All characters appearing or mentioned in this story are 18 years old or older. This story is a work of fiction and any reference or description to actual persons is unintentional.
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Late April 1998
It's when you are really into something that you could miss the small things. As April started to wind down, I found myself very much freaking out for a meeting I had my uncle arrange for me at a tech company.
I was going to demonstrate a system that I'd devised for user input, but for some unknown reason, I decided that after the meeting was set to scrap all of my efforts and start again from scratch.
So now here I was, in my apartment, trying to solve a signal degradation issue for the last three days. This wasn't an issue with my old system so suffice it to say that I brought this on myself.
My last test came back much like the first twenty which just pushed me further into despair. But when you are at your lowest, there is nowhere to go but up.
It's a cliché I know, but it's relevant; honest.
Resolving to try once more to fix this before reverting back to the old system, I start some tweaks. A knocking at my door startles me and misaligns the circuits I was working on. Great.
I answered the door and was, as you probably could guessed, pleasantly surprised to see Sarah standing on my porch.
Sarah was s senior like me, 18 years old, and one of the more intelligent people at Rancho Hills high school. We shared some engineering classes and partnered on a few projects this year for finals. She was involved in a bunch of other academic clubs and was rumored to have been accepted to Harvard when she was a sophomore. For all that though, why she was here was beyond me.
"Hi, Paul," she said brightly, "sorry to drop in unannounced but I had an idea I wanted your help with. Can I come in?"
"Sure," I said, motioning her inside. My place was recently cleaned because I had company the day before, so it wasn't too embarrassing. The smell of burning metal caught my attention though.
"Shit," I exclaimed. "Uh, have a seat, I'll be right back," I said as I rushed out of the living room. My soldering iron turned a pool of solder into many tiny rivers on my circuit board. Great. Now it's a total loss.
I turned off the equipment and opened a window. Returning to the living room I saw Sarah had seated herself on the couch.
She was taller than most woman I'd known, fit but curvy hips and bust, and wavy black shoulder length which was currently pulled up into two tight buns on the crown of her head. Her olive toned skin was the second most fascinating thing about her; it seemed she could wear any clothing and it matched perfectly. Currently she wore the button up white short sleeve shirt and plaid skirt I saw her in most often. I think it was from her old school which had a uniform. If it worked for her I was certainly glad she didn't feel the need to change, cause she looked awesome.
The first most fascinating thing about her was her eyes; a very rounded almond shape but narrower, with dark eye liner accentuating her dark brown eyes and the sharpness of her face. Beautiful was an accurate description. Exotically infatuating would be more apt.
"Sorry about that," I said as I sat down at the other end of the couch, "technical difficulties. Nothing to worry about."
She smiled politely at my comment. "No worries," she said. "Project not going well?"
"It's...progressing. Slowly," I admitted.
"Well, I'm not great with microelectronics but if you want to chat let me know."
"I will," I promised. "So, what is it I can help you with today?"
"In a word," she started, "efficiency."
This was not the word I was expecting. Or hoping for. Still, my white knight syndrome was in full swing so I plowed on.
"Can I have a few more words," I asked?
She smile wider, her eyes squinting at the corners telling me her amusement was genuine.
"I am on a fast track out of this town," she stated. "I am going to attend Harvard in the fall, but before then I have a million things I need to wrap up here. Projects, finals, club leadership handoffs, and more.
"And during all of this, stress starts building up and eventually I can't take it and I have a fit or something."
I grew somewhat concerned at this point. "Is there someone you can talk to or somewhere to go to decompress?" I offered.
She looked away. "Not really. I don't have time. But how it brought me to your house is kind of a happenstance and kind of an accident.
"You see, this morning I had too much to handle and I couldn't take it anymore. I broke down crying in one of the restrooms that no one uses. However, and this is the accident, Ashley came in to wash something off of her hands from the field."
Ashley; of course. Ashley is that kind of a person. Help first, question later. It's one of the things that attracted me to her.
"So there I am, on the floor crying, and Ashley sits next to me and just hugs me. Doesn't ask questions or ask if I'm OK, just comforts me. I must have cried for a half hour after that. When I calmed down, she asked me to tell her my problems and I did.
"She sat there the entire time, just letting me talk. It was wonderful what she did."
Yea, I thought. That sounds like something Ashley would do.
"Still," Sarah continued, "I didn't have any answers and eventually I got to the part of my asshole ex-boyfriend and the fact that I hadn't had any intimacy since I broke up with him months ago.
