Barrier reef

Round 23: Summer 2017

Luc's last update/Rose's last update/Evan's last update

Luc's next update/Evan's next update/Rose's next update

Warning: nudity

Evan Moretti is 28, Luc Lane is 24 and Rose Draper is 22.
(Lucia is 25, Steve is 22, Ione is 21, Asha and Olivia are both 20)

Narrated by Rose Draper

Joanna doesn't get back until next summer so until then, it's only phone calls for us, plus a letter here and there. When she finally gets back, I'm going to tell her that she's never leaving again!


I know she had to go off and do her thing but this past year has been pretty sucky. I have to admit that it was worse while I was finishing up at uni though - I had way more time to fill then.

My job is keeping me busy these days. I'm still looking around for a writing job but for the meantime, I'm working as a DJ. Don't ask me how I fell into this - it's definitely not my type of music. The stuff I listen to is more acoustic - "hippie shit" is how Luc describes it.

Not really my type of threads either but I'm getting paid to project a certain image, so it's not so bad. But the sooner I'm working on a real newspaper, the better.

It's surprisingly hard work, physically. I'm too lazy for this. I want a desk job.

Luc usually comes when I do my sets but he doesn't watch for very long. He goes and hangs out at the bar and waits for a girl who might catch his eye.

There's always one, sometimes a couple.

I don't know what Luc says to these girls but they just throw themselves at him within minutes. Blue Velvet is kind of a sleazy club, I guess, with all those hot tubs and everything. I'd never set foot in it if I wasn't getting paid to. Right up Luc's alley though.

Luc is one of the guys I'm living with and the other is Evan. Evan is pretty cool. He's sweet, he's always checking how I'm coping without Joanna and everything. I have to wonder what he has in common with Luc though. I never would have imagined these two living together!

They're both total slobs but Evan is so conservative and Luc is...not.

Luc tells the most obscene jokes, complete with hand gestures and Evan is always so offended and disgusted by them. Luc just goes right on telling them though. I think he likes to try and shock him. It's not very hard.

Luc and I went out in high school and we've stayed friends, so we usually get along pretty well.

He gets too much sometimes, like when he tried to grab my ass in the kitchen the other morning.

Luc does that kind of stuff a lot. I don't know if he's serious or not. Well, no, I know he's serious. If I was up for it, he would be too. But I don't know if he actually thinks he'll get somewhere or if he knows he won't but likes getting a rise out of me anyway.

One of my old dormmates from Novak Hall, Olivia, came by the other day and she brought her new boyfriend with her. For the last few weeks I was there, Steve was all she talked about.

He seems like a really great guy and he's so cute too! Olivia didn't date much in high school but she seems positively giddy about Steve.

You can really tell he likes her too, just from the way he looks at her. It's adorable.

Ione called the other day and told me they'd run into Evan's ex, Lucia, in the park. They were just hanging out when Evan spotted her and he thought he'd go and say hello. Evan kind of has to be friends with everyone and it's been bothering him that he's not friends with Lucia.

Anyway, Lucia saw Evan and Ione together, realised what was going on and freaked the hell out! Right there in the park, she just had some kind of mental collapse!

Ione's been waiting for Evan to propose. She thought it might happen when he took her out to this new restaurant and told her to get all dressed up but she got nothing. I should tell Evan to buy a clue but Ione would be annoyed if I interfered, I think.

I'm so glad I ended up with Joanna and not Luc. There are so many reasons but for one, Joanna would never make a creepy "booty call" to me in the middle of the night. With someone else in the room. I really did not need to hear that conversation.

It doesn't seem to bother Asha. She comes running over every time.

Now to me, it's pretty obvious Luc really likes Asha. In the time we've been living together, I haven't seen him bring home any girl more than once. Except Asha. He's been with Asha for 3 years, which is actually Luc's longest relationship. Most of them last about an hour, if that.

It's actually something I'm starting to nag him about. If Asha is "his favourite" (this is actually what he tells her and I think he thinks it's romantic - I could puke, honestly), why the need for all these other girls? I know for a fact that he never cheated on me - he tells everybody everything and I would have found out for sure - so it is possible for him to be faithful to someone. He never wants to hear it and he rolls his eyes as soon as I start but I don't care. I think he's acting like a total ass about this and I'll say so if I feel like it.

A little brag:

I'm sharing this because it was so hard to get everything placed just so and I'm so happy with it now that it's done! You know that irritating thing when you're trying to place a lot on a piece of completely flat, empty land and it just won't go? Or when you pick up a lot to move it, change your mind and then it won't go back to where it was mere seconds ago? Well, that happened, times about a million! I had to move all 6 of these lots countless times because I'd get 5 placed and the last one wouldn't fit. Grrr!

Anyway, here is Lachance International Airport. It is named after Sacha Lachance, Sullivan's very first City Planner and very first manwhore. It's made up of the 6 lots that comprise StephSim's Simtopia Airport Collection and is bordered by the Maxis hedges, whatever those white cylindrical things are supposed to be and two of Criquette's hood deco items, namely the bus depot and the airport control tower. Don't mind the crooked cylinder thing - it's hiding an area I'm not quite sure what to do with yet!

Here it is from the lot view. The lots look awesome on the inside as well. StephSim has thought of pretty much everything you'd see in a real life airport. I'm going to do Joanna's homecoming here and when you see it, it will look only slightly different from the way StephSim has it. It was looking more desert-y to me but as Exeter is an urban area, I changed it so it would suit the hood a little better.

Each lot is seriously big-ass. Like really. These are 5x6 lots (that's the very biggest size), so if you lag on smaller lots, I wouldn't advise you to use these as visitable community lots. They would still look really cool from a hood decoration point of view, so you might still want to grab them.

Randomness:

So when I last left Steve and Olivia, they had developed crushes on one another.

I had them selectable very briefly, just to check wants and stuff.

In this brief time, they took it upon themselves to make out a little, thereby falling in love. Awwww!

They were unselectable at this point and I thought Evan had actually asked them both to leave but they came inside anyway and continued the lovefest.

Continued the lovefest on Rose's couch. I'm sure she'd be thrilled, had she not already gone to work by this point.

Can you think of a more romantic way to lose your virginity than on a cheap couch, with your friend's roommate sitting right next to you playing video games? I love how Evan doesn't seem to care about the naked people on his couch, but Luc's dirty jokes are positively scandalous to him!

I'm considering the fact that Steve and Olivia did it on the couch canon (ie. I'm not going to have her lose her virginity again in a more appropriate way) but not the fact that Evan was sitting there. I really can't think of a way to explain that away! Steve and Olivia are not shy but neither of them seem like the exhibitionist types either. I'm pretending the house was empty!

Notes:

• Title is from Barrier Reef by Old 97s.
• Luc and Rose are actually in the "friend zone" (ACR 2 feature) but I make him try to flirt with her anyway, because it's funny to see him get rejected. Their relationship doesn't suffer too much - they work their way up to 100/100 pretty quickly. They're good buddies, despite it all.
• Rose's main wants this round were to go on vacation and to woohoo in bed. Sorry Rose, but neither of those things will be happening until next summer, when Joanna comes home! She'll probably have to wait even longer for a holiday because I won't want to send Joanna overseas again so soon!
• I'll do another letter from Joanna tomorrow - she's off to Three Lakes next.
• I'm still keeping an eye on Asha and Luc's wants and they're changing a little. Both still have the fear of marriage but this session was the first time it ever rolled away. It rolled away for both several times and rolled back again. Most of Luc's wants are non-Romance aspiration related, except when he's with Asha, when he rolls Asha wants. He has 10 woohoos locked because I thought I'd let him have his fun but I wonder if it'd roll away if I unlocked it. Asha's wants are still mostly about Luc. So I don't know. I guess I'll conclude that they're both doubting whether being married to each other is the big scary thing they've built it up as in their minds but most of the time, it still freaks them both out.
• Rose was talking about Asha a lot, so I figured she was nagging Luc about his fidelity. I figure she'd be the type. Rose is not kidding herself about Luc not cheating on her, if you were wondering - he could have cheated on her, as he has chemistry with every other girl their age (except Cordy, of course) but he didn't.