It was five years before Puck saw Finn again, and when he did reappear in his life, it was this crashing tidal wave that nearly wiped out everything in its path.

He had left Ohio when Finn had, taking the first flight west toward California without looking back. When one week turned into two and then a month, he knew that Finn was gone. There was a letter, a postcard really, just a few lines scrawled out about basic training. There was no return address, and Puck never bothered to call Carole or Kurt to find out where it could have come from. He saw a vague status update from Rachel about three months after they all left, and he wondered for a moment if Finn had gone back to her. His heart couldn't take finding out the answer.

In a best effort to forget all about Finn and the messy, beautiful, crazy wonderful summer, Finn threw himself into living up the L.A. life. He found work at a bar that filled up his nights and built up his pool clientele enough to amply supplement his income. Puck found a little rental bungalow in Malibu that should have been way beyond affordable, but the little old lady who owned it found him charming and decided to cut him a break. And so he spent all his free time learning to surf and playing his guitar on the little terrace outside her rose garden and hiking up in the canyon.

And he wasn't lonely. No, in fact, in true Puck fashion, he was far from it. He chased girl after girl, settling into a comfortable pattern where he'd hang out with them for a few months until it got too real and he'd break it off without much of an explanation. He steered clear of any guys, especially tall and lanky brunettes with crooked smiles, and focused solely on girls.

He was a little less discriminatory there. Jasmine had been a pretty Persian waitress at his usual coffee place until he got bored and started brewing it at home. Allison, a petite Irish Catholic redhead, sold sheet music at the little store he'd found his second week in the city. Carlota was a fiery Latina that accidentally rear ended him late one night when he was on his way home from work. Jessica had been a beach blonde who'd asked him for a surfing lesson, while Cameron was the gorgeous African-American model next door who was always asking him to come over to fix something around her place.

As great as all those girls had been, they had only been temporary fixes. He got bored as he tended to do and he'd disappear or be a jackass or just ignore them altogether. He never brought them back to Ohio to meet his mom, was careful never to call them his girlfriend and refused to ever utter the l-word in their direction. They couldn't keep things at his house, he never spent the night at their place and he never bothered to memorize their phone numbers. They were just girls that he'd know and then forget. There wasn't room in his heart for anything more permanent. That all still belonged to Finn.

He had been so careful about avoiding all conversations and updates about his former best friend and old flame. He unfriended most of his Lima classmates from social media and avoided places like supermarkets whenever he was back in Ohio for holidays. When his sister came out to UCLA for college, he stopped going home altogether. His mom was happy to travel to California to save them all some money, so there wasn't really any reason to go back to his hometown. If his mother knew anything about Finn, she never let on. The only person he talked to other than his family from home was Chang, and the Asian never said anything about the old quarterback after Puck told him he didn't want to hear about Finn ever again that first year.

And it worked out pretty well until he came down with the flu. Hunkered down in his queen-sized bed with a cache of tissues and cold medication, he alternated between sleeping, flipping through the stack of magazines he'd been mostly ignoring for the past six months and scanning idly through crappy daytime TV. He was just about to look through yet another issue of Sports Illustrated when he stopped the remote on one of those entertainment tabloid shows. He should have been surprised to see Rachel Berry's familiar face beaming back at him but he wasn't. Everyone had always known that she had been destined for greatness, so it only made sense that she was opening some Broadway revival in New York soon. She looked beautiful as the surgically enhanced reporter interviewed her.

"And what about your personal life, Miss Berry?" the aging blonde asked. Rachel smiled uncomfortably in return, shifting a little in her seat. "Your recent breakup has been noted in the New York Post. Is there anyone special in your life?"

Rachel took a small breath and smiled again. Puck recognized it as her stage face, the guise she wore when she was in professional mode back in high school. "Yes, it's true that Finn and I have parted ways after several years, but we remain close. He supports me in everything that I do, and I am so fortunate that we have been able to stay best friends."

The reporter wrapped up the interview, and Puck flipped off the television. Finn and Rachel had broken up? Part of his felt like this shouldn't change anything, but an even bigger part of him knew that it potentially changed everything. His head was a mess of chaos between the unsettling revelation and the powerful meds. Rather than act impulsively, he told himself that he was going to sleep on it. He wanted to be back at fighting weight, of clear mind and heart, before he made any kind of decision about what came next.

Puck fell into a deep slumber soon after. He dreamt so vividly about Finn then that he could almost feel him there with him. He could hear his voice, swore that it still sounded the same, just like his kiss still tasted just as it had five years ago. He felt lonelier than ever when he woke up, reaching across the bed for a ghost that hadn't been there in far too long. Puck knew that he had a lot of choices he could make right now, but it really felt like there was only one viable option. Five years was long enough to try to forget, but Finn wasn't leaving his heart. Seeing Rachel, hearing about the breakup, it had to be a sign. Maybe Finn hadn't forgotten either; maybe he still loved him.

He reached for his cell phone and dialed the only person he knew would certainly be able to track down Finn for him. It only rang twice before he heard his old friend's voice. "Chang, man, you have to get me Finn's number."

"Puck, hey," Mike replied nervously. "Are you sure? You told me never to give it to you. I mean, you made me promise, even if you begged."

Puck chuckled as he remembered the few drunken calls Mike had endured over the years. "I'm sure," he said quietly. "I'm finally sure."

Thirteen seconds later, Puck hung up the phone and looked down at the ten digits he'd written on the back of a takeout menu from the Korean place a few blocks away. Never had such simple numbers meant so much to him. He was scared now that he actually had them in his hands. His fingers shook almost violently as he dialed them on his phone. And then there was this ringing in his ear and then he heard it, the one thing he had been waiting five years to hear:

Hello.