Second chapter!
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'Cause It's You
Chapter Two
November 27, 2015
The first time Jess ever sees Nick, she's sitting in his living room.
She's so incredibly nervous because this is the fifth apartment she's been to today and the absolute last thing she expected when the front door opened was to be greeted by three dudes but that's exactly what happened. She sits on her hands to keep from waving them around too much while she answers their questions and has to sing when her nerves get the best of her - four times so far, and she's only been there for twenty minutes. Inwardly, she winces at the three confused scowls from the couch in front of her.
The guy who said she could call him Schmidt is looking at her almost predatorily and that makes her a little uncomfortable, a feeling that only intensifies when he takes his shirt off. She feels a little better when the other two yell at him to make a contribution to what they call the "Douchebag Jar," and when they hold it out to him she notes the fact that it's half-full of crumpled dollar bills, which tells her this might actually be normal Schmidt behavior. The guy who told her his name was Coach has a sly grin that makes her a little nervous, but after sitting before him for half an hour, he doesn't seem so bad.
And then there's Nick.
He's a little unkempt and it looks like he has tiny scabs all along his exposed forearms but he's got this hard look in his brown eyes that sort of interests her. He's attractive enough and he talks with a slang and accent she thinks is Midwestern - Milwaukee, maybe - and he has a grumpy troll kind of vibe, but it's a little endearing.
Once she gets past her initial nerves, she really looks around the apartment. It is by far the nicest she's seen so far. Their ad was true - it really is very light and sun-soaked. Something Spencer never would have allowed at their house, she realizes with a pang, since he liked a darker, cozier kind of vibe. No, she thinks to herself, I need the opposite of whatever he would want. I need this apartment.
Nick seems apprehensive to agree at first which she tells herself is normal because they did just meet less than an hour ago but Dirty Dancing is burning a hole through her backpack pocket and she's pretty much constantly on the verge of drowning in her own tears and in her emotionally compromised state she forgets to sugar coat those facts. They react the way all guys react when they find out her best friend is a model and then they disappear into the bathroom, leaving her alone in their kitchen.
It...wouldn't be the end of the world if she just looked around a little on her own. She's well within her rights as a potential renter to check out her potential new bedroom. It's just happenstance that it's right next to the bathroom where they're meeting to decide her fate. And the only reason she tiptoes over is to keep from stomping and annoying whoever lives below this amazing beautiful complete-opposite-of-Spencer's-taste apartment.
The spare room is beautiful and big and the closet is so large it makes her mouth water at the possibilities but the thing that captures her interest the most is that she can barely hear the echo of dude voices bouncing off the bathroom tiles through the wall. But it's not clear enough and Jess is just beyond caring at this point, she wants it so bad she throws all pretenses out the window and stands with her ear against the bathroom door.
She's shocked when she overhears them decide that she's in. She's in.
She's wearing two hats and four coats over her dress when she ends things with Spencer for good.
She's surrounded on all sides by her new roommates and she can hear Cece loading her things into the trunk of her car somewhere behind her and Vanessa Williams is still sort of ringing in her ears along with her pounding heartbeat. Schmidt's wearing her yellow cat hat when he slaps Spencer across the face and Winston jams her pink bonnet onto his head in solidarity which is cool since they've known each other for less than twelve hours and Nick's wearing the fuzzy red beanie her mother knit for her seven years earlier when he threatens to physically harm Spencer right there in the front yard and suddenly she knows that breaking up with Spencer is probably the greatest thing that ever could have happened to her.
She relishes in being able to tell him that, in being able to watch his stupid perfect face fall when she ends it - like really ends it. It's a strength she never even knew she had that courses through her veins, and even though it stings when Spencer basically accuses her of acting like a child, she feels like a powerful warrior princess slinging spears right through his chest when she fires back.
Perhaps the most jarring thing that happens is that instead of grumbling about Jess dropping - and likely breaking - the TV in the middle of the front lawn of the house she thought she'd live in forever, Nick wordlessly asks for a fist-bump on the walk back to the car. She can practically feel how proud he is of her, which is a really strange feeling since she feels like he's been holding her at arm's length for the few weeks she's lived with him.
One thing's for sure: she's got a very special kind of bond with Nick.
She hopes one day he gets his chance to really end things with Caroline.
The first time Jess ever kisses Nick, her jaw aches so badly she can feel it in her temples.
She's been living with this turtle-faced weirdo for over a year and maybe it's the way that he always always protects her and is so grumpy about it that makes her adore him but she's never wanted to punch someone in the face and then immediately make out with them at the same time until that exact moment.
It's partially out of frustration with their entire situation that she snaps. They're adults for goodness' sake, shouldn't they be able to just say how they feel about each other and move on with their lives? He ruined her relationship with Sam with one mind-blowing kiss, and somehow he's kept her strung along this whole time so that she hasn't really had a chance to explore other potential relationships. And he has the nerve to date his boss and lie about it? And then he acts like it's entirely her fault?
She'd never even seriously thought twice about Nick like that until that night he lost the trench coat and she saw through space and time, and now, suddenly, he's exactly what she's been looking for in a guy all along? The nerve.
It's also partially out of a very deep-seated need to prove herself, and the challenge he presented to her was just too enticing to ignore. And, okay, she really hasn't been able to stop thinking about the first time they kissed - when he grabbed her like she belonged in his arms all along and kissed her like it was their combined destiny. She's been wondering if it's just a fluke. There's no way he's that good a kisser all the time.
It isn't until he backs her all the way up to the table that she's able to form a coherent thought. Remember the first time you kissed Spencer?
Remember how he almost fell over?
Nick's arms are strong and secure around her, lifting her up off the floor and pulling her in closer to him, and even though she's secretly always kind of thought that Nick might possibly be a little on the pudgy side (in a totally cute way), suddenly he's a warm, solid rock that is absolutely unmovable to any force of nature. He's a hurricane ripping at her with gale force winds that destroys any tiny mote of her ability to run or walk or even stand on her own. He takes her again, claims her mouth with his own, tongue swiping through her possessively. It makes Jess' heart skip and her knees tremble in an incredibly pleasant way.
He somehow manages to shatter an entire aquarium while demanding she undress and ugh GOD sometimes she just wants to kill him but also she wants to kiss him so when she storms into her bedroom she immediately regrets it and rushes back out to finish what she started, just to find him rushing to meet her halfway and he nearly sweeps her off her feet again just trying to get a grip around her.
And then they push away from each other and she's ready to kill him again.
Maybe one day it won't be so damn complicated.
The first time Jess ever sleeps with Nick, she wakes up to the feel of his fingers pressing against her neck.
She's never spent the night with a guy and been the last one to wake up, and yet when she rolls to her side to sleepily ask if he was checking her pulse she registers that he's wide awake and grinning like an idiot. Man Nick's got a nice smile - she never really noticed before because he doesn't really ever seem to smile - and it's really infectious so she giggles and he laughs and then it all hits her.
If she saw through space and time with a kiss, she was transported to a whole other dimension in sleeping with him. He was absolutely hands-down the best sex she'd ever had, even compared to Sam. With Sam it was all carnal lust, rough, dizzying passion, the kind where she really just had to hold on and hope she didn't get blown away.
With Nick, she felt all of that, but there was something else too that she'd never experienced before. He's still grinning when he urges her to stay in his bed (even though there's definitely something lumpy and soft pressing uncomfortably against her lower back) and it isn't until he practically bounds out of his bedroom door completely naked that she realizes what it was that made the sex so fantastic.
She'd felt...safe. Protected. Worshipped. He hadn't spoken, in true Nick Miller style, other than to ask her if she was sure, but the looks he gave her combined with the way his hands touched and caressed her stirred something deep inside of her that she'd never felt before, and darn it if she doesn't want more.
She watches him throw boxers and a t-shirt on and when he runs out into the hallway she pulls a half-eaten soft pretzel out from beneath her and stares at it in confusion. But she's happy, so unbelievably happy, even by her own ridiculous standards. She hears the sounds of pots and pans hitting the counter in the kitchen and knows she's in for one hell of a ride with Mr. Turtle Face.
When she decides to pursue a relationship with Nick, she's wearing a sari that is the exact same shade of blue as her eyes.
Her heart aches for Cece and Schmidt nearly ran her over when he sprinted out of the temple for whatever reason but it isn't enough to distract her from the hole in her chest where her heart had been just this morning. She knew her father wouldn't approve, he hadn't approved of any guy since Spencer, but his harsh words still affected her deeply.
And it seems as though they had a similar effect on Nick. He'd called it, basically told her to go home, and she's so hurt that she can't even remember what she said to him when she walked away. All she knew at the time was that she needed to leave right then to avoid crying in front of him.
How the hell does this hurt so much? We aren't even dating, she wonders. She idles beside her car, fingers draped loosely over the door handle, before glancing back up at the temple. The lights are still blazing and members of Cece's and Shivrang's families are running around trying to help pull down decorations, but her roommates (or at least the two she knows are still inside) are nowhere to be seen. For just a brief moment she wonders if Winston is still in the air ducts, but then she sees someone carrying Bucky through the entryway in a small cage and the moment is over.
How could he just give up on her like that? There has to be something different about them; she's never waited so long for a payoff in a relationship just to only get one night. This can't be end of the story, she thinks. Not when it's been so long in the making.
She resolves to stomp back inside to give Nick a piece of her mind, tears streaming down her face be damned. She makes it to the other side of her car and twists her sari around her fingers in an attempt to steel herself when suddenly the door to the temple swings open and Nick comes jogging out with his jacket slung over his shoulder.
He barely even gives her a chance to state her case before he has her pressed up against the side of the car and she doesn't care that the passenger's side door handle is digging into her lower back or that he accidentally pulled a chunk of her ponytail out of the band holding it all in place when he grabbed her head because all she can think about is how absolutely ridiculously right it feels to be in his arms. His kisses are rough and dominant, she's learned, and in that moment he's kissing her more fiercely than she's ever been kissed before and all she can think about is how he literally feels like the puzzle piece that's been missing her whole life.
A week later she stands in the filthy, tattered remains of her sari in an empty room at a Mexican resort holding Winston's shirt and pants while he tries to puzzle Nick's passport back together but she can't help the love that bursts in her chest for her little slightly dysfunctional family and she knows from the soft, secret smiles Nick gives her when Winston and Schmidt aren't looking that he really is all in with her.
The first time she tells Nick she loves him, she's wearing Prince's dress.
It's not exactly the situation she imagined she'd be in by the end of the night when she found out earlier that day that she was going to a Prince party but it ends up being so much better because not only is she finally able to throw all caution to the wind with Nick, she got to spend over an hour eating pancakes and playing ping pong and learning about love with Prince himself in his house and honestly who else in the world can say that?
Nick's drunkenly dancing in the middle of the dance floor all by himself but he seems to sober almost instantly upon spotting her. His grin is as blinding as it was the first morning they woke up together and he nearly breaks a tooth when he lunges for her after she screams that she loves him twice at the top of her lungs. She can feel people pressed up against them on all sides but her senses are assaulted by Nick, who smells like liquor and Old Spice and something else she has never smelled anywhere else that she just calls Nick and it makes her feel so safe and secure and she loves him so much it hurts.
She's pretty keen to let go of him, though, when Prince motions for her to join him on stage. She jumps behind the microphone still shouting and she sees Winston and Schmidt and Cece and Coach rush forward around Nick, all of them wearing identical masks of disbelief when she starts singing, which only intensify when she waves them up on stage with her.
She doesn't know how she knows the words but they're there, at the forefront of her brain, and she spins and twirls and laughs because this is the single craziest thing that has ever happened to her in her entire life and she's so glad everyone's there with her because she might believe that this is real tomorrow when she wakes up.
Nick helps her pick confetti out of her hair the next morning and whispers that he loves her each time he untangles a piece and she literally feels like she's going to explode with pure unadulterated joy.
He's eerily quiet when they break up.
Everything hurts.
The bed is ruined, a literal physical symbol of their relationship. She smells ashes when she chokes back tears and Nick looks at her like he wants to save her but knows he can't.
Jess loves Abby dearly even if she has been working through the whole embarrassment thing but...she kind of hates her at that moment. Part of her knows she and Nick had issues before Abby arrived, but Abby brought them into a stark, harsh light. She magnified them and proved just how un-fixable they really are.
She lays on the floor beside her destroyed side of the bed and curses Schmidt for stealing her room. She curses Abby and then silently cries because she didn't mean it.
She didn't mean any of it. But it's too late to take it all back.