Here is my attempt for the Writing Contest.

Please have in mind that I'm just a stupid German boy, who got his English skills only from school and watching american tv shows, so I apologize if there are a few grammatical / tense mistakes.

Story takes place sometime between 'Cabin' and 'Cooler'

But enough with the blah blah. Here goes!

Nick was sitting at his desk. In from of him, his newest version of "Real Apps". He'd lost interest in it, after Schmidt had given it that stupid name and everybody had laughed about it. But lately he felt the urge to do more than watching TV, drinking beer and working at the bar a few days a week. He liked creating stuff. Maybe "Real Apps" wasn't the best idea, but who knows. A few years ago nobody had believed that there will be a market for a phone with a camera. Who needs a camera in their phone? You want to call people with your phone, not take pictures. But now, everybody had one. So why not "Real Apps"?

He had improved his first prototype in the last few weeks. All the tools attached to the phone were now hidden inside a bigger case, that he had build around the phone. His only problem right now was that a few of the tools were loose and wouldn't stay in their places. He couldn't glue it, because all the tools should be detachable. He needed something that kept the tools fixed, but was easy to remove.

"A rubber band could do the trick", he mumbled to himself and a huge search through his room began. He checked all of his drawers, under the pile of clothes, in the shoe carton under his bed (thank god, that dead guinea pig wasn't there anymore since his almost move-out), between his CDs and every inch of his desk, but nothing. Why was he always out of rubber bands?

Maybe Schmidt could help him out. He was so organized, he never ran out of anything.

"Hey Schmidt, do you..", he stopped mid sentence and stared at his friend, who was sitting on the kitchen counter. Shirtless, with an orange substance on his chest, "What are you doing? Why are you putting honey on your body?", he thought about it for a second and grimaced, "Do you have a lady guest? Is this one of your weird sex things?"

Schmidt glanced at him shortly, shook his head disapprovingly and continued to smear the yellow paste from the bin in front of him on his chest.

„Wait. Is that wax?", Nick asked and his eyes widened in horror, „Are you waxing your chest?!"

"Well of course, Nicholas", Schmidt answered without hesitation, "The ladies like it smooth and it's much easier than shaving every day. You should try it"

"God no", Nick shook his head vigorously.

But in Schmidt's eyes was a sudden glow of excitement. "Yes, you should totally try it. Believe me!"

He jump off the counter, the wax bin in his hands. "I told you a million times. No one likes chest hair. It's gross"

He positioned himself in front of Nick. In his one hand the bin, in his other hand the little spreader. "Take off your shirt"

"No!", Nick exclaimed and took a step back. Crossing his arms protectively over his chest.

Schmidt sighed and put the spreader back in the bin. With his now free hand, he grabbed Nick's shirt. "Come here", with one movement he pulled Nick closer to himself again and at the same time, tried to get the shirt over Nick's head.

"Leave me alone", Nick shouted and tried to wiggle himself out of Schmidt's grip.

"Don't fight me", Schmidt whined, still tugging on his shirt.

And one second later, Nick found himself in a tussle. Schmidt, eagerly trying to get rid of Nick's shirt while still holding the hot wax in his other hand. Nick, doing his best to free himself, without pushing Schmidt to hard, because he was afraid that Schmidt would loose balance and he would get said wax all over him.

"Get that away from me, you weirdo!", Nick changed his strategy and instead of attacking Schmidt, he aimed for the bin and slapped it right out of his hand. It flew a few feet through the air and landed, head down, on the sofa.

"Nick! See what you have done!", Schmidt yelled and hurried to pick it up. But the wax was already all over the leather of the sofa.

"That is not my fault", Nick gritted through his teeth.

"Why do you have to do this all the time? Fight me?", Schmidt sighed, sounding seriously helpless, "Just let me live your life for you. It would be so much better"

Nick chose to ignore that comment. Instead he crossed his arms again and stared at his roommate angrily. "I'm not cleaning that", he decided in a sulky voice

"Yeah, as if I would let you clean that up", Schmidt let out a little, ironic laugh, "You would only make it worse"

With that comment, Nick had enough. He scoffed, turned around and walked out of the living room.

"I'm just trying to help you, Nicholas!", he could hear Schmidt yelling after him.

Nick was about to storm back into his room, but stopped in front of Jess's room. Maybe she had some rubber bands? There was no way, he would go back to Schmidt and ask him.

He knocked and poked his head through the half open door. "Jess?"

It was stupid. He knew she wasn't at home. She was out for lunch with perfect Dr. Sam. But he still wanted to at least pretend that he respected her privacy.

He opened the door fully and walked over to Jess's desk. For some reason, he knew exactly where Jess would keep the rubber bands, if she had any. He opened the drawer and took a quick look through the stuff in there. No rubber band. Damn it!

He was about to leave again, when his eyes got caught by the ball of yarn that was lying on the desk. He hesitated. Maybe he didn't even need a rubber band. It could work with a piece of yarn, too. He knew he wasn't allowed to take it. It was Jess's one rule. Don't take her yarn! But if he just took a little piece of it, she wouldn't notice, right?

He looked around quickly as if he was afraid someone was watching him. Then he took the scissors next to the yarn, cut off one little thread and stuffed it into his pants pockets. He double checked if scissor and yarn were in the exact same spot they were when he had found them and sneaked out of the room with a mischievous grin on his face.

Back in his room, he knotted the two ends together to form a yarn circle. He stretched it, to check if it would hold together. Then he took the tools bundle and tried to pull the yarn over to fixate the loose tools.

"Damn it", he cursed as he realized that the yarn was way to short to get it around the tools. He bit his lip and peeked over to Jess's room.

Maybe if he took one more piece of her yarn? That wouldn't harm anyone...right?

"Mister Miller!", he could hear her yell one second after she came home.

He ducked his head and prepared for what was coming. His door flew open and she was standing there, hands on her hips.

"Hi Jess. What's up? How was your day? Something wrong?", he asked quickly, almost tripping over his own words.

"Save it, Miller", she pointed her finger at him, "I know you took my yarn."

He grimaced. "Oh, that was yours?"

She raised one eyebrow and pressed her lips together. Her eyes pinning him down. Damn! He wouldn't get out of this situation. He had to cave in.

"Okay look", he stood up and made a step towards her, "I'm really sorry. I wanted to use rubber bands. But Schmidt tried to wax my chest and then I saw your yarn"

Her angry expression got replaced by a confused one. "Schmidt tried to..", she shook his head, "What?!"

She looked around the room, maybe to find something that would explain what she just heard, and her eyes widened. "What is that?", he pointed at about 15 to 20 little yarn pieces with knotted-together ends.

Nick's eyes followed her finger and went back to her face. "I wanted to take as little as possible, and then it was too short. So I had to take another one. And another one...and...", he stopped himself and looked at Jess genuinely sorry, "I'll buy you a new one, okay? Don't be mad"

Her expression softened, only her lips tuned into a pout. "But I need it now, Nick! Cece and Sadie are coming over later for crochet time. I told you this morning", she almost sounded a bit disappointed.

"Yeah, right", he remembered, "I'm sorry. I forgot."

She shook her head and checked her watch. "I have to go to the store..but I guess I can make it in time", she mumbled to herself and then looked back up to him, "You're coming with me!"

"What? Why?"

"Because you took it. And the store is all across the city. I don't wanna drive alone. It's boring"

"I really don't want to..."

"Seriously?", she interrupted him with a strict tone and crossed her arms.

"Okay, fine..", he snapped.

A few minutes into the car ride, the tension between the two was gone. Nick had another problem now. Jess's way of driving a car. She always drove like she was the only person on the street. It made him nervous to drive with her and he hated the thought that she drove like this when she was alone.

"Oh look, a fair", she squealed, her gaze directed at the left side of the road.

"Eyes on the road, Jess. Geez", Nick muttered.

Jess ignored him. "Let's make a stop there"

And before Nick could answer, Jess just pulled over the steering wheel and drove across the street towards the parking lot of the fair.

"Jess! Are you out of your mind?!", Nick yelled and his hands grasped into his seat, "There are other people! You can't just cross the street like that."

She just chuckled while she was looking for a free space. "Relax. I checked. There was nobody there"

Nick needed a moment to get over the shock, before he realized that Jess really just stopped at a fair. A freaking fair!

She was already out of the car and looked at him in anticipation. He got out and pulled a turtle face. "Jess, no. You said we're just gonna buy some yarn"

"Just 15 minutes", she promised with a smile.

"A fortuneteller! Let's go there."

He groaned. "You're kidding, right?"

"It's funny", she laughed.

He shook his head. "It's fraud. Please don't tell me, you believe in fortunetellers"

She looked at him with innocent eyes.

"Jess...", he said in an uneasy voice. She just couldn't believe that some complete stranger could tell her, what happened in her future by looking in a glass ball.

"Don't worry", she giggled, "I don't. But it's funny anyway. Please, Nick"

He rolled his eyes, but followed her closer to the tend. When he saw the little sign that said "For only six dollars you can see into your future", his eyes went wide.

"6$? Oh come on, let's not do this Jess. Imagine how many more yarn you can buy with these 6$"

She let out a small laugh. "If I'm lucky I maybe get one more ball of yarn, but only if it's on special offer"

"What? One yarn is over 6$?", he exclaimed in disbelief, "That is crazy! No wonder you always get so angry when I take it. I'm really sorry."

Jess started laughing and Nick looked at her with a frown, wondering what was so damn funny. When their gazes met, Jess became silent and bit her lips, which were curled into a little smile. Her eyes were beaming at him and the expression in them was so warm and deep.

Nick knew a lot of her faces by now. Angry face, sad face, happy face, 'I'm not in a good mood, so don't say anything or I will be mean to you for no reason' face. But this face right now was new and he didn't really know how to react to it. It made him nervous. Not necessarily in a bad way, but still nervous.

"What?", he asked confused.

She shook her head slightly. "Nothing. Come on, let's go in there"

He wanted to protest, but suddenly he could feel Jess's hand grabbing his own and his words got caught in his throat.

She pulled him into the tent and he followed her sluggishly. It was dusky inside and suddenly something unknown touched his head. Before he knew what happened, he jumped backwards, forming a weird semi karate pose. A second later, he realized that he'd just ran into a wind chime that was hanging from the roof. He cleared his throat, went back into a normal standing position and looked at Jess a little embarrassed. But she just chuckled and patted his shoulder.

Nick took a closer look at the inside of the tent. There were curtains, dream catcher and more wind chimes all over the place. On on side of the tend was a table with a crystal ball on it. It looked exactly like it would be shown in a Disney Movie. Everything was so cliché.

"This is ridiculous", Nick mumbled.

Before Jess could say anything, the curtain on the other side of the tend moved and a woman appeared. She carried a folding chair to the table in the middle of the room and made a welcoming gesture with her hand.

"Welcome. I have foreseen your arrival and for that, I brought another seating accommodation. Please!", the woman said with a put-on husky, mysterious voice, which led to another eye roll from Nick. Jess however giggled with excitement and sat down on one of the chairs.

In the next ten or fifteen minutes, the woman talked about all different kind of stuff while holding Jess's hand, pretending to read something out of its lines. It was the typical hooey of a fortuneteller. So universal that it would be accurate for probably 90% of the people in the US. But so clever worded that you could think, she talked solely about your life. Nick got bored after a few seconds but started to watch Jess out of the corner of his eye. He enjoyed seeing all kinds of emotions going on there. The way her eyes got bigger, when the woman talked about something bad. How her lips turned into a little smile, when her friends were mentioned. The sparkle in her eyes, when the fortuneteller announced that something unexpected would happen in her love life. And in general, the way she was totally consumed by the words of that woman. He loved how excited she could get about little things.

When she finally came to an end, Jess turned her head to Nick and smiled. "Sounds good, huh?"

He couldn't fight the enthusiasm that came from her and smiled back. "Sure, Jess"

"Your turn", she demanded and put her hand on his shoulder.

He looked quickly at her hand and then back in her face. "No, come on. Let's go", he really wasn't interested in listening to all that crap again.

"No. Do it, Nick.", she grinned, "It's on me"

He looked her into the eyes for a moment. They were staring back. Excited. And with that his resistance was gone. He just couldn't say no to her.

With a sigh he put his hand on the table. "Alright, but make it quick"

The fortuneteller looked him in the eyes for a moment and raised one eyebrow. "Sorry", he mumbled.

The woman's gaze went over to Jess and finally to Nick's hand. With a small smile she traced along the lines on his hand and began to speak.

"I see a girl in your life."

It was her first sentence and Nick began to panic instantly. "There is always a girl. I don't need palm reading to know that", he snapped at her. A second later he realized that he'd gave himself away with that comment. If he'd just kept his mouth shut, no one would have thought anything. But now, he had made himself suspicious. He could see how Jess turned her head towards him curiously, but he tried to ignore her. Maybe if he acted like nothing happened, she would just forget about it.

The woman ignored his interruption and continued with her blah blah. Nick wasn't really listening anymore, but after a while he actually managed to relax a little bit.

"I can't believe they don't have pistachios", he said for the third time within a few minutes.

He had decided to invite Jess to a bag of roasted almonds as a thank you for the free view in the future. But to his disappointment, almonds were the only kind of nuts they had. The originally concerted 15 minutes were long passed, but to be honest, Nick couldn't care less. They were sitting on a bench next to a puppet theater. A few kids were sitting in front of it, listening to 'Sneaky Snappy Mr Croc'. It was nice to be here. With her.

Jess groaned. "You have like 10 bags of pistachios at home, Nick"

"Yeah I know, but I really like them", he defended himself.

Jess chuckled and when he looked down at her with a grin, her face once again got the expression from earlier. It made him all tingly inside. Something that happened often lately, when he was with her. He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and his eyes wandered down to her lips. They looked so soft. He gulped. Damn, he really wanted to kiss her. He looked back at her eyes quickly, before his thoughts got too obvious. They were still focused on him. He had to do something. Say something. Anything. Before he would do something stupid. But there was only one thing that came into his mind right now.

"Do women think chest hair is gross?", he asked before he could stop himself and winced immediately after.

"What?", she asked half amused, half confused.

He shook his head. "Sorry, forget it. It's just...Schmidt said something..", he stopped himself and grimaced, "Forget it", he said again with a half smile.

Stupid Schmidt. He always managed to get into Nick's head with his stupid comments no matter how hard he tried to ignore him. Even if he knew that Schmidt wasn't right, he always needed somebody else to confirm it.

For a moment Jess was quiet and just nibbled on the nut in her hand. "Well, I can't speak for all women of course. But I don't think it's gross", she let her eyes wander over his chest with a sly smile, "Actually, I think it's kind of sexy"

Nick's eyes widened and he almost choke on the nut, he'd just popped into his mouth. Was she teasing him or did she really just implied that she thought, he was sexy? He felt a sudden rush of confidence. "Are you flirting with me, Day?", he laughed.

"Who knows?", she answered with a smirk.

Oh god! She WAS flirting with him. What was going on? That didn't help at all to stop his urge to just grab her and kiss her. He gulped again and chuckles nervously. Jess gave him one last, little smile before she broke eye contact and looked back at her almonds. Without these big, blue eyes beaming at him, he managed to calm down a little bit.

"So who's the girl?", she finally asked.

Nick felt his body stiffen immediately. He knew that Jess had wanted to ask him that the minute they had left the fortuneteller's tent. She was way too nosy to just forget about his comment from before. But Jess also knew, that it wasn't Nick's favorite thing to talk about stuff like that, so she had tried to hold herself back. But now that Nick had asked her something about women, she probably saw it as a permission to go deeper into this conversation.

"Girl?", he tried to play dumb.

"The girl, the fortuneteller talked about"

"Come on. I told you it's all fraud. There is no girl. She was just talking nonsense", he tried. But he could already feel the sweat forming on his back.

She wouldn't fall for that. "No, no, you basically admitted it in there. Spill it, Miller"

He panicked. What was he supposed to say? Oh, the girl? That's you, Jess. Surprise!

"It's nothing, really. I don't even know if it would work", it wasn't a lie, "And she has a boyfriend, so it doesn't matter anyway"

She didn't say anything, but Nick could see how her brain was working. Did he say too much? There were a lot of girls out there who had a boyfriend, so that shouldn't reveal much. But Jess wasn't stupid of course. They had talked about it a few month ago. Their attraction to each other. 'Two people, who wanna be friends but sometimes are attracted to each other' he had called it. The problem was that for him, the 'sometimes' had turned into an 'always'. But it wasn't just physical. He felt better, when she was around.

"Well, it's just a boyfriend", she said after while, "Maybe it's not even that serious. Maybe, if she knew you're interested, she would think about it"

"Yeah...maybe", he mumbled sounding not especially convinced. Dr. Sam versus him? He knew who he would pick.

They both stayed silent for a moment. Nick was looking down at the nuts in his hand. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see that Jess was looking at him for a few seconds. He still wasn't 100% sure if she knew, that he was talking about her, but he assumed that she didn't. She would have said anything, if she knew, right? This was all way to confusing. He just wanted this conversation to end.

"Hey, Nick", she started and waited until he looked at her, "I really hope things between you and that woman will work out the way you want it to. You deserve to be happy"

She always said things like that and he knew that she really meant it, but he was never really sure how to react to it. "Thanks..", he simply said.

She nodded slightly and smiled.

Nick took a deep breath and nodded too. "Well, come on. It's getting late. Let's go and get you your yarn, Jess"

"Alright", she stood up, "And...thanks for coming with me, Nick. I like hanging out with you", she said with a soft voice.

His heart made a little jump. No matter what would happen between them, he was just happy to have her in his life. "I like hanging out with you too, Jess"

And together they made their way back to the car.

If this trip was the punishment for taking her yarn, Nick might break that rule a few more times in the future.

Author's note: I was really fighting with the ending, because I wasn't sure if I want them to kiss or not. But I decided against it, because I wanted the story to stay in the tv show timeline/universe, thus no kiss before 'Cooler' ;D