2 days ago I (M27) was at the mall shopping with my brother when I noticed a very beautiful woman (F30) in line to get food at one the food places at the food court area. I thought she was very attractive but I just kept going about my day.

As my brother and I are leaving I see her leaving as well and we are about to exit at the same door. I’m told my brother that I was gonna go try to talk to her. So I approached her and introduced myself saying that I thought she was super cute and wanted to come talk to her and see if I could get her number. She said no bc she was “talking to someone”, but she said that she would give me her Instagram. I told her I didn’t have any social media (I just have Snapchat which I rarely use) and she seemed really impressed by this and said “that’s a green flag”. This sparked like a 5 minute conversation where we talked about social media use, books, what we do for a living. She told me she studying to be an RN and I said I was an EMT and that I want to be a firefighter one day.

As the conversation was coming to an end I thought she was really cool and asked for her number again and she said no again. I was disappointed but then I offered my Snapchat and she said sure. I gave her my phone and she added herself and we said goodbye.

She didn’t add me back that day/night but when I woke up the next morning I saw a notification that she added me back as a friend at like midnight. I sent her a snap of the book I told her I was reading which we had discussed earlier. We then talked about how that day I met her was actually her birthday and she had a late night with her friends and only had like 4 hours of sleep.

We didn’t really talk that much during the day but as the evening came we started to message each other more frequently which long paragraphs just getting to know each other. We began talking about our love of movies and some of our favorite directors and actors and how we both have the regal subscription pass.

We seemed to really be hitting it off and I figured I must have been doing well bc after a few hours of messaging she says “Ok I hate Snapchat. Let me see your EMT badge so I know you’re not weird. So that I can give you my number lol”. So I sent her a video of me opening my wallet and showing my emt card. She then gave me her number and we moved the conversation to text

And do the next 2 hours we texted each other so much and so fast haha I could barely keep up bc there was literally no break. We talked about our dogs, shared pictures of families, what we did for Christmas, and we talked about all our favorite movies. I couldn’t believe how similar we were, it was almost like I was talking to a female version of me. We talked until like 1am when she said that she had to go sleep. Earlier she mentioned that she had to go get her brakes replaced in the morning. I told her that I was gonna say that earlier but I was having too much fun talking with her. She said “Same! Thanks. Ok goodnight 😴”.

I would just like some advice on this situation. I’m really interested in getting to know this girl more and I really want to ask her out on a date. I was thinking of messaging her later today and then ask if she wants to go get food and go see a movie since we really bonded over that. When we first met she told me that she was taking to someone but her actions clearly show some interest in me. Should I just go for it and strike while the iron is hot or be patient and get to know her more over text?