As I took a sip of my second cappuccino of the day, I looked down at my watch.

Four twenty-three. My date for the evening was twenty-three minutes late, and I’d already been in this coffee shop for nearly double that time. I was meeting Gareth, a thirty-year-old “tech professional,” who I’d matched up with on a dating app the night before.

On his profile, he’d written that he loved punctuality.

Maybe he loved it so much because he didn’t have any of it himself.

Just as I was about to call it quits and leave, the door creaked open and someone that looked approximately like the photo online walked in. I stood up, forcing myself to smile, and he walked toward me.

“Are you Mason?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, “Gareth?”

“That’s me,” he replied, shaking my hand. “You look… different in person.”

“I do?” I asked.

He nodded, looking me up and down. “I thought you’d be taller.”

“Oh,” I replied, feeling my cheeks heat a little. I pushed up my glasses and gestured to the table. “Well, I’ve, uh… got this table here for us, if you wanted to grab a coffee and come back.”

He shook his head, shrugging off his backpack as he sat down. “I brought a protein shake, actually. Trying to get my macros in for the day.”

“Macros,” I said, sitting down in the chair across from him. “Is that some sort of diet thing?”

“Sort of,” he said.

I expected him to elaborate on that point, but instead he just pulled out a brown, sludgy bottle of protein shake and began to sip. His longish brown hair was slicked back with so much gel that I was sure it’d be crunchy to the touch.

“So, ah… kinda cold out there today, isn’t it?” I said with a little forced laugh.

He swallowed more of his shake and then nodded once. “I hate it,” he said.

“I’m from here, so I’m used to the cold. Ah… where are you from?” I asked.

“Alaska, actually,” he said.

“Oh wow,” I replied. “It’s… it’s cold there.”

God. Lord in heaven, I was really the conversationalist of the century.

“It does tend to get cold in Alaska,” he replied.

“Yeah,” I said, laughing once. I took in a deep breath, feeling my heart start to race as I watched him glugging down his protein shake. The guy looked muscular—but not in the same way that Kade Thompson had looked muscular. This guy looked more like a plastic balloon, with certain muscles bulging out in a near-cartoonish way.

Shoot. It had been a mistake to think of Kade at all. It had been ten days since I had met him—not that I was counting—and every day, I’d tried to keep him out of my mind. But now he was floating back in again, and I couldn’t help but notice all the ways he was different from this guy.

From… Gareth. Who had elected to go on this date with me and now was acting like I didn’t exist.

“Ah—do you mind if I… try something?” I asked, leaning forward a little on my seat toward him. He glanced up at me as if he was annoyed to even hear me speaking, but finally gave a nod.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I want to ask you a question.”

He raised an eyebrow, smirking a little. “You can just ask it. What do you need, permission?”

Great, there went my cheeks again, heating up after being put on the spot. I was just somehow cursed to only go on the worst dates of all time. But a glimmer of hope had sparked inside me, remembering the tips that Kade had given me the other night.

No small talk. Give him something interesting.

“What’s something you’ve never told anyone else before?” I asked, smiling a little, excited to hear his answer. When I’d been with Kade, I’d never felt better than when I was asking him these real questions.

“What?” he asked, wiping away a little dribble of protein shake with a napkin. “Like, a secret?”

I nodded. “Exactly. I’ll start—I’ve never told anyone that I secretly don’t like mac and cheese that much.”

“You… don’t like mac and cheese?”

I shrugged. “I’ll eat it, but I’d much rather have my cheese in the form of a pizza. But I keep that to myself because most people react pretty violently when I tell them I’m not a mac and cheese fan.”

“I can see why,” he said. “It’s one of the greatest foods on Earth. You’ve gotta be crazy not to like it.”

“Well, that’s why it’s a secret,” I said. “And now you’re the only person who knows. Don’t tell my mom, by the way. She’d be devastated if she found out I thought her homemade macaroni is just okay.”

He shook his head, as shocked as if I’d just told him he had one day left to live.

“So how about you?” I said. “Doesn’t have to be food-related, but… anything you’ve never told anyone else?”

“Weird question,” he mumbled. He was silent for a while, inspecting the side of his shake bottle. I wasn’t sure if he was thinking or just ignoring me, but then finally, he spoke up. “I guess I’ve never really told anyone that I hate cats.”

“What?” I said, almost personally pained that he would say that.

He shook his head, scrunching up his nose. “Everyone thinks they’re so cute, but all they do is sit around, eat, and paw at you. Their hair gets everywhere….” He shuddered. “But I don’t tell anyone that, because they think I’m a monster.”

I refrained from telling him that I kind of thought he was a monster at the moment. I thought of Squiggles, at home right now, probably sleeping happily on his scratching tower.

“I love it when my cat paws at me, though,” I said.

“Oh, you have one?” Gareth said.

I nodded, expecting him to apologize profusely.

“Sucks for you,” he said with a laugh, taking another swig of his shake.

I felt like I was deflating already, but I was determined to make this date work. I had set up a date for nearly every night this upcoming week because I was going to have to work ten times harder now if I wanted any shot at bringing a guy home for Christmas.

I’d been on another date last night, but it was so awful I couldn’t possibly describe it. To say the least, I was not about to interact with someone who told me that he didn’t believe in showering more than once a year.

“Okay, new question,” I said, focusing again on Gareth. “What’s your favorite dessert?”

“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head vigorously. “I don’t do sweets. Sugar is the devil’s food, and I’ve been without it for five years now. I could never seriously be interested in someone who was caught up in that addiction.”

Well, that was it.

It was one thing to have a dislike of cats, but someone who didn’t have any sugar at all? It just wasn’t going to work out. The best thing about going back to my parents’ for Christmas was the cookies—cookies everywhere you looked, so many cookies that your body morphed into a fifty percent cookie, fifty percent human hybrid by the time you were rolling yourself home.

Gareth was a dud. I picked up my coffee and swigged the rest of it down.

“I—uh—I’m not really feeling well, suddenly,” I said, only half lying. “I think I might have to head home. Maybe my cappuccino was… uh… poisoned.”

He furrowed his brow at me. “Yeah, maybe it’s a good idea you get going.”

I tried to chat politely with Gareth as I got ready to go, but it became obvious that both he and I knew it had been doomed from the start. He was nice enough, but we were both happy to be leaving and cutting the date short.

I walked home quickly, pulling my scarf tight up against my neck in the chill breeze. As I made my way back, my shock at how incompatible I was with yet another date slowly turned into frustration, then a low-level melancholy.

It was one thing to be a mismatch with a guy, but it was another to have almost fifty guys reject me in one year. Today, I’d taken slightly more initiative than ever before—I was actually able to ask Gareth real questions without stuttering the whole time or clamming up.

But it still hadn’t been right.

How had the same questions felt like complete and total magic when I’d asked them of Kade, but now with another guy, they’d fallen as flat as possible? Why had things just seemed to work and flow so well on my date with Kade?

No. Not date. It hadn’t been a date; it had been a… session. Meeting. Whatever.

But the point remained: I had felt better around Kade than I had around almost any guy in the past year. Was it just because he was a confidence coach, and he got along with everyone? I knew it wasn’t just because of the bourbon—I’d been on my fair share of dates at bars, and more often than not, the drinks just made me feel sick, and I’d beg off, heading home.

I’d been terrified at the end of my night with Kade, and at the time, I’d thought it was because I was so out of place. It’s true that the bar was dingy, and I’d just had a guy suck me off in a small, dark room.

But the more time passed since the night with him, the more I realized that maybe I didn’t freak out because I regretted the night.

Maybe I was actually freaked out because I had liked it so much.

It was like an affront to my entire identity: I wasn’t the type of guy who did that kind of thing and certainly not with a toned rock-and-roll bad boy who had tattoos and a rakish smile. But I had done it, and I had enjoyed it so much it frightened me.

The night with Kade had been an exception to almost every rule I had. And now that it was over, I was pretty sure I’d never find something like that again.

That night, I got into bed far earlier than I usually did. I’d had enough of the world, and after adding Gareth to my List of Doom, all I wanted was to cuddle with Squiggles in the comfort of my bed.

But even shy homebodies like me apparently couldn’t fall asleep at seven thirty at night, especially after two afternoon cappuccinos. When eight thirty rolled around, Squiggles got irritated with my tossing and turning, and he leaped out of bed to go chase his feather toy on the ground. I sighed, sitting up in bed, and looked out the window.

I gasped when I saw that snow had begun to fall. I reached over and checked the weather app on my phone, seeing that a mild snowstorm was predicted for the weekend.

“Thank my lucky stars,” I muttered. I had the next two days off, and I was glad for it. I hated when snow interrupted my work routine, but if I was cozy at home, I wouldn’t mind it at all.

I went over to the window, watching the thin white carpet of snow that had started to cover everything. It was beautiful, and I saw a camera flash on the opposite side of the street. I squinted, and then I saw it: it was two men being followed around by a photographer, and they were posing in front of every pretty tree. They were both in suits, and I realized that they must have been recently engaged or married, taking their first pictures together.

It hit me like a punch to the gut, and I had to look away. The men on the street looked like they couldn’t have been older than me, maybe even a couple years younger, and they had found their partners. I looked back into my dark room, and all that was there was the faint glow coming from outside, reflecting off the snow.

I was really alone, and I was going to be alone again, for yet another Christmas.

I sat down on the edge of my bed and picked up my phone, scrolling through my contact list until I found Kade’s number.

All it would take was one phone call. Kade told me that he’d helped many people better themselves enough to meet partners, and at this point, I felt I had no other hope. I had just gotten promoted, I was going to receive a Christmas bonus in a couple weeks, and there was no reason not to call Kade, other than my own fear.

Maybe I really did need a confidence coach, as rotten as that made me feel. I couldn’t be normal on my own, but if Kade Thompson could make me normal, maybe it was worth it.

My heart felt like it was going to leap out of my chest as I pushed the button to call Kade. My brain raced through every possibility: that it was too late to call (completely stupid as it was eight thirty), that Kade hated me now (potentially true), that this single phone call would give me a heart attack and I’d likely die within minutes (seemed to be completely true).

As it rang, my palms began to sweat. I pulled the phone away from me, hovering my finger over the “cancel” button, but for some reason, I didn’t push it. I gingerly brought the phone back up to my ear, and after another ring, there it was.

“Hello?” came Kade’s voice, and already it felt like slipping into a perfectly hot bath. How could even his voice make me so batty?

“Uh—hi, um—”

“Mason,” he said, “I thought that was your number.”

“Yep! It’s… it’s… me,” I said. I was pretty sure I was about to choke.

“Is everything okay? It’s a pleasure to hear from you. I thought I never would—”

“I need you,” I blurted out, the words coming out far more emphatic than I’d hoped.

“What?” he responded.

“I mean, your service,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I need your services. Confidence coaching. I… should have known from the beginning that I needed it.”

“Oh, this is great news,” Kade said. “Fuck yeah. I knew you were a fuckin’ rock star, Mason. This is going to be perfect.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m going to die, actually,” I said. I heard Kade’s rich, warm laugh, and again, it made me feel so comforted.

“You’re not gonna die,” he said. “You’re going to be the best client I ever had. How about that?”

I laughed unconvincingly. “Sure, uh… yeah,” I managed to say. “So, how ‘bout this snow, eh?”

“I’m glad to hear you haven’t changed at all since Wednesday,” Kade said. “Listen, Mason, when do you want to schedule your next session for?”

“When is your availability? I know this is last minute, and I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

He paused for just a moment. “My schedule is… pretty damn open,” he said.

“Well… I need to get started as soon as I possibly can,” I said. “I mean, if… my goal is to get a boyfriend by Christmas. That’s pretty soon.”

He laughed again. “I maintain that it’s not the best goal—your goal should be something for yourself, not focused on getting another person—but okay. How soon is ‘as soon as you can?’”

“I’m… available tomorrow night,” I said. “I have the weekend off.”

“Hell yes,” Kade said. “Brilliant. Absolutely perfect. Tomorrow sounds perfect. Now, Wednesday was our meet and greet, but this next session we are really going to get to work. I want to give you the most intensive help you can get because I think you’re a hard worker, and I know you want this badly.”

I swallowed. “I do want it badly,” I said.

“That’s what I like to hear,” he said. “So, it would be best if you’re in a place you’re super comfortable tomorrow. I usually recommend a home session, so would your place be a good idea?”

“My place?” I said, my voice rising an octave.

“Yes,” he said. “We can sit at a table or on your couch. Nothing fancy. But I do think it would be best not to go to another public space.”

“Ah—yeah! Of course, yes, my place, that’s… yes,” I said, my mind already racing with the implications. I had been on plenty of dates this year, but only a grand total of two of them had ended up back at my place. One of them just had to charge his phone, and the other had to use my bathroom.

But, I realized, it didn’t matter. Because this wasn’t a date. I didn’t have to impress Kade or try to make him like me as a person, right? I was a paying client, and it was no different than having any other service provider in my home.

“Great. You can text me the address after we hang up. Around seven o’clock?”

“Seven, yes,” I said. “I will be here.”

Kade laughed again. That laugh was going to be the death of me.

“Right on,” he said. “Be ready to work, Mason. I know you want to see progress, and I really want it for you, too.”

After we hung up, I logged on to the dating app and messaged the man I was supposed to be meeting the next night. I rescheduled to later in the week and then got down to business. I went to the notes app and started making a detailed list of all the things I needed to do before seven o’clock tomorrow.

Kade Thompson was going to be in my apartment.