Yesterday was a lovely day – you know, lovely in the sense that I had to run 11-miles in 400% humidity and felt nauseous and then went to meet up with Melissa to watch Matt’s softball game in the heat.
The team’s bar sponsor, Cody’s, is a little hole-in-the wall type place in Lakeview. They do not accept credit cards and they don’t serve food, but you can order in from anywhere, or in yesterday’s instance, we all brought food for a potluck, and Matt grilled chicken.
The other thing about Cody’s is that they allow dogs. A bunch of people on the team had dogs and brought them – they were all awesome, super well behaved and adorable.
When we were sitting and watching the game, a guy walks by us with his dog, who took an interest in one of the other ones. He was in a sling, which has to be a pain in the ass when you’re walking your dog, but I digress.
Anyway.
Shortly after we got to Cody’s, the guy with the sling also showed up. I remembered thinking he was cute, so I took this as a sign to at least chat with him.
We talked for a while, and bless Melissa’s heart, she was trying to figure out if he was single. His name is James and he had just moved into the building across the street from Cody’s and was killing time waiting to meet up with a friend.
At one point, he was talking to the owner of the bar, Gene (I think). I waved over the bartender and pointed at James and said I wanted to buy his next drink. She nods. James then orders his drink, and she makes him pay for it. I was sort of like WTF, and wanted to say something, until I realized that when she nodded at me she also said, “for Gene?” but quietly enough that I thought she said James. Oops. My bad.
A couple of minutes later she says to Gene, “this young lady bought you a drink.”
James says, “Wow, that was really nice of you.” And of course through gritted teeth I was like, “I know, right?” Thank GOD Melissa has been there enough to know who I bought the drink for and that he was the owner and not some random 50-year-old dude, because that would be creepy. I could at least play it off like I was a regular (I’m not) buying the owner a drink.
In any case – not the end of the world, but my plan to be this really cool chick completely backfired.
At one point, James was getting ready to leave, and while he was outside saying goodbye to people, I did something I haven’t done since 2003: Wrote my number down on a bar napkin.
He came back inside and asked me if I’d be back anytime soon and I said I wasn’t sure, but maybe. I mean, really? Can’t you just ask me for my # if you want to see me again? So I was like, “Well actually here’s my number.” It was super awkward, let’s be honest, because if he wanted it, he would have asked for it.
So, I am not going to hold my breath and wait for his call/text, and now I have to sit here wondering how cool it would have been if the buying him a drink thing had actually worked.
A Series of Very Bad Decisions 