He's standing behind me as I look into the mirror across the mat, frozen like a deer in headlights. One hand is in his pocket, the other holding the strap of his gym bag over his shoulder like he caught a glance of me as he was walking past and turned to stone on the spot.

Alexander Ryan. Boy of my dreams, now a grown man I spent the better part of five years ignoring so I could thoroughly cleanse myself of him. I couldn't sleep without feeling his hands scorched into my skin, the memory of them like a ghost that refused to pass through limbo, opting to stay and torment me instead.

That's what happens when you fall in love at sixteen and decide to join up together. Then get married right after you both turn eighteen so you can request to deploy together. Then choose to stay on when the other gets injured after only a year and sent home while you move on to a new deployment.

To be clear, I moved on, then filed for a divorce. One he never granted because I was too much of a coward to come home and face him while he signed the papers. It was his only stipulation. So technically, I'm staring into the bright blue eyes of my estranged husband that I haven't seen in nearly five years.