Laid

Round 23: Autumn 2018

last update/next update

Olivia Nihill and Lia Novak are both 21.
(Ione and Gordon are both 22 and Steve is 23)

Narrated by Olivia Nihill

For our last year at university, Lia and I rented a beach house near campus! Well, I did. I've been saving all my grant money but I didn't want to live by myself so I invited Lia along. It's nice being out of the dorms and we're truly on our own for the first time now. And we're on the beach!



I've been painting a lot again since we got here. How could I not be inspired by such a gorgeous view?

Speaking of gorgeous! I'm still with Steve and he comes up to visit me every weekend. I wish it could be more often but his boss wouldn't think much of that!

Lia has an admirer in Finnegan Roth. He wants to go out with her but she's more hesitant. He calls all the time.

He also comes over all the time. Uninvited but I'm not too uptight about visitors. Lia is, it really bothers her.

I think he's pretty cute (I like redheads though) and he seems sweet but Lia doesn't really want to start anything with him.

Lia told me it was because they had nothing in common - he talks about money all the time, which bores her to tears. I thought maybe it was just the Gordon thing - that either she's still hung up on him or she's just apprehensive about getting serious with another guy. But when I sat down to talk with them, I found Finnegan really does talk about money all the time. And it really is boring, so that's probably not going to go anywhere!

Lia is probably just as single-minded as Finnegan is. She has no idea what she wants to do when she graduates. Apart from have babies.

Lia and I have been talking a lot about Gordon lately. She's always saying how he's the only one she could ever see herself with, she still loves him, et cetera. I think they'll end up back together but I just hope that when that day comes, he has truly changed.

Lia has been reading all these relationship self-help books lately. Which is fine, except she's making me read them too! They're full of such crap but Lia treats them like gospel.

Maybe it was reading those terrible books or maybe it was something I ate but I went to bed feeling absolutely foul that night. My whole family had the flu a while back and I was pretty sure that's what I was coming down with too.

The next morning, I could hear Lia downstairs on the exercise bike and I just prayed she wouldn't come into my bedroom and figure out I was sick. I knew she'd make a huge deal about it and try to get me to see a doctor or something and, really, all I needed was some rest!

I would rather have been in bed but that would have given me away, so I went online for a while instead. Steve was signed into IM, so I talked to him for a little bit. Steve and I actually met on the internet. I guess some people probably think that's pathetic, but I don't care. Who knows how long we would have taken to meet otherwise, or if we would have met at all?

Anyway, so I spent the next couple of days hiding from Lia. I wasn't exerting myself but I wasn't going to see a doctor! That's such overkill.

Lia had assignments to do, so it was a while before we crossed paths.

She finally figured it out though. My nose was all stuffy and it showed in my voice. So Lia started with the mothering and insisted she knew just the thing to help me.

All I could do was roll my eyes. I'd just have to go along with whatever Lia said now. She wasn't going to take no for an answer.

When she called me into the kitchen, I saw Lia had made the most disgusting looking soup I'd ever seen in my life. And she wanted me to eat it! Yuck! I tried to say I was feeling better but she insisted. It wasn't that bad but I honestly was feeling a little better anyway. I'd hidden myself away pretty successfully for the worst of it.

She did make up for her soup sins by calling Steve over to visit me.

It was so unnecessary but I'm always happy to see Steve. And it was sweet that he was worried about me, though I'm sure that was in part because of Lia exaggerating my illness.

I hardly ever get to see him during the week, so we made the most of the time we had.

I even got away from my nursemaid for the afternoon!

She fell asleep outside so Steve and I drove back to Sullivan for a little while. I was going stir-crazy being stuck in the house!

While Steve and I were gone, Gordon called Lia and invited her out with some friends of his.

So she went along and Gordon had invited Ione, Ione's boyfriend Evan, his roommate Luc, plus another girl Lia didn't know named Lucia.

Oh, and Jamie. I don't know what the hell is wrong with this guy. If you're hoping for a reconciliation with your ex, why would you invite the girl you cheated with on a fun night out with said ex? I swear, I think Gordon has sawdust in place of a brain.

Anyway, the group was so big that they spilled onto two tables and Jamie had the nerve to sit down at the table Lia was at! I wasn't there, obviously, but Lia told me she gave her a dirty look!

Lia confronted Gordon about why he brought Jamie along and he insisted there was nothing going on between them any more and they haven't so much as touched since he and Lia broke up.

Which Lia totally bought, of course. Maybe he's telling the truth, I don't know. But if a guy had cheated on me and was trying to get me back, he'd have to cut all ties with whatever skank he happened to have cheated with, not hang out with her, even "as friends".

I'm going to have to call Ione later and see what she thought of all this. I can't imagine she would have been too impressed either!

Gordon supposedly hung around with Luc most of the night. I'll check that with Ione too. I sometimes wonder if Lia is putting the best face on things with Gordon because she wants to get back together so badly.

I was glad Ione was there to keep Lia away from Gordon! I still think they'll end up back together but if he's bringing Jamie out with them, he's clearly not ready for Lia to take him back yet.

Lia and I have graduated now, so Gordon will be a lot closer by. I guess that could be a good thing - he might be more inclined to straighten himself out with Lia nearby. We'll see, I guess.

Grad pics:

Just to prove to you that Jace and Magdalena did attend their daughter's grad!
And so did Ben and Caterina...

and Steve...

I completely forgot to do individual pics this time. Lame! I'm going to have to dress them up again and fake it, because it's going to drive me crazy that the Nihills have one for Max and not for Olivia.

Notes:

• Title is from Laid by James, which is still one of my favourite songs ever.
• I discovered my uni terrain has space for beach lots, so I thought why not? Olivia is rich, so I can see her renting a beach house anyway. Olivia will be receiving a substantial amount of money from her trust fund when she turns 25 (I think I calculated it as about $200,000), so she didn't need all that grant money anyway.
• Lia and Finnegan: they are a strong two bolts but Lia just shows no interest at all. He flirts with her, even makes out with her and she only just got a crush on him. She's never interacted with him romantically. When they talk, they just argue. So it seems like a mostly physical attraction. I was going to get something started with them but I don't think Lia's the type to base a relationship on just physical attraction, so there was just a lot of flirtation.
• Lia has the want to Fall in Love. Her aspiration seems to drop very quickly - Family Sims are so hard to keep happy when they're single! Anyway, Lia spins up wants for Gordon constantly. I've decided I'm going to wait until they're 100/100 (he is already, she's not) and then see what happens. For the first time this round, Lia rolled up the want to woohoo, which kind of spun me out. I know as a Sim, she doesn't know that she's waiting until marriage but until now, her wants have always lined up pretty conveniently with what I have planned for her. But you know, just because she's saving herself for marriage, it doesn't mean she doesn't want to have sex, so it seems quite realistic to me anyway.
• Olivia is Sim #7 to be hit with the Flu Epidemic ROS. Except...after taking super good care of her and setting up all those pics, I realised she wasn't actually sick. I know what I did wrong but I feel pretty silly!
• I imagine the university is about a 45 minute drive from Exeter (my downtown) and just over an hour from Sullivan. So it's a little too far for Steve to drive back and forth from every night after work but not out of the realm of possibility that he could do it on weekends, or when his girlfriend's room-mate calls and insists she's at death's door. ;)