I’ve never been drawn to muscles before, but on Ryan, it’s part of the whole package. He’s solid inside and out. He’s the youngest LD on Capitol Hill, leader of his local Big Brothers program, captain of the intramural soccer team, and he happily offers to babysit his niece and nephew. He has never—not once in three years—not called me when he said he would, nor left me to wonder about his intentions. When he wants something, he gets it. In that way, we’re alike.

Ryan has presidential aspirations. Legitimate ones. When he told me this on our fifth date, laying out the path for the next twenty years of his professional life as we sat at the ceviche bar on West Fourth, it startled me, but then I figured Michelle probably wasn’t troubleshooting how to be FLOTUS on her fifth date with Barack, so I might as well enjoy my scallops and take life as it came.

“Hi, honey,” he says.

“Don’t move a muscle.” I reach for my phone to document this. “How have we never done a Christmaskuh card showcasing your abs? ‘Give me a pec under the mistletoe’ in a brushed script font. Or, if you turned around, we could do ‘Lats of love this holiday season.’ ”

“Awful.” Ryan laughs, his brown eyes crinkling, his Greek-statue triceps flexing as he twists my cheap wrench. He rises and comes to me, lifting me threshold-crossing style. We kiss. “But if it’s a holiday card, we’re supposed to be together.”

“But then I’d block your twenty-four-pack.”

“People would still know it’s there,” he says and kisses me again.

I tap his chest. “By any chance, is there something besides your bod making it so ungodly hot in here?”

Ryan sets me down, leans handsomely against the stove and tucks his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

“I always want bad news first,” I say, setting down my many tote bags. I leave the house with one and somehow manage to come home every day with four. “What kind of person can absorb good news knowing bad news lurks around the corner?”

“All right,” he says. “The bad news is I broke your radiator while fixing your dishwasher. The good news is I fixed your dishwasher.” He tugs at my sleeve. “Take your coat off. Stay awhile.”

I’d love to throw off my trench, but I am fully nude beneath it, and this hot flash is not the opening salvo I’d envisioned for our passionate tryst tonight. I lean around him to survey the disaster that is my kitchen. So much for my three-act fantasy.

“Dishwasher sure looks fixed,” I joke. “While you’re lining up renovation projects, do you think you can fix my headboard tomorrow? I was hoping we could do some damage to it tonight.”