Background: I met this girl a few weeks ago during a multi-grade school trip (I'm two grades above her/ a year older than her); a week after the trip, I got free tickets to an event, so I decided to take her and some friends with me. After the lecture, I only had a few brief conversations with her, but she always seemed to want to talk to me (I took this as an IOI). A few days ago, I decided to speak to her over FB; long-story short, we decided we would go see a film together.

Date: I was running late due to other commitments I had before, so we kept on calling each other consistently to try and meet up at a theatre I had never been to. Once we found each other, the first thing I did was to hug her (overt contact) to start climbing the DiCarlo ladder. We briefly conversed since we had to rush to get into the theatre. As soon as we got in, we bought our tickets and went to the screening room.

Upon siting down in our chairs, I moved my arm onto the arm rest we shared so my arm was brushing hers (incidental contact). I then saw she was wearing earrings, so I asked her if I could touch them; upon accepting, I held them for a second (my hand brushing her neck) and complimented her on them (which she took pretty well). To keep climbing the DiCarlo ladder (also to see if she was really interested in me and to show my interest in her), I decided my next move should be to offer my hand to see weather she should take it. I kept chickening out of attempting this continuously for and hour and a half, until I gathered the courage to just grab her hand and place it so her hand and forearm were on her thigh (my fingers just touching her thigh). Upon doing that, we both looked at one another and smiled and kept holding hands. For the remainder of the film, I kept flexing my hand slightly and used my fingers to caress her thigh. This was probably the hardest part of the entire night; the rest was downhill.

In the middle of the film, she asked me if I could walk her home (since she lives close to a sketchy area), which I accepted. Upon leaving the theatre after the film had finished, I put my arm around her back (which she mirrored) and started to talk about the film, the actors, etc; mid-way through the trip, I played with her earrings again.

As we neared her place, we slowed down. Eventually, I stopped walking and sort of looked her in the face and started kissing her. This was really, really botched (we were both pretty bad at kissing), so after a half a minute or so I pulled out and we kept on walking. Right outside her place, I stopped and tried to kiss her again (worse than before). We then said goodbye and I started to walk back. She then texted me that she wanted to know when I was home; she texted me again before I had arrived; I told her I was close then she replied "Alright, good night". After replying to that, I got back and crashed.

Summary:

If your person of interest is giving you strong IOIs, then there's no reason you should hesitate escalating.