A/N - I'm gonna stop promising to update soon because we all know I'm just blatantly lying to you at this point. I'm the worst. But thank you to anyone still reading this, and reviewing, and waiting for my updates, and pestering me to keep writing (cough-Katya-cough). You guys are the best.
XXX
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jeff sat on his sofa staring at a wall. Where was Annie? And why did she suddenly think watching a movie was gonna help him. Granted she'd done some weird stuff in the last 47 days to get him to feel better, but watching a movie was never really an option. Most of the time she just found new ways to convince him to see a shrink because clearly he was going insane.
A loud knock came from his door, and Annie's voice spoke up. "Jeff, it's me. I got the movie."
He slowly picked himself up from the couch and dragged his feet across his apartment. He was still wearing the bathrobe and sweatpants, but he had the decency to actually put on a shirt now. When he answered the door, Annie was standing there beaming at him like he hadn't had a meltdown in the study room and they were both two perfectly sane people about to watch a movie.
She brushed past him without so much as a hello, and proceeded to pull a DVD and various bags of candy from her backpack.
Jeff frowned. "You brought candy?"
"I didn't know if you'd have any snacks," She said putting the DVD into the player.
Jeff slugged over to the couch, and dropped himself down as she took the bags of candy and sat next to him.
"So, I have a mental breakdown, and your solution is candy and a movie?"
"Are you sure you haven't seen this before?" She asked him, opening a bag of Red Vines.
Jeff surveyed the DVD case. "I have an irrational hatred for Bill Murray." She gave him a puzzled look, nibbling on the end of a red vine. "He looks like my dad," Jeff admitted.
She nodded with understanding, then turned to face the TV, pressing play on the DVD remote. "Well, pay attention," She told him. "This movie could teach you a thing or two."
Jeff shrugged, and sat back on his couch. He hardly believed a movie was the answer to all his problems, but then again death couldn't even answer his problems, so a movie couldn't hurt. The music started playing, Bill Murray's stupid Father-Winger face came on the screen, and Jeff sat back and watched, ignoring the fact that Annie was sitting very close to him, and kept looking at his face every two seconds to see his reaction.
XXX
Phil Connors woke up on February 3rd with an armful of Andie MacDowell. They went out into the snow, the credits started playing, and Jeff turned to look at Annie with a bewildered expression. Annie smirked up at him.
"Oh my God!" Was all Jeff could say. What the hell was his life? He was a movie! His life was literally a movie plot! Abed was gonna pee his pants when he found out about this.
"So, this is what's happening to you, right?" Annie asked. She had a knowing look on her face, like she'd just cracked a code.
"Oh my God!" Jeff repeated. He was Phil Connors. This made absolutely no sense. Yet it made prefect sense. Everything was confusing. Dear god it was like he was watching Lost all over again.
"So I guess now, all you have to do is become a better person and you can wake up tomorrow morning," Annie said. Her face fell when she realized the implications of her statement. "Wow, you're going to be here a long time."
"I.." Jeff began, but it seemed he had completely lost his ability to talk. "I mean, what do I even..."
Annie gave him a sympathetic look. She looked around his messy apartment, and her nose scrunched up a little.
"How do you find anything in here?" She asked.
"It's a recent mess. Y'know, because my life's a freaking movie!" Jeff said loudly.
She nodded, and hopped up from the couch, rooting through her bag for something. Jeff continued to stare into space wondering if maybe Abed really was god, and this was Jeff's punishment for becoming a less interesting character than his friend had hoped. Annie dropped back on the sofa, holding a yellow legal pad and one of her signature purple pens. She turned to face him and half sat on her legs.
"Okay," She began, in her authorative voice. She tucked some of her hair behind her ear, and finally looked up at him with her formidable face. "Let's start with things you need to stop doing; so, what have you done today that's bad?"
Jeff frowned. "What are you doing?"
"I'm helping you break the loop. You need to become a better person, and for some one as morally ambiguous as you, it's hard to know where to start. So let's make a list and work from there."
"Okay," Jeff said. He was still mildly disorientated from the fact that his life mirrored a movie, but he turned to face her properly anyway.
"Okay," Annie grinned. "What have you done today that's bad?"
"Today-today or Thursday-today?"
Annie thought about it for a moment. "Go back to the first day, what did you do then that was bad?"
Jeff frowned. He'd been in this loop for a month and a half. He'd already reached a point where the days all blurred together in his head since pretty much everything was the same. He could hardly remember that first day. Still, Annie was tapping her pen against the paper impatiently so he said the first thing he could remember.
"I pissed you off."
She raised one eyebrow but successfully kept her curiosity at bay. "Okay. And what would be a way for you to avoid doing that?"
Jeff sighed. Not insulting Biff for starters, but he didn't know if he could do that. Also, he probably should stop tricking her into going on dates with him. And he shouldn't tell jerks in bars trying to hit on her that he was her boyfriend. Basically a lot of embarrassingly stupid things that he really didn't want to admit to right now, especially since she was being so awesome and helping him with all of this.
"I also turned down Pierce's invitation to go to his step-son's wedding," Jeff said. It was a cheap trick, and he was pretty sure it wouldn't divert her attention, but she seemed to catch how awkward this was for him, and took the bait.
"Well then, you should probably say yes to that next time he asks."
Jeff rolled his eyes. "I know, but it's a wedding for some one I don't know. With Pierce. I just find it really hard to care."
She gave him a stern look. "Jeff, not caring's what got you into this situation."
"Ugh. I know," Jeff whined. "Can't I just start with something else?"
"This is gonna take forever," Annie muttered with slight annoyance.
"Okay fine, I'll say yes to Pierce! I'll go to Pavel's dumb disaster of a party! I won't sleep with Snape, and I'll tell Abed his movie will do great in the joke of a film festival that is Greendale Film Festival! I'll be nice to Biff, and I'll stop tricking you, and I'll give Chang a ride to the bar, and I'll stop skipping Applied...whatever it is, and I'll help the dean carry his Eminem autobiographies to the library! Never mind that I've done all those things at least once in this stupid loop and it didn't make any difference!"
Annie gave him an unimpressed look. "You can have as many temper tantrums as you want but it isn't gonna help you get out of this," She said, patiently.
"Sorry, but I'm a little tired from the fact that I can't get out of this."
"You can, you just need to do the good deeds!"
"I already did!"
"Well, you need to mean it!"
"I'm sorry, I can't just suddenly care about pointless things! I'm not that sort of person."
Annie slumped her shoulders in frustration. "But Jeff, you already do care! You just pretend you don't because for some reason you think that's cool, but if you just stop for a moment and ignore whatever it is that's making you act like such a jerk this year, maybe you can get out of this!" There was a glimmer of hope in her eyes, and Jeff could see that she really did believe in him. This frightened him a little bit, as well as making him feel like a jerk for disappointing her so much.
"Oh okay, Abed. But just so you know, caring sucks! Caring about you, and the study group, and that stupid mess of a school, it all sucks!"
"Why does it suck?"
"Because, I have no freedom anymore! I care about you, but I can't do anything about it because you said you just wanted to be friends, and you date douche-bags! But the main reason I can't do anything about it is because I care about that stupid study group, and I care what they think, and I care that Shirley will probably shake her head like a disappointed mother, and that Britta will call me a creep, and that Troy will..." He trailed off. "I don't know! But I know that I care, and I know that it sucks! So pretending I don't care works for me!"
Annie looked surprised by this new revelation. She stared at him for a long time. There was a crease in her brow, and she looked like she couldn't decide whether to apologize, cry, or yell at him. She looked down at the blank legal pad, swallowing down whatever thoughts were floating through her head. She let out a long sigh and then finally looked up at him again.
"They don't care you know; that you care about me. Abed's mentioned it to me hundreds of times."
"Annie," Jeff said, because it was all he could say. It was the only word going through his head.
"I said we should be friends because I found out you slept with Britta, and that hurt me."
Jeff felt his chest tighten. He always knew he'd hurt her, (he'd have to be a grade A jackass not to know), but it occurred to him now that he'd never apologized. And he never told her that Britta didn't mean anything. Basically she'd spent this entire year dating douche-bags just so she could forget about him, the biggest douche-bag of them all. Meanwhile here he was acting like an idiot because he was too scared to tell her he actually wanted to date her.
"I suck," Jeff finally said.
"Yeah, you do," Annie nodded.
They fell into a silence, just watching each other. There were too many emotions swimming through both of their heads.
"I do care about you though, as more than just a friend. And I have for a shamefully long time now." She smiled softly at him. "And I'm sorry for being such a tool."
"You should tell me that, after you break the loop," She told him, considering every word carefully.
Jeff sighed. He'd forgotten about the loop. Great, now he was gonna wake up again tomorrow morning after finally having enough courage to admit that he wanted her, and she wasn't going to remember a damn thing. He groaned and buried his face into the back of his sofa. "Mff-fuph-iph," He mumbled into the couch.
"I hate this too, but think of it this way, you and I work all night to figure out what you have to do, and then eventually you'll wake up on a Friday morning and tell me everything."
Jeff sat up again, giving her an affectionate look. "Annie Edison, ever the optimist."
"One of us has to be," She said. She picked up her pen again, and lifted up a knee, resting the legal pad on it so she could write.
"What happens then?"
"When?"
"When I break the loop and pour my heart out to you." He grimaced at how lame that sounded.
Annie pursed her lips, and considered the thought for a moment. "I don't know, you'll have to wait and see."
Jeff slouched a little. He really didn't want to wait, he wanted to kiss her. Now. But she had a point. And he'd have to be really masochistic to put himself through finally getting to kiss her only to have her not remember tomorrow. He straightened up his back and gave her a small smile.
"Okay then, Milady. Where do we start?"
She smiled proudly, and wrote a heading on the top of the legal pad. "Well, we know you've done a lot of bad deeds-" She gave him a chastising look, but her smile was teasing "-so now we just need to figure out what good deeds you have to do." She stopped writing for a moment, and fluttered her eyes to look up at him. "Milord," She finally added with a smile.
Jeff smiled back at her fondly. Thank God for Annie Edison. He'd probably never get out of the loop without her.
XXX
"Wait. So you spent the entire day reading Harry Potter?" Annie asked with a smirk on her face.
After the weird intense-ness from their earlier fight had completely died away, Annie had compiled a list of things for him to do. Jeff had shed the bathrobe, and the two had dug in to the candy she had brought, while Jeff told her about all the crazy stuff he did on his many, many Thursdays. The task of figuring out good deeds had long since been forgotten, and the two had settled with just hanging out and laughing at Jeff's misfortune, while watching whatever crap was on TV.
It was nice. In fact, it was the nicest Jeff had felt in a very, very long time. He knew nothing he did in this day ever really affected him, but he could almost feel the difference from finally getting to smile for once.
"Yeah, that was one of my more productive days," Jeff shrugged. He flicked past the usual episode of Grey's Anatomy, causing Annie to jump.
"Ooh, put it back. I wanna watch that!"
"Annie, I could literally quote the entire episode to you. We're watching something else," He said, landing on some random music channel showing Lady Gaga's latest video. He turned the volume down and turned back to Annie, who was eating a handful of M&M's.
"You's so lady-like," He teased.
She grinned and threw one at him. "So what else did you do?"
"Um...I painted my apartment a couple of...bold colours, but I didn't really like any of them."
She giggled. "What colours?"
"The first time it was orange mostly. It's oddly cheap."
She scrunched her face up. "That's 'cos it's a gross colour for an apartment."
"You can't talk. Your apartment's purple," He said, taking a few M&M's for himself.
"Purple is the best colour," She said, waving her purple pen in front of his face.
"Oh sure, if you're a unicorn."
She feigned insult and threw a handful of Skittles at him.
"Okay, what else?"
"I've already told you everything," Jeff said.
"No, you said you've been stuck for 47 days. You've only told me about 20 or so."
Jeff looked to the TV and started unscrewing an oreo. "Well, yeah, but that's 'cos I spent all the other days pretty much killing myself." He avoided looking at her. They had been having light banter until now, and he was finally enjoying himself. He didn't want to talk about all the sad depressing crap he put himself through to get out. It was just awkward.
They sat in silence. Jeff was scraping the white part of the oreo with his teeth, pretending to watch as a bunch of models danced around Kanye. He pretended he couldn't see Annie watching him intently, but her eyes burned into him. He eventually gave in, and looked at her from the corner of his eye, only turning his head slightly. She had a sympathetic expression, which he sort of hated. It was the sort of look people used to give him after his parent's divorce, or whenever some girl dumped him. That look of pity that he couldn't do anything about, it made him feel helpless.
"I also ate my weight in cupcakes," He said, hoping it would drive the conversation back to fun, not heart-wrenching topics.
"Jeff," She said, reaching out and placing a hand on his shoulder.
He turned to look at her. "It's not..." He wanted to say a big deal but the words couldn't seem to find their way to his lips.
"This really sucked for you, huh?"
Jeff shrugged. "It's obviously something I had to go through. Phil Connors went through the same thing, it's supposed to happen so I can learn to be good or whatever," He said waving a hand to the TV where Nicki Minaj was doing her thing. He turned to face Annie, who was still giving him that damn look. "Annie, it really isn't..."
"I know," She assured him. "It's just not a nice thought."
He gave her the tiniest hints of a smile, and looked down at her fingers resting on his shoulder. "I'm good now." With you, went unsaid.
She smiled too, and slid her hand down his arm. "So, cupcakes?"
Jeff grinned. "The best cupcakes. You were there, actually."
"Was I?"
"Yeah. We talked about debate. It got awkward."
She smiled. "Debate?"
"Debate," was all he said. And from the way she was looking at him, it was pretty much all he needed to say. He felt a pull in his chest when he thought about tomorrow. Tomorrow was going to suck. He'd just had this great, amazing day full of great, amazing memories with Annie Edison, and she wouldn't know a thing. He didn't want it to end, and he most certainly didn't want her to forget. He had her, he finally, undoubtedly, absolutely had her, and tomorrow she would be gone again, and who knows for how long. It took Phil Connors years, didn't it? What about Jeff? He didn't want to spend years waiting for the day he could finally tell her again about what he felt for her.
"What if it doesn't work?" He asked. The genuine fear of being stuck was taking over him.
"What?"
"Doing the good deeds thing. What if I'm stuck here, in this day, forever?"
A sad expression took over he face, but she blinked it away quickly. "You won't be."
"But what if I am? I mean, it took a mental breakdown for you to finally understand what was going on. I can't have a mental breakdown every day, hoping that you'll come hang out with me."
Annie looked at the legal pad, full of her purple scribbles. "Just stick to the good deeds and you'll get out of it," She said.
"Annie," He half-whined. "We don't know that. And not that hanging out with you like this for eternity wouldn't be awesome, because it totally would-" She blushed, self-consciously. "-but, I sort of want..."
"More?" She finished for him.
He gave her a confirming nod. "I just hate the thought of going through this entire day over and over again and not ending it with you." He made a face after that. "God, that sounded-" But by the time the word cheesy reached his lips, Annie had gotten there first.
It took Jeff less than a second to comprehend what was going on, and start kissing her back. This was it. This was the moment he'd been imagining, and waiting for, and dreaming about for practically a year, and it definitely lived up to the hype. Her hands slid up his arms and twisted around his neck. Every second she seemed to get closer and closer to him. She tasted like perfection, literal, honest-to-God perfection. Jeff brought his hands up, tangling his fingers in her soft hair. She had somehow dragged herself over from her side of the couch to basically sitting on his lap. They were going at it like hormonal teenagers, not that Jeff had any complaints.
Her tongue slipped into his mouth , and okay...that was perfection. His hands went from her hair to the sides of her face. Her skin was soft, and smooth, and warm; and she tasted so wonderfully sweet. So Annie. How he'd managed to keep himself from doing this long ago, he had no idea, because clearly, this was the greatest thing that could ever happen to him.
Almost greatest. She wouldn't remember it tomorrow. Damn it.
"Mhph! Hm! Wait," He said, reluctantly pulling away from her. The fact that she was on his lap meant that she was perfectly in his eye-line now, which didn't help. Her big eyes looked so confused, and sad, worried all at once, and Jeff just felt like an overall ass.
"You're not gonna remember this tomorrow," He said. She sighed with disappointment, knowing he was right. "I want you to remember this tomorrow," He quietly added.
She nodded. "Me too," She practically whispered back. Her arms slid down from around his neck, and her hands rested on his chest, which she was staring at with sadness. She chuckled lightly, but it was bitter. "This day sucks."
Jeff wrapped his arms around her, and brought her head down to his chest. "Oh, trust me, I know," He mumbled into her hair. She slid off him a bit, so that now only her legs were on his lap, and they stayed like that for a while, listening to the faint sounds of Bruno Mars singing about how he didn't feel like doing anything.
XXX
Jeff opened his eyes to loud obnoxious noises coming from his TV. He and Annie must have dozed off through the night. It was pretty late, and in a couple of hours he was going to be waking up alone in his bed as he did every Thursday.
They were both cuddled up on the couch. Annie had her head resting on his chest, and had stretched her legs out behind her, tangling them through his.
"Annie?" Jeff said quietly, nudging her a little, but she was fast asleep. Her breathing was slow, and she looked peaceful and quiet. Jeff decided to just leave her there. It was late, and he wasn't gonna let her drive through her neighbourhood at this hour. Besides, she'd be back in her bed by morning. And she was so warm. He figured it wouldn't hurt to let her sleep here a couple more hours.
He fished around the coffee table covered in candy-wrappers until he finally found the remote for the TV. He switched it off, and watched Annie silently, as she slept. Soon he felt his eyelids become heavy, and drifted off into a nice sleep again.
XXX
Day Forty Eight
Jeff woke up in his bed, wrapped in his covers, and alone. He sighed to himself, and lay there staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, letting the fact that this day was going to hurt like hell sink in for a bit. Eventually he pulled himself together, and got up to get ready for Greendale for the first time in weeks.
He decided it was about time to drop the wallowing-in-self-pity fashion statement and go back to the usual dress-shirts and jeans. He styled his hair, and briefly wondered how the hell he'd fallen so low that he stopped caring what it looked like for a while. Blasphemy!
When he walked out of his room, his coffee table was completely clean, and clear of candy wrappers. There was no legal pad, no Annie, no trace that anything had happened there the night before. Because it hadn't. Jeff ignored the feeling of being punched in the stomach that he got, and went to his car. He had good deeds to do, and a loop to break out of, so he could finally spend the night with Annie, and wake up knowing she'd still be there.
XXX
"Who are you talking about?"
"Professor Snape, the substitute for our pottery class" Abed said.
"Snape?" Annie asked. As per usual no one took the Harry Potter bait.
"Yeah," Jeff said. "Abed thinks I should date her." He ignored Shirley and Pierce's reactions to this news and focused on Annie, who nodded and looked to her unopened books without a word. "I won't though," He added. Annie looked up again, catching his eye. He tried to swallow down the sucky feeling he kept getting by the fact that everything from the night before hadn't actually happened.
Pierce opened his mouth for the usual retort.
"Yes, it's because I'm gay," Jeff said, before Pierce could throw his insult out in the open. Pierce seemed disorientated for a moment, while Troy and Britta strolled in.
"How was dance class?" Annie asked them. And Britta proceeded to complain about Troy's mix-up as always, as the two took their seats. Jeff sat silently waiting for his cue to begin good deed-ing. He watched Annie from the corner of his eye, simply because he just couldn't not watch her at this point. And yeah, he was basically torturing himself, but he didn't really regret it.
"That's not the important news" Pierce said, cutting through Jeff's daze. "The important part is that he said I could bring anyone I want, and I've chosen to bring one of you. So which of you lucky people want to come to my stepson's wedding with me?"
Shirley opened her mouth to excuse herself from it, but Jeff interrupted her.
"I'll go."
They all looked at him with confused expressions. Maybe he should have waited till the hot-seat was on him, then it would be more Winger of him to accept the invitation.
"Well, I don't know, Winger. You barely gave everyone else a chance to accept," Pierce started.
"You guys are all busy, right?" Jeff asked, the group. They all seemed to get the idea that he was doing this for their sake, and began nodding and giving him thankful looks. Jeff simply shrugged. "See? They're busy, I'll go."
"Interesting," Abed noted.
"What's interesting, Abed?" Shirley asked. Jeff rolled his eyes. Here we go.
"Jeff's character has been slowly going back to his usual jerk ways since the start of the year. Now he's suddenly being nice. It's like he's had character growth but we missed it," Abed's eyes widened. "Do you have a secret girlfriend? You're usually a better person when your actions are affected by a woman." His eyes flickered to Annie briefly, but were gone just as fast.
The groups all snapped their heads to stare at Jeff, giving him looks of varying curiostiy.
"No, Abed, I don't have a secret girlfriend. Why, do you?"
Abed leaned back in his chair and eyed him suspiciously, but didn't answer.
"Okay," Britta began. "As interesting as Jeff's 'character development'-" She did air-quotes, "-is, I think what we really need to talk about is the fact that Starburns reshaped his sideburns again."
"Why would we need to take about that?" Troy asked, grossed out by the topic of conversation.
"Because, he obviously looked better as Hairyburns."
"I don't know.." Shirley said. The group's usual epic debate about Starburns vs Hairyburns started again, and Jeff went back to running through the list he and Annie had made the night before in his head. He still had a lot of stuff he needed to do for the people of Greendale. Not to mention Annie was probably right about the meaning it thing, and he really didn't have the energy to care. But she had kissed him last night, and it was amazing. And really if caring about Greendale was all it took, than Jeff didn't really mind.
He looked to her as Abed listed out the pros and cons of Hairyburns. She caught his eye, and he gave her a small smile. She probably didn't understand it, but that was okay. She would soon. Jeff was gonna make sure of it.
