Me and my big mouth. After a few days of things almost being normal again, I said something else stupid without thinking. Jess and I were in the bathroom, brushing our teeth. We tend to do that together a lot. She joked about things not being weird between us, suggesting we should go out to a fancy dinner. My response was "And then we can have sex." The look on her face when I said that! It was similar to when I said "Not like this" during the night we were locked up together because of True American. Kind of a look of surprise, curiosity even. Definitely not disgust. I still shouldn't have said it though. Of course we joked it off and before it got weird, Schmidt burst in saying he had found an awesome parking spot.
Schmidt knows about us. I guess he has kind of a sixth sense. He wasn't too thrilled when his suspicions had been confirmed. Jess and I tried to play it off like everything was normal, but we know it isn't. We talked about it away from Schmidt but anxiety kicked in and I changed the topic to the parking spot. I don't know why I can't just tell her how I feel. I kissed her for heaven's sake, surely she must have some idea. I know I denied it meant anything but Jess is pretty good at reading me and knowing when I'm telling the truth or not.
I almost blew it. We talked some more about it later and I told her how much I regretted kissing her. I looked over at her and saw the tears in her eyes and the upset look on her face and knew that what I had said held more power than I thought it would. She got up and left, the parking spot no longer important. And even though Schmidt wasn't exactly happy about what's been going on with me and Jess, he encouraged me to go after her. And of course I did. I'm Nick and Jess is the girl I'm in love with. When she hurts, I hurt, and I do everything in my power to try to make things better for her. I dread the day I won't be able to do this anymore.
She was on her way outside with a box of fish sticks to feed the stray cats when I made it back upstairs to the loft. I sucked up all of my damn nervousness and flat out told her that the kiss had indeed, meant something to me and the fact that it had made things weird was the only reason I had regretted it. And continuing on this "thrill", I also threw in that I had wanted to be with her since she'd moved in. The look on her face made me want to kiss her as hard as I could and pick her up and carry her off to my room to do everything I had ever imagined doing with her. But the moment was quickly ruined because Schmidt burst in the door. And then it got worse. He pulled up the "no nail oath" that he had kindly reminded me of earlier and pointed out that the other members of the loft had to kiss Jess as well. Seeing him kiss Jess was painful but seeing how much they both hated it and how Jess reacted brought me some gratification. The look of repulsion on her face was a far cry from how she looked when she had kissed me.
I don't want to push things with her. I could bring up what happened again tonight to her and maybe we could talk about it. Or I could just leave things alone and if we wind up together, fine. If we don't, then it just wasn't written in the stars for us. Leaving well enough alone seems like the better plan, because let's face it, I'm Nick Miller.