Chapter 13 - Life Moves On

The day of the triple birthday party dawns with a broken appliance...and, really, the entire Toft family just can't give a damn about it. There's cake.

Glynnis goes first!

She grows into a lovely young adult. She's got her father's body type down to a tee, being so skinny that she barely has a chest to speak of. But she finds that she likes it that way.

Tiara grows into the exciteable little beauty queen that she always knew she would be.

Meanwhile, Athena is destined to fill the hot librarian role when she grows up.

After a tearful (on Tiara and Naomi's part, at least) farewell, Glynnis bids the family adieu. "There is no way in hell I'm doing any more babysitting," she mutters dryly as she heaves her suitcase containing her few belongings over her shoulder and charges toward the elevator. "Call me!"

She becomes a desk jockey at the local police station, being brave enough to lasso down ANY criminal that comes after her, and moves out, though no one's quite sure where to for the longest time.

It takes the twins to decide they should visit their older sister and figure it out for themselves.

"She sounded smug on the phone," Athena says. "Smug. Why do you think she was smug?"

"Ha, like I'd know! Obviously she got super famous at the police department and was able to afford a giant house, HA!"

Oh.

"How in the WORLD did you end up with a place like this?!"

Glynnis shrugs, face expressionless as always. "Turns out it was the only unoccupied place in town, and the police chief's kind of fond of me, so...they got the Mayor to drop the price for me."

Tiara doesn't believe that for a second. She's still pretty sure that there's some huge conspiracy going on, but she knows that Glynnis would smack her upside the head for even suggesting it and it's happened enough for Tiara to know just how much that hurts.

Tiara reflects that she arrived at the perfect tme to see this house. The view at this time of day is spectacular.

The view of the shuffleboard, that is. The three sisters play together happily.

Athena loses. She loses a lot. All kinds of fun is had regardless, and the three part ways with regret when Rhiannon calls the twins and tells them to come home so they can see their belated birthday presents.

"Mom!" Tiara immediately grabs the paints and devours them with huge eyes. "How did you afford these?!"

Rhiannon chuckles. "Don't you mind that. All that matters is that they're here."

The guitar tucked away to the side is almost forgotten, but when Tiara sees it she almost falls over and has conniptions.

Athena's birthday gifts are a little more understated, but the value of all of the books are equal to the easel and guitar, and Athena is so overcome with happiness that she immediately sits down and begins reading them. Rhiannon has the sinking suspicion that they'll all be read in less than two days.

Naomi, meanwhile, wonders what it must look like to have parents who are married. She doesn't even have a clue about who her father is. With all of that in mind, she decides it's time to start courting potential husbands so she can be SURE to get married!

"Hi! I'm Naomi!"

"I'm...Octavio."

"You're what?"

"Octavio! It's my name. Don't laugh at me."

Naomi decides it'd be mean to say the only thing she wants to laugh at is his outfit combined with his hair, so she keeps that to herself. "Have you ever thought about marriage?"

Octavio turns pale and horrified. "What?!"

"Not until school is over, silly!"

------

asdfghjkl Athena and Tiara as teens. I can't get over it. I'm always going to be fond of Glynnis and her little quirks, though.

New traits are Computer Whiz for Glynnis, Lucky for Tiara, and Loner for Athena.

And I officially hate Bridgeport. xD I kicked Glynnis out and she goes to the only unoccupied house, which is that beast over there. Moving my characters will be so wonderful.

Chapter 12 - Time Flies By

Okay, it is about damn time for the twins to grow up, because this is just ridiculous.

Rhiannon has a private celebration with a cake with only Glynnis to wave noisemakers.

Tiara...

...and Athena.

The two promptly decide that the best way to celebrate is to get some of that sleep they couldn't get when they were younger.

As a sidenote, amusingly enough, they sleep in sync. They always flip over at the same time, and if one of them shifts and the other doesn't follow then the shifter will immediately flip back to the original position. Twins all the way.

"Oh my gosh, 'thena, I'm gonna DIE if we stay in this apartment any longer! C'mon, let's go play Tag!"

"Oh, but, I...umm...I'd rather read."

"Read?! Who reads?! Come oooooon! I wanna go to the park! There's always this creepy guy playing a guitar and it's super cool!"

Athena decides that she is doomed to a life of being decidedly uncool, then, if books are boring.

The family is actually remarkably unsocial. With Rhiannon home with maternity days to take care of Naomi and Glynnis coming home immediately after school to help raise her to be a proper human being, the only people that get much interaction outside of the family are Athena and Tiara. Even then, only Tiara is the social butterfly.

Tiara's also got a strange obsession with animals, specifically cats.

"Moooooom, can we pleeeeeaaaase get a kitten? Please! I'd take good care of it! I'd feed it and clean the litter box and pet it and play with it and everything!"

Rhiannon is decidedly unimpressed with the idea. She doesn't even think the apartments allow animals. The idea is promptly put to rest.

Her...association with Matthew Hamming (she can't bear to call it a relationship without getting all jittery and awkward) continues onward. There isn't an ounce of commitment. The two are unexclusive lovers, nothing more. And she likes it that way.

But she can no longer keep their trysts to the elevator. She arranges it for Glynnis to take the other three out to the park every once and a while, and only then does she sneak Matthew into her abode to enjoy him far more thoroughly.

She's now ever more conscious of just how small the apartment is, however. With a crib and two beds crammed into the living room as well as a double bed and a single bed in the bedroom, there's barely any room to move, much less live.

But it seems that there's not a single affordable place for her to move the family to in Bridgeport. There's a single house available, but its cost ranges in the hundreds of thousands of Simoleans.

The commitment-phobic part of her is rather delighted at the opportunity to move to another city if her family continues to grow like this.

And then she remembers Matthew.

Her mouse pointer lingers on the search engine link marked "Riverview housing" for long moments before she closes the window, skids backward in the chair, and abruptly stands up to make her way to work. She'll think about it later...when it doesn't make her feel suffocated to think about sticking around a single city just because she doesn't want to leave a man.

Naomi's birthday comes quickly, and everyone is there to celebrate loudly and boisterously.

She takes after Matthew in every way, with features that are incredibly severe and sharp but that she can only grow into in time. Just looking at her gives Rhiannon a strange yearning sense in the base of her stomach, and she regrets not inviting Matthew over to see her grow up.

The family bonds properly: with everyone on their cell phone at the same time. Their phone bill must be outrageous.

A birthday collision. Thanks, guys.

Finally, Pajama Day at school!

Naomi is particularly pleased with the fact that she doesn't even have to change out of her clothes for her first day of school.

------

(srsly, tho, I have absolutely no idea how this happened, haha, but I had no idea how to end this filler chapter, so I thought "why not?!")

I finally scribbled down the traits, and they are as follows:

Glynnis: Good Sense of Humor, Brave, Loner, Hates the Outdoors.
Tiara: Virtuoso, Artistic, Cat Person
Athena: Shy, Genius, Bookworm
Naomi: Heavy Sleeper, Ambitious, Friendly

Chapter 11 - Exploration

Taking care of a baby and two toddlers that have yet to be pottytrained sure is a stinky job. But with Rhiannon and Matthew out to breakfast for the third day in the row, there's no one else to take care of the three kids.

The rewards come in happy forms, at least.

"Thanks so much, Glyn," Rhiannon murmurs, and Glynnis notes that the lines slowly growing on Rhi's aging face look more relaxed than they have in weeks. How can Glynnis complain about babysitter duty when her mom finally looks...happy?

Matthew's become a pretty frequent guest in the house over the last few days, in fact. During those times, he and Rhi seem to interact rarely, but he's always there to teach Athena and Tiara a few words like "lawsuit" and "agent" or to smooth Naomi's hair when she's pouting.

He's even taken to chatting with Glynnis while Rhi is busy doing work off the clock to catch up from the maternity days she's been forced to take.

"So...how's school?"

"It's all right."

"Making friends and stuff?"

Glynnis looks around the room with a quiet chuckle. "See all the kids in here? Does it really look like I'm gonna be making friends when I've gotta come right home and take care of them?"

"Oh..."

"I'm not complaining," she murmurs, glancing toward Rhiannon to make sure she's still distracted. "I don't need them anyway. I'd rather be here than anywhere else."

Though his visits are mostly used for him to keep Rhi up to date with what's going on at the film studio and for her to run lines with him, eventually Glynnis always has to go to bed.

"Rhi," Matthew murmurs, voice low and eyes warm.

It's always strange when the two of them are alone these days. She can exude that easy confidence when they're surrounded by her children. She can strut around the apartment and send him smirks and winks and pretend like he's just another man.

But then the door to the bedroom shuts when Glynnis disappears, and she's left staring into the eyes of a man who became one of her greatest inspirations to become an actress when she was younger. And he's looking at her like THAT. He's looking at her not only like she's beautiful, like he wants in her pants, but like she's crucial and important.

It's in these moments that the confident pretense drops and she's left staring at him with an utterly haunting vulnerability in her big brown eyes.

"Do you want...?"

She nods and takes his hand, guiding him out to the hallway.

They've never had sex anywhere but the elevator in her apartment, but Rhiannon refuses to take a risk of sleeping with him in her apartment with four daughters to take care of.

Every time she draws close, he finds that he really doesn't mind that much.

When the two are sated, barely able to support each other in their panting exhaustion, Matthew catches her eyes again. "I'm having a party tomorrow. I want you to come."

"A party?" Rhiannon still remembers when Barry Tenderlove pulled that line on her. He's a happy man now, apparently running around with a four-star celebrity himself in the form of Emmy Starr, but something in her still twitches every time she sees his picture in a magazine. There's always that faint twinge of jealousy.

"Yeah. Formal dress. Just a few friends of mine."

There's a plea in his eyes and Rhiannon sucks all the power she can from it like a spider. She lifts her chin a little higher as she smooths her skirt back down and readjusts her rumpled top. "Yeah. Yeah, all right, I'll be there."

The old dress has too many memories. Rhiannon smooths out an old relic, one she never thought she'd fit into after having four daughters, but she surprises herself.

The taxi drops her off a short distance from Matthew Hamming's estate, since there's really no good word for it otherwise, and she strolls toward it with a faint sense of trepidation. She had a horrible track record with Bridgeport parties. Who's to say tonight won't be an exception?

There are just a few people there, such as William Fangmann, but Rhiannon carefully steers clear of them and sticks close to Matthew for the night. Being alone with a vampire doesn't suit her.

The two find ways to stay close to each other through the evening without being overly obvious. Matthew doesn't hesitate to beat her quite soundly in foosball.

"Goddamnit, boy," she groans, putting her hands on her hips. "No mercy on an old woman like me?"

"Old?" Matthew's eyes slowly skim over her figure, the corners of them crinkling with his smile, and he chuckles. "Babe, if you're old, I'm two steps away from dying."

When the other guests finally leave, Rhiannon corners Matthew near the door. "Now now...I've been here for hours and you still haven't invited me to spend the night."

"Mmm, Miss Toft." He simpers like a woman, pressing a hand to his chest. "I never thought you liked me like that."

Her words slip out in a whisper before she can stop them. "I think I like you in every way."

Matthew looks over at her with wide eyes, mouth open in surprise. Rhiannon's stomach twists with nerves. Watcher, what does Matthew want? Does he want a commitment that she can't give him? He takes a step closer to her, eyes flicking down to her lips, and she catches her breath. "You know," he murmurs, lifting a hand to touch her cheek before his thumb slides across her lips. "You're pretty likeable yourself, lady."

For the first time, their kisses are slow and languid. There's no need to rush. His hands dip into the slope of the small of her back. Her fingers slide through his perfectly coiffed hair.

When Rhiannon finally manages to pull back from him a moment, she gasps. "Matthew, I...we need to talk about this."

"No, we don't."

It's incredibly hard to try to think when there's a pair of lips tracing down your neck, but Rhiannon tries. "I'm serious. I can't...I can't keep doing, ah, this with you if you want a...commitment."

He chuckles. "Rhi, I don't want a commitment from you, unless it's a commitment for me to have sex with you in every room in this entire city." He presses another kiss to her jawbone before he leans toward her lips instead. "Find another sugar daddy, for all I care. Just let yourself feel what we have here. Don't run from it."

When they finally slip into Matthew's bedroom, his stomach growls heartily. "Could your body have any worse timing?" Rhiannon teases.

"Frankly, Rhi, I don't give a damn." He adjusts the pillows and looks up at her with fiery eyes. "There's only one thing in this entire damn city that I want to taste, and it's right in front of me."

For the first time, the two have the chance to explore each other. It feels virginal, in a way, the fact that she's let this man take her any number of times but that she's never seen him naked or vice versa. The passion of the evening threatens to overwhelm them both, and by the time that the sun is rising outside, they're still enjoying each other with an insatiability reserved for people half their age.

Glynnis's night isn't quite as fun. Sleep? What is sleep?

Rhiannon returns tomorrow just long enough for Naomi to grow into a toddler. She's a wide-eyed, bushy-tailed little thing, that's for sure.

-----

Can you tell I'm trying to move the story as fast as I can so I can move the family to somewhere more suitable to have a legacy? OTL Everyone being so crammed together is making me sad.

Matthew's old man bathrobe makes me giggle.