when an english teacher and a music teacher love each other very very much...

they get married!

chloe and nat were both teachers at a now defunct alternative school called sparhawk (chloe's beloved alma mater- can you call your high school that?) when they became aware of each other. before they met, they each had some vague ideas about what the other was like. chloe had seen a student dressed as nat on "dress like a teacher day", and thought, "woah, cool outfit, who are you supposed to be?". nat substituted in chloe's messy and chaotic english classroom and noticed her unusual handwriting in the lesson plans she had left. one day, chloe finally encountered nat in person in the copy room, where he was printing out the chords for ethel cain's "american teenager"- a badass, if uncommon, choice for a high school band song. nat was elusive, whooshing around the school in an oversized winter coat. in the following months, they would exchange meaningful glances and eye rolls at the weekly staff meetings, daydreaming about their musical endeavors while they coworkers bored them to death. nat then invited chloe to record a song after school- she was so excited! as one does, she searched for him on the internet, and found his musical project called law years, and was intimidated, incorrectly deducing that he was a former cop (he very much was not). when chloe urgently needed a drummer for an upcoming record release show, she nervously asked nat, who happily agreed. from then on, she only wanted to hang out with nat, finding any excuse to go record with him in his parents' basement studio. one day, when she was with him, nat said, "I'm sorry we're not getting much music done", and she said, "that's okay, I'm really just here to hang out with you". she didn't know it yet, but at that time, nat had felt his world turn upside down, cowriting songs with a girl in doc martens, sitting cross legged on the floor in the place he grew up and started his first bands. that night, while she drove home, chloe wrote the lyrics to the song they had made. they were all about nat. their first date was at chloe's apartment, watching the shining (chloe for the 7th time, nat for the 30th), just the two of them.