Jon is afraid of falling down the stairs. He thinks that's his uncommon fear, but he's only taking his own age bracket into account. He's so riddled with common or at least understandable fears that I'm not sure which one I can submit as uncommon. He's afraid that he'll run out of people willing to take care of him and die under a bridge slumped over in a broken wheelchair. Cathy is afraid she's too weird for even this merry band of misfits, which gets to be her common fear simply because it's less specific than Jon's version of it. She's also afraid of men. Wait, that's common too. Okay: she's afraid her husband will find out she's afraid of men (although he's also afraid of men and that reassures her a little). Maurice is afraid of dogs (that's common, right?), and he's terrified of getting into another brawl. Ella is afraid of bullying, and she's afraid that she's going to have to support herself and her brother on a working-class income forever and ever. Christine is afraid of spiders! Finally, a grounded, non-esoteric fear. I felt I couldn't justify having 6 characters who aren't afraid of spiders, and Christine is the unlucky winner. She's also afraid she's going to burn for all eternity in hell for her life choices, which is a common fear in her old community but rare in med school. Ren is afraid he won't get accepted into med school. He's also afraid that as a physical manifestation of the grand underlying forces of the universe, he's failing at holding the fabric of existence together, and as a result, reality will warp into itself very soon. That one's uncommon simply because he has to be in a state of delusion to feel it, and those tend to be infrequent and brief.

@Suzi St Serpico That uncommon fear is indeed uncommon! Thankfully! Does Funny Bunny know?

I rolled dice and I got Ren complaining about Jon. Wow. That's one combo I never considered. They're friends, and they spend a lot of time together, but they don't interact much just the two of them. Jon is a hypermasculine jock with a math degree and a spinal cord injury, and Ren is a gigantic strapping farmboy who is a real softie and wants to go to med school. So what would Ren complain about? 1. Jon puts the bottles of juice in the fridge sideways, and then they leak. 2. Jon thinks he's the smartest person in the room sometimes. There are other smart people in the room. 3. He should say what he's angry about, and not just throw things. Especially things I was about to eat. 4. Sports are boring. That's not so much a complaint about Jon. Look, I'll play a little basketball but I can't stand watching it. 5. I don't want golf lessons, but he always asks Maury and never me. I want him to ask me so I can turn him down.

@Suzi St Serpico that's a pretty tangled-up and intriguing bit of character development!

I added an alien character after I finished the first draft because someone told me that a book called 'Alien Romance' without aliens is a bait and switch. So far, nobody has told me they love her, so I don't know if she adds much to the book. But her counterparts, the glitter ghosts, have a couple of fans. The glitter ghosts are wild, irreverent, and giddy, so maybe they seem more fun while the alien seems too stuffy. I'm also not sure whether readers think those characters are supposed to be objectively real or if my two MCs have dissociative disorders.

Gilles clapped Maurice on the back, bouncing on his toes in his tennis whites, his tennis shoes, and a red headband that, combined with his distinctive gull-wing ears, made him look startlingly similar to Cathy. "Prête à jouer?" he asked. "Nous avons de bonne chance - c'est une belle journée. Veux-tu le côté éloigné ou le côté proche?" Maurice bit his lip, stared at the racket clutched tightly in his fists, scrambled to find enough French to answer. "Je ne... c'est pas... c'est pas grave." Gilles paused in mid-bounce, framed by the chain-link gate leading into the courts. He frowned at Maurice. Maurice's anxiety spiked so hard, his chest hurt. "Ne parle pas français," he said, glowering. "Speak... English." Then Gilles resumed bouncing, tapping his racket cheerfully against the bars as if his mood shift had never happened. "Right, I speak English, and you speak French," Maurice muttered under his breath, so utterly, thoroughly confused. Cathy wasn't like this at all. Cathy ate up every French word he stumbled through like it was a gallette, hungry for more even when he mixed his languages all up. He followed his father-in-law through the gate and took his place on the near side of the net, clutching the racket defensively in front of him as Gilles opposite him bounced a ball with studied casualness.

I've decided that Cathy's treasure is one she hasn't managed to obtain yet - the cottage in the country. But I do have some concept sketches in the works!