Pat

Deja Vu b

After dropping the kids off at school, I went to the repair guy Gabe told me about but he hadn’t opened yet so I went to the next repair shop. It was a few shops away but it was open.

“Hi, do you guys repair laptops?” I asked the lady at the counter.

“Yes we do. Give me a minute, let me get one of the people who do,” she said and disappeared through a door labelled ‘Staff Only’.

“Hi, how can I help you today?” that voice sounded familiar. I looked up from my phone and there she was, the woman from my dream.

“I…umm…I…I…” I cleared my throat. “The lady that was here told me she went to get someone that would help me…I mean my laptop,”

“I am that someone. What is wrong with it?”

“It went off and refused to switch back on,”

“This is a very nice machine, how long have you had it?”

“Honestly, I can’t remember, it’s one of those things you just find yourself with and have no idea how they got in your possession but I think my husband got it for me way before we got married and we’ve been married almost five years,” I was telling a stranger a lot of private details. I thought to myself.

“Five years? That’s a long time. But don’t worry I’ll fix it,”

“I need it in a few hours. I run my business through it,”

“What kind of business?”

“I write online articles and stuff like that,”

“Sounds interesting,”

“I enjoy writing. It’s something that comes naturally to me.”

“I’ll start on it immediately. You can come back in three hours. I’ll have it ready by then,”

“Thank you so much,”

“It’s my pleasure,”I’m not sure whether it was the way she said it or the little smirk on her lips when she said it by my heartbeat dropped down to my lady part.

I decided to wait for it a nearby café because driving all the way home and then back would be a lot of work.

I lost track of time and went back thirty minutes after the said three hours. She explained all the things that needed to be fixed and replaced and what caused it to behave that way. I expected the bill to be equivalent to buying a new machine.

“That’ll be two thousand,” the cashier said. I thought it was a mistake. “A new fan belt is one thousand five hundred and the labour is five hundred,” she explained.

I paid my tab and took the receipt to the other side to collect my laptop.

“I think you made a mistake billing me,”

“Nop, that was the only thing that needed a new part everything else could be easily fixed or replaced,”

“But the labour, let me pay for that,”

“I’ll be offended if you do. Helping a beautiful woman is payment enough for me.” I could feel myself blushing.

As she handed back my laptop, her hand accidentally brushed against mine and I almost dropped it. I thanked her and left. I sat in the car for a few minutes trying to catch my breath when my phone rang.

“Babe where are you? We need those orders sent back today,”

“I’m on my way,” I said and hang up. I drove back home thinking about her. That was some Twilight Zone type of weird. How could I dream of a woman I had never met before only to meet her a few days later?