Special thanks to bethanyactually and amrywiol for beta-reading. This would be worse without their input.

INGREDIENTS OF THANKSGIVING

SOCIAL ANXIETY I

"Okay." Annie stared resolutely ahead. Through the windshield of Jeff's car the world looked cold and gray and wet, perhaps because it was late November in Colorado. It cold have been worse; the alternative was cold and gray and icy. She shivered slightly in the chill air and adjusted her cardigan.

"Okay?" Jeff, noticing her shivering, turned up the heat. "I'm willing to circle the block a few more times, if you want."

"You said you'd pick her up at two, and it's already ten after." Annie shook her head. "We can do this. I can do this. You've met your mother before."

"Many times," Jeff replied. He gripped the steering wheel and gave her a sidelong glance. He didn't like seeing her anxious. "She's a sweet little old lady. And she has a glass jaw, so if it comes to it…"

Annie smiled at that, but sobered quickly. "I know it's not anything to get worried about. I don't have a very good track record meeting my boyfriends' parents. The last time I was in still in high school. I faked a British accent the whole evening and I claimed I was an exchange student from Barcelona."

Jeff cocked his head. "Barcelona, England?"

Annie sighed and nodded.

"This was when you were deep in the Adderall addiction, I'm guessing?" Jeff leaned over and grasped her shoulder. "That was a long time ago. You've grown up a lot since then. Which is good, because if you were still the same age I would be a criminal."

She didn't smile at that one, instead just sighing again. "So when was the last time you introduced a girl to your mother?"

"Uh…" That was a tricky one; Jeff had to think about it. The last relationship he'd had was with Britta, and it hadn't even really been a relationship. Definitely meeting parents had never been on the table. Before that was Michelle, bracketed by a few one-night stands, and before that… He had to go back a long way. "Also high school, actually," he said. "My junior prom date had a car and I didn't, so she picked me up. If I hadn't introduced them it would have been extremely awkward."

"So in twenty years I'm the first girl you've ever brought home to Mother?" Annie asked, aghast.

"Not twenty years!" Jeff did some mental arithmetic. "Eighteen." He tried not to think about how Annie had been a toddler at the time. "I did spend a big chunk of time lying to her about being in school, you know. I wasn't about to introduce her to some girl who might let slip that I wasn't majoring in Anthropology, I was selling DVD players and digital cameras."

Annie threw her head back against the headrest dramatically. "I can't live up to twenty years of build-up!" she declared. "She's going to hate me."

"Oh, believe me, she adores you already," Jeff assured her. He hadn't planned on mentioning this, but… "I've told her all about you. And she was just thrilled when she heard we'd gotten together. She's a fan, I promise."

Annie looked at him quizzically. "When…?"

He sighed. Jeff had hoped to avoid telling her about this. Not for any particular reason, he just didn't like to dwell on it. "She was in the hospital, and I had to talk to her about something, so I started telling her about you. About Greendale, and the study group. You came up a lot." Jeff cleared his throat. "I mean, yours was the only name she knew…"

"She knew my name?" Annie asked immediately.

Inwardly Jeff winced. "Yeah," he admitted. "I made the mistake of mentioning you by name the first time I talked to her after the time I told her about how I'd lied about college and law school, and had to go to Greendale…"

"When was this?" She looked at him with what he hoped was a slight smile in her eyes.

"It was… well, it was a while back," he said. "I remember it was the day a ghost stole one of your pens." It had been in actual fact a semi-feral monkey, of course, but they hadn't known that at the time. "That night Mom called. Which was nothing new, she'd been leaving messages for months, but I'd been dodging her for so long... since Christmas the year before. That was when I'd finally come clean about college and Greendale. Anyway, that night she left this really sad voicemail that guilted me into calling her back. I ended up telling her all about you and the pen and how we all went kind of crazy. She thought it was a funny story."

"I'll bet."

"But ever since then, every time I talked to her, which hasn't been often… she always asks how you're doing. And I didn't want to have to keep her updated about Abed and Shirley and Troy and Pierce and Britta, so I told her as little as possible about them." He shrugged. "She's always, how's Annie, what classes do you have with Annie this semester..."

"Uh huh." From her tone it was clear she didn't completely accept his assertion that he'd told Doreen about her purely as a strategic move. She was smiling, though, arms folded as she looked at him.

"Okay, twist my arm, maybe she got the impression you were especially important to me, somehow," Jeff said. "But, you know, it was just because yours was the only name she knew…"

"…for some reason…"

"Yes, yes," he said testily, "I'm extremely into you and have been for a long time, we've established that. So trust me when I say she's very positively disposed towards you. I actually thought about taking you to visit her in the hospital, in fact, but there would have been so many follow-up questions after she actually met you that I decided against it. The shock of meeting you might have messed up her system."

Annie opened her mouth to respond, and then froze, her eyes widening slightly as she stared at him.

"What?" he asked, alarmed.

"Um." She closed her mouth and looked down, shaking her head. "It just hit me that she must have years and years of expectations built up. I can't live up to that! I'm not… she's going to meet me and be disappointed! I haven't even met her yet and I'm already letting her down!"

That was the Annie he knew, all right. Jeff leaned over to embrace her. "No no no," he murmured as she dug her head into his shoulder. "That is just not possible. You're the greatest woman on Earth." He meant that, too. Jeff generally tried not to think too much about the depth of his feelings for Annie; thinking about it led to talking about it led to scaring her away or scaring himself away.

"You're sweet," she whispered back. "But most people don't think that."

"Most people are wrong. Which comes as no surprise, when you look at our political system." Jeff was gratified to feel her loosen a bit against him. "But she's known how much I adore you longer than I have, basically, so if she's prejudiced it's absolutely in your favor. So long as you don't suddenly start talking about how much you hate Simon & Simon, you'll be golden, I promise."

"Simon & Simon?"

"Her favorite TV show." Seeing her lack of recognition, Jeff added, "It's been off the air since before you were born…"

"And I'm hearing about it for the first time now?!" Wild-eyed, Annie swatted him on the shoulder. "If I'd known about it I could have prepared! I bet it's on YouTube or Netflix, or I could get the DVDs… is Best Buy open today?"

"Annie." Jeff pulled her up and off him, and looked her in the eye. "It's going to be fine, I promise."

She drew herself up, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. "Okay," she said, opening them. "But if it isn't fine we go back to your place and I don't have to get out of bed until Monday."

He couldn't help smiling at her. "That's true either way."

"Now come on, we're fifteen minutes late… It's going to be fine." Annie muttered to herself as she looked up Simon & Simon on Wikipedia with her phone. "It's going to be fine."

MEAL PLANNING

"It's going to be fine," Shirley assured Andre for the fourth time that day. The couple stood in their kitchen, surveying the array of side dishes, salad, stuffing, and cornbread. Four cases of wine, which was probably three times more than they would need but leftovers would keep. Enough food to satisfy a regiment; every day for weeks Shirley had thought of some desperately-needed addition to the menu. Guests, when dinner started, would have their choice of four entrees: turkey, ham, salmon, and what Shirley had been calling Godawful vegan tofu spaghetti because calling itBritta seemed cruel "Just fine."

Andre uncorked their second bottle of wine. "The more you say that," he said, "the less confident I get."

"Pierce is in Las Vegas for the holiday," she reminded him. "Jeffrey will be on his best behavior because his mother will be here…"

"Have you met his mother?" he asked as he poured. "What's her name?"

"I have no reason to think she's anything but lovely. Her name is Doreen, and she had a heart attack two months ago, and she's doing well."

"Not so well as to have Thanksgiving at her own house," muttered Andre. "I love you baby, and I know you love your friends, but I feel like we're setting ourselves up for farce having all these people over."

"It's not so many people! Just you and me and the kids and your brother and his wife and their kids and your mother and your stepfather and your cousin Estelle… and Annie and Jeff, and Doreen, and Troy and Britta, and Abed and Ronette."

"That's like twenty people." He took a sip of wine and handed another glass to Shirley. "Is it too late to send them all to get Chinese somewhere, and we grab the kids and flee for the border?"

"You be nice, now," she said, and sipped from the glass he gave her. "And you know Jeff and Annie will be in their own little world with Doreen probably, and you know your family would be here anyway, so really we're just having Troy and Abed over, with their dates."

"Does Abed know he has a date?" Andre asked.

Shirley looked away.

"You were going to talk to him about this in advance. You said you would," Andre reminded her. "You weren't just going to spring Ronette on him. Or him on Ronette — does she know you're playing matchmaker?"

"Of course," Shirley said airily.

"And she's game?"

"Of course." Shirley drained her wineglass. "I didn't exactly tell her much about Abed. Just that he's a sweet boy. Muslim, half-Polish, loves movies and television."

Andre made a face. "That's more than I knew about him, woman — he's half-Polish?"

"She can learn all about him when she meets him," Shirley continued. "There's nothing wrong with him, after all."

"It's going to be farce," Andre said gloomily. "Thanksgiving growing up was always a farce. If we're out of nutmeg," he warned her, "I am not going to make three trips out into the rain trying to buy some."

"We have plenty of nutmeg," Shirley said in a singsong voice. "With both his roommates in relationships, Abed will see that it's high time for him to settle down, with a nice girl."

"Is this about him and Troy, and how you thought they were…?"

"I never thought that," Shirley said sharply. "I just think that Abed deserves to meet a nice young woman like Ronette."

"Ronette," muttered Andre.

"She was named after the girl group." Shirley checked her watch. "And she should be here by now."