I rolled my eyes at her reference to our scaling of men. In the beginning, she expected him to be an eight because I said he was a ten. Sisters.
“He’s really hot,” Anna gushed. “I think he looks like a younger Daniel Craig. Can I still say that he’s hot, even though I’m getting married next week and he might be my future brother-in-law?”
“Ooh, a hot older man that looks like James Bond,” Bridget said salaciously, raising both of her eyebrows. Bridget has always had a thing for older men and would prefer George Clooney over Ryan Gosling any day. “What’s his name?”
“Oh shit!” I exclaimed. I totally hadn’t thought about this until now. Bridget not only worked at MS, but she was in HR. She had probably heard of Ryan and maybe even knew him. Could I trust her to keep this confidential? I needed to make it clear to her, just in case it wasn’t obvious.
“Bridget … he’s a CVP. I don’t know if … I don’t think I should tell you his full name,” I said carefully. “You’re in HR. I’m sorry. I just don’t want anyone at work to know about this. If anyone were to find out …” I started to panic. Bridget was one of my best friends, so how could I keep this from her? Things were just happening so fast.
“Julia, it’s okay. I was only curious. Don’t worry. I won’t say anything. You can trust me to keep this confidential. I know what the implications are if you don’t,” she said reassuringly. “So who is he?” she still asked sheepishly with a mischievous grin.
I waited before saying his name. There was no turning back after this. I covered my face with both hands and took a deep breath. “Ryan McGraw.”
“Holy shit!” Bridget exclaimed, spitting out the last sip of her drink.
“I know.” I cringed and then looked at her carefully. “Now do you see why I’m a little freaked out? No one can know from Megasoft! Got it?”
“Got it.” Bridget nodded and held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.” She slapped my knee. “Wow, Ryan McGraw … He’s, he’s, just … wow.” With her eyes already wide, a thought occurred to her and they got impossibly bigger. “You don’t report into him or anything, do you? You aren’t in his chain of command, right?”
“No, thank God.”
“Okay, then you’re good. There’s nothing to worry about from an HR policy perspective. Having said that, I think you probably know that it’s not a good idea for the word to get out, though, right?”
“Totally.” I nodded emphatically. “I didn’t even what to tell you, remember?” I pointed out.
“Wow. Fate and forbidden love!” Sarah said dramatically, sounding like she was a voiceover in a movie preview.
Everyone laughed but me. Sarah was starting to get on my nerves a bit.
“Okay, enough speculation and discussion about my love life. Let’s have Anna open gifts before she passes out.” I took her third cosmo away, causing her to pout. If she wasn’t going to pace herself, then I needed to do it for her. Otherwise, we’d be pouring her into bed by ten.
For the next thirty minutes, Anna opened her gifts and ended up with four super sexy pieces of lingerie. My favorite was a black bustier with matching panties and garters. I would never have the guts to purchase something like that on my own. Just looking at it and imagining myself wearing it in front of Ryan made me blush.
Appetizers, penis cake, dinner and several drinks later, we ended up at a nightclub in Pioneer Square. It was an ultra-trendy club with overpriced drinks, but it had a cool lounge that was lit like a futuristic blue room. The club was known as a great place for dancing and attracting top DJ talent. I didn’t realize you needed talent to be a DJ, but apparently it’s a real skill to spin top 40 with hip hop and house music. Who knew?
The girls were all on the dance floor and Anna and Sarah were flirting outrageously, dirty dancing with a couple of attractive young fraternity guys. Seriously? I’m sure the frat boys were getting a kick out of being picked up by two attractive older women. It’s not like we were all that much older, but when you’re twenty-two, someone who is twenty-eight or twenty-nine is pretty darn old. Anna looked like she was going to keel over. I better keep an eye on her.
I needed to pee. I left Bridget and Allison dancing with a few guys we had picked up earlier in the evening. A little innocent flirtation was harmless and they were nowhere near the blatant flirts Anna and Sarah were. I was feeling warm and dizzy from the overcrowded room and suffocated by the close body contact on the dance floor. There were silver disco balls of all sizes hanging down from the high ceiling and the blinking lights reflecting off of them were starting to give me a headache. If I kept looking at them, I was probably going to have a disco ball-induced seizure or something. I was a lightweight and I knew I was way past my drink limit for the night. I knew I had the one cosmo at my place and two glasses of wine at dinner, and two, or was this my third, at the club …