"The first time I saw Jess was I standing in her empty room and I was looking out the window. She was trying to get in the building. Pretty hilarious, she didn't have her glasses on and she was bumping into stuff."
(Nick, 6x22 "Five Stars for Beezus")

"Steve was in love with Nick?"
"Oh yeah, and he never told him. That sweet gay coward."
(Jess and Winston, 6x22 "Five Stars for Beezus")

Nick seriously wondered what went through Schmidt's head sometimes. First he wanted a new roommate out of the blue to mess up the entire ecosystem and THEN he goes and invites a girl over, fully expecting Nick to go along with it.

Nick tried to be cool about it. She probably wouldn't even want to live here. And even if by some weird happenstance, she did, maybe Schmidt was right and she did have some friends…

Of course, he hadn't made any sort of attempt at pursuing a woman in four years… not since Caroline.

Nick got up off his bed to walk around the apartment before he got himself into a funk about his ex-girlfriend. He would not become an emotional wreck in front of some random girl.

It was true though. He hadn't had to talk to a girl in that way for years. Did he even know how to still do it? Did he ever? Had Caroline just been a fluke? Schmidt and Coach were always telling him to go try his luck on all sorts of random girls they saw, some prettier than others. But for sure, they were all out of his league and worst of all, they were not Caroline.

Nick slapped himself in the face. Enough! No Caroline thoughts. She dumped you without explanation. You hate her! She's not even that great. No one could possibly be that amazing! Let's be real. Get it together, man!

Nick wandered into the spare room that Schmidt hoped to rent out to a new roommate. It hadn't been occupied in over two years. It previously belonged to their roommate, Steve, who had only lived there for a few months before spontaneously moving out without much of an explanation. He only said that he "needed some space." Whatever that meant.

Nick hadn't been that close to him in the first place. He sort of weirded him out because all he did was stare at him from across the room and if Nick ever talked to him he would just laugh and then mumble some weird excuse— like he remembered he needed to wash his windows— before running away.

He did seem to like Schmidt though. They both would talk for hours about how to properly organize a shelf or their favorite types of designers or what they recently read in Vogue. Nick couldn't understand it nor did he care.

Well, Steve was gone now and his room was empty. There was a half-filled bookshelf, a beanbag chair, some cardboard boxes filled with random stuff, a broken lamp, a rolled up rug, an empty cooler, and an old dusty fan. This was the designated storage area where they threw things that didn't have a place anywhere else. So where was all this stuff going to go if someone moved in? Schmidt really wanted to mess all that up?

"Help! Someone! Can anyone help me?"

Nick looked around. It was a female voice. But where was it coming from?

His eyes immediately fell on the window and he realized it was open. No wonder he felt a draft. He wondered how long it had been like that. He strode across the room to shut it. Just as he was grabbing the latch, something caught his eye on the street below: it was bright red and moving rapidly.

It was a woman wearing a red sundress which normally wouldn't have been that alarming, but she was charging at the door to the building like a stampeding bull. Nick stared at her, incredulous. He was sure he had never seen this girl in his life, so she obviously didn't live here. Was she trying to break in? …In broad daylight?

After crashing into the door, she fell back, rubbing at her shoulder and limping away in pain. Once she recovered, she stamped her foot like an upset child and began to pace.

She started trying to talk to passerbys, bumping into them as they passed. Nick was surprised at how clumsy she was and began to wonder if she was blind. No one paid much attention to her except for when she unceremoniously collided with them. She would sometimes stop and bang her fists on the door before going back to crashing into— er, talking to people. It was almost funny to watch her determination.

After a minute or two of this madness, she suddenly yelled up towards the sky, "Hello! Can anyone hear me? I don't live here! I need to get into this building!"

As she was saying this, she continued to walk around in circles. Nick wanted to shout down to her to look out, but it was too late. She slammed right into a sign post and fell straight backwards, her feet flying above her head. Nick winced, but also found himself chuckling as she struggled to pull her skirt back down, apparently unharmed and still on the ground.

She was easily the craziest and yet entirely entertaining person he had ever seen. And there she was just lying on the sidewalk. It was a rather pathetic and somehow humorous sight. He felt a strange feeling bubbling in his stomach… he sort of wanted to talk to her.

She was still lying on the pavement, but she had pulled out her phone and was casually texting, unaware of the people stepping over and around her. Nick smirked again and made up his mind. He was going down to let her in. Perhaps this was his chance to try talking to a female in that way. She made him laugh, at least. No girl had managed that in a long time.

He exited the apartment and hurried to the elevator. He tapped his foot impatiently as the down arrow appeared. He began to worry that she might give up and leave or that someone else might let her in and he would never see her again. He wanted to at least see her up close. He couldn't see her face very well from upstairs.

Completely out of patience for the elevator, he ran to the stairs. He practically flew down them, surprising even himself. He didn't know this girl at all and yet he was practically willing to break his neck to get a chance to talk to her. What had gotten into him?

He burst through the door that exited the stairs and ran to the front door, stopping just beside them. He attempted to compose himself a little before he let her in. He took a deep breath and then opened them.

She was nowhere in sight. He looked both ways, up and down, across the street... but she was gone.

Nick grumbled and kicked at nothing. This was why he never tried at anything. It always ended in disappointment. He got his hopes up just for the briefest moment and was crushed once again. So typical.

He sighed heavily and turned to go back in the building.