She puts it off as long as she can, but when the pain gets so annoying that she can't ignore it, she makes an appointment to get her wisdom teeth removed.
She's lucky in that she only has two to take out, but the cost of the procedure still clears out nearly an eighth of her savings account. The oral surgeon is putting her under too, so she needs someone to take and bring her home – because she is still estranged from her family and doesn't have a significant other, she has to rely on her friends to pick up the slack.
Abed drives her to the appointment, but he has a class so he can only stay for a half hour. Shirley relieves him then, meeting Annie when she comes out of the procedure, mouth still stuffed with cotton and head still foggy with the anesthesia. Shirley takes her home, doles out her pain medication, and tucks her into bed with her favorite teddy bear under her arm. When Annie wakes a few hours later, Britta is at the apartment, with chocolate pudding and ice packs for Annie's cheeks. She crawls into bed beside Annie and they watch "Brave" on Annie's laptop – until it's time for more pain meds and Annie promptly falls asleep again.
When she wakes next, it's dark outside and the small lamp on her bedside table is on. Jeff is sitting beside her bed in her uncomfortable desk chair, holding a large pink plastic cup, and the sight is so strange that she rubs at her eyes as she sits up against her pillows, convinced that she is either still asleep or hallucinating from the pain meds.
"Sleeping Beauty awakens," he says, with a smile. "Good thing too. This thing is melting fast."
He hands her the cup and it's cold against her skin. She looks at it in confusion.
"Strawberry milkshake," he explains. "Strawberry's your favorite, right?"
She bobs her head, running her finger along the plastic cover. There is no straw so she just holds the cup stupidly.
"You can't use a straw," he tells her, giving her a plastic spoon. "It could dislodge your blood clots or give you dry socket or something else really terrible. That's what Shirley told me anyway."
She nods again, hating how heavy her head feels. It even makes it difficult for her to get the lid off the cup, and Jeff has to reach out and do it for her. She is hungrier than she realized and she really wants something more than a shake, something substantial like a cheeseburger and fries, but strawberry is her favorite and it is a really good shake so she shouldn't complain.
She has eaten several spoonfuls before it hits her that she hasn't said a single word to Jeff since she woke up, which is definitely rude and a little weird.
"Thank you," she says, wiping at her mouth. "This is really good and I appreciate …"
She trails off when she finally gets a good look at him. He is wearing a jacket and tie with one of his pairs of designer jeans, looking like he stepped off the cover of GQ. She smoothes her sleep-matted hair self-consciously and straightens her tank top.
"I'm sorry. Do you need to be somewhere? You don't have to stay if—"
"It's fine," he says quickly. "I've got plans, but not until later. I can play nurse for a little while longer." He smiles and leans in so his elbows rest against the mattress beside her. "How are you feeling? Is the pain bad?"
She lifts a hand to her jaw, feeling how swollen it is – she must look terrible.
"It's really not that bad. But maybe that's the pain meds talking. I don't know."
"Oh, right," Jeff says, reaching over to her bedside table where the pill bottles are. "You're supposed to get another one before I go. And an antibiotic."
He fiddles with the little blue containers, popping the lid off each and shaking out the correct number of tablets. When he goes to get her a glass of water, she manages to push herself out of bed so she can check her reflection in the mirror above her dresser. Her cheeks are puffy, like she still has the gauze stuffed in them, and the skin is red. She touches her jaw, expecting it to feel hot but it is still cool from the ice packs. She doesn't realize that Jeff has returned until she sees his reflection behind her. When their eyes meet in the mirror, she shrugs.
"I look *awful*."
He grins, cocking his head.
"You look like you took a couple of hard punches to the face, yeah. But you wear it really well."
She laughs and the movement makes her jaw ache a little.
"Come on," he says, putting a hand on her back. "Let's take these pills and get you back to bed so you can rest."
"I'm sick of resting," she grumbles petulantly.
"You won't be after you take your pain killer. I promise."
She knows that he is right, but she swallows down the pills begrudgingly because she really does hate how they knock her out, leaving her with no control over her body. Jeff holds up the edge of her comforter so she can slip back beneath the sheets. He arranges the blankets around her shoulders, even more carefully and gently than Shirley did, and then sits back down in her desk chair.
"What are you doing?" she asks.
"Keeping you company. Until you fall asleep."
She shakes her head against the pillow.
"You don't have to do that. I know you have somewhere to be. I'll probably be out in 20, 30 minutes tops so it's not—"
"Annie," he says very patiently. "Relax. I can spare a half hour."
He pulls out her laptop and angles it beside her hip so they both see it when he starts 'The Naked Gun' on Netflix. She has seen it before with Troy and Abed, but it's the kind of movie that she could watch over and over, particularly with pain killers tripping through her bloodstream. As she predicted, though, she falls asleep early, just after Leslie Nielsen meets the guy from 'Fantasy Island.'
The next time she wakes, her room is completely dark, the bedside lamp turned off and her desk chair back in place.
For a week and a half, the committee has to deal with a graffiti problem.
Someone keeps tagging the east wall of the administration building with artwork criticizing the Dean in gaudy neon spray paint. Every time they lay a fresh coat of paint over it, the graffiti turns right back up the next day.
It certainly isn't surprising that someone might take issue with the Dean's job performance, but the strange thing about the scribblings is that they use tame language that would barely make a 1950s grade school student blush.
Annie's personal favorite is the one that declares 'The Dean Stinks!', complete with a crude drawing of the man in question and wavy 'stink' lines coming off him like Pig Pen from the Peanuts cartoons.
But as amusing and harmless as the graffiti may be, she finds the entire thing highly annoying. They have wasted plenty of time and money re-painting the wall four times, and she is sick of it. The only answer is to find the person responsible and make sure that he – or she – stops once and for all. The rest of the committee doesn't seem overly concerned about the whole thing, so no one is willing to join her on her stakeout of the east wall – except Jeff.
He refuses at first, but after he is tasked with painting over the latest graffiti, he finds Annie and tells her that they should wear all black so they can't be spotted after dark.
And just like that, he is as invested in this crazy, ultimately insignificant nonsense as she is.
That is the thing that always manages to catch her by surprise, how they can seem so distant from one another one minute, like they may as well be standing on opposite sides of the world, and then jump headfirst into some mess or another with the same crazed, singled-minded focus. She thinks about what the Dean accused them of at the beginning of the semester – that they latch onto these opportunities just to spend time with one another. Maybe there is a grain of truth in that, but they both get genuinely invested so there has to be more to it than that.
The Dean also called the thing between them creepy, which, she thinks, is like the pot calling the kettle black. Obviously, there is an age difference, but she has only ever felt self-conscious about that because other people have made her think that she should. She really doesn't see it as a big deal – there are 12 years between them, not 22 or 32. And while the gap is always going to be there, every time that she adds a candle to her birthday cake, it seems to narrow. At some point, she thinks, it probably won't matter at all.
Of course, maybe there is something creepy about the two of them crouching together behind a bush, waiting for some unknown graffiti artist to make an appearance.
It's not normal anyway.
She can admit that much.
But then, when the culprit finally shows up, decked out in gray hoodie that obscures his face, she knows that both she and Jeff feel the same rush of dizzying adrenaline. He tackles the guy, who is caught red-handed with his can of hot pink spray paint, and for some strange reason, it makes perfect sense that the persistent graffiti artist is the Dean himself, in some desperate act of self-loathing and attention-seeking that only he would think of.
He starts to sob when Annie berates him for wasting so much of the committee's time and money, but still, there's a sense of accomplishment to the whole thing.
Afterward, Jeff snags a couple of beers for them from the fridge in the faculty lounge and they sit on the table in the former study room to toast their success.
"We could probably conquer the world," he says. "If we worked together, I mean."
She grins, because there is a part of her that has always loved their 'us against the world' moments.
"Maybe. If you listened to me the entire time."
He laughs and shakes his head as he takes another sip of his beer.
"Oh, like I've never been right about something and you refused to listen?"
She tilts her head, feigning deep thought.
"No," she says. "Not that I recall."
"Smart ass," he half mutters, half laughs.
She swings her legs against the edge of the table, feeling as giddy as a kid. It is moments like these, when she feels good and happy and comfortable, that she knows there is nothing creepy between them. They are friends, with the potential for something more, and if it takes another five years for them to figure it all out, then that's their business. Jeff turns slightly, so he is angled towards her instead of facing straight ahead. When he reaches out to grab a piece of her hair and twirls it between his fingers, everything inside her liquefies instantly and that good, happy, comfortable feeling is a distant memory.
"I like your hair long like this," he says. "It's …"
She wills herself not move, not to breathe, even when his hand shifts to the back of her hair and she can feel his fingers tracing small circles against her scalp. She feels hot everywhere, from head to toe, and when she lifts her eyes to his, the serious, sober look in them makes her slide toward him so her leg is pressed against his. His hand moves from her hair to her cheek, his thumb stroking whisper-soft along her cheekbone, and he leans in, his gaze falling to her mouth.
She could reach out and pull him toward her, speed things along, but there is something about the moment that makes her want to just let it happen however it will. Jeff moves in even closer, so she can feel his breath on her lips. She refuses to close her eyes, though, because she wants to remember all of the details later, like the patchy spot of stubble on the right side of his jaw and the loose thread at the collar of his shirt. He slides his hand to the back of her neck and moves her toward him, just a fraction of an inch, so she wets her lips because they suddenly feel very dry and just waits.
He stares at her mouth for long, agonizing moment, but instead of closing the distance and kissing her, he drops his head and exhales a long, shaky breath.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I don't know what…"
She is trembling now, but it isn't from excitement or anticipation or lust. Her beer bottle drops to the table beside her with a thud and she slides away from him as if she's been burned.
This time, she walks away, but she still lets him have the last word.
By the time she makes it home, she is furious.
She flings her bag down on the kitchen counter and paces the floor in front of it, her hands curled into fists. She is grateful that Abed is out with Rachel because he would insist on knowing what has her so upset, and even if she managed to stay strong and not reveal anything, he would somehow figure out the truth anyway.
For a moment, she thinks about calling Jason – because she is wound up seriously tight and maybe what she needs is something to take her mind off stupid Jeff Winger for a little while. But she knows that it wouldn't give her any lasting satisfaction and she is tired of settling for band aid after band aid.
She let Jeff off easy, walking away like she did – and it's not fair. He has made her feel like some stupid child more times than she wants to count just because she doesn't want to pretend that the things that happen between them don't really matter, don't really mean anything, but he is the one who keeps pushing the damn issue. He is the one who refuses to put up or shut up.
So she takes a deep breath, grabs her keys and wallet, and drives over to his apartment like a woman possessed. She is able to sneak into his building behind a cheesy middle-aged guy in a rumpled suit who leers at her the entire three floors of the elevator ride, so she can catch Jeff off-guard.
She pounds on his door insistently, because she figures that he wouldn't expect that of her, and sure enough, when he flings open the door, he first looks annoyed at the intrusion and then surprised when he sees that it's her.
He is barefoot, still wearing his clothes from earlier though he's unbuttoned most of the shirt, so he was probably getting ready for bed.
Well, too damn bad, she thinks. He'll just have to wait.
"We need to talk," she declares, pushing past him into the apartment.
"Annie," he says, and maybe she is too sensitive right now because there seems to be something so condescending in the way he draws out her name. "It's late. Let's wait until the morning when we've both gotten some sleep to do this, okay?"
She drops her hands to her hips, resisting the urge to tap her foot.
"Why do you get to make up all the rules?" she demands. "Why do you get to decide everything? When we're allowed to talk and when we're allowed to touch and whether it means something or not? Why is it all up to you? I'm sick of it."
He crosses his arms against his chest, and his expression is so patient and understanding, which makes her feel like a child throwing a silly tantrum. And it's maddening because she has every right to ask these questions. She should have asked them a long time ago, actually.
"If I remember it right," he says, almost conversationally. "You were the one making the rules that night at your apartment. After we all got kicked out of the bar."
"You were drunk, Jeff. We both know what kind of mess that would have turned into."
He looks away, studying some spot on the floor, but doesn't disagree. His slumped shoulders almost make her lose her nerve, and she suddenly wonders why she came, what she thought this would accomplish.
But she is here, in his apartment, even though it's close to midnight, and she might never work up the courage to do this again.
"You can't keep doing this," she whispers. "You have to stop. Because it's not fair... and I can't take it anymore."
It must be the tone of her voice, all low and broken, that gets to him, because his face shifts and he looks sick, uncomfortable, maybe even ashamed.
"I'm sorry, Annie. Really."
"You keep saying that. But I don't think you mean it."
He steps toward her, shaking his head.
"I do. I don't want to be … But this is all really compli-"
"Don't," she nearly yells. "Don't say complicated. I swear to God, I will kick you right where it hurts if you say that word."
He smiles weakly and lifts a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug.
"It is, though."
It seems only fitting that she doesn't know whether to laugh or cry because Jeff Winger has always seemed to pull her in a million directions. She takes a deep breath, ignoring the way her heart thunders against her chest.
"Okay, fine," she says, as calmly as she can manage. "You know what? Sure. Your feelings are complicated. They're so complicated that after five years you still can't make any sense of them at all. Fine."
He eyes her warily because he knows her well enough to know that she isn't finished.
"But if that's true, then keep them to yourself," she continues. "Stop throwing crumbs at me whenever you want a little attention. I'm tired of it, Jeff."
"That's not what I'm doing," he insists. "That's not what I mean to do anyway."
She sighs, because whether he is telling the truth or not, it isn't enough. Maybe nothing is ever going to be enough. Maybe she just has to accept that. She turns toward the door – she just wants to go home now, fall into bed, and sleep for a few days.
But she feels Jeff's hand curl around her shoulder then and gently turn her around, so they're facing one another in his quiet apartment. He looks as worn out as she feels, and she wonders why they've put themselves through this for so long, how they ever thought it would work out.
"Annie," he whispers. "I don't know what I'm doing…"
She bobs her head even though she doesn't quite understand what he is trying to tell her. But it must be all the encouragement that he needs because he steps toward her and his hands slide to her waist. When she realizes that he is leaning in to kiss her for the first time in nearly four years, that there is no hesitation this time, that he is not going to stop, she feels lightheaded, the ringing in her ears making everything around her seem blurry and hazy – because unlike that night at her apartment when he'd been drinking, she has no good reason to stop him.
So she doesn't, and then his mouth is pressed to hers and her body is clutched to his, and it feels like something she vaguely remembers and nothing that she has ever felt before. She grabs fistfuls of his shirt and hangs on for dear life.
She is sitting on the sofa in the student lounge, rereading the latest chapter in her criminology text book in preparation for class when she feels his shadow loom over her.
Jeff looks impeccable as always – perfectly mussed hair, unwrinkled designer shirt, and jeans that fit just right. There is a few days' worth of stubble along his jaw too, but even that works for him. – but there is something decidedly off about his expression.
"Hey," he says, almost hesitantly, just before he sits beside on her the sofa.
"Oh, hey, Jeff." She taps her cell phone, sitting on the cushion beside her. "Did you get my text about Duncan needing to push back the committee meeting? It's four instead of three."
"Yeah," he says, bobbing his head distractedly. "I got it. That's fine."
"Good. We have a lot to go over so we need everyone to be there. *On time.*"
"Yeah, fine. I'll be there."
She nods and taps her fingers against the shiny pages of her textbook. Beside her, Jeff bounces his knee anxiously, like he doesn't know quite what to do with himself.
"Is everything okay, Jeff?" she asks. "You seem a little preoccupied."
He opens his mouth to speak, but stops, as if he can't quite find the right words. He shakes his head then, like he's trying to force his thoughts to coalesce into something coherent.
"Unless I was dreaming," he says finally, in a low, steady voice. "We had sex last night."
She smiles, tilting her head coyly.
"Do you have a lot of sexy dreams about me?" she teases. "Is that why you're so confused?"
His mouth drops open again, and he seems almost paralyzed by her blasé attitude. The truth, though, is that she is having the hardest time playing it cool, putting up this breezy, carefree front so he won't be able to tell that she has spent every minute since she left his apartment in the pre-dawn light analyzing, obsessing, and agonizing over every detail of their night together. She has been stuck on the stupid, ridiculous fact that when she finally got around to going to bed with Jeff Winger, she wasn't wearing a matching bra and panties set – all because she needed to do laundry and had to throw on a pink, orange and white floral print bra and blue and purple polka dot boy shorts that morning, never expecting that anyone would see them. Why couldn't it have happened when she was wearing a lacy black set or the red satin?
"Annie, are you kidding me here?"
He sounds as frustrated as she has ever heard him and she can't help but enjoy it for a moment – he has frustrated the hell out of her on nearly a daily basis for years, so it seems only fair. She closes her text book and slides it back into her bag, giving him her undivided attention.
"I'm sorry," she says. "I couldn't resist." She smoothes her hands over her pants to get rid of the wrinkles and shrugs. "Yes. We had sex last night."
"And?" he prods.
"And what?"
He gapes at her in disbelief.
"You don't think there's anything to say about it?"
"It was a lot of fun," she says simply – and that is something of lie because she doesn't really think that 'fun' captures the reality of the experience. It was more intense than she ever imagined, maybe even more intense than she wanted it to be, like he branded every inch of her skin that he touched and now she will never be able to look at him again and not remember the feel of him searing her from the inside out.
He runs a hand through his hair, not seeming to care that he has disrupted the artfully sculpted bedhead.
"Well, yeah. It was, but that's not really what I meant."
"What else is there to say?" she asks. "I mean, we're two consenting adults who got caught up in the moment. End of story."
"End of story?" he repeats incredulously. "Seriously, Annie?"
"Jeff, you've explained to me enough times that our relationship is strictly platonic. Now, I guess I never thought of sex as platonic, but you would know better than me so …"
He frowns, his jaw clenched.
"I just thought you'd want to have some big conversation about where we go from here and all that."
"But we already know, don't we?" she asks rhetorically. "We'll just move on as if it never happened. Like we always do."
He looks at her like he is trying to decide whether to debate her or agree with her. It kills her to say the words because they are the worst kind of lie, the kind that tastes like sawdust as it soon as it falls out of her mouth. There isn't any real way to move on from this, but she is still determined to walk away from him with her head held high before he can do it to her.
"I guess," he says. "I just thought..."
"Well, you can stop thinking," she tells him, patting his knee – which is a mistake because it reminds how perfectly firm every inch of him is and that she would like nothing more than to push him back on the couch, undress him with her teeth, and relive every painfully hot moment of last night. "It's fine. But I've got to go. I'm going to be late for Professor Hickey's class and he'll never let me hear the end of it." She grabs her bag and conjures up a bright smile. "See you later."
When she glances back at him and sees the befuddled expression on his face, she almost feels guilty.
Three hours later, the guilt is long gone.
Because she hates how jittery she feels just sitting at the same table with Jeff for the committee meeting and it seems like it's all his fault.
She also hates the fact that she spent nearly ten minutes in her criminology class doodling his name in the margins of her notebook – cursive, print, block letters, she'd covered them all before she realized what she was doing and forced herself to sit up straight and hang on every word that fell out of Professor Hickey's mouth like they had the power to change her life. She held her pen in a white-knuckle grip, though, forgoing note-taking for the first time in her academic career for fear that it would be Jeff's name that she scribbled down and not the finer points of criminal investigative techniques.
Fine, she thinks testily. There is always going to be some pining teenager somewhere inside of her. She will never grow up to be as cool and cynical and detached as Jeff – so what? For as much as he brags about his freewheeling, uncomplicated existence, he has never struck her as a particularly happy person.
Following his example is definitely not the way to true and abiding happiness.
Having sex and walking away isn't either – not for her anyway.
When she left Jeff's apartment early this morning, she knew that she wouldn't be seeing Jason again because now she fully understands the difference between casual sex and sex with someone that she has feelings for, and there is no contest in her mind.
So what if she's not the kind of girl who wants to just have an itch scratched? So what if she wants a little more than that, to feel connected to someone? Jeff and Britta and Jason and whoever else can think that makes her naive or idealistic or immature or conventional – she doesn't really care.
She is going to live life on her terms – and she can't imagine anything more grown up than that.
So she is not about to head down the same road with Jeff that she just did with Jason. She won't sleep with him and have it mean nothing. She won't do the whole no-strings thing in the hope that someday he'll realize how much he really cares about her – because while she isn't hoping for happily ever after or a diamond ring, she needs something more from him and she won't compromise on that.
But God, she does want to sleep with him again.
She wants to know if last night was a fluke, if years of pent-up sexual tension made it more than it could ever be again. She wants to feel and taste his skin again, see if it's as delicious as she remembers.
And there was that one point, when she hovered over him, running her fingertips over his stomach, and he actually trembled – she actually made Jeff Winger tremble – and she felt so powerful in that moment, so sexy - she definitely wants to feel that again.
He barely gives her a minute to think either because he corners her after the meeting has wrapped up, when they're the only ones left in room. She looks up at him with a faint smile, hoping he can't see the way her hands shake as gathers up her notepad and pen.
"I hope you're not mad about getting stuck with book drive duty," she says, the first thing that comes to mind. "You know I can't trust Duncan and Chang to handle it by themselves."
"No. It's fine. Whatever."
It is completely unlike him to accept such a demanding assignment without putting up a fight, so he is obviously as distracted by last night's activities as she is and she finds some comfort in that.
"Next week, I promise you'll get the easiest assignment. Okay?"
He nods absently, but she doubts that he's even heard her.
"I'm sorry," he says, and his voice has the confident, charming lilt that it usually does when he is about to talk his way out – or into - something. "But I'm still a little unclear about our earlier conversation."
"What conversation?" she asks, unable to meet his eyes as she puts her things in her bag for fear that he'll see through her.
Jeff throws up his hands in clear and obvious frustration.
"Okay, maybe this was cute in the beginning but now it's just pissing me off. You know damn well what conversation I'm talking about. The one about the sex we had."
She shrugs, and she thinks that she must be doing a pretty good job of appearing indifferent - if she does say so herself – because he seems pretty flustered.
"What was unclear about it? I thought we said all there is to say."
He pauses for a long moment, and that seems to be all it takes for him to get himself together. Because when he takes a step toward her and smiles, he looks as cocky as ever.
"Annie. Come on," he drawls. "I know you. I know what you're doing. You think if you play hard to get, I'll fall at your feet and declare my undying love. It's not a bad plan, really, but you had to know I'd see right through it."
It amazes her how fast anger seizes control of her – she wants to slap him, punch him, kick him right in the damn groin so he can't even think about having sex with anyone without blinding, white-hot pain.
"I'm not playing hard to get," she grits out, and now there is nothing left to do but be honest. "What I'm doing is making a pre-emptive strike against you telling me once again that I've misinterpreted or read into what's happened between us. It was a mistake; it didn't mean anything – I get it."
He blinks and all the arrogance seems to bleed out of him in an instant.
"You think I'd sleep with you and pretend it didn't mean anything?"
He sounds so hurt and so wounded by the mere thought that it only makes her angrier. She crosses her arms over her chest and glares at him.
"Isn't that what you've done every time we've gotten close?"
He shakes his head, slow and tired.
"Annie, I've only been trying to protect you. I know that—"
"No," she snaps. "Don't put this off on me. This is about you. This is about your insecurities. If you don't have feelings for me and this is all just some physical thing that you needed to get out of your system, then fine. I'll accept that. But if you're avoiding what's happening between us because you're worried about what Shirley and Britta might think or the snide comments that Duncan or the Dean will make, then you're a coward and I don't want to be with you anyway."
She grabs her bag and tries to push past him, but his hand wraps around her elbow, holding her in place.
"That's not what this is about," he insists. "It's not like …what happens if we try this and it doesn't work out? What happens to our friendship and our friendships with everyone else? Because my track record speaks for itself, Annie. I'm not built for … whatever kind of future you're imagining."
Once again, he is being completely unfair. Because the truth is, she doesn't have any concrete future imagined with him – silly daydreams that she might have had in the past about being married to him when she was sick of fantasizing about Zac Efron don't count. For all the times that she's thought about what being with him would be like, no complete picture would ever come to mind.
She even acknowledges that there is the very real possibility that they would be an utter disaster together, that they would only make each other crazy and miserable. There are even times when she thinks of it as something that they just need to get out of their systems herself, that they just need to resolve the tension once and for all so they can really and truly move on.
She is just sick to death of pretending that it doesn't exist at all. She is sick of being too scared to see where it might go.
"I don't know what happens if it doesn't work out," she tells him honestly. "But that's the thing, Jeff. You never know. It's a risk because all relationships are a risk."
He drops his hands to his hips and lowers his head. Everything about his body language screams defeat.
"I don't know if I want to risk you," he says. "I don't know if I can."
She nods – because she understands the feeling well enough.
"If you keep pretending that we're just pals and holding me at arm's length, you may lose me anyway."
His head jerks up, and his expression is tense and annoyed.
"Are you giving me an ultimatum?"
"No," she says with hesitation. "I'm just telling you the truth. We can't stay in this limbo forever. All that's going to do is cause resentment and bitterness. I don't want that for us."
She shrugs again, and they stand there for a moment, neither saying a word. There isn't anything left to say, she thinks.
So she pats his arm awkwardly and marches for the door.
For once, she gets the last word.