Chapter Text
Fifty two days. Fifty two days utterly alone. ‘Alone’ was a feeling no one who lived in the loft could ever experience as having four roommates living together meant there was always someone home.
......
The first few weeks were the hardest for Jess. In a literal twenty four hours Schmidt and Cece left for their honeymoon, Winston left to prank Schmidt and Cece on their honeymoon, and Nick, emboldened by Jess’s words the night of the wedding, left with Reagan to go to New Orleans for three months.
Jessica Day had never felt so alone in her life.
The only person who would understand what she was feeling is Cece, but even Jess knew better than to interrupt her honeymoon with Schmidt. She was a big girl, and she would be just fine, right?
Right?
Day one had been the hardest. Schmidt and Cece left for their honeymoon before anyone else was awake, and Winston had spent the night at Aly’s. And then...Nick left.
Jess barely slept and laid awake most of the night, running through her conversation with Nick over and over again. Her eyes were swollen from crying, her face puffy, and she realized that under no circumstance would she be able to face Nick before he left. She heard him get up that morning and start moving around the loft, packing and readying to leave for New Orleans. At one point he had knocked on her bedroom door and softly called, “Jess? Are you awake?”, but Jess froze and willed herself not to make a sound lest she give away that she indeed was awake and avoiding him. She eventually heard the loft door close behind Nick on his way out, and she crept over to her window and peeked out through a small crack in the curtains as she watched him get in a cab and drive away.
“Goodbye, Nick.” she whispered, and with that crawled back into her bed and sobbed into her pillows.
She spent the days ahead binge watching Dirty Dancing and eating endless pints of ice cream, physically unable to pull herself off the couch as the pain from the emotional turmoil was too much to bear. The pain overwhelmed her and she burst into tears without a moment’s notice, everything a trigger and everything reminding her of Nick.
The worst part of all was that she hadn’t heard from Nick, not even once. Even Cece, on her freaking honeymoon, managed to send her a few texts checking in with Jess and seeing how she was managing. Schmidt had even texted her, reminding her not to eat his artisanal cheeses while he was gone. But Nick? Nothing.
Jess had kept her phone beside her at all times, almost obsessive in her need to have it within her reach in case Nick texted or tried to call. She became hypervigilant and would grab her phone constantly, swearing to herself that she heard her phone ‘ding’ and that it was Nick finally reaching out to her. But her phone remained silent, and Nick never called.
When Jess realized that her roommates were due home in three days, she knew she had to come up with a plan. While she had openly let herself mope around the loft in dirty pajamas and unkempt hair, Jess knew that when the guys got back from their trips, er, honeymoons , that she needed to reassure them that everything was ok and she was just fine. What she really needed, the more she thought about it, was something to distract herself so her thoughts didn’t linger on the best friend who abandoned her. Jess also knew she had to get herself out of the loft, as every little thing there reminded her of Nick.
During one of her late night television binges, yet another pint of ice cream in hand, a commercial aired about the local community college offering recreational activity classes to adults: wood working, music, gardening, drawing, everything . It was brilliant, and it gave Jess exactly what she needed to stay out of the loft and focused on something other than Nick.
She grabbed her laptop and brought up the community college’s website and downloaded the class catalog. Several hours later, exhausted but proud of herself, Jess had signed herself up for five classes at the college, two book clubs, one gym class, and one volunteer spot. Thanks to her skill as a teacher managing and organizing every part of her day, Jess’s new “No Nick” schedule left her only two one-hour chunks of the day that she had to be at the loft. When she thought about it further, she told herself that it would be even less time due to having to leave to get to her next activity.
Feeling a measure of contentment that she hadn’t felt in weeks, Jess closed her laptop and went to bed, sleeping better than she had in a long time.
......
Jess was deep into her new schedule by the time the loftmates started returning from their trips. While she didn’t actively avoid them, she also did not want to give any of them an opening to pry into her feelings about Nick. Ever the caregiver, Jess believed that her feelings for Nick were her own problem and that no one needed to worry about her. They all had their own lives and they were moving forward like they should be.
After a few weeks Winston and Schmidt started to notice that the atmosphere in the loft felt a little off. They were both well aware of how perky and chipper Jess could be when she was deep into one of her craft projects or lesson planning for school, but this version of Jess seemed almost manic. At first they dismissed it, chalking it up to the summer holiday and her penchant for always keeping busy, but after a month of watching Jess run from one class to the next they started to worry.
Jess was thinner than they remembered her, and her skin was pale and her eyes no longer had the same shine and sparkle. Neither Winston nor Schmidt were dumb enough to not realize that something had happened to Jess, but neither knew for sure what it could be. They each had their own suspicions, of course, but they didn’t know for sure until they cornered Cece one night and she accidentally let slip that Jess was struggling and working through some “stuff”.
The guys didn’t buy it, and even Cece knew that they didn’t believe her. Suddenly the loft door swung open revealing Jess, covered in sawdust and carrying her bag. She froze when she saw the looks on their faces, intuiting she had just walked in while they were talking about her. Jess saw the look of pity on their faces, and desperate to avoid any questions that she didn’t want to answer yet, scurried away to her bedroom and locked the door behind her.
Another day down. I can do this. I can be over Nick by the time he returns from New Orleans.