Social Question
Dating gaffe. Have a laugh at my expense, plus WWYD?
TL;DR at bottom
Ten months ago, I stopped in a bagel shop that’s near my work. Before I knew it, the girl behind the counter and I were have a crazy-smooth flirt session in the midst of her taking and fixing my order. At the end, she opened the door for me to ask for her number, but did it by saying “I don’t know what the number here is [something, something].” In the moment, my loudest thought was, “She doesn’t know the number? That’s dumb.” So, I got tripped up and ended up saying goodbye and walking out without getting her number. I never went back (until today), in part because I was kind of embarrassed about blowing it, and because I’ve not really been ready to date for the past year, because I’ve been living austerely for the past year to get my financial house back in order.
So this morning, I decide to go in, mainly because a bagel was the right-sized thing to get. She’s there. She looks a little different from what I remember, so I don’t react much, but the electricity picked up again, and it didn’t take long for her to start getting a little lost in my eyes, and she nervously handed my change back to me. She asked where I’d been. I said I had been busy with my acting, and since it was clear that she was still feeling it, I said I’d be back. She said, “Don’t take ten months,” which said a lot, I think because she remembered me and she remembered the last time I came in.
On the way out, I knew I should go back in and ask her out, but I didn’t. So, finally, I decided I would go back at lunch and do it. I got up the nerve, drove down there, walked in, and… well, she wasn’t at the counter. There was another girl there I recognized, and I asked her if “my” girl was there. (I didn’t say “my.”) She said, “Which one?” and I was like, “I don’t know, she was here this morning,” because a) I don’t know her name, and b) I couldn’t exactly say she’s short and has big tits. So she goes in the back, and the girl comes walking up to the front. I am locked and loaded, of course, and ready to ask her out, and because I have so little game it just spilled out. She asked, “What happened?” and I stood there with a big grin and said, “Nothing… I just wanted to know if you wanted to hang out some time.”
So this is the point where she says, something like “Oh, thank you… I’m married.” Wha??? I’m really stunned, but I say I’m sorry, and she says thanks again, and I turn around and go back to my car. I’m just like stunned and laughing at my dumb luck, because I don’t really chase after girls very often, and so many times it doesn’t work out (maybe that’s true for everyone, I don’t know.)
Anyway, so I’m totally reevaluating the entire chain of events, because it just seems too dumb to be real. And what bubbles to the surface as a probable explanation is that there are two girls there who look similar, and I asked out the wrong one. You have to understand that I was handicapped by tunnel vision. I had to decide fifteen minutes ahead of time that I was going to ask this girl out, so I got in my car, drove to the place, got out, went in, and walked up to the counter. When the second girl above asked which girl I was looking for, a little voice said there might be a snag here, but I was already marching forward. When who I suspect is the wrong girl came up to the counter and said “What happened?” there was a little voice that wanted to ask, “Wait… did you take my order this morning?” but in a split-second, I decided I couldn’t say that, because it would look stupid if that was, in fact, “my” girl who took my order this morning, and I couldn’t even remember correctly if that was her. So out it came, and I was dead wrong.
O.M.G. Now what?
TL;DR This afternoon, I probably confused two girls at the bagel shop and asked out the wrong girl. (The wrong girl is married, so she said no. The right girl wanted me to ask her out ten months ago and again when I saw here this morning.) Now what?