'New Girl': Are Nick and Jess still hooking up?

New Girl type TV Show network Fox

Have Nick and Jess been hooking up this whole time?

Exhibit A: A sneak peek at the New Girl season finale reveals that Nick (Jake Johnson) and Jess (Zooey Deschanel) used to have a special code for when they wanted to have sex—a code that was recently used by one of them! Does this mean they’ve been doing the dirty even after they broke up?

“No,” executive producer Liz Meriwether tells EW. Sorry to burst your bubble! “Sex mug, for us, is Jess acknowledging it’s been on their minds. It hasn’t been something that’s been happening, but there’s been a continuing subtext. It was our way of acknowledging that over the course of the season, even though we didn’t do episodes about it, that whatever was there between them didn’t go completely away. All your feelings that are complicated are still there.”

Still, there might be hope on the horizon for fans of the former couple. “I feel like their relationship is the center of the show,” Meriwether says. “Whether or not it becomes romantic again, I do feel like we’re going to keep telling the story of their relationship. I miss some of that romance between them and there’s a way of doing it in a different way in season 5.”

The New Girl finale airs Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET on Fox.