A/N - A slightly longer chapter, just to give you some more background about their years in between. This will also be the last of the 'background' chapters, with the following chapters being in the 'here and now' - so to speak of.. There will be more 'background' so to speak but it will flow in line with the story and the 'hear and now'

Thanks for your reviews as always, especially 'Guest'..

Enjoy.

The darlings of Abigail Adams they called us at graduation.

Lucas mused as he looked at the sleeping form of his partner Riley beside him, her head buried under the doona cover, dark hair poking in a dozen different directions above it.

I don't know if both of us were darlings but you sure were my love, he smiled to himself. Lucas slowly extracted himself from their bed and padded to the bathroom. After quietly washing his hands he wandered into the kitchen, pulling an old university t-shirt over his head before retrieving a coffee mug from the drainer. Lucas rummaged around for his favourite coffee pod in the container sitting on the bench and proceeded to brew his morning cup. As the machine finished its cycle, he extracted his cup and quietly walked out onto the front deck of their cottage home. They had come a long way from their early beginnings in middle school and truth be told, Lucas would have to pinch himself sometimes to believe where he was today and the woman who was with him that shared his dream. As with any dream, it had come with its own sacrifices.

Lucas and Riley were committed to each other and that was something that Farkle, Maya and indeed their whole group both admired and understood. When Lucas was offered a full scholarship for veterinary medicine at the University of California, Riley followed him. She joined UC also, but they were not at the same campus. Lucas's scholarship was at the UC Davis Campus, just west of Sacramento and Riley was enrolled into Berkeley, studying Communications to become a reporter. With their campuses an hour apart, they split the difference and sought out an apartment in Vallejo. For what seemed like for ages, they managed to find a quaint, lived in one bedroom apartment in Porter St overlooking the bay. They worked hard as they studied, sacrificed the party lifestyle that their university class mates embraced and they channelled their savings into their apartment, and their efforts into study and each other. They worked part time in Vallejo, with Lucas working at the local wildlife sanctuary and the yacht club while Riley worked at a pre-primary school. After four years, their hard work and dedication to each other paid off. Riley graduated with her Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Mass Media which gave her the qualifications she needed to successfully start her career at the local affiliate TV stations, aiming to one day hoping to either anchor their news program or if luck smiled, become an established reporter for MSNBC or CNN. Lucas graduated the same year with his Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from the prestigious university, then began post graduate studies into preventative medicines.

Being apart from their friends was hard. Sometimes it tore at their soul. Especially for Riley. She missed her best friend Maya terribly, the distance only mildly soothed by Facetime and Skype. When their finances would allow, and sometimes with help from the senior Matthews, Riley and Lucas would fly to New York to catch up with their friends and family. Although they hadn't noticed it at first, but after a year they began to discover that things were just not the same within their once close-knit circle.

Maya had begun studying medicine at New York University. Zay studied at NYU also but he chose law. Farkle was accepted into Massachusetts Institute of Technology, better known as MIT. In turn, he moved to Boston and lived on campus. And of course, Riley and himself had moved to California. Smackle followed Farkle to Boston as well, having won a full scholarship to Harvard for their Political Sciences program. Although Smackle would deny it, she also went to Boston to try to kindle her friendship with Farkle into something more. Whenever Riley and Lucas would arrive in New York, Maya and Zay would try their best to make time in their frantic study roster and work schedules. To help pay for tuition, Maya began teaching CPR to kids at some of the Manhattan youth centres and help out at her mum's cafe, while Zay would work as an intern/admin assistant at Topanga's law firm. Farkle and Smackle had similar issues with work and study also, adding to the equation the distance from Boston to New York as well as Farkle actively avoiding Smackle's attention.

Maybe this is the way it was meant to be after all, he mused as his vision moved from the ferry terminal to across the bay.

His musing was slowed as he heard the bare feet of his lover enter the kitchen. He smiled as the familiar sound and thanked whoever was the divine deity that she was in his life. The fridge opened and closed and before long, a slender pair of arms were wrapped around his shoulders from behind, a pair of lips touching the left side of his neck.

"Good morning..", smirked Lucas as the arms left his shoulders and the arms owner appeared next to him in her chair.

She smiled a smile that only a lover could smile back at him as she swallowed her orange juice.

"It certainly is…", she replied.

"I was going to let you sleep," he spoke as he drank in the vision that was Riley. Riley too was looking at the water of the Napa River channel towards the old naval yards. This town was home to them, a place where they started out as barely broke students which in turn slowly grew on them. Even after they graduated, Lucas as a veterinarian and Riley as a graduate journalist they stayed in the town, with Lucas working a local practice while Riley commuted to San Francisco when she began her cadetship with KGO-TV. After finding employment, they began in earnest looking for a place to buy before they came across their current two-bedroom bungalow.

Their first home. Theirs.

She looked at Lucas, feeling the emotion and pride welling inside.

"Na, it's ok. I need to double check what I packed before I leave for the airport."

Lucas snorted a laugh.

"For the eighteenth time," he teased.

Riley had been a cat on a hot tin roof when she was selected to cover a new research venture in Nevada between the technology giant Tesla and the Minkus Corporation. Her mind and heart raced when she heard the company names, and she dove for her cell phone to ring Lucas the moment she heard who was going to be at the press junket at the beginning on the venture. She begged, cajoled and pleaded with her bosses to send her and they eventually relented. She had been doing excellent pieces for them not only for crime reporting but also stepping up to cover humanity topics and technology. Riley poked her tongue out as she headed back to the kitchen with her glass and his coffee mug.

"Come on, lets dress and we'll go grab brunch before we head to the airport."