but realistically, her nerves had begun to catch up with her.
She knocked hesitantly and clutched her toolbag tightly with her sweaty hand. She heard a muffled grumbling noise and then the shuffling of feet coming toward her. The door swung open and a disheveled man who had clearly just woken up stood before her. His eyes were puffy and red, which Piper assumed was from doing drugs of some sort. His hair, which was somewhere between blond and brown, was matted in some areas and then looked as though it was attempting to escape from his head in other areas.
He wore baggy gray sweatpants and a green buttoned-down shirt that was wide open, exposing his chest and stomach. Piper noticed he was fit and had a thick, raised scar running from his chest down to his belly button. Even with the repulsive lack of grooming he had a gorgeous face. The structure of his lips and cheeks were rigid and incredibly masculine. He reminded Piper of a young James Dean, weathered but smolderingly handsome.
“They send a freaking skirt to fix my cable? What the hell is this world coming to?” Sean asked as he squinted to look Piper over. The bright lights of the hallway were too much for his cloudy and watery eyes. Piper was beginning to wonder what kind of backward town Edenville must be. Its occupants had such a hard time wrapping their mind around a woman being able to run some wires and drill some holes. She wasn’t sure if they thought work at the cable company was so complicated or that girls weren’t capable of manual labor. “At least you’re hot. Let’s get this over with already. I’ve got shit, like work, to do on my computer.”
Piper wanted to interject that chatting with other unmotivated strangers while blowing things up in the latest video game didn’t count as work. Instead, she smiled and followed Sean into his apartment. Not surprisingly, it was a mess. The apartment itself was quite nice, with a brick fireplace and granite countertops in the kitchen, but it was overrun with beer bottles, ashtrays, and piles of clothes.
“Sorry you’re having trouble with your cable. I'm sure I can get it fixed so you can get back to work,” Piper spoke in a coy, quiet voice and smiled warmly at Sean. She made her way to the first television in the room. She knew full well that the problem with his cable didn’t lie in the house. She had disconnected his service from outside.
Sean plopped down on the couch, and she could feel his eyes on her. Piper had on a lace tank top beneath her uniform and had left most of the buttons on her shirt undone. In a very degrading move she had searched through her old clothes to find a pair of thong underwear that she hiked up above the line of her khaki pants. It was all incredibly demeaning to her, but she had known guys like Sean her whole life. She knew what he’d be thinking as she bent down to get access behind the television.
“Oh wow,” Piper sang, feigning surprise. “You have the Demons from the Depths Five? I’ve been on the waiting list to get a copy of that for weeks. You’re so lucky.” Piper felt her face warm a little as she tried to sound like an envious fellow gamer.
“It’s not luck. You have to be someone in this town to get access to shit like that so early. You play?” She assumed that was some kind of gamer slang and that he was asking her if she liked video games.
“A little,” she answered. “I can hold my own. But I guess it doesn’t matter, since I’m not someone in this town I won’t get a chance to play it for a while,” Piper used her fingers to make air quotes and show a sassy side.
“If you ever get my shit fixed here, then maybe I’ll let you lose to me for a while.” Sean had clearly spotted the lacey clues Piper had left for him to find all over her body. She could feel his interest in her growing. He had a devilish smile creeping across his face.
“I’ll have it fixed in just a few minutes, but I have other jobs to get to so I can’t stay, even though I’d really like to hang for a while.” Piper wasn't sure if people still said things like hang, and she could feel her