We were supposed to be studying when my classmate offered to massage my sore shoulder. Her hand was also near my upper thigh, which was doing very little to advance my education.
I’m 20, and so is she. We go to the same college, have classes together, and talk regularly. She tells me about her friends and whatever drama is happening around them. We see each other every day and sometimes meet up to study or just hang out. There is already an easy familiarity between us.
She touches me fairly often, so touch alone wasn’t a completely new development. That is inconvenient when you’re trying to identify a signal. You need something to compare it with, and my comparison was a woman who was already comfortable being close to me.
Then our conversation over messages turned to sex. We talked about how people do it, and she asked whether I was taking part in No Nut November. I said I would try. It was a fairly restrained answer for a conversation that had wandered some distance from coursework.
The next day, we met to study. She was touching me again, but this time it felt more erotic to me. That was my impression, rather than a statement she had made about what she wanted. Still, after the previous day’s conversation, it was hard to file everything under ordinary classmate behavior.
I mentioned that my shoulder wasn’t feeling good. She offered to massage it. Between that offer and where she was keeping her hand, I had quite a lot to consider for someone who had arrived for a study session.
Somehow, I then asked about other girls. In a situation where I was trying to understand the attention of the woman beside me, I introduced women who weren’t there. My timing could probably use more work than my shoulder.
She got annoyed and asked why I was thinking about other girls when she was beautiful and hot herself. That was considerably more specific than the signals I had been trying to interpret. She had moved the conversation from women in general to one woman in particular, and helpfully identified which one.
I still don’t have an explicit statement that she wants to date me or have sex with me. I don’t want to assume that being touched means more than she intends. But this isn’t just a case of a classmate replying quickly to a message anymore.
I went from wondering about the way she touched me to hearing her object to my interest in other girls. She had put herself forward as beautiful and hot. I was still checking for hints.
