You know that feeling when individual events cease to have distinct beginning and endings and they begin to bleed into each other? That was last Sunday. A first date. Me, feeling light-headed and nervous (a washing machine running a spin-dry cycle). Her, taking it very well. Nervous, too, she said. We went for coffee, which became beer, and then dinner at my parents’ who live in another city.
There are three of her sitting in front of me, in a coffee shop slash bar in Kallio: a girl I used to go to school with; a blogger I once wrote a letter to; and the flesh and blood woman I’m meeting for the first time.
Before I go to meet her, my apartment is teeming. My roommate runs around the apartment shrieking that this is the most exciting day of the year.
Eleven hours later, on a sidewalk in front of her house, we are standing close, her hands in mine, both of us wondering if either of us is brave enough for a first kiss (is this an uncertainty that is ever outgrown?). I ask her if I should come up to see her place, or...
“Maybe not tonight,” she says.
I was going to finish my sentence with: “Or maybe we’ll leave something for date #2.” It occurs to me later that there’s a lot of room for misunderstanding in what I said. Oh well.
But you know where I’m supposed to be right now? On my way to her place. I’m already late. Welcome to date #2.
And here’s what really happened.
