Service Call - 1. Story

The last thing I expected that day was to meet Adam.

I was one year out of college, a twenty-three year old working in I.T. at the same university I had attended. I was enjoying my first full week of vacation by going to the gym each day. It would be beach going weather soon and I needed to lose a few pounds that I put on from spending too much time inside.

On my way home from the gym I picked up some Thai stir-fry in sweet and sour sauce with jasmine rice. Eating this would probably erase most of the gains I had made at the gym, but this was one of my favorite meals and I had craved it all week.

As I pulled into my assigned parking spot, I noticed a company vehicle in the guest parking spot next to mine. The magnetic sign on the driver’s door read: Wilson Computer Support with the company catch phrase, ‘Why take your computer to the shop? We will come to you!’ The driver was still in the vehicle using his phone, and I couldn’t tell much about him because his head was turned away from me.

I got out of my car and went around to the passenger side to collect the Thai food out of the passenger floor board and as I closed the door, the driver climbed out of his vehicle.

He looked in his mid to late twenties and I estimated that he was a few inches taller than me. I fell in love with him the moment our eyes met. His angular face, striking green eyes, and flawless complexion was topped by a head full of dark brown hair cut into a faux hawk that stood up in rigid spikes. I imagined most women have either wanted to possess his beauty, or fall prey to it. My heart raced and my face felt flushed as I stared. I always got embarrassed when I was this close to an attractive guy, and I'd never been near one as gorgeous as him.

He broke eye contact first and looked me over. Sniffing the air and licking his lips, he said, “Mmmmm. Smells good.”

His voice was deep and it matched perfectly with what I imagined him to sound like.

I stuttered for a moment and smiled while responding, “Thai stir-fry.”

“I’m Adam.”

“Michael,” I replied keeping my eyes locked on his.

“Well, I hope you enjoy it, Michael. Do you mind? I need to get something out of my trunk for a customer.”

I stopped staring and moved out of his way. As he walked past me, I felt electricity in the air and my gaydar was going off like crazy. I walked towards my apartment complex and then decided to take a chance. I turned around and walked to the rear of his car.

I nervously cleared my throat and asked, “Do you have a business card? My computer sometimes gets infected with malware and I hate having to take it to the shop. Maybe I could utilize your company’s services at some point?”

“Sure! It’s just me though. Most of my business is warranty repair for Dell, HP and Toshiba, but I have several customers who contact me when they have general computer problems.”

He reached into his left pants pocket. While he wasn’t looking I took the opportunity to devour the sight of his body from head to toe. He wore a red, short-sleeve polo shirt with khaki pants and brown dress shoes. I could tell from his arms and the way his polo clung to his body that he was in excellent shape. He pulled a silver business card-holder from his pocket, opened it and handed me a card.

I tore my gaze away from his body in time to notice him smirking at me. I took the card politely and then made a fool of myself by saying, “I’ll call you as soon as I have a problem!” I must have seemed far too excited to have a computer problem and I think both of us knew that.

His smile was like a soft white cloud, but he didn’t respond. I turned around and, feeling embarrassed, walked quickly to my apartment. My heart already yearned for him although we had just met.

While eating my food I devised a plan to mess up my laptop’s operating system so I had a reason to call Adam and invite him over. After eating half of the box I put the rest in the fridge, showered and worked on my plan.

First, I made a complete backup of my laptop’s operating system to an external USB drive. The last thing I wanted to do was wipe the drive and install Windows from scratch, apply all those damn updates and then reinstall all the applications.

Second, I removed my virus protection, pop-up and ad blocker and downgraded Flash and Java. I wanted to make sure that my system was so screwed up that he wouldn’t be able to fix it quickly.

Third, I went to every site I knew would lead to infection and clicked the links I would normally tell someone to avoid.

Last, I rebooted to test the results. Just as I expected, the computer was slower and as soon as my wireless network connection went active I started getting pop-ups.

I was ready to execute my plan.

I called the number listed on his business card.

“This is Adam. How may I help you?”

“Hi Adam, this is Michael. We met around lunch time and I asked for your business card. I booted up my laptop just now and I’m getting annoying pop-ups without even launching an Internet browser. Do you think I could schedule a service call?”

I thought I heard him chuckle, but it was muffled. “Sure Michael, I’m finishing up with another client, but I can come over as soon as I’m finished. Which apartment number is yours?”

I hesitated before answering, “I’m in building twelve, apartment eight.”

“I’ll be there within thirty minutes.”

I panicked and my stomach started churning. I never expected him to come over so quickly. I was going to have to rush to make sure my place was immaculate before he arrived.

I vacuumed my living room, cleaned the bathroom, loaded the dishwasher and changed clothes. I put on a tight-fitting Aeropostale t-shirt and pair of button fly jeans, closed my bedroom door and sat down on the couch.

He didn’t make me wait very long. I heard a knock on the door about five minutes later. I tried not to make it obvious that I was excited to see him and took my time reaching the door. I gathered myself and opened the door to see Adam smiling at me.

“Thanks for coming over so quickly.”

I motioned towards the laptop sitting on the dining table and he sat down in front of it.

“I really didn’t expect to see you so soon. I hope you didn’t rush to break something just to give me work.”

“Nah, it’s just a weird coincidence that this thing broke. I think it’s been getting slower for a while now.”

He looked at my laptop for a few minutes checking out the list of installed programs, and reviewing the contents of the program files, application data and temporary directories. Afterwards, he turned and stared at me with a frown.

“Michael, you haven’t been keeping your system updated and it appears that your anti-virus program has been removed. I’m going to start by creating a new administrator account on your system and running several tools under that account to clean up the infection. Then I’ll install a free anti-virus software package and update your Flash and Java installations so that you’ll hopefully avoid re-infection.”

“Thanks.”

I cleared my throat to get his attention. “Would you like something to drink? I have iced tea, water and milk.”

“Sure, water would be nice.”

I got up from the table and before entering the kitchen, quickly glanced back and noticed that his eyes were on me. He had been looking at my ass! My hunch from the parking lot was right. I broke out into a huge smile, filled a glass with ice and water from the fridge and set it down in front of him.

“Thanks. You’ve really done a number on this system. It looks like you visited several malware sites after we talked and picked up more than one infection. In fact, I think you managed to pick up a rootkit virus.”

He was quiet for a few minutes while staring at my browser’s history and then he glared at me.

“Why would you visit just these sites?”

I forgot to delete my Internet history! I realized he knew what I had done. As much as I tried to avoid blushing, my face felt flushed and fell to avoid his gaze, but not for long.

“Did you do this just so you could see me again?”

I didn’t answer. At that moment all I felt was shame. Instead of being upfront, I had been devious and went overboard. No one in their right mind would visit all of those sites and definitely not in a row. I should have realized that he would be bright enough to know what I had done.

“I’m going to leave this as is. You can fix your own mess. I have enough work to do without being asked to fix something under false pretenses. If you liked me, why didn’t you just ask me out? You had two chances, once at the car and once when you called me. Next time, just take a chance and ask the guy out.”

Stuttering, I asked, “How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing … I want to pretend this never happened.”

I opened my apartment door and he walked out without saying goodbye. I felt like shit, but I kept thinking about his last comment: ‘Next time, just take a chance and ask the guy out.’

Gathering enough courage, I took my phone out of my pocket and called him. He was at the bottom of the stairs when he answered.

“Yes?”

“Hi Adam, this is Michael. When I met you in the parking lot today I felt an instant connection that I haven’t felt before. I really like you and I’d like to ask you to have dinner with me, my treat of course.”

He didn’t respond, but he started walking up the steps with the phone still against his ear. I was nervous at this point and expected him to yell at me. In fact, I backed against the door frame as he approached.

He got really close to me, our faces were just inches apart but his phone was still against his ear. “Michael, I’d love to have dinner with you, but I expect dessert after dinner. I’ll pick you up at six. How does that sound?”

I smiled from ear to ear and replied, “Great.”

He leaned in and kissed me on the lips. It wasn’t a long kiss, but it felt wonderful.

Adam hung up on me, put his phone in his pocket and smiled. I stayed where I was and watched his body move as he walked away.

After a few minutes I went back inside, closed the door and began preparing for our date. I hoped I wouldn’t mess up my second chance with him.

Something deep inside told me that it was going to be a magical night.

One thought kept running through my mind while I got ready.

I love dessert.