why are you here? #1: birthday cake (3/3)

content warnings (!!!) sexual situations, questionable consent // nsfw, 18+ 

January didn’t suit Colette, with the cold, the dirty road slush, and her skin dry as sandpaper. Granted, the summer rain and heat didn’t suit her, either. Colette preferred the specific two weeks of late September when the fall air was crisp and the colors were lovely, too early for all that gaudy Halloween decor, not too early for pumpkin spice everything, which she would scoff at in public and devour in private.

The boys were behaving themselves tonight. She ordered some pizza for dinner, after which the boys put on a movie in the living room and she sat at the dining room table with her laptop to do some work.

Jordan said he would be home late. Some work errand that had him driving hours out into the countryside for a delivery, and she tried to tell him, you know you should ask for per diem pay, for meals and gas reimbursement. “Yeah, yeah, I know,” he would say, but he never complained about things when he should.

why are you here? #1: birthday cake (2/3)

note: so my computer kind of died, maybe. I hope it's just the power cord, and I'm waiting on a new one to be delivered before I can test that theory out. For now, I'm literally just copy-pasting what I had finished over on Tumblr, so the pictures and formatting might be a little different and/or weird. It's readable though, I hope??? And hopefully Tumblr will let me hotlink these photos??? Then, if/when I get my setup fixed, I'll redo these posts properly. At the moment, these are the only copies of these pictures I even have, so I really hope I can get back into that computer and get my files back. 😭😭😭

They started out on the highway to bring back their bounty of eggs to the hotel. It wasn’t very late yet, but these early January nights had ended the day hours ago. Now the road shone ahead of them with the light of a full moon on the fresh white snow. The green glow of the dashboard lit Jordan’s face, and Maria took the opportunity to study him deeply as he drove, with little chance he’d catch her staring, as he told a story about his boys and how they messed up the living room couch and Colette blamed him for it. How he didn’t seem angry, only bemused and accepting of his fate.

why are you here? #1: birthday cake (1/3)

January 2088. Jordan Graham is 28, Maria Boone is 26.

warnings: gross? 🤮

The day was gray and sloshy, that icy, sleety rain that might have been snow if it were only a couple degrees colder. Maria sat beside Jordan in his parked his truck on the sodden gravel driveway of the farm where they were sent to source some free range duck eggs that were supposed to be the best in the state. They waited silently for a full minute for the scene to change.

It didn’t change.
Maria’s brown curls were already frizzing up around her face in a puffy mess. And she wore brand new suede boots, too tight and stiff on her feet and she’d only been sitting in a truck so far. He said to wear boots, so she wore boots.

These were not the kind of boots he meant.

why are you here? a short prequel story

This has been going on for a couple weeks on Tumblr already, but I wanted to explain a little here, too, before we dive in. 

So, it’s not supposed to be a secret that I’m doing a novel version of this story, too. It won’t differ from the blog version. It will be just slightly beefier and without the sims pictures, of course. (But, man, if I could do drawings! Or if I had money to hire an illustrator... I’m not ruling that out, even though it would be a terrible financial decision, lol!)

Anyway, so I’ve been revising the chapters that would make up book 1, and there are some new scenes I’ve written that never got to be part of this blog story. They’re such good additions! And there are also some things that were part of old gameplay stories that I’ve turned into real narrative scenes, that I want to expand and take new pictures for.

So, I really really do want to move forward into Colette’s chapter #5.3, like we were supposed to, but I also want to freshen up these beginning chapters, too. 

In my head, I’m like: Don’t redo old stories… don’t redo old stories… don’t redo old stories!!!

Except I kind of want to go back and redo old stories. 😂🤣😂🤣😵

I guess I’m a bit of a completionist. I know the blog version can't include everything from the novels—it could never—but it should include the important things. The things that develop characters and explain motives and maybe just a little bit of the absolutely precious fluff that deserves to be illustrated with sims, just because.

And I do intend to leave the blog version up when the novel version is published (because I’m an indie author and I do what I want!), so I want them both to be as full as they can be for their format.

Because, at the end of the day, this sims story version is here to please me, and please you guys, and it serves no other purpose than that, really. So, it would make me happy to go back and redo some of those earlier pre-story sections, like before even “My Sweetheart.” So I think I will.

Because I really do want to get back to Colette in #5.3 and she really does need to get laid! But funny enough, after her shock in #5.2 pt 10, then drafting Colette in #5.3, I felt like she was wanting to dig so much into her history of that time and the failure of that relationship. So I’ve been spending a lot of time in that era anyway.

So, a quick flashback story first??? (I said quick, but I didn’t say little. It’s not really very little. But with the writing done and grabbing a few select pictures, I think I can post it pretty quick.)

The flashback story begins almost one year ago in story time, on Maria’s birthday. It’s an expansion/retelling of this gameplay post, which was their first real story on the blog (not as supporting characters), with Maria and Jordan in their flirty coworkers era, and Jordan and Colette in the last months of their quickly deteriorating togetherness. Then it also fills in the gaps in and around “my sweetheart #2” and what drove Jordan to decide to ultimately blow up his life.

As it stands, it’s about 12,000 words (I’m so so sorry! I promise they’re good ones? 😬😬😬) and will be split into 4 chapters of 4-6 parts each.

And then we’ll hop straight back to Colette in #5.3. 

So, current readers will experience this as a prequel story, but after it’s all done, I will backdate the posts to the beginning and it will also serve as a new beginning for new readers. 

boxes and squares #5.2: come down from the clouds (2/2)

November 2088. Jordan Graham is 28, Maria Boone is 26, Johanna is 4, Felix and Milo are 9, Nessa Phoenix is 38, Colette Marin is 31.

previously: climb club family // the plain-looking plucky friend // the blonde photographer // the boys always know first // they made vows

warnings: little bit saucy, additional spice linked elsewhere

Jordan had been distracted since Maria and JoJo came to join his adventure. He had skipped more climbing sessions than he wanted to admit. But now that they were settled, it was time to pick up the slack. “Go climb, my love,” Maria told him. “You’re not quitting this thing on my behalf. Isn’t it the whole reason we’re here?”

Another bonus was the free family passes to the park, already bought and paid for as part of his climbing package.

“So you guys check out the park. Nessa will show you everything, and I’ll meet up with you later for dinner.”

Jordan was quite proud of the skewers he’d grilled for the group tonight. It was his turn to make dinner for climb club after hours.

boxes and squares #5.2: come down from the clouds (1/2)

November 2088. Jordan Graham is 28, Maria Boone is 26, Johanna is 4, Felix and Milo are 9, Lou Corelli is 29, Dom is 58, Judith is 54.

previously: a freeloading loser // that money is not for spending on your boyfriend // this beach is for dancing





Go ahead and live this fairytale for just a little bit longer.

You could almost fool yourself that it could last forever, like you can just forget that fairytales aren’t real.

boxes and squares #5.1: live the fairytale

November 2088. Jordan Graham is 28, Maria Boone is 26, Johanna is 4. (Flashback Jordan is 24, Colette is 27.)

* grab yourself a steamy beverage and a cozy chair, this one is long! 5100 words and 65 pictures!

** warnings: briefly NSFW.




What are you going to do in Nevada? Not stay there, Maria would soon find out, because Jordan mentioned the wild horses in Arizona and Johanna lost her little mind over the idea. So now they were in Arizona, scouting the canyons for wild horses. Among this and many other things she never would have guessed her life could include, there was the sound of yodeling on the canyon walls. Back and forth, a booming manly echo answered by sprightly little girl song, growing closer and mixed with laughter. He taught her to yodel. Maria never would have guessed that he knew how to yodel, but so he did, and now they both did.

Long after their sound gave them away, Maria saw them emerge around the bend of the trail, carrying back their sacks full of treasure. Would it be rocks, pine cones, sticks shaped like swords?

“Did you see any horses?” 

“No, we found bugs! We’re gonna eat them!” Johanna’s face was bright with the idea. 

“Oh, God, no! You can’t eat a bug!”

“Jordan said we can!”

She gaped at him in horror. He shrugged with a sheepish grin. “How’s it different from eating any other animal?”

Maria was prepared for there to be bugs on this wild adventure, but she never imagined they were going to eat them!