Charles avoided Fabian the next morning by spending it in the back room with Granddad’s old weight living equipment. One thing he could guarantee was that Fabian wouldn’t be working out.
It had been too long since he’d had a good workout that didn’t involve drilling or sparring. And of course, that made it clear that the next thing the dojo needed was a gym. He started drawing up the plans.
The currently-blocked-off upstairs bedroom would be perfect.
When Fabian was safely gone for the day, he emerged from his cave and started scrounging up his breakfast. As soon as he headed toward the kitchen, Ada pounced him.
“I want you to teach me to drive!” she announced.
Charles blinked. “Ada, I don’t know how to drive. I don’t own a car. I teleport everywhere, remember?”
Ada frowned at him. “Why should that matter? You’re an adult now. It’s one of those things you’re supposed to do. Besides, you drove us home from the Yo party.”
“I did that because Fabian was drunk, and I went about 10 miles an hour.”
“You can do it again! We’ll just pretend I’m drunk too.”
How did he get himself into these things?
“And why are we doing this in Fabian’s SUV?” he demanded. “Do you know what kind of gas mileage this thing gets? I can feel the trees dying as it drives by!”
“Um, Charles?”
“I don’t see why we can’t get Fabian to sell this monstrosity. He drives his patrol car everywhere, even if it’s just down the block.”
“Charles, could you just tell me which pedal makes the car go?”
“Oh. Um, yeah.”
Afterward, he headed over to the dojo to oversee the upstairs renovation. Things were going along well, and the contract work wasn’t going to take more than a day or two. When he was confident that the workers didn’t need any more supervision, he took a deep breath and dialed Michelle Yo’s number.
“Hello! It’s Charles Sample! We met at your brother’s birthday party. Yeah. We talked about a personal training session, and I think that would be a great idea. Do you think we could schedule some time….”
Michelle was excited. She was there in half an hour.
“I’m so glad you called!” she exclaimed. “The next script on my desk is Kung Fu Chainsaw Madness, and I’m just not confident I can pull of the stunts.”
Charles grinned. He was in his element. “Well, we could schedule a bunch of intensive sessions this week.” That way, they’d be seeing a lot of each other. Michelle was a beautiful woman, and he’d never met anyone with as much passion for Martial Arts before. And she didn’t seem to mind his ghostliness at all….
“Thank you so much for changing your schedule for me!” she said. “I can do any evening but Wednesday. I always spend that with my boyfriend Bill.”
Oh.
“Well, then,” Charles said, keeping his voice level. “It sounds like there’s no time to lose. Let’s get started.”
The truth was, they had little talk about except Sim Fu. Charles just didn’t have much in common with someone who thought about movies most of the time.
When Michelle left, Charles found himself wandering Sunset Valley’s new club district. He was too restless to sleep. Eventually, he stopped into the new exotic-themed fusion lounge to drown his sorrow in a drink or two.
It wasn’t fair. It was so difficult to make a connection with anyone. He was so lonely.
Maybe his kind just wasn’t made to find love.
He dusted off his self-pity. There was nothing to do but keep trying. At least the bookstore was open 24 hours. Surely there was a book on business taxes he could use to keep himself useful.
Or maybe he could just get a book on fishing.
As he emerged from the bookstore, he had the sudden feeling of someone walking over HIS grave. He looked up and found someone watching him from a nearby bench.
He drifted over uncertainly. “Hello? I’m Charles Sample.”
The woman leaped to her feet. “You’re some kind of spirit aren’t you? I knew it! Everyone says there’s no such thing, but I knew there had to be someone around like you. You’re amazing!”
“I’m, um, what?” Charles asked, dumbfounded.
“Wow! You can float too! Can you fly?”
Then she caught herself. “I”m sorry. I’m Veronica Krane. You must think I’m completely insane.”
Charles smiled at her, starting to relax. “I’ve just never seen anyone react the way you did. I don’t think you’re crazy.”
Veronica gave him a sidelong glance. “If you don’t think I’m crazy, maybe I’m not trying hard enough.”
And so they began talking. And talking. She asked him about his paranormal bloodline and was really fascinated. He asked her about her life and found that she was new in town and trying on careers like other people tried on hats.
Then he looked up, and the sun had risen. They’d been talking all night. Charles had never felt so comfortable with another human being.
Veronica yawned. “Wow, I have to get to work.”
He had to see her again. “Hey, my sister has a birthday party in a couple of days. Would it sound too weird if I asked you to join me?”
Veronica beamed. “That sounds like fun!”
He wasn’t sure, but maybe he’d just made his first date.
———-
I looked it up. Veronica’s last trait is Dramatic. So: Athletic, Daredevil, Dramatic, Eccentric, Good Sense of Humor.
So the deal is that I created Veronica, and Pinstar has a silly rule against marrying sims you create yourself. There’s nothing special about her, and I didn’t design her to be Charles’s mate. She was one of the first sims I created when I bought Sims 3, and she’s designed to be the love interest in my urban fantasy novel. I found her in my files when I started playing again, and I uploaded her to the Exchange. EA featured her, which was pretty cool. She has 500+ downloads from the Exchange. So, I remembered how much I like this character, and I dropped her in my game.
I did tweak her traits a bit because there was nothing paranormal about the base game, and I thought it would be cool to have a ghost hunter. However, Twallan’s StoryProgression assigned her to the military instead. I though you could have NPC ghost hunters, so I may ask about that.
I DID know that if nobody else in town worked out, at least she had the Daredevil trait, so I had my eye out for her :).
I guess I’ll treat this like I do any other Pinstar rule I don’t want to follow ;).
