3.

Jan 19, 1994

Kathy is moving full speed ahead and we'll be done with each other sooner rather than later. We had lunch together to go over some of the specifics, like selling the house and assorted crap and will I pay off her car? I didn't know she had financed it, but that says a lot about our relationship over the last couple of years, I guess. There was a lot I didn't know. Seeing her wasn't as uncomfortable as I thought it would be. I'm not angry now, and now I know she made the right decision even if her timing was abysmal.

I told her there's someone I'm interested in, I don't know why I did because I wasn't out to hurt her; maybe because I know she wants me to be happy? She was fine with it and already knew I was trying to date because Dack told her; she guessed who without being told. How the hell did she know? She says it's never been a secret from anyone, that they all knew that sooner or later I would drift towards Charlie, but she thought it would take me a little longer. What the hell?

I didn't really know, either, but I sure as hell had not been quiet with my friends about what I thought about Ian. I think I'd mentioned one time too many how cute I thought he was, and how funny and friendly he was, and how lucky his wife had to be. I'd realized he always turned his paperwork in to me when he came back from an assignment and he flirted, but I tried not to make anything of it and I never realized everyone else had noticed.

If I had known then that his soon-to-be-ex had set him up with several women for the sole purpose of chewing through my 25-dates demand—I honestly don't know how I would have reacted, but it's one of the reasons I was willing to give her a chance later, when we visited his parents and she was right there down the street, offering us the use of her house. She loved him; she let him go but she still loved him, which I've always thought was somewhat of a testament to the kind of man he is and the respect she has for him.

In any case, I knew most of the women I worked with were well aware of what I thought about him, but no one ever told me they thought it was working both ways. It's probably a good thing they didn't, or I would have been terrified.

He created his own version of speed dating, and it took him less than a month to do it. All that gossip and tittering behind my back, I didn't realize what they were laughing about was that he was completely upfront about what he was doing. It turned into an office mission: everyone date Murf, just go to McDonald's for lunch with him or a quick walk in the park, because that constitutes a date. He had the married women in the office upset because, even though he was only going through the motions and they knew it, he refused to “date” a married woman.

There was even debate about whether I specifically told him to date 25 women, or 25 people, because there were a couple of guys who volunteered to help him chalk off a couple of slots on his list and were a little put off when it was decided that I'd probably been specific about gender.

Less than a month after he asked me out, Ian walked into the office and marched up to my desk to tell me he had held up his end of the deal; did I intend to hold up mine? He started out trying to act brash and tough, but in seconds melted a little and looked like a little boy asking please? I didn't quite believe him, though, because there was no way anyone could have dated up that kind of frenzy so quickly.

Dack swore he had, and all the little rats popped out of the woodwork to tell me they had gone out with him. When I realized what he had done, and how he and Dack had drafted so many people we worked with behind my back, just to get me to say yes...I think then I knew I would fall for him, and it would be so much more than the crush I'd been grappling with.