4

Geffen

A good old-fashioned love story.

- Content warning: Pregnancy mention

Mission Affordable
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is this smaller-than-average mission revival house. While, normally, homes in this style require hundreds of thousands of simoleons, this one comes in at just under §40,000, making it ideal for the medium size-family whose kids don't mind sleeping in the basement. Fixtures included, finished basement as standard equipment. Stinger missile launcher removed for your convenience.

Bedrooms: 2
Bathrooms: 2
Basement: Yes
House type: Ranch
Max. occupancy: 3
The first house I built after quitting MTS, the version in the tray has 2 bedrooms in the basement; however, for the Geffen's, I deleted one room and knocked the wall down so it's a greatroom. There's really no space for a sitting room on the ground level. Depending on how the story goes, I might restore that deleted bedroom, but the other one is gone for good.

Despairing over ever finding love again, Tamara went to the library one day to lose her troubles in the pages of some romance novel. Instead, she found Jae and fell madly in love. That was 2 years ago. Now, they're married, expecting their first child, and quite unable to remember how they ever lived without each other.

Tamara
After being flatly rebuffed by the only boy she ever had a crush on in high school, Tamara became convinced that she would never fall in love again and that she would grow old and die completely alone forever. Well, it turns out she was just looking on the wrong side of the street. Once she stopped trying to like men, everything just sort of fell into place.
Astrological sign: Pisces
Lifestage: Young adult (aged 28)
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Jae
Never really one for that whole "dating" thing, Jae was pretty convinced that she couldn't experience romantic attraction. Not that this was a problem, of course. All of her friends and co-workers, and even most of her family, often went onto social media to complain and cry and whatever else about a recent failed romance, and she felt she was above all that. At least until a blonde girl with brown eyes sat across from her on the train one day.
Astrological sign: Pisces
Lifestage: Young adult (aged 26)
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Aidan Kessler. Tamara Cruse was obsessed with this boy back in school. From about middle school up until senior year of high school, she was absolutely in love with him. She wrote more poetry, drew more pictures, and made more private blog posts about him than you could imagine and had a shrine to him in her closet, complete with pillar candles and discreetly-taken Polaroids. Did he know about any of this? Of course not! After spending the better part of 5 years thinking of the best way to approach him, her best friend encouraged her to take action at long last. So, that's exactly what she did. Immediately after 7th period that day, she approached him in the corridor outside the computer lab and asked him to the senior prom. His reply was less than ideal: "Uh, sorry but, like, I'm going with someone."

Her dreams of "happily ever after" now completely shattered, she dragged through 8th period, catatonically took the city bus back home, and cried in front of her Aidan shrine for a couple hours, then a few more hours on the couch. Her dad couldn't even cheer her up with takeaway chicken alfredo from Fagioli's. Fortunately, her sorrow lasted only 1 evening; the next morning, she put on her shoes and dismantled the Aidan shrine with her foot, every bit crushed and torn apart, especially his portrait. Where once there was love and longing for Aidan, there now existed only spite and enmity. She never even went to the senior prom to watch his date kick him in the nards and storm out with the Prom Queen after he tried to kiss her during the slowdance.

Jae Geffen, in the meantime, spent all of her high-school years on the Debate team, with forays into the Drama club whenever there was a play on. The fact that she alternated between dressing feminine, masculine, and androgynous at school translated into a strong affinity for character acting, so if ever there was a character who needed a distinctive voice, Jae was always there. She'd had a crush on all of 1 boy, back in middle school... or, she pretended to have a crush on him. It only took about 6 months for her to realise that she didn't care about him in that way. The thing that finally convinced her that she was incapable of romantic attraction was hearing a group of girls in the cafeteria chattering about who they wanted to go out with at spring break. "Oh, Cody Svoboda's so hot... I saw Travis Goldman with his shirt off... Jeff Allan is so cute, he's so quiet and respectful..." Jae realised she couldn't name a single boy that she found remotely attractive. For a while, she was convinced that this made her bad or wrong somehow, to the point it was interfering with her schoolwork. The guidance counsellor recommended that she seek professional therapy, but her therapist was no help; she only said, "You just aren't attracted to anyone yet. You'll find the right boy someday."

While reading Wikipedia one day, Jae came upon an interesting article: Asexuality. Heretofore, she had only ever heard of asexuality in reference to single-celled organisms, but the way the website defined the condition in the abstract seemed to fit her to the last stitch. Reading further, she discovered the companion term: Aromanticism. They both seemed to describe her perfectly. She found it simultaneously amazing and ironic that she, an 18-year-old, would be able to find herself on Wikipedia in her own spare time, using sheer clickthought, while a highly-paid, Ivy League-educated therapist couldn't be bothered to figure it out. She printed out the asexual and aromantic pride banners on sticker paper the following night at home and affixed them to her homework binder.

While Jae was content with the aro/ace label in high school, she started feeling frustrated again in college when all of her friends started talking about marriage and having kids. She realised that she wanted to love someone, she just wasn't finding herself attracted to anyone, and she couldn't figure out why. When her friend from mass media class, Brittany, announced to the group chat that she was pregnant, Jae became so jealous that she could feel it in her cheeks. She knew Brittany's boyfriend, Cody Svoboda, from middle school; she knew he was one of the school heartthrobs, she remembered trying to find him attractive and not being able to, how she tried to pretend she found him hot by writing "JG ♥ CS" on surfaces with a Sharpie, and now she was feeling conflicted. Almost like she was being torn between the past, where Cody was boyfriend material, and the present, where Brittany won that particular race and was going to marry Cody and start a family with him in a gentrified tract house on the edge of town someplace. In her dorm room one night, as she was lying there in the dark with tears welling up in her eyes for a reason she couldn't remember, she realised that she wasn't jealous that Brittany was marrying Cody, she was jealous that Brittany was not marrying her. All these years, suppressing the fact that she was gay and not even realising it. Her parents weren't going to like it, neither was her rabbi, but she could deal with them.

Well, despite Brittany's pregnancy (and Shauna's, Alanna's, and Nicole's), Jae managed to graduate from Northeastern Community College with a Bachelor's degree in library sciences in archiving. Tamara, on the other hand, went directly to South Central University after high school and, from there, to Bookmore College of Law in Willow Creek, passing the bar exam and becoming an attorney. Jae went to work for the Gubler-Dochney Branch Library as a junior librarian, while Tamara was hired by the Civil Justice League in Newcrest.

With both of them working in Newcrest, both Jae and Tamara often rode the same train from Simcinnati to work every day, but usually it was quite packed full of other people. One fateful day the year before last, they both had to work late, affording them the opportunity to take the late train at the same time. You know what they say about love at first sight? well no, neither do i. write more, tina.

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