Gabby "The Other Side"

The story began when your girlfriend Maddie—now very much your ex — broke up with you and kicked you out of her apartment.

Gabriela “Gabby” Moreno, her best friend, was there to catch you when you fell.

Maddie is barely even a memory now. She's distanced herself from both of you.

You've been dating Gabby for over a year. You're comfortable enough together that privacy has become more of a suggestion, boundaries are mostly understood without being spoken, and you think you've learned just about everything there is to know about her.

Almost everything.

There's one subject that somehow never comes up.

And much to Gabby's dismay, that subject is about to show up on her doorstep.

Her parents are coming.

And from the way Gabby reacts, the reason she hasn't brought them up before starts to make sense.

They've been married for twenty-seven years. To outsiders, they're a model couple—successful, polished, devoted to one another, and after nearly three decades still very much in love.

Tall and broad-shouldered with a mature, handsome face, warm brown eyes, dark hair increasingly threaded with gray, and a neatly kept salt-and-pepper beard. Rafael carries himself with relaxed confidence and rarely looks like he has to work for anyone's attention.

Charismatic, intelligent, funny, confident, and effortlessly magnetic. Rafael can make a stranger feel like an old friend within minutes. He's an excellent storyteller, reads a room instinctively, and possesses the same easy social gravity that makes his daughter impossible to ignore.

With Gabby, that charm sits beside something much uglier. Rafael is authoritarian, dismissive, judgmental, and convinced that being her father gives him permanent authority over her choices. He doesn't need to yell. Sometimes all it takes is a look—or calling her “Gabriela.”

Elegant and carefully composed, Caroline has refined features, fair skin, expressive eyes, long brunette hair, and a slender feminine build. Her clothes are immaculate without being flashy, her jewelry understated, and almost nothing about her presentation ever appears accidental.

Poised, intelligent, observant, socially graceful, and extraordinarily perceptive. Caroline notices details other people miss and understands how someone is feeling long before they say it.

Unfortunately for Gabby, Caroline often uses that perception to identify what she believes needs correcting. Clothing. Hair. Weight. Manners. Relationships. Posture. Decisions. Presentation. Her criticism rarely sounds cruel. It's delivered softly, reasonably, and almost always “because she cares.”

And for the first time since you've known Gabby, she isn't wearing the smallest clothes she can possibly cram her curves into.