Part III: Looked over, not overlooked [The face to face encounter]

Well damn. In the last part of the story, I explained how Pilot and I were kinda caught in a compromising situation... and then forgot it ever happened.
After an unexpected call from Jacob Wannabe, the bickering is set aside and the search for the perfect red dress failed. However, that wouldn't deter me from my mission of looking like a million bucks at the NYE party and makin' ma momma proud of the genes she passed on.

Part III: Looked over, but not overlooked

After I had finally given up on my quest to convince my boss to let me leave early on New Year's eve.... I find out, I have pending Paid Time Off, that does NOT roll into the new year.

So I gotta just lose my hard worked paid time off?! Oh HELL no.

I throw a minor tantrum and rant about how I've been forced to work EVERY holiday this year and I have not complained, and how the company was not acting ethically by having the same people working on holidays when clearly, the same people were getting all the holidays off.

So, my PTO was used so I could leave early. Granted, they spread out the hours over 3 different day, but I was leaving early enough to get there before 12 so I didn't mind too much honestly.

The day comes around. I get to work with my after-work kit: dress, heels, necklace and make up, which mainly consisted of black mascara and red lipstick.

10:30 rolls around and I rush out to change and look like a million bucks, or as close as I can get in a bathroom stall at work. And SHIT. It worked alright. At this point, I didn't really know if the red lipstick would look good with everything else.... but once I had it on... Kaboom.

I had my own little Bow-chicka-bow-wow moment in the bathroom when I realized that, despite lacking the red dress, I had the badass bitch look on me and I was ready to rock it.

Make that boy regret his decisions was at the top of my list of final achievements for 2009.

I had worn my trench coat to work that day, which proved to be a good idea, since the black dress rather short and I kinda wanted to have a BANG moment when I decided to take off the coat.

I got there, but everyone was downstairs at that point, so no major coat moment.

I head down and... everyone is there... My heart starts skipping beats and my hands are shaking and my knees are weak... I mean.... I thought I could do this, but I start realizing there are some flaws in my plan. For one, everyone there has a date, and I'm the only one who's gonna be painstakingly single there... and as much as I tried to convince myself that it didn't matter, I was there by myself. An accomplice in my plan would have at least spared me the awkward moment in which I had to stand on my own cuz everyone else was making out with their respective date, if anything, by making conversation with me and providing comedic relief. But no. Here I was on my own at the verge of a stairway to hell and feeling my self-assurance plummet deeply and quickly. This was not good.

What kicked me out of my funk was...

...a gorilla suit.

Pilot's younger brother, whom we'll call Movie, had dressed up in a gorilla suit and danced around to a techno beat. As I was staring down at those damn stairs, he ran up, and, right by the door frame decided to hump my leg.

Yes. This is real life. I was relieved from a panic attack by a guy who humped my leg in a gorilla suit. Go friggin figure.

I get to the bottom of the stairs and just walk into the party, hoping that I don't have one of my fainting episodes and ruin the grand entrance, and well, fuck up my moment.

And there they were. First thing I saw in the room. Jacob and PB and everyone else.

You know how you can feel someone's eyes on you? Looking at you? I felt it alright.

She stared. He did a double take and then a look over. I looked at them both in the eye... and then laughed.

Because I'm a brave little solider, I battled on, and went straight to the back of the room in search for some liquid courage in the from of alcohol... but there was none. Water was the only other option at this point. As much as I had enjoyed the entrance, there was still the rest of the party to deal with and my hands were still shaking.

But on I went, and said hello to everyone, starting by the person next to Jacob and "failing to notice" that they were there.

I walked around a bit, got a lot of compliments and managed to ease my nerves a bit and just loosen up. I talked to some of my friends, danced a little, got ready for the ball dropping (we see it on the projector screen every year), and pretended to be cool by leaving the room every time I got a call, which happened 3 times.

I'll admit that I was watching to see if he was looking and his eye caught mine a couple times to which I just looked away.

I got my drink for the new years toast, huddled with my brother and braced myself for the arrival, but my brother scurried away when the countdown began and I stood there, unfortunately, behind the evil two on my own.

Except that, like all magical moments in life, in the last 10 seconds, my grandparents arrived and I was caught by the New Year hugging my gramps and feeling overjoyed.

Well damn.

That wasn't so bad after all. Sure as hell beat nagging my brother to kiss my cheek. lol.

We sing happy birthday for my brother, and who woudda thunk it, Jacob's mom, both of whose birthdays are January1st.

After that I left the room. I got a bunch of text messages at once and of course, I had a couple calls coming through.

By the time I came back downstairs, they had both left.

After that, my night was just fun. Danced a little. Laughed a lot. Ate like crazy. Chilled with the dominican crew. Talked with a couple friends. Made a few new ones.

But, that split second double take still lingered in my mind.

I was most certainly not over looked that night.

Don't miss the next part of the story, in which I explain The Star Wars movie night and hope that Ally doesn't want to kill me.

Catch y'all laterz

-Jezz