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Jess knows it's dumb to be thinking about her empty uterus all the time -- Sadie told her she has years left to procreate, she's got all the eggs, everything is fine! It's just that that deadline is real, and it's coming, and every month another egg dies, and she's only human, she can't help thinking about it sometimes. A lot. Maybe more than a lot. And when Sam breaks up with her the same week she turns 31, well. If you think about it, it's not that weird that when she's at Sadie's for her birthday dinner, playing with Sadie’s gorgeous sperm-donor-created baby, and she happens to see the old donor catalog in a pile of magazines -- well, okay, maybe it is a little weird. But whatever. She steals it, okay? She steals the sperm donor catalog.
It's just curiosity, mostly! She wants to see what kind of dudes are in this thing, giving their sperm to make a baby like Sadie's with giant brown eyes and perfect soft skin and ten fingers and ten toes and that baby smell to their heads, and -- God, Jess wants a stupid baby, okay? She just really, really, really wants one.
And yeah, she knows she lives in a loft with three roommates, and she still feels like she's twelve years old, and probably she should put off having a baby until she has a husband to help with diaper changing and waking up in the middle of the night, and definitely put it off until she has a job, but still. It's not going to hurt anything to browse the catalog, right? See what her options are.
She kind of ends up secretly looking through it a lot, though. It feels illicit, like sneaking her mom's romance novels when she was 13 and then skipping to the dirty parts, sneaking looks at all those good genes. It's not like there's that much information about them, just hair and eye color, skin tone, hobbies. But she feels like she knows them, making up little stories about them. How she can tell this one is really sensitive and artistic, and this other one who likes sports probably has a great swimmer's body, all lean and toned, how his kid would be strong and confident. Most days, she spends the half hour before she goes to sleep lying in her bed, looking through it and wanting a baby so badly.
Her adult education job is okay, but then it's summer, and she goes on a thousand interviews for real, actual teaching jobs, and she's sure she's not going to get anything, no matter what Nick keeps saying. But then she gets a second interview, and weirdly, shockingly, gets hired to teach 7th grade life sciences at one of the public schools right nearby. She almost feels like they've made some kind of mistake, and the day she goes back into a classroom that's actually hers, that she can decorate herself, that she's not just borrowing it at night from some other, real teacher -- well, she almost cries. Okay, maybe she does cry, just quietly for a little bit, putting her stuff out on her desk. Being back in the classroom just feels so right, like she's herself again, and when she gets her first paycheck, it's such a relief to have grown-up money again, not have to scrimp so much to pay the rent.
And she should just be psyched to be an awesome single lady with disposable income again, splurge on some new container gardening supplies or maybe some of the really good crochet yarn at the fancy yarn store, merino maybe, or alpaca, but all she can see when she looks at her bank account total is how she could totally afford a crib now. She could totally afford a crib, and she'll be 31 and a half in eight days, and yeah, okay, yeah. She's decided. She's going to buy herself some sperm and knock herself up. She's really going to do it. She's a modern lady, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle! Yeah!
This time when she reads through the catalog, it's serious. She already knows her favorites -- number 131, number 287, number 38. The night of her second paycheck, she's engrossed in rereading the tiny blurbs, trying to weigh the benefits of liking art museums over the benefits of being into music, so engrossed that she's barely aware of anything happening around her. Which is probably why she doesn't hear the footsteps coming towards her door until Nick actually opens it up, making her jump half out of her skin.
"Hey, Jess," he starts, obviously about to ask her something, but he pulls up short when she shrieks and shoves the catalog under the covers.
"Don't you ever knock?!?!" she yells at him. Come on, Nick, she thought they were really big on knocking since that time she saw his swimsuit area by accident!
"What're you looking at?" Nick says, looking intrigued. "Is that porn?" He makes a swipe for her covers.
"No!" she says, batting at his hands, but he's really determined, laughing like he thinks it's hilarious.
"I can't believe you're looking at porn, let me see!" he says. She tries to grab his wrists, but he's too strong, pulling his hands away from her like it's nothing.
"Nick!" she says. She tries kicking at the covers, trying to knock them and the catalog off the bed. "Stop it, it's none of your business, leave me alone!"
But it's too late. "Aha!" Nick says, grabbing it and holding it out of her reach. "Let me see what sick stuff you're into. C'mon, don't be embarrassed, everyone looks at --" he trails off as he looks at the cover and sees the picture of the beautiful baby on the front. "What the --" he says, and then he's obviously reading the name of the sperm bank right there in giant letters, and then he stares at Jess with his eyes wide.
Jess has never been so embarrassed in her life. Her face is so hot it feels like it might literally burst into flame. "Give me that," she says, and snatches it back from Nick. He doesn't even try to stop her -- he looks stunned.
"Why the hell are you looking at that?" Nick says. She can't think why he's so shocked -- he knows she wants a baby and doesn't have a boyfriend, how else is she supposed to get one?
"You know why!" she says. "I want a family and my eggs are dying!"
Nick makes the turtliest of turtle faces. "I thought you had tons of eggs or whatever!" he says. "You kept singing that Queen of the Eggs song!”
“I know,” Jess says, “but --”
“I mean, a sperm bank? Seriously, Jess?"
"Well, maybe I'm tired of waiting!" she says. "I'm thirty-one, Nick. I'm sick of everyone else being pregnant every time I get on Facebook, okay?"
"Ew, that’s disgusting," Nick says. "Don’t get on Facebook, what’s the matter with you? And you seriously want to get some stranger's sperm to knock you up? You don't know anything about these bozos, Jess, they could be serial killers!"
Jess makes a face at him. "Don't be so melodramatic," she says, even though the thought had crossed her mind too.
"Well, they're definitely weirdos!" Nick says. "What kind of guy goes to a sperm bank? Besides, you live with all of us, wouldn't you rather get some genes that you know? I mean, I'll give you some sperm, it's no problem!"
He -- he'll -- what now? "You -- what?" she says.
"Yeah, I'll do it, of course I'll do it! I jerk off all the time anyway!"
Wow, okay, so that is a lot of information flying at her at once. "Oh my God, EW," she says, making a horrible face. "I didn't need to know that!" She’s still trying to get her head around him offering to be her sperm donor, so this yelling at him for being disgusting is pretty much coming out on autopilot.
"So what!" he says, getting all loud and belligerent. "You know that's how they get the sperm in the sperm bank, right?"
"STOP IT," Jess says. He just -- he needs to shut up for a second and let her think. "I can't -- are you thinking about what you're saying right now? You want to have a baby with me? The whole point of a sperm donor is that you have some stranger who doesn't have to be involved!"
"What?" Nick says. "I don't have to be involved, I don't care! I'd be just the same as a sperm donor, but you'd know that your baby wasn't getting evil genes so it won't murder you in your sleep Children of the Corn-style!"
"There's no such thing as evil genes!" Jess says, finally getting belligerent right back. What is the matter with him? He is driving her insane!
"Oh, so you'd be fine if Charles Manson knocked you up," Nick says, and they have wandered so far from the point Jess doesn't even know how they got here; her head is spinning.
"What are you even talking about?!" Jess says. "Of course I don't want a Manson baby, but that doesn't mean --"
"So let's do this!" Nick says. "What, do you not think my baby would be cute enough? Is there something wrong with my genes?"
Okay, that is enough. "What is the matter with you? We are not having this conversation!" Jess says.
"Yes, we are!" Nick says. "I just want to save you from getting killed by your baby and you're acting like I'm the weirdo here?!?"
"YOU ARE THE WEIRDO! Okay, that's it, get out of my room," Jess says, pointing at the door. "Get out."
He goes, grumbling. And of course any conversation they would have about this would devolve into a screaming fight -- what makes him think his genes are so great, anyway? He'd have the angriest, most infuriating baby in the world. He drives her so crazy, she can't even stand it.
Before he came bursting in, she was about to go to bed, so she storms under the covers, but she's so worked up it's hard to sleep, and when she looks at the catalog now, instead of seeing architects and NASA scientists and business executives who run marathons in their spare time, all she sees are unemployed deadbeats and yeah, okay, serial killers. A surprising amount of these profiles could also fit Charles Manson, that is the disturbing thing. And Jeffrey Dahmer had blond hair too, number 61, what proof do you have you don't have bodies in your fridge, huh?
Stupid Nick Miller, why does he have to ruin everything? She tosses and turns for awhile, thinking about how annoying Nick is, all on edge and twitchy. Totally furious, even though she suspects maybe she is staying furious to not think about how maybe Nick had a good idea -- but no, he didn't! He would totally horn in on raising this baby, and he would be the worst, she can't imagine how angry she would be all the time. He is maddening. Thinking about how maddening he is just seems to make her more and more worked up, though, until finally she ends up -- well, um, okay, so to be totally honest, she ends up self-completing, furtively and quietly under the covers. At least if she gets off she'll probably be able to fall asleep, right? And she does -- after her, um, climax, it's only a couple of minutes before she drifts off, feeling weirdly satisfied, and trying not to think about that too hard.
**
The infuriating part is that Nick’s stupid Manson baby thing totally ruins the sperm bank for her. Every time she thinks about going there all she can see are creepy demon babies, and this is all his fault. So fine, she hopes he’s happy, he is just going to step up if she’s going to have a baby, that’s all there is to it. He owes her sperm for this, she doesn’t even care about how serious he was before, or how weird it’s going to be, that’s how desperate the situation is.
She storms into his room late one night, just after he’s gotten back from his shift at the bar, when she knows Winston is at work and Schmidt will be asleep. “I hope you’re happy,” she says. “I’m too scared of a Manson baby to go to the sperm bank.”
Nick makes an appreciative face, like she’s just told him something awesome. “Oh, so you’ve come to your senses!” he says. “Good for you.”
“Nick!” she says. “You ruined it! I hope you’re happy -- I really want a baby, and now the only way to get it is if someone I know gives me sperm. And since it’s your fault I can’t go to a sperm bank....”
Nick blinks a couple times, looking a little more startled than she expected. “Oh,” he says. “Oh! I mean, um, really?”
“What?” she says. “Are you scared? You think that would be a little too weird?” She knew he didn’t really want to do it -- he talks a big game, but where’s his follow-through, huh, Nick?
“No, I don’t think it would be weird,” he says, getting defensive, even though he obviously kind of does think it’s weird. “I’ll knock you up right now, I don’t care! I’ll give you sperm for free, you’re better off than paying, whatever, $300 for that substandard jizz.”
“Ew!” Jess says at his choice of words. “Please don’t -- but okay, fine! Great! I’ll talk to Sadie about doing the insemination.”
“Great!” Nick says. “Tell me when you want me to jerk off in a jar for you and she can put it in the ol’ turkey baster.”
Jess makes a face, but laughs at the same time. “Well, it’s a little more complicated than a turkey baster,” she says. “It’s like a whole procedure.”
Nick makes that face he makes whenever they talk about vaginas. “It is?”
“Yeah, it’s a whole thing,” Jess says. “And insurance doesn’t cover it, which is annoying, but I’ve saved up enough money that I can get it in two months, probably, so --”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Nick says. “This costs money?! How much money?”
She tells him. For a second afterward she is legitimately concerned his eyeballs might pop out. She’s never seen that much of the whites of someone’s eyes before -- she’s pretty sure she saw the corner of his brain for a second.
“What?!?!” he says once he regains the power of speech, his voice all strangled and high-pitched. “Are you kidding me?!?”
“Of course I’m not kidding,” Jess says. She doesn’t know why he’s so surprised -- doesn’t he know anything? “You don’t think doctors do stuff for free, do you? I mean, there’s equipment and --”
“THAT IS RIDICULOUS,” Nick yells. “PEOPLE GET PREGNANT FOR FREE ALL THE TIME!!!”
“Shh!” Jess says, a little alarmed, glancing back towards the door. “You’re going to wake up Schmidt!” Schmidt’s room is on the whole other side of the apartment, but still, Nick is being really loud.
Nick brings it down to a whisper-scream, but doesn’t seem any less agitated. “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE GOING TO PAY MONEY FOR THAT,” he whisper-yells. “I COULD GET YOU PREGNANT RIGHT NOW, WHY DO WE HAVE TO BRING SOME QUACK DOCTOR INTO THIS?!”
“Hey!” Jess says. She’s talking in her normal voice, even though with Nick sort-of whispering like that it makes her want to whisper too, but she is not going to be pulled down to his level. “Sadie is not a quack!”
“You know what I mean!” Nick says. He seems to be calming down a little, so that it’s more like a normal whisper and not like the strangled yelps of someone in the fourth circle of hell who had their vocal cords removed, so that’s something. “There is no reason to pay good money for something that stupid when sex is free! We’re not doing that, okay, we can do this the old fashioned way.”
That finally distracts Jess from being surprised that Nick doesn’t understand what artificial insemination is, to understanding what he is actually suggesting. “Wait,” she says, and now her voice is the one that’s gone all high-pitched and crazy. “You want to have sex with me?!”
“I want to save you A LOT OF MONEY,” Nick says, in the confident tone of someone who would rather install two-liter bottles into the wall than just call a plumber to fix the toilet. “Just think of my penis as a turkey baster.”
“OH MY GOD,” Jess says, and when Nick makes frantic shushing noises she drops her voice to the same whisper-scream that seems to be getting a lot of action in this conversation. “Oh my God, are you freaking kidding me?! First of all, that is the most disgusting thing anyone’s ever said to me --”
“Thank you,” Nick says.
“-- and second of all, ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!?! We are not having sex, it’s weird enough you want to have a kid together!”
“HOW IS HAVING SEX MORE INTIMATE THAN HAVING A KID TOGETHER?” Nick whisper-yells.
“HOW DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND HOW IT CLEARLY IS?” Jess whisper-yells.
“IT WOULD BE VERY CLINICAL!” Nick says through gritted teeth. “PURELY FOR PROCREATION.”
“GET OUT!” Jess points at the door. “I HAVE HAD SO MUCH MORE THAN ENOUGH OF YOU.”
“This is MY ROOM,” Nick says.
“Oh,” Jess says, wind taken out of her sails a little. “Right.”
“You’re so melodramatic,” Nick says, his tone still really angry, but at least not whisper-yelling anymore. “Why can’t we have a rational discussion about this without you ordering me out of the room?”
“BECAUSE NOTHING YOU SAY IS EVER RATIONAL,” Jess yells for real, at the actual end of her rope, and storms out of the room herself.
Schmidt is sleepily emerging from his room as she slams the door, rubbing his eyes. “Can you two keep it down? I’m sleeping!” he says. “What on earth is going on?”
“Don’t even worry about it,” Jess says, and goes in her room and slams that door too for good measure, and it takes her awhile to calm down again. How on earth could Nick think it would be fine to just sleep together, how is that okay?!? Even if it would save her a lot of money she could put toward a changing table, because teacher’s salaries are no joke, my friend -- but whatever, that is not a mental road she is going to go down, Nick needs to stop putting horrible ideas in her head.
**
Of course Nick’s second ridiculous idea sticks just as hard as the first ridiculous idea did. Because here is the thing: if she’s really going to use Nick as a sperm donor, she doesn’t want everybody knowing about it. If everybody knows about it, it’ll be like Nick is the dad, but he’s not going to be the dad, he’s just going to be the donor. He’s just doing her a friendly, sperm-donating favor, he’s not going to help raise the kid or anything, but she knows that nobody would understand that. And if Sadie knows about Nick being the donor, well, everyone will eventually know about it. Sadie has good intentions, but when she gets drunk, good intentions don’t count for a lot, let’s just say.
Anyway, even if Sadie wasn’t a drunken broadcasting system, Jess would feel weird about Sadie knowing that her kid was Nick’s. Just... it feels weird. She just kind of feels like Sadie might read more into it than is there, the same way everybody else would. Jess and Nick are just friends -- this is just a favor, and nobody needs to make a big deal of it, okay? Why does everybody make such a big deal of it whenever she imagines them finding out?!
So there is a lot of appeal to keeping it just between her and Nick. And there’s a lot of appeal to saving the money too -- when you think about it, it really is ridiculous to pay a doctor to do something they can do for themselves. It’s like paying a doctor to clip your toenails -- totally unnecessary and really, when you think about it, kind of lazy, right?
So that’s how she and Nick end up in her room in the middle of the night two weeks later when Schmidt is visiting his parents for Rosh Hashanah and Winston’s at work, so they’re guaranteed five hours of complete and utter privacy. Not that it’s going to take five hours, it’s just nice to have a buffer so they don’t have to worry about it.
“Okay,” Nick says, swinging his arms like he’s warming up for a sports game, limbering up. “How’re we going to do this?”
Jess is so embarrassed, she doesn’t know why he wants to make it worse by talking about it. Anyway, what does he even mean -- how many ways are there to do it? “Uh... I don’t know, what do you --”
“I mean,” Nick says. “We don’t have to do it for real if that’s too weird.”
Jess just stares at him for a second, completely blank on what he could possibly be getting at. “Uh... we kind of do have to do it for real, though, don’t we?”
“No, I mean,” Nick says. “Like, we could just keep it clinical. Like, I could jerk off and then just stick it in at the last minute.”
“AUGH, EW,” Jess says, clapping her hands over her ears, her face going hot as the fires of hell, which is suddenly where this conversation seems to be taking place.
“What?!” Nick says, looking kind of offended. “It’s like the opposite of pulling out!”
Jess’s whole face has screwed itself up, she can’t even look at him. She kind of gestures with one hand. “I appreciate that,” she says. She feels like she needs to bleach her whole brain. “But, augh, just, that’s so weird --”
“It’s not weird!” Nick says.
“It is weird!” Jess says. “I don’t want to watch you... pleasuring yourself.”
“Oh, what, I’m disgusting now?” Nick says. He actually seems kind of offended. “Geez, grow up, you’re so immature! I’m just trying to make it less awkward!”
“How is this less awkward?” Jess says. She thinks she has her hand pressing against her forehead, and has to make an effort to put it down. She still can’t quite look at Nick.
“It’d be less awkward!” Nick says. “Or fine, I don’t know, maybe we could do it from behind or something so we don’t have to look at each other.”
“NICK,” Jess says. She is seriously going to have an aneurysm if he keeps saying these disgusting things to her, why do they have to talk about it, why can’t they just get it over with? “Um, I understand what you’re trying to do, but -- oh my God, that’s so gross, can’t we just do it normal?”
“Normal?” Nick says, like that’s a weird thing to say.
“Yeah! What, can you not do it normal?”
“YOU ARE SO INHIBITED,” Nick says.
"I'm not inhibited!" Jess says, getting really aggravated. "I just want to do it normal, what's wrong with normal, are you saying --"
"Are you trying to say 'missionary'?!" Nick says, talking over her. "Because 'normal' is only a category that someone INCREDIBLY INHIBITED would use --"
"Of course I mean missionary!" Jess says. "What else would I mean by 'normal'? Why do you have to be so --"
"Okay, FINE, now we're getting somewhere," Nick says.
"--difficult about everything," Jess says. She's vaguely aware she and Nick are pretty much toe to toe at this point, yelling at each other. She's just so annoyed at him, why did she pick him to father her child anyway, this is obviously not going to work. "I mean, if you can only do it like a pervert, whatever, but --"
"Oh, I can do it 'normal,'" Nick says, using air quotes, but then he's grabbing her arm and kissing her out of the blue, cutting her off midsentence, this hot, hard, furious kiss like Jess has never been kissed in her entire life. Suddenly a thousand horrible romance novel cliches are rushing through her head, all about a fire in her belly and melting into his kiss, and somehow they feel accurate, her all boneless and overwhelmed, like if he wasn't holding onto her so tight with hands that are suddenly surprisingly strong, she'd crumple like a folding chair. She's kissing him back, her hands in his hair, but it's all on instinct, her body reacting before her mind can catch up, because she feels like she's still trying to understand that this is actually happening, that Nick's tongue is in her mouth and his hands are on her hips and he's pressing his dick against her stomach, and she's more turned on than she's been in her entire life. Somehow she didn't think doing this with Nick would be so… sexy.
"Oh my God," she breathes out when Nick pulls back, resting his forehead against hers for a second. She wants to fan herself like a southern belle in some kind of racist Civil War drama.
"That normal enough for you?" Nick says, his voice all low and sexy, and all Jess can do is laugh breathlessly, this girly, horrible, turned-on laugh. Nick pulls her in closer, pressing a softer but still somehow mind-bogglingly hot kiss to her mouth, and then he says, "So you want me to put a baby inside you?"
Oh God, why does that turn her on even more? What is wrong with her? "Uh huh," Jess says, sounding and feeling like she's brain-damaged, and Nick's hands move to her ass as he starts to walk them back toward the bed.
Then he's on top of her, kissing her with his hand moving to her boob, and he mumbles against her mouth, "Do you have a condom?"
Jess blinks, pulling back to stare at him. "What?" she says, trying not to laugh.
It actually takes Nick a second, but then he makes a face as he realizes that is the opposite of what they're doing here. "Shut up," he says. "I forgot." Then he's kissing her again, fierce and hungry, and her capacity for independent thought takes a steep nose dive for the next half hour or so.
**
When they've both, uh, finished, Nick rolls off her, and then they're both just lying there, breathing hard, their bare arms touching. It's sort of weird and awkward now that they're not in the heat of the things. "So..." Jess says. "We just had sex." She kind of laughs, just because it's funny, sort of.
"Yeah, we did," Nick says, laughing too.
"That happened," Jess says. She feels squishy -- she's always used a condom before, and without it, it's just very... wet. Down there. But that's good! She wants that stuff to make it all the way to her fallopian tubes. Actually, that reminds her....
"Jess!" Nick says. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Standing on my head!" Jess says. It's not that dramatic -- her head's on the bed and she's leaning her legs against the wall, so it's not like it's hard. "I want to help the little guys out with fertilizing me!"
"Okay," Nick says, rubbing his forehead. "That's great. I mean, you're naked, but okay."
"We just had sex, Nick," Jess says. "Of course I'm naked."
Nick's turtle-face looks weird upside-down. Also it kind of looks like he's eyeing her boobs, since they're hanging weird when she's standing on her head like this.
"Okay," Nick says again, sitting up and starting to look for his clothes. "Great, well, uh. I guess we're done here?"
Jess tries to sound normal -- sure, his private part was just inside her, but it was just a friendly friend favor, no big deal, no reason to feel weird. "Yep, thanks, Nick!" she says. "Um, I'm still ovulating tomorrow, so..."
"Yep," Nick says. "I'll be back knocking you up tomorrow night."
She holds out her hand and he high-fives it.
"Woo, babymaking!" she says.
"Yeah," Nick says, fumbling on his boxers. "Woo, babymaking."
**
So it's a little weird the next day. That's to be expected -- nothing to freak out about. Maybe she turns bright red when she runs into Nick in the kitchen the next morning, and maybe Nick keeps clearing his throat over and over again, but whatever! They'll be fine. So she keeps thinking about Nick naked, so what. Soon she'll be pregnant and this whole thing will be a fading distant memory, her and Nick back to normal friends without, you know, carnal knowledge of each other.
It's even weirder when they do it again the next night, and the weirdest thing about it is that it's getting kind of familiar. She knows how Nick kisses, and how he feels inside her, and that he looks into your eyes the whole time, which makes her feel kind of strange in her stomach.
They do it a third night, just to be safe. "All right, uh, thanks, pal," Jess says afterwards, as Nick is getting dressed again to leave her room. "That should do it, I guess." It's only been a couple of days, but it already feels like a habit, like it's going to be weird when Nick isn't in here doing it with her tomorrow night. Like a little bit of a letdown, somehow.
Nick looks a little lost himself, not quite looking at her. "Yeah, no problem," he says.
Jess wants to hug him or something, but she doesn't quite know what to do -- now touching feels strange, like hugging's both too intimate and not intimate enough. She ends up clapping him on the back, like someone's dad. "Um, see you in the morning!" she says, feeling like a doofus.
Nick gives her a weird look, but ducks his head and leaves, so, uh, mission accomplished?
**
When Jess gets her period two weeks later, she cries, alone in her room, for about a half hour. Then she blows her nose, washes her face, and starts doing research.
Apparently when you're in your 30s, it can take up to a year to get pregnant without anything being wrong. So this is perfectly normal, nothing to worry about, she just has to try again next month. And apparently the best way to know if you're ovulating is to get those little ovulation sticks you pee on, and then when the sticks say you're about to ovulate, you have to have sex in the next 12-36 hours.
So okay. She has a plan. She just has to tell Nick that they have to try again next month, get to the store to buy those sticks, and not worry about it for a couple of weeks.
The only thing is, it's one of those days when it's impossible to get Nick alone, because it's Saturday and Schmidt is glued to him like a clingy girlfriend. "It's such a nice day," Jess says. "I think I'm going to go sit up on the roof. Nick, you wanna come?"
"Are you guys going up to the roof?" Schmidt says, sticking his head out of his room, because he wasn't even in the same room. "I could use some sun, let me just get into my sunbathing gear."
After they've been on the roof for an hour with a Schmidt who is only wearing a Speedo, Jess says, "I have to run some errands but it's Outside Dave's naptime. Nick, could you drive me?"
"Errands?" Schmidt says, pushing his sunglasses down his nose so he can look over them. "I have some too, could we drop by the drycleaners?"
The most annoying thing about this, Jess thinks, slouched down in the backseat of Nick's car, because Schmidt looked at her like she was crazy when she tried to sit shotgun, is that even though she's being so transparently obvious she wants to talk to Nick on his own, Nick isn't getting it.
By dinner time, she's given up on ever getting Nick alone, so she just rolls her eyes, marches out to the kitchen where all the guys are milling around, making ethnic noodles and wrestling and setting their fantasy football lineups, and says theatrically, "Augh, I have the worst period cramps." Then she adds, just to make sure nobody missed it, "I just got my period."
"Ugh!" and "Ew!" and "Oh my God, Jess, why would we want to know that?" all the guys say at basically the same time, Nick making as much of a face as any of them, but then halfway through his barfing motion his eyes go wide and panicked and he stares at her as the penny finally drops. God, it only took all day.
"You got your period?" he says, blank and stunned, his mouth opening like a fish, so obviously weirded out in a completely different way than the other guys that Jess glares at him, making the fiercest 'be cool,' face she has ever made in her life. "I mean, augh, ew, gross, menstrual cycles are disgusting," he says.
"Yeah," Jess says, still looking right at Nick. "So, you know, I need a plan for what to do next."
Winston and Schmidt stare at her. "Uh, a plan?" Winston says.
Shoot, why is she being as weird as Nick? This whole frustrating day has really thrown her off her game. "Uh, you know, uh, a heating pad plan?" Jess says, moving to the cabinet where she keeps her hot water bottle. "I just, I'm gonna fill this up and then I'm going to go to my room to lie down, so that's where I'll be, in my room, lying down. Alone in my room. You know, if any of you need me." She gives Nick another meaningful look, which it looks like he's actually finally understanding. God, about time.
When Nick slips through the door of her room ten minutes later, he still looks a little stunned, like he'd just assumed that Jess would be pregnant after one try. And sure, Jess had kind of assumed that too, but that was hours ago, before she got educated.
"It didn't work?" Nick says, mostly whispering, glancing back at the door like maybe Schmidt has a glass pressed up against the other side of it. Which, honestly, is not an unreasonable fear. "Do you think -- I mean, are my guys -- am I, like, barren or something?"
Jess can't help laughing, and then she explains to him everything she read online about fertility in your thirties and ovulation and how she needs to actually get to the store for an errand without Schmidt to buy those ovulation kits, and how Nick is just going to have to be on call the second week of the month from here on out until they finally get one of those eggs fertilized and implanted.
"On call?" Nick says. He looks a little dazed -- maybe Jess went into too much detail on her Fallopian tubes. "You mean every time you're ovulating you're just going to make me have sex with you?"
Jess blinks at him. "Not make," she says. "I mean, you don't have to if you don't want."
"No," Nick says, and swallows visibly. "I mean, I'm okay with having sex with you if you are. I just, uh, I wanted to make sure you were sure, is all."
"Okay, great," Jess says.
"Faaaaantastic," Nick says. "Uh, so, should I sneak in tonight?"
Jess looks at him. "Just got my period," she reminds him. "Like, two weeks from now, buddy."
Nick blushes. "Right, okay, sure," he says. "Uh, let me know, I guess." He slinks out of her room.
**
She ends up making a shared Google calendar for her and Nick, so she can put in her cycle and he can see the approximate time of the month she'll be ovulating. So it shouldn't come as a shock to either of them twelve days later, what with them being so open and honest about her body and all, but when Jess pees on the stick and she actually is about to ovulate, her heart starts pounding like this is some fight-or-flight type situation. Oh God, it's happening, and she has 12-36 hours to have unprotected sex with Nick.
She wanders out to the living room to see what Nick's doing, hoping he'll be hanging out by himself to make this easy, but all three of the guys are sitting on the couch staring at the TV like they've actually been entranced.
"Hey, guys, whatcha doing?" Jess says, sprawling down on the couch with them.
"Die Hard," Winston says without taking his eyes off the screen. His mouth's a little bit open.
"Yeah, shhh, Jess, it's Die Hard," Nick says.
There's clearly no way that Jess is going to be able to drag him away with any kind of excuse. She thinks fast, pulls out her phone, then thinks hard about what won't be totally incriminating in case Schmidt grabs his phone away, and finally texts him, "stick says 12-36 hours."
Across the couch, Nick's phone beeps, and he absently pulls it out of his pocket. She hopes nobody else is watching him, because his eyes bug out when he reads the text, and then he stares at her.
It feels so dirty with the other two guys sitting right there, knowing she just told him they have to have sex, like, right away.
"Oh my God, this is the best part," Schmidt says from right next to Nick, and she and Nick are staring at each other trying to think when they could best have sex in the next few hours. She's feeling weirdly turned on already.
Nick turns back to his phone, typing with his thumbs, and then Jess's phone beeps.
"Jess, if you're going to keep making that noise, get out of the living room," Schmidt says. "Important things are happening here."
The text from Nick says, "Go in ur room right now and stay there."
Oh, God, the bossy tone. Her eyes widen a little bit, feeling even more squirmy between her legs, and she clears her throat. "Okay, okay," she says to Schmidt, trying to sound normal, but she's pretty sure her voice is kind of husky. "Keep your pants on." She accidentally looks right at Nick as she says that, and he's watching her darkly, and -- oh God -- he's got a pillow over his lap. She turns and almost runs for her room.
She knows it's not like they're going to have sex right now, with the other guys right outside the door. They're just going to talk about when would be a good time, obviously. She tells herself that over and over again through the eternity it seems like it takes Nick to get in there, pacing back and forth in her room.
"Nah, don't pause it," she hears Nick saying loudly outside the door. "I gotta take the kids to the pool, if you know what I mean, so I might be awhile."
There's a brief pause, then her door opens just a crack and Nick sneaks through it.
"Hey," she starts to say, but Nick takes a giant step forward to put his finger over her lips. "Shh," he says, and he's standing right there, right in front of her, and she's so turned on right now, his fingers hot against her chin.
"Quick," he whispers, so quietly she can barely hear him. Outside the door, she can hear some kind of explosion rumbling from the movie. "We've got ten minutes."
Her eyes widen. "Now?" she whispers.
"I've gotta work in a couple hours," Nick whispers. His hands have absently moved down to her waist, playing with the hem of her shirt. "We should probably be safe, don't you think?"
That's true, they might not get a chance once he's back, and probably definitely not within twelve hours. But still -- "Won't they notice you're missing?" Jess whispers, though she's kicking off her shoes.
"Nah, I told them I was pooping," Nick whispers, pulling off his own shoes. "We're fine for a little bit. But we have to be really quiet."
Jess nods, standing in front of him flat-footed in her bare feet. She bites her lip for a second, then pulls her top off, watches his eyes go dark, and there's a flurry of clothes coming off, him pressing her down on the bed.
When he pushes inside her, she makes a little noise, and he claps his hand over her mouth. "Shh, Jess," he says, staring at her all hot and intense, getting deeper inside, and the guys are right outside. "Shh," he says, and bites down gently on her shoulder like he's trying not to make any noise himself, and this is the hottest thing that's ever happened to her.
At least until the next day, when they check into a fleabag motel to do it like a couple of sluts.
**
That month, getting her period is disappointing, but with something strange mixed into it when she thinks they'll have to try again, something like relief or excitement. She tries not to examine that too closely, texting Nick discreetly that Aunt Flo is here, trying to go about her business for the next week or two, not think too hard about how, oh darn, she has to sleep with Nick again.
They're kind of getting in the swing of the shenanigans they have to go through to get some privacy to do it. They tell Schmidt that they're going to a French film festival and do it in a parking lot, and then the next month, when Schmidt says he wants to come along to the French film festival, they do it in the theater bathroom. It's such a weird thrill, sneaking around like this -- Jess kind of gets why Cece kept her thing with Schmidt a secret for so long, because it's really sexy, having this private, secret thing. Even if she and Nick are just doing it as friends, and only doing it once a month, still. She has to keep reminding herself that the endgame is a baby, because when it's just this furtive, hot sex, it's hard to keep that in her sights somehow.
**
In month five of trying, the ovulation stick tells her it's time first thing in the morning on a Wednesday before school, her still bleary-eyed because it's 6:30 am. Nick closed the bar the night before, but the light's still on in his room -- when he closes, he gets home around 3, but a lot of times it takes him a few hours to wind down and go to sleep. Jess slips away from where Schmidt is puttering in the kitchen to knock on Nick's door.
"I'm about to ovulate," she whispers once she's in his room. She kind of wishes they could just do it right now, make sure those sperm are in there doing their job, cover their bases, but there's no way she has time to do it before work.
Nick's lying on his bed looking drowsy, his laptop next to him streaming an episode of Ice Road Truckers. "Cool," he says. This sex-summoning is starting to feel routine, weird as that is. "So, after school, before Schmidt gets home from work?"
"No, it'll have to be a little later," Jess says. "I have Science Olympiad till five."
"Oh," Nick says, shifting to sit up against the pillows. "I'm working six till closing again tonight." When he works that shift he leaves around 5:30, which is when Jess gets home after Science Olympiad.
"Oh," Jess says blankly. That means they won't be able to do it until tomorrow after school, which is almost 36 hours away. That's really risky -- what if it's too late and her egg dies before any sperm can get to it, and then this whole month is wasted?
She can see Nick doing the same mental math and coming to the same conclusion. Crap. So the only time they'll both be home in the next 24 hours is between 3 am and 6:30 am tomorrow morning, but that's…
Oh. Well, there you go. "Okay, um, wake me up after your shift tonight," Jess says. "We'll do it then."
**
Going to bed that night feels strange, knowing that Nick's going to come wake her up for sex in the middle of the night. Like a really weird, adult version of Santa Claus, or like how old-timey people must have felt on their wedding night, knowing they were definitely having sex. She feels like she should put on her sexiest pajamas, except everything sexy she has isn't really designed to sleep in, the lace scratching her in a way she's sure is going to keep her awake, or the straps digging in to her shoulders. Finally she decides this is stupid. Nick's seen her in her unsexy, comfy pajamas a thousand times, and anyway, it's not like he's a boyfriend she's trying to impress! He's just a friend doing her a biological favor for the fifth month in a row -- nothing to get worked up about. She doesn't know what she was thinking.
She washes the makeup off her face, leaving her skin shiny and bare, puts on her comfiest pair of blue flannel pajamas, and manages to fall asleep in spite of how her heart inexplicably keeps racing.
**
She wakes up in the dark to Nick's hand gentle on her shoulder, Nick's voice saying, "Jess," low and a little rough, like he needs to clear his throat.
"Mmm," she says, and rolls over, blinking.
He looks strange, the room dark except for streetlights and the moon fading in through the window, his face shadowed, light catching one cheekbone. His expression is a little more open than sometimes, vulnerable, maybe just from it being the middle of the night, how everything's dim and quiet and feels different. "Hey," he says, keeping his voice down.
She smiles at him, drowsy and relaxed, and flips the covers back to invite him to slide under. It seems easier than saying anything right at this moment, feeling like she's swimming up from underwater, brain gradually clearing the sleep out. She kind of expects him to strip first, get right down to business, but instead he just crawls right under in his t-shirt and jeans, curling on his side facing her. He smells like the bar, wood and booze, and a little like the outside, asphalt and trees and that salt smell that blows in when the wind's coming off the ocean.
"How was work?" Jess says, stretching a little, then settling curved in towards him too. It seems like he wants to talk a little or something -- usually when they do this they're wide awake and in a hurry, or arguing and cranky, everything bright jangly edges, Nick's hand over her mouth, Nick moving inside her fast and frantic. This feels different.
"Okay," Nick says. "Sorry to wake you." His eyes look soft, and she wonders if she seems more sleepy and out of it than she thinks. Everything feels half like a dream.
She leans forward and kisses him, soft and careful, and he kisses her back, a little tentative this time, exploring. For some reason it feels like a first kiss, even though they've had sex kind of a bunch of times, in a bunch of different positions in case one was better for conception.
Jess makes a little noise against his mouth. "Shh," Nick says, resting his forehead against hers. Jess laughs a little and kisses him again, and everything goes slow and dreamy, slipping out of their clothes, skin pale and smooth in the light gliding in from the window, Nick moving on top of her achingly slowly.
It feels so strange and quiet and intimate, and Jess is so sleepy, that she almost curls up with him afterwards and says, "Stay." She wants him to sleep there, all loose-limbed and comfortable with his face smoothed out, and the threat of Winston or Schmidt finding him there seems so far away and imaginary, like she can barely remember who Winston and Schmidt are. She just wants Nick, there in her bed, like a real boyfriend, wants to wake up together and spend the day together and not have this just be sex.
But she holds herself back, tries to remember that this is just insemination, that that's all he signed on for, and watches Nick get dressed again in the moonlight. She's almost asleep by the time he slips out the door again, and when her alarm goes off in the morning it's hard to remember if it really happened or if it was a dream.
**
That's the month she gets pregnant. And she's happy about it, she really is. She tries not to think about the faint look of disappointment on Nick's face when she told him, how weird it's going to be not to sleep with him anymore. But -- that's okay. They can both just get back to dating other people, and everything will go back to normal. It's fine. It's really fine.
**
Epilogue
Cece's the best friend ever -- she goes with Jess to every single one of Jess's doctor's appointments with her. It really helps to have someone else with her to remember stuff the doctor says and to hold her hand, like when Sadie told her there was something weird with the placenta and Jess was freaking out so much internally she barely heard that it probably wasn't a big deal and that the baby would probably be fine. Cece's there when they find out she's having a boy, there to freak out with Jess and convince her that she'll be able to raise a boy without a dad, even before all her roommates hear about it and get way overexcited about teaching him to play basketball and pee standing up and ask out girls ("Or boys!" Jess interjected) and to laugh at Jess's worries about him not having male role models.
"Um, look at who you live with," Winston said. "He's got male role models coming out his ears."
"Yeah," Nick added. "Your problem is too many. Don't let him use Schmidt as a role model, Jess -- you don't want your kid using baby hair salsa."
"Chutney," Schmidt says.
"Whatever," Nick says.
But on the day of Jess's first fancy 3D ultrasound, Cece has a really important job she has to be at, so Jess doesn't have anyone to go with. She whines about it in the kitchen in the morning.
"Sorry, Jess, I've got work," Schmidt says, pouring hot water into his french press.
"I'm going to bed," Winston says on his way through the kitchen, his tie loose at the collar and his suit a little rumpled from work. "Goodnight, all!"
"It's eight am," Nick calls after him.
Jess looks at Nick, her final option. They've been careful not to have Nick more involved than anyone else, blocking out how he's the, uh, 'donor', but this is okay, right? When no one else can go? "Nick?" she says.
Nick shrugs. "Yeah, you want me to go watch the little baby on the baby TV? Sure, I'm not doing anything."
Jess hadn't really thought about it until she and Nick walk into the OBGYN office together, but this is the first time she's been to this office with a guy. There's another couple sitting in the waiting room, the guy with his arm around the girl. Obviously he's the one who knocked her up. Oh God, everyone's going to assume Nick's the one who knocked her up! Oh God, Nick is the one who knocked her up!
Jess's face starts getting hot, but when she looks at Nick, he doesn't seem to be feeling awkward at all. He's his ordinary rumpled self, two days worth of stubble, wrinkled button-down, holey sneakers, flopping down in one of the chairs and picking up a Women's Health magazine. Jess sits down gingerly next to him, still way too aware that everyone probably thinks he's her husband or something.
Actually, maybe that's kind of nice. She's not a sad single mom doing this on her own -- she caught a husband. A smelly, mussed, semi-employed deadbeat husband, but still!
"Oh, you brought Nick," Sadie says when she comes in the exam room and sees them there. Nick was playing with the model ovaries, and he nervously throws them back on the counter with a clatter. "This should be fun."
"Hi, Sadie," Nick says. "I'm here to watch the baby TV."
"Good," Sadie says, using her soothing doctor voice like she thinks Nick's an idiot. "We'll get to that after the exam." She's putting on her latex gloves, and Nick's face starts going all turtle-y.
"Um, what's that?" Nick says.
"I'm just going to check Jess's cervix," Sadie says in the same soothing voice, sitting down on her rolling stool and scooting between Jess's legs.
"Oh God," Nick mutters. He's safely ensconced up by Jess's head where she put him as soon as she put her feet in the stirrups, but she should've known he'd be traumatized by all the vagina talk that would go on at this appointment -- he has such a horrified look on his face right now, and it's so dumb, Sadie's fingers aren't in his vagina.
"You okay there, soldier?" Jess says to him. He's got his head in his hand now.
"I didn't know we were going to talk about your cervix," Nick says. "I'm a man, I shouldn't be hearing this."
"Aww, dads are in here hearing about cervixes all the time," Sadie says. "Sack up, little man."
Nick's head comes up sharply. "I'm not the dad!" He sounds panicky. Oh God, be cool, Nick!
Sadie looks at him like he's a weird idiot again. "I know," she says, back in that soothing, you're-a-dummy voice.
As Sadie looks away, down at Jess's vagina, Jess smacks Nick on the chest, and he jerks and makes an "ow" face at her, batting her hand away, and Jess furiously mouths, "Be cool," at him. They're about to have a frantic mouthed argument when Sadie's head comes back up and they both abruptly go back to normal.
"Okay, Jess, everything looks good," Sadie says. "You ready for your ultrasound?"
Nick doesn't know where to look when Jess's bare belly comes out, staring pointedly at the ceiling and the model of a uterus and anywhere else, but then finally Jess's belly has the gel on it and Sadie's got the wand out, and they can all safely look at the monitor, where there is a weirdly clear image of a foot.
"Whoa," Jess says, staring at it. It's so much clearer than the regular 2D ultrasounds she's been getting up till now -- you can even see toenails!
"That's the baby's little foot?" Nick says. He's staring at the monitor with his eyes wide. "That's amazing!" He looks back and forth between the monitor and Jess's belly like he expects to be able to see the foot through her skin. WIth his eyes all lit up like that, it looks like this is more what he was expecting from this appointment.
Sadie smiles at them. "Let's find his head," she says, and starts moving the wand down Jess's belly so they see the baby's legs and butt as it moves down.
"Hey, is that his dick?" Nick says as the baby's penis goes by.
"Yes, Nick," Jess says, rolling her eyes.
"Cool," Nick says, making an impressed face.
When Jess glances away from him and back to the monitor, they've finally found the baby's face, showing up in crazy accurate detail, a tiny hand making a fist up by his temple, his baby forehead and tiny closed up eyes and funny little nose, and, um, the baby really looks familiar, actually. In fact, right this second, the baby is making what could only be described as... "Look at that turtle face," Jess murmurs, feeling so many weird things at once she doesn't even know which one she's feeling the most. She looks at Nick. From his wide eyes, he looks like he feels about the same, and he turns his head to look at her, and they just stare at each other for a second. It never occurred to her that the baby might look like Nick -- why did that never occur to her? And this baby doesn't just look a little like Nick -- he looks so much like Nick that Jess is worried Sadie's going to notice and figure it out.
"What's that?" Sadie says, apparently not hearing.
"Um, nothing," Jess says, trying to focus on the monitor and stop thinking about Nick. That's her son there on the screen. She has a son, with ten fingers and ten toes and a face with actual expressions on it, like he's a whole little person.
In the car on the way home, they drive for like ten minutes in silence before Nick clears his throat and says, "So that was cool."
"Yeah!" Jess says. "Thanks for coming."
"Yeah, um, it was fun to see your kid," Nick says, putting a little emphasis on the 'your.' "Not my kid, your kid, but still cool." He laughs a little nervously. "It's funny how you could see his expressions."
"Yeah," Jess says, "I wasn't expecting that, to see what he looked like."
They subside into silence. Jess feels so awkward. Finally she blurts out, "I don't think anybody will be able to tell."
"Tell what?!" Nick says. "I didn't notice anything! You used a sperm donor!"
"Yeah, exactly!" Jess says. "It's fine, it's normal."
"Totally normal," Nick says, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. All Jess can think about is the night they made this baby; about how the baby is going to be born and look like Nick, and maybe have Nick's personality, and how it will just be this combination of the two of them out walking around out in the universe. She feels weird. How did they never think about this before?
Neither of them says anything else the whole way home, but Nick keeps shooting her these little glances, and they're going to be connected forever, and uh, maybe they are in over their heads here, but it's too late now.
"I really think it's fine," Nick says into the silence as Jess pulls into her parking space. "I don't think it'll change anything."
Jess clears her throat. "Yeah, definitely," she says. "Nothing's going to change. Nobody will even notice."
She thinks about Cece's face when she sees Jess give birth to this tiny, Nick-faced baby, and oh God, they are so screwed.