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As Nick Hogan prepared for his early release from Florida's Pinellas County Jail, Brooke Hogan was doing everything she could to put her family's tough year behind her. Anticipating the big moment, Brooke opened up to Life & Style about his plans -- and the healing that has yet to begin. "Life is better now that I'm going to have my best friend back," Brooke told Life & Style two days before she greeted Nick with a huge hug outside the jail at 12:30 a.m. on Oct. 21. "He's got so much energy now. He was so excited about getting out, he was literally jumping up and down while I was talking to him."

After being locked up for more than five months, Nick had some very specific post-prison plans -- which included eating his favorite foods. "There's a place called Los Mariachis in Tampa," Brooke says. "He wants a chicken queso from there. But that's not all. He wants sushi -- a lot of it. So I'm going to get him a bunch of sushi hand rolls -- and a cake that says something like 'Welcome home' on it."

Nick also wants to catch up on the movies he's missed, says Brooke. "He knows Forgetting Sarah Marshall came out on DVD -- that's one of his favorites," she notes. And he wants to go visit family in LA, says a family insider, though that may not happen right away. "He just wants a shower and a good meal right now," the insider says.

But before any celebratory dinners, DVD screenings and family reunions, Nick has one important stop he urgently wants to make -- at the VA Hospital in Tampa, Fla., where John, a former Marine, remains in a semiconscious state. "Nick wants to see John," Brooke tells Life & Style. "He's been lobbying hard for that." Due to the Grazianos' pending civil lawsuit against the Hogans, however, the visit may not be possible.

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