Chapter 6

July 7^th, 2020

The next few weeks around the house were mostly spent with everyone getting to know one another. Lauren, in addition to being a personal trainer, turned out to be an excellent cook. A few days after she arrived, it was decided that a grocery run was needed, but Andy felt strongly that he wanted to go as well. It wasn’t advised, but it wasn’t strictly forbidden any more either. The Air Force website had been quite clear about what he needed to do if he wanted to go out, now that he had at least one partner – not only was he required to wear a P95 mask, but he also had to wear goggles protecting his eyes and latex gloves covering his hands. It felt burdensome, but he direly needed to get out of the house for a least a short period of time, so he, Aisling and Lauren resolved to make the grocery store run.

“I feel like Mad Max in this get up,” Andy grumbled as he got out of the car in the Safeway parking lot. “Except for the fact that I’m unarmed.”
“They won’t let us in the shop if you’re sporting an axe, love,” Aisling said, comforting him. The girls were dressed up in their gear as well, although both girls were wearing his t-shirts. They’d taken to just going through his shirts each morning and tossing one on, not that he minded. Andy owned a lot of t-shirts. It was practically a uniform. “And we’re going through supplies much faster these days with more mouths to feed.”

“An’ you need to let me get a bunch of healthier things in addition to your junk food,” Lauren said scoldingly. “With five people in the condo instead of two, you’d better get used to one of us going out for supplies every few days.”
“Also, you’re the one who wanted to come along, Andy,” Aisling said with a laugh. “You could’ve just stayed home and let us do all the work.”
“I had to get out of the house before I went stir crazy. You know I’ve barely been more a hundred feet out of the condo since April. We were told we were in a very high risk area, so we completely quarantined and just had food delivered, but it was starting to rack up quite the bill that way. They told us it was high risk even to go out for a walk.”

The trio headed into Safeway, keeping a good distance from everyone else. At the beginning of the year, if Andy had come into this particular Safeway on a Saturday, it would’ve been a madhouse. Instead, it felt like a ghost town. Some of the aisles were still desperately barren, with supplies like toilet paper down to only a few options, if that. Thankfully, Eric had been smart enough to set up a recurring order from their local CostCo to get toilet paper delivered when they had it in stock. Andy had been tempted to do a CostCo run as well, but as his first real outing in months, he wanted to stick to something where he felt like he at least had a little control. Their local Safeway was located up in the hills a little bit, so it didn’t always get as much traffic as grocery stores closer to the freeways.

Andy started to move over to grab a shopping cart, only to get the mom armbar move from Lauren, who pushed him back a good step. “Oh no, Andy,” she laughed. “We’ll push the cart. You just pick things up and put them into the cart with your gloves.”

“I don’t understand what the difference is,” Andy sighed. “But okay, okay, I do remember them saying that men weren’t supposed to touch shared objects in public spaces so I’ll keep my hands off.”

“It’s like you haven’t been trained properly,” Aisling giggled.
“You watch it, Ash, or I’ll bend you over my knee,” he teased back.
“She’d only enjoy it, Andy,” Lauren said, rolling her bright blue eyes as they headed into the vegetable section. Andy mostly let the girls pick up things and put them into the cart, but every so often he would insist on something and would pick it up himself, like garlic. Both Lauren and Aisling questioned the amount of garlic he bagged up and dropped into the cart, but he was insistent that they would use it all before they were back to the grocery store again.
They’d gotten close to a full cart’s worth of groceries and were standing in the frozen food section, mostly looking for ice cream truth be told, when a familiar voice called to him from a little bit away. “Andy, that you under all that mess?”
Sure enough, it was his friend Phil Marcos, standing next to a curvy Hispanic woman. Andy might not have been able to recognize Phil at first glance with the mask and the goggles, but the jacket was a one-of-a-kind letterman jacket from a fighting game tournament Phil had won almost a decade ago. “How did you recognize me, Phil?”

“I was taking a wild guess, but I don’t know anyone else here in the States who would be wearing a Nautilus Pompilus t-shirt. Russian alternative rock band t-shirts aren’t exactly a dime a dozen.”

Andy paused for a second, and then realized, he wasn’t wearing his Nautilus Pompilus t-shirt, but Aisling was. He nodded with a slight smile. “Fair enough. We can’t exactly talk here, but let’s meet up at the base of Mount Diablo, in the park. We can stand far apart enough to talk and still be safe. We’ve got to drop groceries off, so let’s say we meet up in a couple of hours?”

Phil looked down at his watch. “Three o’clock? Sure, we’ll see you there.”

They didn’t say anything else to each other, just finished up shopping, paying, and taking their groceries home. On the way home, Andy explained to Aisling and Lauren that Phil was one of his oldest friends, and that he was one of the people Andy had talked to over voice chat during the days since the quarantine had started, although Phil had been radio silent for a few weeks now.

On the way to the park, Aisling and Lauren were peppering him with questions about Phil. They’d talked to a few of Andy’s friends on video chat, but they’d only heard stories about Phil. Of course, they’d heard quite a lot of those stories.

They pulled into the parking lot at the park and Andy could see Phil’s car on the other side. Sitting on the hood was Phil with the woman he’d seen him with in the Safeway. Andy hopped out of his car, along with Aisling and Lauren. They were out in the open and so far from each other that they felt safe not wearing masks and goggles. Andy walked forward, not towards Phil, but towards the wooden fencing. “So, Phil, where the hell ya been?” Andy laughed.

Phil was a slender enough Filipino but he looked thinner than Andy remembered. He was clean shaven, and while Andy expected him to have a shaggy head of hair, it looked trimmed and coiffed. Phil had an easy going way about him, a casual grace that Andy had always envied. He smiled up at Andy, shrugging a little bit. “So, Andy, this is Audrey. She’s my partner.”

To the right of Phil stood the woman he’d seen her with earlier in the day, but now he could get a better look at her. She was curvy, almost plump, but had a rosy demeanor to her. She was wearing a Street Fighter t-shirt that clearly couldn’t be Phil’s. She was a bit younger than Phil was, but not unbearably so. “Hi Andy!” she said, giving him a big wave. “Sorry I’ve kept him off the group Discord, but I didn’t want to share him until I felt like we were established.”

“Oh, love,” Aisling giggled. “We’re all doing that.”

“Phil, this is Aisling, Ash for short, and this is Lauren,” Andy said, rubbing the back of his own neck sheepishly. “Frankly, I’m a little embarrassed they’re stuck with me, but they both seem happy enough, so maybe I’m doing okay by them.”