Author's Note: When I threw together a Miss Jenn style random list of events to outline her oh-so-mysterious story of how she got together with Mr. Mazzara, I wasn't actually expecting to write anything long form.
And yet… here we are. My plot brain just couldn't help it haha.
This is going to be fun and wacky and is really not meant to be taken seriously. Granted, at the end of the first story in this unnecessary little series, Miss Jenn slapped Chad Danforth so like I think you guys have been preconditioned XD
"All right, we've got about…" Mike Bowen squinted at the phone held up on a little clip attached to his vent. "four and a half hours to go."
Miss Jenn, who'd been staring off into space, blinked herself out of a strange fantasy/mental fanfiction about what High School Musical 4 should really be about: the various OG characters off in the real work world struggling to achieve the dreams that had seemed so clear in college, all brought together to do one last show to help raise money for Miss Darbus' cancer treatment. Tragic, of course. But heartwarming, touching. Not like any of this soccer nonsense.
"Wow, only four and a half hours!" she chirped, trying not to notice the pinch in her lower back. "Perhaps we could turn on some music?"
"Oh, sure, go right ahead." Mike turned his head and smiled at her, all soft in the eyes.
Miss Jenn turned up the corners of her mouth in response, but her heart wasn't in it. She'd agreed to go on a week-long Caribbean cruise with Mike in a very… spur of the moment attitude. Sure, he was handsome and charming, they had fun together, he could pull out a swoony line every so often that kept her more romantic side intrigued.
But this car ride had been… strange. Miss Jenn was a chatterbox, she knew that quite well. But for some bizarre, inexplicable reason, she couldn't think of a single thing to say. Every time she tried to start a conversation, the words felt stiff and strange in her mouth. Her topics were too boring, or too interrogative, or too random, and she began to overthink her next words so much that she'd just stopped speaking all together, and since Mike was definitely not a car talker, everything had just gone silent.
Miss Jenn hated silence. There were approximately two people in the world she could be comfortably silent with: her father, and-
Don't think about him, Miss Jenn chided herself. Not here. Not right now.
Miss Jenn reached for Mike's phone, which was already connected to the aux cord, and pulled it carefully out of the clamp. "Don't mind if I do…" she muttered to herself, doing a quick search on Spotify for her favorite Disney singalong playlist. She pressed shuffled and tucked the phone back in its spot.
The first song that popped up was "Wouldn't Change a Thing" from Camp Rock 2. Miss Jenn beamed and was about to break into song when Mike started laughing. "Good one," he chuckled, taking his eyes briefly off the road to shake his head fondly at her.
"Uh-" Miss Jenn blinked a few times, her smile freezing. "…What?"
"The music's a joke, right?" Mike confirmed, his brow furrowing a little as he realized his gut instinct may have been wrong. "You don't actually listen to this stuff in your spare time."
"Oh!" Miss Jenn shoved a laugh out of her throat and reclaimed the phone. "Oh, of course not. Absolutely not. Let me just-"
Her fingers spazzed slightly as she desperately tried to think of any other artist or playlist or album or soundtrack that wasn't Disney or Broadway.
She landed on Abba. Abba was a crowd pleaser, right?
As "Lay All Your Love on Me" came on at a reasonable decibel through the car speakers, Miss Jenn settled back in her seat and her metaphorical stomach sank low in her midsection.
"Mind if I stop for gas?" Mike asked after another twenty minutes of painful silence. "We're getting a little low."
"Of course not, go right ahead," Miss Jenn murmured distractedly.
Mike took the nearest exit and drove through lines of ugly off-highway strip malls until he came to a gas station that he deemed cheap enough.
"I'm just gonna get out and stretch my legs," Miss Jenn said as she unbuckled and got out of the car. "Can I grab you a snack? Sun chips, some cookies, those little… square peanut butter cracker things?"
"An apple would be great," Mike told her. "Thanks, Jennifer."
"Okay," Miss Jenn sighed, and turned towards the Sinclair convenience store.
As she wandered the aisles of cheap, high-sodium goods, listless, her phone started buzzing. Miss Jenn rooted around in her purse for the device, frown steadily deepening when she still couldn't find it after the third ring. Then—ah! It had slipped into a side pocket—she dragged her phone out. She winced at the fact that her phone was at only 5 percent; maybe she could go on aux instead of Mike for the remainder of the drive. But she forgot all about that the moment she saw the caller ID.
Benjamin Mazzara.
Benjamin Mazzara was calling her.
On instinct, Miss Jenn made to pick up the call. But right before her finger made impact with the phone screen, she paused.
As her phone buzzed a fourth time, she wondered by Mr. Mazzara would be calling her in the middle of the summer.
As her phone buzzed a fifth time, she wondered exactly why the act of picking up was giving her opening-night level nerves.
As her phone buzzed the sixth time, she decided she didn't care all that much and to answer the phone anyway.
And then the call dropped.
"Oh," Miss Jenn said, disappointed. She stared at her phone for a moment, trying to figure out what to do. She could call him back, she supposed, claim that she hadn't been able to get her phone out of her purse in time.
But Mike was just outside, filling up the car to take them to a Caribbean cruise. Maybe now wasn't the best time to start reengaging with Mr. Mazzara and… all that that included.
And yet, when a voicemail pinged into her box, Miss Jenn almost dropped her phone in her haste to open it and listen.
Mr. Mazzara cleared his throat, and for a moment there was silence. Then: "Hello, Jennifer. This is Benjamin Mazzara. I was just calling to let you know that I have officially accepted the proffered position at Caltech in California… but that I am accepted it as an adjunct professor. Hence… I will be in California for a year and then… I'll be back."
Another throat clearing.
"I fully realize this probably means nothing to you. If I recall correctly, you should be floating somewhere in the Caribbean with Michael Bowen. That being said, I really wanted you to know. And I wanted you to know that, despite the fact that I've decided to leave… nothing has changed, Jennifer. Nothing has changed, particularly- ahem- particularly how I feel about you. I wish you well, and…well, don't forget your SPF 40."
The voicemail ended.
Miss Jenn stood stock-still in the Sinclair convenience store, her already-wide eyes blinking owlishly at nothing at all.
Then she stuffed her phone in her pocket and strode—powerfully, purposefully, like a woman who knew who she was and what she wanted (or perhaps… what she was and who she wanted?)—out of the store.
Mike was just putting the nozzle back into the station. He smiled quizzically at her over the top of the car. "No luck on snacks?"
"I have something I need to say!" Miss Jenn announced, stopping a few feet away from the vehicle.
Mike came around the side of the car, the ratio of quizzical to smile growing. "Uh…"
"Mike, you are a wonderful man," Miss Jenn declared. "A truly, deeply, wonderful man."
The smile was completely gone now and Mike let his head fall back. "Jenn, please don't-"
She pushed through the guilt. In the long run, she really would be doing him a favor. "Mike," she began again. "Mike. I don't think we're meant to be together."
"Is this because I wanted an apple for a snack?" he asked pitifully, looking at her with such a heartbroken expression that Miss Jenn almost went back against all of her intuition. This man really liked her.
And that was one more reason he deserved someone else. Someone who really liked him.
"It has nothing to do with the apple," she told him gently. "And everything to do with… well, not one thing, actually. Just a whole mess of things. Personalities and- and dreams and… neither of us have done anything wrong. We're just like… two beautiful puzzle pieces that, in reality, were meant to be on opposite sides of the puzzle."
She sighed listlessly. "I'm so sorry to tell you this now, Mike. You deserve so much more."
Mike's mouth twisted and he shook his head. "No. No, don't drag yourself down to make me feel better. It's…" He barked a humorless laugh. "I was going to say it's all right, but it's not. But… it's also not your fault. If this isn't working for you, there's nothing I can really-"
He shook his head again and gazed at the sky. "So. What's the plan? Do you want me to drive you back to Salt Lake?"
Dread and horror filled Miss Jenn at the thought of being stuck in a car with her now ex-boyfriend for an interminable amount of hours. "No, no, I'll just call a friend," she excused herself. "There's no need for me to stop you from going on the cruise on top of everything else."
"I'm not going on a cruise by myself, Jenn," Mike said with a strained chuckle. "I'm not that pathetic."
"You're not-" Miss Jenn began, but the dumped man was already walking around the side of the car and getting in the driver's seat. Miss Jenn went to the trunk and dragged out her suitcase, getting the message.
He did, however, roll down his window right before he left. "It was really great, Jennifer," he told her mournfully. "The time we spent together was really great and I'm never going to forget it. I wish you the best."
"You too," Miss Jenn said with a sad smile.
She watched him drive away, sighing deeply. How was she going to get home, really? Her "friends" were rather few and far between. Unless you counted people under the age of 18, of course. Then she had plenty of friends.
Miss Jenn shook her head. She wasn't going to call her theater students to come pick her up in a random town nearly three hours away from Salt Lake. Really, she hated to ask anyone to come so far out of their way.
But there was someone, she knew, who would. Someone who would make the drive and never once complain about it. Someone she really, really needed to talk to.
Miss Jenn pulled out her phone and glared at it. It had dipped to three percent and she cursed mentally, forced to hurry her debating along just in case her phone died before she had the chance to call anyone at all.
Mr. Mazzara's number rang once, twice, and then he picked up.
"Jennifer! I thought for sure you'd be… sunning yourself somewhere in the great blue ocean."
"Not quite," Miss Jenn admitted with a slightly strained laugh. "Um… hi, by the way."
"Hello."
"I have… a stupid big favor to ask you," she went on, speaking quickly before she lost her nerve. "I, well… I just broke up with Mike. And now I'm stuck in Wells, Nevada, of all places."
"He just left you there?" Mazzara demanded incredulously.
"No!" Miss Jenn cried. "No, no, I told him to go. But… now I do kind of need a way to get home, and…"
"And you want me to come pick you up."
Miss Jenn let out a breath, realizing how cruel that was. "Yes?"
"I'm getting my oil changed," Mr. Mazzara replied, "as we speak. But-"
Miss Jenn wilted. If he was using an excuse as desperate as an oil change to avoid coming to get her-? "Absolutely," she agreed. "Understood. I'm sure they have Ubers around here, right? No worries at all, absolutely fine."
"Jennifer-"
Abruptly, the call cut out. Miss Jenn blinked in surprised, tapping at her phone screen.
It was dead. Her phone was dead.
Miss Jenn let out a groan. No Uber for her, it seemed. No, what she needed was a place to stay—a cheap place, preferably. Teacher budgets really weren't all that much to brag about.
After speaking to the man in Sinclair, Miss Jenn set off down the sidewalk, dragging her suitcase behind her. He'd told her that the cheapest motel nearby was Super 8, which sounded just as sketchy as you'd expect from a place only charging fifty-five dollars a night.
The motel, conveniently, was right next door, and Miss Jenn easily procured a room from the receptionist, a very old woman who smelled uncomfortably like pickles. The room was actually decently sized, but Miss Jenn realized immediately that by paying so little she had sacrificed one very important factor: cleanliness. The paint was sagging off the walls, the mirror was spotted and cloudy, there was strange white hair all over the rug, and the bathroom-
She didn't want to talk about the bathroom.
At the very least, there was an outlet. Miss Jenn changed into a more comfortable outfit and shoes and plugged in her phone, wandering around the dingy space while she waited for it to charge. Regardless of the grossness, she'd stay the night; she'd paid for it already, after all. That being said, she would be leaving a very poor review.
The emotional rollercoaster of the day was beginning to set in, and Miss Jenn eyed the bed with some trepidation. "Well…" she murmured to herself. "I'll have to touch something in this room at some point."
She brushed her teeth and took a lengthy shower (the water came out clear, thank God), then eased off her shower shoes, wrinkling her nose as the bottoms of her feet touched the hairy carpet.
Then she threw back the bedclothes and screamed.
Bed bugs.
Her sheet was covered in bed bugs.
"Nope, nope, nope!" Miss Jenn stuffed her shoes back on her feet, grabbed her key card, and ran out of the door, not even bothering to take her purse with her. She had to get out of this room and out of this building.
She'd take a walk. She'd take a very long walk. Maybe she'd just walk all the way back to Salt Lake and come back for her things later.
With the eyesore beige motel at her back, Miss Jenn set off down the dusty road, her eyes on the mountains. Everything was so barren around here. Just flat lot after flat lot, with no evidence of life but 18-wheelers. Dead grass stretched in either direction, absolutely endless.
Miss Jenn walked.
And walked.
And walked.
She honestly wasn't sure where she was going, and she had no way to get back. But her brain was a chaotic dust storm and with no one to talk to she just needed to move.
And then an owl hooted.
Miss Jenn raised her head in surprise, not having registered how dark it was becoming. She hadn't known there were owls around here. Didn't they live in trees? There certainly wasn't much of that in the general vicinity.
Another hoot, chilling and majestic. Miss Jenn squinted around and her eyes fell on the bird itself, resting on top of a street lamp.
"Hello!" Miss Jenn called, waving vigorously. "You may be wondering why I'm so excited to see you, well! You are the first other living creature I've spotted in hours, and I just really need someone to talk to so-"
The owl took off.
"No, no, wait-" Miss Jenn groaned and began to run after it, tracking its progress straight across a field. The owl kept hooting, its wingspan a dark blur across the dusk blue of the sky.
Miss Jenn stepped into a hole and tripped. Her shoe popped off and she hit the ground, landing on the scratchy grass with a none-too-graceful thud. She flopped over on her back and gazed up at the sky, starting to giggle hysterically.
What was she doing? She was wandering around a dead town in Nevada without even a phone. At this point she was probably lost.
She could die out here, she mused with another crazed giggle. She could die out here in this field, slowly starving to nothingness.
With a groan, Miss Jenn got to her feet again and stuffed her shoe back on. The owl was long gone, and now she really needed to figure out how to get back to her hotel. Maybe she could sleep on the carpet? Or the chair?
As she made her way through the field and towards the road, headlights slashed across her path. Miss Jenn squinted, surprised to see another person in an area so seemingly bereft.
And then her surprise turned to suspicion as the car appeared to slow down. And then it turned to alarm as the car definitely slowed down and forget starvation she was about to get serial killed-
She began running, tripping over her flip-flops and the cracks in the road in her haste to get away from someone who was most definitely a serial killer.
"Jenn- Jennifer!"
Miss Jenn tripped again and her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. At first, she'd thought the voice was Mike's, but after a moment's contemplation she concluded it didn't sound like him at all.
That being said… the voice was still very familiar.
"Jennifer!" Mr. Benjamin Mazzara shouted.
Miss Jenn stopped running, turned, and started running again—this time towards him. At the sight of her change in direction Mr. Mazzara unloaded himself the rest of the way from his still idling car, face creased in a perplexity that Jenn definitely didn't blame him for.
She was sure the surprise on his face only increased a moment later, but she couldn't see because she was too busy throwing her arms around him. "I am so glad to see you," Miss Jenn practically wailed, wilting into him. She was feeling rather faint, to be completely honest, though she wasn't sure if it was the shock of Mr. Mazzara's surprise appearance, or the fact that she'd just walked for a good two hours, or that she had had little-to-no food or water since that afternoon.
Regardless of the reason, it was both soothing and necessary to be pressed up against Mr. Mazzara's surprisingly solid, plaid-shirt-clad chest. He smelled so familiar and comforting, casting her back to standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the theater rehearsal room or stretching out on the couch in his office (which was much comfier than her own) after a long day, the tidy afghan knitted by his great-aunt thrown over her knees.
Mr. Mazzara, never one to quite figure out hugs, patted at her shoulder blades gently. "What were you doing out here? Please tell me that Michael Bowen didn't just kick you out on the side of the road."
"Oh goodness, no," Miss Jenn gasped, drawing back. Her knees wobbled a bit and she leaned against his car for stability. "But I- you? I thought you weren't coming?"
"Well, if you'd let me finish my sentence before hanging up or had paid attention to any of my subsequent calls or texts, you would know that I was simply getting an oil change, which takes all of about thirty-five minutes, and then I was planning to get right on the road to come save you," Mr. Mazzara informed her rapidly, looking a little peeved. "Did you really think that I would just leave you stranded out here?"
"Oh!" Miss Jenn had, in fact, thought so, and had thought so with great disappointment and misery. "Well, I- hm. I didn't suppose rescuing me was terribly high on your list after I left you high and dry to go on a week-long vacation with another man."
Mr. Mazzara pursed his lips. "I'll admit it was not my most favorite thing that you've done," he admitted. "But I can't say that I didn't understand. I am going to California, after all… though, as I mentioned, not for quite as long as expected."
He glanced passed her towards his car. "Shall we begin driving? Do you… have any bags?"
"Yes, they're at the Super 8 motel." Miss Jenn's mouth twisted sardonically. "Along with many friends… all of them bed bugs."
"Oh," Mr. Mazzara grimaced, walking around the side of the car to get the door for her. "Well, we'd better break up their party, then."
Miss Jenn had about ten seconds between Mazzara closing her door and opening his own to control her heart rate and get her mind in order.
She was not successful. So, of course she immediately started babbling when he eased himself into the car.
"I'm really glad you accepted the teaching position at Caltech," she said, drumming her fingers on the door. "Not that I know anything at all about Caltech, or that I want you to be in California or anything, but I more than most am a huge supporter of pursuing your dreams. If I ever got a call from Broadway, I would be in New York in an instant."
"Well, that would be a very happy day for you and a rather sad one for the rest of us," Mr. Mazzara inserted, offering her a sidelong smile that made more butterflies launch into flight in Miss Jenn's stomach than any of Mike Bowen's gooey doe-eyes ever could.
She let out a nervous laugh and slid down in her seat. She wanted to say things, a lot of things, but instead the car fell silent.
And it was… nice. Peaceful. Just the sound of the rushing road beneath the wheels of Mr. Mazzara's car, his light throat-clearing, her own frantic heartbeat.
The only two people in the world she could be comfortably silent with were her father… and Benjamin Mazzara.
"Would you like to listen to some music?" Mr. Mazzara suggested after a few minutes more. "After we retrieve your bags, we have a decently long drive ahead of us. Perhaps some show tunes, to keep us awake?"
Miss Jenn inhaled sharply, her eyes holding more stars than the Nevada sky. "Really?" she whispered.
Mr. Mazzara sent her a weird look out of the corner of his eye. "Uh… yes? You enjoy that music, do you not?"
Miss Jenn grabbed his face and kissed him.
Mr. Mazzara swerved straight off the road.
Wells, Nevada, thankfully, is a very flat place with very little to fill it. The car bounced a bit as it left the pavement and hit long dry grass, but other than interrupting Miss Jenn and Mr. Mazzara's very spontaneous and very wonderful first kiss no harm was done. Mr. Mazzara slammed on the breaks and the two of them broke apart, falling back against their seats. Miss Jenn pressed her hand to her sternum, struggling to catch her breath.
"Um-" Mr. Mazzara's voice squeaked like a teenager's and he cleared his throat. "Um. Um. Okay."
"I'm not even going to apologize," Miss Jenn peeped, drawing in a huge inhalation. "I have zero regrets."
"I… also have zero regrets. Though I may have had a few if I had wrecked my car," Mr. Mazzara replied, momentarily contemplative.
"That's fair."
He turned his face so he was staring straight at her and sent her the most bashful smile she'd ever seen his facial muscles create. "So… I take it you listened to my voicemail and are reacting… positively?"
"Very positively," Miss Jenn agreed with an equally bashful grin, mirroring his position. "Positively enough to consider skyping you every night for an academic year just to hear you talk about your day. Positively enough to fly down to California and sneak into one of your college classes to surprise you. Positively enough to text every single member of my extended family just to tell them that, Benjamin Mazzara, I am enraptured by you-"
He leaned forward and kissed her again, and yes, it interrupted her spiel but more importantly they were kissing and there was no driving off the road to interrupt them this time.
Mr. Mazzara brushed his knuckles across her cheekbone and pulled away a quarter of an inch. "I love you, Jennifer. And I'd love to be with you more than anything. It's not a Caribbean cruise, but perhaps we could go to Slices and actually get a slice, sometime?"
Miss Jenn laughed, a little teary. "Oh, I think we can manage that and quite a bit more."
Author's Note: Can somebody pleeeeease explain why I am so inspired to write them, and also how this series turned less into a Portwell fixit and more into me enjoying Jenzzara's company after literally not seeing new content for a year+?
Actually—okay, I might have an idea. Because sometimes I think I ship Jenzzara less than I actually just love their characters? Writing them is endlessly amusing and fun, and is worth churning out an incredibly random 4k word one-shot for.
Well, anyway, I just had a great time writing this and I hope you all enjoyed, too :D Also… the actor who plays Mazzara is in Salt Lake rn and I am SOOOO hopefully that means he'll be in Season 4, and that there's gonna be Jenzzara endgame. Yes, fine, she's canonically with Mike right now, but Tim is notorious for ignoring past romantic development so he could easily ignore that and jump on the Jenzzara train with all of us cool people.