The next few hours were just a steady stream of congratulatory call upon congratulatory call. Andrea and Joe, her whole campaign team, a bunch of old friends from the city and a whole lot of journalists asking for an interview called. She answered each one.

In the evening, as the calls finally stopped, she took some time to celebrate. From tomorrow onwards, she would be a member of the State Assembly. And with her foot in the door like that, it would be easy to rise through the ranks…

It was the morning after the election and Jan felt nervous. With the outer districts being perceived as far less important in the Greater SimCity area, it wasn’t unusual for the ballot count in those districts to be finished very late at night. Jan took advantage of that, shut off her phone and crawled to bed early. 

The last few months had been crazy, with campaign event after campaign event and countless of interviewers with just one question: why on SimEarth would a successful celebrity lawyer decide to trade in her prestigious position for a meagerly paying government job?

Jan had her reasons. None of them were the public’s business, though, and so, as the calls for interviews rose in the days counting up to the election, Jan decided to ‘unplug’ instead of celebrating. Not that there were any election parties held in the district to begin with.

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She eventually gathered up the courage to turn on the morning news to find out whether she’d won. She hated uncertainty. In her job, failure was sometimes to be expected, but she still hated it.

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“…and State Assemblywoman Jan Tellerman, an independent candidate, who is currently unavailable for an interview.”

The three friends settled down in the kitchen to have dinner, and Jan recapped this afternoon’s events:

“I mean, I’m not clairvoyant. He never told me how he felt about it! And now I’m the bad guy although he…

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“Darling, no one expects you to be able to read minds. This was his wrong-doing. He screwed it up.”

Jan nodded: “I just don’t know what came over me. I guess we… I just saw her standing there and- how am I able to compete with her! She’s so much younger than me and…”

“Pregnant.”, Komei interrupted.

“Yes.”

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“Never knew you wanted children?”

“I don’t. Me as a mother! That would be a tremendously bad idea, not to mention that that ship has sailed a long time ago.”

“Way too much information, Jan!”

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“I guess what Komei and I are trying to tell you”, Andrea chirped with a sharp look towards Komei,  “is that it isn’t your fault that this played out the way it did. It is okay for you to decide that you don’t want to marry, it is okay for you to decide you don’t want kids. Leo should have told you what he wanted in life and you may have been able to come up with a compromise. But he didn’t, so…”

“Not my fault. Right. Time to focus on the campaign.”

With a smirk, Andrea turned to Komei yet again: “Say, did you take a dip in the pool while Jan and I were preparing dinner or did you just decide that you like running around half naked?”