The scene might have been perfectly pleasant for a late Saturday morning in the loft. However, in this case it was fraught with that kind of ringing, panicked urgency which felt like everything right now, but which of course would probably be interpreted very differently in a year, or maybe even in a month, and quite possibly within the hour if the cards were played right by the players in question: Nick was in the shower, and he might have been taking his time because he'd skipped a few days and needed a real deep clean. But in this case, he took his time because he desperately wanted to avoid the excruciatingly awkward reality outside of the bathroom. What was that? He queried. What the hell did that mean?
Meanwhile, Jess was sitting on the edge of her bed, head in her hands, possibly pondering the layout of her day, happy to have the weekend off. But for the past twenty minutes she'd been pressing the heels of her palms hard into her eye sockets, very surely in an attempt to press out her entire existence with the kaleidoscope of sparkly, mushrooming swirls that appeared behind her lids as a result. Boy are they pretty! Why do they do that? How can my eyes make their own light? Is that a real color, or are my retinas cracking? Am I pressing too hard? Why am I doing this again…?
Ohhh, right. Jess caught the wave of the last receding eye-swirl as she kept her eyes closed, but loosened the pressure and conceded to the memory of why she was trying to distract herself in the first place. What have I done? She felt utterly humiliated. And not just a little bit confused, though she was certain she wasn't the only one. Could she even fix this? No more procrastinating. She needed to fix this.
Two beats later, full of resolve but devoid of clarity, she was standing upright, smoothing her hands down her blouse and over her fluffy skirt, and striding with something like confidence towards the bathroom where she could hear the water running in that irregular way that indicates someone is messing up the stream with showerly activities. Like washing, or shaving. Or…
"Nick.", Jess stated quickly, attempting to flatten her voice. No feelings. Not yet. She stayed outside the door, and cleared her throat just as she heard Nick do the same. He replied coarsely, "…Yeah.". She took a deep breath and stepped into the steamy, steamy bathroom.
Half an hour earlier, still in the veritable morning period of 10 o'clock, the three other loft-mates had all been up and dressed, and had cleared out to their various activities. Schmidt left to shop for a new blingy watch to wear to that night's gala – the main fundraising event for the museum for which Fawn was a board member. Winston was on duty and had left for work, and Coach had appointments with three personal training clients that day – a moonlighting gig he'd been cultivating since school was almost out for the summer. The apartment door had closed for the third time, and quiet settled in.
Nick came out of his room a few moments later, and, taking advantage of what he thought was a completely empty apartment, had opted to wear nothing but a pair of silky black boxers. It should certainly be noted that these damn fancy boxers were his only clean pair of underpants. And since he didn't have to be at work until after 5pm, he'd planned on a day of laundry (an aforementioned necessity, or it would have remained off the loosely-named "to do" list), and indulging in a couple of the games he'd dvr'd the week before.
So he was undeniably caught off guard when he walked into the living room and found Jess on the couch, fully dressed, but most definitely lounging. He hadn't heard her voice at all this morning, and for that reason had confidently calculated that he was alone, and that the alone-ness would be the perpetual state of things for most of his day.
And so the derailment began. Jess' presence always obliterated the mere notion of being alone, surpassing the neutrality of being around someone while not needing to interact, and launching headlong into something akin to what he wanted to think was an imposition on his mentally crafted alone time. Except that, as much as Nick wanted to be annoyed, and to be able to openly, aggressively express that annoyance, seeing her sitting there with her bare legs stretched out along the couch and looking simply, but notably gorgeous, he instead made note of a batch of very vigorous butterflies migrating into the most flutter-prone part of his stomach.
Okay, but so what. So he wasn't alone. What's the big deal? It's just Jess. And yet he stopped short anyway, stood oddly frozen by the TV, now very aware of his boxers-clad self. And he was also very aware of those damn butterflies. He pictured Monarchs. And then he semi-pondered whether Jess could maybe see them, as they'd ramped up the pace of his heart and his whole body felt like he'd swallowed a box of writhing pistons. He started to sweat a little. What the hell? What was happening?
He took in a sharp breath just as she opened her mouth. "Hey Nick," she said, looking right at his eyes. "Hi Jess.", he replied with forced calm. He at least felt like he had sounded cool, nonchalant, all whatevs. Except that he just stood there. He mentally kicked himself in the ass with his mentally-conjured foot. Move, you idiot, he thought, his eyes glued to hers. Her brow furrowed, and she gave him a quizzical smile, tilting her head very slightly. He absolutely did not move. Not an inch. Even while he made mental note of the fact that his not moving was what was accelerating the creation of the now-palpable tension.
And then she did it. The thing that created all the other things that shifted everything else about everything else that came after that moment: She looked. At him. At the other him. The below part of him.
He held his breath, panicked but riveted. His face made expressions, his mouth and eyebrows doing some stuff, but all he could register was the dry, blurry feeling at the edges of his eyes as they grew wider and wider. Was this happening? Jess' face didn't flinch, her breath was steady, and Nick couldn't blink. Her eyes, though, were so obviously taking it all in. She was staring right at his crotch. Like, burning a hole through the black silk of his boxers and directly into his Base Chakra. The seat of passion. Her eyes were just completely… On. It.
The thought passed through his mind: Did she like what she saw?
Nick's mind was racing, but he couldn't move his legs to walk, and let's face it. He would have turned around and run like hell. He couldn't open his mouth to speak. If he'd been possessed of that skill at that moment, nothing civilized or coherent would have emerged anyway. So it was an entirely perfect addition to that storm of awkward inappropriateness when Jess did the next thing that she did, and it made Nick dizzy.
She licked her lips.
With her eyes unabashedly moving over Nick's silken groin, her tongue came out of her mouth and arrived on her lips, and she just licked them. And holy shit. Right on cue. Nick's body went rogue. It jumped ship in magnificent betrayal. As if she was some kind of snake whisperer, and while the rest of Nick was silently screaming, his seat of passion boldly, defiantly, offered the dedicated, lusty gaze of Jessica Day an unmistakable salute.
This revelation caused Nick, whose eyes still held fast to Jess', to lift his jaw slightly, almost in challenge, while his boxers busied themselves forming an impressive triangle. How would he recover from this…this…mutiny?
Jess' eyes remained locked on his now-prominent erection, and her lips glistened slightly as she made ripples in the tension by absently fluttering all ten of her fingers up to her chest. She visibly shivered at her own touch. Nick flicked his eyes briefly south, instantly resurrecting the heat in his abdomen: He noticed how her cleavage was, despite her apparent calm, quite flushed.
How could this happen so easily when they were alone? How had they kept this smoldering at bay for the past year? Was it because now they were both single? Where was Winston-the-Diffuser-of-Sexual-Tension when they needed him?! An aptly-timed text would have done the trick. Anyone? Help! The seconds slugged by, trying to make it through the thick essence of sex in the room.
Nick was glued to his spot, and his boner was pulsing hard – for her, he stupidly realized. He felt mortified. He felt enlightened. And as his mind and body found each other again, he felt incredibly aroused. Yes, he'd abruptly halted right in front of her, and somehow could not make himself move. But it was Jess who'd started them on this odd, and clearly erotic trajectory, a fact that she apparently also now realized. Suddenly she stood up, eyes wide, but now cast to the floor. Her voice reverberated through him, because everything from her at that moment would do that: "Oh God, Nick", she said.
Those three words, in that voice filled with pure animal want, were all too familiar. Yet the context threw Nick off. There was an apology in there, yes. But it was mixed with an unmistakable yearning, clear as day. He heard it. Hell, he felt it. He was certain. This wasn't just his damn imagination.
She stiffly strode past him, leaving a potent breeze filled with her scent in her wake. As he felt her pass, his skin responded to the virtual contact, and rippled into glorious, sensational goose bumps. It set him free. He waited until he heard the slam of her bedroom door, and made a beeline for the bathroom, and for the safe haven of the shower.