Six days. That's how long it had taken for her prettily planned life to go to hell in a hand basket. Or maybe up in flames was a better phrase. Well, whatever you wanted to call it, that's what had happened.

She replayed the events of the last six days in her sore head. It was her second wineover in the span of just one week. For someone who didn't really drink, this seemed a tad excessive.

She had returned home the morning after staying at Josh's, only to find her parents and Bryan pacing the lush lounge in her family's well-appointed foyer. Apparently he had filled them in on her surprise visit to his apartment the night before, and her subsequent exit. He had, of course, neglected to mention her reason for leaving so abruptly, and had made her out to be some kind of hormonal lunatic.

She had stared incredulously as her mother and Bryan bore down on her, questioning and somehow fuming at her behavior. Her mother had berated her for being so rude as to intrude on Bryan unannounced and then fleeing, and Bryan had shouted something about how she had dared to spend the night alone at another man's apartment. He'd also made a cutting remark about how she'd had the nerve to just “waltz in” the following morning while wearing the same outfit from the night before with no shame whatsoever.

She had stared at them stupidly, and then done the only thing she could think of in that moment. She pulled Bryan's ring off of her finger, and threw it at his head. Her aim, however, hadn't been amazing. The ring had gone flying past Bryan's head, sailing through the air only to land in her father's coffee as he sat silently in a wingback chair behind Bryan, surveying the scene with hooded eyes.

That had shut them up. “Mother,” she spat as she turned toward her first, ”I went to my fiancé's apartment, the one where we were going to live together. The one I helped him pick out and furnish, I'll remind you. I went because I was concerned about how hard he's been working, and I wanted to cook him a meal like a proper little wifey. Only he hasn't been working hard, it seems he has been fucking hard.” She heard a sharp intake of breath at this statement, although she didn't know who it had come from, since the rage had made her hungover head swirl. “I left because he was busy giving it to some other girl.”

“Serena,” her mother had breathed, “how dare you use such language?” She had ignored her and turned to Bryan instead.

“And you, you filthy...” Some choice words entered her head, but for the sake of her mother's heart, she went with, “Swine! I've been planning our wedding, and that's what you've been doing?” She'd finally let it all out.

The screaming match had culminated in her mother fainting – yes, she was that dramatic – and her father escorting Bryan out the door with a warning to never darken their doorstep again. She threw herself up the stairs and into her bedroom.

She had mostly stayed locked in her bedroom for the next couple of days, her father and Katie checking on her occasionally. She hadn't spoken to her mother since the big blowout, but from the snippets of conversation she'd heard whenever she had snuck out of the bedroom to the kitchen for more tea or ice cream, her mother was furious she had broken off her engagement to “such an eligible man” and lamenting that she “couldn't have acted like a lady and forgiven his one indiscretion” in what she described as his “moment of weakness.”

Wow mom, so much for female empowerment. I don't know why they even let us vote, she had thought sarcastically upon hearing her mother's ranting. Again, those were treacherous thoughts that would never be formed into words. Serena had chided herself for not speaking up.

Three days after the fight, her mother had thrown open her bedroom door, pulled open her drawn curtains so violently she thought they might tear – though that would hardly have been a loss, as in her last redecorating fit she had somehow decided princess pink was an appropriate color for a twenty-one-year-old – ignored Serena's puffy eyes, and had perched graciously, but dramatically on the edge of her bed.

“Well Serena, since you seem to have some sort of plan for your future I don't know about since you threw the plan that I did know about out of the window with both hands, do you care to share what you intend on doing with yourself now?”

She had looked into her mother's narrowed grey eyes and was overcome with a sense of shame. Her mother had worked hard to find someone she considered suitable for her to date, and had been so supportive of the relationship – some nights she had stayed up late to talk with Serena about the problems she'd been having with Bryan, and had thrown herself into wedding planning these last six months.

“I'm so sorry, mom,” she muttered, tears she hadn't even realized she still had in her now threatening to spill. “I was just so hurt and shocked that I didn't consider the consequences of my actions until just now.” A familiar sense of overwhelming shame and guilt settled over Serena.

Her mother had been right, there had been a plan. One that her mother had carefully crafted and had been working on for Serena's entire life, and with one tantrum, Serena had thrown it all away. No wonder her mother was so angry at her. After all, men cheated, didn't they? She suddenly wondered if her mother had forgiven her father for any such indiscretions, but she quickly pushed that thought away. No, her father would never.

Nevertheless, she had heard countless stories from her friends about their fathers' adulterous affairs, and yet, most were still married. Perhaps it came with the territory, but how would she know? Bryan had been her first serious boyfriend, and her mother never spoke of such things.

She thought back to how she had felt the moment she had laid eyes on the scene playing out on Bryan's couch, and felt sure she had made the right decision. Plan be damned, what he had done to her was unforgivable.

“I'm sorry, mom. I just knew I could never be with Bryan after what I saw. I know how hard you worked, but I'll make it up you. I'll enroll in school. I'll work really hard, and I'll make you proud of me again,” she had vowed quietly.

It had all tumbled out so fast, and she had been so desperate to just say something that would make the situation better, that for the second time in three days, she had accidentally stumbled into a life-changing argument.

“School?” her mother had repeated coolly. “And what, exactly, would you be enrolling for, dear? You're four years out of high school, you've not applied for colleges anywhere, and you have no work experience other than helping out at your father's company.”

Her mother was right yet again. The plan for her life had never included college. Katie, her sister, who had somehow managed to escape from the rigid confines of their mother's master plan for her to an extent, had insisted on obtaining a degree before settling down. She had dug her heels in until their father had finally convinced their mother to let her do it.

Katie was a year younger than she was, and almost finished with her degree. She had also somehow managed to move into an off-campus apartment at some point, although there were rules, of course. Her sister was required to visit home at least once every few days, attend all family functions, and her mother still bought her clothes and groceries. Still, it was considerably more freedom than Serena had.

Serena, however, had started working for their father's company straight out of high school. She had started as an assistant to a low-level marketing manager at Woods Co, the family empire that had been started by her grandfather some sixty years ago. She was likely to stay in that position until she was married off and raising babies.

So she was safe, earned a reasonably comfortable salary, had become very good at her job and had settled into a routine, constantly under the watchful eyes of her mother.

Her job in the marketing department wasn't bad, as it meant that she got to work a little on ad campaigns for the company and occasionally even got to meet the lead designers. She was little more than a glorified secretary, really, but it wasn't all bad.

“I know, mom,” she said, “but I've been thinking about it a bit, and I'd really like to go to design school.”

She thought of all the sketches she'd drawn over the past few years, stowed safely under her bed and in her desk at the office, and was considering showing them to her mother, when she realized her mother was laughing at her. “Design school?” she scoffed. “That's not a plan, honey!”

And so it had become a fight. She spent the next two days trying in vain to convince her parents, but her dad had grown incredibly angry at the suggestion that she wanted to leave the company to go to school instead – not that he had ever shown any interest in her becoming more involved in the company.

He had, in fact, always complained about not having any sons to take over from him when he was ready to retire, but failed to acknowledge his daughters could do the job just as well. He seemed content in letting their mother choose appropriate husbands for them so maybe one day he would have a son-in-law he could groom to take over his empire.

Her mom may have laughed at first, but the more she realized Serena was serious, the more unreasonable she became. At some point during a particularly heated argument, Serena had pulled the sketches out from under her bed and hurled them at her parents' faces. Her mistake.

Her mother had gone completely pale, as though the fact she had sketched them at all was a betrayal, and merely evidence that she had been planning all along to renege on the carefully crafted plan her mother had for her life. Her father had just stared at her before accusing her of stealing his company's time if she had done them on the clock, and then walked out in a huff.

It was then that it had hit her. Instead of supporting her after having found out what Bryan had done, instead of helping her figure out what to do from here, they had laughed at her, ridiculed her, blamed her for Bryan's indiscretion, screamed at her, and essentially accused her of stealing money from them.

If she was ever going to pursue her passion and live her life, she had to get away from here. Away from her parents and their controlling ways and overprotectiveness.

It had taken everything in her, and she'd had to dig deep to find the one assertive bone in her body, but somehow she had done it. She left.

In that moment she had hurried upstairs, threw some clothes and toiletries into a travel bag, and on the way out to her car, had announced to her stunned parents that she was leaving, and that she would find a way to do it on her own.

It wasn't until her car had screeched out of their driveway and she had driven around some that she had calmed down enough to realize what she had just done. She couldn't go back home, and she doubted she could go back to her job at the company. Her sister lived with three roommates in her apartment, so crashing there was impossible, and Mary was out of town for a few days. She belatedly realized she should have thought this through more carefully, but there was no going back now.

She had no place to live, no job, not much money saved up, and no idea how she was going to get herself out of this predicament.

She turned her car around and headed in the direction of Josh's apartment. Perhaps he would take pity on her yet again, and let her stay in his spare bedroom until Mary came home. At the very least she hoped he would be there so she could vent.

As it turned out, he was home. One look at her tearstained face, hunched shoulders and travel bag, and he had pulled her into his apartment without question.

It had also turned out that Josh hadn't been alone, but he had pulled her straight into the kitchen, poured another huge glass of chilled white wine for her, and instructed her to stay put for a second.

Emanating from his living room, she heard a shrill – clearly quite unhappy – female voice. “Seriously Josh, someone knocks on your door and now you're just throwing me out? In the middle of that?” the mystery woman had almost yelled.

Josh had replied in a voice so low she couldn't make out the words he said to the woman. But she could hear the woman's response clearly. “I don't give a fuck what happened. You just don't treat a woman like this, Josh. You just don't fucking kick her out seconds after you... Asshole!”

The woman had been well and truly yelling by then. Could she have possibly picked a worse time?

Again, Josh's reply had been too low for her to make out, but the woman's response didn't make it hard to guess what he had said.

“Don't ever contact me again, Josh. In fact, lose my number. Fuck you!” and then the door had slammed shut.

When Josh returned to the kitchen, she noticed, for the first time, his disheveled hair and the fact that the top button to his jeans was conspicuously undone, but he didn't say anything about it. She flushed.

“What happened, Her?”

She had hated that nickname at first. After meeting as children, he had decided that the second half of her name was somehow redundant, and had taken to calling her “Ser” instead. Over the years she had grown fond of it, and as soon as she heard it, the whole saga of the past few days came pouring out of her mouth.

He immediately offered his second bedroom to her. He told her to make herself comfortable and just to relax, and that he was going to help her figure this out.

And that was how she came to wake up with her second wineover in the space of a week, and absolutely no idea what to do next.