But then in April 2012, things started to change. On a social media site, she mentioned that she was sad. That was the description, nothing else was said. We met for coffee one night in April and out of the blue, she told me that she broke up with her boyfriend. My suspicions were true. The signs had sort of been there. Ting told me Julia was having problems with her boyfriend. Julia told me that her boyfriend was planning to move to Japan in a few years so she knew her relationship wouldn’t last.
With her old boyfriend out of the picture, I saw an opportunity to make something happen. First off, I had to give her some time to get over her breakup. Since they had been together for almost three years, I figured that one week would be good enough. In reality, it is a really jerk move to try to pick up a girl right after a broken relationship however I had to move in quickly. If I didn’t move in, someone else might.
I remembered being nervous when I called her one week later. It had to be a phone call, I didn’t want to send text messages. And calling girls was always the worst. Throughout high school and college, I remember I had trouble finding out what to say so I would have to carefully think about it before hand. I absolutely dreaded letting the conversation go limp and having dead space over the phone. Even worse was calling a girl and getting the voicemail because I could never leave a voicemail without sounding retarded.
I called Julia and got her voicemail. I left her a message where I stammered out a few points and probably repeated myself once or twice. Luckily, she called back and I could feel much more relaxed to ask her to go to the park on Friday. Thankfully, she said yes.
On my way to the park, I was thinking about how to move forward. Julia and I were friends at this point, but without doing anything different, we would just stay friends. I remembered being told that if you want to make her a girlfriend, I would have to start treating her as more than just a friend. I’d also have to risk losing her as a friend as well. It was a risk worth taking. So the mentality changed. I knew I would have to touch her more and flirt with her. I’d have to make her feel attraction. I would have to do these things but I didn’t know how to frame everything. I was kind of at a loss for fun and interesting things to do.
The first thing we did was we went to the dollar store at the mall and buy some coloring books and crayons. After 15 or 20 minutes, we were at the park under a pavilion coloring pictures of superheroes and cartoon characters. It may have not been sexy or exciting, but she definitely wasn’t expecting it. Really, all I cared about was engaging her in conversation.
While we were walking around the park, we talked about work, families, video games, and our friends. As a way of touching her, I made sure to walk very close to her and our arms or shoulders would occasionally bump into her. I didn’t want to push her away after all. I told her several anecdotes just to make her laugh and steer the conversation and eventually I got to one that was somewhat risque. I don’t remember how the conversation led to it, but I told her about the time my friend called me at 8 am in the morning just to tell me he got laid for the first time. It was an anecdote to bring up the topic of sex without directing it at Julia.
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