We are fated, like my grandmother, my mother, my sisters, and me, to be the person before. The rebound, the partner at the beginning of rom-coms who is rarely named because they are always what the main character doesn’t need. They are the utterly forgettable Before. “I know it sounds crazy,” I told my soon-to-be best friend the first day we met at college, “but I’m the kiss before you find your true love.”
