So I’ve known this girl at work for 9 months and been into her for 6 months. She works in the department next to mine so she’s close by. We get along well and have conversations. I just sort of started liking her out of nowhere, didn’t expect it. There was a moment before I liked her that I thought she was for sure interested in me, but never sure.
Right now I’m at a crossroads and I just don’t know what to do. I haven’t had the courage to ask her yet because first I wanna see if she likes me or would be interested.
Here’s kind of a rundown of her and I:
\*We always greet when we see each other. She smiles usually, sometimes she just waves and is like whatever as if she was tired.
\* I usually initiate the person to person conversations. It’s usually at her work area and I’ll spend a significant amount of time there. Never got the “you gotta go I’m busy right now” or had go away heat. At least not externally.
\*Texting is the weird one. She pulled my number from Zelle because we never exchanged numbers. She was the first one to text me. It was just a meme. Texts were mostly infrequent for a while, usually just a way to relay work stuff easier. Though when it was an actual text conversation, she is the one to initiate. These convos are usually at work, as she usually never texts me outside of work. They’re usually short because I end them because I don’t know what else to say lol. Once we texted for 2 hours late at night outside of work, it was a conversation I started. My text was last as I would guess she just decided to end it.
\*We’ll usually have lunch at work together, you know just more conversation there.
\*One thing though, most of our conversations are usually about her. It usually stuff going on in her life. She never asks me what’s going on in my life. When she does ask me stuff it’s about topics we’re discussing like movies, tv, food.
\*Another thing I realized is that she has never asked me how my day is going or how am I. I’m friendlier with her the most out of MY coworkers yet she has asked some of them how they’re doing.
\*I’ve tried to flirt but maybe it has come out too soft. I’ve given her compliments before on her hair, makeup, outfits. Perhaps they come off as friendly.
\*I’ve made prolonged contact with her during our conversations. She does not break it, so it seems she welcomes it.
\*I’ve tried the touching aspect of flirting by hitting her arm when we’re joking about something, which she continued laughing as I was doing it. As well as shoulder touching while joking. She’s been receptive of the touching but might not be working for me either.
\*I invited her to come out drinking with MY coworkers but she declined. She immediately invited me and them to go out drinking the next day with her friends. I initially did not want to invite her at all but I kinda jumped the gun for some reason. We had a great time while we were out. This was a month ago and I feel this was a turning point. Like I said, I did not want to set this in motion initially and I feel things have changed since then. She wanted me and my coworkers to join her and her friend’s discord group so we could hang out again. I gave her our usernames by text and told her in person. We’ll we were never added to the discord but that’s whatever lol. I’m assuming her friends did not want us on it and maybe they did not like us lol. My text with our usernames was my last text to her at that time and she did not text me for a while even though we were still talking to each other at work.
\*Texts start back up again eventually and things go back to like it was before. Though there was a period of 5 days within the last week where she did not text back at all, even for reminder texts she asked me to send her, which she usually replied back with a thumbs up or ok. On Monday, she texts me during the shift, we have a mini conversation but it’s ended with her text because I did not know what to say anymore or how to continue it.
\*I’ve started to feel distance after new hires in her department. There’s a new guy who started and usually works next to her during her shift. Not thinking there’s something between them, since he’s married. Though it’s weird because it’s usually women in her department and with the addition of him, I felt it has definitely changed the dynamic with us. Texts have become less frequent, and I have been less comfortable going up to talk to her while he’s there. They also seem to talk a lot during the shift so it seems to me that I may be interrupting when I do.
I know some just wanna say to ask her out and see what she thinks from there. But what can I do to escalate things to gauge whether there might be interest from her? I know she has to definitely think that I like her or am interested in her. She would have to be the most oblivious person on earth. I don’t think I have been preemptively shut down either. What’s weird is there are a decent amount of people in her and my department, and they have seen how much time I spent talking to her, yet no one, and I mean no one has even asked me if I like her. Not sure if they have asked her. A lady in her department does know I like her, she’s actually the most gossipy person there, and even she has not told her or anyone else. I feel like everything is just working against me.
Do you think too much time has passed by to ask her out? How can it not be awkward if I do?