“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted to my best friend as Raymond sat opposite me and watched me pace back and forth in front of him.

“I thought you wanted her to set you up on a date?” he asked, sounding confused. “That’s what you told me the last time we saw each other.”

“Yeah, and I guess I did think that’s what I wanted.” I rubbed my hand over my face. “But now that it’s actually here….”

I trailed off and tried to make sense of the mess inside my head. Last night, when we had been tidying the place up after our evening together, I had known. I had known that this was the day I needed to make a move. I wasn’t sure what had switched inside of me—maybe the kindness she had shown Hunter or maybe how good it was to have her spend the evening with us—but I wanted Autumn. I didn’t want some girl she was setting me up on a date with. I wanted her and only her, and anything else would have been a lie.

But then she had told me that she had someone interested, someone who sounded sweet and good and like a solid match for me, and I felt like the ground had dropped out from underneath me. I wished I’d had the nerve to tell her this wasn’t what I wanted, that it would have been silly for me to go out with this woman given what I felt for her, but that wouldn’t have gone down well. She had gone to all this effort to find someone for me, right at the moment when I had decided I had already found the person I wanted to date.

“So what are you going to do?” Raymond asked, and I shook my head and shrugged.

“I honestly have no fucking idea,” I admitted. “I don’t think I can back out of this date now, not when it’s all set up for me. I should have turned her down when she brought it up. I don’t think I’m ready yet—”

“Dude, I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but it sounds as though you have feelings for Autumn,” Raymond cut across me. I clenched my fists at my sides. I knew he was right and had been right all along, but I wasn’t ready to admit that to myself yet.

“I guess you could be right,” I conceded. “But I can’t tell her that now, can I? After everything I’ve done and said in the last few weeks. She’s going to think I’m crazy.”

“I don’t think she is,” he assured me gently. “Look, you guys have been pretty much dating all this time, haven’t you? All you need to do is tell her you’re starting to get feelings for her. Just tell her the truth. I don’t think that’s so crazy.”

“Yeah, but she just set me up with someone else,” I pointed out to him. “Those aren’t exactly the actions of someone who’s into me, are they?”

“I mean, I guess not, on the surface,” he conceded. “But maybe it’s that she does have feelings for you and isn’t sure you feel the same way. This is what you asked for, after all. She’s just going along with that. But things have changed now, and you can only try to tell her the truth, right?”

“I don’t think I can.” I shook my head. “I think I left it too long. I think I’ve fucked things up between us.”

“I think you’re catastrophizing because you haven’t done this in a while.” He cut me off once more, which was the right decision because it felt as though my brain was going to melt and start leaking out the back of my head at any given moment.

“I think I’m going to go out on this date with this woman,” I sighed. “I don’t want her to think I’m not grateful for it.”

“Are you just proving a point?” Raymond furrowed his brow. “Because I’m sure she would rather you tell her the truth than play these silly games.”

“I’m not playing games,” I replied stubbornly and realized I sounded a little too much like Hunter when he wasn’t getting something he wanted. I took a deep breath, raised my hands, and exhaled.

“She’s set me up on a date,” I told him. “She’s gone to all this effort to find me someone. I’m not going to shoot that down, not now. This is what I told her I wanted all along, and it’s that simple. I’m going to do it.”

“And you’re not doing this to spite her?” Raymond pressed. I shook my head.

“I’m doing this because she’s trying for me,” I replied, and I felt my entire body tense at the thought of what was meant to be happening tonight. Autumn had texted me the address, the place I was to pick this woman up, and I knew I should go there with my game face on and make the most of it. But I could barely even imagine heading out to this woman’s place, not when Autumn was spending the night alone.

“Right.” Raymond nodded, but he didn’t seem convinced. “I’ll pick up Hunter, then, and bring him around here.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll drop him off.”

“I think it’s important you take some time to think,” he replied firmly. “Figure out what you really want, no?”

“I guess so,” I sighed. “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”

“It’s cool.” He waved his hand. “You just make the right choice tonight, okay?”

“Any input on what that is?” I grinned at him ruefully. He shook his head.

“I’m keeping out of this one,” he replied firmly. “You have to make this call for yourself.”

“Guess so,” I conceded. With that, I headed back down to my place to start getting ready for my date that evening.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like the thought of seeing this woman at all. In fact, in a lot of ways, she sounded pretty great, and I trusted that anyone who was friends with Autumn had to have at least something going for them. I should have been excited at the thought of getting back out there with someone new, even if my last blind date hadn’t exactly gone the way I had expected it to. Yet, as I made Hunter some lunch and told him he’d be visiting Raymond later that afternoon, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was wrong.

“Where are you going tonight?” he asked, and I paused for a moment before answering. Should I tell him the truth? No, he was already sure Autumn and I were seeing each other, and the last thing I needed was to confuse him further on that point.

“Just out on a work meeting,” I told him. “Nothing exciting. You’re not missing anything, trust me.”

“I get to see the baby today?” His eyes lit up as it clicked with him that he would be spending the evening with the whole family.

“Yeah, you will.” I ruffled his hair, and I felt this sting of sadness knowing that I hadn’t been able to give him that same family. I had wanted him to grow up normal and happy, but he had lacked something his whole life, lacked a mother figure in his world. Wasn’t that what this dating thing was meant to be about? Bringing him that at last?

Raymond picked him up, and he gave me a hard look and a nod as Hunter climbed into the car. I knew exactly what he was trying to put across. I headed back into the house and started getting ready. I was meant to be picking up this Casey woman at seven and taking her out to dinner. I wondered if she was looking forward to it, if she was excited about what lay ahead, or if she was nervous and wondering if this was the right choice at all. Maybe I should turn up there, tell her the truth, and book it out of there before she could get too mad at me.

I stepped outside to get in my car and found that it had started to rain. Just my luck, as though I needed another reminder as to how this night was going to go. I got in the car and began to drive over to her place, going slowly, but the traffic was light, and I arrived there in plenty of time.

I drew up outside her door—a green one, Autumn had told me—and looked at the house. It was old-fashioned and a little run-down but sweet, and I wondered about the woman inside. Probably kind. Probably funny. Probably smart. Yet I had no urge to pull this car to a halt and go up there and meet her. It was crazy, but there was another woman I wanted to spend my evening with, a woman I knew was funny, smart, kind, beautiful, charming, a little awkward—all those things I had no idea I had been looking for in a partner but had landed in someone right in front of me like she had been dropped from the stars to change everything in my life for the better.

I drove around the block once more and tried to talk myself into going up there. I knew I should. Autumn had gone to all this effort to set this up for me, but the pit in my stomach was telling me this was wrong.

I drove for a while and eventually drew the car to a halt outside the unfamiliar house. My heart was pounding in my chest as I forced myself to get to my feet, to lock the car behind me, to put one foot in front of the other and make my way up there to that house.

I paused in front of the door. There was still time to back out of this, to make things right. But I found my knuckles lifting to the wood and, before I could talk myself out of it, I rapped on the door.

Shifting my weight from foot to foot, I heard someone moving inside, and my heart went double-time, so fast it felt like it was going to pop out of my chest. Finally, she reached the door and pulled it open. And as soon as she did, I knew that I’d made the right call tonight.