Spencer Carlin really hated weddings. This of course was not a well known fact about the pretty twenty four year old woman. One would look at her and expect her to to be exactly the kind to love everything about weddings, from picking a cake to dresses to the flowers. That was not true about Spencer, weddings made her sad. It made her think of promises made and broken, of a time when she dreamed about the day she would give herself to someone and know it was forever. She had been naïve back then, she had known that the moment she had looked into Ashley Davies’ eyes waiting for an answer that never came. That moment of hesitation before the shots rang out that killed her brother, that was the moment she lost her innocence.

She tried not to think of that time in her life, of the period she spent mourning her brother without the arms of the one person she had loved above all else around her. She had missed Ashley so much in the months that she had spent in Europe, even knowing that if she came back it would not have been the same between them anyway. Maybe if Ashley had stayed for once in her life instead of choosing the easy way out they could have worked things out, but Ashley was Ashley and she had run hard and fast.

Of course, when she finally came back with her answer, one that Spencer wanted to hear so badly three months earlier, it was too late. Spencer knew that for certain when she came to school the next morning only to find out that Ashley had once again run to Aiden.

So they drifted apart, Ashley having Aiden for awhile and Spencer meeting Carmen. Spencer had always known in the back of her mind that if they ever parted ways, they would, no could not stay friends. Friendship with Ashley would have killed her everyday a little more, so when Ashley left for London with barely a goodbye halfway through Spencer’s senior year, Spencer had felt both relief and a profound sense of loss. But she got over it, in her own way with help from people she would never of expected it from.