Chapter Text
Jeff had honestly thought it wasn't going to happen. Firstly, it had been a plan made in idle jest while one of them was more than a little drunk. He'd assumed Annie had forgotten about it immediately, until she reminded him the Monday after. Secondly, when the day actually came they all had bigger problems.
But while their expulsion from Greendale Community College was a major issue, and the dean's apparent abduction and replacement with a doppleganger an even more major issue, nevertheless somehow she'd found time to locate an actual tiki bar, only about twenty minutes away. She'd even called ahead and confirmed that they had banana daiquiris on the menu. So while the rest of the group split up and approached their multitudinous Chang-related problems, Jeff and Annie were taking a night off.
She was the only one who'd remembered it was his birthday. Frankly Jeff felt a little guilty; it seemed like a waste of time, but there wasn't much they could do until Troy came back with whatever information he could wrestle out of the air-conditioning annex. And blowing off helping their friends didn't seem in-character for Annie Edison. But then again, it beat pacing around his apartment, or hers, and it definitely beat babysitting Shirley's kids.
The House of the Smiling Pineapple had once been a Ray n' Beef's Pizza Palace where Jeff had attended multiple birthday parties as a kid in the 80s, he was pretty sure. It had been the fashionable place to turn seven for a little while there, when the fashionable way to celebrate was to invite your entire second-grade class for an evening of pizza and arcade games. He hadn't had such a party himself but he'd been to other people's.
The animatronic anthropomorphic cats had all been ripped out and auctioned off years ago, of course, and the arcade was empty of machines except for the skee ball units that were built in, and those were plainly broken. But there was still an oddly-shaped little stage in one corner of the open dining room, the one where the tiki bar was set up, with a little portable karaoke machine. The various logos and wall art for the now-defunct chain of restaurant-arcades had all been painted over with crude pineapple murals. The carpet was no particular color, slightly squishy, and probably older than Jeff himself. The whole building smelled a little musty, or he might have imagined that.
But they had a liquor license and a blender, and bananas and rum and whatever else went into a banana daiquiri, so Jeff and Annie took an empty booth and ordered one each. Also a pepperoni pizza that came out almost immediately, before the drinks even, maybe because despite it being peak restaurant hours, the place was nearly empty.
"I'll cover the pizza," Jeff said, because he knew Annie was going to insist on paying for the daiquiris. She looked nice, in a dark red print dress with a black sweater over it, her hair and makeup immaculate. He’d have assumed she’d dressed up a little for him, except that she always looked good.
As he predicted, she shook her head. "It's still your birthday. Happy birthday!" Annie exclaimed with forced cheer, and made jazz-hands.
He tried not to find it adorable. "Thank you, thank you, it's absolutely worthwhile to celebrate my having survived another year, yes, thanks." Jeff dabbed at a slice of pizza with a paper napkin in an attempt to soak up the small puddle of grease atop the layer of cheese.
"Well, it is." Annie tried to push through his sarcasm. "This time last year, you were less than halfway through your Greendale college experience, and now…"
"Now I'm not just an ex-lawyer, I'm an ex-lawyer who was expelled from the number two community college in Greendale."
"Now, you're more than halfway through your Greendale college experience," she continued firmly. "This is something we'll get past. Save the dean, save the school, save our course credits."
"Sure."
"And if not, well, we can transfer to Greendale City College. That's allowed."
"I'm just imagining future job interviews. 'Well Mister Winger, this is quite a resume, I see here you attended Greendale, and oh, apparently you were expelled from Greendale and had to transfer?' As if having an unmarred Greendale degree wasn't stigma enough."
"Jeff," Annie said in a tone of admonishment. "You're overestimating the extent to which anybody who doesn't live within walking distance of Greendale knows anything about it. Before I signed up, I thought Greendale was some kind of community outreach program for at-risk teens that had run out of money in the 90s but they still ran the commercials as a joke."
The sullen teen who was technically their server came by with their drinks, finally. Actually Jeff wasn't sure she was a teenager, maybe she was just naturally awkward and surly. Whether teens were allowed to serve alcohol wasn't a legal question he knew the answer to, off the top of his head. He tried to ask for more napkins but if she heard him she pretended not to, hurrying back to the bar where she could go back to playing with her phone.
Annie held her daiquiri up and waited until Jeff clinked his against it. "Cheers!"
Jeff watched Annie fumble a little with her frozen drink and tried not to see her tall glass with straw as remotely phallic. Once he'd started to see it he couldn't un-see. He drank his own as quickly as he could without getting an ice-cream headache and tried to force himself to see her as basically the same age as their probably-teenaged server. The spunky kid-sister type who’d once ambushed him from the bushes.
"Okay,” she continued, oblivious. “I was going to say that when I found this place online there wasn't anything that screamed 'also the site is a disused… whatever you call this, pizza cat-house,' but hey, that's pretty good!" She was pointing at her drink. "What do you think?"
"It's hard to mess up," Jeff said. "But, yeah, she didn't mess it up."
"So, this time next year, when you're evaluating the year, you can remember that it started with the triumph of Annie buying you not just a banana daiquiri but a delicious banana daiquiri!" She spoke so fervently Jeff couldn't help but grin.
"Do you do that? Evaluate the previous year on your birthday? This year's started pretty rocky for you."
"Sure, sure, we're expelled and Chang has taken over Greendale blah blah blah." She gestured dismissively. "But we'll get that taken care of. This year will be better than last year. Last year I moved in with the guys, and… We had a lot of fun…you know, the group did. Better than the year before, which was better than the year before that."
"Okay, okay," Jeff said, because he didn't want to drive Annie into a spiral of reminiscence. "So what's the coming year hold?"
"Once we resolve this thing?" Annie shrugged. "We'll be seniors. And then we'll get jobs, I guess. You'll be lawyering again, you'll like that. I don't know what I'll do. I should start thinking about it soon."
Jeff knew that Annie's major was Hospital Administration, which seemed fairly specific in terms of what career path it might lead to. "I'm surprised you don't have a binder full of plans drawn up already."
"I do!" She brightened slightly. "I made all these plans when I was a kid." She didn't notice his half-smile at her referring to herself as a kid in the past tense. "I had to modify them after. It was something to do in rehab."
"You sound like a normal person talking about the future," Jeff observed. "You don't sound overwhelmed with eager excitement, I mean."
Annie shrugged. "I guess I—"
"You want more? Or should I bring the check?" The teen from behind the counter had apparently decided it was time to check on them.
"I'll take a Gray Goose tonic," Jeff said, because he didn't want another banana daiquiri and Annie hadn't had more than half of hers.
"I don't know what that is," the teen said shortly. “The poster behind the bar says how to make daiquiris and pina coladas and mai tais, is all.”
"Vodka brand," he replied, pointing. "There's a bottle on the shelf."
"Whatever," the teen wandered off before Annie'd had a chance to say anything.
"Should I get another?" Annie asked, studying her drink. "Since you did?"
"Nah. We're pressing our luck as it is—"
"Guys!" And then Britta was there, of all people. She stood in front of their booth with her arms folded and her face pointy. "What are you doing here?" She looked suspiciously from Annie to Jeff and back again.
"Nothing incriminating!" Jeff snapped. "What're you doing here?"
"I work here!"
"Oh," said Annie. "That makes sense."
"Yeah, I guess she has to work somewhere," Jeff agreed.
"This pizza is really greasy." Annie indicated the almost-untouched slice in front of her.
Britta nodded. "Yeah, I know. The pizza is nasty. Don’t get the pizza. Why are you here?" Her eyes widened. "Are you two secretly dating?"
"What? No, obviously!" cried Annie.
Britta blinked and tried to reassure her. “I won’t tell anybody if—“
“We’re friends!” Jeff and Annie chorused. He tried not to wince at a momentary flash of heartburn.
"Friends!” Annie repeated. “And it's Jeff's thirty-third birthday!"
"It is?" Britta turned to Jeff. "Why didn't you say anything?"
He swallowed the sudden flash of guilt, because he hadn’t done anything wrong, and shrugged. "There's a lot going on. Speaking of, why are you here?"
"Are you clocking in?" guessed Annie. “I thought you were going to the thing.”
"I'm on my way over there, I'm just here to pick up my paycheck…" Britta shook her head. "I don't get why you two are here."
"When I was a kid I always wanted a birthday party here," Jeff said, "but never had one."
Annie blinked. "Really?"
Jeff nodded. "So now here we are."
“Funny coincidence,” Annie said, though her tone indicated she wasn’t so sure about it being funny ha-ha.
"You wanted a birthday party in a bar?" Britta scowled, annoyed she wasn't understanding something.
"It used to be a Ray n' Beef's," Annie said after a moment. “I think I was here once when I was little, before it closed. It might have been another location.”
"Either way, you can still see the embossed cartoon cat heads under the paint." Jeff pointed towards the barely-disguised trade dress that adorned the bar.
"Huh. I never noticed." Britta shrugged. "Well, I gotta go. Have fun, you two. Happy birthday." She turned to leave but Annie grabbed her arm.
"Wait, Britta, you work here, what food is okay to eat?"
"Huh? Uh." Britta had to think about that one. "The Chinese place at the other end of the shopping center is okay."
"I mean here. What food here is okay?"
"I guess the chicken nuggets? They're basically precooked, we just microwave them.” Britta turned away, cupped her hands. “Hey! Courtney!” she called to the bar back. “I know these guys!”
“What were we talking about?” Jeff asked once Britta was out of earshot and away, which wasn’t until after Courtney had bullied her into running Jeff’s vodka tonic over to him, and then Annie sending her back to Courtney to place an order for chicken nuggets.
“I don’t remember,” Annie said with a shrug. She was finishing off her daiquiri. “When you were secretly dating Britta did you guys go on dates like this? Not that this is a date,” she added quickly.
“Ugh, no.” Jeff’s expression soured at the memory. “No, if we were alone together…” He glanced away, suddenly aware that Annie seemed to be studying his face. “We didn’t spend a lot of time together. There wasn’t hanging out.”
Annie cleared her throat awkwardly. “It’s just, she kind of leaped to a conclusion. I know, it’s Britta, but…”
“It’s Britta,” he said shortly. How to explain to her how that whole thing with Britta had been…whatever it was. He didn’t even know how to explain it to himself. It was nothing like spending time with Annie, his good friend who had gotten over her crush on him a year or so ago and whom he just liked hanging out with, with no expectation that it would ever lead to anything.
He realized she was staring at him. She looked away a moment after she saw that he’d noticed. Her expression was hard to read but she didn’t look pleased. Then she shook her head, as if dismissing a thought. “Job prospects. We were talking about job prospects.”
“Yeah, that’s a grim one for anyone with Greendale’s stink on them,” Jeff replied. “Happier topic, go. Inspector Spacetime? Cougar Town?”
“Are you going to go back to your old firm, after? Ted and those guys? One of them was named Ted, right?”
“Ted Hamlin, yeah. My boss.” Jeff sipped his drink. “I’ve been doing a little bit of work for them for a while now. Consulting, part-time, just enough to keep the lights on. I can’t appear in court, which is what I’m good at—“
“Speeches!” Annie exclaimed, sitting up and pointing at him with a grin.
“Yeah.” Jeff smiled. “God, you’re a lightweight. You’re the size of a purse dog, is why.”
“Well, I never got any chicken nuggets,” she replied, sounding a little hurt. “And I just seem tiny to you because you’re the world’s largest human. Big slab of…” To Jeff’s relief (not disappointment, definitely not disappointment) she trailed off. “But you were saying.”
“I can’t appear in court so I’m just doing scutwork. Pasting together boilerplate stuff to make briefs and contracts, mostly. I think Ted just wants me to be around so I don’t go work someplace else after I get the bar admission back.”
Annie nodded. “That seems like a good sign.”
“I don’t know that I actually want to do that, though. I…I was a good lawyer. For the kind of law that I did, I was a good lawyer. I was respected, I had friends…”
“That one guy,” Annie said, nodding.
“Exactly,” Jeff agreed, though he wasn’t sure who she meant. “But they stopped returning my calls as soon as I was disgraced. At best they’re people who might be willing to become my friends again in the future someday. They’re not here, now.”
“You have friends besides me, Jeff,” Annie assured him. “They’d be here, if… you know.”
“I know, I know.” Jeff felt like he wasn’t making the point he’d intended to. “But once all of this, Greendale, is really over, we’ve graduated from City College or whatever…will they still be my friends?”
“Of course—“
“And maybe Greendale changed me,” he continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “And there’s other work I could be doing. Something a little more meaningful.”
“Jeff!” Annie did the sit-up-and-point-and-grin thing again. “I have an idea!”
“Seriously,” he asked her, “how are you this drunk off of one probably-watery banana daiquiri?”
“I told you, I didn’t get my nugs!”
They both startled as their server (Courtney?) dropped a plate of chicken nuggets on the tabletop between them. “There you go. And here’s the check.”
“Can I—?” Jeff asked, but she was already gone.
“Also I drank it really fast,” Annie said as she picked up a chicken nugget. If Britta hadn’t told them that they were reheated from frozen in a microwave, Jeff probably would have guessed that anyway. He watched her eat with evident relish.
“I didn’t tell you my idea,” Annie said a moment later. “We should go into business together. Start a law firm.”
He chuckled. It was extremely easy to picture working professionally alongside Annie Edison. “You know actual lawyering isn’t like the way we prosecuted Todd, right?”
“I was going to say,” she nodded, “we did that and it went really well. We can do it! It’ll be fun. I’ll have to become a lawyer. Should I change my major?”
He tried not to grin, because he didn’t want to encourage her. “Annie, I think right now — while at a loose end from being expelled from Greendale, trying to cheer me up on my birthday, struggling to identify your next steps after school — it’s not a good time to decide to go to law school. Also you’re at least a little tipsy.”
“You’re right. I’ll become a paralegal.” Annie chewed on a nugget, then swallowed. “I’ll be your assistant for, like, a year, and then I’ll be your paralegal and I’ll have to do law school on the side so I can pass the bar and we can hire, I don’t know, Neil or something to do the paralegal stuff and then we’re lawyers together…”
Jeff gave up trying not to grin, she was too much fun to watch.
“That way,” she continued, “we can switch off who works and who stays home with our kids.”
There was a moment of silence. Annie ate another chicken nugget, apparently not noticing Jeff’s stunned expression.
“Kids?” he finally croaked.
“Kids?” Annie looked around. “Where? I don’t see any kids…”
“You said ‘kids,’” Jeff said slowly.
She looked confused. “Yeah, just now, repeating what you said.”
“Before that.”
“What? No. Before that I was saying we could be lawyers together. But I’m getting way ahead of myself,” she continued, staring off into space and again, not seeing Jeff’s stricken expression. “We start out, you’re the lawyer and I’m your paraprofessional legal assistant slash office manager working towards my paralegal certification.” She glanced his way, did a double take. “What? I—if you don’t want to, I mean, I was just being…”
“It’s okay,” Jeff said quickly, pushing away his shock at her...call it a momentary lapse.
“Yeah?”
He chose his words carefully. This wasn’t a deposition; he wasn’t under oath. Still, he tried not to lie to Annie. His conscience always ate at him. Better to be judicious with which true things to say. “Much as I like the idea of turning responsibility for my career success over to you, and I do—you run a tight ship, you’d be a great paralegal—this isn’t a good time to make long-term plans.”
“Pffft.” Annie scoffed. “You can always come up with a reason not to make plans.”
“You’re right,” Jeff said. “I can.”
He smiled at her until she smiled back, and then they finished off the chicken nuggets. They were a little dry but hardly inedible.