Indulgences
Back from an uneventful week in the Algarve - very quiet out of season (and probably intolerable in season). The first few days overcast but after that the sun shone, we rented a car, looked off some cliffs into the Atlantic, climbed a small mountain (Rocha de Pena) and so on. I'm still not convinced Portugal is much other than a less stylish version of Spain, but we'll reserve judgement for now.
At Faro airport I purchased some sweets for my team (which sadly turned out to be rather indigestible fig-based affairs) and a small box of marzipan things for Indira. On getting to work I wasn't sure if I should give them to her - one might have been OK but a box of 6 could be seen as excessive... But as it happened she gave me an Indian sweet she'd made and told me she'd brought in some gulab jamun for me the previous week not knowing I'd be on holiday, so I figured the petit-fours would be acceptable and left them on her desk with an "I saw those and thought of you" e-mail as explanation.
In response she offered to share them with me. I said I'd thought she might like to share them with her daughters, if she wasn't trying to keep them away from sweet things, but that failing that I'd be happy to indulge. So then an e-mail arrived saying "I think we should indulge together".
This certainly raised my temperature a few degrees, in fact I spent some time in a happy daze. Surely this must be intentional? After all I've spent much of the past couple of months imagining that very scenario.
Anyway, next day I got my coffee machine out of storage and made her a cappuccino, and having two of the petit-fours left I fed one to her while we were alone in the kitchen. I'd been pondering for a day whether I should try this - it's quite an intimate thing to do and some women would shy away, so I was a bit worried. But I showed her what it was first and she opened her mouth and I slid it in as slowly as I dared, keeping my eyes on hers. I'm certain the sexual connotation was entirely clear to both of us. Then she smiled at me and touched my arm. Admittedly just the outside of my upper arm and in a way that was more shy than suggestive - so we still have mixed signals to contend with, if entirely friendly ones.
She's now gone on leave for a week and a day, but when we were chatting this afternoon about her garden she suggested I should visit her at home during the week and advise her what plants to put in - "it's only 8 stops on the Tube". This was said in so matter of fact a way that I pictured her husband and kids all being there and suggested she e-mail me a photograph instead, but perhaps I've seriously missed a cue... she also told me her kids are back at school after Monday. I think I'll look for my gardening book and send her a mobile phone text message offering to bring it round at a time convenient to her.
My concern with this is that if I go and nothing happens it'll be the end of the story. Presently whether anything is in store or not, I have this idea it might be, and it's keeping things interesting. We might even be able to flirt subtly pretty much indefinitely. But if it gets made clear there's nothing doing - whether via an unambiguous pass and rejection or a more subtly obvious failure of anything to happen - any further flirting becomes impossible, and our outings would quite lose their edge. As with Mrs K's sister (but that's another story).
And on the other hand if something is going to happen I'm not sure her home is the most comfortable place for it psychologically. So maybe those two possibilities are what's putting me off. There's not much of a middle way there really. The present situation may be kind of frustrating but once that kind of gossamer excitement is gone you never get it back.
In other news, I accidentally e-mailed my friend and secret unrequited love interest Dee yesterday and she e-mailed me back advising among other things that she'd acquired a boyfriend about a year ago. (She used three exclamation marks). So that guy she was knocking around with before wasn't a boyfriend. So when I last saw her she was unattached and she still wasn't interested in me. Hmmm...
At Faro airport I purchased some sweets for my team (which sadly turned out to be rather indigestible fig-based affairs) and a small box of marzipan things for Indira. On getting to work I wasn't sure if I should give them to her - one might have been OK but a box of 6 could be seen as excessive... But as it happened she gave me an Indian sweet she'd made and told me she'd brought in some gulab jamun for me the previous week not knowing I'd be on holiday, so I figured the petit-fours would be acceptable and left them on her desk with an "I saw those and thought of you" e-mail as explanation.
In response she offered to share them with me. I said I'd thought she might like to share them with her daughters, if she wasn't trying to keep them away from sweet things, but that failing that I'd be happy to indulge. So then an e-mail arrived saying "I think we should indulge together".
This certainly raised my temperature a few degrees, in fact I spent some time in a happy daze. Surely this must be intentional? After all I've spent much of the past couple of months imagining that very scenario.
Anyway, next day I got my coffee machine out of storage and made her a cappuccino, and having two of the petit-fours left I fed one to her while we were alone in the kitchen. I'd been pondering for a day whether I should try this - it's quite an intimate thing to do and some women would shy away, so I was a bit worried. But I showed her what it was first and she opened her mouth and I slid it in as slowly as I dared, keeping my eyes on hers. I'm certain the sexual connotation was entirely clear to both of us. Then she smiled at me and touched my arm. Admittedly just the outside of my upper arm and in a way that was more shy than suggestive - so we still have mixed signals to contend with, if entirely friendly ones.
She's now gone on leave for a week and a day, but when we were chatting this afternoon about her garden she suggested I should visit her at home during the week and advise her what plants to put in - "it's only 8 stops on the Tube". This was said in so matter of fact a way that I pictured her husband and kids all being there and suggested she e-mail me a photograph instead, but perhaps I've seriously missed a cue... she also told me her kids are back at school after Monday. I think I'll look for my gardening book and send her a mobile phone text message offering to bring it round at a time convenient to her.
My concern with this is that if I go and nothing happens it'll be the end of the story. Presently whether anything is in store or not, I have this idea it might be, and it's keeping things interesting. We might even be able to flirt subtly pretty much indefinitely. But if it gets made clear there's nothing doing - whether via an unambiguous pass and rejection or a more subtly obvious failure of anything to happen - any further flirting becomes impossible, and our outings would quite lose their edge. As with Mrs K's sister (but that's another story).
And on the other hand if something is going to happen I'm not sure her home is the most comfortable place for it psychologically. So maybe those two possibilities are what's putting me off. There's not much of a middle way there really. The present situation may be kind of frustrating but once that kind of gossamer excitement is gone you never get it back.
In other news, I accidentally e-mailed my friend and secret unrequited love interest Dee yesterday and she e-mailed me back advising among other things that she'd acquired a boyfriend about a year ago. (She used three exclamation marks). So that guy she was knocking around with before wasn't a boyfriend. So when I last saw her she was unattached and she still wasn't interested in me. Hmmm...
posted by Lost Tango at 9:45 PM
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