Before and After

Kate, if anything, is a creature of habit.

She insists on crosswords with her coffee, skips breakfast, watches reruns of her favorite sitcoms religiously, and has had the same dream of becoming an English teacher since she was seven. She grew up in Portland, went to college and finished grad school there, and just recently got a job lined up at her old high school as an English teacher. And that would be fine, would be totally, absolutely fine, if she just wasn't so lonely now that everyone else seemed to move on.

After college, everyone in her inner circle split off to different places, and by that, she really only means her two best friends Laura and Garrett who last minute decided to take years off from adulting and go backpacking in Europe. Not only that, but her breakup with Parker Torres...even though at this point it's been over three years, and she was the one to cut things off...for some reason, it still stings.

The summer she graduated from grad school had been, people other than her would say, a complete bust. She landed her dream job, but that didn't start until September, so she nannied in the meantime and rarely did anything else. Until her parents surprised her with a congrats-on-finishing-grad-school cruise and she decided to kick back and make the most of it.

But of course the absolute last person she wanted to see, Parker Torres, had to make an appearance and make a bet with her that would, if she lost, guarantee that he would become a part of her life again. Now Kate has to navigate this "new" Parker, which she firmly believes is just a complete joke, because people shouldn't change-right? But he did, and now she has to put the puzzle pieces back together to figure him out and decide if he was worth falling for again, or if she should just cut her losses and head back to the same routine.

But routines were meant to be broken. And Kate's was no exception.