Round Three

I visited my long time friend with whom I have a pleasantly bubbling science experiment of late (I've been calling her Karen here). The back story is in previous posts. This was the first time we've seen each other since we expressed our mutual curiosity in each other. 

Day 1

For my first night in her town initially we had plans to hang out alone but she switched it up last minute. I wasn't a fan of the new plan. It was dinner and drinks with her best friend female roommate, her gay friend (neither of whom I've met) and my oldest friend. I appreciated her consideration in supplying me with back up to counter her special forces unit. It was clear that I needed to charm her, the best friend, and the gay friend enough so he says something like "Girl! if you don't I will!" and she says "You bitch! you get all the good ones." It went well. I did a decent job all around except I think I may have spent more effort on her friends than I did on her.  This whole thing is so precarious I really need her people on my side. We went our separate ways at the end and hugged goodnight... damn. Then I went to agonize the details over beers with the dude I've been friends with for 25 years.

Day 2 

I met Karen at her job when she was finishing up so we could drive back to her place together. She suggested we make dinner followed by a bar hop. Sounds as though the likely post-hangout girl talk session was favorable. We made dinner the mood was playful and good. Her roommate came home and asked me for a male's perspective on a dude she has a run in with, awesome! Karen and I killed 2 bottles of wine then went out. We happened on a bar with a jazz hip hop group performing that was really great. Drank/talked/drank etc until 3 am.

We arrived at her door. Despite our long history, I felt it would be cheating to skip the awkward outside the door posturing that occurs at the end of any good first date. I pulled her aside and explained this, she played along for a minute and said "Can we just go inside already? Its freezing!" More wine... Smoking on the balcony we started in analyzing how we're friends and this is going to change the dynamic all over with us, and all our mutual friends, blah blah blah. I grabbed her waist at a pause and kissed her. We went up stairs pretended to watch television while having a PG13 make out session then passed out. 

In the morning she made me breakfast then we made the 2 hour drive back to Philly together (our home towns are Philly suburbs, and she had some family stuff going on). We talked the whole way on relationship failures of the past, ugh. We are both extremely jaded. I kissed her goodbye and hopped out of the car late for work. We left it as "we'll see what happens." We also devised an absurd cover story to tell our friends to keep the gossip wheel from grinding us into a paste. One couple went so far as to say " We're rooting for you guys, we need a new power couple" WHAT?! No thanks.

I'm not emboldened enough to claim that I have successfully transversed the friendship gap, but I do seem to be on the way.