Friends of P

Round 37: February 2046 (Summer)

Austin Carmody, Declan Romilly and Xavier Moretti are 25.
(Evan is 57, Ione is 50, Louisa is 26 and Justin is 25)

Narrated by Xavier Moretti

I’m in my final year of law school this year and I still find it hard to believe I made it this far.

I didn’t even think I’d get in…and then I expected to flunk out every single year but I’m doing much better than I ever expected.

I’m the only student in our unit this year, as Declan is now finished. He’s already thinking about possibly going back one day and doing more study. He doesn’t even know what he’d study. He’s just been missing being a student.

I cannot imagine doing any more classes than I absolutely have to do to get into my career of choice but Declan finds academic stuff to be almost fun, so we’re quite different that way.

When I’m done with studying, I’m hoping I can devote a lot of that time to my writing. I’ve had the same couple of projects going since uni and it’d be nice to finish one of them.

I haven’t finished many projects at all, actually, and I’ve definitely never shown them to anyone who might be able to get them published which is my ultimate goal. I guess I’ll have to get past that hurdle first.

But that will have to wait. What little free time I have these days, I’ve been spending with Georgina. Officially, we decided to go out back in December but we didn’t really get to spend any significant amount of time together until last month, when she moved back to Sullivan.

Our first date was at Zoe’s, a restaurant close to the place Georgina lives with her sister and their roomies.

I was nervous and I think Georgina was too but we somehow got over and started talking.

We spoke a little bit about my writing and Georgina said she’d be happy to go over it with a teacher’s eye, like she does for her brother Gabriel, if I’m ever interested.

Grammar and spelling are not necessarily my strong points, so showing my writing to Georgina first might be a bit less daunting than submitting it to an actual editor.

We spend more time than we’d like at either my place or hers, just so we can still be together even while we’re busy studying (me) or lesson planning (her).

When I’m done with law school and she’s not so brand new to teaching, I hope we can have a bit more fun together.

I’ve known her my whole life - we even went trick-or-treating together a few times as kids - but we never really took the time to really get to know each other before now.

Now that we have, I’m so glad that we did. I’m feeling more positive about Georgina than I ever did about previous girlfriends.

Georgina and I are pretty similar. We’re both very quiet people who aren’t interested in crazy parties or noisy bars.

We’re both twins, both from big families and want to have our own one day - maybe together but it’s early, so I guess we’ll see.

Our biggest difference being that I’m tidy to a fault and she makes puddles in the bathroom even if she’s done nothing more than wash her hands.

She’s about as bad as Austin. I feel like I’m constantly cleaning up after Austin.

It’s a little bit more endearing with Georgina, I have to admit.

Justin likes to joke that we’d better make sure it works or else we’ll really disappoint Mum! She’s been best friends with Georgina’s mum since they were young and this is like their dream come true.

Mum loves Georgina but she’s mostly pretty relaxed about us. I’m pretty sure Georgina’s mum (along with her grandma) is already planning the wedding.

I’m glad that we don’t have to do a big “meet the parents” thing. I would find that pretty nerve-wracking.

I wish Aurora and Bianca were home from uni, because I’d love for them to spend some time with Georgina. She gets along really well with Francesca though and we’ve had dinner with Justin and his girlfriend Louisa.

It might seem a bit early to do that kind of thing but seeing they’ve already met many times and I hang out with Justin so much, it didn’t really make sense to delay it.

I hope I’m not getting my hopes up too high with Georgina but I feel so positive about it already, it’s really hard not to!

Notes:

• Title is from Friends of P by the Rentals. 
• Argh, I really wish I'd been able to fit more in about Declan and Austin this time around but I didn't! I really do want to send Declan back to uni at some point though. I can see him as the perpetual student type and maybe even eventually lecturing at the university level as well. But he'll need money for more study, which he doesn't have right now. Something to think about in the future though. 
• Xavier is pretty wrapped up in Georgina right now, as you may be able to tell. Georgina is even worse though. Xavier's wants panel always has at least three wants for Georgina in there, as does Georgina's...but she's also already rolled a marriage want, which is pretty hardcore for a relationship I'm pegging as around 4-6 weeks old! Xavier is taking things a bit more slowly, fortunately. ;) 
• Xavier and Georgina's families are similarly enthusiastic...which I find interesting, because they don't seem that excited about Bianca and Gabriel, Xavier's sister and Georgina's brother, who are also dating. When Xavier and Georgina got together, I started seeing all these "Become Friends with Georgina/Xavier" wants from each family, which was cute but I didn't see similar with Bianca and Gabriel. I think the game treats teen relationships differently in that way, which is pretty realistic, really. No need to get all excited about a couple of 13-year-olds dating!