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Message-ID: <47753asstr$1084097404@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: "artie m" <silli_artie@hotmail.com>
Subject: {ASSM} <*> New: "Cindy" by artie (MF,angst)
Lines: 322
Date: Sun,  9 May 2004 06:10:04 -0400
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Read the latest version of this and all my stories at 
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<1st attachment, "cindy.doc" begin>

Cindy
 Copyright 2004 by <a
href="mailto:silli_artie@hotmail.com">silli_artie@hotmail.com</a>
This work may not be reposted or redistributed without the
prior express written permission of the author.A work of
fiction, meant for adults.  Read something else if you are not an
adult, or are offended by stories with sexual content.  Then
again, if all you're looking for is in-out, in-out, in-out, you
should probably read something else.  I welcome constructive
comments.  Enjoy.

The phone rang Saturday morning just as I was about to go grocery
shopping.

"Hello?"

"Bob, this is Cindy."

Holy shit -- the bottom fell out of my stomach.  I hadn't spoken
to her for six or seven months, not since she moved out on me.

"Yeah?"

She sighed.  "Bob, I need your help."

I felt like saying, "So fucking what?" but I didn't.  I settled
for, "What?"

"Bob, my computer is acting up.  I need help."

Must be the computer Doug got for her.  "So have Doug fix it," I
told her flatly.

She sighed again.  I recognized the way she sounded -- after
living together for two and a half years, I knew she was on the
verge of tears.  Tough.

"Bob," she said emotionally, "I...  I broke up with Doug.  He ...
he was fooling around with someone else."

What goes around, I thought with a slight smile, like me
returning from a business trip to find she'd moved out.  The only
explanation I got was that she'd found someone else.

I heard stories, even saw them a few times.  I learned she'd been
screwing him for a month or more while we were living together. 
He was big, a big asshole as far as I could tell.  Big, loud,
more money than sense.  Our friends, still my friends, didn't
understand it.  Most of them thought he was a loudmouthed jerk,
but one with a lot of money to spend.  Nobody was quite sure how
he made it, but he spent it, and evidently spent a lot on Cindy.

"Bob?  I ... need ... your help."

"What?" I asked.

"You'll help me?" enthusiastic again.

"I'm not sure if I can.  What's wrong?" I asked

"It's really, really slow some times, but okay others.  Some
times I  can't even print."

"Okay, what kind of computer is it?"

"A white one."

What did I expect?  That was Cindy.  "Tell me more about it," I
prodded.

"It's white, and thin, and the apple on the lid lights up
pretty."

Ah, the clues I needed -- at least it was a Mac, an iBook.  I
prodded for more information.  She had a G4, with old software. 
Okay, what kind of Internet connection?

I figured it was wireless, "a pretty white cone with an apple"
connected to "a phone thing and another box that whirs."  Sounds
like DSL, and something with a fan?

"Okay," I told her, "I can take a look at it."

"You can!  When?  This afternoon?"

I glanced at the clock -- almost two.  "Three," I told her; I
should get there around three thirty or so, payback for all those
times she made me wait.

"Oh thank you!  I ... I'm looking forward to seeing you again,
Bob."

"Where do you live?"  She never told me where she'd moved to.

"Oh..."  She gave me her address, and directions.

"See you at three," I told her.

*

Why the fuck was I doing this?  It was almost four when I parked
in a guest spot near her place.  I grabbed my iBook and my bag of
tricks and walked to her apartment.

After all that time -- with her, then without her.  No, think of
it as another tech call.

Bullshit.  This was the only woman I'd ever told, "I love you." 
I was going to ask her to marry me, but she moved out before I
got the chance.  And she'd been fooling around for a month or
more.  Was I lucky?  I don't fucking know.

Like a friend told me, it takes two to grow a relationship, but
only one to end it.

I knocked on her door.

She opened the door.  Her smile faded quickly.  "Thanks for
coming over," she mumbled.

I could tell she'd been crying.  She still looked good.  God
don't get started on that, all that time in her arms...

I followed her in.  She showed me her laptop, sitting closed in
the living room.  She showed me the rest, an Airport Extreme base
station, printer, and a network storage drive, all connected to a
DSL modem.

"Is your laptop running?"  I asked as we went back to the living
room.

We walked by a large bedroom, with a big bed and nice new
furniture.  All the furniture looked new.  Thoughts of making
love with her, snuggling with her.

"It's turned off," she told me.

I nodded.  The activity lights on her wireless base station and
the storage box had been flashing like crazy -- her link had been
hijacked, or at least was being "shared."

I pulled out my iBook and opened it.  "Okay, it will take me a
while."

She nodded, then left the room, head down.

It hurt to be here.  It hurt to be in the same room with her. 
Part of me wanted to grab her, hold her, kiss away her tears. 
Another part was still in shock, returning home and instead of
finding her, finding that note.  Now here, surrounded by new
furniture, even a big plasma HDTV on the wall -- what had I given
her?  Love?

I brought up iStumbler and watched it scan.  Fuck, will people
never learn?  Six unsecured access points and one secured.  Which
one of the unsecured ones was hers?  A bunch were still named
"Linksys," the out-of-the-box default.  Hmmm -- I'd guess hers
was the one named "mel0ns."  Signal strengths were too close for
me to tell which was hers.  I'd need to hardwire into it to
change the configuration anyway.

I picked up my iBook and my bag of tricks.  Got a short Ethernet
cable from the bag and cabled into her setup.  Yup, hers was
"mel0ns" but not for very long.  My first stop on the web was
hotbits, for a bag of fresh, random bits for a new name and long
WEP key.  Fired up the Airport Extreme admin program, and right
off the bat it wanted to upgrade the firmware.  That's going to
break connections, but I don't really care -- do it.  Two minutes
later, mel0ns disappeared, replaced with a closed, secured,
network.  How I loved being in her arms, those weekend mornings
in bed snuggling together.

I disconnected from things and tried the new wireless connection.
 Fine.  The lights weren't flashing as much.  Time to update her
laptop.

"Cindy, I need you to start up your laptop for me," I called out,
moving back to the living room.

"You've fixed things?" she asked.

"About halfway there," I told her.

She met me in the living room.  She'd changed clothes, or at
least her top.  She was wearing the stretch velvet top that she'd
made my favorite.  It looked like she'd changed bras as well,
wearing the one with the soft fabric cups.  It wasn't as
comfortable for her, but I liked it.

The combination was like a knife in my chest.

The last time she'd worn that combination (for me at least,
another sharp pang) had been on my birthday.  She'd held me and
teased me, holding me to perfumed cloth, burying my face in her
bounty, finally pulling off her top and bra and suckling me,
driving me crazy, mounting and riding me on the floor.  That had
been an incredible weekend for both of us.  Or so I thought.

She probably saw the pain in my face; she sighed and turned to
her laptop.  She opened it and hit the power button.

I pulled up a chair; she sat next to me.

Her laptop powered up and went right into the Finder -- no
password.  I shook my head and reconfigured the wireless network,
then started applying a slew of software updates.

Now Cindy is no dummy -- she's intelligent, articulate, talented.
 But computers aren't her thing.  If she's so intelligent,
articulate, talented, what the hell did she see in Doug?  What
did he have that I didn't?  Other than money?

I explained what had happened.  If she thought of her wireless
link as a car, she'd been leaving it with the keys in the
ignition and the engine running, and people had been driving it
around.  That was over.  When the updates were done, I convinced
her to at least put a password on her machine.  I quizzed her on
what software she used, looked at what was installed, and set the
firewall accordingly.

"Cindy, you're too good to be taken advantage of," I told her as
I saved the last of the changes.

She broke down.  I didn't know what to do.  That dilemma again --
hold her, or laugh. No, I couldn't laugh.  She'd hurt me, hurt me
worse than I'd ever been hurt in my life.  It still hurt.  With a
sigh I moved closer and held her.

I held her as she babbled.  Strange, the more I held her as she
babbled, the less I felt.  Holding her head on my chest I could
smell the hair stuff she used, so many memories in that -- but
they seemed far away.

She babbled about feeling bad, leaving me was a mistake, how he
used her (Doug, I guess), how he never showed his feelings.  I
remembered holding her in bed, telling her how she made me feel,
the amazing things she did to me, giving myself to her.

She babbled more, about how he never held her.  I remembered
snuggling with her in the morning.  When they had sex (her
words), he either got up right away or rolled over and went to
sleep.  Snuggling with her, holding her after making love was
almost the best part.

Each memory she rekindled flared briefly, searing another spot on
my soul, then faded.

I held her in silence after she ran out of steam.  I felt burned
out.

She looked up at me; I wiped her eves.  I remembered doing that
after the first time I told her I loved her; she broke into tears
and I held her.

"Can you stay?" she asked.

When I hadn't answered after a while, she added, "For dinner?"

I shook my head.  "Not tonight."

She looked at me -- with longing.  "What can I do?"

I held her hands.  "I don't know."

She nodded.  "Do you still love me?"

I sighed, my breath ragged.  "I don't know," I whispered.

"I know I've hurt you.  I'm sorry.  Can you love me again?"

Now I was almost in tears.  "I don't know."

She smiled.  "If I try, will you try with me?"

Oh God, I wanted to.  "Yes."

She kissed my hands.  "When you're ready."

She helped me gather my things, and showed me to the door.

We hugged briefly.  I turned and walked to my car.

And sat there, tears rolling down my face.  I wanted to love her.
 I wanted to be in her arms again.  So why did I walk away from
what I wanted and needed so much?

I wiped my face and started the car.  One more thing I didn't
understand.

Fin Rev 5/08/2004
Cindy By <a
href="mailto:silli_artie@hotmail.com">silli_artie@hotmail.com</a>
<a
href="http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/artie/www">http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/artie/www</a
> 

Cindy

 <a
href="mailto:silli_artie@hotmail.com">silli_artie@hotmail.com</a>
	6	<a
href="http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/artie/www">http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/artie/www</a
> 





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