Driving to the wedding reception your mind lingers on Carter. When you moved to LA a year ago and started at your new job, he was the one to take you under his wing. When you first met him, you'd thought he was cute with his sand-coloured hair and blue eyes. He'd shown you around town, introduced you to people, helped you whenever you needed it. A month into knowing him you'd ended up in his bed, drunk, because of his stupid, charming smile and how incredibly there-for-you he was. The following morning he'd confessed that he liked you, to which your response was to throw up. You still wasn't sure whether it was because of the hangover or his words. You still blush at the memory.

You had told him that you didn't feel that way about him, but that you wanted to stay friends. He'd agreed to this, but you knew he still carried a torch for you, after all this time. He's since switched jobs, so you weren't working together anymore.

You didn't really know how you'd ended up being friends with benefits, more benefits for him though. You usually only called him when you were drunk and lonely, but he didn't seem to mind, which made you hate yourself. You know you should just break it off, for his sake. You keep reminding yourself that he deserves someone who returns his feelings and is as awesome to him as he is to you, but then you see how his face lights up when he sees you, how excitedly he takes your call, that you just can't bring yourself to do it.

You drive up to a big white house, noticing that the wedding party is already in full swing. Of course it is, you are late, you remind yourself, finding a parking spot for your Volkswagen and pulling up. You grab the white envelope holding the gift certificate – you and Melissa's colleagues had gotten them an all expenses paid weekend at a spa – from the passenger seat along with your clutch, and you head for the backyard.

Walking up you notice it's a big wedding, there must be almost twenty tables arranged around a designated dancing area. Everywhere there is white and lavender. You stop in your tracks, trying to find where you could drop off your gift, when you notice an elegantly dressed elderly woman walking up to you across the lawn.

"Oh hello dear, I don't think we have met," she smiles warmly to you offering her hand to shake yours.

"No, but I bet you are Sean's grandmother," you smile back. "I'm Melissa's friend, Emma."

"Hello Emma, it's nice to meet you." she smiles, offering to take the envelope. You place it in her hands.

"So nice to meet you, too. You have a lovely house," you compliment. As the woman takes you by the arm and starts leading you across the lawn, you scan the crowd while she tells you about the house. You are thankful for her presence; weddings are your personal hell. All the happiness and a lot of people of which you know a tenth if you're lucky, and even then more often than not they are people who you are related to and don't want to see anyway. You liked Melissa and Sean perfectly fine – she was actually one of your closest friends – and by now you liked Sean's granny, but coming to these things alone was your idea of torture.

Much to your liking, you are lead straight to the happy couple.

"Emma! I'm married!" Melissa squeals as she sees you, her other hand clutching onto a glass of champagne and the other grabbing a fistful of her dress so she can run over to you.

You hold out your arms so that she can run into the hug she's obviously planning. "Congratulations, Mel!" you laugh into her veil as she all but spills her drink on your back as she hugs you enthusiastically. "I'm really sorry I wasn't at the ceremony, I would've loved to have seen it," you respond as the both of you pull away from the hug.

"Don't worry, Sean's cousin got it all on tape," Melissa chirps, as Sean walks over to the pair of you. "I hope. If he didn't I might kill him," she continues, as her new husband wraps his arms around her waist.

"Oops, what have I potentially forgotten to do now?" he laughs as he breaks one hand free to squeeze yours. You smile and mouth "congrats" to him so as not to interrupt their banter as Melissa turns her head towards him.

"Not you, FDR," she smiles.

"Oh, well him you can kill," Sean smiles into her hair, and she chuckles. You can't help but think how lucky these two are, it's almost disgusting if it wasn't so sweet. A woman comes by with a tray of champagne flutes. You take one, which you down in one go.

"Wow, rough day?" Melissa asks, as she reaches for the tray and replaces your empty glass with a full one.

"Try rough month," you respond. "But no more of that now, this is your day," you smile at the pair.

"Let's find your table," Melissa urges and locks arms with you. You feel kind of bad that all these people have to take the time to escort you around, but then again, you know next to no one at the party.

"Okay so we thought that seeing as you don't really know the people here, we'd sit you with some of our other friends, because let's face it, our relatives are boring," she whispers the last part into your ear, and you swear that in your peripheral vision you see the head of a middle aged woman next to you turn at the comment, and you try to keep a straight face.

"FDR, whom I already mentioned, is related to Sean, but his fiancée Lauren is really nice. Tuck is essentially FDR's best friend but we've gotten to know him quite well so we invited him too, he's the one with the accent," she explains as she gives various people smiles along the walk. You try to keep everyone's names in mind as you approach a table with four people sitting around it. "And then there's Callie from Sean's work and her brother Greg," she states as you stop in front of the table. "Everyone," Melissa states to the group, stopping their conversations, "this is my good friend Emma." You smile and give a little wave, feeling like you're the new student in school and the teacher makes you stand up in front of everyone and the annoying boy in the back row throws a paper ball at you.

"Hi Emma, nice to meet you, I'm FDR," a tall, dark haired man stands up on your left hand side, winks and shakes your hand. Usually overly flirty men annoy you, but he is over the top gorgeous, in your opinion too good looking, that for a second you are taken aback by his amazingly blue eyes. You regain your composure, however, and smile, "Hi, you too." Your gaze shifts to the man sitting next to FDR. He has light brown, quite short hair and an attractive smirk on his full lips at which you find yourself involuntarily staring for a moment when from your right a hand appears.

"I'm Greg. Why don't you sit here next to me," a tall man with black hair, to whom the hand belongs, says.

"Hi, Greg. Sure, thanks," you reply, slightly uncomfortable with the look in his eyes. You take the seat offered to you and as you look up you notice the man sitting next to FDR eyeing you while he leans back in his chair. When you catch him looking, he smiles and turn his gaze to Melissa.

"Ya'll take good care of her now," Melissa tells the group as she leans down to hug you.

"We will," FDR and Greg say almost in unison. Melissa chuckles next to your ear and promises to catch up with you later, before turning to leave. You turn your face back towards the people at the table when a cold hand is placed on your arm.

"I'm Callie," a pretty blond sitting between Greg and the mystery man states, with a smirk on her face. You wait a second for her to add something to her statement, anything, but she doesn't.

"Hi Callie. Melissa tells me you and Greg are sister and brother," you say, offering her a smile, to which she doesn't respond.

"Yes, but don't hold that against me," Greg chirps in smiling. Turning your face towards Melissa's retreating back you fake a laugh, which sounds fake even to your ears, wondering how soon you can leave without hurting the happy couple's feelings. You think you hear someone chuckle under their breath at your laugh. At the corner of your eye you see the man, who has yet to introduce himself, lean in.

"Nice to meet you, sweetheart. I'm Tuck," he says, and your heart skips a beat at his accent and all around mannerism; he sounds distinctly English. British accents have always been your soft spot, ever since you visited London for the first time. He holds out his hand for you to shake, smiling with his eyes, which makes you a bit uneasy in a good way.

"Nice to meet you too. From England, I presume?" you ask as you shake his warm hand. He nods, holding your hand a fraction of a second longer than customary.

"What are doing so far away from home?" you ask as he releases your hand. You both remain in your position, leaning in towards each other. His smile creeps down to his lips and he opens his mouth to respond, when you see Greg's head block your vision of Tuck.

"Oh, he's got a kid here, the usual. So, how do you know Melissa?" Greg asks, a smile forming on his lips. You bite your lip and manage a smile.

"We work together."

"Oh, so you work at the bookstore too," Tuck chimes in smiling, and you just want to ask him to say something more. He could read you the phonebook for all you cared.

"Yeah, for about a year now," you respond, ignoring Greg who is already saying something which probably in his head sounded really good. You however have no idea what he is going on about because you notice Tuck gazing at you intently. You will yourself to stare back when you realise just how gorgeous he is. He looks like he is trouble, guys with that kind of eyes usually are. There is something about his demeanour though, a softness that disrupts the whole bad boy image.

"Don't you think, Emma?" you hear as you are elbowed on your right arm by Greg, pulling you from your staring competition.

"What? Yeah, sure," you respond.

"Shall we then?" he continues, offering you his hand.

"What?" you ask, slightly shocked.

"Dance. You just said this was a great song," he smiles, standing up and still holding his hand in front of your face. You let out a little sigh, to which you think you can again hear the small chuckle, but this time you realise it is coming from Tuck. You send him a glare as you reluctantly stand up and take Greg's hand so he can lead you to the area in the middle of the tables.

You thank heavens that the song you "liked" without knowing it is a fast paced one. You look at Greg as he's grooving in front of you, and realise that he is actually quite easy on the eyes. He's tall, not skinny but not robust either, and he has soft features and slightly wavy black hair, which makes you wonder which one of the siblings is hiding their natural colour, or if both are. Greg hadn't done anything cross, he'd actually been nice. If only he wasn't so overly enthusiastic, you might consider him less annoying.

As you move your hips to the song your gaze travels sideways to your table. Tuck is looking at you again. You notice Callie placing her hand on his arm, saying something into his ear while with her other hand stroking his neck softly. He smiles at her briefly but doesn't say anything, and brings his eyes back to you. You try to hide how pleased you are, instead putting a little extra effort into your dance as you know he is watching. Greg, unfortunately, gets the wrong idea.

"Wow, you are really getting into this," he breathes into your ear as he goes to wrap an arm around your waist. You try to get away from his grip by taking a step back when you bump into someone.

"Oh my God, I'm really sorry -" you start, turning around to see who you have almost knocked over when you see a familiar face.

"Emma! What are you doing here?!" your childhood friend Lauren squeals. The petite blonde wraps you into a hug.

"What are you doing here?" you respond and you can't stop smiling. "Oh I've missed you so much!" as you step back to look at her.

"I've missed you too! Wow, I can't believe you're here! Come sit at my table," she smiles and drags you with her, leaving dumbfounded Greg to jiggle on his own.

"Honey, this is Emma. We've known each other since we were five," Lauren chirps as she plops down on the seat next to FDR and motions for you to sit next to her, which you do.

"Oh she's that Emma!" FDR replies. "We actually met already, Melissa introduced us."

"How funny though that you're here! Do you live in LA now?" Lauren smiles at you.

And with that you're off. You and Lauren had gone through school together in Georgia and had remained friends until she moved. You remember how sad you were when she left for LA to be with a guy. She gives you her story, how she'd met FDR at the video store (at which you wonder why you never meet a guy like FDR at the video store) and how they are now crazy in love and planning their wedding, to which she invites you. Every now and then you notice Tuck stealing glances your way, while conversing with Callie. He seems to be paying more attention to your conversation with Lauren than his own.

"So what's your deal, are you seeing anyone special?" Lauren asks with a friendly face. Coming from any other person you'd be offended at the question most feared by all single people. But Lauren was so sincere. From the corner of your eye you notice Tuck lean in slightly.

"Uhh, no, no one special," you respond smiling, feeling a slight nagging at the back of your brain because of Carter.

"Well, we'll just have to fix that, shouldn't be a problem with you looking like that," Lauren smiles and winks, turning to FDR.

"You know any nice single men worthy of my good friend?"

"Well," FDR leans in with his arm resting on the back support of Lauren's chair. "I do know one."

"Yeah I really don't need to be fixed up. But thanks," you respond with a small chuckle, taking a sip of champagne.

"You don't even want to know about him?" Lauren asks.

"I seriously appreciate your concern, but no. If you'll excuse me for a minute," you smile and stand up, starting to make your way towards the house.