A/N: Hello again! I managed to write a second chapter! Hurrah! Hoping this is OK-ish and that I've kind of stuck with what the characters are actually like. Still in Nick's POV, might change that around soon! As always, I LOVE reviews (hint hint), even if they aren't positive, always useful getting advice on it etc, lemmie know whatcha think.

Also, THAT KISS. Let's face it, we all fainted a little at that. I hope it wasn't just me anyways. Thought I'd update this now, to give myself a week to get over it, and write about a different topic to it. Quick shout-out to Crissandcasper cos she's the best person to fangirl over New Girl with EH-VURR. Haha! Thanks y'all.

Nick was sat in homeroom, dreading his Calculus class coming up. He was terrible with numbers and his cranky old teacher was the type to humiliate you if you got an answer wrong. He'd actually done his homework for once though; his mom had gone crazy at him when she'd received a phone call about Nick's pending academic failure. He was acing other classes, such as English and History, but he needed those to go to law school one day, and math didn't hold much interest for him.

He found himself doodling on textbook someone had left behind on the desk the previous day, and realised he'd drawn a grumpy face. Maybe this suited him perfectly, he's always been the aggressive type; not the type to fight, but just constantly complain about everything. This was one of the things that just made him confused about the fact he had never been short of friends, was it the nicer you were the less friends you had? Perhaps if he was nicer, he's have more GOOD friends, instead of these people he pretended he'd keep in touch with once school ended.

Some girls who were in his friendship group were laughing…or giggling. It wasn't a nice laugh, it was a mocking one. He wondered who was at the receiving end of their bitching, so looked in the direction of their not-so discreet pointing. It was surprising to see that girl from the bus this morning again…Jess? NOT Jessica, if he remembered correctly. Why would they laugh at her? Then again, some girls didn't need a reason exactly, they just did it to make themselves look better.

"Oh my god, what is that skirt?!"

"It's like something from a Broadway show, and not in a good way…eww!"

"I know, it's like WHAAAT. I need sunglasses..eurgh."

It was Janey, the girl who liked him, and her girlfriends. In his mind he couldn't help but defend Jess, what was wrong with wearing a bright skirt? And why did he care? She seemed nice enough, maybe too nice; he didn't think it was normal to be so awake in the morning, especially on the first day of school. Miss Haddon – his teacher for homeroom – pointed Jess in the direction of an empty seat, just behind Nick's. She sat down and Nick could hear her clumsily arranging all her junk again, underneath her desk. He heard her apologising to everyone sat around her, and he felt a laugh passing his lips.

"See, Nick totally gets it, he's laughing too, quit being boring Brit. I can't believe she just hit Joe with that great big art book thing!"

He didn't even notice the girls continuing their conversation, but got snapped back to reality once he heard his name. Apparently one of them, Brit had told them to stop it, and they'd thought Nick was laughing at Jess too…but he realised he was thinking about her, and paying attention to what she was doing. He found it amusing that she'd been doing exactly the same now with hitting people with her folders, but apparently the girls didn't find it endearing, since Jess had just hit one of their boyfriends. Maybe Janey was just trying to impress him by being mean to her. He knew Jess was pretty, THAT much was obvious. Perhaps to other girls this was threatening.

That's when he felt a sharp corner poke the back of his leg quite hard. He cussed, and grabbed his leg, and heard a familiar voice apologise to him for the second time that day. As he turned around he noticed recognition had come to her features, and a smile appeared on her face. It was the kind of smile that you couldn't NOT smile back to, no matter how grumpy you are as a person.

"Oh my god, Nick, right? Hi..again! Sorry, I didn't mean to hit your leg with m folder, again, it's just-"

All of a sudden, Janey piped up, "Hey, you've already hit him? What's your problem? Sooo weird, god. You need to look where you're going, or you'll have issues with some people here, ok?!"

This was annoying to Nick. He was about to have a conversation with Jess, and Janey had to ruin it. Problem was that Nick couldn't even say anything to her about it if he wanted to keep his relatively cool status. He wasn't sure why he cared about that, but he had to let it slide.

He looked away from Janey and back to Jess; she looked absolutely humiliated. Nick knew the feeling of first days at new schools too well, and he had been lucky at this one, he'd been accepted, could he let this embarrassment happen to quirky Jess?

He lowered his voice and fully turned around to her, since the other girls had gone back to a conversation about Team Edward vs Team Jacob, or something equally boring. "Look Jess, I'm sorry about that. Get a locker, and put that stuff in it, just a bit of advice."

The bell rang and everyone started to get out of their seats, except Jess. Nick had his rucksack over one shoulder, and was ready to leave when he noticed her sat there digging through her satchel, with a confused but determined expression.

He had to ask…"Anything I can help you with?". She carried on, exasperated. "Seriously, you need to move, people will be in here for class in a minute, let's go."

She looked up at him for a second. Those eyes. Wow. Never mind, had to get her moving, they were the last two left in the room, and he didn't want to be late for calculus, to give his teacher another excuse to hate him.

"I have no idea where I'm going, I don't know how to get a locker, and I've lost my map of the school. So no, you can't help me, I'm a hopeless case." This shocked Nick, a hopeless case? Wasn't she the happiest person in California 10 minutes ago. With a sigh he agreed to help her, by picking up the infamous art folder. "Let's get this to a locker, then I'll tell you where you're going, I guess."

He couldn't help it. She wasn't a vile cheerleader type, and she wasn't a weird goth girl either, she seemed…cool? Not "in-crowd" cool, but cool because she WASN'T cool, in the same way as liking Journey was before Glee happened.

She stood up, pulled herself together, and got moving. She walked down the corridor a little to student services in silence, and not a comfortable silence either.; the kind when you don't know someone and topics are running through your mind, trying to select one that would fill the silence for a few seconds. "New school then. I was new here last year, so I get how you feel. I didn't lose my map though, and picked up my locker key as soon as I arrived. What did you do before homeroom?"

"I sat on the hill outside, and started to make a daisy chain…why?" It was impossible not to smirk at that, she was so strange, and said 'why?' with a straight face, as if she genuinely didn't think that was odd. They picked up her key, ran to her locker, and realised that she was 2 doors down from him for her calculus class. "Jess, we are SO late. I needed to be on time today, run...RUN!" She wasn't running, she was dawdling. He grabbed her arm to get her attention, quickly pointed to where she was going, and ran for his own class. By the time he got there, class had already started and Ms Corby looked at him with an unsurprised eye roll.

"Mr Miller, late again? Shocking. Detention. Sit down, and don't annoy me today."

He was a little pissed at Jess, she'd made him late on the one time it was important, and now he was going to suffer for it for the next hour, but there was a thought at the back of his mind, that it would be completely worth it.