Elissa can't wait to get back to how life was back then—before the pandemic. She misses griping about whose turn it is to refill the office coffee pot. She misses happy hours with her best friends. She misses missing her husband after his long day at the office. But her first week at what should be back-to-normal is anything but what she expects. Elissa's husband wants to move onto new and better things, her friends don't seem to have her back, and her boss presents with her with an impossible choice.  With her life upended, Elissa ends up in the most unexpected of places: crashing on a futon of the messy studio apartment her friendly but oh-so-young neighborhood coffee barista, who shows Elissa it's never too late for a second chance at life. How far would you take a fresh start? Cecilia Gray writes about first love, second chances, and forever friendships. With echoes of Anita Shreve and Jodi Picoult, Gray's Second Chance series follows three best friends at breaking points with hope and home during pandemic America. In That Was Then, the quarantine tears open the secrets of a frayed marriage. In Any Day Now, traditional family values clash with a daughter's newfound dreams. In We Are Forever, an unexpected death leads to the possibility for a new life. Follow three best friends amidst upheavals that send them crashing into unexpected romantic entanglements, unexplored career choices, and fresh starts they had assumed were long past possible. These full-length (75,000 words/300 page) compelling contemporary novels stand on their own or can be read as a series.