After the break, Eric and Jessica are canoodling in bed. Jessica is dissing Zach and Dick, and she talks about "learning to trust people." On that point, she asks Eric whether he cast the weird-ass votes at the beginning of the game that got blamed on Nick, and he tells her frankly that he did. She barely believes it, and he explains to us that he really, really wants to tell her the truth because of his feelings for her, and that he wants to tell her he's America's Player, but he's "simply not allowed" to do that. "Nick really did take the fall," he chuckles to Jessica. Eric proceeds to give Jessica a series of untrue answers about the reasons behind the random votes, and he even winds up telling her that he put the mustard in Jen's bed. He claims this was "a straight-up joke," and that he then decided not to take the blame for it when he saw how upset everyone was. "You are good," Jessica says. I think she and I use language differently. She DRs that Eric's game is more complicated than she thought, but she says, "I trust Eric, still." And then she kind of looks around the DR like she's checking it for grasshoppers, which doesn't make it look like she entirely trusts Eric. She asks why he told her all this, and he says something about "what may be developing" and how he doesn't want there to be any surprises. She's all, "Oh, Eric," in this way that indicates that a little night-vision smooching is most likely all he's getting, and all he would ever get even if she weren't scheduled to start hating his guts in a few weeks.

Jessica gets her call from her brother, who is indeed home. She says she's sorry she missed the homecoming. He asks her how the show is, and she says it's "so much fun" and she loves it, but it's really stressful. (MS: "You know what I'd be talking about to my brother who just got back from Iraq? How stressful my time on Big Brother is. Because the thing is, he can relate.") He tells her people are buying "Booyah" shirts like the one she has. So they're sticking to the important subjects, is what it is. He tells her he loves her, and they sign off. She hangs up and cries. Support our troops! And also Dick! Jessica tells us she's really happy to know her brother is home, because being gone when he got back was the worst part of coming on the show. She goes and tells everyone, and she gets big hugs from everybody, including Eric, who is getting big points for giving her the phone call. Not boobie-touching points, but points. She tells us that it was so wonderful to hear her brother's voice. She tells us that if he can make it through a war, she can certainly make it through a TV show. I was afraid she was going in that direction. (MS: "At least she acknowledged that war is harder.")