Chapter 11: The Perfect Copy
Cece Parekh arrived on a Tuesday afternoon, and the loft immediately rearranged itself around her presence.
I was in the kitchen attempting to improve my scrambled egg technique—still imperfect despite multiple observation sessions—when the front door opened and Jess's voice shifted into a register I hadn't heard before. Higher. More excited. The sound of someone greeting their favorite person.
"You came!"
"Of course I came." A new voice, warm and slightly amused. "You've been texting me emergency emojis for three days. I thought someone died."
"Coach left! And I got two new roommates! And one of them is weird!"
I set down the spatula and leaned against the counter, waiting for the inevitable introduction. Through the doorway, I could see Jess pulling a tall woman into the apartment—dark hair, model's posture, the kind of effortless beauty that made average people feel acutely aware of their own averageness.
Cece. In the show, she'd been Jess's best friend since childhood, voice of reason to Jess's chaos, eventual wife of Schmidt. I knew her trajectory better than she did—the modeling career peaks and valleys, the complicated romance with Schmidt that would define multiple seasons, the journey toward finding what she actually wanted versus what she'd been told to want.
But standing in the kitchen watching her assess the loft with quick, professional eyes, I had to remind myself that she wasn't a character. She was a person, and I was about to meet her for the first time while knowing her entire future.
"Chase!" Jess called. "Come meet my best friend!"
I crossed into the living room with what I hoped was appropriately casual body language. Cece's assessment turned toward me—quick, thorough, the kind of evaluation that happened automatically when you spent your career being evaluated. Threat? Background? Worth noticing?
"This is Chase," Jess said. "One of the new roommates. The weird one."
"Jess—"
"It's a compliment! Weird is interesting."
Cece extended her hand. "Cece. I've heard about you."
"Good things, I hope."
"She said you called Winston's future cat by name before it existed." Her expression was unreadable. "That's pretty specific weird."
The Ferguson slip, still echoing. I shook her hand, keeping my grip firm but not competitive. "Lucky guess. Common cat name."
"Uh-huh." She didn't believe me, but she also didn't seem to care. I'd been categorized—weird but harmless—and that was apparently sufficient for now.
Schmidt emerged from his room with suspicious timing, drawn by the sound of Cece's voice like a moth to expensive flame. "Cece! I didn't know you were visiting."
"I didn't tell you."
"Of course. Why would you? We're not—I mean, we're friends, obviously, through Jess, but there's no expectation of—"
"Schmidt." Cece's voice was patient. "Take a breath."
The dynamic between them was already visible—Schmidt's transparent interest, Cece's practiced deflection, the tension that would eventually resolve into romance after years of complication. I watched it play out, cataloguing details the show had only hinted at. Schmidt's tell when he was nervous: he adjusted his collar. Cece's tell when she was amused: her left eyebrow lifted fractionally.
Real people. Real tells. Real future that I couldn't help knowing.
---
The afternoon settled into comfortable chaos. Jess insisted on showing Cece the loft improvements since her last visit—which apparently meant reorganized craft supplies and a new system for communal food sharing. Winston joined the conversation with easy familiarity; he and Cece had a rapport built on years of proximity to Jess.
I stayed on the edges, present but not intrusive. The safer position.
Then Jess pulled out the photo albums.
"Oh god," Cece groaned. "Not the photos."
"The photos! Cece was so young in some of these. Look at her first modeling headshot—"
"Jess, I will literally pay you to stop."
But Jess was already flipping through pages, narrating Cece's early career with the enthusiasm of a proud parent. Awkward poses from teenage years. Test shots that never went anywhere. The progression from uncertain beginner to confident professional.
I watched with genuine interest. The show had established Cece as a model, but the details of that career had always been background information. Seeing the actual documentation—the technical evolution, the development of presence—was fascinating.
Cece noticed me watching. "You're actually looking at the technique."
"Sorry?"
"Most people just see the pictures. Pretty girl, nice pose, whatever." She took the album from Jess, flipping to a specific page. "This one. What do you see?"
A promotional shot from maybe five years ago. Cece in evening wear, shoulder angled toward the camera, chin slightly elevated.
"The shoulder line creates diagonal energy," I said, before I could stop myself. "The chin lift elongates the neck but not enough to look unnatural. Your weight's shifted onto the back leg, which creates a slight hip tilt that—"
I caught myself. Cece was staring at me with an expression I couldn't categorize.
"Show me," she said.
"What?"
"The pose. Show me what you just described."
This was a test, and I was going to fail it. The Photographic Reflex was already activating—I'd been watching her body language all afternoon, encoding the way she moved, the signature elements of her presence. Demonstrating would reveal too much competence.
But refusing would look suspicious in a different way.
I stepped away from the couch and attempted the pose. Shoulder angled. Chin elevated. Weight shifted.
The room went quiet.
"That's..." Jess's voice trailed off.
"Creepy accurate," Cece finished. "Like looking at a mirror."
I'd replicated it too perfectly. The Photographic Reflex had encoded not just the mechanics but the specific quality of Cece's presence—the way she inhabited space, the particular tension in her shoulders. What should have been an approximation was a copy.
"Good at impressions," I said, scrambling for cover. "Party trick. Don't ask me to do any accents."
Jess was already reaching for her phone. "I have to document this. Hold it. Hold the pose."
The Polaroid camera came from somewhere—Jess's room, probably, where vintage photography equipment competed for space with craft supplies. She snapped a photo before I could object.
"For posterity," she announced, shaking the developing image. "The weird roommate's hidden talent."
Cece took the photo when it finished developing, studying it with an expression I couldn't read.
"You actually saw the technique," she said quietly. "Not just the surface."
"It's craft. Worth seeing."
Something shifted in how she looked at me. I wasn't threat. I wasn't background. I'd become something else—interesting, maybe, or unsettling in a way that hadn't resolved into dismissal.
She pinned the Polaroid to Jess's corkboard without asking. My face, frozen in her pose, captured for whoever walked past that wall.
Schmidt had watched the entire exchange from across the room. His expression was complicated—competitive instinct activated by attention I hadn't sought, territorial awareness responding to Cece's interest in something that wasn't him.
Another variable. Another complication. Another way the timeline was bending.
---
Cece cornered me in the kitchen later, when Jess was distracted by a phone call from work.
"That wasn't a party trick," she said.
"It was something."
"Most guys just stare. They see pretty and stop looking. You actually saw what I was doing." Her assessment was direct, unapologetic. "Why?"
I considered my options. The truth—I have a supernatural ability to copy physical techniques through observation—wasn't available. But something adjacent might work.
"Craft matters," I said. "Doesn't matter what kind. When someone's actually good at something, you can see the work underneath. I pay attention to that."
"Because?"
"Because competence is interesting. Most people are okay at a lot of things. Actually being good takes something else."
Cece processed this. I couldn't tell if she believed me or just found the answer acceptable.
"You're weird," she said finally—the same word Jess used, the same word Nick used. Apparently I was a consensus.
"So I've heard."
"Not bad weird. Just..." She paused, searching for precision. "Most guys would have made a move by now. The pose thing was an opening. You didn't take it."
"Wasn't looking for an opening."
"That's the weird part."
She left without explaining further, rejoining Jess in the living room where the conversation had shifted to someone named Spencer and whether his "finding himself journey" was genuine or pathetic.
I cleaned up the kitchen, processing what had happened. The pose incident had created a connection—not romantic, not exactly, but something built on being seen accurately. Cece spent her career being looked at. Someone who actually looked at what she was doing, rather than just how she looked doing it, was apparently novel enough to register.
Whether that was good or dangerous, I couldn't tell yet.
The Polaroid stayed on the corkboard. My face in her pose. Evidence of something I couldn't take back.
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