Day 0 - Then

Crying alone at a bus stop.

That's the last time I had seen him. That's the last time I cared to know anything about him, and now I'm being told that I have to face the ghost from my past. The one man that I have ever fully given my heart to and had it shattered and stomped on right in front of me?

"Come again?" I shook my head, unsure if I had heard Jason right.

"It's the trip of a lifetime, Kim," Jason laughed on the other end of the phone. "My parents are paying for it all. You can't miss it!"

"Jase," I tried to stay calm against the ache building in my stomach. How Jason managed to make that happen from two hundred miles away, I do not quite understand.

"Bring Cole, too. The more the merrier!"

Of course that would make things so much better. My current boyfriend and my ex-boyfriend under one happy little roof. I could think of a million things that I would rather do than introduce them to each other… getting all four of my wisdom teeth pulled out without any anesthesia, for starters. I haven't even told Cole about Tommy. That was painful territory.

"I don't know if we can take all ten days off of work," I sighed. "Our firm is going through this big merger—"

"Bullshit," he called my lie, "You pulled that same line for my twenty-ninth birthday. You can't miss my thirtieth. It won't be the same without you."

"I don't know," I whispered back as I played with a fray on my jeans, "I have a lot of work to do here, you know…"

I looked around my living room, a mug of cooling coffee in hand. Never mind the fact that I didn't even bother to make it into the office today. I shuffled some strewn papers into a neat pile, making myself useful for the first time today. I had been working from home a lot since the office was getting some work done.

"Kim, I know about the renovations… Trini told me… you're not getting out of this."

Traitor!

"I… I'm not trying to get out of anything. I am simply just too busy to make it out there."

"And it has nothing to do with the fact that Tommy's going to be there?"

There was a silence.

"None," I lied. "I've moved on, Jase. That was teenage stuff."

And it was. I stopped crying over Tommy Oliver a long time ago. The second chance at our relationship after graduation was a big bust. It all went to shit when he decided to leave for bootcamp without even telling me.

"Then why does the wound still sound fresh?"

"Don't," I sighed with a half-warning, the grip around my phone tightening.

It really was a long time ago, but I could still feel the summer heat beating on my skin, the taste of his tongue on my lips, his laughter in the wind as we drove with the top down in his jeep… just the two of us. We had plans of moving in together… of finally getting things right… and then he left like a thief in the night. Without evening giving me a proper goodbye.

'Don't wait for me,' Tommy whispered as everything inside of me shattered.

I stood at the bus stop that he didn't even tell me about for hours after he was gone, staring at the spot that the bus had sat earlier. The same bus that whisked him away and disappeared into the horizon.

I had been away from Tommy before, but there was something different about him leaving. It was so definite, like he knew something that I didn't know yet. I would have waited for him had I know he had enlisted into the Marine Corps, but he didn't even give me the option of deciding that for myself. He didn't make that fact known until he was shuttled away at the last possible moment.

He let me believe that everything was fine, that we were moving forward. Hell, we even had plans for the following night. He was too much of a coward to face me and tell me the truth… that this was all a game to him and he had finally won.

Mission: Make Kimberly fall back in love with me: Completed!

I was over the heartbreak that he had done to me. I had convinced myself that it was payback for what I had done to him when I first left for Florida. When I moved back to Angel Grove after the Pan Globals, Tommy and I decided to give our relationship another go. It was better than what we had when we were in high school, we had both grown, had new experiences, moved forward in a new and adult relationship… but it was all a lie. It had all been part of his master plan to make me fall deeper in love with him than I had ever before and tear me apart.

Tommy Oliver was not safe.

"I just want us to have fun… and it would be really difficult to not have my two best friends there to celebrate with me."

Silence, again.

"So that means he's back from—"

"—He goes back to Iraq for another tour in three weeks. He's on pre-deployment leave right now. That's why this is perfect."

He goes back? I thought he just had gotten back.

"Oh," was all I could mutter.

The never-ending silence between us growing. Sometimes that said more than words ever could.

"…it's getting bad out there," he whispered, both of us taking in the harsh reality of a war on the other side of the world.

It's easy to forget when it's not right at your doorstep. I've buried myself in my work for the last several years, living in the bubble of what's in front of me and not around me. I forced myself to not think about it. I knew he was out there.

The planet I had risked my life to save was at war with itself. There was nothing more terrifying than that.

"I know," I answered after a breath. "How is he?"

I surprised myself by asking that question.

"Why don't you ask him yourself? Come to Santorini."

See him again after so many years? I didn't even know if I wanted to.

I had everything I could ever want and I didn't have to have Tommy Oliver in my life to get it. Maybe eleven years had been enough time to leave the past behind us. I certainly didn't think about him… much… not that I would ever admit that, even to myself at times. I had Cole… My patient, understanding, and thoughtful boyfriend that I was crazy about.

Tommy Oliver was a mere drop of water in the ocean of my life— insignificant and forgettable.

Shaking my thoughts into the present, I plastered a grin on my face. It wasn't like Jason could see me anyway, but somehow it allowed me to feel a small tinge of excitement.

"When do we leave?"

The cheering on the other end of the phone nearly deafened me.

"Tomorrow! Our flights are all over the place, but I'll send the details to your email. I promise this will be unforgettable!"

Somehow I didn't doubt that.

Author note: Just a taste of what's to come. Let me know what you think! See you next time!