The Reunion: A Recap

Hi all, I am so excited to be writing this post!  For those of you who might not read In All The Wrong Places, I will be doing a few "reunion" posts here for fun!  Here is the plan:  This post will be a brief catch-up on what our favorite characters were up to when the blog ended.  The recap here will focus on pre-baby and pre-final wrap post, so we'll be starting shortly after Liv and Brody's wedding.  Then, because people were pretty split about what they'd like, I plan to do a few pre-pregnancy posts and a few-post baby posts.  I'm going to try to do at least one post in each time period from each character.  Honestly?  I'm going to hit the high points.  The fun posts to write.  The big things that are happening.  So if there's anything that you really want to see how it played out, post it in the comments.  As always, no promises, but I'll try to accommodate your requests as much as I can.  Alright, on to the recaps.  I didn't edit them, so I apologize if they're a bit jumbled.  Also, recaps are hard to write!  I tried to capture the important things from the last few months of the blog.  If you have questions post them in the comments!  I'm hoping to have a post up later this week.

Liv and Brody:  Liv and Brody just got married (obviously) and went on a ridiculous but enviable honeymoon to a private Fijian island.  When they got back, they adopted a dog that one of Brody's employee's family members was rehoming (Eddie).  Brody purchased some additional office space and was preparing to do some major restructuring and expanding of his business, while eventually paring down his own duties to allow him some more time to spend with Liv and their potential-eventual-family.  Liv was offered a new position at her job, providing therapy within a school.  The new job means she's off most of the summers and is working really independently.  She was preparing herself for Brody to be ridiculously busy for about a year while he restructured and got things in place to give himself a more reasonable schedule.  Liv and Brody hosted their first holiday together (Thanksgiving) and Brody flew Liv's parents out to be there as a surprise.  Liv and Ken, Brody's brother, had had a rocky start but are now getting along much better.  Brody's sister (Jen) loves Liv, as does his mom.

Lauren and Alex:  Alex and Lauren took a disastrous Thanksgiving trip to Savannah to visit Alex's parents.  Alex's mom invites the neighbor and his adult daughter, and it quickly becomes clear that she's trying to set Alex up with the daughter in an effort to replace Lauren.  Alex is completely oblivious and he and Lauren get into a fight about it.  In the morning, after a conversation with his mom, he realizes Lauren was right, has it out with his mom, and they leave.  Despite Lauren never wanting to get married or have kids, Alex gets her a 'just be with me forever' emerald and diamond ring, which he gives to her when they're just about to have sex, in a very Alex and Lauren sort of way.  She chooses to wear on her left hand.  Lauren's new boss is inappropriate, touching her and flirting with her despite her repeatedly telling him not to.  Eventually, he begins to take her work away and starts to change her position to something completely different.  Meanwhile, Alex and the guys go on a ski trip and Alex gets seriously injured.  Lauren and Alex's mom come to a tenuous truce in the hospital, and then Lauren throws herself into taking care of him, but Alex struggles with whether or not she's truly in it for the long haul.  This could be partially because at work, Lauren's boss attempts to change her job description and Lauren quits on the spot.  She eventually finds out that he had logged into her email and sent HR an email from her account, asking for the change in job duties.  They offer her job back, but she negotiates an impressive severance package instead.  Not much later, her former boss and employer is on the front page of the paper for a sexual harassment scandal.  After another fight about Lauren's struggle with commitment, she and Alex decide to move in together.

Kinsley and Damien:  Kinsley struggled with her relationship with Damien from the beginning.  They had broken up once earlier in the story when Damien and Kinsley's views on family and boundaries clashed significantly. When Kinsley's story picks up after the conclusion of Liv's, she finds out that her mom was in the hospital after an overdose.  For once, Kinsley was grateful for Damien's unflappable calm.  She finally ended up telling him about her family, revealing indirectly why she has such impenetrable walls up and is often flighty and hard for him to understand.  Through the interactions with her parents in the hospital, especially her mom, we see that Kinsley's parents are both manipulative and self-serving (not unlike Kinsley).  Once the dust settles, Kinsley panics about being so vulnerable and tries to push Damien away again.  Despite everything, she makes an effort with her mom, going to visit.  During one of those visits, they have a blowout that ends with Kinsley's mom calling her a stupid little tramp, and we don't hear from Kinsley's mom again after that.  After a chat with Liv, Kinsley talks to Damien instead of shutting him out, continuing to work on being a better partner.  Surprisingly enough, Kinsley begins to get close to Damien's family as well--especially his mom and his niece and nephew.  Kinsley and Damien spend part of Thanksgiving with his family and part of it with Kinsley's dad.  Kinsley is surprised by the presence of her brother (that she hadn't seen in 17 years--since he went to prison when he was 18 for theft and vehicular assault), and doesn't handle it well.  A confrontation with her dad leads to Kinsley and Damien leaving.  Kinsley starts to rebuild her relationship with her brother while cutting off contact with her parents.  Knowing that Kinsley has been on family overload, Damien suggests they spend Christmas weekend away together, showing that he's getting much better at compromising with family things.  A bit after Christmas, Kinsley ends up running into Cole, the man she'd been sleeping with when she and Damien had been broken up.  He kissed her and she panicked, frantically telling Damien that night.  Damien handles it well, believing that Cole did it and Kinsley didn't want anything to do with it, but Kinsley struggles with feeling like she's not good enough, making her start to sabotage things.  Eventually, she takes some time to herself, pushes herself outside her comfort zone, and starts to become comfortable with herself.  She and Damien end up staying together.