Asking her out
So there’s this girl I’ve known for about four years. I was really into her at first, but I messed things up and ended up cutting contact. Basically, I was too immature at the time: I once asked her if she wanted to go shopping, but she invited two of our friends, and I got upset because I had wanted to spend time with her alone. Other things happened too, but I think I mostly cut contact because of my anxiety.
Recently, we started hanging out again. I’m doing an internship at university, and we ran into each other at the office a few times because she was there working on her master’s thesis. We ate together a couple of times and were able to reconnect after all that time. She’s always been someone I felt comfortable around, so it wasn’t really difficult.
At one point, she confronted me about the past because she knew I had feelings for her four years ago. She basically told me that it wasn’t entirely my fault that things didn’t work out. She said we were both immature back then, but that now she thinks I’m a better person. That’s literally what she said.
I told my friends about that conversation, and they all said she was probably open to the idea of something happening between us, so I got a bit hyped lol. I tried to hang out with her more. We went to parties, and we often had moments alone where we would talk for hours. On the other hand, when we text, she takes hours to reply. She’s never cold by message, though. She just takes a long time to respond. Honestly, I don’t care that much about texting dynamics because I’m not on my phone that much either, but I wanted to mention it for context.
Recently, I tried to ask her out by saying something like, “Let’s eat together, just the two of us,” but she didn’t seem to understand that I was interested. The first time, she thought I only wanted to eat with her because I wanted to go somewhere specific, and the second time, she just told me, “You’re so antisocial.”
Yesterday, we went to a bar with some friends, but I was too anxious to really talk to her. I couldn’t act natural around her, and I felt like I kept saying stupid or over-the-top things.
The problem is that exam season is coming up, and we probably won’t see each other for a while. I was thinking about sending her a message to tell her that I like her. Nothing overly dramatic, just something along the lines of: “Hey, I like you, and I wanted to know if you’d be open to hanging out more, just the two of us, so we can see if there’s something between us.”
Do you think this is a good idea? For context, we once talked about this kind of thing, and she told me she prefers when guys are direct with her because she doesn’t really notice when someone is interested unless there’s a clear conversation about it.