Our knees kept touching under the table, and somehow giving him my phone number felt like the bold part.
I’d gone to play a game. A nerdy game, the sort of thing I already enjoyed before a very cute guy became an additional reason to pay attention. There were four of us: a good friend of mine, two people I hadn’t played with before, and me. He was one of the new people.
We had chemistry. That was how it felt to me, anyway. We laughed all night, although, in fairness, the whole table was laughing. It was a genuinely good evening for everyone. I couldn’t claim exclusive rights to the atmosphere just because I liked one particular person in it.
Still, the knees. They kept meeting under the table, which was a small detail until I started wondering whether it was a detail at all. The flirting felt mutual. I didn’t know whether he would have described the evening that way, and I hadn’t exactly collected a statement from him.
The part making me hesitate was where we’d met. People go to game nights because they want to play games. I do, too. I liked that we already had something to enjoy together without anyone having to announce romantic intentions. But I couldn’t tell whether showing mine would be welcome or would make his regular hobby feel suddenly complicated. A fun evening didn’t automatically answer that.
My friend offered a possible route, at least in my head. I could ask them to pass along my number. It sounded simple until I pictured asking a third person to help with something that had so far consisted of laughing and making contact below table level. That seemed like a surprising amount of organization for a little flirting. Besides, I wasn’t sure I wanted to put my friend in the middle.
If I saw him at another game night, I could give him my number myself. No intermediary, just a more obvious indication that I’d enjoyed meeting him in particular. The possibility appealed to me; actually doing it was another matter. There hadn’t been another encounter yet. I was considering a next move before I even knew when I’d see him again.
For now, I had one lovely evening, a very cute guy I hoped to see again, and a phone number that remained entirely in my possession.
