I’m not always great at picking up on social cues. And, when it comes to a guy being interested in me, I am the absolute worst. As you’ll recall when I met Bling Butt I thought he was asking for my number so he could go on a tour at the brewery I work at… it took a few times of him explaining he wanted to hang out sometime with me, not at the brewery, for me to get that he was hitting on me.  In short, when it comes to guys, I’m oblivious.

Last week I was talking with a co-worker at a happy hour and we decided to hang out this weekend. Initially I thought “Cool, another single person living downtown I can hang out with.” Then I mentioned to a friend that he was going to join us at the jazz festival we were going to and my friend was like “Ooo, so like a date?” Um. No. I don’t think. Maybe? UGH! And that’s when the second-guessing began. Replaying every moment of hanging out at the happy hour, rereading text messages trying to decipher if they were friendly or flirty… Only to decide it was definitely just a friend hangout. Maybe.

Saturday rolled around and I realized I needed some spotters out there ready to observe and report back since I couldn’t trust my own read on the situation. The pre-determined plan involved meeting at the brewery for a drink when he got off work, then heading over to this jazz festival taking place on my block where we’d be meeting up with some other friends of mine. The good news was meeting at the brewery was a double win – I had already planned on stopping by to see a girlfriend who was in town and had gone on a tour. Perfect – I could have her be my eyes at the brewery!

Gentlemen, you want to know how girls think? Well… this is it. When the guy got off work he came over to the table to join us – this moment is key. Where will he sit? Will he show interest in my friend, but not TOO much interest? How does he look at me? Does he look at me? Seriously, there are times I really wish we could go back to the days of passing notes with the checkbox of YES or NO for the question “Do you like me?” OR that it would be appropriate to just ask “Is this a date?” (Check YES or NO.)

The table was full so the guy grabbed a stool from another table and… that’s right, pulled it over to sit by me. HOWEVER, this is not actually a sign of anything – I was the only one he knew at the table, of course he was going to sit by me… right? Not proof enough.

Now, I don’t know what my friend Jody was going off of, but by the time we left the brewery she and her girlfriends were convinced he was interested in me and it was more like a date. However, I still couldn’t be sure – but no worries, I had my festival team ready to go with observing and reporting back as well. I will say he did offer to drive my friend and her girls to their next destination so they wouldn’t have to walk in the heat, so regardless of if it was a date or not – he earned some bonus points there. Oh, and he didn’t seem to mind that I had a friend drop me off at the brewery and told him he was my ride to the festival. Flexible, I like that… mostly because I’m unpredictable. More points.

The festival rapidly turned into a drunken blur – I blame not eating dinner, not drinking enough water and… Oh, yeah the copious amounts of alcohol consumed. Phoenix Flyer – I’m talking to you. (Note: the Phoenix Flyer was a barrel of booze, Bourbon/Cranberry/Champagne, with a keg tapped into it. It needed a warning label). The guy wisely steered clear of the PF, but the rest of us imbibed freely. Over the course of the evening our group had grown to about nine of us and it was great fun – a beautiful night, a street festival, live music, delicious drinks – and he mingled with everyone, was rather charming and somewhere during the night I found myself wanting it to be a date, but leaning more toward it likely wasn’t. I’m not sure what made me think that, he bought me some drinks, I bought some drinks so the whole “I’m paying for our date” thing wasn’t in play… but at the same time he DID buy me some drinks… it was unclear. And I love that he walked around talking to everyone – in our group, random festival goers, etc. but that didn’t help any of us to figure out if he was into me. In fact, my friends at the festival were all on the fence – they couldn’t call it. I just know when he told me it was time for him to head out I was disappointed. He hadn’t been drinking near as much as the rest of us, had been sticking to just a couple of beers, and wanted to make sure he could drive home. Responsible. I get it. And I like it…

BUT… I HAD been drinking a lot and now was really wanting it to be a date. And for him to stay. We were all getting ready to head back to my loft for an impromptu after-party and I wanted him there. So, I told him if he wanted to drink more and still hang out that he could stay over. And that’s when he kissed me. DATE!

And boy was it a date. What started as meeting for a drink at the brewery then heading to a jazz festival turned into a 28-hour date. Yep, you read that correctly – 28 hours.

Everyone came back to my house for a party and we stayed up for several hours… which led to a few people spending the night. More bonus points – I kept seeing him cleaning up the mess we were all making. And he didn’t complain when a friend was passed out in the bathroom and he had to go down four floors to use the bathroom in the common room.

In the morning he and I decided to get brunch. But first he needed to check on his cat. Yep, you read that correctly too – he has a cat. One he adores enough to worry about and go check on. So, we went to his house to check on his cat, then hit up my favorite brunch spot – Genessee Royale. After that we decided to go across the street to a new brewery, The Stockyards Brewing Co., to try some of their beers. After less than 24 hours he had paid attention enough to know the type of beer I would order (seriously they had a Kumquat Weiss from Crane Brewing on tap that was AMAZING — OF COURSE I was going to try it… but I loved that he already knew I would because of how much I like sours and anything tart – extra points).

Our next stop was an antique mall where we dug through albums looking for gems and played around trying stuff on. (Yeah,I’m wearing a hat just like Ponch wore in CHIPS… I was trying to do a serious face, but couldn’t hold it.)

After antiquing we had planned on calling it a day, but then decided heck – let’s hit up Knuckleheads, a blues bar, for their Sunday open jam session. After a couple of hours there it was time to eat again so we ordered an anchovy, tomato, basil, garlic pizza to go from a cute place in the River Market and headed back to my loft to watch Hail, Caesar! Throughout the day I can easily say I laughed more than I have in months, maybe years, and just really enjoyed hearing his stories and talking with him and getting to know him. By the time he left at 10:30 last night I was pretty smitten.

Who knows, maybe that was it – one perfect date that felt like seven dates. Maybe I’ll see him again, I don’t really know. Like I said, I’m not good at reading these situations. But I can say spending those 28 hours with him was quite a gift. I was reminded what it was like to be comfortable around someone again (I mean seriously no showers all day, no makeup AND we ate like the most offensive pizza ever), to laugh and to have doors opened for me and someone put their arm around me and give me a quick kiss in public because he thought I was doing something cute. It was good to be reminded there are guys like that out there… and there’s no reason why one of them can’t be the guy for me.

This Thursday I’m being interviewed for a feature about being single in KC that will appear in a local magazine. The slant of the article is to introduce me to the single guys in the city and provide my contact info in case any of them are interested in taking me out and getting to know me. I don’t know who my next date will be with, hopefully the guy from this weekend, maybe another guy, but I do hope it makes me smile as much as I’ve been smiling since Saturday night.