When I woke up, I was alone. Someone, and by that I mean Mike, had tucked a pillow under my head. I was still sleeping across the bed the wrong way. I had slept better than I had in weeks, which was depressing. Since I was starting to worry I would be forever alone, the fact I slept better with company turned into a downer.

The sun shone around the edges of the blinds, and not knowing what else to do, I got up and put on my pants. In a strange situation it is always better to be wearing pants than not. In his large bathroom with too many nozzles and not enough toilet paper, I remembered to brush my teeth first and then pee and wash up.

Mike was in the living room wearing a headset and talking to someone in a business like tone. When he saw me, he waved in the general direction of the kitchen. There were bagels and coffee. I helped myself and sat in the living room and eavesdropped on his rather boring, technical conversation about the waivers needed to get a tanker of blood to a vampire party. Apparently, it was considered a biohazard, and as such, there were roads the truck couldn’t drive on. There was something so mundane and bureaucratic about it. When I thought about vampires swimming in a sea of blood during an orgy, I had never thought about how the blood got there, if I had thought about the blood at all. Somehow seeing the nuts and bolts of the entire process made the whole thing less dark and scary.

He didn’t end the phone call although he covered the mouthpiece and apologized to me several times. I felt increasingly awkward and embarrassed each time, like I was an interloper. It was also starting to get late, and I eventually had to go to work. I washed my coffee cup and scrubbed out the sink. With the kitchen tidied up, I took Mike a bagel and cup of coffee.

“I got to go to work,” I mouthed and turned and fled.

The indifferent sun seemed to be shining even brighter than usual as I waited for the bus. The sky was the color of old blue jeans. When the bus came, I got on and listened to the couple in front of me fight all the way through the downtown about where he had slept last night. He swore he had stayed at his sister’s. She—and I had to agree—was pretty sure he was stepping out. They were entertaining enough that it was disappointing when I had to get off, and I wouldn’t get to find out what happened to them. Nothing probably, he would keep cheating, and she would keep yelling until one of them couldn’t take it anymore.

When I got home, my apartment looked so shitty, I panicked to the point of needing to clean, which had never happened to me before. Maybe taking care of Mike had kick started something in my brain, something that had been shut off and broken, the urge to take pride in where I lived. Of course, I needed to leave for work, so I didn’t get much done, but I did get things started.

Work was fine, filled with mindless, meaningless smiles at customers and equally mindless, meaningless chit-chat with co-workers. None of it mattered, not really anyway. I didn’t tell anyone about Mike. Instead, I said “Have a nice stay” about a hundred times while waiting for my life to begin, which was stupid. My life had begun. This was it. I could go out and get hit by a car on my way to the bus, and all I would ever have would be the pride of explaining the continental breakfast and one night with a man who was scared I would hurt him, and, oh yeah, six years with my loser ex. It didn’t amount to anything, and maybe it never would. I didn’t have any dreams any more. How long had it been since I had dared to want something different? Something more? As a kid what I wanted to be when I grew up wasn’t some weirdo who went on too many Cinder dates. Of that I was sure.

That night I cleaned my apartment and did laundry, and put it away after. I still had to drink myself to sleep, which was probably why when Pete called two days later, on my day off, I was happy to hear from him. I had gotten a few texts from Mike, but nothing that signified any connection or that he wanted anything to do with me other than hide under his headset until I left, which was possibly unfair. He had gotten me breakfast, and maybe there really had been a crisis with the vamp blood. Now that I had the better part of a week to stew over it, it was very easy to decide I had been given the great brush off.

Pete, on the other hand, was apparently dying to see me again. He didn’t seem to mind that I hadn’t answered his calls right after our first date, and I didn’t ask what he had been doing between those calls and this one. I didn’t really care. It would be nice to have dinner with a man, a real date. He had even called it that. A Real Date with capital letters and everything so there was no room for misinterpretation. I liked that.

He was taking me out to a trendy Ethiopian restaurant where you ate on the floor. I couldn’t wait. I was impressed he liked Ethiopian food, but I was disappointed I couldn’t wear my short skirt. I could remember him going down on me. I wanted to feel like he was spending the night thinking about getting under my skirt again, but flashing the rest of the restaurant every time I got up and down was more than I was willing to commit to that particular fantasy.

The restaurant he picked was close enough to my apartment I could walk there, although I didn’t think he knew that. I wore actual trousers and long tunic top with a pair of short bootie style boots. Over the top, I wore a blue cape. I had spent far too much on the cape and never found the nerve to wear it, making it the worst sort of purchase, but I couldn’t bear to part with it. I figured, perhaps, this was an occasion that deserved a bit of flair. Off I went in my most dashing and daring coat.

Pete was outside the restaurant looking at his phone when I walked up, but he put it away as soon as he saw me.

“Wow, you look sophisticated. I feel underdressed,” Pete said, which was sort of a funny thing for him to say because he was wearing a sport coat over a checked shirt with black pants, and those sort of leather, slip-on boot things men wear. There was probably a name for them, but I didn’t know what it was. His mustache looked glorious. It was wrong, but I couldn’t help comparing him to Mike with his casual tees, clean shaven face, and shaggy blond hair. I wasn’t sure who was better looking. They were so different.

“Hey, you said it was ‘A Real Date.’ So I wanted to put in a little extra effort.” I said it like I was joking, but I wasn’t.

“It totally paid off. You look fresh. Can I escort you into the restaurant? I believe our table or I guess our spot on the floor, is ready.” He held out his arm. I took it. We both played at being deadly serious. Our table was ready, and we sat down, on the floor. There was a little platter thing on a stool like a table and some cushions. The menu was preset, and we just ordered meat or vegetarian. Pete had apparently been here before. As soon as we sat down, they came over to fuss at him. He also had a six-pack of his own home-brew, and he gave one bottle to the waiter to slip to a friend in the kitchen. Then out came beans for me, a dish of raw meat for Pete and the injera, the sour flat bread so ubiquitous to Ethiopian food. The food was spicy and sour, messy and good. Talking to Pete was easy. Somehow with him, I became the best, funniest version of myself.

The whole night was like that. He made me laugh. I made him laugh, and there were no awkward pauses. It was like we had known each other forever. He paid the bill, and I didn’t fight him about it. When we went outside, it was cold and dark. The street lights glistened. The food and the beer made me warm and satisfied. Snow fell lightly. Each flake seemed to shine with my own happiness in this perfect moment. Pete turned toward me, took me in his arms, and I knew he was going to kiss me. He did. Everything stopped. It was as if the power of his kiss made even the snowflakes freeze in place, trapped under the light of the streetlamp as we stood on the corner. His lips on mine made my brain slow down, and his arms were around me and his body against mine. We pulled apart laughing when some drunk leaned out of the bar and hollered, “Get a room!”

“Baby, I got a room,” he said with a fake accent and a humorous leer.

“Yeah but mine is closer.” For the first time in my life, I took a man home. I was glad I had cleaned up the day before. When we walked in I was embarrassingly aware of everything wrong with my apartment. The mismatched art, the photo of me and the ex at a renaissance fair of all the things I hadn’t, for some mysterious reason, gotten around to throwing out yet. The dishes in the sink and stain on the carpet. Horrifyingly enough there was a bra hung over the back of one of the chairs where I had left it when I had taken it off after work in an attempt to get comfortable.