A/N: Okay, bad news: The one-shot continues to elude me. But also, good news: I really enjoyed writing more for this story, and I'm hoping it's an improvement over my first one.
Here's Chapter 2 – I hope you like it! I will post the 3rd and final chapter in a few days. Thanks for your comments, encouragement, and inspiration! All of it really means a lot.
Chapter 2
Technically there is nothing perfect about what's happening right now because there are a half dozen people watching as Nick and Jess very indiscreetly stumble into a random alleyway, and the spectacle is infinitely more appealing to passers-by than decorum. And adding to the imperfection is a brick jammed against Jess' left shoulder blade, and also the afternoon brightness, and dammit, most of the bystanders are sticking around. Because drunk people making out in an alley is funny.
But despite these glitches—and let's be honest here, the two of them are mostly oblivious to the glitches—the sounds Jess makes as Nick is feverishly kissing her, pressed against the brick wall with her arms thrown around his shoulders- are creating a feedback loop of very perfect sensations. Nothing is slowing down, everything is building and Nick feels amazing.
But he's also beginning to wonder in a tiny way if this is whole thing is such a good idea.
And he's wondering that because his hand is halfway up her dress now and god, her skin, and he's forgotten how soft it feels—like a rare, fine silk—and the way she gets goose bumps as he trails his fingers up the outside of her thigh. And women in general feel pretty good, but this is Jess who is grabbing his ass and then working her hand down to pull his thigh between her legs so she can press herself against it, and it's Jess who is dragging her fingernails through the hair on his scalp, and these sexy, sexy vibrations coming from her throat are imperceptible to human ears, but are, like, extremely perceptible to other things, such as Nick's penis.
Dammit, people, yeah, we'll get a room if you all get a life, Nick is thinking with like, 0.6% of his brain, but anyway, he pulls away from her because he can see only one trajectory for this whole scenario, and none of you idiots are invited, so get the hell out of here!
He clears his throat with his large hands on her slim waist, and looks to where the people were, and they're (mostly) gone now, so he can say what he wants to say.
"Hey, I'm glad you asked me to get a drink with you."
She's flushed and flustered and kind of wondering why they're talking instead of doing the other stuff. The awesomer stuff from a few seconds ago.
"Yeah, Nick, me too. I've wanted to… ask you. For a while now."
She leans forward and kisses his neck, which makes him close his eyes, and with his eyes closed, it's a little easier for him to say the next thing.
"Well I'm really glad you did, Jess, and the timing couldn't have been better. It was actually kind of perfect, so I don't want you to think this is, like, a rebound thing or anything."
She's mostly listening to his words, but with those last few her kissing stops right on his jugular. She can feel his pulse fluttering on her lips, which move against his skin when she asks,
"Wait, what? What rebound thing?"
She steps away and looks at him, begins to push his hands away too. She feels all the tendrils of her being that were out and free and gallivanting all over him just a few moments ago start to recoil and retreat back into herself at that word.
Rebound?
Crap. Nick kind of hates himself right now. But the last person he made out with was Kate, and that was only last week. And when Jess emailed him out of the blue to get together, also just last week, her email was the thing that made him shower after three days of moping around his apartment. His friend, Jess, wanted to see him, and that's why he showered. But the thought – I wonder what Kate is doing right now – that's what he was thinking while he took the shower.
Kate was the blond woman—Nick's date—from Schmidt's six-months-ago birthday party. No one since he and Jess dated had really made much of an impression or had had much of an impact. But Kate kind of blindsided him. She was a whirlwind – she was beautiful and exciting, and she was a mess. She was disorganized, flighty, and volatile. And she made Nick feel like he really had his shit together. And that made him feel great. And he got caught up in taking care of her over the six-ish months they were dating, until he found some questionable texts from an ex-boyfriend and shortly after that, a pair of mystery boxers in her bedroom.
Of course Nick can't stand infidelity, and of course he confronted her, hoping for the best, but she'd barely offered any defense, and then she stole a bunch of his t-shirts and said she never wanted to see him again, and a part of him was like, good riddance, but more of him felt wounded, betrayed, and so hurt. It was hard for him to stop thinking about it—about her.
And it was like that for a few days until the email from Jess came and when he opened it everything started to seem like maybe it could feel good again. Taking a shower definitely helped, so there was that.
And now here they are, but the trajectory has clearly shifted somewhat. But what was he supposed to do? He had to be honest, even more so now than before the whole Kate thing happened. Everything is still sort of fresh, right? Plus, he honestly had no idea when she emailed him to get together that things with Jess would play out like this.
"I'm sorry, Jess. I didn't mean to make things weird or anything. I didn't expect any of this—" insert Nick's large hand waving around between them "—to happen. Or anything. And I just thought you should know."
"What are you talking about, Nick? What rebound thing? What did you want me to know?"
She asked it, but now she's looking around for her purse, which she'd let fall to the ground in the flurry of her partiality to holding onto Nick's ass, and now Nick is starting to feel really dumb. He wants to take it all back and put his hands where they were and put his lips where they were and forget about Kate.
And he kind of does start to forget about Kate, actually, and he has Jess to thank for that – again. Because now Jess is heading back down the alleyway to the street, and she's holding her purse and getting smaller. The vacuum she's creating with her departure kind of sucks out all thoughts of Kate and they're replaced by thoughts of a receding Jess. Nick is finding that one single thing way more unsettling than anything Kate ever did, or ever could do.
He watches dumbly as Jess walks like someone who wants to go somewhere else now, and not at all like someone who might still be interested in nailing the ex-boyfriend she's been seriously pining over for the better part of the past year.
That latter someone would have probably waited for that ex-boyfriend, would have held his hand, or maybe taken his arm and wrapped it around herself. She would have smiled up at him with hooded eyes filled with desire, and there he'd see that the original trajectory was still very much intact. And he would have thanked his lucky stars, as he leaned down to kiss her again, forgetting every other woman he'd ever cared for as he began to lead her down the few blocks to his apartment.
"I'm really drunk, Nick," she says when he finally catches up with her. He's out of breath and also really drunk, but maybe a little less so now with all the manic trotting, now that the blood is rushing around so much, getting all oxygenated and whatnot.
She stops on the sidewalk, and they're closer to her apartment now, than they are to his. He makes a mental note of that as he reaches for her, takes her arms, and tries to connect again. But she won't look at him.
"Jess—hey." His voice is soft.
"I thought you knew… that I was dating Kate. It was a new thing when I brought her to Schmidt's birthday, and I know we didn't really talk much, but I just thought…"
He trails off as he sees her eyes filling with tears, and she's annoyed. She's annoyed that she had no idea, and that no one told her, and also that she cares so much about it, and that the caring part hasn't gone away, still doesn't seem to be going away.
She reaches up and wipes her eyes.
"Yeah, I didn't know, Nick. I had no idea what that was—who she was, and I'm sorry—I'm sorry I'm being so stupid about it. It's fine, really, but—"
"—No, Jess, you're not being—"
"—of course, you know, you're gonna date people. You can even date them for a while sometimes, and you think it's going to… be something—real, you know? And sometimes it works out. But sometimes it just doesn't."
She looks at him, feeling more hurt than she thinks she has a right to, but it's there, so.
"And you know, to be honest, it never even occurred to me that it would ever occur to you that I might be a… that I could ever be a rebound. Not to you, of all people, Nick."
She sniffs; he's just listening. He's feeling a little sad and a little confused.
"And yeah, I get it that you're in a phase where you want to have a distraction, but I can't do it. I can't do that for you, Nick."
Jess forces a smile and kind of maneuvers herself out of his semi-embrace, and she believes this whole thing is over now that she's stated her boundaries.
She gives his arm a friendly pat and there's a stab in her chest but she says it anyway, because she means it when she tells him,
"I'm sure you won't have any trouble finding someone who can do that for you."
She starts walking away again and he's speechless because it really seems like what he thought he'd said back there in the alley is the complete opposite of what it seems like she heard.
"Hey, wait, Jess. Please."
She hasn't really gone far, but she's heading toward her apartment, and he takes a few long strides till he's right next to her. He wants her to stop. He wants to connect with her again, so badly.
"I was trying to say the right thing back there, Jess, but I think it was exactly the wrong thing."
He stops walking and grasps the tops of her arms again, forces her to look at him, says the first thing that comes to mind.
"Jess, it was because of you."
She bites.
"What do you mean? What was because of me?"
He really wants to answer her, he wants to fix this, but all the words he has right now sound truly stupid.
But he still has to take a stab at it.
"I took a shower because of you."
Nope.
She looks doubtful and scowls, shaking her head a little.
He tries again.
"Everyone is a rebound in the grand scheme of things, am I right?!"
No.
She's staring at him because he's making this worse, and he knows he didn't succeed in expressing enough, or expressing anything, really. And the worst part is that she's right that he wants a distraction, but that's seriously only because he can't stop thinking about kissing her again. He is focused on nothing else but her lips and the way she's breathing and the way she smells and the infinite blue of her eyes.
"Nick—" she starts.
"It's all because of you, Jess." Now he's sounding a little panicky, like it's now or never, because he really doesn't want her to walk away anymore – or ever again, actually.
Her voice is quiet.
"All of what is because of me?"
She knows she's pressing him and she doesn't care, because it's working and he bursts.
"Everything is because of you, okay? All of the everything, Jess, because you're at the center like the mountain-queen of all of it, and anything before you and anything after you just goes way, way out there, like, all of those other things and those other people just go away when you do anything or say anything, you know? Because as soon as you say anything or want anything, Jess… it's like, I just can't—I can never say no to you, and I don't want to say no to you. Because you're all of the everything and you're at the top, Jess. You're at the top of the center of everything ever, ever."
Nick exhales long and slow, checks off a box somewhere in the ether because damn, that felt right. It felt so right, but he's wondering if it sounded right. His heart is racing, but by the look on her face, he'd give it a solid 'maybe'. But that's like a C+/B- and that's definitely passing, so he feels happy.
She looks up at him and smiles shyly.
"I'm at the top of the center, huh?" She points her smile down at their feet, which are pointing at each other, as she lowers her long lashes, and the way they fall onto her cheeks kind of squeezes his heart. He just nods a little.
"Well, that's curious. I didn't realize."
"It's the truth."
"It's the truth? Are you sure?"
His heart is still pounding. The floodgates are open. It's out there now, and it feels exhilarating and panic-inducing and chest-constricting and really fucking amazing.
"Yeah, Jess. I'm sure." He swallows.
"I mean, I want to believe you."
"I'm sure, Jess. I'm sure. I'm sure."
His head is spinning. The confession was like riding a rubber raft over a waterfall and now he's just falling, blinded by the spray of feelings and woozy from the butterflies bouncing around in his stomach.
She stares at him.
It feels like a short decade passes.
"Come over." She says, finally. She points in the direction of her apartment.
"Are you sure you want me to?" he suddenly asks, all off-beat, extra-loud robot style.
He needs to drown out the voice in his head that's calling him a complete idiot for not just nodding and following her.
He feels really lucky when she doesn't answer, just looks over her shoulder as she starts walking.
