A/N: to try to accommodate the characters to what I had previously written I had to take some liberties with some of the characters and stuff, I hope you don't mind! I'll work on chapter 2 this weekend-when i'm not binge watching OITNB-and I'll have that up sometime this week! As always your reviews mean the world to me!

Chapter One

Her parents named her Emmeline Marie Swan to take after her great-great aunt or something of the like. Naturally, she made everyone call her Emma or Em. She was twenty-two years old, originally from a haughty and pristine neighborhood in Long Island and this was her final year of college. She should get a degree in Sociology with a minor in History this upcoming May. But hey, one never knows what can happen in a year.

It is a hot and humid August day in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. It has just rained so irrationally the sun is already out, but that is New Orleans's weather for you. It is as unpredictable and crazy as the people who live there.

Emma absolutely adores it.

She came to New Orleans four years ago, seeking an escape from her life in Long Island. New Orleans was a wild and crazy city, its culture and history vast and exciting. It was so different from her perfectly boring life at home. Not that she would call New York, home. You see, Emma had spent most of her life in prep schools and boarding schools across the East coast. All of them were all-girls, which just means that, when she was younger, Emma was specially boy crazy and her virginity is long gone, she had been smoking cigarettes (mostly, but ever since moving to New Orleans she did not shy away from the occasional joint) since the age of fourteen –she quit cigarettes about a year ago—and the list just goes on and on. Long story short, Emma had been "living on the edge" since she was twelve, but what else could you expect from a preteen with absentee parents? She has had roommates from Hong Kong, Sweden, and France, the occasional American thrown in the mix, but high school was mostly a United Nations experience for her.

Her actual home, however, the one she was raised in—or rather the one her Puerto Rican housemaid raised her in—was more like solitary confinement. Her dad was an internist and head of his entire medical department. He was on call nearly twenty four hours a day and spent most of the time in the family's apartment in Manhattan, which is just Emma's way of saying he was never around. Her mother was a lovely ex-debutante who was constantly at a loss on what to do with a daughter that preferred to dress up as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark and read thick musty books, rather than playing dress-up in princess-like ball gowns. The house itself was depressing to say the least, Emma's lack of siblings made the extra rooms seem unnecessary, the furnishings were not meant for a kid to touch, and even looking the Persian rugs was altogether unheard of. But that is what you get when your house is a massive inherited estate that dates back to the early 1900s.

To summarize her lot of first world problems, Emma wanted a change from stuck-up debutantes her mother coerced her into spending her afternoons with, angry New Yorkers, and strict education. She wanted a place where she could break free, that was still wild and exciting as New York but vastly different from it. New Orleans seemed like a healthy alternative, it was love at first sight when Emma visited her future Uptown campus, and though her parents would've preferred an Ivy League school a couple of hours away, she never applied to one.

Emma's freshman year here, however, is somewhat of a blur. Her weekends started on Tuesdays, the bars are eighteen and up and close later than in New York, coincidentally Tuesday was fifty cent night. On Wednesday, the girls and she would go out to Ladies' Night, all you can drink for two dollars at the door and one didn't even need a fake ID, even though Emma had one. Thursday was Latin Night, where the Latino community would make your dance moves feel incompetent, but it didn't matter because you'd be your stereotypical "white-girl wasted" self and most of them wouldn't mind grinding with a gringa. On Fridays she'd go down to Bourbon and Frenchmen Street both the birthplaces of debauchery, music, art, and—most importantly—a good time. During that first year Emma did everything from almost killing her liver, to waking up in random frat boy beds, and dropping acid during Mardi Gras. But, she's settled down since then, and though she's not particularly proud of her actions back then, Emma honestly think everyone's first year of college is all sorts of crazy. Why should hers be an exception?

-/-

Three classes later and Emma's first day of senior year is over. She's back at the apartment she shares with my best friend Ruby, a leggy brunette who happens to be half Italian. They were suitemates in freshman year, then roommates sophomore year. Ever since then they've been inseparable. The apartment they share is four blocks away from campus and it's a small two-bedroom lot, but it fits them comfortably and the family room is big enough to accommodate whoever wants to stay over during Mardi Gras. Which is almost always Ruby's brother, whom Emma has hooked up with in the past. Again, she was quite loose during freshman year.

Ruby is in her room, sprawled on her bed clothed only in her underwear, one of those cheap tiny battery operated fans in her hand.

"I'm home." Emma says smirking at her.

"It's so hot." She replies.

"How was your chem lab this morning?"

"Horrible, five of us showed up and the professor didn't even let us out early. How about you? How was your research thing?" She replies.

"Didn't really do much." Emma turns around and heads to our kitchen to grab some lunch. "Hey, do you want anything from the fridge?" She ask loudly.

"To be honest, I don't really feel like moving." She answers back. Yet despite what she just said, Emma suddenly hears bed sheets rustling and a shuffle of feet pounding lightly on the floor. In a matter of seconds Ruby is in front of her.

"I thought you didn't feel like moving."

"Guess what I saw today." She says excitedly, the last time Emma saw her this excited was when the president of one of the fraternities asked her to their formal and when they heard rumors of Brad Pitt being the king of Bacchus last year. He was.

"I hate guessing games." Emma replies dryly, focused on spreading an even layer of peanut butter on a slice of bread.

"Just guess!"

"Was it that famous quarterback running in Audubon Park?"

"No. But it was a really hot guy."

"Ruby, he's probably gay, a freshman, or even worse a stinky little hipster." I am now distributing an even layer of grape jelly on the other slice of bread. I am very excited for this sandwich.

"No, he's not. I already Facebook stalked him." Oy vey.

"Ruby, how do you even know his name?" Emma asks exasperatedly. She decided to give up men this year, at least stupid college guys anyways, in order to focus on raising her GPA and getting into the Tulane School of Social Work so she can obtain a master's in social work.

"That's the best part! He came into the tutoring center today! He's going to work there! You know who else works there? I do. It's fate."

Emma scoffs.

"Okay, just because you swore off getting laid until further notice, doesn't mean I did. He's hot, I'm amazing. It's meant to be."

"Okay, Ruby. Whatever you say." Emma laughs and starts walking back to her room where her unmade bed and the cheap battery operated fan awaited her and her imminent naptime.

And as the heat engulfs Emma's tiny room, she passes out almost immediately.

She regains consciousness in a large room, a room she'd been in before and recognized as parlor, but in a house she can swear she has never set foot in. The windows were open and a warm summer breeze enters through them. The room is still and there is no one else with her. The only sounds are those of an electric fan whirring from the ceiling, a radio emitting a song she recognizes but is clearly almost a century old, and her own sobs. It takes her forever to realize that she's sitting in a white wicker chaise, clutching a letter and sobbing her eyes out. While she cries, tears drop on the paper rapidly, her hands are shaking, and her eyesight is blurry but she can make out that it isn't a letter but rather a telegram. She now hears herself talking or rather repeating the same word over and over.

"No, no, no."

She's rocking forwards and back in her seat.

"No, no, no."

Her chest is heavy, she can't breathe. A voice from behind her asks her what the telegram says. She turns around but the figure doesn't have a face. That doesn't stop her from answering it.

"We're sorry to inform you that the Lt. K. Jones has been classified as missing in action."

The figure—whom she's determined is a woman—tells her to keep her hopes up, that whoever this man is couldn't possibly be dead. He's just missing she says. She keeps reading, he's presumably killed in action. She should expect a follow up letter and the worst. The chances of him being found are slim, she shouldn't get her hopes up. He is probably dead. She feels her heart being torn apart, her cries echoing across the room. Cries of heartbreak and despair, cries of hopelessness.

The room fades to black.

"No! Goddamnit!" Ruby's voice exclaims frustrated from her room. Emma awakes with a start and covered in sweat. Her chest is heaving, she's out of breath. She brings a hand to her head as if that's going to soothe the headache that came from whatever weird dream she just had. Emma closes her eyes and wipes her cheeks from tears she had shed while sleeping. The sun is still shining through her windows, it's setting though. It must be about five in the afternoon. Sitting upright and swinging her legs to the side of the bed, Emma stands up and stretches. That was a really weird dream.

"What happened, Ruby?" Emma asks loudly.

"He has a girlfriend!" Ruby replies, her voice clearly indicating frustration.

"Who has a girlfriend?" Emma studies her reflection in the mirror while awaiting Ruby's response. Her face is milky white, dark circles rather prominent on her now pallid complexion.

"The hot guy I saw today! He has a stupid girlfriend! I'm so stalking her." Determination is her strong suit.

Emma slips on a large tshirt, ex-boyfriend couture, and leaves her room.

"I'm sorry, Bee." she tells Ruby sincerely as she enters her friend's room.

"She's not even that pretty. Whatever, I'm over it." She isn't.

Emma looks at her and smiles knowingly.

"I'm fine! I only met the guy for five minutes. Did I feel a connection? Of course. But, you know, some things just aren't meant to be, it's not like my heart is shattered into a million pieces or anything." Ruby tells Emma defiantly, her nose turned up to the side and her will unrelenting.

"You sure you're okay?" Emma asks seriously.

"Never been better. However, I was wondering if you would like to accompany me in drunken endeavors tonight." She adds with a big smile.

"Yeah, that sounds good. A bunch of people are going to The Uptown tonight."

"Isn't that too classy? It's too classy. I want to get freshman wasted." She adds with a pout.

"Bee, our livers can't afford to get freshman wasted anymore."

She scoffs.

"Plus, we can find you a hotter, older, probably working man tonight! That's got to be better than all of the douchebags we go to school with. Come on, he was probably just another one of them. He's nothing special."

"Fine, but no one over thirty-five."

-/-

Around ten they leave. It took them forever to find decent attire but they finally settled in some cute dresses. After all, the bar at The Uptown Hotel is one of the classier establishments the undergrads can attend. You can't just show up in a micro mini, a plunging neckline, and hooker heels. Ruby was wearing a purple dress with sheer flowing fabric around the skirt and a lace bodice. She was wearing her new Michael Kors cork wedges, dangly gold earrings, and about a hundred bangles. Emma was wearing a black strapless dress, topped with a leather jacket. She finished the look with her trusty royal blue Steve Madden pumps and simple jewelry. Nothing too extravagant but still decent enough to be considered classy with a bit of an edge.

When they arrive at the hotel, most of their friends are already waiting at the bar. Girls were wearing sophisticated dresses and guys were dressed smartly for the occasion. It's a different crowd here, and Emma likes it. Most of the clientele are either hotel guests or seniors and juniors from the nearby campuses, the occasional freshman or sophomore sneak in but they keep their composure if they don't want their fake IDs to be questioned.

"Em! Ruby! Over here!" As they step through the threshold to they lounge, their friends Mary Margaret and Leo immediately beckon the girls. Mary is a graphic design major who wears cat-eye glasses and the latest fashion trends and Leo is a sociology major just like Emma. They met in freshman year when they bonded over some actor whose name escapes her now, they both wanted to have his adopted babies.

"Leo! Mags! So good to see you! How's the selection looking?" Ruby says rapidly all in one breath as she sits down and flashes the bartender a flirty smile.

"Pretty slim, looks like there won't be much of a show tonight." Mags replies before eating the olive from her martini. Leo nods wholeheartedly. They are obviously talking about men. Because what else do single people who haven't had a decent relationship in a sufficient amount of time talk about?

"Don't you roll your eyes at us, Emmeline." Leo starts, "Just because you've decided to be celibate this year doesn't mean we have."

"Right?!" Ruby exclaims.

"I haven't decided to be celibate, Leonard. I'm just not looking for another fling with a frat boy who wears Sperry's and pastel Polo's and doesn't give a shit about me. I'm done with college guys, that's all."

Leo nods, understanding her point and then turns around to attempt to catch the bartender's attention for another whiskey sour.

The conversation stops momentarily as both Mags and Ruby are in their own conversation, and Leo is looking the other way. This gives Emma time to look across the room and spot some sorority girls she is friends with and have greeted, appreciate the dim lighting and the old-fashioned glamour of the hotel bar, and relish in the jazz piano that was resonating throughout the whole establishment.

"So, Em." Leo starts eyeing me seriously, "I take it that since you're done with college boys you'll have no problem considering an older man?"

"If I like him, why not?" Emma humors him.

"A med-school student perhaps? Very smart, responsible, and drop dead gorgeous, if I may say so myself?" Oh, no. Emma just knows where this is going.

"Leo, you better not be planning on setting me up with anyone." She answers sternly.

"Actually, I was." he replies not skipping a beat. "He's absolutely perfect for you, I'm sure."

"No."

"Come on, Em. You'll like him!" He pleads.

"No."

"But I've already named your children! Emmeline Marie, you can't do this to me."

"I can and I will. Also, you know I have no intention of having children and stop calling me by my full name, you know very well that I hate it."

"Well that's too bad that you won't even meet with him, because I told him to meet us here. I've told him nothing but wonders about you and he seems interested, but I guess Ruby won't mind taking him." Ruby finally swivels around in her chair, taking a break from flirting with the bartender, looking outraged.

"Hey! I can find my own man, thank you very much." She says haughtily. Ruby has never been fond of receiving someone's sloppy seconds. If she finds the guy first, then he's hers, and that's that.

"Like the bartender? Cute Ruby, but so sophomore year." Leo replies.

"Whatever, at least I'm getting free drinks." She sticks her tongue out and gives her back to us.

"Leo, I really don't want to dive into a blind date right after classes start." Emma tells him, desperately trying to make him understand that she just wants to focus in her own problems this year.

"Oh, relax. Who's to say you'll hit it off? Personally I think you will, but you might not. You don't have to talk to him. He's just all alone in this city, you know? He just moved here, doesn't really have any friends. You don't have to be cordial or anything."

Sometimes, Emma really hates Leo.

"Fine I'l-"

"Oh, speak of the devil! He just got here." And at once, Leo's skinny self disappears from her view to go find a guy Emma cannot identify through the massive amount of people.

Emma turns around and tries to enter Mags and Ruby's conversation, but she just stares down at her vodka tonic quietly, full of self doubt. She hates meeting strangers, she really does. She isn't exactly an extrovert when it comes to meeting someone for the first time. Talking to men has never been her strong-suit, luckily she guesses for her, Emma has always been able to rely on her apparent good looks to make a good first impression.

Leo comes back closely followed by a smartly dressed man in dark blue jeans and a white button down shirt. And so Emma meets Graham Humbert. In all honesty Emma can say that she was immediately taken aback by his good looks. If the fact that he towered over her five foot four inch stature with what she can only guess as to somewhere nearing six feet, that his eyes from what she could tell were dark green and contrasted perfectly with his cropped short wavy light brown hair and matching scruff didn't kill her, his Irish accent surely did. He was twenty-five years old, a med-student in the neighboring Tulane campus a few blocks away, and from Belfast in Ireland.

Ruby immediately forgot about the bartender and focused all attention on him, but it seemed that Graham didn't have eyes for a leggy, curvy, brunette Italian. But for Emma, the average height, skinny blonde, who basically hadn't said a word since he had arrived. He'd smile at Emma warmly, enticingly, and she'd blush while drinking out of her glass. She had no idea what was wrong with her. Normally Emma talks, she makes an effort to be witty and chatty, but tonight to say that she was tongue-tied was an understatement.

After all the introductions and idle chit chat has ended, things pretty much go back to normal. Emma is still not saying much, and she really doesn't know what to say. Victor—one of those guys you hook up with once and they always seem to come back into your life sporadically—has whisked off Ruby to the makeshift dance floor. Emma secretly thinks Ruby actually likes him, but she just doesn't want to admit it.

Graham, then, takes to sit in her spot in her absence.

When it comes to him, Emma is apparently still mute.

"Are you normally this quiet?" Good God, that accent is divine.

Emma looks at him and smirks, some of her composure returning to her.

"I'm hardly ever quiet." Emma tells him.

"Emmeline, right?" He asks, his eyes concentrated on mine.

"Call me Emma." She cringes at the sound of her full name, even if it is being uttered by such a wonderful voice.

"You don't like your full name, I take it." He smiles at her. Emma notices that he has dimples, not the deep-set kind, but longer shallow ones that are barely noticeable. She also notices that the skin around his eyes crinkle when he smiles, he has a gorgeous smile.

"Gee, was my evident cringing at the mere mention of it any indication? You're going to think I'm vapid, but it's such an old lady's name. I hate it."

"I think it's pretty, there's class to it. And hey, at least kids didn't completely disregard your last name when you were growing up and took to call you Graham Cracker instead." He eyes her seriously. Giving Emma a look that obviously tells her that she is better off with her name than he is with his.

Emma laughs.

"That's hardly creative, did they not have any other pastries they could name you after?" He smiles ruefully. "Can I call you Graham Biscuit?" Graham shakes his head at her, smiling softly at her lame attempt at conversation.

"You've got a terrible sense of humor, did you know?"

"Personally, I think I'm hilarious." Emma replies haughtily, feigning an insulted look. He laughs and takes the beer bottle that has been nursing in his hands to his lips and drinks. He sets it down on the counter, chuckles and looks back at her.

"You know your British slang pretty well. Surprising, for an uncultured American." He tells her, throwing in a wink for good measure.

"You are such a gentleman, thank you. Are you the type of guy that insults a girl first and then has his way with them? And I was quite the Anglophile growing up, blame Harry Potter and Beatlemania for all I care."

He smiles even wider.

"The insult-and-take-advantage technique works most of the time though. You wouldn't believe how many girls I've gotten like that."

"Charming."

"But did my ears deceive me or did you acknowledge some attraction towards me?" His eyes are sparkling devilishly, looking straight into hers.

Emma is taken aback by how forward he was, certainly. But, it was a new, refreshing kind of forward, obviously European.

She liked it.

"Me? Attracted to you? Never." He raises his eyebrows.

"That's a shame, because I'm attracted to you." He turns back towards the bar and signals for another beer. And for some inane reason Emma is left mute again.

What do they teach boys in Ireland?

-/-

Some time later they leave the hotel and decide to walk to one of the bars around Maple Street. Ruby keeps trying to hold a conversation with Graham, but to no avail. He keeps glancing to the back, where Emma is lagging behind. She really doesn't know why she's being so different tonight. Maybe it's because he's drop dead gorgeous, smart, witty, and charming. Or maybe it's because she's never really given having a functional relationship a chance.

Not that she's thinking about dating him.

Or that her stomach squirms in delight every time he glances back at her.

Leo then turns and walks towards her, his grin couldn't be wider or more knowing. His shoulder bumps with hers. He simply mutters an "I told you so" and leaves to walk beside Mags who's a couple of steps in front of her.

Emma is slightly annoyed, though. The moment when she decides to not care about guys or all the relationship drama is when, out of nowhere, some fantastic person shows up. But what bothers her more isn't that he's amazing and he just came into her life, but that there's a possibility of this turning into something other than what she's used to. If you knew the real her, which obviously many people don't, you'd know that she's not the type of girl she portrays herself to be. In all reality, she's not loud and extroverted and she definitely doesn't feel like the badass everyone makes her out to be. On the inside, she's a girl who's been hurt since infancy, never knowing what real love is. She's never believed in it. Her parents' marriage was more of a convenient social sham than anything else, half of her friends' parents are divorced, and the others have been unhappily married for years now. Emma doesn't know real love. She was raised alongside her cousins, who were all male as she am the only female to be born in the Swan family for at least two generations. Socializing with teenage boys surely didn't teach her about functional relationships and she grew up thinking that love was disposable, that fairytales were just stories. She's never known real love, not even from her own mother. So it is only fitting, that she's never been in an actual relationship. Hook-ups she has had plenty, but never a functional relationship.

In all honesty, she's scared of having one.

They are nearing the cross-street between St. Charles and the street her apartment is located. Suddenly, Emma doesn't have any intention of going to a bar on Maple. She just wants to be home.

"Emma, are you alright?" Graham's voice snaps her out of her depressive reverie. She hadn't even noticed that she had stop walking. Ruby, Mags, and Leo were a block and a half in front of her now.

"I'm fine." Emma gives him a small smile.

"You aren't." he replies seriously.

"I am, really. I just don't feel like going bar-hopping tonight, that's all." It isn't all, but she just met him and he doesn't need to know about her problems.

His face falls a bit.

"I think I'm just gonna head home, can you let them know? Just tell them I wasn't feeling well." Emma says.

"I'll walk you." He offers. Emma tells him that there's no need for it, that it's his first night here and that her home wasn't that far.

He insists and Emma can't help but comply.

They walk in silence for the longest time. It feels comfortable, though. There was some sort of electric charge between them, that much was undeniable, but neither of them did anything about it.

"You know, Leo told me you were pretty, but he didn't really do you justice. I find you absolutely gorgeous." He says after a while, slowly and tentatively.

Ladies and gentlemen, Emma Swan has just died.

"Thank you." Emma replies awkwardly.

They were nearing her apartment now and she's fighting the urge of bringing him upstairs with her. However, that's what old Em would do, not something mature Em would do.

They walk in silence again until they near the door. Emma opens it and steps inside, she tells him that he can come inside if he wants but he stays in the doorstep saying that he promised Leo he'd go back after he dropped her off.

He says goodbye and walks down the stairs of the small doorstep. Immediately after Emma closes the door there's a knock on it.

"Do you need anything?" She asks him as she open the door.

"No, not really. I just came back because I've been meaning to ask you something ever since we left the hotel." He's completely lost the cool he's had all night. Emma can tell he's kind of nervous.

"Okay. Shoot." She tells him encouragingly.

"Right, well. I'll understand completely if you tell me to bugger off because you just met me and for all you know I could be a murderous lunatic or something but-"

"That's great, considering I let you walk me to my house at two in the morning, just us two. I love to know that you're a murderous lunatic." Emma cuts him off, jokingly.

"I'm not." He smiles.

"Great, then continue." She grins back.

"I'd really like to see more of you." He says.

"Okay..."

"Because I'm extremely attracted to you and I'd love to get to know you better." He continues.

"Is this you asking me out?" Emma asks him. Internally, she's doing a happy dance.

"Yes. But I feel like I should be forward about this, as a med student I'll have a crap schedule."

"That's totally fine. We'll work something out." Emma says brightly, unable to stop a grin from forming at her lips.

"So, you'll do it? Go out with me, I mean?"

"Yeah, I think I will."

An enormous grin forms on his face. Before leaving he tells her he'll get her number from Leo and will text her. Emma closes the door again and as she starts taking everything off, she says to herself.

"So much for taking a hiatus from men, Emmeline."

A/N: Also, this IS a CS story. but mostly a triangle love story of sorts.