“Really?” She wanted him to come to her, suddenly, so much. She’d been planning to pack up and head into the city to meet him, but it was hot and sunny, a perfect end-of-summer beach day.

“Well, what are you doing out there?” he asked. “Having a party I can’t crash? Wait! Are you finally going to have sex?”

“No! I’m setting up for a day at the beach right now—alone. Though maybe I should get on Tinder and try to scare up some local matches. Maybe I’ll have more luck here than I’ve had in the city.”

“Grand. Send me the name of the beach, and I’ll be off. I’ll advise on the Tindering, too.”

She laughed. Max was here! “You might want to buy bathing trunks.” She imagined him in his sleek blue suit, striding up the beach. It was a pleasant image. But still, it was an extremely hot day.

“I have mine with me. I always stay at the Four Seasons because it has a sauna I’m partial to.”

“Of course you do.”

“Marie likes the Plaza, but there’s no opportunity to shed one’s clothing and get sweaty at the Plaza.”

“You can’t see, but I’m rolling my eyes. Anyway, I thought you were an expert at making your own opportunities to shed clothing and get sweaty.”

She was teasing him about his so-called man-whorish ways, but she’d learned he was, for lack of a better phrase, an ethical man-whore. He liked sex, and he apparently had a lot of it, but he tried to make sure that everyone had a good time and understood his “rules of engagement.”

She wanted to be like that. She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t get her act together. She took his point that her last prospect, HarlemHipster, had been fine. So he was allergic to dogs. As Max had said, she wasn’t going to marry him.

She realized that Max hadn’t responded to her teasing about him making his own opportunities to get hot and sweaty. She’d expected a sharp comeback, but he’d gone uncharacteristically silent. “Anyway, definitely come on out.”