Nerd Girl (7 page)

It’s never me.

“It was fate!” Anna exclaimed. “I mean, seriously. He hits you with his car. Then you just happen to bump into him at Betty’s. He works at MS—you work at MS. He lives in Queen Anne—you live in Queen Anne. Why the hell didn’t you get his last name?” She’s yelling at me now and people started to look over at us.

It was Sunday morning and Anna and I were having brunch at a local bakery in my neighborhood. I filled her in on the details of the week which included my getting hit by a car, my job interview, and my unexpected dinner with Ryan.

“I don’t know!” My voice pitched as I wailed pathetically. “The whole evening took me by surprise. I just wasn’t thinking.” I took another bite of my scrambled eggs and noticed the room was getting busy. A long line of people were waiting behind the cash register and more continued to enter into the small café for their daily dose of caffeine.

“Oh, come on, Jules. You’re so full of shit right now. How often does someone get hit by a car driven by a hottie and then randomly meet again to
then
have dinner together? You end up having this amazing connection, and then you guys both just leave? No phone number, no name, nothing? What the fuck?” Anna arched both eyebrows and looked exasperated. “And you said he kissed you!” she continued to rant.

“Well, no, not exactly. I said he kissed me on the forehead, not the lips,” I clarified.

She ignored that detail. “But you wanted to kiss him, right? Do you think he wanted to kiss you? On the lips, that is?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said, uncertain. “It was sort of like he was having an argument in his head. I’m sure he had his reasons for doing what he did,” I said in his defense.

“Do you think he has a girlfriend … or a wife?” Anna pressed her lips together as if waiting for me to deny her claim.

“Well, he didn’t have a ring on his finger. I noticed that at least.” I rolled my eyes in an effort to show Anna that I wasn’t completely clueless. “He might have a girlfriend, but we didn’t talk about any relationships.”

“Why not?” she asked accusingly. “You were with him for almost six hours. There was this mutual unspoken attraction between the two of you and you’re telling me that the topic of relationships never came up?” She looked at me incredulously.

“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. Besides, I didn’t want to bring up Andrew. Nothing is a bigger damper on a conversation than bringing up your ex. No thank you. I was NOT going to go there.”

With one eyebrow raised, Anna speculated, “Maybe he’s in a similar situation; in between relationships? Maybe he felt it was impolite to bring up an ex, just like you. Or maybe he has a girlfriend and she’s the one that stood him up that night, and he just didn’t want to tell you. Or maybe he’s gay?”

“Okay, just stop it, Anna. I don’t think he’s gay.” I rolled my eyes at her once again. I was getting irritated now. “I don’t think he’s the type to cheat on someone, either. He seemed like such a responsible and honest person.”

“How would you know? You’ve dated two guys now that have cheated on you, and you had no clue.”

I cringed at the truth of her words and looked away. Her insensitivity was really starting to piss me off.
Sisters
“Well, there’s no point in discussing this further. It’s done. We shared one dinner together and it was lovely. I’ll never see him again, so that’s just how it is. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“So, on a scale of one to ten, how cute was he?” Anna asked with a gleam in her eye.

“Definite ten,” I said without hesitation.

“On your scale or mine?”

“Mine, of course.”

“Then a solid eight.”

“Anna!” I scolded, offended.

She looked at me defensively with wide eyes. “What? It’s nothing new that you and I have always had different taste in men.”

I decided to ignore her. “He’s almost eight years older, though. I’ve never dated anyone that old before. Do you think that would be a problem?”

“So you admit it! You do want to date him.”

I sighed in defeat. “Okay, yes, I guess I do,” I finally admitted, both to myself and her. “But I have no way of finding him, so it’s just wishful thinking.” I kept telling her this not-so-minor detail, but she’d clearly decided to ignore it.

Anna leaned in closer and narrowed her eyes at me. “Do you know what I think?”

“What do you think, Anna?” I mocked boredom.

“I think you subconsciously did it on purpose,” she said, pointing her finger at me accusingly. She knew me so well. Before I could respond to her accusation, she shifted her flow of thought and whined, “Oh Jules, why did you let him get away?” She looked as sad as I felt that night after Ryan had walked away from me. “You know, you’ve got to put yourself out there again. You’re such an amazing person and sometimes I think you have no idea. This is the first person that’s piqued your interest since Andrew and … I get it. You need some time to get over him, but it’s been three, almost four months now. Andrew broke your confidence, but you need to get it back. What better way to do that than finding someone new to replace him?”

I was reminded of how much I loved my sister. Despite her occasional craziness, I knew she had my best interest at heart. “You’re right. I know,” I said with sad resignation.

I looked up at Anna and saw renewed energy on her face.
Oh goodness, here we go.

“Julia, you’ve got to find him. I can feel it. I can sense it. He’s your destiny.” This was classic Anna. She was such a drama queen. “Okay, let’s think for a moment,” she continued. “Is there really no way for you to find or contact him again? There’s got to be some way.”

God love her for trying.
I decided to humor her. “I could go through the MS GAL, which is the company global address list, and try to locate all the Ryans that work out of the Redmond office, then narrow it down to those that work in marketing.” Anna still looked hopeful, so I had to burst her bubble. “In a ninety thousand person company, that would probably narrow it down to hundreds of people. I think that would be pretty ridiculous to attempt and I doubt I’d have much luck.”

Anna’s eyebrows creased and she was now frowning.

“Besides, I already tried that.” I looked up at her sheepishly. There were exactly 654 Ryans in the MS GAL. “He’s probably forgotten about me anyways. There’s a reason he didn’t want my phone number. If I chased him down, I’d be stalking him. He’d think I was a freak.”

She looked at me like a mother scolding her child, arching an eyebrow. “Julia, you’re a pretty intuitive person most of the time. Don’t tell me that you honestly think you didn’t make some sort of lasting impression on him. From how you described the whole evening, he was totally into you. He’s probably thinking the same thing you are right now. Stop selling yourself short.”

“That’s exactly what he said,” I mumbled.

“What?” Anna looked confused.

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “It doesn’t matter. Like I said, I have no way to get in touch with him. It’s too late, so let’s just drop it.”

She sighed. “Fiiine,” she exaggerated.

I needed to change the subject. In an effort to keep myself from tearing up, I asked Anna how the meeting went the other night with the Edgewater Hotel catering staff. I knew this would lead to other wedding plan discussions that would occupy our conversation for the next hour.

Anna talked about dinner entrée options; my slow-rising emotion finally surfaced and bittersweet regret flowed over me. I’d completely blown it with Ryan. As I listened to Anna ramble on about salmon versus flank steak, I just wanted to crawl back into my bed and cry.

With my Starbucks tall drip coffee in hand, I headed towards Building 36, looking for my new office. I was starting my new job today and feeling a mixture of excitement and anxiety.

I had decided to take a three day weekend before starting my new job and spent the weekend cleaning house, both literally and figuratively. Two weeks had gone by without any further Ryan sightings. After the whole dinner episode with Ryan, I found myself in a funk again. My initial relief at letting him go quickly turned into regret and it left me in a somber mood. I realized I had been sulking ever since my breakfast with Anna. However, over the weekend, I decided I was ready to shake off all this negativity and sadness. My mood and attitude really needed a makeover.

To get my groove back, I applied some retail therapy and bought new clothes to spice up my summer wardrobe. I got a pedicure with sexy, bright red nail polish, which I planned on showing off with my new open toe wedge sandals. I also added some summer highlights to my dark brown hair, hoping the lighter look would lighten my mood. The most satisfying thing about this weekend was that I had cleaned out all reminders of Andrew.

At the start of the weekend, I’d found myself flipping through the GAL again. I was feeling pretty pathetic, especially as I tried to decipher the GAL and
come up with some code that would miraculously reveal which entry was the right Ryan. If I continued this worthless pursuit, I knew I would drive myself nuts, so from that point forward, I decided to stop obsessing further about Ryan. No more. He was merely a memorable chance encounter. I would focus on my new job and I give myself a break from men. I would remake myself again, as I’ve always done. Why should this time be any different?

With that decision made, I settled into a weekend of alone time. I dug out my
Harry Potter
books, because I needed to stay away from romance novels for a while. I started at the third book. I needed a literary escape and it was my opinion that
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
was when the series started getting really good. This was also a tribute to the nerdy part in me. The four remaining books in the series were a commitment to get through over the next several months, but they were my favorites and the ending always made me feel so hopeful.

As I rounded the corner at the top of the stairs, I admired my pretty toenails and new sandals. I had a clear head and was nervously excited. As I followed the office number signs down a hallway, I passed a lobby area with a foosball table, big screen TV and contemporary white leather lounge sofa with matching white chairs. As I passed several more halls, I noticed each hallway had a green street sign under the office number signs. Each was the name of a famous city. I passed by New York, Miami, New Orleans, and finally saw my office number range located under “Los Angeles.”

As I entered my office, I took in my new surroundings with renewed energy. I had a meeting with Catherine later this morning, but I had thirty minutes to unpack and get situated. Over the weekend, all my boxes were moved from my old office to my new one. My keyboard, docking station, and monitor had already been set up—you had to love MS moving services. They had this down to a science, making you as efficient as you could be as soon as you could be. Anything MS could do to support working long unreasonable hours, they did so with enthusiasm. I docked my PC to make sure everything was working and hooked up properly. Before I could login, I found a smiling guy standing in my door. He looked cheerful and welcoming. He appeared to be about my age, maybe a little younger.

“Hi, are you Julia?” he asked with friendly inquisitiveness and a slight Indian accent.

“Um, yes, that’s me.” I smiled and nodded.

“Well, it’s so nice to meet you.” He walked forward into my office and extended his arm to shake my hand. “I’m Vivek. I work on Catherine’s team as well. We’re all really excited to finally have you here!” he gushed.

“It’s really nice to meet you,” I greeted enthusiastically.

“We’re actually neighbors. My office is right next door.”

Vivek was well-dressed in a short sleeve, retro, white button down tucked into designer jeans that were cinched with a chic, brown leather belt. I approved of his brown patent ankle boots that fit easily under his jeans. He was the classic MS metrosexual. It figured he was in marketing. You just didn’t see guys this well dressed in IT or in the product groups. MS had two types of people, technical and non-technical. The product groups are technical groups that develop and code the software. These are the hardcore nerds and they can care less what they look
like. Marketing, on the other hand, is non-technical. They care (occasionally too much) about personal hygiene, so naturally, this means they’re dressed better. I was going to have to step up my wardrobe. We chit chatted about my old job and why I wanted a change. He told me a little bit about his role and function on the team. He handled developer audience marketing.