#reece

There was too much at stake here. Too many friendships, and wasn't friendship just as cherished in life as some scandalous romance? Or more.

The men challenged each other to a spirited and friendly push-ups contest.

“Our dads are such meatheads,” the girls laughed.

They were silly together and had so much fun. So nothing terrible happened and the two families enjoyed each other's company most evenings until the fireflies came out.

“I know you’re unhappy,” Jason admitted to Sofia one night soon after.

Sofia hoped he didn’t also know the full extent of her unhappiness. She had wondered all these years what the problem was. Was he depressed? Was he gay? Was she ugly? Could he just try? All these years Sofia felt like she’d done all of the trying for them both. 

“It’s steroids,” he continued. “That’s why I was ashamed to go to a doctor about… the problem. I know exactly why I have the problem.” 

“Oh,” she said. She had no idea he was still taking those, and now everything made a lot of sense. She felt all at once betrayed, but also relieved. If the steroids were the problem, then they could also be an easy solution. He could just stop taking them.

If he chose to, that is. 

“If I come off them, I’ll lose bulk. Nobody will take me seriously. I’ll never be a celebrity trainer. You don’t know how skinny I was. You wouldn’t still want me like that. You wouldn’t want me if I had to quit training and become some security guard or something.”

“You aren’t giving me enough credit,” Sofia said.

Her husband would still be strong, but wiry and lean and tall.

Oh. He would look like Adrian. 

But if her husband was more like Adrian, then she wouldn’t need to have a crush on Adrian anymore. It all made too much sense. It could be the answer to everything. It could work. 

A few weeks later, Jason was off his juice. And for the first time in their marriage, they went to bed together properly.

Everything worked. Everything did what it was supposed to do. This would be the answer to everything, Sofia thought.

Please. Please. Please.

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So many story notes! 

We needed a bit of storytelling in this one to make sense of everything this game threw at me! Sometimes Paralives is very fateful. There are usually three packs of story cards to choose from, but one night, Sofia was assigned a pack of social cards, and there was only one choice to make!

Okay, yes, one of them does have to do with Adrian, platonically, but two were for her husband and they are very sweet ones!

Aw, this lady wants her marriage to work. So we're going to help her fight for it! 

We chose the one about “romantic interest” because I suspected that might be a problem with some of these premade couples. Soon after they added a romantic interest tag, they were able to roll the card for “get intimate for the first time.” And I think that might have been the problem all along. Romantic interest is an early relationship tag, but they were already marked as fiancés and lovers. Like the game had skipped ahead too far and missed that early tag that would have allowed them to initiate their romantic relationship. 

It worked. Now they’re all fixed up! They can get intimate and try for a baby as they should be able to.

further notes: 

It was *not* easy to get all those paras together in one yard. I wish it was easier to wrangle inactive paras. The girls can’t even invite each other over on their phones. So the best I can do is load and reload from house to house, telling the paras to “go here” and get them busy with an action before they can run away. I had in mind an evening cookout, but it was like midnight before I got everyone under control. 😵‍💫

It was not my intention for Sofia to hijack this legacy from my main family, but she had juicier drama, so here we are. But this is not turning into the Cooper legacy. We’ll still give priority to the Wyles kiddos as next generation heirs, as we do.