The eternal struggle

Girls have it so easy.

It is the eternal struggle of a man – the delicate balance of not seeming desperate (when we always are) while also trying to act interested (which we also always are). It’s exhausting.

Heather came over about a week and a half ago, on Friday evening, for steaks and beers and boating. To me, that’s a date. If I have a girl over, to my house, and cook her a meal (in this case, steaks and potatoes on the grill), that’s a date. However, the whole “casually hanging out” thing, or whatever it is that we’re doing, leaves a lot of grey area. Did Heather think it was a date? It’s impossible to tell. I wanted her to think it was a date, and tried really hard to create a date-like atmosphere. Take, for example, the patio table; I picked fresh daisies (yes, I know that they were daisies…yes, I had to e-mail my mom a picture that I had taken for her to identify them) from the ditch across the road and put them in a vase on the table. And, okay, so what if we didn’t have a vase? A 40-ounce Bud Light bottle from Devon and Derek’s last round of Edward 40-Hands doesn’t count? Really, if flowers in a beer bottle on the table don’t say “date,” I don’t know what does.

But it’s not like the evening was awkward, because it wasn’t. When we’re together the conversation just flows and it’s perfect. Heather’s really funny. And really smart. Time just flies when she and I are spending time together and I find myself not ever wanting her to leave.

After we ate we went on a slow boat cruise around the lake. It was just around sunset and it was beautiful. Our trip was cut short when I realized that the gas gauge was hovering around E – Devon, naturally, forgot to fill up before he left for the weekend, and in lieu of going all the way to the other end of the lake to the gas station, Heather suggested we just go back to the house and hang out. So we sat on the end of the dock, dangling our toes in the water and talking and laughing and looking at the stars for hours that flew by in a matter of seconds. And next thing you know Heather’s telling me that it’s late and she has to go.

So I walked her out to her car and we hugged, and she said that she would see me when she got back from the vacation she was taking with her family – an entire week. And I really wanted to kiss her, but I didn’t know if that would be crossing some sort of line, or if it would be rushing things too much. So, I kissed her on the cheek. That’s a sweet thing to do, right? And that throws out the “I really like you but I don’t want to cross a line and freak you out” vibe, doesn’t it? God, I hope so.

I’ve gone into Brews Brothers the past couple mornings before work, but haven’t seen Heather at all. How does the two-day rule for calling a girl after a date apply when she went on vacation for a week the day after your date? Do I wait two days from the day she got back from vacation? That would be today, and I’m dying to call her, and I wish there were some handbook for men that just spelled all this out for me and played out every scenario that I could possibly encounter.

Or – and here’s a thought – Heather could just say, “Hey! I like you, too!”

Wouldn’t life just be so much easier if girls would say what they’re feeling?