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So I had a date tonight

Background here.

Anyway, she calls at like 9pm or so and tells me she's ready. She asks if she can come pick me up; she doesn't usually have a car, but for some reason she has access to one this weekend and wants to drive. I'm like "sorry, I'm taking you out, I'm driving." This turns out to be a good idea.

I go over to her apartment complex, park, knock on her door. She invites me inside and runs upstairs to finish getting ready because obviously it would be too kind to just be ready when I arrive to begin with. She's wearing these super short jean shorts that barely cover her ass, and a white tank with a jacket over it. We part, she has to move her car so she asks me to follow her in my car while she moves it to park elsewhere. I do that, she gets in, and the game is on.

I'm nervous at first (standard), we head downtown, park in the garage, walk 3 blocks to her favorite sushi restaurant. She wants to find an ATM; I say "why do you need an ATM? I'm taking you out to dinner" and she responds with "I don't let guys buy me dinner" and I'm thinking "wtf, she knows this is a date, right?" so I say "you don't let guys do romantic, chivalrous things for you?" to basically be like "uh hi, this is a date, I'm paying" and I forget her response but she was really determined to pay for her food. We go to the ATM, she pulls out a $20 (lol busto people), we go to the restaurant. I'm a total sushi noob and she's really excited to show me what I've been missing out. We arrive and are seated at the bar in front of where they prepare all the food; we're kinda squished together, and shoulders/legs are touching as we go over the menu together. It's really funny to watch her eyes light up at every other item on the menu; she comes up with like 20 diff rolls that I apparently HAVE to try and orders for us. She shows me how to use chopsticks; remarkably I actually can use them to pick up my food. Food was pretty good, not that I'm an expert or anything but I enjoyed it. We shared a bowl of fried green tea ice cream after our sushi, which is tasty; bill comes out to $32.26, she demands we split it, so we both throw in a $20 and I give her the change back.

We head back to the car; I open her door for her b/c I'm a gentleman. She's like "crap, I don't have socks with me!" cause our next stop was bowling; so, we drive back to her apartment complex so she can grab some (it isn't far, fortunately). She picks them up and gets back in the car, and then is like "hey, they have bowling lanes on campus right? Why are we going to Pismo Beach [like 10-15 miles away] to go bowling?" and I'm like "uh, because the lanes on campus are full of busto-ass freshmen with nothing better to do?" and she says "Hey, I'm a freshman!" to which I replied "yeah, and you have something better to do." Owned. Then "Pismo Beach is so far! Why waste the gas?" and she's apparently a hippie worried about the environment and is seriously angry at me for driving 10 miles away to go bowling. But I mean, there's no [censored] way I'm taking this girl to campus on a date, so [censored] that. I'm a little worried she's pissed at me, so I try to defuse it a little by saying "man, I have never had a girl fight me this much when I'm trying to take her out for a nice evening" and she starts laughing and says "I know", so I guess I'm in the clear. We start talking about whatever, conversation is good.

We get to Pismo Beach and park in the lot about 100yds from the beach. We head back up the street to the bowling alley; in the lobby, they have a bunch of arcade machines and one of those things filled with stuffed animals where you bring the claw down to try to grab them. A mother and child were experiencing tragedy at the hands of the machine; a toy was stuck on the claw! Using my exceptionally long arms, however, I was able to reach up and grab it off the claw to give it to the kid. So yeah, there's my good deed for the day. Shortly thereafter we go inside and find out that they stop opening up lanes for people at 10pm (it's like 10:45). [censored]! Fortunately there's a pool hall across the street, so I suggest we head in there; she obliges.

There's a waitlist for tables, so I buy us a couple sodas (brag: beat down her wall of "I don't let guys buy me things") and we hang out in the bar area and talk until our table is ready. We play 5 games; she wins the first, then I tie it at 1-1, she wins a horrific third game in which neither of us could sink the 8 ball to save our lives (she finally won when I hit it into the wrong pocket), then she took the 4th and lost the 5th. So, final score 3-2 her. We played until 12:30 or so, I paid for it (brag: resisted her "I don't let guys buy me things" again), we head outside. Since the beach is just past our car, I suggest we head down and check it out, a.k.a. time to put the moves on! She says ok.

There's a pier that goes out over the ocean; we walk down a ways and stop at a railing overlooking the water. We talk for awhile about random stuff; this is obviously the moment when I'm supposed to kiss her, so I'm trying to figure out how to make it happen. I'm really not a very physical person, and I always feel awkward doing stuff like putting my arm around a girl or whatever, so I'm struggling to make this happen. Finally I just decide "[censored] it" and put my arm around her; she had been saying something about surfing and how high the waves get, and I timed the arm-around-shoulder with something like "that sounds dangerous, I wouldn't want you getting hurt" or something lame like that. She says "well, you can't let being afraid of things keep you from living life" and I said "yeah, that's a good rule to live by."

My response was referring to not being afraid of the kiss I was about to plant on her; I expected that to sail over her head, but she may have gotten it because she started laughing. I said "what?" and she responded "oh, nothing...I'm just an awkward person." I figured this was my shot and said "ok, well maybe we'll have to do something about that" and got ready to go in for the kill...

...and she turned away and said "no, don't kiss me."

Hmm.

She backed away and got this frantic look on her face, like she was both scared and empathetic. She went into this long speech about how she was having such a great time, but she knew it would ruin our friendship because she went through something similar recently, and how she didn't want to lead me on, and how there's some guy back home she was going to date during the summer and it isn't fair to him to just be coming out of a relationship with someone else (even if it's one week long? come on), and how this was such a perfect moment and we have great chemistry and she liked me, and how under different circumstances something could happen, but it can't with the way things are right now, and how kissing is really personal to her and isn't something she takes lightly...and I don't even remember all of it. I tried to tell her all the reasons she was wrong even though I knew it was pointless and nothing I could say would change her mind. It didn't. Then she started being worried that I was mad at her, so I told her I wasn't and hugged her, probably for like 15 seconds, and kissed the side of her forehead as she laid her head against my chest. She told me I was sweet. I pretended to smile.

We turned back to the ocean. She started naming shapes she saw in the foam beneath us. I didn't really see any of it. We walked back to the car, she started talking about other stuff like everything was normal again. I responded when necessary and pretended to smile at the appropriate moments for the 20 minute drive back to her place; I walked her to her door, she invited me inside for a minute. We hugged goodnight, she said "please don't hate me" (something she had also said on the pier), I said of course I won't. She tells me 5 times she had an amazing time. She asks if I want to study for our Monday bio final, I say I'll let her know (not planning on calling her). As I walk out the door she says behind me "you were a great date"; I turn and smile and say "thanks", and apparently she didn't believe the look on my face because she said it again. I go home.

So now I just feel defeated. Every girl I fall for I seem to fall into the friend zone with, and all of my actions thus far with Natalia should have landed me in the same place, yet the same reasons why I wind up being the guy most girls talk about their boyfriend problems to are the reasons this girl liked me. And still, I come so close and fall short. What the [censored] am I even supposed to do now? I've been on two dates this year, and in one of them the girl apparently didn't even realize it was a date, and then there's this. I mean, how can she even call it a date if apparently I had no chance to begin with? What the [censored]? What did you think was going to happen when we walked out on the pier?

I don't really know how to conclude this...so, yeah. I'm done.