Not long after that night at Snookered, our Friday night Team played at Sharky's. We finished up kind of early and I wasn't ready to go home. Well, let's say I wasn't ready to go home if she wasn't ready to go home.
I don't even remember who asked who, but we ended up keeping one of the tables we were playing matches on and practicing. We practiced for a pretty long time! Aaaaannnnd we probably didn't say 10 words to each other. For me, it was a combination of being nervous and terrified that I would say something stupid, along with the fact that I had convinced myself that there was no way in hell that someone that young and that beautiful would be interested in an old fart like me. I also still wasn't sure about John and how they were tied together. (LOL jokes on me, they weren't. At all.) For her, I think she thought I was married. I wasn't wearing my wedding ring any more, but I had my Masonic ring on and she couldn't remember which hand a wedding ring was supposed to be worn on. So just before we wrapped up our practice session, she uttered the only personal question either of us asked all night. "Are you married?" She later told me it took her that long to work up the nerve to ask that. The answer was technically yes, the divorce isn't final yet but we're not together any more. The only other things we said were if I showed her how to do something. And she asked me if practicing with her was boring for me.
Not long after that, I started just looking for reasons to text her outside the Friday group chat. I figured she didn't have anybody's number in her phone, so I started texting her outside that with what was said and associating that with a name.
"Rack's is always hot" == Paul Steiner.
"Janice threw up"
"Did they fix the AC?" == Dawn Chan
etc, etc...
Not long after that, I looked in the APA app and noticed she went up to an SL2 in 9 ball. She had somehow dropped down to an SL1. Your skill level is pretty fluid for the first few weeks. So I texted her telling her that he skill level had gone up.
Not long after that, we were at league and she left early and we were texting back and forth because I was playing the last match. I was keeping her up to date whether she wanted me to or not. LOL
A couple of nights later I was back at Racks and texted her to ask if she was at Racks that night. I had seen her across the room. I knew she was there. I mentioned I was just making up things to text her about, didn't I?
A couple of nights after that, we stayed late practicing together again. That's the first night we texted each other letting the other know that we made it home. She asked again if practicing with her was too easy. I said no way. And besides, I enjoy your company. I swear to God I about fainted when she responded, "The feeling is mutual."
From that point we texted a lot. Pretty much all day every day. It still took me way longer than I want to admit to ask her out though. I’ll get to that.