A Little Excerpt

It was Friday June 9, 2017, and Andrew Grzedek was spending the whole evening in his apartment in Chicago, since he was battling a pretty bad cold. The weather was really hot, so that made things way more miserable than they needed to be. His best friends and roommates, Matt Bartz and Jason Lazinski, were spending an evening in the city. Of course, they invited him to come with them, but Andrew said no. They live in Lincoln Park, a neighborhood just north of downtown, and Matt and Jason had made plans to visit the Loop.

At 7:30 in the evening, Andrew wore his hoodie and jeans, with a blanket over him. All he felt like doing was watch some movies and eat some leftover Chinese food from the night before. His head was pounding, he couldn't breathe, and he just felt miserable overall. Before too long, he fell asleep on the couch, so that he could try to beat this cold before summer really hit. He started feeling sick on Thursday night, but he went to work both days before the weekend started.

It seemed like forever, but it was probably more like fifteen minutes. Andrew woke up to his phone going off. He wasn't too sure if he wanted to answer it or not. He thought about just letting it ring, since he didn't know who would call him at this time of day.

But it occurred to him. 

"Hello?" Andrew answered his phone sleepily.
"Hi, Andrew!" his girlfriend, Eliza Colbert, replied on her end.
"Hey, what's up?"
"Not much. How are you?"
"I'm a little sick," Andrew responded.
"I heard. Want me to come over soon? I brought some things you may like!" Eliza exclaimed.
"Sure. I have some movies we could watch. When will you get here?"
"Well, I'm on the train headed into Chicago, and then I was gonna get a ride over to you."
"How nice of you."
"See you in a few."

Andrew's girlfriend lives in Naperville, which is about thirty minutes west of Chicago. It was probably going to take her about forty-five minutes to get to Andrew's place. Andrew stayed awake as much as he could because he was just simply out of it. At around 8:30, Eliza came to the door with a plastic bag full of stuff in her hand. Andrew slowly got up and opened the door for her.

"Hi, Eliza. Come on in," Andrew greeted his girlfriend. 
"Hey, I got you some orange juice and some French bread," Eliza replied.
"Thank you. I'm really going to need that."
"I don't like orange juice, and my cousin told me to give it to you, since she also knows you're sick."
"I think I'm gonna need orange juice now more than ever," Andrew remarked, smiling a little.
"Probably. I also brought some movies that you can fall asleep to," Eliza said.
"Hopefully they're funny."
"They are."
"Then I probably won't fall asleep to them."
"You never know."

Matt and Jason knew Eliza was coming over for a night, and they were fine with that. Andrew put on a couple movies that lasted about three hours altogether. It was now almost midnight, and Andrew fell asleep on the pull-out couch when the second movie was about to end. Eliza did not want to disturb him, but she decided to wrap her arms around him and fall asleep right next to him.

Why not?

"I know what we need to get Andrew," Matt said to Jason as they were about to head back to the Lincoln Park neighborhood.
"What?" Jason asked.
"A cookie."
"That would be a great idea. Are you talking about those gooey cookies that we had that one time?"
"Yes," Matt replied.
"I want one now as well," Jason stated.
"We can also get one for ourselves."
"Good."
"I still have some leftover pizza from tonight. I'm gonna have some when we get back."
​"You go do that."