After the check arrived, Dustin convinced Kimmie to let him pay by reminding her that one of the cornerstone tenets of feminism was a woman’s right to choose, and if she chose to let him pay for her dessert, then she was still a feminist in good standing. She laughed, agreeing to his logic, which pleased him because it made their outing if not a real date, then at least date-like, which gave him the confidence to ask if he could walk her home, to which she said yes.

“I believe you say what you mean, Dustin. And I like it,” she told him as they strolled across Park Avenue.

“I say what I mean, I do what I say.”

“What’s that from?” Kimmie asked.

“It’s a quote from one of my favorite movies. Heat with Al Pacino.”

“Al Pacino wasn’t in Heat. That was Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy.”

“They were in The Heat. I’m talking about the movie from the nineties with Pacino and De Niro. Written and directed by Michael Mann. One of my dad’s ex-girlfriends who lived with us when I was younger loved it and was always telling me about it. Eventually my dad let me watch it with her. It was only my second R-rated movie. It’s a cat-and-mouse bank heist movie with one of the most famous shoot-’em-up scenes of all time.”

They were now only a block and a half from her father’s brownstone off Madison Avenue, standing at the corner, waiting for the walk signal to change. Their time together was almost done.

“That’s a weird movie for a woman to like,” Kimmie said, unaware she was being sexist.

“I thought so, too, but she was much cooler than my dad. And even though it was this high-octane action movie it was also a love story. All the men in it loved the women in their lives, which she found romantic.” Speaking of romantic, the two of them were now standing in front of her house in the middle of a snowstorm. If Dustin had the ability to freeze time right then he would’ve rushed to the nearest electronic store, bought a drone with a 4K camera and night vision, and recorded this moment in time. If he could get a fish-eye lens on the camera, he was sure he could create a snow globe effect, with the twirl and dazzle of snowflakes in the night air and this beautiful girl he was with, cinematic proof that this night actually happened.

“Did you find it romantic when you saw it?” Kimmie asked.