It turned out that sex with Julia was just what the doctor ordered. Beneath the "hard-nosed lawyer" image that she liked to present to the world, she was really just wonderfully insecure and awkward and girlish and, in short, exactly what Nick needed right then. Where Amanda's extreme confidence and aggression had, honestly, scared him to death, he found himself so busy being the one doing the reassuring, with Julia, that he was almost starting to feel like a man again.

And it was nice to feel like a man again. To have someone look at him with eyes softer and more special than she looked at the rest of the world with. To have a head on his shoulder at the movie theater, and fingers shyly lacing their way through his as they walked down the street.

And best of all, Nick had found himself spending a lot less time obsessing stupidly over the possibility of an impossible relationship with a certain roommate of his. And when Jess asked him to help her pick out a Christmas present for Paul, he was surprised to realize that it really didn't bother him a bit.

After they were done at the mall they dropped Schmidt and Winston off at the gym, as promised. And while they continued to run a few errands, Jess kept messing with that silly plush heart, putting on a dashboard puppet show for him, complete with funny voices. There was even the occasional burst into operatic arias, with the battery-powered beat, beat, beat keeping time.

Nick just laughed at her nonsense, and reflected that he didn't remember the last time he and Jess had had this much fun together.

And then she'd suddenly stopped, mid-vibrato, as if something had just occurred to her. She cocked her head and surveyed Nick curiously.

"What, Jess?! What are you looking at?!"

"Are you ok, Nick? Are you feeling ok?!"

"What? I thought we've been having a good time!" he said defensively.

"We arrrre," she drew out with squinty eyes and a tone of speculation, "That's what's suspicioussss. You haven't yelled at me all afternoon." She began ticking off eyebrow-raising examples on her slender fingers. "You went to as many stores as I wanted to go to without complaining, you didn't say a word when I ended up going back and buying something at the first store we'd gone into, and now you're laughing at my sophisticated man voice. You hate that voice!"

"It's Christmas, Jess," he offered with a grin, "the Grinch's heart always grows twice it's size at Christmas, you know that."

"TWICE my SIZE?!" she made the stuffed heart say with formal dismay, "Why I won't be able to fit into my tuxeeeedo for Neeeew Yeeeears if that is the case."

"WAIT!" she suddenly demanded, being Jess again. "Are you humming Christmas carols?!"

He shot her a "you're being ridiculous again" look. "Um...I'm whistling 'Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer'...through my teeth, Jess."

But that didn't stop the look of puzzled wonder spreading across her face. "For you, that's the equivalent of humming Christmas carols!" she said marvelingly. And then her eyes and her mouth widened into three O's of shock. "Oh myyy g-...NICK!" She sat straight up and punched him in the arm. "WHO IS SHE?!"

"What, I don't know what you're talking about" he demurred evasively. "HEY, are you hungry?! In the mood for ice cream? Let's go get ice cream!"

But she refused to be deterred, and continued accusingly, "You have a girlfriend!"

"YOU don't know what you're talking about..." He tried to sound clueless and convincing.

"Nick, don't even try to play coy with me, you know all I'll have to do is check your back when we get out of the car..."

"Well it is a little hot in here, and I'm wearing a coat you know..."

"Never mind!" She waved off his excuses dismissively as she spoke with authority now. "I don't need a sweaty back to tell the story! It's all there in the evidence! I just can't believe it's taken me this long to put it together!"

"Okay Jess," he said, still attempting to maintain the appearance of detachment, "just for the sake of entertainment...why don't you compile the evidence for me."

"I'd be GLAD to! So happy you asked!" Jess announced sassily, and eagerly began rattling off the damning clues with fierce clarity. "Number ONE...You've been astonishingly good-humored lately. You just said, 'Cool!' when Schmidt hired an electrician to put a dimmer switch in in the living room the other day, and...OOO! last week! you asked the checker at the grocery store how her baby was doing!"

"...she was pregnant for nine months, and now she isn't, it was hard not to notice..."

Jess was shaking her head wonderingly, "How have I been so stupid. You've even been nice to Paul lately."

"Okay, maybe I misjudged him, I'm willing to admit that..."

But again she refused to be diverted. "Who is it?" she demanded.

"Who?!"

"The girl you're in love with."

"I'm NOT in love with anyone, Jess..."

"Your girlfriend..."

"I do NOT have a girlfriend!"

"The girl you're sleeping with."

Nick paused microscopically too long, and Jess hooted gleefully, "A-HA! I was right! Nick Miller's been gettin' him a little sumpin' sumpin' on the side! He's got a ho on the down-low!"

He finally just had to give up. "Okay, okay Jess, you got me, but please, let's speak of it with a little more respect than that! I'm not Schmidt, you know! She's a really nice girl, and yeah, we're kinda seeing each other." And darn if it didn't feel kinda nice to finally talk about it to someone.

"Ho HO!" Mr. Sophisticated Heart Man was saying, "He requests that we speak of this lady with respect. And when do we meet the charming young lass?"

"Ehhhh," Nick evaded, "I don't know if we're at that point yet. You know, the 'hey let me introduce you to my world' point. Right now we're still in the 'telling-each-other-as-little-as-possible-in-as-many-grand-sounding-words-as-possible' stage."

"Come COME, young Nick, allow me to council you in matters of the heart! That IS my area of expertise, you know, ho ho!" Jess continued to chortle in her deep cartoony voice, shaking Paul's Christmas present in his face.

"Okay, seriously, Jess," he said, pushing it away, but still laughing in spite of himself. "I totally just answered a question a stuffed toy asked me, and I looked at it the whole time I was talking to it...PUT THAT THING AWAY already!"

"Thirty seven minutes!" She announced triumphantly, as she jammed the heart back in its bag.

"What?!"

"It totally just took you thirty seven minutes to tell me to put it away, and I was singing OPERA," Jess observed gleefully. "You are IN to her, man!"

"Jess..."

"I'm looking back now," she was reflecting thoughtfully. "So much is making sense. You've been putting on a clean shirt for work every night, and you've been smelling extra good..."

"You go around smelling me?!"

"...and I think you've even been handsomer lately. You've been sitting straighter...not walking hunched over like a chimp as much...and I can't even remember the last time I saw the turtle face. Ok...well..." she threw up her hands in exasperation and rolled her eyes, "right now...so you had to go and prove me wrong and make the turtle face right now...but before that..."

"A chimp?!" he was demanding resentfully.

But she ignored him and cooed, "Nicholas, I'm so happy for youuuu! Now introduce us to this bitch so I can tell you whether she's good enough for you or not!"

"Um, yeah, no, that's not going to happen any time soon."

"Why not?!"

"I told you, we're not ready for our worlds to collide, yet."

"Too busy 'colliding' other things huh, wink wink, nudge nudge," she said in one of her voices.

"Okay, if the jar was around right now, I'd make you make a donation," Nick said. But he was smiling. He couldn't seem to stop smiling.

She was right. Life had seemed a little more worth living lately, since Julia had come on the scene. He wasn't sure where things with her were headed, but he was having fun finding out.

Plus, Jess had just told him that he'd been looking handsome lately. And smelling good. And that a girl needed to be good enough for him, and not the other way around.

Yes, life was good at the moment.

He'd just ignore the part about the chimp.