Starting Forever

He was amazed at the number of people who came to pay their respects. He'd never realized how many people had known his family. Even people he'd gone to high school with came, said they were sorry for their loss, and shook his hand.

The visitation was supposed to end at nine, and by eight-thirty, most of the people had come by again and expressed their sympathy and then left. Jeff was glad it was almost over. Over the last three days, he and his mother had somewhat come to grips with the loss, but all the people had made him feel sad again. As the crowd of people dwindled down to only six, he was starting to feel better.

It was almost nine when she walked through the door of the viewing room, looked around, and then smiled when she saw him. She walked to the casket, looked at his father, then took Jeff's mother's hand and said, "You don't know me, but I work with Jeff. I'm Teresa. I'm so sorry for your loss."

Jeff's mother said something he didn't really hear because he couldn't believe Teresa was there. It was a five hour drive from his apartment to his parent's house and another half hour to the funeral home. Teresa would have had to leave right from work to make it, but she wasn't dressed in her work clothes.

She wasn't the Teresa with baggy pants and shirts and work shoes. She wasn't the Teresa with no makeup and with her hair crammed under a ball cap. She was wearing a black dress that fit some very slender and sensuous curves and her dark brown hair shimmered in waves over her softly rounded shoulders. She wore black high heels that accented slender legs clad in black nylon.

Teresa smiled when she moved from his mother to face him.

"Hi, Jeff. I'm so sorry for you. Is there anything you need or anything I can do?"

Jeff took her outstretched hand.

"Teresa, how did you get here?"

"I drove my car."

"But why?"

Teresa smiled again.

"I thought you could use a friend...if I can call you a friend, that is."

Jeff nodded his head.

"I'm happy you came. I'm not sure I understand why you did, but I'm happy. You cant be thinking of going back tonight. Do you have a place to stay?"

"Yeah. I booked a room at a hotel in town. It's not much, but it's a bed and a shower. I thought I'd stay for the funeral, if that's all right with you. I'll go back home after that."

"Mom has a spare room you could use."

"No, that's all right. I'd just be imposing. I do need to get something to eat though. I don't like eating while I'm driving and I didn't have time to stop. Is there anything open this late on Friday night?"

Jeff took his mother home and then took Teresa to a pizza place that stayed open until midnight. While they ate, Jeff asked Teresa how she managed to get there as soon as she did. Teresa shrugged.

"I took a personal day. Everything was running, so I wasn't really needed there anyway."

"You fixed that mess by this morning?"

"No, we had it fixed yesterday morning and the line ran all day. We're shipping by air and working over the weekend to get caught up, but we didn't shut the customer down."

Jeff frowned.

"You're either lying to me or you must be part magician. Some of the parts weren't due to arrive until today."

Teresa grinned.

"They didn't, but there are other places to get parts."

"Like where."

"Oh, like that extra ten percent of I/O you keep putting into everything. Then there's the three lines that hardly ever run. We'll have them put back together and running again in a couple of weeks, but Scheduling said they won't need them before that. I had to change a few things to get some of the parts to work, but they do now. After that, it was just wiring them all together and loading the program. We had a few hitches after that, loose connections and that sort of thing, but they were easy fixes."

"Well, even with all that, how did you get the whole thing done in two days? It took a week to wire it the first time."

Teresa sipped her soda, then shrugged.

"If you work sixteen hours a day, five days becomes two and a half. We didn't stop working when you left, you know."

"Bart let you do that?"

"Well, after a while he did. He told me you recommended me and that I was in charge, but he started telling us what to do right after that. I could see he didn't know what he was doing, so I asked him if he'd help me make a plan to get things running again. Once we were alone in his office, I told him he should just get out of our way, let us do what needed to be done, and let us work the hours we needed to do it. I also told him if he wouldn't do that, I'd quit and let him handle it all by himself."

Teresa grinned.

"He seemed to come around right after that."

Jeff sat back in the booth and laughed.

"You actually told him that?"

"Yes I did."

"So, I guess you saved my ass again."

Teresa shook her head.

"No, I saved both our asses. If the line hadn't run, Bart would have blamed me, and he'd have blamed you for recommending me. Now he can't do either."

}{

As Jeff lay in bed that night, he wondered if he'd seen the real Teresa or if she was just acting. She'd never said anything about liking working with him, and she'd always been a little standoffish. He couldn't figure out why she'd waste one of her five personal days to come to his dad's funeral, much less drive for five and a half hours to get there unless she did. He was also impressed that she'd been thinking he might get blamed if the line wasn't back up and running, and had worked to make sure he didn't.

Maybe it was just him who'd been standoffish, he thought. He'd always considered Teresa to be just a technician who had to do what he said. As soon as that thought entered his mind, he remembered what his dad had said to him.

"...and who never forgot how to treat other people."

Jeff realized he'd been treating Teresa like some robot who only did and only could do what he told her to do. Even after she'd found his programming mistake, he continued to treat her like that. She was an intelligent woman and she deserved better.

Tonight, she'd been just a woman, not a technician, and he'd discovered he liked being with her. He couldn't believe she felt anything like that after he'd basically ignored her for so long, but why else would she do what she'd done?

Those thoughts confused him even more, and he decided he had to find out in a different setting, a setting where the reason they were together wasn't sympathy or some sense that it was the proper thing to do.

After the funeral the next day, Jeff walked his mother to the funeral home limousine, then turned to face Teresa.

"Well, I guess I'll see you on Monday then."

"Yeah, I'll be there, just like always."

"I meant to tell you, you look really great when you're dressed up."

"Thanks. I don't get many chances to dress up what with work and all. It's kind of nice, well, dressing up for a funeral isn't nice, but it's nice to wear something besides work clothes."

Jeff smiled.

"You should do it more often."

Teresa grinned.

"That's probably not gonna happen. All I do is work and sleep."

"Well, it was kind of nice eating that pizza with you. We could do that again sometime if you want.

"You, an engineer, would ask a technician for a date?"

"No, but I'd date a woman who works as a technician and who's pretty nice to have pizza with."

"Where would we go?"

"I was thinking you might like Radizio's."

Teresa smiled.

"Radizio's is a little out of my comfort zone, but if you'll make it just another pizza, you've got a date."

"Well, another pizza it is then. I have to get Mom home now and you have a long drive ahead of you. We'll talk more on Monday, OK?"

}|{

On Monday morning, Jeff was looking at the marked up drawings Teresa had left on his desk when Bart walked up.

"It's good to have you back, Jeff. Everything all right back home?"

"As good as it can be I suppose. I hear the line's running."

Bart sighed.

"Yep. It was a hard slog, but we managed. Of course, I had to do some directing, but I figured I'd have to. It's a good thing I remembered about our idle equipment. I don't think we'd have made it otherwise."

"Oh? How so?"

Bart smiled again.

"The technicians were able to get enough parts from that equipment to get the line back up and running by Wednesday night. I had to make them work extra hours to do that, but we got it done."

"Some of that equipment had obsolete controls. It all worked?"

"Yeah. There wasn't any problem at all. Go take a look and you'll see."

Jeff had already seen. Teresa had marked up the drawings and his printed program to show him what she'd changed, and some of the changes were major. Some of the I/O she'd taken from other machines was larger in size and the connectors were different. Jeff didn't know how she'd done it, but somehow she and the other techs had fit the old I/O into the existing cabinet. She'd made new cables to make the connections to the control computer as well and changed two subroutines so the old I/O could communicate with the control computer. I have to see this for myself, he thought, and pushed his chair back from the desk.

When he got to the line, Teresa was standing there watching it run. She was the old Teresa with her baggy clothes and no makeup and with her hair stuffed under a ball cap. She grinned when he walked up to her.

"We're still running, and after the weekend, we're about caught up again."

"Well that's good. Teresa, you said you had to make a few changes, but you didn't tell me you redesigned the whole control system."

"I didn't, not really. I just matched up the old stuff to the new stuff. It wasn't all that hard to do. It just took time. Speaking of time, now that you're back, you can watch this line and I can go do something else."

Jeff put his hand on her shoulder to keep her from walking away.

"Are we still on for Saturday night?"

Teresa looked at the floor.

"If you still want to. I didn't know if you would or not."

}|{

They dated for two months before he kissed her on the doorstep to her apartment. Teresa melted into his arms and didn't back away when he broke the kiss.

"What was that for", she asked.

"It was because I think I love you."

"An engineer would be in love with a technician?"

Jeff chuckled.

"You're not a technician tonight. You're a pretty woman I like being with. I think I want to keep being with you too."

Teresa stroked the back of his head.

"You're not just saying that because of what I did when your dad passed away?"

Jeff pulled Teresa a little closer.

"Yes, in a way, but it's not what you did. It's what I understood when you did it. Before, you were just a technician I worked with. When you came to the funeral home, I realized you can be a very pretty woman when you want to. I also remembered one of the last things Dad said to me. He said I hadn't forgotten how to treat people. Well, I had forgotten how to treat people, or at least how I should have been treating you.

"When we had pizza that night, I found out you're smart woman that I liked being with. Over the last two months, I haven't changed my mind about that. I thought I should show you how I feel. If you don't feel he same way about me...well, it'll be hard, but I'll get over it somehow. I hope you feel at least something though."

Jeff saw tears in Teresa's eyes then.

"Why are you crying? Did I go too far too fast?"

Teresa wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

"I'm crying because I'm happy."

"So, you do feel something?"

Teresa nodded her head and then wiped her eyes again.

"Uh-huh. I have for a long time. I just didn't think you were interested."

Jeff kissed Teresa again, then pulled gently back and smiled.

"Does that convince you I am interested?"

Teresa sniffed.

"I don't know. Kiss me again and I'll tell you."

}|{

As in most places where a lot of people see each other every day, word spread fast that Jeff and Teresa were a "thing". Some said it would never last. Others said they thought it was great. Bart didn't think either of those things.

He called Jeff into his office one Friday afternoon about four thirty. When Jeff sat down, Bart frowned.

"I hear through the grapevine that you and that woman technician...what's her name...Teresa, yeah that's it, Teresa...that you and Teresa are seeing each other."

Jeff smiled.

"Yes, we are."

Bart shook his head.

"That's bad for the department, Jeff. I can't have my engineers and technicians going out together. I mean, the other managers will think I can't control my own people. You need to break this off before it gets out of hand."

Jeff felt his neck getting warm, something that had happened only a few times in his life, times when he was so mad about something he had to work hard to control his emotions.

"Just how would it get out of hand, Bart?"

"Well, the obvious way. It's all hunky-dory for a while and you'll start sleeping with her, but you'll figure out one of these days she's beneath you and dump her. Then she'll be pissed off and won't want to work with you. Things will suffer and I'll get the blame.

"I'm just trying to help here, Jeff. I know you're probably still grieving for your dad so you aren't thinking straight, but she's not the person you think she is."

Jeff felt his neck get warmer.

"She's the person who got your assembly line back up and running."

Bart smiled.

"With my help, yes she did, but only with my help."

"I suppose you were the one who figured out how to interface the obsolete I/O with the new system too."

"I already told you we didn't have to do that. It all worked."

Jeff leaned forward and put his hands on Bart's desk.

"Bart, I've looked at the machine and I've seen what Teresa did. What Teresa did is re-engineer that control system and bail your ass out of trouble. If you're trying to take credit for that, you're a pompous ass."

Bart frowned.

"I don't usually let my engineers talk to me that way. Because you just lost your dad, I'll make an exception...but just this once."

"I'd tell you the same thing any other time, so what are my options here? You going to fire me if I don't stop seeing her?"

"Hell no, I'm not going to fire you. You're too valuable to the company. I will have to fire her though. Like I said before, I can't have things like this going on in my department and she's just a technician I can easily replace."

Jeff stood up and thought for a moment to choose his words carefully.

"Bart, I'll tell you what. I can fix this little problem for you. I won't stop seeing Teresa, but since I won't be one of your employees after today, you'll be off the hook."

Bart's question was almost a gasp.

"You're quitting? After everything I've done for you?"

Jeff smiled a wry smile.

"Yes, Bart, and the only thing you've done for me is show me you really are a pompous ass who let his promotions make him think he was better than anybody else. I know what happened with that line and I know you couldn't have done what you said. You don't have the background or education to do what Teresa did.

"I could take it if you blamed me for doing something wrong even if I didn't, but I'm not going to take you interfering in my personal life and threatening Teresa if I don't do what you want. If you want to run things your way and dictate what people do outside of work, you'll have to do it without me. Have a nice life."

With that, Jeff turned around and walked out the door of Bart's office. It took him another fifteen minutes to clean out his desk, fifteen minutes of Bart begging him to stay and saying he was only saying he'd fire Teresa to get Jeff to stop seeing her. He followed Jeff to the door, still trying to convince him to stay. Jeff didn't give Bart the satisfaction of even talking with him.

He'd only just gotten inside his apartment when his cell phone buzzed. It was Teresa. Jeff tapped the "connect" icon.

"Hi, Teresa."

"Jeff, one of the guys on second shift called me and said you quit today."

"Yes, I did."

"What happened?"

"It's kind of a long story. Have you had dinner yet?"

}|{

Over another pizza, Jeff told Teresa about his conversation with Bart that afternoon. Teresa listened intently, and when he finished, she put her hand over his.

"Jeff, you shouldn't have done that for me. I don't want to be the reason you don't have a job."

Jeff shrugged.

"After Bart made the threat to fire you, I figured it was either let him have his way or quit so I could keep seeing you. I wanted you more than the job. Besides, I'm not worried about a job. I have headhunters calling me at least once a week."

Teresa's smile looked a little odd to Jeff. He asked her what was wrong. She just smiled again.

"Nothing's wrong. I think I'm ready to go home now."

On her door step, Jeff kissed Teresa like he had in the past. This time, instead of thanking him for dinner, Teresa looked up and smiled.

"Bart really thought we'd start sleeping together and then break up?"

"That's what he said."

Teresa traced his cheek with a fingertip.

"Maybe we should find out if that's what happens."

"Are you saying you want to...?"

Teresa moved her fingertip across his lips.

"Come inside with me and find out."

Teresa unlocked her door and stepped through. Jeff followed her, and when he was inside, she closed and locked the door again. Then, she turned to Jeff, put her arms around his neck and pressed her body against his.

"I know about you engineers. Sometimes you can't see something because you're looking in the wrong place. I've been ready for this for weeks, but you didn't seem to see that, so I decided I'd have to tell you."

Teresa backed away a little, lifted the hem of her T-shirt and grinned, then pulled it off over her head. She tossed it in the direction of the couch and then slipped the straps of her bra down over her shoulders. As she worked the hooks around to her front, she looked up at Jeff.

"I hope you're not disappointed. My boobs aren't very big."

Jeff reached out and stroked the left one.

"They're beautiful", was all he could think of to say.

Teresa unhooked the band and tossed it on top of her T-shirt, then unbuttoned her jeans, pulled down the zipper, and started working them off over her hips.

Jeff didn't think her breasts were all that small. Teresa wasn't very big herself, so the soft, twin globes that were swaying seductively fit her body size. He watched as Teresa kicked off her sandals, pulled her jeans down her slender legs, and then stepped out of them. She hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her red boy short panties, then looked up at Jeff.

"I guess I should let you do this, that is if you want to do what I hope you do."

Jeff didn't say anything. He just pulled Teresa to him and kissed her while ran his hands down her back to cup her firm cheeks. Teresa slipped her arms up between them and put them around his neck. After a few seconds, she pulled gently back.

"Does that mean you're interested?"

"I'm very interested, but I don't have anything with me."

Teresa smiled.

"You don't need anything. I took care of that weeks ago when I decided you were more to me than just another engineer. I'm safe."

"Then show me your bedroom and you'll find out how interested I am."

Teresa pulled the blanket and sheet down to the foot of the single bed while Jeff took off his clothes as quickly as he could. Then, he pulled her to him and smiled.

"I hope you won't be disappointed either. I don't have a lot of experience at this."

Teresa stroked his cheek.

"Don't worry about it. I don't either, but between an engineer and a technician, we should be able to figure it out."

Jeff was gentle as he kissed her again. Teresa was gentle as well. She felt his cock pressing into her tummy and reached down to lightly stroke it as she pressed her breasts tightly into his chest. A few moments later, she eased back and led him to the bed.