Timebomb

Round 19: Autumn 2010

Mina and Pascal's last update/Abigail and Caleb's last update

next update/Caleb's next update

Pascal Lachance is 68, Mina is 60, Caleb Moretti is 28, Abigail is 27 and Nicholas is 7.
(Jonas is 32, Tatiana is 27, Jesse Carmody is 25, Evan is 21 and Dominic is 3 months old)

Narrated by Abigail Lachance

Things have been a little awkward here lately, ever since I met Jesse. Or at least it feels that way to me. I don't know if Caleb actually suspects anything. I want to tell him about Jesse but not until I figure out what I'm going to do.



It's been weighing on my mind a lot lately and I'm not sleeping well. If I don't deal with this soon, my work will start to suffer. I'm in the military and that means early mornings.

Jonas came around with Tatiana the other week to see our new house. Nicholas knows my brother pretty well but he'd never met Tatiana. She loves children, so they got along great.

They also brought their baby son, Dominic, so we could all meet him. No one could wrest him away from Dad's arms but he's very sweet.

Nicholas is developing Mum's love of mechanical things, so my parents set up a train set for him upstairs. We never had space for anything like this when I was growing up! I just love this house.

All the time we were settling in though, Jesse was on my mind. I was surprised but not too surprised when he called one afternoon. Lucky I got to the phone before anyone else!

Caleb walked by while I was on the phone so I made sure anything I was saying was very vague and non-incriminating. I guess he still wasn't suspicious because he didn't ask me anything about the phone call.

Jesse did manage to convince me to meet him at a club in Exeter. It's pretty dark in there, so I don't think anyone would have recognised us, even if we had run into anyone.

By the end of the night with Jesse, I had made my decision. I wanted to be with Jesse. I feel guilty for even saying that because Caleb has been good to me and I do still love him. But we don't have the chemistry that Jesse and I have. I can't be with Caleb and constantly thinking about Jesse. We were so young when we got together and I didn't get a chance to...explore my options, I guess. I knew I had to talk to Caleb.

Unfortunately, Evan beat me to it while I was at work one day. He apparently saw me putting some flowers down for Jesse outside his house, read the card and put two and two together. Ugh, I am so stupid! I was going to tell Caleb but I didn't want him to find out this way.

I think shock and anger probably would sum up his reaction to the news.

That night, Caleb and I had a huge, blow-out fight. I got almost as angry as he did, not that I really had the right to. Everything he accused me of was completely true and eventually, I had to admit to it.

And I guess an admission of guilt was all he needed to hear. Caleb ended things right then and there.

All I could do was stand there with my head in my hands while Caleb told me everything he planned to do. He left that night and stayed at his parents' house until he found a place to live.

He ended up moving back to Sullivan, where he grew up and is renting a small unit in a triplex not far from his parents' house. He has a room set up for Nicholas already, for when he has custody. We will have joint physical and legal custody of our son.

In the time since Caleb left, I've tried to explain to Nicholas what happened. Not all the details, of course. I'm just trying to put things in age-appropriate terms.

He's really having trouble coming to terms with it though. He just wants his mum and dad living together again. For Nicholas's sake, I'm going to hold off jumping into a relationship with Jesse. I want to, but I also want to make sure Nicholas is okay with everything too.

Random pics:

Yes, that is Abigail's bed and yes, Tatiana and Jonas are about to woohoo on it. They disappeared while Pascal was cooing over Dominic and I went looking for them, and there they were.

You will probably need to click to make this larger so you can see the want I've circled. Mina was 4 days away from Elder at this stage and she's already hanging out to retire! Retirement has been on Pascal's mind too, so I guess she picked up the idea from him. The only difference is that he's actually at retirement age.

Naomi works with Pascal (who will soon retire) and she came home from work with him the other day. I smelled trouble - two Romance Sims with a three bolt attraction - but they were both very good. By the way, she's in her second trimester here. Second. Imagine how enormous she'll look in her third. Those H&M maternity meshes are huge but I'm leaving her in this one because I'm impressed that the game picked something that is vaguely what I think of as Naomi's style. Much closer than Anna's hippie get-up anyway!

Notes:

• I love this house! It's a great size, so easy to play and it came fully furnished (I've changed a lot of the furniture though) for under $50,000! I think I downloaded it from Beatdoc's LJ. I wish she could make all the houses in my game. I always love her lots.
• So you may have guessed that this was coming! Caleb and Abigail are finished. I think they were always a disaster waiting to happen, really. A Romance Sim tied down with a baby and pseudo-husband at 20 years old? It's no wonder Abigail strayed.
• While Jesse and Abigail were at the club, they both rolled up marriage wants: Jesse first, then Abigail. Abigail also rolled the want to marry Caleb this round, so she has simultaneous wants to marry two men. Which is better than Jesse, who has simultaneous wants to marry 4 women. Not even kidding. Anyway, so if I get these two together, which I probably will eventually, they won't marry until it looks like they want to be exclusive. We'll see if that ever happens!
• What I'm planning to do with the custody arrangement is play Abigail in the first year of the round and Caleb in the second. Nicholas will move between the houses and will feature in both updates. I've done similar custody arrangements in the past and it works pretty well. I'll use Insim to add Nicholas to the household he needs to be in.