And there it is: like malware, this date has been infected and is now crashing. Quickly.

“Okay, Chad. You know what? I’m not sure we’re a good match here.”

The fact: I’m 100 percent positive.

“How can you possibly know that? We haven’t even danced together. Which, by the way, is a really good indication of how your sex life will be.”

My appetite is officially gone.

“I just...know.”

“Oh, come on. We were just getting to know each other,” he bargains.

“I already know plenty about you, Chad. I think you should go.”

“Go? The meal hasn’t even come yet. I’m not going anywhere. And I want to know what you think you know about me.”

The whites of his eyes are more pronounced than before and the vein in his forehead is pulsating at me like a blinking reflector on the back of a bicycle.

I should say nothing. I should thank him for his spontaneity in being my date to Monica’s wedding, then guide him to the door before he turns into The Hulk.

But... I won’t do that. Because he struck a nerve. He struck a few, actually. Most importantly, Chad asked a question I can’t hold back on answering.

“For starters, you’re telling me you’re ready for a genuine relationship, but you openly admitted trying to swoop up a nearly married Monica. I’m not sure that screams ‘genuine.’ Secondly, never in a million years would I ever sign my name on a sex contract. What is this, Fifty Shades of Grey? Third, I researched the shit out of you, and while I admittedly flubbed your professional credentials—which, by the way, will never happen again—I know more about you than I should for a first date, Chadwick Harold Johnston. Based on who you follow and what you’ve liked on social media over the last eighteen months, it appears that you tried your hand at becoming an amateur fitness model but didn’t qualify for the PowerBar open—whatever the hell that is—which is why you started working out like crazy and taking gym selfies every other day. Unfortunately, it didn’t grow your following enough organically, so you started paying for Russian bots to like your posts. Sometime after that, you started dating a Norwegian supermodel who dumped you for an ‘up-and-coming SoundCloud rapper’—talk about an ego blow—and that’s when you switched your account to private. And only just recently, I’d say in the last three months—because that’s how long it’s been since your pics started getting more than eleven likes—did you go back to being public. My guess? So you could show off your thirteen-pound muscle gain in time for ‘summer body season’ in hopes that Nadia, your Norwegian ex, would somehow see it and want you back. But you’re here. With me. So that didn’t exactly go to plan, now, did it?”

“How...how do you know all this?”

I can’t tell if he’s horrified or impressed, but it doesn’t matter.

“Not that you’ve asked any questions about my life, but let’s just say I’m sort of a master of internet research.”