I got asked out again!

Play and read.

'Member how I have a secret lady-crush on my neighbor whose pinky finger I accidentally held onto a little too long when she offered me a friendly hand-hold after we were taken by boat from our homes during the flooding this past spring? Well, it's not so much a lady-crush as it is a sense that if she'd only give me a chance we could be the best of friends, engaging in all sorts of besty fun like hair braiding, tickle fights, and reading each other's diary after I watch her jump out for milk and break into her apartment.

Well, I had finally given up and accepted the fact that we would never lie head-to-toe giving each other foot massages while watching So You Think You can Dance as I had dreamed, when she reached out to me!

So there I was heading towards home at the end of my afternoon walk yesterday when our paths crossed on this little side street near our house as she was starting out on her walk. We had seen each other on this little road before in a similar instance of my coming and her going and engaged in some very brief chatter of the my-iPod-is-on-and-I-can't-really-hear-you-so-I'll-just-laugh-and-hope-what-you-just-said-was-funny variety. It was the fantasy that we could be walking friends that initially piqued my interest in this neighbor, in fact. I had always been under the impression that you needed to be all familied up and over 40 to have a walking friend, but here we are a couple of twenty-somethings, living next door to each other, walking what seemed like the same areas of town.

But my dream had been nearly shattered when Dan came home from work one day, having just driven past her on our road and said, "She runs a lot faster than you do."

Huh. (We'll save for another post my rantings on how this particular comment of Dan's was both hurtful and unnecessary and how a simple, "I saw our neighbor out on a jog" would have sufficed. I'll hold that little pot of resentment in, just as I did three months ago when he said it. Jerkface.)

But, a runner I am not, and a running friend, I need not. Not that this was the only thing standing in the way of our unborn walking friendship. The fact that we didn't know each other in any capacity might have also had something to do with it. We just never connected in that way, particularly since the pinky incident. In fact, I took a heavy ribbing from Mattie when I told him that I knocked on her door to offer her use of our grill any time she liked (mere minutes after she had stuck her head out her window to say how she loved the smell of barbecue...and that smelled to me of a first move). He said I was coming on too strongly. He meant, "She's just not that into you."

After the BBQ incident, I considered myself defeated. We'd be nothing more than hi-bye friends and I'd just have to slash her tires and be done with it. But yesterday, as we stopped to chat (iPods off this time...let's be honest, I turned mine off last time too) and I made an offhand remark about our being on the same route, she said, "Yeah, if you ever want to go sometime..."

Or maybe she said, "Just give me a call and we can go..."

I can't remember the exact words---which surprises me because you'd think I'd have 'em tattooed on my arm by now---but the gist of it was that she thought we should walk together sometime. (Now I remember what she said: "Hello, friendly neighbor who is always so nice and not at all in a creepy way. You are so cool and we should definitely go on a walk all Laverne and Shirley style with our arms linked. We can walk and talk in the afternoon sun, laughing the time away. Since that time I forced my pinky into your hand and made you hold onto it for soooo long---sorry about that by the way---I've know that you're just the kind of person I would want to divulge all my deepest secrets to. I'd like to be forever and ever friends if that's okay with you, funny neighbor who never weirds me out.")

I think I played it cool... I didn't respond. That is, I did that spazzy thing I do where I talk too quickly and loudly and make stupid jokes so that when she mentioned us walking together some time I followed it with some random comment about the humidity rather than responding to what she said. You know, instead of how people do it in a real conversations where one person says something and the second person listens to what that person says and then says something based on what the first person said instead of of awkwardly filling the space with generic statements about the weather. (It was hot though and only later did I notice that I had a giant sweat stain under my boobs...I don't understand why more people don't want to be friends with me.)

So, I probably blew it and we'll never walk together but, you know what, it would have never worked. The street we met on is close to a wooded path that leads to the big, often empty Phillips Exeter Academy track where I go to jog (not as swiftly as she does, apparently) when I'm feeling aggressive. Like super aggressive. Like, when I want to pretend I'm training in preparation to be on Survivor, I go to this track. I asked her if that's where she goes but, no, she doesn't go to the track to run...she goes to the bleachers! She runs up and down the bleachers at the football field of this massive private prep school---50 times! 50! I had a stitch and a lake of boob sweat from four trips around the track (only two and half of which I actually jogged) and she's doing bleachers! What is she a Navy Seal? I just don't think I could have a true friendship with a person who takes bleachers in such stride that she welcomes company while doing so. She clearly doesn't know that were I to accompany her on said bleachers, boob lake would turn into a tsunami and I'd be a mess of sweat (and probably vomit) that she'd end up having to prop up as she walked me to the pay phone to call 911.

No, I don't think we're destined to be walking friends.

But, make no mistake about the real meaning of this interaction...she likes me! All this time I spent with my ear to the wall listening, she may have been just on the other side listening back.

Should I make her a mix tape?

I have to play my next move just right. Should I stand outside her window with a boombox over my head playing Dionne Warwick's "That's What Friends Are For"?

No, that would be weird. Maybe I could stand at the bottom of the bleachers instead.

I'm replaying the scene in my head and I still can't seem to remember how exactly she put it, this notion that we should someday walk, side by side, the streets of Exeter, NH. Am I supposed to call? I don't have her number. Should I knock three times on the ceiling? Now I'm realizing that she said we should walk together only after I said that it looked like we walked the same route. I wonder if she heard it as, "Oh, fancy that. It looks like we walk in the exact same place at the exact same time every day," and felt like she had to suggest we engage in social ambling.

Was she offering me a pity walk? I don't need your friggin' pity walks!

There are plenty of people I can walk with. In fact, I prefer walk alone! In fact, I'm pretty sure I could do 100 ups and downs on those bleachers!

I laugh in the face of the pity walk! And I laugh in the face of the bleachers! And when Dan comes home, I will laugh in his face, too! And then get mad at him now for saying she was faster than me.

Jerkface.

P.S. You realize I can really never be friends with her now. I'd have one beer and then my compulsive honesty would have me trying to explain how, "I have this blog and, um, it's sort of funny 'cuz I have this running joke about how I wanted to be your friend and kind of stalked you...Not really stalked you but pretended that I listened at your wall...Though I did overhear you one time talking to your boyfriend and figured out that you were dating someone from work...But I don't really listen...I mean, I hear things 'cuz our apartments are so close and you can't help but overhear some things...I bet you can hear us, too...Can you hear us? 'Cuz all that stuff about me being the librarian and Dan being a boy scout was just a joke...No, but really I just thought since we're around the same age and live next door to each other we should be friends and look now we're friends and haha isn't this funny about how I pretended to be stalking you...I mean isn't that just a really funny thing...You get it, right?...You get that I was just pretending to be obsessed with you?...Now that we're friends, you get it, don't you?"

And she'd be all, "My pinky still hurts."