Monica’s eyes narrowed for a split second as Gray introduced himself. She couldn’t see his face, but she’d make sure she did when she left the elevator. If the man’s name had been anything else, she wouldn’t have cared what he looked like. She wanted to get a little more information out of him before she had to get off, but in a happy-go-lucky voice he continued to tell her all about the other residents of the apartment. She couldn’t just interrupt; he seemed like a nice guy and she didn’t want to get on his bad side. When she’d gotten back to the states, her doctors told her that making a couple good friends could be really helpful for her. She ‘needed someone to talk to,’ they said, and offered her their numbers. Monica really didn’t want to call her doctors on the phone; if she could help it, she wouldn’t go to the doctors ever again. 

	“Sounds like a fun bunch,” the woman frowned, “I get the loud guy right above me, huh?” she half laughed, a sign of defeat more than anything else. [i]Perfect[/i]. She had tried and failed to peer around the boxes once more. Her attention was pulled away from the man by the ring of the elevator; they had reached the fifth floor. Monica did her best to evade his paperwork with her crutches, but accidentally knocked into him and sent a stack falling to the ground. 

	“I’m so sorry,” Monica put a single crutch to the side, “Let me get that for you,” her eyes had stayed focused on the stack of papers, and she struggled to get down to grab them but managed to recover most of the stack anyway. She kept the door open with her other arm as she balanced the papers and began to hand them back to Gray. Her heart skipped a beat as she saw the man’s face for the first time. He hadn’t aged a day since high school.

	“Gray? Gray Yin?” Monica hoped he recognized her; she had been through quite a bit. Her eyes were almost always darkened around the bottom due to a usual lack of sleep, and he athletic form she had had in high school had slimmed down with the loss of muscle, her occasional refusal to eat and her rough days without food in the Middle East. The woman smiled, hoping her friend would remember her. She didn’t blame him if he didn’t, and she didn’t blame him if he did and just didn’t want to talk to her. She had left without an explanation after all.