First time poster, long time beta here. Sorry about this post being so long, I don't have the time to make it short.

A couple days ago, I was at a bus station. The coach was running late, 95F in shade, annoyed people everywhere around. Noticed a very cute girl also waiting, then noticed BF next to her with some luggage. I didn't pay too much attention to them, but noticed that as the bus was approaching, they were hugging each other like there is no tomorrow. Just like in romantic movies, except they were sweating.

I hopped on the bus, took one of the best seats (legroom FTW). I saw her putting down her luggage at the other side of the coach, and waving at her BF, and heavily gesturing about the thermal conditions and the significant lack of an A/C. I started reading a book. A couple minutes later, while we were still idling at the station, I noticed her again, putting her luggage down in front of me, still gesturing heavily outside. Then she took the seat facing me just as the coach was leaving the station.

Of course I already had the perfectly reasonable explanation how this is not about me in any ways: she just took the other available seat with the most legroom. Her behavior was perfectly rational and damn you, beta brain, for always rationalizing how it's not about me. So I kept reading.

There was around 110F on the bus that was idling at every stop for 10-20 minutes, running WAY behind schedule. It was hard to concentrate on the book with all the heat and the HB9 sitting right in front of me, occasionally glancing at me. I put down the book and was just looking around, watching the landscape. We made eye contact every once in a while empathetically. With all the power of seddit, I really had to do something. Or something else, but there is no way I can leave it at that.

THIS IS WHERE YOU, FELLOW BETAs NEED TO PAY ATTENTION.

She was bored, I was bored, why the heck we should not talk?! The perfect situational opener is right there, as riskless as it gets.

- It's hot, huh? - I heard my voice. Fucking genious, is that the best I could come up after 30 minutes? - Luckily, we are running slow, so we get to enjoy more of it.

Whatever, it worked. Lesson learned #1: chatting is fun, being bored is not.

As we were chatting she was giving couple IOIs. I already mentioned my expertise in coming up with excuses for IOIs being a totally rational, innocuous, and definitely not targeted at me, or my person, or the region of space I occupy. Lesson learned #2: stop doing that, it's stupid. Always Assume Attraction. Also, those IOIs were so obvious, I haven't managed to come up for excuses for some of them.

Given Lesson #1 and #2, I realized that most of the girls like idle chat even if they don't actually attracted to you. It's a pastime. You don't actually have a reason not to chat up a girl who looks bored. Not even if she's hot.

Hours went by, we actually had fun, got to know each other a bit, she was a really interesting person overally. That, and an HB9. And during that time, I managed to show more facets of my life than most of my friends know about, sprinkling DHV all so smoothly. Never really realized I can do that.

On a sidenote: Having a book on you is awesome. I like reading classic literature. It's an instant DHV for arts students, whom I really fancy generally. Also good for qualification: she has a good chance to prove her appreciation of good books. Or she can weird out about someone reading an entire book, voluntarily, in which case I have some very important things to do somewhere else bye. And as a bonus, should you start chatting about books, you get to talk about basically everything. Wonder what does she thinks about threesomes? Oh, I have read recently that book from Paul Auster... 2 minutes later there we are talking about FFM vs MMF, while being intellectual and shit. Read books people.

THIS IS WHERE YOU, REVERED PUAs, KINDLY TAKE A MOMENT TO INDULGE ME WITH YOUR INSIGHT, PERCHANCE

Well, I couldn't figure out a way to do kino, other than leaning forward, reaching out and grabbing her thighs. Fucking legroom. During the conversation we both causally mentioned our significant others. She even asked about my GF a couple questions. I did not want to do the routine about whether his boyfriend treats her nice. Not sure if it was a shit test, it felt like a "I would like you to know that I have a boyfriend. Do go on". Not sure how to take it.

As we were slowly reaching our destination, she asked me which stop was mine. Then a minute later casually mentioned her stop that was one before mine and asked if there is any more stops till that. There was none. This, to me, translated as "I'm gonna take off this vehicle in 2 minutes. Ball is in your court". Correct me if I'm wrong. I figured it is the moment of truth, time to act, so I decided to grow a pair of balls and... Her phone started ringing. We both looked at her phone. She ignored the call, and looked back at me. I was dumbstruck, 3... 2... 1... Yeah right, balls, court, time to act:

- How about hanging out sometimes later?

- Why of course, just Facebook me ...

- I don't do Facebook - while I was reaching for my phone.

- Then perhaps your number.... - then she noticed my phone, already waiting for some digits to be entered, - Ahhh, that's okay. - and she typed away.

I felt great. I guess this is how Lance Armstrong felt when he got to be the first jazz musican on the Moon. As she took off the bus, I sent her a text, just so she has my number. I noticed that she did not reach for the phone while I could still see her. Perhaps the text was delayed, perhaps she did not notice it, perhaps she did not want to search for it with all her luggage, perhaps she ignored it for the moment.

Two days later I texted her again about hanging out that night. Never got any answer from her.

Perhaps she mistyped her number. Perhaps she changed her mind about me. Perhaps my outgoing texts or her incoming texts are lost; not sure if it's my phone that's acting up or my provider, but I had many cases of being unreachable and having texts delivered up to a day late.

With all the things I know about her, it'd be pretty easy to look her up on any social sites, which I don't use and have no intention to sign up to. Also I think it would be creepy to cyberstalk her, being the guy who declaredly don't do Facebook.

This is the conundrum. We really did get off really well up to our parting moment. What are the chances that she changed her mind about this hanging out thing? What would be a good way to figure out if it's the case, or if it's simple failure of communication.

tl;dr: After great convo on bus and a #-close, AFC gets shunned and wants to figure out if it's because of Murphy's law, or HB9 is really skilled at not answering the phone. Also, legroom.

edit: formatting. reddit needs a preview before submit feature. Ffffuuuu, it's long.