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“Troy! Where are the chips I bought for the party?”
Troy didn’t answer.
“Troy?” Annie asked again. She turned a corner in the apartment to see Troy, stifling a giggle and holding something behind his back.
“Troy.”
“Yeah, Annie?”
“Did you eat the chips?”
“What chips? You got chips for the party?” Troy looked around excitedly, pretending to wonder where the chips were. Annie sighed, then turned to look for Abed.
“Abed? Did you help Troy steal the chips for the party?”
“You bought chips?” Annie turned to find Abed suddenly standing next to Troy, wearing the same mischievous grin that Troy was, also with something behind his back.
“Abed, you went to the store with me to buy them. I know you know that I bought chips.”
“Uh, I don’t know, Annie. I think you’re making things up.” Troy let out a little chuckle at this, and Abed nudged at him to make him stop. Annie saw this and sighed, reaching behind Abed’s back and grabbing the chips in his hand.
“The bag isn’t even open.”
“Yeah, we wanted to make you think we’d eaten all the chips but the idea of actually robbing this party of chips made Troy and me both very upset so we didn’t eat them.”
Annie looked at the boys and shrugged her shoulders, opening the chips and pouring them into a bowl. She was getting pretty good at being loosey-goosey. “Well, as long as the party still has chips, I guess.”
Later in the evening, the party was in full swing. The group was there, Leonard was around, Magnitude was pop-popping somewhere, and it was just a great time. All of the chips were properly served, too. Annie made sure of it.
On the couch was a sleepy Abed and an animated Troy. The two were hanging out with Britta and Jeff, telling them about how they’d pranked Annie earlier in the day.
“Yeah, and then we took the chips and hid them!”
“So… the prank was she thought she needed to get more chips?” Jeff asked, sharing a glance with Britta.
“Yeah! It was a solid prank.”
“But you didn’t actually eat any of the chips?”
“No, we would never. Could you imagine if this party had no chips?”
Jeff and Britta shared another look, then shrugged and nodded.
“These chips are pretty incredible,” Britta agreed, grabbing another handful.
“God, Britta. You’re getting more in your hair and on your shirt than in your mouth,” Jeff scoffed before standing up and looking for someone else to socialize with.
“Oh, shut up, Jeff. Why don’t you go make sure your hair still looks good? You gotta be extra careful with that receding hairline…” Britta said as she got up to follow him, leaving Troy and Abed alone. Troy watched them leave, giggling at their dumb banter, then looked down to see Abed asleep with his head in Troy’s lap. Troy didn’t know what to do, so he just… let him nap.
A little bit later, Annie came up to Troy and sat in a chair next to the couch. “Is he really asleep?”
“Yeah, it’s kinda cute. He’s just been napping like this for a little while.” Troy looked down at his friend, who was sleeping so peacefully it almost felt like a crime to breathe too hard around him.
“He must have been exhausted to fall asleep with all this noise,” Annie observed, a hand over her heart as she watched her friend lovingly.
“Yeah, we had a big day. That prank took forever to plan,” Troy replied, running a hand through Abed’s hair. It was so soft.
“Really? That prank took planning?”
“We had to figure out when the best time was to steal the chips!” Troy whispered furiously, not wanting to wake Abed.
“I had just taken a shower right before that. I took like two hours.”
“And we planned that that would be the perfect time.”
Annie giggled. “Yeah, sure.” Troy smiled back at her and they sat silently, Annie taking sips of her drink and Troy continuing to run his fingers through Abed’s hair.
Soon, the party began to die down, and their friends started to file out of their apartment. Abed sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes to see the apartment empty except for Troy and Annie.
“The party’s over? What happened?”
“You fell asleep, buddy.”
Abed looked at Annie, then back to Troy. “That was an incredible nap. Were you running your fingers through my hair?”
“Yeah, did you not like that?” Troy asked, suddenly a little nervous. Abed paused for a moment, a small smile on his face.
“My mom used to do that when I fell asleep at family functions. It was nice.”
Troy and Annie shared a happy glance, then got up from the couch.
“Well,” Annie said, starting to gather the trash from the party, “the apartment isn’t gonna clean itself.” Troy and Abed recognized this as Annie’s unspoken request to help her clean—she’d sat them both down to tell them that was what this phrase meant—and stood up, cleaning up what they could.