“Honestly, Hilary! Just relax, everything is going to be fine! Come on, I mean…it’s not even you’re wedding day and you’re freaking out!” Sophia Dane was in the middle of calming her older stepsister, Hilary Dane, the day before her wedding.

During Sophia’s first year of college and Hilary’s second, Hilary had met an amazing guy named Paul Lankly and the year that Hilary had graduated, it was known that she had become pregnant with Paul’s child.

Oh yes, her parents threw a fit when they found out about it but when Paul had proven that he was going to stick around, they accepted the whole situation and after a few months into the pregnancy, he had actually proposed to Hilary!

Now here they were three years later with a two year old son as they made the final preparations to walk down the aisle…and Hilary was freaking out.

“No, no, no! But what if it isn’t fine?! Oh god, what if they forgot about the cake! Maybe…maybe the king of Canada is getting married and went to the same place I did to order a cake and since he’s the king and more important then me that they decided to bake his cake and forgot about mine!”

Sophia stared at her; you know something is wrong when Hilary thinks that Canada has a King so Sophia did the only thing that would have a 100 guarantee of working.

She slapped her.

Hilary was silent for a moment before she smiled and plopped down on the couch.

“Thanks for that.” Sophia grinned.

“Anytime.”

“Wow, you’re right. Everything will be fine. Thank God you’re my maid of honor, if you weren’t then who knows what I would have done. No one else would have the guts to slap the bride the day before her wedding day.” Sophia grinned again.

“Unless the girl was in love with the Brides fiancé and made it her goal to ruin the wedding.” At this Hilary paled a bit and her jaw dropped.

“Oh no! Do you think…I mean…there was this one girl-”

“HILARY!” Sophia yelled and Hilary shut up. “Thank you, I was kidding. Man, you weren’t this bad even when you were pregnant with Jason.” Sophia mumbled and Hilary laughed before lightly hitting her.

“Anyways…so how does it feel to be back in Millsbury after all these years?” Hilary asked and Sophia shrugged.
She wasn’t quite sure how it felt; the last time she had been here was the day she left for Princeton.

Why? Well, she really had no reason to come back.

Hilary stayed in Washington after she met Paul and their parents had taken it upon themselves to travel around the world and spend holidays with their two daughters whenever they could.

All of Sophia’s friends came up to visit her or she went to visit them at the apartments they had bought near their compasses and Sophia also didn’t like the idea of chancing a run in with a certain blue eyed, brunette boy who had stolen her heart six years ago before carelessly tossing it around and stomping on it.

Not that she gave him much thought any more. Nope, she had learned to move on.

Eventually her and Jake had broken up because of the distance during college she was at Princeton and he was at Miami and although there were diffidently awkward moments every one in while between the two of them, they tried their best to remain close. After Jake there had been other guys; Lance, Ben, Luke, R.J, and Greg – she even believed to have fallen in love with Luke and he was her first on her 21st birthday…but eventually time went on and they fell apart and didn’t have the courage to carry on with on another but they still kept in touch.

Furthermore, Sophia was truly and completely done with him. She was over him.

Finally.

Hilary and Paul were originally going to wed in Washington seeing as that’s where they’re living but Hilary’s and Sophia’s parents insisted in having the wedding back in Millsbury so they eventually agreed.

“I don’t know. I guess the same as it did the last time I was here.” Sophia answered with a shrug and Hilary nodded.

“Okay, now that we’ve taken a moment out of our day to talk about something other then everything that could go wrong with the wedding, let’s start that up again. I mean, what happens if…”

And just like that, Hilary quickly slipped into ‘worrying bride’ mode and Sophia was forced to listen and calm her worries.

“So, did you guys hear?” Matthew Cresent looked up from his computer for a second at David’s voice and noticed that Jimmy had looked up from the sports magazine he had been flipping through.

They were all currently sitting at Matt’s condominium on one of the rare days that they all had off together.

“Hear what?” Matt asked before he continued to surf the web.

“Sophia Dane. She’s back.” Matt’s hand suddenly frozen while on the other hand his heart had sped up.

Sophia was back. He hadn’t seen her in years…much less spoken to her.

After he cut off the whole Annie thing during Christmas vacation three years ago he’d only been with two other girls.

Yes, he lasted three years with Annie although he suspected that she probably cheated on quite a few times after high school ended and that’s one of the reasons he finally decided to break it off.

Jimmy and David supported his decision 100 and Jimmy even said that he believed that she’d been cheating on him too.

Well thanks for voicing your concerns so early into the relationship Jimmy boy.

Matt looked over at Jimmy when he snorted.

“So Her Highness had finally decided to step down from her pedestal long enough to grace us with her presence? She finally decided that meeting with the little people was important enough to take time from her work?” He asked coldly and Matt rolled his eyes.

News about Sophia had diffidently gotten back to town even if she hadn’t been there for a few years.

The again, when she started appearing in some of the biggest magazines it was hard to not here about her.

Yes, magazines. Sophia actually managed to graduate a year early from Princeton and instead of going for a masters degree she took up turning some of her designs into real clothes and eventually her clothes were being seen everywhere.

She only designed summer and spring wear and Matt believed that that’s one of the reasons they were so good; she concentrated on only certain seasons instead of year round clothing.

Celebrities everywhere we buying up her clothing and magazines were always trying to get into her personal life that she somehow managed to keep secret.

As a matter of fact, the only relationship that the magazines had been able to uncover was one with the professional actor, Luke Liming. Eventually though, the magazines slowly began to tone down the snooping and now they just go at her whenever she shows up and huge public events which she doesn’t often do.

“Stop being so bitter, Jimmy. She’s not the only one from high school who’s had it good. I mean, look at Matt!” David scolded.

He always was the nice one towards Sophia and sometimes it made Matt wonder…

Jimmy folded his arms.

“Yeah but at least everyone else showed up for our 5 year high school reunion.” David rolled his eyes.

“You heard what happened; her step-father was in the hospital for goodness sake!” David argued and Jimmy scoffed.

“Yeah, I know. Whatever.” David decided that he should just let the topic go and continued.

“Anyways, so yeah. She’s only in town though for Hilary’s and Paul’s wedding.”

“How do you know all this?” Matt asked, suddenly suspicious.

“I was good friends with Hilary and kept in touch with her so I am therefore invited to the wedding.” David said with a smile. “Plus, Sophia’s been meeting with me every once in a while to go over the final preparations for the reception.” Matt honestly felt him blood boil a bit but fought the urge to kick David’s as and kept his cool.

“You’ve been meeting with Sophia?” Without inviting me? He added silently. Of course he never told anyone of his feelings for her but still…

David shrugged.

“Yeah, she’s a cool girl. Really cool; I never understood why you two had problems with her.”

“How often have you been meeting with her?” Matt questioned, ignoring the urge to tell David that he didn’t have a problem with her – it was just Jimmy.

David shrugged.

“I dunno, a few we-“

“Dude, why do you care?” Jimmy asked incredulously and Matt froze a moment before relaxing and shrugging.

“I don’t especially but…” He shrugged as if that would answer the question and Jimmy continued to stare at Matt as David rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

“Anyways, since I helped Sophia out with the reception Hilary said I could bring two friends… you guys interested?”

“Hll yeah, great way to scope out the single ladies.” Jimmy stated and smirked as he high fived David.

Matt also agreed to go but there was only one single lady he was planning on scoping out…