Hold Your Horses

 It's high noon on a mild Saturday in August. Weather seems to be holding up, and I'm more or less on cruise control for a little while until the fall semester starts and I'll be managing work and in-person classes.

A week ago, I had asked around and ended up getting my crush's phone number. I had been talking to her here and there whenever I can for the few weeks before that. Last Saturday, I managed to hold up a pretty good conversation, with semi-lengthy texts, but she responded well and she hasn't given any short one word responses that day. So if nothing else, there was at least some politeness and some friendliness, because I'd imagine if you don't want to talk to someone or you want to try to shut a conversation down, then you could shorten the answers and not leave room for new questions to come up.

I had texted her a fair amount on Saturday, August 6th, and then a bit more on Sunday, August 7th. I had some semblance of a plan prior to getting her number to find a way to ask her out, but I guess I scrapped that plan once I managed to get her number. Come Sunday evening, somehow I shifted the conversation towards trying to see what she does on the weekends, just to gauge whether or not I'd be able to ask her out to even just grab coffee or do something since usually weekends are among the easiest times to schedule something. I had figured that if I now had her number, it wasn't really that big of a deal per se to rush and follow some sort of plan anymore, just to text her casually as a friend and see if I can eventually build something up. Although, at one point Sunday evening, I was contemplating if I should just try to ask her out to coffee. And then...

Surprisingly (well at least to my surprise anyways), she said she'd be down to grab coffee.

Now I say it's surprising because for whatever reason I had thought that maybe I overplayed my hand, that the cards I had weren't the best and that I wasn't going to succeed. I'm not sure why I would think that, but maybe it's because I had previously not succeeded much in the relationship department in my life, but even more specifically from 2019 to now. Sure that 2020 I didn't do much (not like you really could have done much anyways) but even if we count the tail end of 2020 until now, that's still almost 2 years, and in that time I had maybe tried 3 or 4 times to befriend a girl and try to get closer to see about maybe building a relationship.

However, even with all that being said, I'm not entirely sure if this girl knows I intended for this to be a date, or if it's just a couple of friends grabbing coffee together, which I guess is totally valid too. I mean in my mind, I would figure that if a guy asks a girl out to coffee (or anything) that likely story is that he's interested in her if he's asking her specifically and not inviting anyone else off the bat. But I guess I could also see it as I didn't ever say the word "date" so maybe it's seen as a platonic thing, I don't really know, but I guess even if it's seen as a friend thing, at least I'd get a proper chance to sit down and talk to her, and maybe if we have fun I can always work on doing another thing with her and work it up from there.

I'd really like and I hope things work out well. I still have about 4 days before this all happens. I don't know what to expect or what is going to happen, but I guess all I do know is that I should probably dress a little nicer than athletic shorts and graphic t-shirts, I should offer to pay for her coffee (even if it's not a "date", I still asked her for her time and the least I can do is offer), and then just be myself and talk. Who knows how it will go, but I should just be early, and be calm and myself.

But yeah, so far so good, I think there's definitely hope for something, and now we just wait and see if the vibes feel good and if everything seems to fit together.