A/N: New Kick story! I liked this idea a lot, and I was gonna do it for Leolivia, but I tried and then I realized I don't know Leo and Olivia as well as I know Jack and Kim! Haha :) So I just changed it to Kick, and I love it all the same, maybe even more.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Kickin' It or any of these characters, EXCEPT my OC Ella.

Chapter One

I wasn't doing anything particularly spectacular on the night of my twentieth birthday (more like two AM on the morning after my twentieth birthday). I was just walking by the beach with Ella. I wanted to go out to the ocean, one of my favorite places to be, but that really wasn't Ella's thing, so we stayed on the sandy sidewalk, strolling and letting the sound of the waves crashing on the shore fill the silence between us.

Ella had her arms folded while she watched her feet take small graceful steps, trying to keep from getting too much sand in her black flats. When she noticed me watching her, she looked up and gave me a quick sheepish smile before looking down again. She held on tighter to her long grey cardigan, pulling it so that it covered up her white sundress. Her shoulder-length, straight, brown and stick thin hair was blowing around in the warm wind, getting tangled, but she ignored it. She never put her hair up.

"Do you have to be home soon?" I asked just to ask something.

She snapped her head up, looking at me with wide startled eyes. I had surprised her just by saying something.

"No," she answered softly. "I stopped having a curfew when my Dad started working nights shifts."

"That makes sense." I laughed lightly. "What's he do?"

"He's a nurse. Not the manliest job, but…" she trailed off with a shrug. "My Mom was too," she added.

"Is that what you wanna do?"

She laughed a real laugh, surprising me for the first time that night. It was loud, and she threw her head back. She even stopped walking, bending over slightly. I hadn't seen her laugh like that before and it was infectious.

"What's so funny?" I asked her, but I was bent forward myself from laughing.

She shook her head. "The idea that you think I know what I want to do with my life!" She replied quickly, speaking louder and less hesitantly than before, like she wasn't thinking it over too hard. "Oh my Gosh! Please. I don't even… I couldn't even decide on what to order at that restaurant! I sincerely hope that was a joke, Jack." She punched my arm playfully.

I shrugged. "Well that's okay too! I mean, there's a million possibilities. Not like you have to decide it all right now. Just thought you might have a plan. You look like the type to have a plan," I said absentmindedly.

She did look like the type to have a plan. The smart type. The perfectionist type. The 'I've known what college I want to go to since I was five' type. That was what I thought when I first saw her three weeks ago at Jerry's—her cousin's—going away party.

She was standing off to the side, staying close by the wall, withdrawn. She scanned the room with big chestnut brown eyes, looking out of place and vaguely frightened. She didn't belong there. She didn't want to be there. Crowds made her anxious. I could tell from one look. But I liked her. There was some magnetic quality about her, something that led me to approach her.

When I came up to her, she looked at me as if I was the actual devil. Her hand flew up to her cross necklace and she fiddled with it, not breaking eye contact with me. I could have turned around and rejoined my friends, but all I wanted then was to make that girl feel comfortable in an uncomfortable place. So I spoke to her.

Her voice shook at first, and her hand stayed on her golden chain, but after I complimented her pink skirt, she loosened up. She talked back to me in sentences rather than in single words. She gave me an incandescent smile that brightened her eyes. Her hand fell back by her side.

I don't know. I just liked Ella. I liked her name and her hair. I liked her soft singsong voice and her gentle eyes. I liked the freckles sprinkled lightly across her nose and the way she held onto my arm when we were in a crowd.

"I look like the type to have a plan?" Ella repeated back to me, furrowing her eyebrows in confusion.

We slowly started walking again.

"Yeah. You do," I told her honestly.

She smiled. "'Cause I'm quiet, right? Yeah, everyone in school always assumed I was smart. But I'm really not. I made average grades. As and Bs with a C or two sprinkled in here and there. And I don't see myself getting into a good college because I didn't take any extracurricular activities because I don't really have that many interests. All the clubs seemed stupid and boring," she explained.

"Well did you apply to any?"

It was July, the summer after senior year for Ella, who had just graduated, and anyone who was going to start college in the fall had already been accepted months ago.

"No. I don't even know if I'll go. I hate school. I'm taking a year and then if I do make a decision to go, I'll go next fall. My Dad's not happy about it, but I kind of like the way it feels. It's… free. Do you ever regret not going?" She stopped and turned to me.

I stopped too, her serious question taking me by surprise. I looked at her. "Not usually. I mean, every now and then I get that 'what if' feeling, but also, it was the right choice for me. I hate school too. I hate the grades and the stress and the learning stuff you don't care about… But I love karate. I love doing it and teaching it and why not make a career out of that if I can, you know?"

She nodded, looking somewhere beside me. She never maintained eye contact for too long.

"Yeah. You're lucky you have something like that. I'm not good at a lot. I don't care, really. I just wanna scrape by. That's literally all I want in life. Make a living. Not be homeless. My only goal."

"I think you can achieve that," I said, laughing.

She shrugged, smiling slightly at the ground. She crossed her arms tighter, as if the sticky hot summer air was chilling her skin.

I reached up slowly and put a hand on the side of her face. She smiled sweetly up at me, then half-closed her eyes, leaning in a little. I placed my other hand on her lower back and brought her closer to me, just so that I could feel her warm body against mine. I kissed her gently. As my lips glided over hers, I tasted the mint chapstick she had put on earlier when the wind was at its strongest. I remembered her saying how she always used mint chapstick because she liked the way it made her lips tingle, and when we broke apart, I felt that sensation too.

"Was that a goodbye kiss?" She asked me, pouty.

I nodded to the big yellow house across the street—Ella's house. My truck parked in front. "Yeah, I guess so."

We crossed the street hand-in-hand and she gave me one last peck on the cheek before running up onto her front porch. When she got to the door, she turned and waved back at me.

I hopped in my truck and left once I saw that she was safely inside.

I got back to my apartment, only realizing how tired I was when I walked in and saw my bed. Those navy blue sheets and that old mattress had never looked so comfortable. I threw my keys down on the kitchen counter, ready to take the few steps over to my bed and fall straightforward onto it when a picture caught my eye.

When I threw my keys, they slid a little across the counter and bumped into it. I had put that picture there right after I moved in and I didn't think much about it usually, but every now and then I liked to look at it, which was why I sat it there in the first place. It was just an old picture of me, Milton, Jerry, and Kim, back from when we were about fourteen.

I picked it up and thought about then and now. Milton was happily at Harvard with people just as weird as him—people who liked to learn. Jerry had just moved to Chicago and was living with some girl he met on the internet. Kim was at NYU, though I didn't know how she was doing because I hadn't talked to her since the day she left for New York two years ago.

I was the only one of the crew still in Seaford. Sometimes it bothered me and sometimes it comforted me. But it was all fine, because everything really was going okay for me. I had a job, still working with Rudy, and it payed the rent (on a tiny studio apartment). I had Ella, my kinda-sorta girlfriend (we hadn't used that term yet).

Yes, things were okay. I missed Milton and Jerry, but I still talked to them all the time. They still visited. We stayed close. And as for Kim—well, she had been gone so long it barely hurt anymore.

It only hurt when I looked back at an old picture, remembering how things used to be, and knowing how far gone it all was. How we were all adults, and all living our lives separately, and how none of us even had a clue who Kim was now.

I just shook it off.

A/N: Kinda sad? Maybe? I'm not sure. But anyway, this was really a set up kinda chapter, so it focused more on Jack's life now, which was why Kim wasn't brought up till the end there. She's not part of his life anymore. But it is totally a story about Jack and Kim still. Just… wait for it.

Please review if you'd like me to continue this! :)