• A bearded social worker from Bushwick who does outreach in the foster care system and was such an incredible, selfless human being that I felt like the most superficial person who’d ever lived, especially when I heard myself being very opinionated about casting options for the movie of Wicked.

• Two different lawyers who both liked spinning—or, as they called it, performance cycling—more than I’ve ever liked anything and who bragged about where they got to sit in spin class and how the hottest instructors knew their names.

• An Orthodox Jewish guy who was very eager in bed but turned out to be married with seven children, yet didn’t think he was conflicted.

My main problem with all of these perfectly nice guys was that while I was with them I kept zoning out and superimposing Prince Edgar’s head, and his smile, onto their bodies. I also started doing this with my roommates and my relatives, to the point where I worried that someday I’d be found babbling in an abandoned building beside a limbless mannequin I called Your Highness.

I was so lost that I let my guard down and consented to have a meal with Callum, and yes, I can hear billions of voices, as a sort of “Hallelujah” chorus, chanting, “Oh, honey,” “Really? You’re back for more?” and “Then you have no one to blame but yourself—I mean it.” But Callum had been texting me and sending me pictures from his arc on a Netflix limited series where he plays an Olympic swimmer suspected of killing his rivals with poisoned sports drinks and tarantulas in their Speedos. Callum had trained himself into even more phenomenal shape, and yes, there were shots of him naked in the locker room shower with the water streaming down his torso. So stop judging me.

“You look great,” said Callum, sitting across from me at his favorite vegan café. As always, there was an aura about him, a golden, perfectly scruffed, shaggy blonde actor/model/bastard glow.

“You too.”

“Thank you for showing up. I wasn’t sure if you would, and I wasn’t going to blame you. I was a total shit.”

I kept my guard up. Callum could hypnotize me, using his good looks, his low, raspy voice and his ability to act as if we were the only two people on Earth. Some wildly attractive people are snobs, making sure everyone else feels inferior. Callum was the opposite; he was a born seducer, making sure everyone adores him. If I’m being honest, that’s a huge part of why I fell so hard: I couldn’t believe that someone as hot, easygoing and seemingly untroubled could be interested in a person as nervous and awkward as me, someone who, before leaving the apartment, tries on so many sweaters that my hair becomes a static-electricity haystack.