Candyman

Chapter 1

"Let's see... Bar 4, gray shirt, brown jacket, brown shoes..." you mumbled to yourself, reading the description of your next appointment off of the iPad. Your eyes scanned up and down the front bar, trying your best to match the vague details to any of the people that sat near that section. Sundays were by far the worst day; everyone else had the day off except retail and the store was completely packed. People were even lined up against the walls, waiting for their turn to have their devices looked at. Finally, your eyes landed on a brown suede jacket at the very end, encasing the broadest shoulders you had ever seen. Peering down the wooden table, the man who belonged to the jacket wore a gray t-shirt and was seemingly happily clicking away on his perfectly fine computer. "Network and connectivity issues," you sighed to yourself, bracing for the inevitable argument that was about to happen.

"Steve?" you asked as you approached from the opposite side. The man in the jacket snapped his head up from his screen and your breath hitched in your chest. The blue in his eyes was crystal clear, his chiseled jaw cut the sharpest of lines against his neck. The thick vein ran along his muscles and disappeared under the collar, the blond hair combed back and shaped just so, just enough to look cool but still age-appropriate. A small smirk formed across his pillowy lips as his eyes raked over you and suddenly you felt a bit self-conscious in your issued t-shirt and skinny jeans. Jesus, you hadn't even bothered with makeup today.

"Yep, that's me," and he stuck out his hand. You took it in kind and felt how firm but soft his grip was, and you couldn't help but notice how his fingers lingered on your skin just a second too long.

"So, we got some issues connecting? How can I help you?" You asked, trying to regain control over yourself and the appointment. You couldn't help but lean over the edge of the bar, crossing your arms so that your tits were pushed up and out.

Steve swiped his tongue gently over his lower lip before explaining, "I just bought a house around here and the internet guys were over yesterday. They said they set everything up but nothing will connect, least of all my computer."

"Oh man, that sucks so much. When I moved into my current apartment, I had to have the internet guys out three times until my service would work consistently. Those poor phone technicians, I swear I was calling and raising hell every other day," you laughed as you started gathering some information from his computer.

"Right? They never seem to really know what the issue is, they just want to run cable everywhere and make a huge fucking mess. Excuse my language," he continued, "When I showed them that my computer wouldn't connect, they just insisted that I needed to bring it here and have you guys look at it. So, here I am."

You clicked around his settings a bit, noticing that the computer had connected to the store's wifi with no issues. Opening up the browser, it loaded several websites and his mail at normal speeds. Even his notifications started to come through after being offline for who knows how long.

"Well, from my first look at everything, I'm sorry to say that I think your computer is fine. It's loading everything and running speedtests as it should. I would be happy to run a more thorough test if you have a few minutes," you offered and Steve nodded. Instinctively, you ran an ethernet cable from the hub at the bar to the computer and forced the computer to restart into a netboot, selecting the diagnostic suite from the multitudes of hard disk images that loaded onto the screen.

"I had a feeling they were bullshitting me, but I'm not very good with any of this, so why not waste an afternoon?"

"Hey now, it's not a total waste. I'm going to check everything out on your computer and make sure there isn't anything else going on with it. Plus, you did get to meet me, and I'm pretty great," you laughed as the diagnostics ran. Just as you suspected, everything started to come back with green checkmarks, a sign that nothing was failing. "Sorry Steve, Comcast sucks. You'll probably have to have the tech come back out again."