their thing, and it strikes her like a blow to the shins when she looks around the lunch line and he's all the way over next to Troy, with Shirley and Britta as his oblivious guard dogs.
That was last Thursday, and he hasn't walked down the hall beside her since. They chat and laugh in group the same as always—sometimes she forgets precisely how smooth Jeff can be at maneuvering, because she never knew him in the life where slithering-out of stuff was how he made a paycheck—but it's all public, and it's all distant. He hasn't even texted her in five days, except once to ask if she was awake and would she bring her notes to group tomorrow. When she'd confirmed she would, and asked if he wanted to meet ten minutes early to discuss them, Jeff texted back with 'ok' and two pumpkins, then never followed up. Annie knows too that shortly after Pierce's adventure in the safe room (and her slightly drunken party conversation) Abed tried unsuccessfully to corner Britta for a complete interrogation on their leader's state of mind. Jeff goes up, Jeff goes down, and the group has been waiting for the bomb to drop.
In the space of a few nanoseconds after Jeff asks her about their history, it crosses her mind that maybe this is an excuse, and he's finally ready to talk about whats been bothering him since Halloween. Then he opens his mouth again, and Annie's sympathy dries up faster than bubblegum on blacktop.
"Is this a subtle jab about me ditching you at the convention? Or the fact that I hung out with Britta in Pierce's haunted glamour mansion? Because that time, you walked out on me."
For a moment Annie can only stare, her mouth fallen open. Realizing she's done an impression of a fish for nearly four seconds, Annie gathers her brain back together and says, "No, it's not about you abandoning me at the Inspecticon. You already bought me a drink to make up for that, remember? And you can confide in Britta without me getting upset, Jeff. The reason I'm using this spot has nothing to do with you."
Unsatisfied, Jeff swings his arms open, a showman on the stage. "Alright then Minerva, why don't you share with the class?" he demands, and Annie can't understand why he's come all the way down here just to be a jerk. Abruptly, her chair feels too small and too low under his gaze. So she stands, shoves her things roughly into her backpack, and yanks the large zipper so hard it jams.
"It's all the drama we carry around, okay?" She pulls on the cheaply manufactured plastic until it closes up with a ripping noise. Tugging on her backpack and avoiding eye contact, Annie continues.
"I love our room, you know I'd get up insanely early to fight for it! But sometimes it's all a bit much, and I need time alone. Between our apparently villainous escapades whenever I come to school and Abed versus Troy-and-Britta whenever I go home, it's a parade of noise that never stops. Then add in you and all your weirdness this week..."
Her eyes jump up from the table in time to see Jeff flinch as if she'd physically attacked him. "I'm not being weird," he snaps. "You're the one afraid to hang out in the study room."
Rolling her eyes, Annie says, "Yes, Jeff, you're right. As usual. Maybe I don't think our space is conducive to intense, focused education. So I come down here." She points at the hanging clip-board on the rack. "Twice a week, like clockwork. I even sign in so they don't accuse me of being a Nazi again. A Nazi, Jeff! If I want to be on my own, where I won't get constantly interrupted, I don't see why you're acting all sensitive about it. It's just a study room!"
The moment bends and stretches, with Annie breathing a little too fast and her friend staring at her like she's been speaking in tongues. She licks her lips and musters herself for the imminent argument, until she notices the clock above Jeff's shoulder. She gasps, and practically feels all her blood leave her extremities to rush inward to her chest. Then Jeff stands up as well, looming so high that he blocks the wall clock. His voice drops to a tone Annie almost never hears: low and concerned.
"What is it?"
Muttering under breath about the time, Annie digs into her bag, finds her cell phone, flips it on, and squeaks at the read-out.
"What's wrong?"
"It's the alarm widget," she moans. "It's always failing because my phone is a million years old, and now for today's special bonus I'm late for my quiz! I'm sorry, Jeff, I've got to go. Tell the group if you want, I don't care."
"Annie," he calls, but she's already out the gate, past the lockers, and on her way to class.
Over the the next forty-eight hours, the space between Annie and Jeff balloons into a mile wide trench, then without warning snaps back to normal again. The day after he picked a fight with her in the Greendale basement, Jeff stands even further away during group activities, and spends so much time texting over his phone that Annie begins to wonder if he has neck problems when he sleeps at night.
One day bleeds into another, however, and Jeff sits down beside her at lunch as if they're the best buddies since Troy & Abed In The Afternoon. Annie's never felt like Jeff's -buddy- buddy before (he always has Shirley and Britta for that), and his wise-cracking geniality is a little bizarre after the antisocial statue of the prior day. But one thing is incredibly familiar and equally welcome: he's paying attention to her again. He starts texting her discreetly in their History class, and when they walk to the study room his shoulder brushes hers in a way Annie hadn't realized she was missing. It feels, she decides, like this is once more the Jeff Winger she knows and wants to be friends with. This is the Jeff who won six red balls from The Hunger Deans. When she watches him tuck his phone into his jean pocket with a smirk, what she really sees is the man who solved a yamicide with her and sang in the Glee Christmas against his better judgment.
"Later," he waves after the group disperses, and when Annie turns in the direction of the Greendale basement, Jeff lets her go without a blink of discontent. Exhaling, Annie makes a bee line down to the other study room. It's empty when she arrives, with the lights turned off to save on Greendale's electric bill, so at first she doesn't notice anything out of place. She settles her backpack on a chair, leans over to the wall, and flicks on the fluorescent overheads.
On the table, in the spot where a name tag at a wedding might sit, is a palm-sized white box tied with a yellow ribbon. Annie picks up the box, turns it over in her hands, then peels off the ribbon. It falls away easily, leaving tiny specks of gold glitter on her fingertips. Inside the box is a gift and a post-it note.
SORRY
—says the post-it, and follows the apology with a crude doodle of a snowman, a party balloon, and a woman's shoe.
Annie bites her bottom lip at the pastel square of paper, and carefully presses it to the inside of her History notebook. Then she takes up her new egg timer, twists the shiny knob until it stops at one hour, and settles down for a good lesson.
