I was friends with a girl for about 7 or 8 years, with a lot of breaks in contact therein. In retrospect, she seems to have been downright smitten with me... something I wish I'd noticed while we were still in touch
I moved away from Massachusetts in late 2002, which reduced us to phone and internet contact; she lost both, for a time, as did I, and the last time I actually had any connection with her was late February of '05.
Shortly before I left Massachusetts, we started hanging out a lot more frequently, and doing more things together... movies, dinner, etc. She seemed to be making an active effort to uncover and get involved in my various hobbies of that time period, while trying to be subtle about it. Somehow, and I don't know how... we did have general discussions about intimacy and sexual matters, though, so that might've done it... I came out, regarding my interest in tickling. As close as we were, it was a little uncomfortable at first, but by and by she started bringing it up herself. I heard stories about her b/f's efforts at tickling her (they didn't sound particularly extreme; I don't think he was "one of us" himself) and things did get to the point where she would tentatively tease about not being able to take too much of it... whereupon I'd tease back about her needing endurance training.
Alas, it wasn't ill-received, but shortly after that I moved away from MA. It was quite suddenly, literally a 3-day notice due to personal and family circumstances at the time. So, yeah; who knows what might have happened. Way to go, NG02
(and, by the way, it was great meeting you at NEST)