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“Teach me how to be slutty,” Jess begs, half-past drunk on Cece’s signature spiked pink lemonade. She hiccups, giggles, “I want to be hot like you. I want to impress a boy.”
Cece snorts, “Oh, Jessie girl, you can never be as slutty as me,” She swats a quasi-comforting hand at Jess, drunkenly missing her target by a long shot and inelegantly sticking her finger in Jess’s ear, “But hey, babe, we can try. I’m gonna make you so hot, you’ll… never be cold again.”
The two of them laugh for twenty minutes straight at Cece’s rather unfunny joke. Jess nearly pees her pants. Cece’s solution is to drink more lemonade.
////
The next morning when Jess wakes up with a splitting headache and a mental scrapbook of vague memories and butchered conversations, she rolls towards Cece deliriously, “Did we, um, make a deal last night to make me hot?”
Cece grunts incoherently. Her eyes flutter open painfully and she swats at Jess in an eerily familiar way that means Cece is more than likely still drunk, “I don’t know,” She groans, “Probably? I’ll do it either way, whatever, just let me sleep for now.”
Jess lets her sleep, but she gets up to make bacon and eggs anyway. That’s the only way to cure the inedible combination of excitement and intoxication settled in her belly. Lots of grease. Obviously.
/////
It takes approximately three weeks and four days for Jess’s new Hot Look to amass itself. Jess would know, she totally counted.
After the basic planning and explanation, Jess and Cece come to the conclusion that they would have to slowly start changing her all-around wardrobe, one piece at a time, so that none of the boys would notice too early in the process. Surprisingly, it actually seems to work, and Jess manages to wear one item slightly sexier than the last every single day until she has the Hot Look that she and Cece has planned.
“Are you sure this is… me? This isn’t too far away from my style?” Jess asks into Cece’s full-length mirror.
Her dress is more fitted than she would normally pick, even for dates. It hugs against her hips and her waist and her chest and everything she usually thinks about hiding. Cece made her ditch the pantyhose immediately, which Jess parted with sadly. Her shoes have increased in height by at least two inches each. She feels far from herself in this outfit.
Cece rolls her eyes behind her, tugging at the skin-hugging skirt of Jess’s dress, “You want to be hot, don’t you? Being hot is never anybody’s actual style, it’s just… hot.”
“Okay,” Jess sucks her stomach in. She has to admit that she does look kind of hot, “Whatever. I trust you, Cece.”
/////
Even with their perfectly calibrated Jess-centric Hot Look, Jess can’t get the one person that she really wants to look at her to notice her. Nick.
Yeah, yeah, Jess knows she’s insane for liking Nick, wanting to be hot so he’d go for a girl like her. In fact, she’d already gotten quite the earful on the entire notion from Cece when she first told her best friend about her Hot-ivations (that’s hot and motivations smooshed into one word, one of Jess’s finest moments during the whole ordeal in her opinion, even if she had been drunk at the time).
Now, the whole Nick Has Not Noticed problem isn’t to say that other men haven’t noticed. Jess had been experiencing more and more wolf whistling and general flirting just on the street than she typically did. Men seemed more gentlemanly toward her, opening doors, saying excuse me. Usually, the only attention she got on the street was from homeless people that wanted her to donate to their Rabies Fun Runs For Charity.
Beyond the nameless faces of the street, Jess’s new look hadn’t gone completely unnoticed in the loft, even if Nick appeared to be entirely ignorant of Jess’s attempts. Schmidt and Winston had definitely noticed if their own reactions were any indication. Oh, without a doubt, they noticed.
One day during breakfast, Jess moved to retrieve the Emergency Dish Soap from beneath the sink (she wouldn’t need to do that if somebody hadn’t used it as the lubricant in the failure that was their Extreme Adult Slip N’ Slide). Jess was wearing a skinny crimson, Aztec-esque patterned dress with a fairly conservative neckline but a short length that cut off just about mid-thigh and rose up even further when she moved. She’d already donned her dark black high heels and they clicked against the wood floors of the loft like bell tolls of Hotness On Her Way.
“Schmidt? Are you sure that there’s dish soap down here? I could have sworn it belonged in the cabinet near the fridge.”
“In Cabinet 27C? Are you insane? That’s so wrong, it- oh.”
As Jess stood back up, she turned around to find her roommates staring at her. Winston was trying to avert his gaze. Schmidt was at a loss for words. Nick was… nowhere to be found.
“What’s wrong?” Jess deadpanned (she maybe even makes the pouting face that Cece taught her because she’s hot now and she damn well can).
The next thing Jess knew, Schmidt was suddenly getting up, chair scraping against the kitchen floor, and storming out of the kitchen toward his room, muttering nonsense about bad influences and missing the days when even hot people wore uggs and ugly clothes that instantly dropped them four Hot Levels, whatever that means. Jess wasn’t looking too far into it, but she got the point.
Winston blabbed about literally everything he could think of, his eyes on the ceiling the entire time, as Jess stood at the sink and cleaned her dishes smugly. She had to give it to him, he was certainly determined. But at least he had noticed.
/////
A week later and Nick still hadn’t noticed.
Jess was going as far as employing every possible Seduction Tactic she had learned from all the rom-coms she had binge watched since she was 15 years old.
She tried touching his arm mid-conversation.
It turned out more awkward than seductive. Cece banged her head against the wall when she saw Jess try it.
She tried to play hard to get, called Nick ‘buddy’ then slapped him on the back. Nick just looked confused and walked away.
She tried complimenting him, but that entire tactic was doomed from the start, Jess should’ve thought harder about it before she tried it.
Nick didn’t take flattery very well, never had. It hadn’t been a smart move. At all. Jess banged her own head against the wall as she walked away from that trainwreck of a conversation, leaving Nick in her wake screaming about government corruption and clandestine mass-sterilization.
All in all, it wasn’t going well. Jess’s feet hurt from the heels, Nick still hadn’t appeared to have noticed, and frankly she was cold even more than usual with all that skin showing.
/////
Movie night came around, and Jess was determined to take her chance. She very purposely sat next to Nick, made a point to share the blanket, their arms touching, her knee bumping into his as she reached for the popcorn.
It was like something right out of Pretty In Pink or something.
Nick looked uncomfortable the entire time.
Halfway through their biweekly showing of Napoleon Dynamite, Nick announced that he needed a beer, practically launching himself off of the couch.
“Anybody want one?” He asked with his head stuffed in the fridge.
Winston and Schmidt both politely declined- well, Winston politely declined while Schmidt hollered back, “Are you kidding me? I’m on the Rich Man’s diet, Nick! You should know that! I cannot eat anything that costs less than ten dollars and that swill you chug probably costs less than two!” Nick rolled his eyes in the direction of the couch and said, “So, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that’s a no.”
Jess, however, piped up quite innocently, tugging their blanket tighter around her waist, “I’d like a beer, Nick!”
Nick simply grunted in confirmation, as if disturbed by her beer-wanting existence, “Okay, sure,” He grabbed a beer dutifully for her anyway, the bottles clinking together as he shut the fridge door and made his way back to his spot on the couch.
“Thanks, Nick,” Jess muttered to him as Schmidt very aggressively shushed them.
Even with them sitting right next to each other, Nick didn’t seem to notice her Hotness Efforts. She was wearing a bright yellow dress that hugged her hips like cotton stapled to a brick wall and a neckline that showed off both her neck and her breasts. Jess looked objectively hot. Not that Nick noticed.
It really was too bad that Jess was engrossed in the movie five minutes when Nick literally choked on his beer after Jess took her first sip, hot red lips wrapping softly around the chilled bottle.
Jess looked up at Schmidt and Winston’s giggling, cocked her head as Nick hurriedly stood up and hurried out of the room.
“What are you doing?”
“I think it’s about my bedtime,” Nick announced hastily. Jess knew that it was an outright lie: Nick was half-nocturnal and it was just barely half-past nine. In the entire time she had lived in the loft, she had never seen Nick call his bedtime anything earlier than 11 o’clock, but Jess wasn’t about to question it when Nick was closing his door with such tremendous finality as that, a practical slam of the door.
Jess and Schmidt and Winston refocused on Napoleon Dynamite’s peculiar dancing after the whole strange situation subsided. Jess couldn’t help but feel disappointed that she never got the chance to stand up in that dress of hers and shimmy around the coffee table in front of Nick, but oh well, there was always another outfit, another day.
///////
Of all the dresses that Cece forced Jess to try on, Jess likes the black one the most. It’s more tight-fitting and revealing than her typical wardrobe would allow, but of a familiar fabric that caused her to consider keeping it even after the whole ordeal was over- hot but close enough to being her that she was comfortable in it.
Jess has quickly found in her endeavor that Nick was very problematic in the way that he was a homebody if there ever was one, which left Jess with no free time to lounge about in her Not Hot, largely more comfortable clothes, so Jess liked to wear the little black dress when she was trying to be sexy around the loft because of its comfort and familiarity. That didn’t make it any less hot, at least according to Schmidt.
“Hey, Schmidt?” Jess called, stepping out of her room curiously, “Have you seen my glitter pens?”
Schmidt tore his eyes away from the television to glance at her, “I think they’re- oh, you’re kidding me. No. No way. No. No-ho-ho. Not this trap again. NOOOO.” He threw the tv remote down onto the couch cushion and stormed out of the living room, “I swear to god. NO. NO. NOOOOO.” He slammed his bedroom door behind him. Jess shrugged and moved to look for her godforsaken pens.
“Schmidt?” Nick yawned, stepping out of his bedroom, “Did you drop food down your shirt again? Do you need me to- oh…”
Jess had serendipitously dipped down moments earlier to rummage through one of the kitchen drawers on her hunt for the glitter pens. She was turned away, distracted and obliviously, and she completed missed the way that Nick really looked like he just about wanted to die and backed right back up into his bedroom, shutting the door soundly behind him.
When she found the glitter pens, pulling them out from the silverware drawer with a triumphant aha!, she found the living room to be completely desolate, and she returned to her own room entirely oblivious.
///////
Three weeks in and Jess quit. That’s right, put it in your calendar, remember the date, on the fateful date of July 31st Jessica Day quit something. She had never done that in her life (Cece would say she had quit twice, but Jess disagrees fervently on that matter- it doesn’t count if you’re accidentally high on pot brownies when you agree to it in the first place), but Nick Miller was a stubborn son of a bitch and it really wasn’t looking like the whole plan was working anyway.
“Are you sure you want to quit?” Cece asked with a frown as Jess tossed some of the Objectively Hot Dresses into Cece’s arms, “You’re just so close!”
Jess shook her head, “I just don’t think it’s working. And besides, I never would have thought being hot was so exhausting.”
Cece rolled her eyes at that, collapsing onto Jess’s bed under the weight of borrowed clothes, “That’s the point. It’s supposed to look easier than it is. That’s why it’s so hot.” Jess wasn’t so sure. She was convinced that Cece was just naturally hot (which she was, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t still difficult).
“Whatever,” Jess sighed, throwing the last of the clothes on top of Cece, “I think I’m done.”
Jess guided Cece out of the loft, who was blinded by the mound of clothes but managed to talk through them anyway, “I’m going to take these clothes back to my place. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay, love you!” Jess said, shutting the door behind her best friend and her failed experiment. Oh, well.
Jess was really glad to be back in sweat pants. Really glad. She excitedly jumped into her beloved, highly patterned pair of pajamas pants that bragged I Love Oregon! with every square inch and she threw her favorite Teachers Rule! Sweatshirt over her head as she wandered into the kitchen.
She’s eating Twinkies and strawberries on the couch, a red berry halfway to her lips, when Nick walks into the living room and- freezes.
“Nick?” She says slowly, eyes narrowed. She wouldn’t normally care about Nick’s weirdness (Nick was always weird), but in this case he was standing in the way of the left side of the screen and keeping her from watching her Seinfeld reruns, “You’re kinda standing in front of the tv.”
Nick dutifully inches to his right, just out of the way, but continues staring at her like she was a stranger in his home in the midst of burgling him of his most prized possessions (which is absurd because a) Jess is his roommate, not a stranger and b) Jess knows full well that he keeps his really valuable things in the dumpster-worthy box under his bed, nowhere near the living room, but that’s beside the point). Jess doesn’t pay any mind to him. Nick was just weird sometimes.
He stands there for ten long minutes, staring incredulously at Jess, not moving a muscle as she lounges and feasts on twinkies and strawberries, feeling grateful that she isn’t being sucked into a waist-pulling dress or high heels or any of Cece’s ridiculous clothes.
Finally, Nick throws his hands in the air in defeat, scoffs, “What are you doing? Like, really, why are you doing this? What is your master plan? To kill me? To make me move? What?” He says when she has a mouthful of Twinkie and her eyes grow three sizes in surprise.
She tears her eyes away from the Seinfeld rerun with Jerry making a fool of himself to look up at him, “Wha-,”
Then the pacing starts, which means she’s really in trouble with this bout of Nick Weirdness. Pacing Nick means Distressed Nick, so Jess really knows that Nick is serious about… whatever it is that has him in a flurry. Halfway through his pacing route, the mumbling gibberish begins, and Nick begins to rant incoherently about heart attacks and hard ons and improper roommate decorum and how he had no idea there were this many Hotness Leagues and god he was so out of just about everybody’s it’s crazy and the sanctity of a cold beer has been stolen from him and he can never go near that drawer now or do this or do that and- oh. Jess is still very confused, but she thinks she’s starting to understand what’s going on.
After weeks of Hot Clothes and no response from Nick, she’s wearing a pair of just about the most unattractive pants known man, and looking down at herself she sees a faint trail of Twinkie cream and strawberry juice, and yet this is suddenly the look that seems to elicit a response from Nick. Needless to say, she’s confused.
Nick finally stops his pacing, abruptly, like running right into a brick wall. Sure, he’s still fidgeting, anxious, hands wringing, but the biggest of the movement has stopped and he’s staring at her with wide, tentative eyes, earnestly.
He advances towards her, brows drawn tight, and mutters, “What the hell, Day? Who do you think you are? Some- some beautiful gypsy lady?”
The next thing Jess knows, he’s pulling her up and kissing her and oh- she really, really likes this, god. She doesn’t feel hot in the slightest in her lumpy sweat pants, but he makes her feel like the hottest thing he’s ever seen.
When Nick pulls away, Jess holds back a disappointed moan and finds that Nick looks… sad. He shrugs and steps back again, like nothing was happening, freezing up nervously, and he apologizes. He actually apologizes for some godforsaken reason that Jess can’t quite comprehend, the idiot.
“Sorry, I- sorry.”
Nick clears his throat, despondently repeats his incoherent mumbling about people being out of other people’s leagues. He finally elaborates, saying, “And well, I’m certainly out of your league, what with the dresses and the legs.” The way he says the word legs makes Jess squirm. He emphasizes it like he’s whispering it reverently, reading it out of a holy book and praying to his god, eyes rolling back as if he can’t believe how ridiculous the thought of her legs is, “And now this where you look just- nevermind.”
He takes a few more steps back, away from her, apologizes even more fervently. He rubs his face in that adorably sloppy way of his that makes him look like a decades-older man with twin cases of insomnia and a caffeine high.
Jess actually rolls her eyes a little, because this is the man she wants to be with? (Yes, definitely.)
“Nick, you’re an idiot,” She breathes out, her low voice riding the passing wave of a laugh. She tugs him back to her for another kiss.
/////////
“Cece,” Jess hisses into her phone the next morning from the couch in the living room, “Guess where I am?”
Cece groans tiredly, “I-I dunno, Jess.”
Jess tries to hold back her smile, “I’m laying here with Nick.” The two of them had fallen asleep together the night before on the living room couch (fully clothed, don’t worry), watching Seinfeld reruns and making out.
“Thasgreat.”
“He found me on the couch and we had a whole big talk and then he kissed me! Can you believe it? And I didn’t even look hot at the time!”
“Goofoyoo.”
“Okay, I’m gonna let you go back to sleep now! I don’t want to wake Nick up. Love you!” She hangs up the phone quietly, snuggling farther into Nick’s warm arms.
Jess is half asleep when she feels a cold kiss press to her neck, and Nick whispered, “I always think you’re hot, Jess. Always.” Jess wraps herself tighter in his embrace, and falls asleep with a smile on her face.