Now I get touchy. “Why? Did you introduce yourself saying, ‘Hi, I’m Richard. I’m carnivorous’?”

“I was talking about the joke.”

“What joke?”

“How do you know if someone is a vegetarian?”

I stare at him blankly.

“Don’t worry, they’ll tell you. And… you aren’t laughing.”

His discomfort is so genuine that I crack a smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll have the pasta. Steakhouses keep it on the menu to save dudes like you from first date fiascos… N-not t-that I think we’re on a date.”

“Imagine that.” Richard chuckles. “I’d be sweating cold right now. So why the meat aversion?”

“Do you really care?”

“Is it a sensitive subject?”

“Not for me, but sometimes people get defensive-aggressive about their right to eat meat.”

“I won’t bite, I promise.”

He meant it as a joke, but the phrase only makes me imagine the touch of Richard’s lips on my neck as his teeth graze my skin. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I forcibly pull my degenerate brain away from neck-biting scenarios and back to meat-avoiding diets.

“Well, there’s the animal cruelty, of course,” I say. “The fact that meat is actually bad for our health. And the staggering amount of pollution and water consumption it takes to feed, grow, and slaughter a cow.”

Richard is looking at me with a weird expression, his lips contracted and eyebrows drawn together. I’m not sure if he’s embarrassed, or if he’s trying too hard not to laugh. The latter, I suspect.

He clears his throat before speaking. “Is it just meat or everything coming from animals you don’t eat?”

“I’m vegetarian, not vegan. Otherwise, you’d be totally screwed as I wouldn’t eat a thing in this place. Anyway, I try to steer clear of dairy, but I eat eggs if they come from happy chickens.”

Richard’s lips twitch. “And how do you assess the happiness of chickens?”

“If they’re free-range chickens that eat real grass and are not stuck in a cage all their lives, they’re happy chickens.”

The boss roars with laughter. “I’m sorry,” he says between chuckles. “But before today, the welfare of chickens was a foreign concept.” Still smirking, he adds, “And I don’t mean it in an insensitive way.”

The server arrives with our salads.

Richard takes a forkful of his bacon-covered lettuce wedge and asks, “So you’re never having a bite of meat ever again in your life?”

I take a second before answering. Never eat meat is part of the list, but so is never make exceptions. I’ll make the exception to stay a vegetarian and cross out the two.

“Nope.”

After the potentially rocky introduction, the conversation flows between us for the entire evening. Our food arrives—T-bone for him, mushroom fettuccini for me—and we eat, drink wine, and chat happily.

“So how was it growing up in England?” I ask at one point. “Did you do all that cool Harry Potter stuff?”

Richard stops cutting his steak. “You mean battling the most powerful dark wizard of all time and destroying his soul bit by bit?”