I finished out the week at work, doing what I could on Newtopia during my breaks and in the evenings, before I even seriously considered quitting.

My boss, Mr. Hayes, had been particularly grating, and Jeremy had been even more annoying than usual, but I’d meant what I said to Jackal; I didn’t want to commit the guys to working jobs they hated if they didn’t take well to it.

But it turned out being a bouncer on Earth was pretty similar to guarding type quests in Newtopia, and they had few complaints.

It was when I saw their pay checks that I started seriously reconsidering my life choices. Between the three of them, they made more in one night than I did in a week. I sat in stunned silence, running the numbers over in my head and projecting how much they’d need to earn, in addition to what I had squirrelled away in my savings to buy a house.

An inner-city apartment might not do us much good, but a quiet house hidden away in a low-key suburb - somewhere out of the way but with a decent internet connection… Maybe we could get a house after all. It might not be the Market Town apothecary dream I’d had with Brick, but it could be a place we could host the world that I could build my dream house in.

It would be like the ultimate sim inception. A fixer-upper world nestled inside a fixer-upper house. I pictured myself in a flannel shirt holding a hammer and smiled, feeling starry eyed. It’d be like a Hallmark movie. Only maybe an XXX rated Hallmark movie, considering I had five hunky guys plus an ex and a weasel to house with me and Hallmark seemed to prefer just the one love-interest.

I’d always wanted a real home to call my own. A sense of security. When the weight of that burden had been all on my shoulders, it had felt suffocating. Saving for a house was one of those monumental things that seemed almost impossible, especially on my own. I’d kind of hoped when I’d got together with James that the burden would be halved, but I’d just ended up having to dig into my savings to cover him all the time… but now the cost was shared between so many of us and I felt like things were possible again.

Who knew the solution to finding affordable housing was just to add boyfriends until your household income was big enough? It felt like the kind of advice I should have found on a Buzzfeed article.

I could almost picture it: ‘How Many Boyfriends Would You Need to Afford This House?’ Maybe there’d be a little set of sliders you could use to approximate boyfriend to house price and income ratios.

“What are you giggling at?” James asked, quirking his eyebrow at me.

“Nothing,” I said guiltily.

He peered over my shoulder and let out a low whistle.

“You should’ve been a bouncer,” I said, fanning myself with the payslips.

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“More brain than muscle,” James shrugged, gesturing to his slim build.

“Debatable,” Nightfall muttered under his breath.

“Is it enough?” Jackal asked. “Can you quit your job yet?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said. “I mean, I’ll have to give notice, but we should have enough in the bank to pay for what we need to do – and find a better place to live. We’ll still have to rent for a while, but if we keep on track we could buy something permanent in the foreseeable future, although it would mean you’d have to keep working in order to pay the mortgage.”

“That’s good news,” Bruiser said. “We weren’t sure what the dollar to gold conversion rate was, so we weren’t really sure how much we were making.”

“Well, I’ve got two days off to make plans now,” I said, seriously intending to spend a few hours of it looking through real estate listings. I hadn’t seen Mrs. Greaves in a few days, which was a stroke of good luck, but her unexplained absence would inevitably end at some stage and then our time in this apartment might be up at the click of her fingers.

We needed to find a place we could safely set up another system to run Newtopia before this one came down.

“You might, but we don’t,” Bruiser yawned. “I need to hit the hay.”

“Take my bed,” I said. “Brick’s already in there, but you should both fit. We need to sort something out soon. This couch is getting decimated.”

“Sorry,” Bruiser said sheepishly. “Hopefully I don’t do the same thing to your mattress.”

“It’s not just you,” I said, kissing him on the cheek and pushing him towards my room. “It was a cheap couch when we got it, and it definitely wasn’t built with three large guys sharing it in mind.”

Jackal looked at where it slumped in the corner fretfully. “Do you want me to sleep on the floor, Emma? I can sleep on the floor if you want me to. I don’t want to break your things.”

“It’s fine, honestly,” I said, returning to his side once Bruiser had disappeared into my bedroom. “I don’t care about the couch. I just wish it was more comfortable for you, especially after you’ve been up all night working.”

Jackal stifled a yawn. “It’s not that bad. I’m barely tired.”

“Clearly,” I said blandly. “How about you lie down and have a rest on the couch. We can shut the curtains and you can have a rest.”

“But you were working at the table,” Jackal looked at the mess of papers I’d spread out around me.

“I can do what I need to on my phone,” I said, already walking to the curtains to shut them. I almost tripped over Bonaparte, who was curled up in a sunny spot on the kitchen floor and hissed at me when I took his sunbeam away.

When I turned back to look at Jackal, I found he’d followed me, and I bumped into his solid chest. He wrapped his arms around me and gave me a brief hug.

“You’re kind,” he said, squeezing my shoulders before abruptly pulling away and stepping backwards.

“I… it’s okay,” I blinked, feeling off kilter at the sudden beginning and end to the hug. “Do you want me to go into the office, or is it okay if I stay in here?”

“While I sleep?” Jackal asked, his voice stiff and his expression unreadable in the darkness.

“If it’s okay. I promise I’ll be quiet.”

“No!” Jackal said, then pulled the curtain back open. “I’ll go with Bruiser.”

“Did I say something wrong?” I asked. “I can go in the office with Nightfall and James. It’s okay. You’ll be on the floor if you’re in my room, and as uncomfortable as the couch is, it’s still better than that.”

“No,” Jackal said sternly. “I am tired of breaking things.”

I couldn’t find a response to that and watched him disappear with a sense of loss. He’d done so much for me, and I couldn’t even offer him a good night’s rest.

I shook my head and returned to the table, taking notes on some of the different areas that had houses within my price range.