In which it turns out that all is not quite what it seems

Today was a beautiful day, and with the bank holiday weekend almost upon us, my team decided to treat ourselves to lunch in the sunshine. Wandering back to the office with two of my colleagues, the conversation turned to the colleague who (unbeknown to them) recently asked me out, and the fact that he is dating my schoolfriend.

"Really?" questioned my brunette colleague. "He's seeing someone?"

"Mmm," I responded with forced nonchalance. "It's early days, but he seems to like her. I think he cooked her dinner the other night."

Brunette raised her eyebrows and replied, slightly frostily, that she supposed that it was a good thing he was looking outside of the office for once.

Obviously, my interest was piqued, so I questioned this. "Ooh, no-one you know," replied Brunette, who has worked at The PR Agency for a lot longer than me. "I think he had a thing with someone who left last year, and, well... we did exchange a couple of emails."

I glanced at her but she was staring pointedly ahead. "Um..." I ventured. "I exchanged a couple of emails with him too." Now Brunette looked round, so I continued with a wry smile, "He asked me out."

"He asked me out!" said Brunette, looking surprised.

Now I wondered what I'd gotten into, so I quickly explained that he'd cancelled on me. "He's cancelled on me five times!" said Brunette, now starting to laugh. Just as we thought it could get worse, our companion chimed in, "He hit on me too."

Brunette and I both turned to stare at Blonde, who is married! "We went for lunch," she continued, "and afterwards he emailed saying he knew it was inappropriate, but he thinks I'm really great."

By this point we were all in stitches. "He sent me that same email!" I squealed. "But without the bit about it being inappropriate!"

"He's probably got a template set up in Outlook!" laughed Brunette, and we all dissolved into fits of giggles.

Further investigation suggests that he's been 'involved' with Brunette the longest, with Blonde coming in a couple of months ago and me most recently. We haven't checked the dates exactly, but it seems there may have been some cross-over between Brunette and I - it's not impossible that he was emailing us on the same days. We've decided to put out a few feelers and see if anyone else has been in any way involved - it seems likely, don't you think?! You have to have a grudging respect for him really. He's been putting a lot of trust in the idea that we won't talk to each other about it... either that or, as Forces Wife suggested, he's completely shameless!

The gentleman in question is leaving work in a couple of months, so we have plenty of time to plot our revenge. We'd like to bring to his attention the fact that he's been caught out... and preferably in a fairly public way! As he's dating someone, we don't want to go down the obvious route of asking him out and then all turning up, in a John Tucker Must Die type scenario, but we've got plenty of time to think of an alternative... and if you have any ideas, I would love to hear from you!

In which The Journalist does not email me

I mentioned in my last post that my birthday bought with it a text message from The Journalist. He said he thinks about me a lot, I'm "pretty wonderful" and, crucially, that he would email me during the week. To be clear, those were his exact words: "I will email you during the week."

I should never have got my hopes up as a) my birthday was a Friday and he texted at 11pm, meaning there is a 100% chance he was drunk, b) he has the memory of a goldfish and has been known to forget entire conversations held less than 24 hours ago and c) he has a girlfriend. I realise he doesn't sound like much of a catch at this point, but you have to trust me when I say there is just something about this man. He manages to make all his failings utterly charming (except the part about having a girlfriend).

The Journalist likes me (more on that later) and he knows that I like him. When we were both in relationships, we emailed sporadically, met up for the occasional drink, and flirted outrageously within fairly safe parameters. Because we were both unavailable, we knew where we stood. We were on equal footing - if either of us had called an end to it, the other would have coped just fine. When things cooled off significantly a few months ago, I won't pretend I didn't miss him, but I knew it was best for everyone concerned.

Of course, now, everything is different. I'd written him off until I got his text message (our first contact since his birthday a couple of months ago) but now I was all over the place again. Yes, things would be easier if he was single, but I'm not going to get involved in trying to make that happen. However, I do like him, he is great company, and a few drinks and some flirting would be nice. Hardly admirable, but there you have it.

The week started, and continued, without an email. On Monday, I was ok with this. It wouldn't do for him to look too keen. On Tuesday, I started to obsess a tiny bit. Just a tiny bit. By Wednesday, I was jumping six foot out my chair every time an email came through (I work in PR and receive approximately 500 emails a day). On Thursday morning I thought, f*** it, it's only The Journalist, and emailed him.

Then the real fun started. He didn't email back. I realised that if I checked his Twitter account, I could see if he was tweeting from "web" or "Blackberry" therefore allowing me to ascertain whether or not he was at his desk and receiving his emails. In short, I became a crazy person, in a surprisingly short amount of time.

And then he emailed: "No, I will not go out with you. I have a girlfriend and you are a mental person. Due to cutting edge technology that you are currently unaware of, I am able to see that you have checked my Twitter account 47 times in the last four hours. Yes, I have your email. Yes, I am ignoring you. Please leave me alone and get help."

(This didn't actually happen. But it could have done.)

That night, I convinced myself his email would be waiting when I got to work the next morning. It wasn't. So I broke every rule in The Rules and DM'd him on Twitter. I kept it light. I asked if he'd got my email (I know, cringe) and said it was unlike him to reply. And he messaged me back straight away! He said, yes, he had got my email, but he was very busy and had forgotten to respond. He said he wasn't sure if he was busy next week, but he would let me know via email. He said "I promise." There was a kiss.

So, what we have here is a situation where he has, to all intents and purposes, said he will email me during the week. I am in trouble.