Road to Fucking Nowhere

Romance

Cw for non explicit sex and possible eating disorder reference in this chapter

Ripp didn't actually know why he'd picked the romance aspiration.
Each sim had an aspiration they would pick upon aging up to a teen, that would influence the choices they made for the rest of their life. There was family, romance, knowledge, fortune and pleasure. And also a sixth, rarer one-grilled cheese-which only a few sims had after a failed attempt at changing their aspiration, or by choice as a secondary aspiration.
Ripp was a romance sim. Why? He wasn't exactly sure. Did the flirting and sleeping with as many sims as possible part of it lure him? Maybe a little. Was it that he never wanted to get married and go about his life being a serial non-monogamist? That was the part he wasn't so sure about. Did he want to get married and have a family eventually? Or not? He didn't know.
Maybe it was the fact that it was the aspiration his father would hate the most. The General hated him. So Ripp would go out of his way to do the things the General hated. Laze around. Dress in his brother's old clothes. Hang around with boys, and part alien boys too at that. Grow up to be not only bisexual and transgender, but a sex-obsessed whore. Ripp didn't intend to live a life of promiscuity forever, which was why he wondered if it was really the right choice for him, but it sure pissed his father off.
Or deep down, maybe it was because he was just trying to find the love he didn't have throughout his childhood.
Ripp wasn't very promiscuous at all yet though. He was now 18 and embarrassingly had only one boyfriend in his time as a romance sim so far. Although he had the interest in sex, and had for a while, he wasn't a very good romance sim, at least by his own standards.
"Can I help you, Ripp?" A man with short blonde hair and a black t shirt tucked into his jeans asked him, as Ripp approached the counter of the service station shop. Ripp's first, and short-lived, romance from high school, Warren Sims.
Ripp placed a can of soda and a bag of chips on the counter. "Just these, thanks."
Ripp had broken up with Warren. They were co-workers together, at the same time before Ripp took up the night shift. Warren had given him the important things at least, his first kiss and his first sexual experience. He had also respected his trans identity which was one barrier on his romance sim journey. "I've been in love with you for a while Ripp, ever since you started working here."
"You know I'm not a girl, right?" Ripp had asked doubtfully. He was used to people desiring him, yet not seeing him as a guy. Not that he was that fussed with who he would like to take to bed with him-they all wanted one thing in the end-but it was something he was getting tired of.
"Yeah, and I don't care at all. I still want to be with you. You were a pretty girl, and now you're a pretty boy, Ripp."
Warren was also a romance sim, so there was that. And he'd been there when his mother Lyla had... disappeared. But Ripp didn't see their relationship going anywhere at all-both of them were just happy to have sex with each other and be the sleazy romance sims everyone expected them to be looking back at it-so he ended it. They weren't going to be like Johnny and Ophelia, who had literally been together since middle school. Also Ophelia was concerned about the age gap between them. "Warren? But he's four years older than you! Ripp, you're only fifteen!" She had said. So last year just before Ripp ran away, they had parted amicably.
They exchanged passive glances as if they were strangers rather than once lovers. "That'll be ten simoleons" Warren uttered, and Ripp handed him the cash then left the store, bag of chips and soda in hand.

Johnny and Ophelia were coming back into town for the weekend. Ripp was going to meet them at the diner, along with Lana and Lilith. Ever since Johnny and Ophelia had gone to college they had been busy with schoolwork and didn't have that much time to see Ripp anymore so he was very eager.

Ripp, Johnny and Ophelia were very close. First it was just Ripp and Johnny in middle school. Ripp had just moved to Strangetown on yet another of his father's millitary placements and he met Johnny in their music class together.
"Hi, i'm Johnny, it's nice to meet you. I'm here to learn guitar."
"Cool! I'm also learning guitar! And sorry if you get this a lot, but dude, I've never met someone that's literally part alien before. That's dope."
Ripp was bewildered at Johnny's appearance at first like a lot of sims unfamiliar with Strangetown would be. The most obvious thing was that his skin was completely green. He was literally half alien, with his father PT9 being a retired Pollination Technician-aliens tasked with abducting and impregnating sim males for reasons Ripp did not want to think about. His ears ended in delicate points, something else peculiar. Other than that though he was just like any other sim, with green eyes unlike the pitch-black scleras of his more alien father, cousins and two half sisters, and a flop of blonde hair over one side of his face. He was also notably taller than him, towering over Ripp by a few inches. Ripp had become friends with him almost instantly, despite both his father and brother considering him an alien freak. Ripp's brother Tank would turn out to be a nuisance for them since he loathed them both. He would go out of his way to bully and torment Johnny every chance he got, and Ripp would always defend Johnny, embarrassed to even be Tank's brother-only to receive that same treatment himself, at home. They had managed to make their friendship last even through that.
Then Ophelia had arrived. Ophelia was a strange girl with an unusual past, with dark skin and long, blonde braids that went down her shoulders. Her parents had come to Strangetown to be closer to Ophelia's aunt Olive, a mysterious woman who has had many husbands and many rumours about her, such as whispers of her being a serial killer, and having a child with death himself. That added with the fact her home was a literal graveyard, it was hard not to believe. Ophelia was naturally anxious and worried about almost everything. And who could blame her? Not even a few days after she had arrived, her parents were found drowned at their home pool. Olive was a suspect of course, and they ended up being buried in her extensive graveyard. But no one could find any evidence.
Ophelia moved in with Olive as she was the only nearby relative left, which terrified her-she was convinced Olive wanted to kill her. She was teased at school, for her seemingly irrational fears, for living in a graveyard, for talking about her ghost "friends" and simply just for being "weird" in general. It was Johnny that befriended her first. Johnny was also an odd one out, being a green half-alien and all. "You're green," she had said to him in amazement when he decided to sit next to her in the cafeteria one day, as that was one of the only spaces left. "And you're the weird girl who lives in a graveyard. I guess we're both weird," Johnny had joked. After that day, Johnny never left her side.
Ophelia struggled to make friends with other girls, something Ripp also struggled with. The girls in their class thought Ophelia was weird, talking about her behind her back and refusing to let her join in with them. At that time the girls thought Ripp was a tomboy and a lesbian, preferring to hang out with Johnny rather than any of them, and his own weird interest in sex on top of all that. Ripp and Ophelia had met after Ophelia joined him and Johnny's music class to play violin. "Well if they don't want anything to do with me, or with you, then I guess we could become friends, Ophelia," Ripp had said. "I like that idea," Ophelia replied.
"I like your style Phi. It's sick as fuck." Ripp really did find Ophelia's tie over her grey crop top and baggy jeans, and her spiked wristbands, sick. And hot. Even when it turned out Ripp didn't fit in with other girls because he wasn't a girl, they had stuck together.
From that day on, Ripp Johnny and Ophelia were known as a trio. Then Johnny and Ophelia had started dating and Ripp became the unfortunate third wheel trailing behind them, but still, one of them was hardly seen without the others. It was the three of them throughout middle school, and high school, until they'd left Ripp behind to go to college. But he was going to meet them again today.