I don’t know where else to blow off this steam, so here I am:

My neighbor is gorgeous. Every time I am with her I feel like I have to hold back on how "friendly" I am with her. I so desperately want to move a little closer, hold her elbow, pull her closer . . .. I get nervous and awkward like a middle-schooler because I don't know how to act. On the one hand, I want to push the envelope and be my charming, irresistible self. But on the other hand I don't want to go too far, have it not go well, and then have to avoid eye contact with my next-door neighbor forever.

To make matters worse, my SO and I have a really nice friendship with her & her SO -- plus our kids are friends with their kids -- which makes it an even more torturous situation.

Sometimes I think she feels it too. Like, when we were at her house on New Year's Eve (she got a little drunk) and, at the stroke of midnight, she kissed me. She has kissed me before when she's had a drink or two, but it was always a sweet, affectionate kiss on the check. She's a sweet, affectionate person! But this time she went for the mouth. I wish I'd had a warning, because I wasn't expecting it, nor ready for it! Maybe I would have been more bold if it weren't for the fact that I had one arm around my SO, and she had an arm around her SO at the time she kissed me . . . but it was what it was.

And that reminds me . . . earlier that evening, she seriously gave me the, "Just kiss me now!" eyes when she was sitting on a bar stool and I was standing next to her. (Now, I'm not the most "successful" guy I know, not by a long shot, but I know the "Just kiss me now" eyes when I see them.) But my SO was literally two feet away from us! I just couldn't pull the trigger in that situation.

Then, did she avoid me for, like, the next two months because she was embarrassed and hoped I didn't read too much into the kiss thing? Did she avoid me because she feels it too and is just as nervous and uncomfortable around me as I am her? Or did she just not care and not notice that she and I didn't see each other for months?

The same thing happened this summer too. I try to make excuses to hang out in the yard when I think she might be around, but -- schedules being what they are -- I went most of the summer without seeing her.

But then this morning, there she was! I was walking to the car and . . . OMG, that tank top! Holy shit!! We waved, I walked over and we chatted, doing our casual small-talk, "How have you been?" stuff, while I used every ounce of self-control I had just to not stare are her tits.

After a few minutes she leaned in, touched my arm, genuinely pleased to have seen me, we said our good-byes and she went back inside her house.

I wish I could make a move, but . . . well, for one thing, it was broad daylight and we were in full view of the entire neighborhood . . . I guess I value her as a friend and neighbor more than I am willing to risk losing her friendship (not to mention my own marriage!).

But part of me thinks that this might be one of those opportunities that doesn't come but once or twice in a lifetime.