So hopefully this chapter will make the story a little more interesting. I haven't given all the information just yet, only the outline, but it will be explored in more depth.
Warning: Things are going to be getting OOC, but I won't completely strip them of their true characters.
Enjoy!
Since she doesn't plan on sleeping anyway, Jess takes to the L.A streets, turning corner after corner with no real knowledge of where it is she plans to walk to. With some luck, Cece will have returned from her shoot and would be prepared to have her stay the night. It would be exactly like it was before she'd moved into the loft: Sleeping on her friend's couch, browsing through sketchy websites to find a new home. She doesn't want to jump to conclusions about it though, Nick could come around almost as quickly as he'd stormed off. He has own little way of coping, which consists of locking himself away in his room and pulling the curtains and refusing any human contact for upwards of six hours. She'd have to give it time, because if this is hard for her, it sure as hell isn't going to be a walk in the park for him. Nevertheless, she's pissed. How could he have been so horrible? As if it were her fault that the universe had failed them in a way that most people would be overjoyed with. And secondly, how dare he accuse her of tampering with the protection? Did he not know her well enough to know that the last thing she would ever do is go behind his back? What the hell kind of person does he think she is?
The city air is humid. Her hair has gone from being daintily curly and shiny to a frizzy mess knotted at the ends and her make-up has been practically washed off by the salty tears streaming down her face that don't seem to want to stop. She needs this. She needs time alone from everyone: the guys, Cece, her colleagues who must think that she's incompetent with all the time she's been taking off. And now she's beginning to regret not wearing tights because her legs are bitterly cold as opposed to the flush of heat she feels in her cheeks. It's a sickeningly familiar feeling. It's also a feeling she's trying to wave off as best she can. It will not happen to her again, she won't go through any of it as much as she did last time. And if it does, she doesn't want to have to say that Nick is the reason for it. The last thing she wants to have happen is to be brought into a damn therapy session and asked by that painfully annoying monotone voice sourced from a woman who seems to wear only flax and wire-frame glasses, 'So why do you think that you experienced the events that you did?' As if there were some big psychological conspiracy instead of a medical mishap caused by biology and biology only.
She shakes the thoughts out of her head. She wants to be mad at a multitude of people right now. Nick, of course, for being the total dick that he was; Cece for encouraging her to tell him and then up and leaving her there to face the heartbreak of being rejected alone, Schmidt, because somehow when this all comes into play, he will be at the roots of it somehow, and then Nick again because he kind of deserves it. Alas, she is still Jess, and even she knows she's going to come out of this with about 0.01% of the same hatred she'd felt going in. It's frustrating as hell. The fact that she has no idea how to deal with it, and Jess Day always has a solution, is equally as frightening. So running around the late night streets of Los Angeles with the threat of being mugged or raped in some alleyway is simply a mere misfortune in her eyes. Hence, running away from her problems seems like a really good idea.
Nick's back is pressed against the wall. He sits propped up on pillows with his head in his hands. Man does he hate himself right now. He'd heard her. He'd heard the slam of her bedroom door about twenty minutes after he'd retreated to his room. And then there was a silence. A silence laced with anguish and dolour and he is at the surface of it. He'd waited. He'd contemplated getting his ass up and going in to her room to make things right, but he'd felt so ashamed of how he'd treated her that he simply couldn't muster up the courage to do that. And anyway, the patter of her ballet flats running out the door was basically his time-up.
He's still angry. He still cannot fathom how they'd managed to screw everything up without any intention to. But it isn't her fault. Try as he might, he can't bring himself to put sincerity behind the words he'd so regrettably uttered back there, and right now, he's praying she's picked up on that. That he could never mean something so unbelievably harsh, nor challenge the integrity of trust in their relationship. What the hell was he thinking? Accusing her of tampering with the birth control. It's not that awful that she is pregnant. What kind of harm could realistically come from it? Apart from the constant money struggles and sleepless nights, the child that she is carrying by him is admittedly a miraculous result of their love and compassion for one another, as cheesy as that crap sounds. And some couples would kill for the opportunity to have a baby. He's being ungrateful. He knows that. Somewhere in the mess of thoughts his mind is jumbled with he wants to feel nothing but adulation. He doesn't want this toxic energy he's causing spurring up the thing he's got going with Jess. Sure, maybe this wasn't in their 'five year plan' that, to be fair, they'd never actually discussed enough to be prepared for something like this, but it's happening and it's something he's just going to have to adjust to and put his own selfish beliefs aside. Which is why he immediately gets up off his bed, pulls on his maroon hoodie, and half jogs-half walks out of the loft and out to his car. As he's pulling the cardboard off, he decides that it's probably best that he get himself a real car considering the fact that he's about to responsible for a myriad of late slips and detentions once the kid has to be driven to school and his current hunk of worn out metal breaks down and causes a pile up on the highway. He fishes his phone out of his pocket and frantically skims through his contacts, hitting speed dial at the designated number.
"Nick?"
"Cece." He pants, buckling his belt into the clasp. "Hey, is Jess there?"
"Um, no? Why, what happened?"
"It's a long story. I'll drop by your place and tell you there."
There's a brief pause.
"Nick, I swear to God if you hurt her."
"Okay yeah this feels great I'm glad we're talking, I'll see you in a few minutes."
He hangs up abruptly, slightly terrified of coming face to face with the woman who could potentially rip him to shreds with her vicious words at the knowledge of him driving her out of the apartment in such a vulnerable state. Cece never hesitates to make sure someone suffers when they are held responsible for interfering with anyone close to her and Nick just isn't mentally prepared to take her words with a pinch of salt. Nevertheless, this isn't about him, this is about him finding Jess and getting her home safely.
He arrives at Cece's apartment a lot quicker than he'd anticipated. He'd been so caught up in his own little dream world, keeping his eyes peeled for Jess that he'd almost missed his turn into her complex. He buzzes into her room and makes his way up the stairs, with too much energy to withstand that extra few minutes for the elevator to arrive. He raps gently on her door, conscious that models are adamant about getting their beauty sleep and he'd rather only have to deal with one ticked off model for now.
"Come in." She says in a hushed tone, opening the door for him. He thanks her and stands around with his hands shoved down into his pockets. Every time he comes to her apartment, which is a very rare occurrence, it's always immaculate. There's rarely any food left lying on countertops, which isn't too surprising, and everything is stacked neatly, on shelves. He sometimes wished he lived here, except he'd probably have it destroyed within the first millisecond of crossing the threshold.
Cece saunters past him and returns to her spot on the couch. "So, what happened with Jess?"
Nick sighs and sits down beside her, throwing his head into his hands. "A lot happened with Jess."
"That's pretty vague, I'm gonna need a little more." She says sarcastically.
He looks up at her and shakes his head, struggling to remember everything that'd happened. "When you left she went to sleep."
"Oh thank God, I thought it'd take weeks before she started sleeping again."
"Why?" He asks, curiously.
"Never mind, keep going." She says, batting her hand carelessly.
"Okay." He starts, rubbing his palms together. "Jess was acting pretty weird when she woke up and then she just comes out and tells me she's pregnant."
"You better not have said anything to her, Miller, or I will ring your neck. I will." She says, pointing an accusing finger at him and clenching her teeth. "It took a lot for her to tell you that."
"Yeah I know." He panics, defending himself as best he can. "But I just got caught up in the spur of the moment and… I guess I blamed her?"
He's almost positive he can hear her growling, but he continues. "And then I went to my room. I thought about what happened and I wanted to go in to her and apologize, but left before I got the chance."
Cece closes her eyes and inhales deeply, trying to summon some kind of calmness before she dives at him and begins clawing at his flesh.
"Okay. I'm not mad at you."
He widens his eyes. "You're not?"
"You got a little upset, I understand." She shrugs. "I don't agree with it, and I seriously want to take a hot rod to your balls, but I'm not gonna do anything to make this worse than it already is. We need to find Jess."
"Thank God." He mutters, running a hand through his hair. "Well where do you think she is?"
Cece's already tapping in to her phone. "I'm gonna leave her a voicemail. She won't answer if she's trying to clear her head."
"But she'll definitely come here, right?"
Cece raises an eyebrow. "Nick, we've been friends since elementary school, she'll definitely come here."
He leans back in the couch and listens out for Jess' voice echo through the phone.
"Hey, it's Jess! I can't come to the phone right now because I'm probably trying out new cupcake recipes, but leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!"
"Hey Jess, just checking up on you. I know things didn't go well with Nick so I'm going to leave a spare key by the plant outside the door if you wanna come over and talk. Bye babe."
Nick stares at her as she places the phone back down. Sometimes he's a little envious of how close the bond between Jess and Cece is, but she's his only way around issues like these, and she's extremely compliant about helping him too.
"Do you think she's going to forgive me for this?"
Cece sighs, acknowledging the hurt in Nick's voice.
"Of course she will. Jess can't stay mad at people for too long, she isn't like other girls. Holding a grudge is something unheard of with her."
"Really?"
"I mean, yeah, it'll take time, but just as long as you're not too pushy with her, she'll come round."
"I just have one question." Nick says, determined to find the answer he's been looking for, for over forty eight hours.
"Shoot."
"Why the hell was Jess so upset? Was it the fact that she's pregnant or is it something else?"
Cece pauses and stares at him, unsure of whether or not she should deliver the news, something Jess should be the only one to do. But the fact that everything's already pretty messy, it's probably something she'd be better off doing to take some of the pressure off her. She purses her lips and makes direct eye contact with Nick.
"Okay Nick, I'm going to tell you something that you need to not bring up in conversation with Jess unless she initiates it, understood?"
He shakes his head hesitantly. "Understood."
"Okay."
Cece gets up from the couch and makes her way over to a cabinet at the other end of the room. She pulls out a small book, a photo album by the looks of it, and flips through it, scanning the pages carefully. She walks back over to the couch, but doesn't sit, and hands the album to Nick, keeping her thumb at the spine of the page. When he takes it from her, what he sees alarms him to such a terrifying extent that he feels the blood drain from his face. His surroundings become a faint blur and he's almost certain he's going to black out. He can see Cece looking down at him, inspecting his facial expression as though she were expecting there to be a specific look that he should be getting. But he feels numb.
"Read the caption under it." She whispers, her eyes awash with empathy and woe. He gulps and takes his fingers away from the bottom of the page. The blank ink is smudged, but it is not illegible. He takes a while to process what exactly it says, because for a brief moment, his knowledge of the English language lapses and it takes him a moment or two to bring himself back down to read and understand it without having to look over it forty times. There are only three columns, each with colons.
Patient: Day, Jessica
Dr: Harrison, Neil
Aug 7, 2003; 0914 hrs
The rest makes no sense to him. Except he knows damn well that the blackish-brown photo stuck onto the yellowed pages is nothing ordinary.
He's frozen. Cece stands over him, and he can tell that she doesn't know what to do either. He can barely find his voice, and he's relying on this silence to bring forth some kind of reaction from either one of them, just to knock the awkwardness and the tension from the atmosphere, because it seriously isn't helping him.
"You kept this?" He asks quietly, unable to raise his voice. He runs his finger across the glossy picture, his breathing shallow.
"I had to." She nods. "She couldn't keep it. It was too painful for her."
They don't say anything for a while. The only sounds to be heard is that of the air conditioning. Cece smiles a very subtle smile and places a hand on his shoulder, knowing just how daunting this whole situation is becoming for him.
"She needs you Nick." Cece croaks, nodding her head.
"I know." He sighs.