Adjo and Mortimer Goth really hit it off at school, and Adjo invited him over after school to check out some video games.

The Goth family was a bit of legend in Sunset Valley, and Shanni’s eyes got wide when Adjo told her who was on his way over. “Goth?” she demanded. “Do you know how much money they have?”

Adjo honestly didn’t know. Less that the Landgraabs, more than the Samples. Something like that.

Shanni was there waiting for the two boys when they arrived home.

And she only had eyes for Mortimer. She asked him about his family and his opinions of their classmates. She hung on his every word.

Pretty soon, they only had eyes for each other.

Shanni didn’t even need to bother with meaningful glances in her brother’s direction. Adjo knew a lost cause when he saw one, and there was no point in getting between Shanni and her prey. He grabbed his guitar and went out.

Leaving Shanni to her important work.

Why did she keep doing this, Adjo asked himself. Shanni was more than just beautiful. She was smart and witty. She had a great sense of color and art. He’d even seen a few of her closely-guarded manuscripts, and she wasn’t a bad writer either. But she seemed to value herself only when she was grabbing the attention of some new guy.

Adjo wished she would find someone who really meant something to her and settle down. True love was worth working on. It wasn’t something to throw around.

Adjo set down his guitar. He knew what he had to do.

Shanni thought long and hard about what might have gone wrong with Miraj.

The problem was, she decided, that she’d been too passive. She’d let Miraj come to her. She just needed to seek him out and tell him how neglected she felt. So, she took a deep breath and turned up at his doorstep after his shift at his after school job.

He smiled when he saw her at the door and invited her inside. That was a good first step. Maybe all of this was a misunderstanding.

Then everything started to go sideways. She started talking, and then she couldn’t stop. Her frustration and anger just kept pouring out until she wasn’t sure what she was saying. His job was keeping him from her. His family was keeping him from her. It was all THEM! THEY were keeping him from her!

(Wherein I discover the, “Talk about Conspiracies” option in her socialization menu. With that and “Freak Out,” I think I am in love with Neurotic sims.)

Miraj blinked. “Uhhhh,” he said. “I have no idea what you just said. Maybe you should sit down, take a deep breath, and calm down.”

Calm down? Calm down! That was enough. Shanni’d had it.

There had to be some guy in all of Sunset Valley who wanted to spend time with her.

Adjo, on the other hand, was still nursing a broken heart.

Lance, who had his nose in all of his children’s business since he hung up his adventuring duds, had plenty of advice to give. But mostly, he was willing to listen to Adjo’s sob story and take it seriously.

“Toya’s a great girl, but you know what they say about fish in the sea. There has to be a girl out there who appreciates a guy who wants to make a commitment.”

Adjo wasn’t ready to go looking for other girls, so he scheduled a guy’s night out with his best bud Malcolm Landgraab instead. Malcolm was an incredibly unassuming guy, considering that he was from the richest old money in Sunset Valley. The two of them got together to hang out on the strip and chat. Malcolm listened to Adjo play guitar for a while. Then they did their homework together.

Malcom listened to Adjo talk about Toya and Lance’s idea that he should look for other girls. “I don’t know,” Malcolm said wistfully. “I think she might come around. Not that you ought to hang around waiting or anything.”

At which point, curfew had passed without them even noticing.

(What happened to the rest of my pics of this outing? Well, whatever.)

So it was another trip home in a cop car, and another lecture, this time from Lance. Adjo was starting to get used to being the naughty kid.

It didn’t take Shanni all that long to get over Michael Bachelor. Her new flame was Miraj Alvi. She caught him watching her in gym class and invited him over her place. Soon they were going steady. He also had a part-time job, which drove Shanni crazy, but it was a lot easier to get his time than it had been Michael’s.

Shanni had visions of candlelit dinners at the bistro where Miraj surprised her with little gifts of jewelery. Despite his job, Miraj insisted he didn’t have that kind of money. They used to take long walks at Central Park instead and gaze into each other’s eyes.

She thought about him all the time. She wondered how far to go in their makeout sessions. She hated that most of the time, they hung out at her place where her parents were watching.

One day, she invited him to the park after dark, thinking they could find some real privacy in the shadows with no parents to watch.

Miraj showed up, but he was cold to her. Whenever she sat down with him on a bench to get cuddly, he jumped up and walked away. She felt like she was chasing him all over the park.

Then he said, “You call that a date? Call me when you grow up,” and walked away.

Shanni was stunned. What had she done wrong?

Adjo was crushed at the disastrous end to his date with Toya.

It took him days to bring himself to talk to her again. Once he got his courage back, he invited her to hang out at the community pool. That seemed like a neutral enough location.

They stayed there until after dark, talking about anything and everything. Adjo pulled out all the stops.

But when he finally confessed his feelings to her, she laughed nervously. She just didn’t see him that way. He was more like a brother to her. Couldn’t they still be friends?

Adjo forced himself to smile. Of course they could. No hard feelings. It wasn’t a big deal anyway.

He invited her into the pool and started a game of splashing.

And, hey, he was sure he could hold his breath underwater longer than she could.

Toya had a fantastic time. She wanted him to call her again tomorrow.

Adjo scraped up the pieces of his heart and headed home.

Adjo and Shanni were still joined at the hip. They did as much as they could together.

But now that they were teens, their personalities began to really diverge.

Shanni took up cooking.

Adjo discovered his grandmother’s guitar in a closet, dusted it off, and started to strum.

It turned out he had a natural talent. He hadn’t been able to keep his little hands off the xylophone when he was a toddler.

But most of all, Shanni discovered *men*. Every day, she came home from school raving about some hot boy in homeroom or gym class.

The first boy she talked about two days in a row was Michael Bachelor. She virtually stalked him on the phone to get him to go out with her.

Adjo, on the other hand, just liked people. He was particularly popular with married women with children. He developed such a platonic entourage of older women that Layla started to get nervous.

He also loved his family in a way that Shanni couldn’t seem to understand.

Once Shanni was able to get Michael to answer her calls, it wasn’t long before she had him wrapped around her little finger.

They couldn’t keep their hands of each other.

The problem was, most of the time when Shanni called, Michael wasn’t home. He claimed he had a part-time job at the bookstore that ate up all his time. Adjo also had a part-time job at the grocery store for about three days before he quit from stress. (Dude. Part-time jobs for teens SUCK. They get no time to do more than school, work, and homework until the weekend. AND they get stressed out.) He saw Michael hanging around talking to his friends after work when he was supposed to be visiting Shannni.

When Shanni found out, she freaked out.

She broke up with Michael then and there. She didn’t have time for men who didn’t have time for her.

Adjo, on the other hand, developed a show, shy crush on Toya Ursine. Sure, she was his second cousin, but that just made the connection deeper on, like, a family level.

He got her to go out to the movies with him, and he was just starting to get her to warm up to him when the POLICE showed up.

Instead of a girlfriend, he was treated to a lecture from his mom about staying out after curfew.