Your girlfriend at the door!

You hear the doorbell ring, and you glance over at Tori. She shrugged and slipped out of her chair. "I'll work on some unpacking for a bit, I'll let you be a responsible homeowner for a bit and answer doors and stuff. C'mon Sabel, you can pretend to help me." She picks up a box and heads to the guest room.

You step over toward the door, opening it to find Andrea on the other side. Uh oh.

Andrea, your girlfriend of almost two years, smiled brightly at you. Her long blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she kept her fit and trim body wrapped up in a fleece jacket and some yoga pants, looking like she was ready to go jogging in the chilly city as she often did. "Sweetie, hi!" She said in a loud, sing-song voice, putting her arms around you. You gulped, wrapping your arms around Andrea as well, hugging her close, but staying at the door for the moment.

"Drea! What a surprise!" You raised your voice in response, hoping Tori would hear and hide in the guest bedroom. "This is... very unlike you, to show up all of a sudden."

Andrea frowned, prodding your shoulder. "You should check your calendar a little more often, Pete. Marsha and Dave scheduled a wine tasting at that new vineyard not far from here, don't you remember? We haven't seen them for a couple months, it's the perfect place to catch up. ...Can I come in?"

"Uhh, why don't we just... go right now?" You suggested shakily, which made Andrea scrunch her nose.

"We're not in a rush to get there, hon. Besides, if you want me to actually move my entire life up here to this little corner of the mountains, shouldn't I be free to enter what'll eventually be my home too? Let's just make some coffee and talk for a bit, I need to use the bathroom anyway after that drive."

You scratched the back of your neck and stepped aside. "Sure, uh, come on in." You stepped aside, and Andrea headed to the bathroom, after giving you a look as she wondered about your weird behavior.

Andrea and you had a relationship that couldn't be more foreign to the friendship between you and Tori. You met Drea when you were working on the Seatown library project, since she worked at a city government position that had her representing the city's interests in the design and budget. If anything, Andrea was the one who helped you push your vision for the library forward, beating out other designs. That's not to say it was all rosy in the beginning--issues with budgets, timeframes, and permits plagued the project and it was usually because Drea would bring the hammer of reality down on your loftier aspects of the project. That's probably why you and she worked so well as a couple, you had complementary personalities that in public felt unbreakable. Your family loved Drea, your city friends adored her, everyone thought you and she made being a couple seem effortless.

However, you knew that the pendulum could swing in the equal and opposite direction with Drea, and nothing made her personality do a full 180 faster than Victoria. The two were oil and water, unable to find any common ground at all, when you'd initially thought the two could be great friends since you thought they could have complementary personalities as well. Your miscalculation resulted in a one-sided rivalry, where Drea was extremely jealous of how you and Tori could just have fun in seemingly the stupidest ways, seeing Tori as a threat to steal you away from her even though you'd tried your hardest to explain to her that there was nothing to worry about.

...Well, there had been nothing to worry about, until a channeled Tori basically said she wouldn't mind if you essentially cheated on Andrea with her. But even without that, Andrea had only reluctantly agreed to you chatting with Tori all the time because she had been with Mike; now that they'd broken up and Tori didn't have a home, Drea had been extremely insistent that you shouldn't let Tori stay here, implying that you couldn't be trusted. It was exhausting, since you had already explained to Drea that you wouldn't cut Tori out of your life when she isn't doing any harm sending you silly cat pictures and talking about dumb reality shows all the time.

While Drea was in the bathroom, you Tori's remaining two boxes and jogged to the guest room, knocking lightly on the closed door. Tori opened the door quietly, and you slid the boxes in with your foot. "What's she doing here?" Tori whispered. "I'd have stayed hidden sooner if I knew she would be here..!"

"She says there's a wine tasting that she'd planned, I don't remember her doing that. Sorry, but you're gonna have to stay put and--"