Ryan: Can I join you?
Me: Sure
Ryan: Where do you run?
Me: Greenlake tomorrow
Ryan: What time?
Me: 6:30? Meet me at crew house on south end
Ryan: perfect
Me: C u there
Ryan: Have a good day at work tomorrow
Me: You too
My second week on the job meant that I was drinking out of the fire hose full blast. I had several meetings laid out for the week where I planned to introduce myself to various people that Catherine said should be on my “meet and greet” list. This included Kyle, among several others, who would be able to educate me on all things Portals 8 launch related. If I wasn’t in a meeting or scheduling one, I spent the rest of my time drowning in the endless pit of documentation called SharePoint.
I couldn’t help thinking about Ryan; I was beyond eager to see him tonight. I even closed my door, put in headphones, and snuck a peek at one of the YouTube videos I came across when I had searched for him the other night.
I recalled the conversation my teammates and I had just last week about Ryan. Of course, I didn’t know then that they were talking about my Ryan. My Ryan. I liked the sound of that. It made me a little paranoid and jealous that there were probably many other women who had similar discussions about him. I mean, how many eligible men like him really existed here at MS? If women knew he was available, I bet there would be a line waiting outside his office. Then again, even if he wasn’t available, there would still probably be a line out the door.
Interoffice dating was a regular occurrence at MS, as it probably was in all companies, but I wasn’t sure how many of them involved a senior executive and an employee lower in the corporate hierarchy. I recalled past rumors about a few different executives who were supposedly diddling one of their employees. For each of these rumors, the man was always an up-and-coming executive in his late thirties or early forties, attractive, and charismatic. The female employee was always a younger, attractive Ivy League grad that was several levels lower than him and who was just starting her post-graduate career. Late afternoon meetings soon turned into closed door meetings, with the need to stay late at the office. A few months later, it was usually the post-grad that ended up moving jobs into another group. Other women in the org would whisper how she slept her way to the top and she was an idiot for letting the senior male take advantage of her. I was guilty of participating in some of those discussions. Not too long after, rumors would circulate about the GM getting a divorce. I wondered if HR had a scorecard that tracked all of this somewhere. Maybe senior executives cheating on their wives just went with the territory.
Maybe there was even a recent sexy Harvard graduate that already had her sights on Ryan. I wondered if Ryan had any idea how he was perceived by the female population around him. Judging by his awareness of his presence on the internet, he probably had no clue. I couldn’t help feeling a little smug, though. The hottest, most eligible MS executive bachelor was interested in me, at least as far as I could tell. But, if things didn’t work out between us, would I end up being another unofficial scorecard metric? Granted, he wasn’t a married man having an affair, but he was a powerful executive. If the rumor got out, it could jeopardize my career and possibly his as well. I could end up being one of those embarrassing rumors.
I convinced myself that it was different between us. He wasn’t taking advantage of me, nor was I in his reporting chain of command. But would the MS jury of public opinion think so, too? Could we even keep it a secret? I supposed I could live with limiting public outings and making sure there were no joint appearances around the office. I knew we weren’t at the point in our relationship where we needed to talk about any of this stuff in any level of detail, but I couldn’t help anticipating that these questions would soon need to be answered.
At 5:45, I decided to head out. As I drove away from campus, my thoughts wandered from potential career-limiting moves to Anna’s wedding. I wondered when or if Ryan would ever get back to me about it. I never should’ve asked him. Now it’s become this thing that’s out there and I can’t take it back. It was like asking someone to the prom and getting a maybe as your answer. The only reasonable conclusion for the maybe was because the person didn’t want to either reject you outright or they were waiting for someone else to ask them.
I let out a big sigh. I was so glad I was going for a run tonight. My brain was too full of information from the documentation overload and then thinking about the implications of getting involved with Ryan—all of it made my head spin. Not to mention I was wound up with nervous excitement at the idea of seeing him again. I needed an outlet for all my pent up energy.