“Harvard, huh?” Monica chuckled. She knew her friend would do big things, but it all just seemed so surreal. In high school she had joked with him about the “nerd-school” he’d go too, but she couldn’t believe that it all had actually happened already. He had moved on with his life, and she had moved on with her own. She told herself as they drove that she couldn’t just go back to the way it had been, just her and Gray. It was nice to see him again, but it was just that: seeing each other again. Nothing was going to happen, they weren’t going to stick together or become best friends once more. Gray had been living his life just fine without her. He had already moved on, and she would have to as well. 

“Sounds like you had a wild time,” a small smile crossed her lips. Had she gone to college, she would’ve loved to move into a sorority house. In high school she had been a bit of a partier, but her loyalty to her parents and her want to stay on good terms caused her to leave before things got too crazy. That would’ve changed if she had left the state for college, but it didn’t really matter now. She smirked as she listened to his story about the woman he had been paired off with. 

“It sounds like she was just out of your league,” she playfully teased him as she grabbed her crutches from the back. Her mouth nearly dropped open as she listened to his degrees and his explanation of his project, “You really are something, Gray.” 

Monica sighed and shook her head with an almost sad smile before thanking Gray for holding the door and clambering out of the car, “My story isn’t much compared to yours, you nerd,” she ruffled his hair. 

Monica was about to follow Gray into the building when the squeal of breaks and the loud revving of an engine from the street caught her attention. Her mind threw her back to Deir Atiyah, to the vision of a car approaching fast and the sight of one of her best friends glassy-eyed beside her once the entire building had been blown apart. She glanced down at her throbbing, bloody leg only to see the cast that she had been in for weeks. Monica had broken out into a cold sweat, and with a quick “excuse me” to Gray she pushed past him and into the single bathroom at Sergio’s. She gripped the edge of the sink until her knuckles were white and tried desperately to bring herself back to reality. She was home, not in battle or in pain or in some mobile hospital in a tent somewhere in the desert.

Her face was flushed of color and her eyes puffy when she returned to the main room of the diner, and she quietly sat down across from Gray at the booth, "Sorry about that. Sometimes the memories," she struggled for the right word, "They're a little strong."