A/N: So this opens kind of after-the-fact in Transformers: Age of Extinction.

Have I mentioned that Mark Wahlberg is SO FUCKING HOT?!

No? Well there ya go.

So yeah, as I said. This is an after-the-fact!fic. My OC, Riley Kendricks, will be a friend of Tessa's. And Miss Riley will also (to her own embarrassment and Tessa's extreme amusement) be completely in love with Tessa's dad. Riley is 21, don't worry.

So! Without further ado, here is the story.

Enjoy! :)

*~Line Break~*

Riley bolted out of her car and ran full-speed to the rickety house's door, excitement coursing through her. "Hi Bee!" she called to the yellow Camaro, which beeped happily back at her. She jogged up the steps and slammed into the house. "Tessa!" she screamed happily, waving a piece of paper. "Tessa! Get down here!" Tessa's boyfriend Shane looked up from the couch.

"Riley," he asked with half a smile. "What-?" He was interrupted by footsteps pounding down the stairs.

"Riley!" Tessa shrieked. "Did you-?"

"'Miss Riley Kendricks,'" Riley read from the piece of paper. "'We are pleased to inform you that your application to Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been accepted-,'" Here she had to pause for Tessa's shriek, "'and we look forward to having you attend our college. Please RSVP by no later than September 1 to finalize your acceptance.'" There was a split second of silence before both girls broke out in shrieks. Tessa tackled her best friend in a hug, still screaming. Riley managed to stay on her feet.

"Whoa, whoa, WHOA!" Tessa's dad, Cade Yeager, said with a laugh as he came barreling into the room. "What's going on here?"

"Riley got accepted to MIT!" Tessa screamed as she pulled away from the octopus-like grip she had on her friend. Riley chuckled breathlessly; her face was flushed with her success and her eyes were bright.

"I think you're more excited about this than I am," Riley teased Tessa who stuck out her tongue at her.

"That's amazing, Riley, congratulations," Cade said with a smile and Riley smiled back.

"Thanks, Mr. Yeager," she said with a nod and Cade frowned.

"Riley, you can call me Cade, for the billionth time!" he said laughingly and Riley shrugged as she was tugged upstairs by Tessa.

"It's a respect thing, sorry!" she called. The two men could hear her indignant "Ease up, Tess!" and chuckled. Shane turned to Cade with a wide smirk that Cade immediately distrusted.

"So…" Shane said, meandering over to Cade and crossing his arms. "When are ya gonna make a move on that?" He jabbed his thumb upstairs.

Cade opened and closed his mouth like a fish, causing Shane's smug smirk to grow.

"N-no! God no! What the heck are you talking about, kid?" Cade said, trying to quell the panic rising inside his chest.

*~Line Break~*

"The fact that you're looking at him like you want to eat him," Tessa said with a smirk. Upstairs in her room, she and Riley were having the exact same conversation.

Riley went completely red at that mental picture and shook her head to rid herself of it. "No I wasn't!" she insisted but Tessa wasn't having it.

"Why don't you just tell him?!" Tessa said exasperatedly.

"Because I'm still a minor in his eyes!" Riley shot back with just as much exasperation. "He'd never look my way! Not like that!"

"He was just doing that!" Tessa practically shrieked and Riley stood in a huff.

"Stop giving me false hope!" she ordered as she opened the door and stomped down the stairs.

Tessa sighed as she heard Riley give her goodbyes to Cade and Shane and the door close. That girl was so flyin' flippin' stubborn. Tessa had no idea why she didn't just come clean; God knows both she and Tessa's dad would be so much happier.

A while later, Tessa herself went downstairs, only to come face-to-face with her father's displeased expression.

"What did you say to upset Riley?" he demanded and Tessa hid her grin. It would only infuriate her father more.

"Nothing. She just won't come clean about something so she got mad at me for pushing her," Tessa said innocently. It was true.

"What? Is Riley in trouble?" Cade asked, his voice worried and Tessa had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling like a loon.

"No, Dad, she's just being stubborn," Tessa said, and bounced past him to get something to drink.

*~Line Break~*

Riley sighed and debated banging her head against the wall. She was trying to write her last essay of this goddamn engineering class, but she had no idea about robotics! None! Her expertise was computers. But she had to take this class in order to get her Bachelor's Degree.

"Why me?" she moaned, her head on her desk. How the hell was she going to write this stupid essay if she had no idea on the subject?! "How Do Robotics Influence the Lives of Everyday Civilians?" What?! How was she supposed to know?! According to every book the stupid class provided her with, everyday civilians didn't use robotics because of the "Remember Chicago" Act.

She jumped as her house phone rang and furrowed her brow. She never used her landline. She jogged downstairs to the kitchen and headed to the phone by the back door. "Hello?" she answered cautiously.

"Hey, Riley, this is Cade Yeager," a male's voice said and Riley relaxed when she recognized the voice as indeed Cade's.

"Hi, Mr. Yeager," Riley said and giggled when Cade made an agonized noise.

"Cade, Cade! 'Mr. Yeager' makes me feel old!" Cade said and Riley laughed.

"Sorry, sorry!" she apologized.

"It's ok…I guess…" Cade mumbled and Riley huffed a laugh.

"Ok, ok, seriously," Cade said, chuckling along with her. "I called to ask if you want to come over to dinner tonight. We're kinda doin' a huge get-together type thing, because it's Friday. Bee and Drift and the whole gang are gonna be there. I'll be grilling and there'll be music and it'll just be a load of fun." He sounded as if he was desperate for Riley to come and that just made her feel even worse when she replied.

"Oh, gosh, Cade, I'm so sorry, but I can't," she said with true regret. "I have a stupid paper on robotics I have to finish by tonight at midnight, and I've only written a third of it."

"Well, bring your laptop or whatever over here, and I'll help you with it!" Cade said as if it were obvious.

"Really?" Riley said, hardly daring to hope that she'll actually get some real help on this.

"Yeah! You can sit right by the grill so we can talk, and I can even get Joshua on the line if there's a question I can't answer for ya!" he said and Riley squealed.

"Oh my God do you have any idea how awesome you are?!" she said excitedly and Cade chuckled.

"Oh I have some idea," he said smugly and Riley rolled her eyes. She made plans to be there around 6:30 to help with the setup and hung up. She froze, then screamed out loud when she realized she had only 10 minutes to get ready and get over there.

"Asshole probably knew it," she muttered as she dashed upstairs.

*~Line Break~*

Cade watched in amusement as Tessa and Riley got into a playful argument about where to place the sliced watermelon. The older woman (Cade refused to think of her as a girl) was wearing khaki knee-length shorts with brown sandals and a blue plaid shirt rolled up to the elbows. All in all, she looked very pretty.

He watched as Riley threw her hands up in exasperation and walked towards Bee, who was sitting on the ground next to Drift and watching the girls with amusement and puzzlement. She leaned against Bee's leg as he said something to her. She laughed and responded and Bee seemed to laugh with her. She saw Cade watching her (and he quickly looked away) and started walking over to him.

"Can I help you?" she asked in amusement as she reached him.

"Uh, I thought I was supposed to help you," he shot back with a grin as he jerked his head towards her laptop. Riley gave it an ugly look.

"I was trying to distract myself from it," she muttered as she walked over and grabbed it. She parked herself in a chair right next to his grill and opened the device up. She typed in her password and then loaded up her document. Cade saw her essay come up; she had written a fair amount, but he could see that it was far from finished.

"Hey, we have five hours in which to write this thing, and you're sitting next to an inventor who knows everything there is to know about robotics," Cade said soothingly and Riley sighed and leaned her head back to look at him.

"Why are you helping me?" she said softly and even over the din of chattering Autobots and humans, Cade could hear her crystal clear.

"Because I want to," he said firmly.

His stomach did not do a flip at her answering smile. No siree, it most certainly did not.

*~Line Break~*

Four and a half hours later, after the party had long been over, Riley and Cade were still bent over her essay. They had moved to the front porch by now, and they were spread over the three steps. Cade had a beer, but as Riley didn't drink ("Nice…" Cade said, looking impressed. "I like that.") she had a lemonade.

"Ok…" Riley said as she scanned the last paragraph. "How should we finish this? We have…half an hour." Cade sighed and rubbed his face.

"I think we should stick with the classic summary-format," he said, "but we should add some of your viewpoints into it. Put a little of, well, you into the paper."

"How?" Riley moaned as she leaned forward. "I'm so tired, I can't even think straight!" Cade sighed and wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

"Hey," he said softly. "You can do this. You're brilliant. I didn't even write this paper; you did! I just provided the facts and you put it into words. Man, your hands were flyin', girl!" She smiled a little at his choice of words.

"Ok," she said just as softly. She sat up straight and began to type, hesitantly at first, and then faster as the words came to her. Cade watched in amazement and pride as her fingers flew across the keyboard; he swore he saw them blur.

"Done!" she announced five minutes later after some tweaking. Cade leaned forward to read it and his smile grew larger and larger with every word.

"I love it!" he announced as he sat back. Riley grinned and blushed, praying he couldn't see it in the porch light.

"Really?" she asked and Cade nodded.

"Absolutely! That's incredibly well-written," he said. "I love this…" he skimmed until he found the sentence he wanted. "'And as for me, well, I cannot pass judgment on robotics in a civilian homes as the government would send their men in black to erase my memory with a little stick.' I love that!" he said with a laugh. "Beautiful! If your professor has a sense of humor, you'll get points for that for sure!"

Riley blushed hotter and ducked her head. "I can always say I only took your advice and put 'some of me into the paper'," she teased and Cade grinned widely.

"And your professor will give me points for that," he shot back and Riley laughed a little.

"He sure would," she whispered as she saved and closed her laptop. She looked up at the sky and smiled.

"When I was little, my dad would take me and my siblings out during the winter to look at the stars. In Florida that's when the skies were always clearest at night," she said as she was brought back to that time. "We would make hot chocolate, bundle up in our warmest robes and scarves and mittens. We'd lie down on the grass and he would point out all the constellations he knew. It was perfect."

She looked away from the stars and found Cade staring at her intently. "That does sound perfect," he murmured and Riley smiled at him. Her eyes flicked to his lips and back, and she realized just how close they had been sitting. She started to turn away but Cade's soft voice stopped her.

"Don't," he whispered, and when she brought her eyes back to his their intensity made her insides squirm with…something.

"Why?" she whispered back, and Cade exhaled a soft laugh against her lips.

"Because you don't want to," he breathed and her lips were on his.

The kiss was gentle, tender, and slow; fire brewed just under the innocent surface as it became deeper. It was a toe-curling kiss, one that every girl dreamed of. Riley felt Cade's warm palm against her cheek and sighed happily against his lips. He chuckled a little and they pulled back, grinning like loons.

"We're a bunch of saps, aren't we?" he asked and Riley giggled a little.

"We are," she agreed. "But I wouldn't change that for the world."

Cade's smile was just as bright as the stars above.

"Neither would I."

*~Line Break~*

A/N: Omigod, I hate this. I hate it. It SUCKS. It's terrible! Feel free to barbecue this!