TUESDAY

This time he knew what woke him up. Jess and Schmidt were bickering like an old married couple, with Coach bellowing "SHUT UP!" every twenty seconds or so. Nick rubbed his face with a groan of dread.

Still, bacon was bacon, and he did possess a penis. So he crawled out of bed.

"Jessica Day, if I have to tell you one more time... I'll tell you what, give...just...GIVE me... THAT..." Schmidt was wrestling a spatula out of her hand when Nick walked in. He ignored the Dysfunctional Cooking Duo as he made the straightest line possible to the coffee pot...but Jess stopped slap-fighting Schmidt the second she saw him, and began tagging after him like an excited puppy.

"NICK! Guess what? It's a bRANd new day! And you know what that means?" She didn't really seem to expect him to answer, which was good, because he wasn't going to. "BRAND new possibilities! Everywhere you look! HEY! Here's a possibility! There's a possibility! Is that a possibility over there?" She was pointing wildly with a spoon she'd picked up, and Schmidt was running around frantically wiping up the droplets of butter that were flying off of it, practically before they hit the counter.

"THAT'S IT! Okay, seriously Jess, you're fired! You're fired for the day! I'm taking over! Just...just fill a plate and go SIT, for the love of God." Schmidt ran a composing hand down his face as he watched her grin and salute jauntily.

"Aye aye, captain! Right after I get Nick his bacon!"

"NO Jess!"

"I can get my own bacon Jess." He'd spoken quietly, but his words suddenly seemed to ring loud in the room, anyway.

"Weeeell, he speaks!" she drawled, patting Nick on the back. "Good morning to you too, Sunshine!" She pushed past him and took her plate to the table, where she sat across from Coach and started eating with a merry enthusiasm that seemed to ignore the fact that at least two out of her three roommates were currently pissed off at her. And Coach was always questionable.

"Do you guys know..." she said, licking a drop of syrup off her top lip, and waving a finger to emphasize the importance of the statement to come, "...that the first episode of 'Joanie Loves Chachi' was the highest rated American TV program on Korean television. Turns out, 'Chachi' is Korean for" she lowered her voice and whispered conspiratorially, "penis."

Nick practically threw his plate down at the head of the table, plopped down in a chair, started to shovel in some food, and ignored the conversation that followed between her and Coach.

"Did you just wiggle an imaginary cigar while saying the word 'penis'?"

"What? no! I mean, I don't think so."

"Because if you can't say the word penis without knocking imaginary ash off of an imaginary cigar, doesn't that make you, like, 12?"

"And paradoxically, born in, like, 1936?" Schmidt joined them, seeming a little calmer now, but still ruffled.

Jess continued to be unflappingly uninsulted, and merely tilted her head in thoughtful consideration. "That may explain why I've been accused of being both juvenile, and an old soul."

"Wait, what explains that?"

"No theory explaining that has been advanced here."

"You'da thunk they would have changed the name 'Chachi' to something less scandelous when they aired it there."

His three roommates turned towards his sudden statement in blank surprise. Dammit, did those words come out of HIS mouth? Right when he'd decided to just eat his bacon and cut out of there without getting caught up in her nonsense, here he was, dignifying her nonsense with a perfectly logical observation.

But the brilliant smile that he was rewarded with sort of made him forget why he was ever mad at her to begin with, and damn if he didn't find himself giving her a little smile back in return.

And damn if the smiles didn't kinda feel like unspoken apologies and forgivenessess.

"What about Chang-hi?" Schmidt's voice broke the little daze Nick had found himself in.

"Huh?"

"Korean Chachi. What about Chin-hwa? Chun-hee? Chung-ho?"

Coach was wide-eyed. "Dude, are you spouting off actual Korean names, or just being horribly offensively racist? Please let me know, so I know whether or not I should feel like punching you right now."

"Oh Coach, " Jess patted his hand lovingly as she cooed, "You always feel like punching someone!"

"Korean cooking lessons, bro. Summer of '98. I was the only white boy in the class. Represent, whaaaat?"

Nick vaguely looked around for the douche-bag jar, but was more preoccupied with saying, "OR-what if they changed it to something that sounded completely innocent in Korean, but still meant 'penis' in English?"

His roommates greeted this hypothetical possibility not only as if it made sense, but as if it was, in fact, brilliant. They finished their breakfasts while proferring viable options, and even Coach was laughing so hard that he forgot to punch anyone for possible racism. Favorite suggestions included "Wang-dong", and "Hung-Lo".

And Nick found his mouth doing this weird thing...this weird, tipped-up at the corners thing...for hours after everyone had left for work.

-

He and Jess amused themselves by texting a few more random name ideas back and forth throughout the day, and soon he found himself automatically smiling in a Pavlovian response every time his phone vibrated. Once he was at work he couldn't always check it right away, and the prospect of a silly little message from her, just waiting there for him in his pocket, somehow made the whole night seem a little lighter and brighter.

When The Perfect Name finally occurred to him, he decided not to text it to her, but to save it for breakfast the next morning. If it was because he wanted to see her blue eyes light up, and her pert nose crinkle, and her scarlet lips tilt in response in person, well, that was something that he didn't admit, even to himself.

But he did imagine the husky giggle that his Perfectly Obvious suggestion would elicit.

He got home in the wee hours of the morning, and before he even slipped his key in the door, he saw the blue light of the TV shining beneath it, and knew that she was still up. Walking in and finding her watching Dirty Dancing was almost comforting in its familiarity.

He went to the kitchen, got a beer out of the fridge, and then joined her quietly, with a content sigh of weariness.

She didn't even look up at him, but launched straight into asking, "Do you ever wish you had a dog?"

"Why do you ask? Is there a dog in this movie?"

"No, you just seem like a dog kind of a guy. When you walked in, it seemed like there should be a dog here to run to the door and greet you. Something big and sloppy and drooly. You could train it to get your beers from the fridge, and then it could lay down in front of the couch and you could use it for an ottoman in between scratching its ears with your feet." She perkily pantomined the action.

Nick cocked his head at her in contemplation, and wondered for a second why his face was hurting. Then he realized that he hadn't smiled this much in one day for as long a he could remember.

"You're the strangest girl I ever met." Was what he wanted to say. But he knew it would sound more like an insult than a compliment, so he let the moment pass.

"Why are you still up? I worked overtime, it's got to be about 4 a.m. You have work tomorrow, you should be in bed."

"It's got to be about 4 a.m., you have work tomorrow, you shouldn't be drinking."

Defensive anger flashed through him and he said, "Dammit Jess, seriously? I'm just trying to look out for you, here!"

She raised an ironic eyebrow and merely said, "Ditto, sailor."

"Son of a...!" But it was hard to argue with truth, and the anger left him as fast as it had flared. "Oh, ok, fine...touche'."

They sat watching the movie in silence for few minutes, and he suddenly felt intensely how very much they really were alike. Both hurting more than anyone knew, and both handling it in their own defective ways.

"Cock-chi."

She looked at him sharply. "What?"

"Korean Chachi. It was staring us in the face the whole time. Cock-chi. You won't be able to top that one, so didn't even try."

And sure enough, her eyes crinkled, and her nose tilted, and her mouth lit up.

Or something like that.

He was really tired, and it was hard to think very clearly when she laughed that husky little giggle, not much more than the sound of the air escaping her body.

He stood up, and saluted her with his bottle before downing its remains.

"And with that, Miss Day, I bid you adieu. Morning will come way too early, please do remember that I like my bacon extra crispy."

And as he headed towards bed, the Dirty Dancing soundtrack trailed behind him like a lullaby. Yes, it had become predictable, but in Nick Miller's world, predictable was a good thing.