(A/N) Ok, well, someone said 'Yay' ANGRY FACE AT THAT PERSON, so here it is. But, you know, I'm kinda liking this. Anyways, this chapter is sorta short. Anyways, enjoy, everyone.

Jeffrey closed his truck door, slammed it really. He should have been happy, wanted with all his heart to be happy, but he wasn't.

It wasn't right. She was sixteen and he was twenty. He shouldn't even consider it! Almost every one of his instincts told him it was wrong, but they were just the insignificant ones that grew from the way he was raised and taught. Not even that, but he didn't even know her! How could he possibly fall in love with someone he didn't know?

Something quietly said differently, though.

But it wasn't right! He shouldn't be falling in love with someone four years his junior just because she was pretty and because he had saved her life! And it was cruel that life and fate, one and the same, were both giving him every opportunity to jump in and see what would happen.

Jeffrey considered the slip of paper in his hand. “Love: Katie,” it read.

He repeated this in his head, rather against his will. “Love: Katie. Love: Katie. Love... Katie. Love Katie.”

“No!” he said aloud, sounding perfectly anguished. “No no no! It's not right!”

After a moment more of hopeless consideration Jeffrey stuffed the paper in his pocket and turned the key in its ignition. For once it started on the first try.

“What, God? Are you trying to tell me to do something so wrong?” Jeffrey spat as he backed up. The radio (Much newer than the rest of the truck) silently announced that it had just become four thirty seven in the afternoon rather than four thirty six. Time to go get his friend from the store.

Jeffrey cruised along the rows of the parking lot until he came to the exit – the same one he had sped into before – and pulled slowly out onto the road. After the high-speed race to the hospital regular driving seemed rather dull.

First he drove past the stores on Capitol Street, then he turned right down Amity Street and passed the rows of family homes and their lawns. There it was on the other side of the T-intersection at the end of Amity, Gerard's General Store, the place where his friend worked.

He pulled into the parking lot next to a mud-covered Subaru and let the engine run for a few seconds before he turned it off.

Inside he found his friend ringing up some goods for an elderly man – jerky, water, ammunition, and the like.

“Goin' out to get that buck again?” Jeffrey asked as he walked up to the pair.

“Yea,” replied the old man who squinted to see who had talked. “Yea, I'll get it eventually. It's so big I can't believe that I keep missing it! But I'm gonna get it this time, damnit...”

“Yea? Can I have the rack when you do get it?” Jeffrey's friend, Adam, asked.

The old man squinted at him and then laughed and gave Adam the finger. “Two years of trying to get this thing, it's turned into a matter of honor, revenge, life and death! And you think I'm going to give you the trophy of my triumph? Over my dead body!”

“...So you're going to put it in your will for me, then?”

“Yea, I suppose so. How much is all of this gonna cost me this time?”

“Eighty four dollars and fifty three cents today, Scott my man.” Adam put the bags of goods on the table as he read off the number.

“Fifty three cents! What the hell is this? That's thirty cents more than the last time,” Scott yelled out angrily.

Adam squinted at the receipt, looking to see what might have done it. “Oh, wait, I see it. You accidentally grabbed an extra mint.” He pulled the offending item out from one of the bags and subtracted the cost. “There you go, twenty three cents. Exact change as usual?”

“Yea. Here you are, then. Take care, boy. Maybe when I get that buck I'll share some meat with you.”

“Yup. Hey, look! You made me go a minute over my hours! Geeze, get outta here!”

“Alright, I'm goin', I'm goin'...”

As the old man shuffled out of the store with his goods in hand Adam took off his clerk's apron and hung it up behind the counter. “So, how's life today, Jeffrey my man?”

Jeffrey sighed in an over the top way. “I dunno, man. I'm a bit... Confused...”

“You don't say.” Adam went in the back storeroom for a moment and brought a box back out and began to distribute various items throughout the store. “Care to explain?”

“Well, ok, the girl, right?”

“Yea, what about her?”

“Well, I think I like her.”

Adam snorted. “'Like' her? What is this, high school again?”

“Well, ok, I'm having a 'temporary bout of infatuation'. Is that better?”

“I suppose,” Adam sighed. “Go on.”

“...And she gave me her phone number. But she's also what, four years younger than me? But it seems like God wants it to happen or something, and she's really damn pretty. So what should I do, man?”

Adam looked at him for second. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what do I do? Do I follow through and call her? Do I just forget about her? What do I say? Where do I take her? What do I-”

Jeffrey's spluttering was cut off suddenly by Adam.

“Dude, dude, woah nelly there, man. First off, you keep sayin', 'Oh gosh, it so wrong,' but then you go and ask, 'what do I say?'” Adam paused for a second to throw the box back in the storage room and then proceeded to write something down on a clip board. “It's kinda hard to give you advice when you do that. But your poor communication skills aside, if you're so enamoured with her then ask her out and see what happens., perhaps see if her parents will still have you over for dinner. It's no illegal if you don't do 'er, and if you think that even God is telling you to try it out then don't you think that he might, ah, turn a blind eye?”

Jeffrey was quiet for moment as he considered what Adam had just said. “I suppose you're right, but... You know... What do I say?”

At this point the “night shift” clerk, a tall, pale, and stringey guy named Craig walked in. “Hey Adam. Hey Jeffrey.”

“Hey Craig.”

“Hey Craig.”

Once Adam had informed Craig of a few shipments and stock changes Adam and Jeffrey headed out to Jeffrey's truck and Adam picked up where they had left off as if nothing had happened. “Well, honestly, man? You went and saved her life. I don't think that you need to worry about pick-up lines or anything of the sort.”

“...I guess,” replied Jeffrey, sounding rather unconvinced.

“Now, where are we going to spend all of our valuable time tonight?”

“Well... I hadn't actually thought about that. I've got the guns – we could go shooting.”

“Nah, the weather's too blah for that, and we don't have enough saved up for melons yet.”

“Good point. Uh... We're halfway through those zombie games, right? I suppose we could get a few pizzas, some soda, and see how far through 'em we get.”

“I like your thinking, man,” Adam laughed as he pulled out a cellphone. “A quick call and a bit of driving and we'll be friggin' wasted.”

“You will be friggin' wasted,” Jeffrey corrected him.

“Why's that? Don't want the girlie girl to think that you're a drinker?” Adam whispered the last word like it was a big secret and then made a drinking sign with his thumb and forefinger.

“No, that's not it. I don't want to get discharged, is all.”

“Ah. Well, that makes sense I suppose. Not being discharged for something like that is always good.”

“Yea, so I've heard. Which place are we trying today?”

“Who else?”

“Bertolli's it is, then. Now for some real music.” Jeffrey pressed a button and the radio began to read off the disk inside it. A second later “God is in the Radio” by the Queens of the Stone Age began to play.

The music played as they drove to the little restaurant on the edge of town, letting the two boys think about different things. Or rather, 'thing' for Jeffrey.

As they pulled into the parking lot with a few minutes to spare they found their favorite man of the hour, Bertolli, standing there with their pizzas and some bottles, both glass and plastic.

“What are you bastards doing here early?” Bertolli shouted this at them and waved the bottles around it the air with his massive hand. “I said fifteen minutes!”

“Well we came early,” Adam shouted back at the enormous Italian man. “What're you gonna do about it?!”

“Oh. Dunno. Not much, probably,” replied Bertolli, though noticeably quieter.

“Oh. So, what do we owe the honor of you bringing our pizza to us, then,” Jeffrey asked him from across the inside of the truck.

“Well, I was just wondering when the two of you are gonna get shipped off East to fight them damn commies.”

“Oh. Well then. Uh, we're gonna be leaving sometime in January,” Adam told him. “We get to stay for Christmas, at least.”

“Well, that's good, I guess.”

“Yea,” said Jeffrey. “Anyways, how much is this gonna cost us?”

“It's free today, boys. It's on me! Just my way of sayin' thanks for going commie killing for us all.”

“Oh, dude, sweet! Man, I can't thank you enough,” Adam smiled as he took the food. “God, we love you, man.”

“Yea, well, I expect each of you to kill at least ten commies for me while you're over there!”

“Yup, we will man, we will,” Adam told him. As they drove away he laughed. “Freakin' sweet, man, just awesome.”

“Yea, well, we still kinda have to go to war, you know,” Jeffrey reminded him.

“That is true.”

“Yea. Now, you ready to go behead some zeds, man?”

“Eff yea!”

A good twenty hours later Jeffrey began to wake up, his head killing him.

After he had pulled his head from the space between the back of the couch and the wall he looked around. The television against the far wall displayed a red film and the superimposed words “You are dead”, and Jeffrey was pretty sure that he could make out some figures who were eating his character's flesh, which would explain the cheesy squelching and chewing noises he was hearing.

“Mother fucker...” he mumbled as he stood up on two leaden legs. This always happened when they did this – Adam would spike Jeffrey's drinks with barely a tablespoon of booze, which was always just enough to make him feel hung over in the morning.

Jeffrey stumbled across the room, barely missing stepping on Adam and stepping on various bottles and boxes as he went. Once he made it to the bathroom he looked in the mirror.

“God damn you, Adam,” Jeffrey mumbled. It was fun, though. It always was.

Once he had relieved himself Jeffrey headed out the front door of Adam's house and onto his porch, which was the highest point for miles.

Adam, being the unique person that he was, had built his house in the middle of a bunch of fields on the corners of four different farmer's fields. Having such a strange spot wasn't enough, however, and he built it on top of stilts that put his house a total of forty feet in the air.

Jeffrey sat down on the porch swing and pulled a battered looking piece of paper from his pocket.

“Yup,” he said aloud. “Love Katie. Looove Katie. Fuck it.”

Picking up his cell phone from where it had fallen on the swing last night he fingered the number pad.

“Well, then, here goes nothing,” Jeffrey snorted to nobody but himself and the birds. Five, nine, zero, six, zero, four, two.

Ring...

Ring...

Good God, ten seconds now? Maybe she got the number wrong...

Ring...

Ring...

Ri-

“Hello?”

“Hi, uh, yea, hey, er, is Katie there?”

Fuck. What sort of thing was that to say?

“Yep, this is her speaking. Nice to hear from you so soon, Mister Caron!”

What? How did she know it was him? It was probably because his voice had cracked. Again.

“Er, yea, you sound beautiful today Miss Coiteux.”

God, what was that? She would probably just hang up on him now!

Instead Katie giggled for a second before going on to say, “Thank you! Now, what is it you need on this fine day?”

Damnit, what to say, what to say...

“Well, I was just wondering if... If it's not too late to take your parents up on that dinner?”

“Nope, not at all. Just come on by around five – dad's grilling burgers tonight. I'll let them know you're coming by. See you then?”

“Uh, yea, yea... Bye.”

“Bye.”

As soon as he had closed the phone Jeffrey breathed a sigh of relief. That had gone pretty well.

Wait, what time was it?

Three thirty? Oh shit.