Worms Holes and Doors to Enlightenment
No one could watch Dirty Dancing six or seven times a day. She had to be joking. Nick had assumed she was joking.
And that's how he learned that, no matter how ridiculous or far-fetched her random babblings might appear to be on the surface, they had to be assumed serious until proven otherwise.
It was a survival skill, really.
Another weapon in the arsonal of The Art of Surviving Jess.
A crash course that they were currently failing.
"Look at her," Nick said in disgust, "She's like a snotty kleenex that's all hair and eyes on top. It grosses me out just to look at her, and I think we all know that I have a higher than ordinary Gross-Out Threshold."
Schmidt and Coach took a moment to nod silent props of respect, each contemplating multiple instances in their own personal histories when they'd had the occassion to witness this themselves.
"Yeah", remembered Schmidt almost wistfully, "What about the time that pigeon got in the loft over the weekend when we were gone to the softball tournament?" He turned to Coach to explain, "It died of what we assume was a panic-induced heart attack, but not before ruining the TV remote in what we assumed was a panic-induced loss of bowel control. Nick took it completely apart and cleaned it out piece by tedious piece with a q-tip and some alcohol. There were only five pieces left over when he put it all back together, and I swear it worked better than it ever did before. He was a hero, man. A damn hero."
"THIS is the story you choose to tell to illustrate my ability to rise above the nauseating ? I just did what any REAL man SHOULD have been able to do under those circumstances!" Nick gave Schmidt a look of pointed though silent accusation and disgust. "I mean...the Bulls were playing that night!"
Coach went all "Coach" on them at that point: "WHO CARES! Can we focus, here? I mean, we haven't even SEEN a model yet! I'm not even sure they exist!"
"Don't say that! DON'T YOU DARE SAY THAT, MAN! They exist! They have to exist! If you build it, they will come!"
Nick and Coach answered Schmidt simultaneosly:
"Dude, that didn't even make any sense."
"I don't see how that quote applies in this situation, man."
"ALL I'M SAYING," Schmidt interrupted, while wincing at the fresh wail of misery rising from the direction of the couch, "is that I'm not giving up on this thing yet! Not yet! We've come too far...endured too much...for all of this to be for nothing!"
-
He'd been sympathetic in the beginning, really. Nick knew what it was like to have your heart ripped out, torn into a million tiny pieces, and blown away with the next careless breath, like it was a dandelion gone to seed.
And while most of it was a hazy drunken blur, he was also pretty sure he'd had his own humiliating episodes of ugly break-up crying.
But there was a difference, a very important difference, an absolutely CRITICAL difference, and the difference was this:
He'd done his moping in the privacy of his own room. Where maybe his roommates could still hear him, but they didn't have to see him if they chose not to. And let's face it, after the night they caught him wearing an old sweater of Caroline's, most of the time they chose not to.
Ok, that was a bad night, if the pictures were any indication. But really not relevant at all to the point he was building up to here, which was: the fact that he WAS in his bedroom meant that he was NOT in the livingroom. In the livingroom on the couch. In the livingroom, on the couch, IN FRONT OF THE TV. The TV that his roommates were free to channel surf at whim and will, as a result.
All because HE was not laying in front of it watching while Baby was decidedly not put into a corner. six. or seven. times. a day.
So the night the Bears were playing he decided it was time to take matters into his own hands.
He slapped himself in the face a few times in order to brace himself for the confrontation, before striding with purpose into the livingroom, approaching the couch with bravado, and forcibly moving her feet so that he could sit in the cushion that he'd spent long hours training to perfectly cup his butt.
He'd swept a few spent Kleenexes into the floor along with her feet. They were still damp, but he raised Gross Shields to 500, and forged ahead. There was work to be done, here.
"Jess...can I call you Jess? I feel like we've barely had a chance to get to know each other yet. I mean, I've been working a lot of over-time at the bar, and you've been...a little preoccupied."
She didn't even seem to notice that he'd gently taken the remote from her clammy hand, and set her movie on mute. She just kept staring straight ahead with unseeing eyes, and an occassional pathetic sniffle.
She was wearing a pair of pajamas that swallowed her, and he suddenly realized that he'd barely even seen her eat. She was just a little bit of a thing to begin with, if he was remembering a certain red sundress correctly...and now she just looked like a drowned kitten. A pathetic little soaking wet kitten just sticking its head out of the sack that some meanie had tried to drown her in. Just a sodden bag full of feather-light bones, with hair and eyes on top.
No matter what, you couldn't ignore that hair and those eyes.
He cleared his throat, and began the speech he'd worked on, because somehow this already seemed to be heading in a direction that he had not imagined, and Nick Miller didn't like to do anything unless he knew exactly how it was going to turn out. This must go as planned.
"Jess, I'm going to implement a little tough love here. I understand, because I've been where you're at. Well, maybe not exactly where you're AT, because I was in my room, and not so much out here, " he gestured around, "in the common room, which is usually reserved for community, gathering of groups and such. I mean, I find the bedroom does seem like the most appropriate place for a good cry, don't you think? Wow, you just can't beat walls...a door to shut... ANYWAY JESS, I haven't watched TV in awhile, myself, so I'm going to just turn your movie off, here..."
He did so, and paused to gauge her reaction. If she'd even blinked, he'd missed it.
"...and I'm going to just start flipping through the channels. See? Like this? WOW, look at all the things that are on the TV! It's a whole new world out there! Not just one movie; the options are endless, eh?"
She wasn't even sniffing now, and the utter silence was sort of creeping him out. He didn't know how he'd expected her to react, but this wasn't it.
"Oh, LOOK! Who knew! There's a football game on tonight! Hey, Jess, I know you probably don't like football, I mean, you don't really seem like a sports girl, not that I know you, because I really don't know you at all, still, you don't seem like a sports girl, so if you just want to go read in your bedroom or something, I'm cool, I'm cool, don't feel like you have to keep me company."
"Nick?" The breathy little mew rose so softly from the nest of blankets and flannel and used tissues that he barely even heard it at first. "Nick? Do you care if I stay?"
"uh...Huh?" No...definitely not as planned.
"I don't want to be alone. I've been feeling really alone. I just don't want to be alone."
He thought he did a pretty good job stifling the curse that rose in his throat, but the effort must have shown in his clenched lips , because she continued, "I promise, I won't say a word."
He finally looked at her, and it was the single tear making its way past a very red little nose that got to him. "Yeah...I mean...yeah, I'm not in the mood to talk, either. Don't worry about it. At all. We're roommates now I guess, so sitting in the same room together not talking for a really long time is absolutely the best way to show how comfortable we are around each other, and how well this whole arrangement is working out."
-
Definitely not as planned. And yet, strangely, not that bad, really. She kept her promise not to talk, and he generously assumed that she would have done so even if she hadn't fallen asleep almost immediately.
Coach and Schmidt were out for the night, and it was just them in the slowly darkening loft. Before he knew it there were several empty beer bottles on the table in front of him, and the room was completely black other than the bright flickering of the screen.
It was oddly relaxing. Usually he liked his sports loud and interactive, but out of deference to her he'd turned it up just loud enough to hear the shrill of the whistles and the clash of helmets and pads. Sure, he'd had to stifle a couple of impulses to jump up yell at the screen, but it was a pretty boring game, and most of the time he didn't mind just sitting there with her rainbow toe socks twitching against his thigh, listening to her breath.
She really wasn't so bad, when she was just breathing.
But he groaned inwardly when she finally began to stir around, and sighed in resignation when he felt again that little grip of dread that had begun, in the last day or so, to accompany the prospect of any interaction with her.
Still, he tried to play nice.
"Decide to wake up, Sleeping Beauty?"
She blinked bleary eyes at the bright screen and asked in a tiny voice, like a tiny child, "Did your team win?"
He nodded towards the TV, "Half-time."
She swallowed a little yawn, and actually sat up straight, using both hands to scratch at the nest of hair on the top of her head. "How long have I been asleep?"
"Well..." he repeated, as if explaining himself to the simple-minded, "It's half-time, so that means it's been about..."
"No," she interrupted, "I mean...what day is it?"
"OH," he responded, as if that actually made sense, and HE was the stupid one, "Sunday. It's Sunday."
She took a deep breath, through her nose, and out her mouth, just like Coach taught them to do when they were about to try to max out on the weights. "I have to go back to work tomorrow. I've used up all my sick days, and I'm not feeling ANY better, AND now I can't get sick for the rest of the semester. Or go spelunking when the weather is prime."
He was surprised and a little encouraged that this was delivered with a quiet little quiver rather than a despairing wail, so much so that he almost made the mistake of asking what on earth prime weather for spelunking might be. But he let it go, figuring that that way probably lay madness, and merely said, "Yeah, I wondered. I mean, we wondered. About school. I mean...your job..you know...the thing that will enable you to pay your share of the rent when it rolls around."
He softened that with a little smile, and was rewarded by a tiny one from her in return. She pushed her glasses up her shiny nose and said, "Oh don't worry. I'll pull it together. Pulllll it toGETTTTHerr..." She tried to sing the last part, but it ended in a sad rusty warble and a sigh.
And suddenly something about the defeated droop of her bird-like shoulders in their old pilly flannel made his heart grow twice its size. He really did know how she was feeling, and in this moment she suddenly seemed like a real person who you could carry on a real conversation with. He had a feeling that this was something like a worm hole in space that was perfectly aligned for time travel to your favorite place and time in history. Or...you know...something. Something that you had to take advantage of while the opportunity was there, or you would forever wonder what would have happened if you had.
"Jess," he said quietly, "You can do this."
"I have to," she answered equally quietly.
"Yes, you do. And so do I." So do I. Where did that come from? And why did that feel like a revelation...like some kind of door to enlightenment was opening up in his mind?
Before he could figure it out, his game came back on, and Jess took a deep breath, stood up, and began gathering her flotsam up in her big blanket. "Listen, I know I'm cramping your dude-style here...I'm going to go on to bed and let you enjoy your game in peace. But Nicholas..." she paused in the doorway, "Thank you."
He'd barely croaked out, "Yeah, sure, uh...anytime" before she disappeared down the hallway.
So much for worm holes and doors to enlightment. Both had apparently slammed shut. But he finally had the room to himself, which was the goal to begin with.
So he opened another beer, and sat alone in the dark, and inexplicably didn't even take advantage of the opportunity to turn up the sound on the TV. It just didn't feel right to break the mood.
But the second half of the game seemed awfully quiet without her making the blanket rise and fall at the other end of the couch.
She really wasn't so bad, when she was just breathing.