Is she still interested?

Went on two really great dates with an old classmate of mine from college. We seemed to click really well. We texted every day. We already started to talk about other potential dates we could go on in the future, her more than me. She even made a suggestion for what we could do on our third date.

In the middle of us dating (I’m a substitute teacher and she’s a dancer, for reference) I told her about a job opportunity for a temporary dance instructor at my school. More as a favor to the drama teacher than to her, in fact I felt kinda bad asking because it’s not very close to her home town, the pay isn’t great, and she’d only be going in once a week for a month. She still seemed thrilled about it.

Back to the third date that never happened, the day after she made the date suggestion, she sent me this long text about how she was really sorry, she actually had an appointment the day we said we’d go, and that she couldn’t make it that week. We agreed to reschedule, but that day never came. I asked her out on a more low key date next week (just pizza) and she sent another lengthy text about her long/busy schedule. I told her to just lmk when she wanted to meet up in the future and she agreed.

After that she basically ghosted me. Texting got very dry. We’d go days without texting and even when we did talk, my responses were clearly more engaged than hers. She wasn’t asking as many questions and would sometimes wait hours to respond. Sometimes she’d respond to my IG story out of the blue, but she still kept it very dry.

This change in behavior lasted one month exactly. After a week and a half of complete radio silence I figured it was over. Then, a month to the very day she canceled our date, she starts texting me again. She said “sorry I’ve been so impossibly busy lately I literally had zero free time this past month.” We talked for a bit and it was clear she was much more engaged in our conversation than in the past. Then she randomly brought up “Oh I’m starting that job at your school next week, maybe we can meet up sometime!”

I told her I’d love to but I’d have to see (I have another job where I work nights, and all her shifts are right when school ends). I didn’t want her to feel like she owed me anything or that she had to see me, bc if she lost interest I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable working that job with me in the building. I changed the topic of conversation, but a few hours later without me even asking she randomly sent me her whole schedule and said “Here are the days I’m coming in!”

I haven’t been able to make the first few, but a few days ago I decided to ask if she wanted to grab dinner after her rehearsal this week. She said “For sure! Sadly this week I have my friend’s bday party right after, but how about after next rehearsal?” I said I’ll see if I can request another night shift so that one is free and that I’d get back to her.

Obviously these are better signs than when she was ghosting me. But I’m still skeptical. Our convos still seem to dry up, and we still go days without texting each other at all. Hell, by the time we get dinner, it’ll have been over two months since we last saw each other in person. Maybe it’s because we haven’t physically seen each other in a while that we’re running out of things to talk about, but still. I’ve got mixed feelings.

So here’s my question: Is she legitimately still interested? Because I’d love to give this another shot, we had really great chemistry when we first started seeing each other. But her becoming so much more aloof in texting really bothered me. Like she could hardly put in the bare minimum effort before this? I feel like I have no idea where this is going anymore.