Valentina was rather curious about Keeley's supposed telenovela idea and had questions.

"Where's the childhood sweetheart now? Is she still trying to seduce the heir even though he's not married to someone else?"

Keeley didn't have a clue what Lacy Knighton was up to. In fact, she didn't even know for sure if Aaron was single. Surely his parents had engaged him to some prominent person's daughter by now.

"I haven't come up with the idea for that part yet. I was mostly wondering what viewers would think about the heir constantly going after the girl he rejected in his previous life. Because last she checked, he was being super cold to the childhood sweetheart but pretty nice to her."

"Hmm…a change of heart…ooh, what if you made him be reincarnated too? Like he's trying to make up for his mistakes or something like that," Valentina suggested.

Ridiculous. There was no way that had happened. Even on the slight chance Aaron was also reborn as a senior in high school, he would remember everything that happened like she did.

He disdained Keeley horribly long before she died and chose to be with Lacy and their child. If he was reborn, wouldn't he go straight for Lacy? Why would he treat her so terribly and keep pestering Keeley?

Aaron wanted nothing to do with Keeley—he was the one who asked for a divorce, not her. She would have withered away in that marriage forever if he hadn't brought it up. He wouldn't change his mind so quickly.

"Too much reincarnation is unrealistic," she said dismissively. "There has to be another reason behind his behavior."

"Love at first sight? Being connected by fate? It's your telenovela; the possibilities are endless! I would definitely watch it, by the way. You should submit it somewhere."

Keeley laughed. "Where would I even do that?"

"I actually have a cousin who works for a TV network back in Peru. I could give him a call and see if there's anything he could do," Valentina teased.

"Go for it if you want." It would be hilarious to see her life reproduced on television. Hilarious and sad.

"I'm going to call him and you're going to be famous," she declared. "You should call it 'Rico y Reencarnado.' It means 'Rich and Reincarnated.' Rich for the male love interest, reincarnated for the female love interest. It would be a hit!"

"Whoa there, who said they were love interests?"

Valentina gave her a funny look.

"You said they were married. In this sort of story, don't they usually end up back together in the end? Or are you going to introduce a new love interest for the main female character?"

End up back together? No way. Keeley would rather have her eyeball stabbed with a fork than be shackled to that iceberg again.

"Like I said, I haven't gotten that far," she said grouchily.

She just explained her life story and her friend basically thought she was supposed to go back to the man who destroyed her!

"I'll pitch what you have so far to my cousin; he'll tell the screenwriters and they'll run with it from there if they're interested. And why wouldn't they be? There was a super popular telenovela a while back where a dead man's soul got put into someone else's body so he could be with his wife again—people love this stuff!"

The question was WHY did people love this stuff? Keeley didn't see the appeal having personally lived through it.

Rebirth was so complicated. All she wanted was a straight answer but she supposed she should have phrased the question more directly to get a clear response. Oh well.

"I'm very interested to see how this pans out," was all Keeley said before going quiet so they could see what happened between Jorge and Ana Maria.

Three hours later, Jennica stumbled through the door exhausted from hours of rehearsals. She saw what her roommates were watching huddled together on the couch, shook her head disapprovingly, and went to her room. She had never been a fan of telenovelas.

===

"I think your initial idea has a lot of promise, Keeley," Dr. Kim said when she saw the research notes Keeley spent all of Sunday compiling. "Of course, you'll need to write a formal proposal paper before I can sign off on your research but as of now I think you're on the right track."

Keeley was relieved. She wanted to do her dissertation on something related to cystic fibrosis more than anything. She was sure Kaleb was looking down on her and wanted to make him and her mom proud.

"Thanks Dr. Kim! I'll get that to you before the end of next week for sure."

The professor smiled at her enthusiasm. "Alright. Now go check on the rats; it's time for their afternoon data to be taken."

"On it!"

She hummed happily as she recorded the data. She was on her way. There was still so much work to do though…she had to do a ton of research to write her proposal and then come up with a solid step-by-step plan for her research in order to get that signed off…

The next two weeks were going to be very busy. Unfortunately, she still had extra homework on top of all this insanity. She was going to be functioning on very little sleep.

As she worked on her dissertation research later that night, her phone blew up with text notifications. Annoyed, she checked to see who on earth was bothering her so much.

Of course it was Aaron! What did he want this time?!

Keeley opened the messages and was surprised by what she saw. No words, just pictures of Dinah doing cute stuff like sleeping with her face pressed up against the coffee machine.

Confused, she texted him back. 'What are these for?'

'Dinah is encouraging you to do well on your dissertation research'

Her jaw dropped and her mind went completely blank. She had no clue how to respond to that. Yes, she told him she would be very busy with her dissertation but had no idea he would take it to heart.

To be perfectly honest…that was pretty cute. Aaron…who even are you anymore?