Before the infection hit San Navarro, it was a pretty great place to live and I had a pretty good life going on there. Like most places in California's Central Valley, its roots lay in agriculture, but as the town had grown from a small farming station to a mid-size city, all sorts of industries had sprouted up, ranging from electronics manufacturing to food packaging and processing. My particular field of expertise was telecommunications or if you want to get real literal about it, cell phone sales. I humped a shitty job selling overpriced phones to people who really had no clue about the crap they were getting themselves into. Contracts, extensions, penalties, minutes, overages, roaming fees, and all that good commercial bullshit that's written into contracts for one thing: to separate people who don't know any better from their money.

I had moved to San Navarro from my hometown of San Jose, along with my childhood buddy, Brian Muller, a recent graduate of the University of California-Davis. Brian had finished a bachelor's degree in communication at UC Davis just a year before and had lucked out by landing an internal communications position for a company in San Navarro that processed and canned tomatoes. I on the other hand had gone to San Jose State on and off for three years before my dad was laid off and I had to drop out because we could no longer afford to pay tuition. At the time Brian had gotten the job, I was slumming around in San Jose, not really doing much of anything. Brian's suggestion that I move with him to San Navarro and try and find a job there was something that I took up immediately as a challenge.

Initially it sucked. Brian and I shared a two-bedroom duplex on Cranyard Street in East San Navarro, a largely working-class blue-collar neighborhood. Without a job, I had burned through most of my savings pretty quickly before I landed the job at the Verizon store. The job paid shit, but working full time, I was able to pay rent, utilities, and buy groceries, as well as having just enough left over for some spending money and even a little cash to send home to my parents. Brian's pay was a lot better, but his hours were far more demanding than mine and the nature of his job often meant he was working late or on weekends, which he hated. As a result we didn't really have social lives other than an occasional trip downtown to the bars where we would drink beer, bitch about work, and unsuccessfully try to pick up women. So it was almost by pure luck that I met Aly Nguyen.

Aly, short for Alyson, had been a friend of Brian's at UC Davis. She had grown up in Fresno as a teenager after her parents had moved to the Central Valley to escape the cost of living in the Bay Area. They had hung out together with the same crowd and she had gone with him to a couple of his fraternity events, but they were always too tight to date or even mess around. They weren't best friends, but they were close enough to be pretty good friends. She was busy working her way through a nursing program at San Navarro State and had moved to the area in order to complete her credentialing and it was by chance that she found out Brian had taken a job here as well, so she contacted him. As a result I met her through Brian and things got pretty interesting from there.

I was smitten with her from the start. Aly was what you would call a hottie, a dime, a "Perfect Ten," by any stretch of the imagination. Slim frame, long legs, shoulder-length black hair with a few red highlights which she usually kept tied back in a ponytail, an amazing body, and to top it off she was both highly intelligent and a sweetheart to boot. Aly was the kind of girl that my mother used to refer to as a "keeper" and the kind of girl that I was deathly afraid of and intimidated by. We got along pretty well and we shared similar interests of Mexican food, really bad action movies, and John Steinbeck novels, but the fact that I was so damned intimidated of her always held me back. And it definitely made things sort of awkward between us.

"You giant puss, just ask her out," Brian would say with a frown on his face. "Dude I know Aly, we've been friends for years. She may be a smoking hottie, but she's not a bitch. She'll give you a shot."

But no matter what Brian said, I could never bring myself to do it. That deep-rooted insecurity of mine could never let me express my feelings. And so those emotions went unsaid, buried deep inside me, like steam under the lid of a pressure cooker. I knew one day it would probably explode and God, I hoped it wouldn't be awkward.

The day before everything went to hell was pretty much like any other day. My shift ended around five and I got home, tired, frustrated, and sick of dealing with people. Brian was supposedly working from home that day, but his schedule on these days generally consisted more of smoking pot and channel surfing rather than getting actual work done. Lo and behold, that's exactly what he was doing when I got home.

"I'm back," I called out, shutting the front door behind me, and walking into the small cramped space that served as our kitchen. Opening the door of our beat-up old Maytag, I scanned the inside of the refrigerator. Hopefully there was something cold to drink in there, preferably a beverage of the adult nature.

"Work suck today?" called out Brian from the living room where the scent of pot was already thick and pungent. The haze was as thick as any Central Valley fog and twice as potent. "How many customers decided to bitch at your ass today?"

"Just a couple," I replied as I continued to dig through the fridge. Yes! Beer. Grabbing one of the remaining bottles of Budweiser, I closed the fridge with one hand and then popped the top off. The ice-cold beer felt great as I tipped back the bottle and took a long swig, the chilly temperature of the beverage temporarily helping me forget the bullshit of the day. Tossing my tie over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, I stepped through the pot haze to the living room, still swigging away at the beer.

"Yeah you got lucky then," said Brian. He was lounging on our old beat-up leather couch in his typical "work from home" attire: a pair of beat-up UC Davis gym shots, a backwards San Francisco Giants baseball cap, and a faded black Volcom t-shirt. His laptop was on the table in front of him, along with an ashtray containing a neatly rolled smoldering joint, and a few scattered work reports. The work wasn't his primary concern though; he was more focused on the hockey game that was being projected on our modest 27" flatscreen HDTV. I dropped down next to him on the couch.

"It's already 2-1?" I said as I rolled up my shirtsleeves and took another sip of Budweiser. Brian reached over and took the joint from the ashtray and took a hit, inhaling deeply, before blowing out the smoke and handing it to me. "Who scored?"

"Pavelski and Marleau scored for the Sharks. Franzen for the Red Wings," Brian replied. "Fucking Detroit's been pushing hard to get the score tied up though." As if on cue the puck flew into the back of San Jose's net, over the sprawling form of Nabokov, and the crowd in Detroit cheered as the goal horn went off. "What did I fucking tell you, right? Fucccccckkkkk."

I took a deep toke off the joint, pulling the smoke into my lungs, and then passed the joint to Brian and blew out the smoke in a long trail. "Defense blew that one," I noted as I finished the beer and placed the empty bottle on the coffee table. "Can't play like that in the defensive zone against a team like the Wings."

"I know, right?" groaned Brian. He finished the rest of the joint and put it out in the ashtray, frowning as he watched the game. "Terrible play."

My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out, flipping open the screen to reveal a text message from Aly.

From Aly: hey! is it ok if i come over for a little while?

I quickly texted her back.

To Aly: yeah, totally fine. come on in when u get here, door's unlocked.

I snapped my phone closed and Brian looked up at me with a quizzical look on his face. "Who was that?" he asked, feigning ignorance like he didn't know. "Was it…..ALY!"

"Maybe."

"You need to stop being such a little bitch about this and just ASK. HER. OUT. She'll give you a chance, I guarantee it. You guys get along, you have similar interests, look, she even texts you instead of me now. She would SO give you a chance if you weren't being such a damn baby about it."

"Hey shut the fuck up. You know how I feel about her. I'm just nervous is all."

"Is 'nervous' a new synonym for "I'm a giant baby bitch?""

"Shut up."

On screen the Sharks had managed to draw a power play with Brian Rafalski serving a two minute penalty for tripping. The power play had hardly started when Dan Boyle fired a slapshot past the Detroit goalie to give the Sharks a 3-2 lead. The sound of booing from the Detroit fans on the TV mingled with Brian's whoops of joy and his foul language as he cursed both the Red Wings and their fans. I remained slightly more restrained, but I hooted and hollered with him as the Sharks celebrated on screen. We were both so busy celebrating that we didn't hear the front door open.

"You boys certainly look excited," laughed a feminine voice behind us and we turned around to find Aly standing in our living room. She was wearing a pair of faded blue jeans with some flats and a white v-neck t-shirt with her hair undone behind her in a wave of iridescent blackness. Her smile sparkled as she laughed in our direction and for a moment I thought I felt my heart stop.

Brian was the first one to say something. "Oh hey Aly. Sorry the Sharks just scored, so we're kinda stoked about that. How did you get here so fast?"

"Oh I was doing some residency work over at Mercy General today instead of St. James Memorial so I was a lot closer to your house, seeing as Mercy is only a few blocks away. I haven't seen you boys in awhile, I missed you!" she said, stepping forward to give Brian a hug.

"We've missed you too. Some of us more than others," said Brian, shooting a goofy look in my direction where Aly couldn't see. I shot him a quick middle finger, and then hid it as Aly turned around to face me. Our eyes met and she hesitated a bit as she moved towards me which she hadn't done with Brian. I felt a little wave of panic wash over me. Was she hesitating because she was interested in me or was she hesitating because she thought I was awkward? Oh shit.

"Hey Danny," she said, folding me into her arms, and I swear that I almost melted into it. Her arms closed around my back as she gave me a quick hug and then stepped back. "How's the cell phone business?"

"Uh it still sort of sucks," I replied awkwardly, scratching my head. "Long hours, the pay's pretty low, you know."

"I see," she replied, her eyes sort of focused away from me and on the wall over our TV, which suited me fine since my eyes were angled down at her feet, away from her stare. Out of the corner of my eye I caught Brian rolling his eyes at me and I made a quick mental note to get him back later. "What about that plan you had to finish college at SNSU?"

"SNSU has the same programs that I took in San Jose, but I still can't pay the tuition yet," I replied. "My dad still hasn't found a new job yet and between my rent and stuff here and trying to help them out, I don't really have any money. I would take out more student loans, but I'm still paying off the ones I took out at San Jose State."

I risked a look up at her face. It was softened, not in an expression of pity, but in an expression of compassion and understanding. "Wow. You're such a good son to your parents. I mean it's really admirable the way that you take care of them. I wish I could do the same."

I smiled a bit at that. "It's nothing big, I just try my best to help them out when they need it. And don't worry, your parents are financially secure with that store they own in Fresno and they've never been afraid to show their love for you. You're a great daughter."

"Thanks," she replied with a dazzling smile, as she reached out to briefly touch my shoulder, before taking a seat on the couch. I plopped down at the far end next to her, shoulder to shoulder. I could feel her body slightly shift against mine and she looked over at me once with an expression I couldn't place. Shyness? Interest? Awkwardness? Plain old "get off me?" I couldn't tell. Should I put an arm around her shoulder? Lean in closer? Tell her how much I was smitten with her? I couldn't decide.

The moment passed as Brian handed us a freshly rolled joint. But if I had known what tomorrow would bring, would I have still hesitated?