Coffee Date

Drove to Texas for a coffee date - a girl (Melissa) I've been chatting with for six months or so; introduced through her sister, Miriam. I had met her and Jennifer around the same time, but they both flaked out on me at the same time as well - pulled away early in our interactions. Jennifer recovered first, so became my partner in The Experiment. When that morphed into a Third Way friendship I was once again adrift, but also wanted to practically apply what I had learned about myself in the intervening six months in hopes of nurturing something that didn't end up as another (admittedly great) friendship. Don't get me wrong, surrounding myself with smart, beautiful women is fantastic and all, but not the type of relationship on which I wish to focus, despite my best efforts.

As I crossed the Red River I was getting hungry, and as I was ahead of schedule, I texted Melissa and asked if she'd like to go to dinner with me. She replied this was the one night she had plans. Understandable, as it was the 4th of July and my suggestion was extremely short notice. Last week my co-worker (Guillermo) told me he'd picked up one of those metallic Texas flag auto decals every BMW in Texas has on its trunk - and had been saving it for me for the last year - was going to let Melissa (his sister-in-law) give it to me at coffee. Earlier this week my daughter's fiancé had made me some Sun Microsystems decals for my laptop and I had an extra, so texted him asking if I should just give it to Melissa as the best way to get it to him while I was in town. That's when Guillermo's wife (Miriam) texted me, inviting me to a private fireworks show at her step-dad's who not only makes all his own fireworks, but put on the show for the City of Dallas in the 90s. I checked into the hotel, showered, changed clothes, and arrived at the appointed time, which just happened to be 90-minutes before my co-worker and his wife arrived. So I mingled.

At some point I was asked who invited me since I seemingly didn't know anyone and no one knew me. The lady who asked turned out to be Miriam's aunt, so I explained I had driven down from Kansas to have coffee with Melissa - which started a whole line of questioning lol. I explained I'd asked Melissa to dinner, but being short notice and all, she had plans, so I ended up here at the insistence of Miriam. The aunt narrowed her eyes and told me she'd just gotten off the phone with Melissa and the reason she couldn't make dinner with me is because she was going to be...here. That's when I knew I'd been set up. I quickly texted Melissa, "Its a trap - you're walking into an ambush - I just met your aunt." Honestly, it was the best set-up ever, and I gotta hand it to Miriam for being able to effortlessly orchestrate it. Turns out everyone did know who I was, they just didn't know what I looked like.

I always have a great time hanging out with Guillermo and his family, and the addition of finally meeting Melissa was the icing on the cake - the event was in Anna too, where I had a house 2007-2010, so that was fun. I never even made it into McKinney. Later, speaking to Miriam, I told her, "I wanted so badly to reach out to Melissa after you introduced us, but didn't want to be, `that guy` and while I was trying to find a polite way to go about that, YOU approached ME with the idea of reaching out - it was perfect!" As these things sometimes happen, I found Melissa more charming in person than I had expected, even "bubbly" (a description to which she took exception :P), and far more prismatic than comes across on the monitor over text. The next morning we finally had our coffee date and I got to see that analytical mind of hers once again as we delved into conversations we'd had early on, which was delightful. It's nice to have my paradigm shifted, and honestly, much needed. I don't yet know if I scared her off - or if she's interested - but I feel like I need to come clean: While I was hinting at a future second date she asked, "You'll be back in Texas?" I replied in the affirmative, but the truth is, a second date will be the sole reason I'm back in Texas.