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It’s clichéd, except Britta doesn’t actually know what a cliché is, and she’s not planning on starting now. They’re sitting on Abed’s couch, Jeff’s arm slung over her shoulder, and he asks “Have you ever thought about getting married?”
Yes, she wants to say. But she’s never really wanted to be married, and she’s especially never wanted to be married to such a colossal but admittedly attractive douche as Jeff Winger, who’s inexplicably gotten into her head and made Young Britta scream in frustration. Young Britta is beautiful and has lived in New York and has a hard exoskeleton, hard edges, a hard heart; she dances at parties and at protests; she latches onto causes and onto people and onto lives. She’s shiny and broken and vaguely alcoholic, but now she’s been adrift too long in the Sea of Aging (Gracefully), and she’s smoothed, softened. She’s transparent. She can’t cut people properly anymore. (Britta’s beginning to realize that this metaphor has its limits.) She’s lost her armor, and she’s opened her heart to idiots and maybe even conservatives but worst of all to Jeff Fucking Winger, who’s looking at her right now, interested. His hand taps out some obscure melody on her shoulderblade.
“No,” Britta says. “Marriage is–” But the words fail her. She’s not sure what marriage is. She’s not sure if she wants it. Mostly, she’s not sure why Jeff’s eyes are so weirdly, stupidly blue as he contemplates her words.
--
The party is awful. Britta’s having sudden, terrible flashbacks to Amsterdam and the hipsters there who had the nerve to be cooler than her, except here, she’s the coolest one, which is even worse. Star-Burns is DJing and Señor Chang is nursing a bottle of “authentic Chinese tequila” in the corner. Troy and Abed are being ambiguously gay (cueing the reminder in Britta’s brain to Show Your Support) and Annie is being Annie, which is to say the absolute most at all times. Pierce is hitting on Shirley, who is serving brownies to Leonard, who is shouting curses at Professor Duncan. No one is sober, and everyone is embarrassing. Britta decides this isn’t Amsterdam- she feels like she’s in high school again.
“Prom not going well?” Goddamn mindreader.
She turns around, and sure enough, there he is, Jeff Motherfucking Winger (she edited the middle name after she found out he’s into a professor, Oedipal, gross) looking hot and not especially bothered. “I didn’t go to prom,” she tells him. “Dropouts be dropping.”
“If it makes you feel better, I was stood up at my prom by a very pretty brunette. I hooked up with her friend, though. Even prettier blonde.”
“Is that a weird come-on or a vaguely likely anecdote?”
“Come-on? I know no come-on. I do enjoy coming with.”
“Ew, ew, ew,” and her ears are red like she’s a middle school girl getting courted with dick jokes and Ring Pops, “ew, ew, ew. And ew.”
He’s smiling now, and the bells and whistles and whatever the fuck Nick Carraway was on about in her Intro to Lit class last semester are ringing. “You’re easily grossed out.”
“I’m easily disgusted by sexual objectification,” she retorts. Even to her own ears, it doesn’t have her usual heat.
Despite the mildness of the response, he still looks contrite, and Britta’s reminded why she likes Jeff despite his fucked-upness and his fancy watches and his hair. He tries. He wants to get better. “You know, if you ever think I’ve gone too far, tell me. I don’t want to be that guy.”
“It’s okay,” she says. But it’s really not okay- it’s not okay how he makes her feel warm and happy and un-Britta, how he sands down her edges and makes her want to settle down and maybe even get a dog in the country. Maybe it’s sexist. Fine, it’s not sexist, but still.
“In that case,” he grins, “in that case, Britta Perry, meet me at the courthouse in the morning. I didn’t know how to tell you, but you’re the father.”
“Ew,” she says again. “As if.”
--
Okay, so she probably shouldn’t have left a drunken voicemail on Jeff’s phone, but if he’s going to reciprocate like this, she’s doing it every week.
“Briiiiitta,” he sings (cue bells, whistles, et al). “Brittaaaa, Britta. Everybody loves Britta! Abed, tell Britta how much you love her.”
“I enjoy Britta’s presence,” Abed states.
“Close enough. Anyways, I wanted to tell you that you’re actually a pretty wonderful friend, even when you’re being mean, which is a lot of the time, but you’re still wonderful in an angry way. Non-homosexually wonderful. No offense, Abed.” (Britta’s rolling her eyes, but she can’t help the strange smile spreading across her face.)
“None taken,” Abed says. “Well-intentioned gay jokes are an integral part of any progressive-slash-diverse friend group in our day and age.”
“Thanks, Abed. I’ll keep that in mind. Oh, he’s spooning the pizza guy now. More than spooning? No. And it’s a pillow, not the pizza guy. But what I wanted to say was- okay, I know that I said earlier that I liked Slater, and I really do, she’s hot in a way that kind of makes me think I have mommy issues, like whoa, but I don’t think it’s going to last, even though I want it to. Well, I don’t know if I want it to last. I want something to last. I want something to last with-”
There’s a lot of loud noises. “ABED! What the hell are you doing with my phone?”
“Eating it,” says Abed. There’s a click, and the voicemail’s done.
Huh, thinks Britta. Interesting.
--
They’re on the couch again, this time watching My Fair Lady. Rex Harrison is dickish and Audrey Hepburn is defiant, but Britta isn’t paying much attention to anything but Jeff’s head on her shoulder. He’s breathing softly but steadily, a little pulse adding to her own.
“I’m getting married in the morn-ing,” sings a perky old man who bears an uncanny resemblance to Pierce and Dean Pelton’s hypothetical sexually ambiguous child.
“Would you?” she asks Jeff. “Would you get married?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “It would have to be the right person.”
Britta takes a deep breath, runs her fingers through his hair. “I might know a girl.”