Chapter 1

My job as a systems installer/integrator took me to many exotic and exciting places like Toledo, Paris, Rome, and even London. Unfortunately, those happened to be in Ohio, Texas, Georgia, and Ontario, respectively.

What it lacked in glamorous travel, it made up for in mind-numbing monotony. Oh, it’s not that bad, I guess, but there is a certain amount of repetitiveness and just plain slogging involved in getting to computer systems to talk to one another.

That, added to the fact that being in the IT field isn’t exactly anything that ladies flocked to, meant I had a fairly active fantasy life. When you aren’t James Bond in person, you can always be him in your head.

This trip had me in Kansas City (Missouri thank God, not Kansas*). At this point I was finishing up the latest touches on Bond’s new lethal gadget ... wait, I don’t even get to be Bond in my own fantasy ... I kind of suck at this.

Ok, for real, I was coming to the end of my portion of this project. They usually take a couple of weeks, then we send in a test/training “team” to turn the system over to the customer.

I was expecting Jerry later that day. What can you say about Jerry? He is the ultimate Jerry. He’s the Jerriest Jerry that ever Jerried. We all know one, even if they don’t happen to be named Jerry.

He was a sweater-vest wearing, somewhat overweight, and very gregarious Jerry with curly reddish-brown hair and a big bushy mustache. Everybody loves Jerry and, honestly, he does a great job.

I was testing the routines one more time when the test/training team got there. As you can tell by the fact that I didn’t say “Jerry”, it wasn’t Jerry. It was Hannah ... l. Oh.

Remember that fantasy life I was telling you about a few lines ago? Hannah figures very prominently in it. She is gorgeous. She might not be everyone’s cup of tea. She’s seriously curvy. If you like your girls stick thin she won’t do much for you. She did a lot for me.

For me, Hannah was probably the most beautiful girl that I actually see on a regular basis. Well except this one girl that works at Firehouse Subs, but she’s another story.

Hannah is “go to a specific restroom at the office that isn’t really anywhere near where you are/need to be because doing so will involve walking by her cubicle beautiful” for me. And I did, in fact, do that even though the only view of Hannah those trips usually afforded was her forehead and the top of her wavy blonde hair. That was enough, though. I could imagine the rest.

If you were keeping track, I had spilled more cum over Hannah the previous two years than I had most other fantasy subjects put together. But ... er ... who keeps track of that kind of thing, Ewww! (minimizing the Fantasy Subject spreadsheet on my computer).

Getting a Hannah when you expect a Jerry is a real jolt to the system. Kind of like expecting iced tea and getting Coke. That first couple of seconds kind of knocks you on your heels, a bit. As such, my greeting to Hannah lacked the smoothness that I would hope it would have if I had been prepared. (Note: it wouldn’t have been smooth then, either.)

Essentially, I shouted her own name in her face. I know, Bond has nothing on me.

Once that formality was out of the way, I found out Jerry was due some vacation time and decided to Jerry his way off to Jerryville (or wherever Jerries go on vacation), so Hannah was sent in his place.

The extent of the conversations I have had with Hannah amounted to cursory greetings in the break room, or slightly more awkward greetings if we happened to cross paths outside the restroom I walked across the building to get to on the off chance I might actually run into her outside the restroom, but if not I would get to see her forehead. Ugh, it sounds stupid when I say it like that.

I was able to get my act together enough to update her on the installation (we were ahead of schedule) and give her the credentials I had set up for the training team in the system.

If I had known Hannah was coming, I would have done something different, for sure, but I didn’t know so I didn’t. Nor did I even think when I handed her the credentials packet that I had set up thinking it would be Jerry.

One of my greatest pleasures is to make Jerry blush. One easy way to do that is to give him a horribly raunchy password to access the system. He doesn’t have the access to change it, so it is a great joy for me to see him blush and huff and puff a bit every time he has to type this password. Sometimes the simple things in life are what really make life worth living.

As it happened, Jerry’s, well now Hannah’s system access password this time was “Gr4bh3rbyt#3Pu55y”.

I was reminded of this fact when Hannah, having read the credentials packet lowered the paper slowly and looked at me with one eyebrow raised. Hmmmm, my turn to blush.

“Uh, I was ... uh ... expecting ... uh ... Jerry when I ... uh ... created that ... uh ... password.” One ticket to HR for Smoothie McSmootherson, please!

“I see,” she responded.

“Uh ... it’s kind of a trick I play on him ... uh ... I’ll change it quickly.”

So I did. Whew crisis averted.

The rest of the afternoon went fairly normally. Hannah went to start her testing while I finished up my scheduled duties for the day.

The way we worked was that the installation team (me) would come set up the system and do the initial testing, then the testing/training team (Hannah, in for Jerry) would spend the last three days I was there testing the system, so that I could be there to work on it if any problems were found, then spending the next week or so training the users to run and maintain the systems.

Over the course of that afternoon, it slowly dawned on me that I would be spending the next three days with the object of my lust rather than a charter member of Jerries of America. You would think it would fill me with joy. To some extent, it did. There is nothing like being near the one you really want. Your heart races, your mouth goes dry, your stomach does these flip-flops that you are sure she would find adorable if you could tell her about them without sounding like a lunatic.

That was the crux of the matter. Along with the elation of being near Hannah, I felt a growing dread that I was not up to the task of being anywhere near Hannah for any reason. I was going to say or do something so monumentally stupid in front of Hannah that I would die the thousand-deaths-of-shame that all of us have died when we screw up in front of our crush.

So, in a way, it was fortunate that if things were going well with the system, there didn’t need to be a lot of interaction between Hannah and myself. I’m pretty good at my job, so the initial testing was going well.

That bought me some time. I could get through this day, regroup tonight and maybe be a bit more prepared for the situation in the morning (Note: I wasn’t).

We finished the day and I drove us to our hotel. She had traveled and just decided to grab a sandwich and turn in. I was a bit tense, so I thought I would grab a quick drink before doing much the same thing (although I thought I’d add a good dose of Skinimax or one of the other Spankavision channels to take the edge off before bed).

I’m not a big drinker, but the warming glow of that Irish whiskey really hit the spot. So I thought I would have another. That led to thoughts of Hannah, very pleasant thoughts. So I had another. That led to somewhat darker thoughts about how I would screw up in front of Hannah and ruin things. Since you can’t un-drink a drink to try to return to a previous pleasantly buzzed state, I decided to forge on with another drink in the hopes that I would come full circle and have more of those pleasant thoughts. I didn’t. Or rather, I don’t think I did. After three more I don’t remember much.

I do remember waking up in my room with a splitting headache. Copious amounts of coffee got me out the door of my room. I hoped my salvation lay in the greasy goodness of Waffle House. It didn’t, but I did at least have my feet under me when I got back to the hotel.

Hannah was waiting for me in the lobby. She had availed herself of the complimentary, and much healthier, options from the hotel’s breakfast bar. She looked at me with that raised eyebrow look again but didn’t say anything other than to offer to drive back to the job site.

The morning went slowly. My head continued to pound from my ill-advised bender (are there any benders that aren’t ill-advised?). The bright spots of the morning were when Hannah seemed to go out of her way to come see me. When she would come near, it was like the murky clouds of my hangover would part and golden rays of sunshine would bathe my brain in soothing endorphins.

This new phenomenon did not, of course, lessen my already worshipful opinion of her any more than if a literal angel had swooped down to lift a burden from you, even temporarily.

After visiting an Indian food buffet for lunch, I was beginning to feel a bit more human throughout the afternoon. As we progressed, I noticed that it wasn’t just my hangover that made Hannah seem like a visiting angel. She was actually treating me with a familiarity that ... well, I wasn’t familiar with. She would laugh at my attempts at humor and seemed to want to listen when I was talking about some inane thing that wasn’t related to this job (she has to listen to that inane stuff). I was beginning to ponder the ramifications of this as the day was ending.

As we drove back to the hotel, she asked where we should go to dinner since the job was wrapping up and I would be leaving the next day. She wanted to celebrate a bit because she didn’t usually get to come on these trips because Jerry usually did. She was usually stuck with in-house training and support duties.

We picked a great little restaurant nearby (Steak ‘n Shake! (just kidding)) and I said I’d come to her room to pick her up after freshening up a bit.

And freshen I did. I wasn’t going to waste an opportunity of spending even one non-work-related minute with Hannah without being at my best. So I showered and shaved and powdered and buffed and trimmed like I had never before. In 20 minutes I was dressed and ready. She didn’t expect me for another 40 minutes so I sat on the bed and waited.

Adrenaline pumping for the possibilities (although I had no reason to expect anything other than dinner), I found it very hard to wait. I made it 15 minutes. Maybe she wouldn’t mind if I waited in her room as she finished getting ready.

I knocked on her door and waited. It seemed like forever. Ugh, this was a mistake. She’s going to be mad. I’ve blown it already. I started to turn away when I heard the door open.