A/N: Thanks for all the positive feedback!
Jess woke up with a headache, a dead phone, and a deep sense of regret.
She rolled out of bed, took two steps, and reconsidered. She gingerly laid down on the bare floorboards, next to the mound of clothes that occupied the floorspace near her bed. The floor was cold. Tequila makes me take my clothes off. Great. That was really great.
She was going to stay in her room and never come out.
In some parts of the world, students were taught over Skype, right? Like girls in Saudi Arabia.
She could hear movement outside her room, in the hallway and the kitchen. It was probably Nick. All the movements, all the voices, were probably Nick. Why had she attempted the sultry approach? Jess did not do sultry. Cool and sexy were admirable aspirational traits that maybe in a decade she could trade her quirky and lovable chips in for. Until then, she was going to pray that the polka dotted peep show worked for the men in her life.
Why did she even want to seduce Nick? Well, he was hot. In a really rugged barebones sort of way. And it had been a really long time. A really long time.
"Uggh!" She slammed the floorboards with her fists and wailed.
Schmidt popped his head through the doorway. "Jess, why are you lying on the floor?"
"Because!"
"That doesn't even look clean." Schmidt prodded her with the tip of his toe. She stirred. Part of her laundry fell onto his shoe. Schmidt retracted. "That's definitely not clean."
"Where's Nick?" she mumbled.
"Nick left," Schmidt said.
"He did?"
"He went running."
Jess looked up at him. "But Nick doesn't run."
Schmidt shrugged. "I like to think of it as entertainment for the whole neighbourhood."
"Oh god."
"What's wrong with you anyway?" Schmidt asked. He sat down on the floor next to her, although not touching the clothing.
Jess lay next to him, torso half-covered in pairs of unwashed tights and sweaters. Looked up at Schmidt with big sad blue eyes. "I just can't be cool and sexy, Schmidt."
Schmidt laughed. "Jess, that's crazy."
"No, it's not," she said, sitting up. "Sex is so much work, Schmidt. I always have to try so hard. I just want to wake up one day and be smooth and attractive and have men gravitate towards me while I bat my eyes mysteriously like Sophia Loren. And it's never going to happen."
"That's the thing, Jess," Schmidt said. "It will happen if you want it to. Look, you know what I always say – there are two types of women in this world. There are planets and there are stars. Planets are people like Nick or Winston, who orbit in celestial nothingness hoping that one day they will get noticed because their gravitational centerfield strikes a lady's fancy. But you and Cece, you're stars. You've got your pick any day of the week."
Jess looked at him. "I don't feel like a star, Schmidt."
"That's because you have to act like a star to be a star," Schmidt said. "You just have to let go. Let it happen because it's going to. Feeling sexy is half the battle of being sexy. Take it from someone who has studied the art of being sexy like it was twelfth grade calculus."
"Really?" Jess said hopefully
"Yup," Schmidt said, getting up. He walked to her doorway, and then turned around. "And pro-tip, it never hurts to wear unforgettable lipstick."
Jess was sitting on the sofa staring aimlessly at the television when she heard the turn of the doorknob. She felt something quicken in her chest; rap on her pulse. And she suppressed it. Sophia Loren she thought in her head. You are a star.
The door opened and he came through it.
And her brain stopped working.
He was wearing a pink t-shirt – the soft thin kind, which meant that you could see his sweat soaking through the fabric. Which wasn't sexy on some people. But on Nick it really was. The tanned thick arms. His legs were imposing and muscular. The sun had browned his skin, like coffee with two creams.
Nick ran his hand through his hair, which made it sweatily stick up in all directions. Hot. And then he looked at her. Really looked at her.
"Hey, Jess," he said. His voice was deep.
"Hi, Nick," she said.
He walked towards her, almost uncertainly. He didn't break eye contact. He reached the couch.
"Mind if I sit here?" he asked.
"Sure," Jess said, and she moved her feet so that he could sit down. Her legs felt warm. Because his body was warm, because he had been running, and sweating. He sat next to her. He looked at her. In that way that made her spine curl. Nick.
"Your lips look great," he said.
She felt blood rush to her face.
"Thanks," she said. "It's new. The lipstick, I mean. Not my lips. These old things."
He smiled at her. Like he could tell she was nervous.
Sophia Loren. Jess straightened herself.
"So, how was your run?" she asked.
"You know, I've got to be honest," Nick said. "I'm not a runner. I don't look good when I run. I kind of looked like Julie Andrews in the opening scene of the Sound of Music, swinging my trunks down the sidewalk, only my arms were the trunks."
Jess laughed. "Whoa there, world. Road Danger. Nick Miller."
"More of a Pedestrian Danger, really."
"Sounds like you belong on the registry." Nick stared at her. Jess put her fingers nervously in her hair. "I just took that to a really weird place."
"It's okay," Nick said softly. He looked at her. With really dark eyes. His skin must feel so nice. She wanted to run her hands along his jaw and feel the stubble. Because it would feel scratchy. Not because of anything else.
"Last night was fun," he said.
"It was."
"We should do that again," he said.
She felt her breath catch somewhere. In her throat. She looked at him. His eyes looked meaningfully back at her. And she smiled, this time without nervousness.
"Yeah, we should," she said.
"I have to work at the bar tonight," Nick said. "But maybe next weekend, when you're free to hang out, or something?"
Next weekend was so far away.
"Yeah," she said. She looked down at her lap. He smiled. He touched her shoulder. Her whole body felt warm.
"I'm going to shower," he said. "If Schmidt sees me sweating on the couch he's going to insist on having it drycleaned."
Jess laughed. "Okay."
It was midnight. Late night. Deep night. It was a dark night. Jess stood in her bedroom, looking at herself in the mirror on the wall. She was alone in the apartment. Schmidt was at Cece's. Winston was with Shelby. As always. Nick was at work.
She had put the dimmer switch in her bedroom on low, and imagined that it would look like the lighting in the bar. Vague and sultry. Her dress was black lace. Because that was kind of sexy, but also not planet-y. And her lipstick was really red. It made her want to eat her own mouth.
Jess made eye contact with herself in the mirror.
"You can do this," she said. And, turning around to make sure nobody was watching, she looked back at the mirror. And then stood up really tall, with her arms above her head, like a striking bear pose. And growled. Loudly. Because that was what you were supposed to do before an interview, to make yourself feel more imposing and more powerful. That was how you rocked an interview. And wasn't this kind of an interview?
Jess left the apartment and entered the bar where Nick was pouring a drink at the counter. He smiled at her when she made her way over to the counter. She sat down on one of the stools and he leaned over to her. Whispered in her ear.
"You got lonely up in the apartment?" he asked.
"Actually I came here to keep you company," Jess said. "All work and no play makes a dull shift."
"Well, I appreciate it," Nick smiled. "Always."
He turned around to get a glass when Jess put out her arm to stop him. He turned around. She looked at him.
"I actually wanted to talk to you about something," she said.
"Okay," Nick said.
Jess sat back in her seat. The bar stool made her feel tall.
"I think we should do it," she said.
"What?"
"I think we should sleep together and not tell anyone," Jess said. She felt Nick's eyes burning holes in her skull. "I think that our friendship is mature enough to sustain a little NC-18 nudity. And given that we both seem to currently suffer from the same problem, I think this is an easy solution. We don't have to … do it … all the time. But if there's an itch that we don't want to scratch ourselves… I think we should do this."
Nick was staring at her. Hard. Like he was trying to restrain himself. His eyes were dark. And suddenly, Jess felt panic. Coursings through her. Like her limbs were on fire. What had she done? Why had she asked him that? This was Nick. Nick. She had just propositioned her roommate at the bar where he worked and he was looking at her like that. With the eyes. With big black circles and he was biting his lip. Like he wanted to bite hers.
"You're not worried that it will become complicated?" he asked. His voice was raspy.
Was he agreeing to this?
"I think we can handle it," she said.
Everything was on fire. Jess felt dizzy. Nick stood behind the bar, with his hands on the wood. His fingers a foot from hers. He looked at the bar. And then her. And she could hear voices calling to him to order drinks. He looked at them. He looked back at her. At her eyes. Then her hair. And her lips. He looked twice at her lips.
"I'm in," he said.
Her legs were shaking on the bar stool because her heart could not handle this. She felt excitement pounding through her chest, coiling in her stomach. Between her legs.
"Great," she said.
He stared at her. With black eyes. That were dark under the light. The low lighting of the bar. Suddenly, flickering before her mind – a series of still motion pictures of her and Nick and their bodies and no clothes and whispers and thick hot air and her mattress and the dark. Nick.
She slid off the bar, smoothly, like she imagined Sophia Loren would.
"I'll see you back at the loft," she said.
"Yeah," Nick whispered. "See you, Jess."
Jess left the bar feeling as though she was on the fire. Just like the sun.
A/N: I'll try to get another update out soon. Please leave a review!
