That awkward moment when you’re dancing under the stars to an incredibly romantic song and he tries to kiss you and you deny it.

Yep. That happened. And this is how it went down:

We had just had an amazing dinner on a beautiful lake. We had been silly and goofy together and now we were in the forest dancing to one of my favorite songs at the time, Hold You in My Arms. It was like that perfect first dance I had imagined. Well, it was perfect until…

“What are you thinking about?” I asked quietly, lifting my head from his chest to look up at him, secretly hoping I looked as dream-like in the moonlight as I felt.

He hesitated for a moment and answered, “Well, if I am being honest, I, um, was thinking that I really want to kiss you.”

Silence. Crickets. (Literally, since we were in the woods.)

“But, uh, then I was thinking it would be too soon,” he stammered quickly.

Silence. More crickets.

My stomach did a flip. I could hear the water lapping the shore in the distance and it suddenly seemed so loud. But not loud enough to drown out my thoughts. That gold-sequin dress girl inside of me screamed, Kiss me, you fool! It’s now or never! You only live once. This is perfect. But my guarded heart told me, Slow down. He’s right. It is too fast. You could get hurt. But mostly they just muddled together and I couldn’t think straight.

For what seemed like several minutes of silence and contemplating (which was a grand total of 10 seconds), I finally formed a coherent sentence which came out slowly and sounded all wrong, “Yeah… I think you’re… probably right about… that.”

We continued to dance without saying anything else, thinking that if we didn’t speak, it wouldn’t seem so awkward. It didn’t work. The song ended and he squeezed me one last time before we let go and walked to the car.

The ride home was quiet. The ease that I had felt earlier in the evening had slipped away. It was replaced by that lingering awkwardness. We made occasional small talk commenting on the mysterious wilderness that surrounded the road we drove on and the countless stars we could see so much better away from the lights of the city. We even talked about the delicious food we had enjoyed at dinner and the ridiculous photos that followed. But nothing more than that. There was no mention of the moment in the woods, or an attempt to clear the air. The moment just hung there and we seemed to be able to talk about everything but that.

Between conversations, I sat back and tried to sort out some of my feelings. What is wrong with me? Why didn’t I just take the obvious invitation he was giving me? It would have been so romantic… and we wouldn’t be sitting here in this awkwardness. No, no. He was right. It just doesn’t feel like the right time. What a gentleman. I could hold you in my arms…. I could hold you in my arms forever…

When I got home that night, I remember thinking (and being comforted by the fact) that this would be our one and only awkward moment, and that we would laugh about it later on. While we do laugh about this moment, I was wrong that it would be our only awkward one.

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