I stopped dead in my tracks. “Okay, you win. All the awards. All the points. This date is now a full ten stars on a scale of one to the best second date ever in the existence of dates.”

Hennessy barked out a laugh. “And it’s not even over yet.”

“We may need to modify the rating system. I have a feeling ten isn’t going to be high enough. Though it might depend if the date includes dinner. There is a slight chance it could go horribly wrong, though I’m highly doubtful it will.”

“There’s a small Hungarian restaurant just a block or two from my place. The owner is a little old guy who talks really loud and he has the best laugh, and the food is amazing.”

I sighed dramatically and threw my hands up and spoke to a more or less empty park. “Okay, folks, thanks for trying, but the contest is over. All the points have been awarded, the votes have been counted, and we have a winner.”

He grinned at me. “Did I win?”

“Hell yes, you did, motherfucker.”

He laughed, long and loud, then slung his arm around my shoulders, and we began to walk back to the main road. “So there is a downside to us being on the same page,” I said. “And I probably should tell you this now so you have enough time to bail. But Angus said if things went well with us today that he wants to meet you.”

“That’s okay, because Michael said the same thing.”

Oh. “So um, are we doing the meet the friends thing? Because I will need some warning time to get my head around that and possibly enough time to get some Xanax, because my nervous rambling would possibly go nuclear, and under Spanish Inquisition circumstances, that won’t end well. Just so you know. Too many questions and the ‘you hurt him and I’ll kill you’ intimidation speech and I will freak the fuck out and you’ll probably need to call an ambulance for me while your friends call the Intervention TV show people for you, and it will be a total disaster.”

Hennessy gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “I promise I won’t let him. He knows, anyway.”

“He knows what?”

He stopped walking, let his arm fall from around my shoulder, and faced me. “That things are different with you. Even from early on, he said he could tell I was already invested. That I’d found an asexual book lover for a boyfriend and that it was different this time.”

The butterflies in my chest flooded my throat. “Boyfriend?”

Hennessy let out a laugh and ran his hand through his hair. “Well, I… I um… I’m not terribly opposed to the idea.”

“Me either,” I whispered.

He beamed. “Then yeah, I think we should do the friend-meeting thing.”