"Make sure you turn off the air…you forgot to last night. I came in and opened up this morning and the whole place was an igloo." I rummage through my pants pockets for the keys that I can't find. I'm always losing the keys to this place anymore. I'm not usually this absentminded I just don't really care about this place anymore. I pat the breast pockets of my jacket in hopes of locating them. I pull the single black keychain from my left breast pocket and hand them across the counter to the guy that works the night shifts here. I don't know his name nor do I know the name of the skinny little thing that works the morning shifts either. If I don't care about this store, what makes you think I care enough to learn the names of the people that work here? I know Buck and that's it. The only reason I know Buck is because he worked here back when my pop owned the place. He used to watch me while I played out front on the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk. Pop worked pretty long hours and when I wasn't in school; I didn't have a choice but to spend time in the shop with him. It got boring in here so I used to play outside every chance I got. "Lock up and leave the keys above the sign outside." I specify. The goofy looking kid nods his head and looks at me like I'm God in his eyes. I don't think he's used to me being here and I guess I can understand that. I don't usually spend time in the store like this. Buck's wife's sick so he couldn't come in today so I have to do the nightly duties, like stocking, counting the money for the night and making sure the distributors know what orders we have.

Sometimes when I don't feel like being here or taking care of this place, I think about just letting it go out of business. All I have to do is stop ordering supplies and let everything sell out to the point where I have nothing left and the place is liquidated. The store is older than I am and the building is practically falling apart. I could give a damn about the place but it's my dad's, you know? It's my dad's and he put a lot of hard work into getting this place off the ground. Out back, he used to fix up cars around the city and for a while there, business was really booming. He made enough selling tools and fixing cars to support me and him and pay all the bills at the house. This place was his pride and joy at some point and something within my conscience prevents me from letting it close down. Pop got the idea that I didn't want to work at the store for the rest of my life and he was okay with that; really he was. He even gave me permission to close the doors for good when the place got too much for me to handle. I just can't bring myself to actually let the damn place go though. I realize that it's on the verge though. I only have two workers and I hardly make a hundred bucks a week in sales...this place is on the verge of going. I can afford more than two workers because honestly, business here is so slow that I pay the workers out of my own pocket. It's not that I can't afford to hire more people I just don't feel like we need more than two workers. As goofy as the boy that works here is, he's a hard worker nonetheless. And the girl…I don't know much about her yet but she seems like she's a decent worker too. She lives in the apartment above the store so she rents off of me. She's never late on her payments so if that's any indication of her character, I'd say she's reliable.

I push the front door of the store open and grab my car keys from my back pocket. I push the button on the remote to unlock the doors of my black and silver BMW M3. I walk around the front of the car so I can get in the driver's seat and open up the door. It's not even dark outside yet and I want to go home and go to bed for the night. Even though I'm ready for bed, I probably won't actually go to sleep until way later. I'm going home, ordering out something for dinner like I always do, taking a shower, eating and then I'll probably sit on my computer for a while to draft something up and then I'll end up heading off to bed. A lot of people have misconceptions about being self-employed. Most people think it's a luxury that I essentially work for myself under my own conditions, under my own rules. But it's really not all it's cracked up to be. I spend about 15 hours a day brainstorming and writing and coming up with ideas. It's really not all that luxurious. Don't get me wrong; I wouldn't give up writing for all the marbles in the world. I love my job and I love what I do and yeah, it more than pays my bills. I'm just saying that it's not all that great to work for myself.

I start my car and put the gear in drive. Sometimes though, I wish I had gone a different route. I'm not sure what I'd rather be doing, but I don't think I'd mind actually getting up to work a 9 to 5 job every day. It'd beat the hell out of sitting home in front of a computer all day and who knows, maybe if I had a real job, I'd make some friends to actually keep me company. I knew from a really young age that writing is what I wanted to do. I had the most overactive imagination as a kid. I was always making up stories in my head and planning things out of how things were supposed to go. Embarrassing as it is to say it, I would lie in bed at night and create little movies in my head to go along with my stories. I took a creative writing class in high school and fell completely in love. I mean, I always knew I had the capability to create something vivid from my imagination; but as a high school freshman, when I put my thoughts down onto paper into words for the first time, it was like the floodgates in my mind opened. I would stay up until ungodly hours of the night, filling up notebooks with my ideas. It only felt natural to go to college for something I was so passionate about. I'm not a pansy, either. I went to Iowa State on a wrestling scholarship and I played a little football in high school and college. I'm not a sissy. I just really like creating things in my mind that other people can't. It's like…when my life is so boring and everything is crumbling into bits and pieces around me, I can open up my MacBook computer and completely escape into a world where everything is perfect in my eyes.

Writing is the only thing I've ever felt 100% certain about in my life. I have a degree in American English and a certificate in Creative Writing. I did my four years in college and I really do think that actually majoring in something related to writing has really made me a better author. But sometimes I really do wish that I had gone for something business related or even law related. I haven't gotten bored with writing yet but I just fear that someday I might. And then when I get bored with it, I'm stuck with a degree in something I ended up hating. Realistically, I didn't have to go to college to become what I am. I could've kept all the money I spent on college because I really didn't need a degree. My editors correct the grammatical errors I make and my publishers take care of all my continuity errors. It's not like I wasted all that money though because college was some of the best years of my life and it's not exactly like I'm paying my loans back. I was able to pay all my student loans off after my first book got published; I made about a $150,000 total from all the sales of my first book. I'm ten books in and my most recently published one made me about $500,000 worldwide.

I cruise my car to a slow speed as I pull into my driveway. Most people would probably wonder why I'm living my life here in Sioux City, Iowa if I'm a millionaire and I guess when I think about it, they'd be justified in wondering that. Because when you step back and look, it's not like I live in an obscenely big mansion. I live in a one bedroom townhouse, I have one nice car, I have nice furniture, no wife and no kids. To the naked eye, I probably just look like your average Joe and I like it that way. I just don't see the point in flaunting the fact that I have all this money. I'm far from broke and I live very, very, VERY comfortably. But I grew up here in Sioux City and just because I'm for lack of better word, "rich", doesn't mean that I have to live like I am. I was raised by a single dad and I know for a fact that money isn't everything. My pop and I didn't live wealthy while I was growing up and I wasn't raised to blow off all my money. I park my car in my garage and shut off the engine.

I won't give myself too much credit though, because I did fly to California a few years back for a vacation. I fell in love with the weather, the atmosphere, the entire essence of California, I just fell in love with. And I bought a beach house out there in Long Beach for whenever I just need to get away from Iowa. I always pictured myself moving out there someday when it was right for me to leave Iowa. Pop's been dead for two years now and I still don't think it's the right time to leave, so maybe, I'll never find the right time to get out of this small town. If I haven't found the right time yet, will I ever? I thought about moving out there after I bought my beach house about four years ago. Pop's test results came back positive for prostate cancer and the chemo took a lot out of him, so I postponed the move. He got better and I thought about moving once again but he needed someone to look after the store. Year after year, I just kept finding reason after reason to stay in Iowa. Pop's not holding me back anymore and I just still can't find the right reason to get out of this place. I think the biggest reason I won't move is because all of this is bound to change if I do.

Another misconception one might have about me being such a well-known, published author is that I'm famous. I'm not famous and I don't intend to ever be. Sure I have millions—if not billions—of fans all over the world. People buy hardback copies, download them on kindles, listen to them on audiobooks, all that. I have many fans and I get e-mails all the time asking me to do book-signings and meet-and-greets. I just don't want all that. I just want to write something that people will enjoy and move on with my life. I don't even publish under my name to prevent all that. I like my quiet little life in Iowa and while I wouldn't mind moving, I do enjoy just being a normal guy. I put my jacket down on the chair of my kitchen when I walk through my back door and kick my shoes off next to the trashcan. I put my car keys on the counter and go immediately to the refrigerator. I grab a can of Dr. Pepper from the case on the bottom shelf and crack it open. The more I think about it, the more I think I might skip writing for the night. With Buck being out, I have to go open the store tomorrow morning around 7:30 which means I have to be up early. It's not like I'll get too far behind if I don't write at all tonight. I'm still just in the research stage of my next book.

Usually, I write science-fiction/romance novels. Let me clear one thing up: The gist of my stories is not some alien dude falling in love with the girl next door. That's not it. They're usually about time traveling. For example, my most successful novel to date was about a girl that was born to a mother out of wedlock as a child of rape, back in 1876. Back then, it was really frowned upon to have a baby out of wedlock and the townspeople didn't care that she was born out of rape. So the local witches of the town put a curse on the baby, which entitled that she lived forever, never able to die. The girl was never able to die but the catch was that she wasn't ever able to love either. Any man that she ever fell in love with would end up dying an unexpected death. That's what I mean when I say I'm a science-fiction/romance writer. Most people would be confused when they heard of those two genres being smushed together but I'm telling you, I make a lot of money off my ideas. So anyway, I usually write things like that. But this time around, I decided to step out of my comfort zone and write a romance novel based off true events. Just two months ago, the town of Sioux City celebrated the ten-year anniversary of Little Annie. Little Annie was a five year old girl that was molested and killed here in Sioux City by a trucker with no possible motive. Authorities took two years to find her body. I was intrigued by the story of Little Annie so I read about it and of course, I had an idea. I asked myself, what if there was a motive? What if Little Annie's mother fell in love with the trucker but couldn't be with the man because she had a child? What if that prompted him to murder the little girl? I know it's a little far-fetched but I already pitched the idea to my publisher and they're willing to pick it up. My mind is twisted and just a little bit corrupted, but it makes me money.

I dust off my can of soda in three gulps and toss the can in the trash. I don't feel like waiting for food to be delivered, so I yank open my freezer and take a peek inside. Nothing quick but a frozen pizza is in here, so I grab it and put it on the counter to cook it. I read the directions on the underside of the label and set my oven to 425 degrees like it says. I push "start" for it to begin preheating and stalk lifelessly and tiredly out of the kitchen. I climb the flight of steps that leads upstairs and go immediately to my bedroom. I'll take a shower tomorrow morning instead of tonight. I sit down on my unmade bed and take off my socks. I lean forward and plug my phone into the charger. I stand up and unbutton my jeans. I pull them down and kick them over into a pile next to my closet. I'm not dirty or a slob, I'm just a little bit lazy. I don't make my bed, I don't put my clothes in a hamper, I don't always clean toothpaste out of the sink or put toilet paper on the dispenser. I'm not dirty though. I know how to clean the house, I don't regularly skip showers and I use deodorant. I'm just lazy and I live alone so it's not like I have anyone to appease.

You'd probably think that with me writing all these stories about love, finding love, falling in love, staying in love and meeting your "soul mate", I'd have someone in my life but that's a contradictory. I've had my fair share of relationships—some failed, some successful—but really, I don't have the time I wish I had to invest in someone. Honestly, writing takes up most of my time. And being a romance novelist, I often have a way of how I see things happening and when they don't play out the way I think they will, I just give up. It's one of my faults. I really don't ever see myself committing to anyone and I really don't want to. I'm not really interested in getting married to anyone. I'm 30 years old and I haven't met "the one" yet, so chances are, there is no such thing as "the one". Besides, marriage is overrated anyway. I'm almost 99% sure that if I got married, I'd probably be unfaithful. It's all I've ever been and really, it's all I've ever known.

I don't try to hurt girls and I'm not intentionally an asshole but I've had about seven girlfriends within the last four years and I've cheated on every single one of them. I'm a man…I like sex. I like a lot of sex. And it's not really a secret that I'm a wealthy guy (though nobody really knows just how wealthy I truly am), so naturally, girls come with the money. Me being a man that likes sex so much, commitment isn't really my strong suit. Sex and relationships just don't go on the same peg in my mind. I see sex as one thing and relationships as another. I haven't quite figured out how to make the two mesh just yet. I guess maybe that's why I like writing about other people's relationships so much, because my own suck. It's not like I've never tried to commit, either. My last girlfriend, I swear I tried. Her name was Dana and she was only a couple years younger than me. She was hot, great in the sack, had a nice rack…all that good stuff. I tried so hard to stay faithful for to her but I was out drinking one night at the bar down the street and one of the waitresses was hot too. I just had sex with her once for about half an hour in my car. Dana found out and dumped me and I'd be lying if I said I actually cared. I'm just not the commitment type.

I should do a study of whether infidelity is genetic or not. Sounds stupid but seriously; my mom couldn't keep her pants on long enough to keep my dad in the marriage so maybe she passed that gene on to me. Now, I'd never talk bad about my mom. I swear I'd never do that. I hold my mom on a pedestal and I love that woman to pieces. I used to be angry that she left but as I got older, I learned to actually admire her for it. My mom got pregnant with me when she was 20 and she was in college but she had to drop out. My dad worked on cars until he saved up enough to open his own shop. My mom was 20 and my dad was 35 so logically, they were both in very different places of their lives. My mom just wanted to be young still and my dad was old enough to know that they had to grow up. My mom would cheat on my dad and the two of them would keep me up at night with their arguing so eventually, when I was about 10, they divorced and she left and went back home to Kansas, where she grew up. She just realized that it wasn't going to work out because they weren't really in love in the first place, they just got thrown together to parent me. They gave me the option, to stay here in Iowa or go to Kansas with my mom and I chose to stay in Iowa with pop. My mom wasn't a bad woman, nor was she absent in my life. She sent me gifts growing up, called me and paid child support to my dad. I used to go visit her every other holiday. I didn't come from a broken home, I just never really got to see a functional marriage. I love my mom to death and I still speak to her on a regular basis.

After I put on my night clothes, I slide my foot into my house slippers and pad downstairs to put my frozen pizza in the oven for dinner. I take the pizza from the box and put it on a sheet of aluminum foil so the bottom can get crispy. Unlike most single bachelors, I can actually cook. If I'm not feeling lazy, I can actually whip myself up something pretty tasty. I spend a lot of time at home and when I'm too lazy to grab the remote and turn off the cooking channel, I don't have a choice but to listen…and sometimes I actually pay attention. Admittedly, tonight is a lazy night for me so instead of cooking myself something from scratch, frozen pizza will have to suffice. I pull the door of the oven open and gently slide the pizza inside of it. I'll let it bake for about half an hour while I just go watch something on TV.

Jo's Point of View.

I sit down on my bed, tucking my legs underneath my butt and cradling the bowl of instant Ramen noodles in my hand. I wrap my hand around the remote and pull it up, aiming it at my television to turn it on. I guess I'll watch the news while I eat my dinner then I'll go to bed for the night. I work early tomorrow morning and these early morning shifts are starting to catch up with me. There's no question about it, I'm sleep-deprived. I would like to blame that on the fact that this apartment isn't an ideal living situation but really, it's no fault but my own. I lie in my bed at night tossing and turning, just hoping that eventually, I'll fall asleep at an hour decent enough to not want to murder a box of kittens when I wake up. I don't sleep. That's become one of my characteristics. I just don't sleep. I twirl my fork around in the bowl of noodles and take a bite. While I'm chewing and the news is on commercial break, I look around. Six months of living in this apartment and I'm still not totally used to it. It's really not that bad but it's far from great. Put it this way, I'm not picky. I'm not picky and I'm just grateful to have a roof over my head and somewhere to sleep at night.

My apartment is one room, a bathroom and a kitchen. My bedroom is my living room and when someone walks through the front door, they'd be in my bedroom. The kitchen, if you want to call it that, is just a stove, a sink and a fridge. I don't have money to blow on expensive furniture, so I don't have a kitchen table. Hell, I don't even have a frame for my bed. I sleep on a mattress that rests on the floor. I don't have a dresser so I keep my clothes in the closet. My shirts and my jeans hang up on the hangers but my pajamas, bras and underwear stay in a basket in the corner of my bedroom. My floors are all wooden and the wallpaper is yellow and outdated. I don't even think it's supposed to be yellow, really. I think it was white at one point. My point is that my place isn't very "homely", but it's my place. It's home and I actually look forward to coming home after long days of work. I scrape the last little bit of noodles from my bowl and eat them. Well that was filling. I lick my lips and put my bowl down on the floor beside my bed. I take a drink of the bottle of water I got from the fridge and gulp it down. I put the water next to the bowl and reach up to turn off my light.

I shut off the light and use the light illuminating from the TV to settle myself in. I pull my blankets back and slide myself between my sheets. I shut off my TV so it's dark and roll over on my side to go to sleep for the night. I can't wait until I afford to put myself through med school. I can't wait to be making enough money to be able to afford a nice place. I'm going to get there eventually and I can't wait. I close my eyes and run through my finances in my head. Last time I checked, I have like $1,520 in my bank account. $300 of that has to go towards my rent and I'll spend about $50 on groceries because I'm running low. I get paid next week, which will be the normal $1,200. I can put about $1,000 of that away towards my med school deposit since the only thing I'll have to pay out of that is my phone bill. At this rate, it's going to take me about another six months to save up the entire deposit. I should look into getting a second job. They're only going to hold my admission place in the program for one full year before they relinquish it and offer it to someone else on the waiting list. I wonder if anywhere else around Sioux City is hiring.

I roll over on my stomach and sigh. This is why I never get any sleep. I'm always just thinking about all my obligations. I think about the fact that I can't afford to do the things I want to do but I'll be damned if I just give up a spot in Harvard because I can't afford it. I should totally just become a stripper or a prostitute. I know so many guys that would sleep with me. That probably sounds cocky or conceited but really. Back when I used to bartend at Hooters, so many drunk men would pull me aside and tell me all the dirty things they'd do to me. I know some men around here that would pick me up, sleep with me and pay me well. I inhale the scent of my pillow which smells like my hair shampoo and just sigh again. Sometimes I think myself into a corner and I end up crying myself to sleep. Crying never gets me anywhere so I try to avoid it but sometimes I just make myself sad. Now obviously I'm not like that. I'm not sleazy or a dirty skank that'd have sex for money. I've only ever had sex with three people in my lifetime so obviously, I'm not easy like that. But it really sounds good sometimes. How am I ever going to afford to be able to do any of this?

Sometimes it's nice not having anyone. Sometimes it's really nice to be alone and not have to answer to anybody or worry and take care of anybody. But sometimes it gets so hard being alone the way I am. I have to count on myself all the freaking time. I'm trying to save up to make my life better but I have the rent, groceries, personal items I have to buy, my cell phone bill… and I have to save up this money quick before they give my spot away. I turn my head to the side and close my eyes softly, like I'm going to go to sleep. When I get off work tomorrow afternoon, I'm gonna look around town to see if anyone else is hiring. Because when I think about it, I have time for a second job. I get up every morning at 7:30 to work at the store from 8:00 to 3:30. I could be working from 3:30 until like 10:00 every night. I don't have a car so I'll have to pay for bus fare to get back and forth to my second job but it's possible. I can do it. I'll be exhausted but I can do it. And when I'm in at Harvard Medical School, I won't be thinking about the exhaustion. I'll be thinking about the fact that I'm going to be a doctor. So yeah… I'll just go apply for a few more jobs tomorrow afternoon after I get off of work. And if that plan fails then yeah, I'll just go be a stripper or a prostitute.

I roll back over on my side again and pull my covers up to my neck. I take a breath and try to throw myself into happy thoughts instead of my drowning financial troubles. Just think about how worth it it's gonna be eventually. One day you won't have to struggle.

A/N: For all you guys that have been asking, no Just So You Know isn't done. I still have one more chapter to wrap the story up and I'm currently working on it. Look for it in the next coming days (I'll probably post it this weekend). I just finished the first chapter of this story and I liked it so much that I couldn't wait for you guys to read it. Then I got all excited to write the second chapter and here we are.

So I know this story's bland right now since it's all introductory stuff, but anyway, what do you guys think so far? I know it's a different kind of Alex and Jo than you're used to, but that's my point. I don't want my Alex and my Jo to be like the same Alex and Jo you guys read in every Jolex fanfiction story.

As always, this intro stuff is pretty important. Specifically, there's something I wrote in Alex's POV that will come back to be pivotal in the story, so just keep a look out for that. (speaking of Alex, I kind of like his character in this story. He seems weird but he's actually kind of brilliant and intelligent, eh?)

I outlined this story and I promise that I'll start the real drama and important stuff by chapter 10. Just give me 9 chapters to explain the alternate universe, then i'll start the thing that's gonna bring Alex and Jo together.

Thanks for the positive and encouraging reviews so far. Love you guys so much.