Chapter Text
It's been three months -- three months of everyone around Jess all coupled-up; a newly-married Cece and Schmidt, a ridiculously in-love (and ridiculously-loud-at-sex) Aly and Winston. Nick's been coupled-up too, but when Jess thinks about his three months in New Orleans with Reagan, her head starts to spin and Cece has to calm her down.
"Just go to bed, Jess," Cece says, shutting the bathroom light behind she and Jess when they walk out. "You'll see him in the morning."
"Three months, Cece," Jess says, her eyes wide. "Three months," she repeats, and then she silently hopes she'll never have to spend another three months without Nick again.
Cece has a lot of sympathy in her voice when she goes, "I know, babe."
"I have to tell him tonight, Cece," Jess says, and then Cece says, "I know, babe" again and goes to bed.
Nick walks in the door wearing a ridiculous "I LOVE NOLA" hat and his eyes are tired and it's almost midnight, but she still loves him. She presses her lips together and tries not to look stupidly happy that he's in the living room of their loft for the first time in three months, but she almost jumps off of the couch and squeals his name. "Nick!"
"Jess," he says, a little quieter. He's laughing under his breath, and then he closes the door and leaves his luggage in the hallway. (He won't unpack for weeks, because he's Nick.)
"H-How -- How was it?", she asks, even though New Orleans and Reagan and being in-love are the last things she'd like to talk about with Nick right now.
"It was... You know, it was good," he says, walking over to the couch and giving her a hug.
"Are you... Where's Reagan?"
"Canada."
"And you're not with her?", Jess questions. She bites down on her lip and tries not to get excited about that.
"I'm kind of... Okay, this is embarrassing, but I'm kind of scared of Canada," he says all too seriously.
Jess is taken aback by that and starts to deliriously crack up at him. "Nick, you're scared of everything, but you can't seriously be scared of Canada."
"They drink milk out of bags, Jessica. That's scary. Or genius. I haven't figured it out yet."
Jess laughs again, and then she goes, "But you're still with her even if you're not... with her."
Nick swipes underneath his eyes and lets out a sleepy yawn, and then he nods. "I'm finally ready to do this, Jess. Long-distance scares me less than Canada does now. I mean, it's Reagan, she's amazing."
Jess doesn't doubt it. Reagan is actually kind of amazing; she's smart and cool and beautiful and she doesn't care that Nick doesn't have a life plan or a savings account.
"How crazy has 4D been without me? Is Winston's cat still alive? Do Cece and Schmidt even plan on moving out? Hey, how are you holdin' up after the Dr. Sam split? I know we didn't get to talk about it much because of the wedding, and then the -- you know, I left with Reagan, -- but I wanted to tell ya': You deserve someone who won't up and leave with one of their best friends. Next time, you've gotta be his best friend. No Diane's allowed."
Jess gulps at that, and then she retracts the whole little speech she's been spending the last forty-five minutes making up in her head, because there's no way in hell she can tell him any of that now.
"I missed you, Nick," she says, pulling the throw blanket up over her body.
Nick sits down on the couch next to her, and he pats her knee for a second. "I missed ya' too, kid."
—
Watching Nick in a relationship is one thing, but watching him keep up with a long-distance, different-time-zones, Skype-only relationship is another.
Nick's in the kitchen on Skype with Reagan the next morning, actually eating his cereal like a normal human being and listening her talk about work.
"Nicholas, tell your girlfriend you need to hang up now. It's been three months and I just got my best friend back," Schmidt says, annoyingly leaning over Nick's laptop and snapping his fingers at him.
"You don't need me to tag along with you and your wife to look at apartments. I won't be living there, and you don't need to model your guest room after my taste," Nick says, shooing Schmidt away.
"Fine," Schmidt growls, and then he hears Jess at the fridge grabbing milk and goes, "J! Apartment hunting, two hours, please change out of that shirt."
"Who else is going?", she asks, shutting the fridge door. "Cece's not even here."
"Well, Nick's out because he sucks," Schmidt says, leveling a hand at her. "Come on. I'll let you use those ridiculous golf pencils the whole time."
Jess shrugs, and then she figures she'd rather be anywhere than at the loft, listening to Nick on Skype with Reagan for the next however-many hours. "You had me at 'golf pencils'."
"That was the last part of my pitch," he says, rolling his eyes. "But okay!"
So Jess ends up apartment hunting with Schmidt on a Saturday afternoon to avoid Nick, and she doesn't even get to use the damn golf pencils.
"Jess, quit dragging your feet on my future floor," Schmidt says, throwing her a glare as the realtor leads them through an apartment that's way out of the Cece-And-Schmidt-Price-Range. "Hey, wait," he says after a second, tilting his head at Jess. "You're actually not okay. What's wrong? Is it the tile in the kitchen? It was pretty cringe-worthy."
"It's... The curtains," she lies, stopping in the middle of the living room and crossing her arms at her chest. "Okay, no, it's -- Why isn't Cece part of this process? I feel like Cece should be part of this process. I mean, what are you gonna do when it comes time to have a baby, have it for her? Ugh, is it hot in here or is it just me? It's not just me, right?"
Schmidt waves to the realtor and goes, "We'll be right in", and then he shakes his head at Jess. "Hey, you're really not okay. What's wrong?"
"If I tell you, you can't tell anyone, or do anything about it. Only your wife knows, and I've forbidden her from doing anything about it. She owes me from the time she was fawning over you while you were Fawn-ing something else. Ha! Because Fawn Moscato. Get it? I'm good."
"Jess, you know me and puns. Stop avoiding my question. Oh my -- Are you in love with Winston? I know how hard it must be watching him with Aly, but they'll probably break up soon. I mean, how many more pranks can she take?"
"Schmidt."
Schmidt shakes his head and holds his hands up in defeat, then goes, "Okay, so it's not Winston..."
Jess squeezes her eyes shut and lets out a breath, and then she looks around the room to make sure no one else is listening to them until she realizes the only person in this apartment is the realtor and he doesn't give a crap about her love life. "I just don't get why he has to be with Reagan, I guess."
Schmidt looks genuinely upset for her. Like, he forgets about the apartment hunting and the cringe-worthy kitchen tiles and the golf pencils for a good second and he wraps her in this tight hug. "I didn't know, Jess. I thought you closed that door and threw out the key. Maybe even buried it underneath that pile of dirty gym clothes that've been sitting in the corner of Nick's room for six years. That's worse."
"I knowww, I know, and that's why I'm so upset about all of this," she says, stepping back from Schmidt. "I guess I thought the door was closed, but then I saw him dance with Reagan at your wedding and knew."
"Knew...?"
"Knew what Cece or Sam couldn't answer me about the one," she says with wide eyes. "I asked Cece and Sam the night we played True American how they knew you and Diane were the people they wanted to be with for the rest of their lives and they couldn't say anything."
"Nothing?!", Schmidt asks dramatically. "I could write a zombie-novel-sized book on all of the reasons why I know Cece is the one."
"Oh yeah? Try me."
"I... Okay, well you just. You see. It's not. Jess! You're stepping on my future wool rug and distracting me," he says, rolling his eyes at her. "Look, you can't put it into words, but you do know when you know. Do you -- Do you know? With Nick?"
Jess blushes, and then she just nods. "I think I do."
—
Jess didn't cry for three months because it's just Nick and she's better than locking herself up in the house to cry over Dirty Dancing on loop while the rest of her friends are all in-love and Nick's all in-love in New Orleans and...
It's just Nick, but just Nick is a lot, and one day she's just sitting on her bed with Cece and Schmidt listening to them ramble about the cost of utilities in one-bedroom apartments in Los Angeles, and she starts crying. Just like that.
"Honey, what's wrong?", Cece asks, inching forward with concern (and a tissue she grabs off of Jess's night table).
"Babe, she's obviously crying because she doesn't want us to move out. It's okay, Jess. We're actually going to take a loft vote tonight -- two "Yes"'s and we're staying."
Cece grits her teeth at Schmidt. "Absolutely not."
"Yeah, absolutely not," Jess says through a sniffle, lifting the tissue Cece hands her up to her eyes and swiping underneath them. "Look, I don't -- I don't even know what's wrong. Okay, no, I do, but like, how stupid of a reason is 'Nick and Reagan'. This morning he talked about buying a ticket to see her up in Canada in three weeks and I wanted to throw up into my cereal, but I don't -- I don't have a right to do that. He's happy and he thinks the door is closed so maybe I should just... close it."
Cece wiggles her eyebrows, and it prompts Jess and Schmidt to both say her name, and then Jess says, "No. I know what you're going to say, and my answer is 'no'."
"Jessica! If he knew that door was open, you wouldn't be breaking down in the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday. Schmidt, honey, back me up," Cece says, turning her head over at Schmidt and flashing him 'Cece Eyes'. (It's what everyone calls it; Cece flashes these eyes that only work on Schmidt, every single time.)
"I'm not getting involved in this," Schmidt says, waving Cece and Jess off with a hand. "This whole situation is messier than Nick's bedroom, and that's saying something."
"You're already involved!", Cece retorts. "Come on, why shouldn't Jess just... tell him how she feels?"
Schmidt clears his throat and inches up closer to Cece on Jess's bed, setting a hand in her lap. "For the same reason you didn't tell me: You didn't get in the way of my relationship with Fawn even though you wanted to. I mean, I saw the way you checked me out sometimes, you just -- You wanted to break yourself off a piece of Schmidt all over this loft."
"Did not! I was so subtle," she argues, smacking her lips together and looking back over at Jess. "Look, babe, just tell him when you're ready to tell him. Or don't. I mean, I don't think he's planning on like, marrying her anytime soon."
Jess's stomach turns at that, but she trusts Cece and she even trusts Schmidt, so she stops crying and tells herself it'll happen the way it's supposed to happen.
—
Halloween weekend is the worst weekend of Jess's adult life. (Yes, worse than the time Nick punched her in the face at that haunted house and Sam rejected her proposition to take things further. Worse than that.)
First, Cece and Schmidt sign the lease to their new apartment, and as happy as Jess and Nick and Winston are that they don't have to live with a married couple anymore, they're really going to miss the hell out of them. They move out the day before Halloween, and even though they're across the hall in 4C because nothing else worked out for them ("Sorry Schmidt, that four-bedroom with the two balconies and jacuzzi tubs isn't happening."), 4D feels stupidly empty on October 30th.
Second, Reagan flies into LA for the weekend, until the 1st. She stays in Nick's room even though Jess makes a joke about Cece and Schmidt's room being free, and they have this loud, shake-the-bed sex until six o'clock when the whole gang has to head out to Winston's cat sitter's friend's cousin's roommate's Halloween party. Jess just slips into her Game of Thrones getup and ignores the way Nick smooches Reagan on the temple when they get into Winston's car.
Third, at Winston's cat sitter's friend's cousin's roommate's Halloween party, Jess has no one to kiss, no one to coordinate costumes with, and she's four Bloody Mary's deep when she watches Reagan slip into Nick's lap and lay there for the rest of the night.
"Hey babe," says Cece, sliding an arm around Jess's backside and handing her a glass filled with Sangria. "If it helps, he never looks at her the way he used to look at you."
Jess takes a sip of her Sangria, and then she bitterly shakes her head. "It doesn't."
"I know, honey, I'm sorry." Cece leans into Jess and kisses her shoulder. "This might be a bad place to tell you, at a weird Halloween party with a creepy dubstep version of The Monster Mash playing in the background, but Schmidt and I are trying to have a baby."
"What?! Where are you gonna get one of those?", Jess curiously asks, her eyes all wide at Cece. Cece just cracks up and grabs Jess by the wrist. "Before -- Before you handed me this," she says, lifting the glass of Sangria up at Cece, "I had this many." She holds up nine fingers, which is very incorrect, and then Cece drags her outside and onto the porch.
"I'm serious, Jess. I mean, I wanted to wait until we were married at least a year, but we -- we want a family, you know? That's the next step. It goes: Marriage, apartment, babies. I think."
"Cece, I'm the last person you should be talking to about the order of doing things. I'm alone and I had so much liquor. Is this what death feels like?"
"Are you talking about the liquor," Cece starts, snatching the glass out of Jess's hands and putting it up on the railing of the porch, "or are you talking about your ex-boyfriend and his girlfriend smooching it up in Winston's cat sitter's friend's cousin's roommate's living room. -- Wait. Did I get that right?"
Jess, impressed, nods and laughs. "What was his name again?"
"I don't even know. I don't trust him, though. The punch had eyeballs in it."
"I know! I still had so much of it," Jess says, sighing and leaning up against the wall of the house. "I'm happy for you, Ceec. Schmidt too. You guys are going to be crazy-good parents. I mean, you take care of me enough, I should know."
Cece bites the inside of her cheek and leans into Jess. "I'm always gonna be your mom."
"Mom? When the hell is all of that stuff going to happen for me?", Jess asks, drunkenly grabbing the glass Cece hid from her off of the railing and taking a long sip.
"Hey, no, don't say that. Jess, there's no time limit for you, okay? If it's not Nick, then it'll be someone else, and you'll be so happy. I promise, babe."
Jess believes her, because she's Cece, but her heart drops into her stomach at the thought of 'not Nick', and then she asks Cece to drive her home.
—
Things are weird in the apartment, and Jess blames it on the fact that she can't be alone with Nick anymore without thinking about everything.
"Is it weird I kind of miss Cece and Schmidt living here?", Nick asks Jess one morning when it's just the two of them. Winston is in his bedroom with Aly after a night shift, so they won't be up until four, five PM, and Cece and Schmidt don't usually barge into 4D until at least eleven AM.
"It's not weird. I kind of cry about it all the time," Jess says, grabbing the milk off of the counter and pouring some into her cereal bowl. She sits down next to him at the island in the kitchen and goes, "No laptop, huh. What happened to your daily Skype session with Reagan? I love starting my mornings to the annoying sound of you guys losing connection every five minutes."
"Reagan and I are on a little... Okay, it's not a breakup, and she called it a break but this isn't Friends, you know? I'm not Ross!"
"You're Chandler, obviously," Jess says, leveling a hand at him.
"And you're such a Monica," he says back.
"Obviously."
"She's in New York for work for a little while and she says as much as she likes being with me, it's getting 'distracting'. Whatever that means."
"Not to be a dick here, but I think it just means: distracting."
Nick laughs and points a finger at her. "'Not to be a dick', huh? Try harder next time, J-Day."
Jess blushes at the nickname, and then she inches in a little closer to Nick, dropping her spoon into her bowl of cereal and folding her hands on the countertop. "You deserve more than that, and I know you probably don't want to hear it because it's Reagan and you're obsessed with her and all that, but you do. You're not a 'distraction'; you're a good boyfriend because you care enough about her to sit there and listen to her ramble about boring pharmaceutical stuff all morning."
Nick laughs at that, but Jess just goes, "Seriously! I know it's probably ninety-nine percent because she's pretty and has a vagina, but how can anyone stay awake through all of that? Doesn't she ever want to talk about... I don't know. Does she watch Game of Thrones?"
"That's the one with Hogwarts, right?", Nick asks, tilting his head.
"You're hopeless. Do you seriously think Hogwarts is a real place, Nick?"
He shrugs his shoulders and says, "Jessica, I've been there, okay? Schmidt and I got really high in college one time and I remember, we went to Hogwarts. You wouldn't know because you only smoke weed every ten years and I'm still pissed off that I missed High Jess."
"Keep me around and nine years will go by like this," she says, snapping her fingers at him.
"Jessica," he says, his voice a little more serious this time, "I'm never letting you go anywhere."
—
Jess stays in the next night and watches movies with Aly and Winston, but by 11:15 they're asleep on each other with popcorn still in their lap (and in Aly's hair), and Jess lowers the volume on the TV and gets her coat.
The bar is empty, probably because it's a Wednesday and it's a week before Christmas and everyone is too poor from shopping to afford even the cheap booze at The Griffin.
Nick's the only one behind there, and he jumps when Jess approaches him. "Hey. I thought you guys were watching crappy Christmas movies," he says, biting the inside of his cheek. "Want a drink, Jess?"
She's more honest with a little booze inside of her, so she takes him up on that offer and goes, "Old Fashioned."
"I know," Nick says, and then a minute later he slides two of them down onto the countertop and goes, "Cheers."
"I know you don't like talking about things, and we don't have to talk about it, but I just figured I'd try," she says, taking a long swig of her drink.
"I don't know, I don't want to talk about her, about Reagan. Maybe we can talk about the fact that Winston's actually in a successful relationship with a girl who doesn't make me want to punch myself in the face, or the fact that Cece's definitely pregnant but she's not telling us yet, because I checked out her boobs at work the other day by accident and they're definitely bigger than normal. All of our friends are doing so... good, you know?"
Jess takes another, longer sip of her drink, and then she nods slowly. "I know. Like, so good."
"Hey, that doesn't -- That doesn't mean you're not doing good, Jess, I didn't -- I didn't mean it like that," he says, suddenly leaning over the counter and rubbing her forearm, apologizing over and over. She waves him off and tells him it's fine, that she doesn't take offense to it even though her life is crap lately, but Nick refuses to let her say that it is. "You're smart and you're beautiful and you're going to make a hell of a wife someday. You have a life plan for everything, Jess. That's solid wife material."
"That actually doesn't matter, none of that stuff. I don't want a plan for everything, Nick. I want stuff to happen, and I want to have to deal with it like a normal person, and it doesn't even matter if you don't have a checking account. Nothing like that matters, and I'm sorry I let it matter so much before."
Nick catches it a little too late, and then he narrows her eyes at her and goes, "Wait, what do --"
"We broke up because your plan didn't match mine, and that's just... It's stupid." She laughs when she says it, but that's probably the booze. (Or, it really is stupid.) "None of that stuff should matter, you know? Cece and Schmidt, they didn't plan exactly the moment to create life, but now there's like a ninety-nine percent chance she's knocked up, and that's great!", Jess shouts, slamming her fist down on the counter of the bar. (Yeah, definitely the booze.)
"Okay, so it's not just me who noticed the boobs thing, right?", Nick asks, and Jess starts to laugh and tells him she looks at Cece's boobs all the time.
"Jess," he says after a minute, after you could hear a literal olive drop onto the bar floor, after the juke box stops playing a song and the traffic outside dies down to a halt. She raises an eyebrow at him, and he's still leaned over the counter, his elbows almost touching hers. "Nothing is wrong with you because you had a plan, you know."
"No, but something is wrong with me for thinking something was wrong with you because you didn't."
—
At Christmas Eve dinner, Jess goes to fill up Cece's wine glass and then Cece shakes her head, and then Nick jumps out of his seat and goes, "WE KNEW!"
"Me and Jess knew because we looked at your boobs," he blurts out, and Schmidt races over to his wife in a panic and tucks a napkin into her dress and goes, "You're done looking. Both of you horn-dogs.."
"Okay, so I'm pregnant, but stupid Miller spoiled that already," Cece says, rolling her eyes as she gets attacked in hugs by Aly and Winston.
"Ceec," Jess calls out, clinking her wine glass and standing up in her seat, "I'm so happy for you. -- You too, Schmidt, even though you're not really doing much of the child-growing or whatever."
"Hey, my sperm is responsible for fifty percent of that child, give him credit!", Schmidt shouts, holding his hand to his chest like he's appalled.
Winston says something about how everyone is growing up, for real, and then he mentions something like: "Me and Aly are gonna babysit to practice, because I can't wait to knock her up!"
"Booze. You had too much. Shut up." Aly leans in and kisses him anyway, though, and when Jess watches them, she really hopes Aly is the girl Winston marries.
"Hey, need my help?" Nick leans over the sink and turns the faucet on, grabbing a glove and a dish. Jess never said she needed anyone's help, but she doesn't protest, she just stands on the left side of the sink and washes spoons. "A kid. They're having a freakin' kid." He blows out his cheeks, and then he goes, "Wow" as if it's so unbelievable a married couple managed to create a baby.
"Schmidt as a dad. Ha. I can just imagine the baby being born and him holding it up in the hospital like they did in that scene in The Lion King," Jess says, laughing under her breath. "They're gonna be great. Both of them."
Nick silently agrees and keeps on washing the dishes on his side of the sink. "Hey, so I know I said I didn't want to talk about it, but I did want to thank you."
She drops the fork she's washing and presses her lips together. "For...?"
"For what you said to me in the bar the other night," he says. "It made me feel better about not having my crap together."
Jess points at herself. "I'm the Queen of Not Having Her Crap Together, as of lately."
Nick shuts off the faucet and slips off his glove, and then he waits for Jess to take off hers before he grabs her hand in his. He circles her knuckles with his thumb, and the whole apartment feels quiet even though Aly and Winston and Cece and Schmidt are in the living room playing that knock-off version of Monopoly Tran left at their place and screaming about Schmidt bending the rules.
"This may be too much, but Jess, you're worth having a plan for, you know," Nick tells her, and she feels him squeeze her hand a little bit.
She gulps and doesn't say anything, and then she blames the next part on all the pink wine she had with dinner.
She bats her eyes at him, and he puffs out his cheeks, and then she leans in to kiss him on the mouth but she misses. "Oh my God. I'm so embarrassing."
He laughs and says, "You got my... Arm? I think?", and then tells her not to worry about it. "Look, I would've kissed ya', if that's -- if that's what you were goin' for, but not -- not like this, okay? We're both drunk and also fifth-and-sixth-wheeling our coupled-up friends."
Jess just blinks a few times and ignores how hot her face feels. "Oh. Oh. You and Reagan are back together, aren't you?"
Nick just blurts out a small, "I'm sorry, Jess, I should've told you."
"Why? No, it's okay, Nick. You don't owe me anything and I can't expect you to be alone just because I am." In her head, she's screaming Tell him you idiot tell him you idiot tell him you idiot, but she's also ten seconds from passing out on the kitchen floor due to embarrassment, and all that.
"We're easing into it," he says. "I'll know how serious she is if she actually shows up tomorrow on Christmas, but for now we're -- What's a texting-only relationship called?"
"I want to say what I think it should be called, but I'm holding back," she says, taking a few steps back from Nick and opening up a bottle of Aspirin that's sitting on the counter. "Headache," she says, pointing at the bottle when Nick looks at her with concern. "Merry Christmas, Nick."
Nick tugs down on his lip, and the look on his face tells Jess he wasn't done talking to her for the night, but she has a headache and she's also dying inside and she's not in the mood for knock-off Monopoly or any more pink wine or Reagan-talk.
"Jessica," he says slowly, and she turns around. "I just... Nothing. It's not important. Merry Christmas, Jess, okay?"
"Okay." She gives him a little wave and heads for her bedroom, but then she turns around and just looks at him.
"Jess, I told ya': Not important."
"No, but this is: Even if she does show up here, it might be nice, but it doesn't make her The One, and I'm not just saying that because I drunkenly tried kissing you in the middle of our kitchen. I don't -- I don't want to talk about how I feel. This is about you, Nick. You think Reagan's settling for you? How about this? You're settling for her!" Her voice gets a little louder now, and she hears Cece and Winston say something and then get up from their game of knock-off Monopoly. "You're settling for a few Skype calls a week, or -- Oh, now it's texts, and 'I might show up''s, and that's not fair, Nick. That's not fair to you! You deserve someone who doesn't pencil you in on her oh-so-busy schedule of selling stupid medicine, okay?"
Nick swallows thickly and just stares at Jess for a few seconds, and then he says, "Okay."