Match Made In Hell

Allow Me to Introduce Myself

"Amalia, we need D4 rewired," Thomas, my boss said smiling at me.

"I still have to do D3. I ran out of RJ45 jacks," I said smiling back.

"There's some more in the bottom drawer of Barbara's desk," he said pointing to Barbara's desk.

"Ok, I'll be gone for a few hours. If you're looking for me, I'll be in either D3 or D4."

"Alright, I'll come and check on you in a bit. I have a meeting with Operations and then I'll be out in the shop."

"Cool beans," I said snatching up the RJ45 jacks, cables, splitter, tester and kit."

I put on my safety glasses and headed out to the shop. I looked at my hands. Oh how I longed to be able to get my nails done like other chics. Being a network engineer prevented me from doing that. I did all the cabling and network administration for all three buildings. This time I had to have the facilities team bring the scaffolding out so that I could get up to the ceiling to run the cables down to D3 and D4. I didn't mind the scaffolding though, 26 feet up in the air. It was the most dangerous part of the job, well, besides testing for live wires in the walls.

It was funny to watch all the black men in the shop look up at me crazy when I got up on the scaffolding in my steel-toed reeboks and True Religion jeans. I thought I was sexy, but I had been told by many that was too manly. Hell, I wasn't fat, but I was no supermodel, just average, I guess. I was 36 and looked pretty good for my age. I had a flat stomach long as I didn't have to raise my shirt up. Ha! I had so many stretch marks on my stomach it wasn't funny, but I had lost all my baby weight. Benjamin was four now and him and Briana were my only kids.

Briana was 14, and somehow I had Benjamin when she was 10 years old. I had only planned for one child but then I had gotten married and he didn't have any kids. My goofy ass, figuring that we would be together forever, had a baby with him. He started cheating, or rather got caught cheating when I was 4 months pregnant, and so I had put him out. Unfortunately, I put him out after he had busted both of my lips and blacked my eye. Either way he was gone now, and we were divorced. The scaffolding shook a little as I went higher and higher. I put the bright yellow hardhat on and threw the 20 ethernet cables up and over the steel beam supporting part of the ceiling and clipped a zip tie around them.

"Down a level!" I yelled, and the scaffolding lowered a bit. I tied another zip tie around the beam and cables, all the way down to D3. I got down off the scaffolding and Donald from the Facilities team rolled it back down the aisle. I separated the cords and tied them into two bundles and stuffed them through the wall.

"How you doing today Ms. Malia?" Teddy asked as he walked past in his rubber apron.

"I'm good and you?" I smiled.

Teddy was a machinist like most of the guys that worked in the shop. Either the guys were machinists or working in a shipping capacity, running around in the shop on their forklifts. Some of them were fine as hell. I wasn't the type that really mixed business with pleasure, but sometimes it was so tempting. There was one guy named Donte and I talked to him all the time, but he was married. We went out twice but not on no date type shit. We had a couple drinks while he talked through the issues that he was having with his wife. I was cool with that. I certainly wasn't into dating no married man, and so I made it clear that it was purely platonic from the get go.

He still found a way to be around me after work sometimes. He had helped me move into my first house when I purchased it. I didn't say no either because I knew nobody else that could do it. I'm an only child so, and most of my male cousins were always busy when you asked them to do something. So I chose to let Donte help me. The three bedroom house was perfect for me and my babies. I had a large yard for Benji, and Briana had already called dibs on one of the basement rooms for her studio. The remainder of the basement was my bar. I had put a pool table down there, it already had a built in bar. My dart board was supposed to be delivered from Amazon by the end of the week and Donte had promised to help me put it up.