Taking the train to visit my folks on the last day of my birthday weekend, I spotted a really attractive girl on the platform. She was just my type, and I wanted to chat her up, but there was no room for me to sit by her and she wasn't looking particularly friendly at all. Got up, moved around, tried making eye contact, and she definitely saw me, but broke it off and didn't look back in my direction.

The train arrives, and I get on it. She ends up sitting in the same sparsely occupied car, a few seats ahead. I know i'm only on the train for 2 stops.. now I'm feeling the pangs of AA, and i'm psyching myself out of going up to her. I know I really want to approach her though, so fuck it.. at the next stop I get up, walk forward a car like I'm going to the bathroom, chill up there for a minute to come up with an opener and gather up some courage, then come back to her seat. She's staring distantly out the window. I smile wide, sit down next to her and say

Me: "I'm going to crowd you for a bit. Hope you don't mind."

Her: "Uh.. okay.."

Me: (slight pause)"...You're now.. part of.. an experiment."

Her: "What experiment?"

Me: "Well, as part of my birthday resolution, I'm trying..."

Her phone goes off, and she says hold on and she has to answer it. It's her mom wondering when she's going to arrive. from listening to her conversation, she's the next stop after me. She hangs up and looks back at me. My opener is now dead, so I just drop it and move forward.

Me: Ma dukes, huh?

Her: Yeah, she's coming to pick me up from the station..

I don't remember exactly what we said from this point, but she told me she's a college student, and we get on the topic of partying, which explains two patches of road rash (one on her shoulder, one on her knee) from her falling down. I start teasing her about not having the survival skills to guard the face, then I bring up going out in town for my birthday and how much fun it was. She asks when my birthday was, and I start off telling her that my birthday ends probably sometime around next Saturday. She grills me for real about the date, and I tell her that it's July 21st. She tells me hers is June 21st, and says a whistful "only one month away". I ask her how old she is - turns out she's 20. I'm 26, and when I tell her that she lightly shit tests me on being old. I tell her that I'm totally terrified of taking showers now because I don't want to break a hip and that she'd better be careful when she gets to be my age because she'll shatter like a little porcelain doll. I notice she's got some hardware on one of her hands, so without skipping a beat I say..

Me: Show me your rings.

Her: Huh? Oh.. (gives me her hand)

Me: (playing with her rings a little bit for kino) Very cool.. I like your style.

Her: (Smiles, says nothing)

Me: Though, I feel like this thumb ring should spin.

Her: OMG no, I hate those things!

Me: (Grins, shows her my thumb ring and spins it) I think they're cool. It helps me think.

We start bullshitting about the town blackout last night, and she reveals that's how she fell and hurt herself, but luckily she lives with a bunch of people who work at the university gym who patched her up even though she kept insisting she was ok. I tell her about how we were drinking on my buddy's rooftop lounge, and how we could see the entirety of the blacked out city. The train starts to pull into the station and I let her know that it's my stop. She lets out an audible "Aww.." which sounded very positive to me.

Me: You go to Rutgers right? Maybe I'll see you around.. but probably not.

Her: Haha yeah, just look for some girl named Jessica stumbling around town drunk and bleeding

Me: (touching her shoulder) I have a feeling there are a lot of Jessicas like that in town.. (smirk)

And I get up and get off the train. Outside of the train I stood there frozen.. I knew I should get her # or facebook contact, but the train was going to leave. I literally almost jumped back on the train to take her # after standing there like a fool for far too long and just going down the next stop and riding all the way back but I knew my father was waiting for me in the parking lot.. So unfortunately, this story ends in fail.

The whole interaction took maybe 10 minutes, and I (un)consciously kept the small talk to a minimum in favor of teasing/humor, comfort, and kino on the hands with the rings thing. My full opener was going to be something about how it's my birthday resolution to get better at talking to attractive strangers, but i'm thinking that phone call might've been for the best since it was admittedly pretty lame. Interesting to note that she didn't even think about going back to the opener once conversation had started. Also, the anxiety I was having about talking to her near completely vanished once I actually sat down to interact with her.

This experience helped me get a handle on some inner game issues I was having with a fwb that started going wrong, and was definitely a step in the right direction in handling my AA - which has traditionally prevented me from approaching more attractive women. I saw that she reacted well to my presence and enjoyed having me there if only for 10 minutes. However, I can't ignore that I totally botched any sort of a close by not going for it at all. I have the feeling that I could have pretty easily gotten it, and am now kicking myself in the ass because seeing her again would have been totally rad. Not to mention that it would really help to have a girl I'm really attracted to on the line to help let my mind further shrink my fwb problem into a non-issue. Que sera sera.. on to the next I suppose.

edit: There was also a short DHV story in there at some point.. When she was telling me about dealing herself party damage, I told her about a friend of mine who I'd gone to see at a party, and later on in the night she tried to give me a HUGE hug, but ended up hugging both of us off of a flight of stairs into the paved driveway. I tried to save her by grabbing out for her hand (KINO), but she ended up pulling me down on top of her. (conveying that I have female friends who are happy to see me, and that I try to keep my friends safe)

TL:DR - Approached a girl on the train with failopener, went well anyways, froze at the end, coulda probably got the digits but walked away numberless. 10 minute interaction.