prequel stories #4: the cutest couples never meant to be

Okay, so some of these ended up being much sadder than I'd anticipated. I should have anticipated it. It's about heartbreak, duh! ;) But some of them are happy as well, since you're not only seeing the endings, but in some cases, the beginnings of the relationships that were meant to work out.

These stories are a little more current, a lot of them taking place just before I started blogging about the neighborhood, and even overlapping with some of the early stories.

The cutest couples never meant to be, countdown style...

#5: Amelia Bradshaw and Alon Hutchins

Amelia Bradshaw always had a weakness for hard athletic bodies, and that was something Alon Hutchins could definitely give her. For six years, at least. They ended in disaster, twice, but they had some good times as well.

They met in high school. She was weak in the knees over this boy from the very start. He was charming and tried very hard to be liked by her family...

He even tried to make "nice" with her cousin Bella.

(lol, just look at that smile on Bella's face! Man, that girl was born trouble! Quite literally, Bella's origin is worth a prequel story in itself! In fact, maybe I'll wrap that into Samantha's story if I can.)

And so went the fateful prom of 2074, which began an epic family rivalry between two cousins, and which really should have been a hint of things to come for Amelia.

The problem was she's always been a sucker for giving second chances as well. Live and learn, dear Amelia. She should have listened to her very good instincts the first time around.

So maybe they weren't exactly cute, but they did have their moments. Maybe I just needed a fifth couple to round off this list ;) But one thing was for sure, Amelia Bradshaw and Alon Hutchins were definitely not meant to be.


#4: Nathan Lind and Anjali Shaw

Anjali was spirited and popular, well-liked by everyone, but especially fond of her was a funny and sarcastic loner boy named Nathan Lind.

He didn't know when they started dating that it was meant to be such a short romance. They fell in love in the fall of their seventeenth year.

They were inseparable for a whole winter. And they became even closer once she told him she didn't have much time left. Had he known what he was in store for, maybe he wouldn't have been brave enough to take it on. But it was too late for that now, because he was in it.

Anjali was a very sick girl, and her doctors knew she wouldn't live to see her eighteenth birthday.

And Nathan was there with her family when her ill-fated body finally collapsed that spring. They were just kids. He never thought about if they would have gotten married or anything, but he certainly didn't want her to die either. Nathan had a greater love in store for his lifetime, but for six short months, he got to be the greatest love of Anjali's little life. He ended up being brave enough after all, and this was one thing he could do for her.


#3: Charlotte Centowski and Adam Thompson

Adam Thompson and Charlotte Centowski fell in love at first sight, and they fell hard!

She was sixteen, and he was seventeen, and they were everything to each other.

Her mother tried to warn her about "everything," and she wasn't just talking about the birds and the bees. Relationships can be so fickle at this age. Things can change very quickly.

But neither of them believed it. He was going to college, but they didn't worry because they were in love, and they were sure of it!

And the thing of it was, they really were in love. But sometimes your first love isn't meant to last forever.

Adam met Heather in his first year of college. And he knew right away that there was something very special about her - it was more than just the pretty eyes, or that they were both math majors, or that she shared his fascination with ghosts. It would take him a long time to finally admit to himself just what that meant.

Because he did love Charlotte very much, and he didn't want to hurt her. He loathed the thought of hurting her.

And when Charlotte joined him at college, she couldn't have been happier. But for Adam, it all felt like lies.

Heather had become his very good friend in that first year of college, but he didn't want to be just friends with Heather. They both wanted more than that. But out of respect for Charlotte, he had something to do first.

It took Adam fourteen months to finally break the news to Charlotte, and it took Charlotte exactly seven years to get over Adam. Some broken hearts heal much slower than others. But she did get over him in the end, because as much as they both did love each other, they were truly better suited to other people in the end.


#2: Jackson Phoenix and Samantha Bradshaw

Samantha Bradshaw was fierce, like most Bradshaw women are, and Jackson Phoenix was intrigued by her.

She was so fierce she was on fire! And maybe this relationship found its roots in primal lust, but Samantha was no easy lay (unlike what we would come to know of her baby sister, Bella). That he had to earn it only added to her mystery.

They were something of a high-school power couple - and he loved her, the way love grows over time.

Samantha's father liked him. He was a good, smart boy, from a good family - Cody actually knew Jack's mother when they were young.

So when he went off to college, she was eighteen and a senior in high school, her father actually let him stay with them when he came back to visit on the weekends consistently, persistently...

Maybe making up for something very shocking that happened one weekend when he didn't come home.

Meet Vanessa. He barely knew anything about her, except that she lived in his dorm on the second floor, that she had to pass his room every time came or went, and she always smiled at him. The most genuine and heart-melting smile he'd ever seen. Samantha was miles away. She would never know. And though he was ashamed of what they'd done, it hadn't exactly felt like a mistake either.

Samantha finished her senior year of high school and joined him at Sim State University. Jack confessed it soon after her arrival. He didn't want her to hear from one of their friends, or worse yet, by gossip. He did something even more shocking, trying to make up for things. It was the worst thing he could have done, given how unsure he was. He asked her to marry him. And she agreed.

But they just couldn't work it out. She couldn't get over the infidelity. And worst of all, he wanted out of the engagement. It was a mistake, and that one weekend with Nessa hadn't felt like a mistake at all.

The fact of it was, he had fallen in love. He couldn't shake her. He couldn't stay away. She was sweet and tender and everything Samantha wasn't, which was everything he never knew he wanted in a woman until he met Nessa.

It wasn't easy news for her to take. Samantha had fallen for him in a way he never really reciprocated. He loved her out of fondness, like you love a friend over time. Not like he was falling for Nessa, who seemed to be made for him in every way. Bradshaw women don't beg! But Samantha did, she broke down and begged.

But it didn't matter. He was in love. He wanted to share his life with Nessa and he was sure of it.

Their last year on campus was an ugly one. Jack and Nessa just wanted to be happy, but Samantha just couldn't let it go. Their senior year became a perpetual act of avoiding her, when all they wanted was to move on and be happy. They were engaged! They were thinking about wedding plans, and around every corner was his ex-girlfriend ready to spew ugliness at him over how he betrayed her. What did he do so wrong but fall in love?

But they finally graduated and moved to the city where they could start fresh. They got what they wanted and she left them alone. They never heard from her ever again. In fact, nobody did.


And the #1 cutest couple never meant to be: Patrick Nova and Kirsten Graham

They were too cute for words. They were beyond adorable, they lit up rooms!

They met in orchestra practice after school. Patrick was a young piano prodigy, and Kirsten played the violin.

And when college brought new people and pending disaster to other couples, it only brought Patrick and Kirsten closer. Closer than ever before. All this freedom introduced a brand new dynamic to their relationship, a new level of maturity.

A shockingly steamy dynamic.

They were good together in so many ways. They wanted the same things. They made, quite literally, beautiful music together :)

They adored each other completely. Almost everyone was sure where this was going.

And almost everyone thought it would happen the spring break of their junior year in college.

It was perfect, you couldn't ask for a more romantic setting. And Patrick thought about it, he thought about it the whole trip, but something stopped him there on the beach. Something held him back, and he couldn't even put his finger on what that was. He didn't ask her to marry him. He wasn't ready yet.

They came back home. She knew something was wrong, she could feel him flaking out from under her. Things went downhill from there. They distanced from each other, and they fell apart.

He didn't know how to explain this to Kirsten, and he didn't imagine he explained it very well. In fact, he never even made much sense of it to himself. He was twenty-one, and he just wasn't ready yet. He knew that wasn't an excuse, since plenty of their friends were the same age and getting engaged happily. He knew he wasn't ready, and needed some space.

But she saw this coming, and maybe accepted it a little too easily. She didn't have it in her heart to fight for him - she didn't feel like she should have to after all this time. She let him go.

They ran into each other a couple times in their senior year of college. Last he knew, she had started dating someone.

He got the space he wanted.

It was a long time before he finally settled down, and when he did, it was with a light and cheerful girl named Lara. He and Lara have been married for six years and have two beautiful daughters together. They've had their ups and downs in that time, and he knows Lara thinks about other people sometimes, so he doesn't feel too badly admitting that sometimes he wonders how life might have been if he had made different choices.

It's hard to say what makes something a mistake, or what to call a regret. Maybe sometimes "not meant to be" doesn't mean that they couldn't have been great together, but just that the timing was all wrong.

***

notes: I'd like to say Patrick got his happy ending like the others have (or will have), but I'm just not sure sometimes. He and Lara have the attraction (a higher attraction than he had with Kirsten), they've got two beautiful blue-eyed girls, but sometimes I just don't feel it for them, you know? You know, the way they act with each other, the light up the room factor? That isn't an ACR score, and it isn't in the bolts, it's completely beyond that, and undefined.

That, and I think Lara might be a closet lesbian, lol! :)

I liked Kirsten a lot though, and I was sad to part with her, even if he wasn't. I had even planned on adding her to the lineup when I started the blog, but there were just too many Sims already! So I gave her a future - I checked up on her every now and then, like I do sometimes with my cast-offs. She's not just sitting around like some shell of a townie. She was messed up over him for a long time, but she eventually moved on with someone really nice - nowhere near the chemistry, but a nice guy just the same - and she wanted to get married, so I let her. She is a bands judge in the music career (I'm really shocked she and Patrick have never run into each other yet), and he is a draftsman in the architect career. They live in Lakeside Heights and have a beautiful little girl named Madelyn.

I think, had you all been reading when this was going on, you would have lynched me for breaking them up. But ah, that's life isn't it? She wanted to get engaged, and he never rolled the want (he is a family sim, so he should have). And sometimes mistakes don't feel like mistakes when we're making them. Sometimes we never really find out for sure if they were mistakes at all.

I think I've said this before - it becomes a kind of running theme in my stories, I think - that there are no real mistakes, just the choices you make and the ones you don't, and consequences of which make up the shape of a life.

So did you guys ever have a couple you just hated to break up? Or do you all keep them together whether they like it or not? ;)