This weekend has sucked ass. I spent two hours at the gym, running and trying to pretend that I could lift more than fifteen pounds at a time with the dumbbells (which I can’t, but I’m not going to admit that), and then I went to an art class down at All Hands on Deck studio and pretended that I could paint with watercolors (which I can’t do that either and thus am now the proud owner of a blobby looking mess that I hung up on my fridge. I paid $20 to paint that fucker. I’m not throwing it away now.).

And now, to top it all off, I’m on a date with Fredrick.

I know, I know, I made fun of him for being a groveling, panty-waisted wimp, but c’mon, it’s Saturday night. Any guy worth actually going on a date with is already taken. I can’t just sit at home and watch Sleepless in Seattle for the seven-hundredth time and cry. Again. I gotta put myself out there in order to find Mr. Right, right?

Except, I’m damn sure Fredrick isn’t it.

“So last night,” he says after he takes an oversized bite of his oversized burger and then chews noisily, a chunk falling out, “I actually put my Star Wars figurine collection in the order that I think it’s going to stay in. It’s so hard to know how to arrange them all, you know? I could do them by height or by movie or by age, but I deci—”

“Hold on,” I interrupt, and I don’t even care that I’m being rude by interrupting him. Anyone who chews with his mouth open isn’t worth worrying about whether or not I’m being rude. “How can you organize them by age?” Even I know that the Star Wars series is six movies long and covers, like, a lot of time. In the first ones, Darth Vader isn’t even Darth Vader, for hell’s sake.

Not that I’m sitting around memorizing Star Wars info, but you’d have to be dead to not know at least that much.

“By calculating their birth dates, duh,” he says. “I put each character onto a timeline and then hung the timeline around my—”

So, he finishes that sentence, and I don’t even interrupt him. But I can’t tell you what he’s saying ‘cause if I spare any more brain cells for inane blathering, I’m afraid I’m going to lose IQ points.

Note to self: The next time I’m so desperate for a date, and I think Fredrick is a good idea, remind me to take the evening and wash my hair. Twice.

Fina-fuckingly, we stand up from the table at Five Guys and head out the door. I want to cry, Nobu57 one night, Five Guys the next…

How did I fall this far this fast? What did I do to deserve this?

I wave down a passing yellow cab and start to climb in. “Hey, hold on, let me come with,” Freddie says and slides in next to me. I shrug. Whatever. He can pay for my cab ride home; I’ll let ‘im. My bank account could use the help.

Except, after I give the cabbie my address and settle back into my seat, Fredrick isn’t settling back into his. He seems to be inching his way toward me, instead.

“Ashley, I just have to tell you that—”

“Fredrick, you need to put your seat belt on,” I say, cutting him off. I’m not about to let him finish a sentence that starts out with that ominous wording.

He huffs out a breath and buckles himself in. Suddenly, the back seat of the cab doesn’t seem nearly wide enough. Despite the fact that he’s strapped in over there and I’m strapped in over here, he’s still way too close for comfort. As if proving that fact, he reaches over and pats my knee and then leaves his hand there. “It’s really sweet of you to care about my safety like that,” he says softly, staring at me.

So I tend to have a pretty bitchy mouth, but even I can’t tell him that I could not care less if he lived or died. I finally settle on a non-committal, “Hmmm.”

Undeterred, he blunders on. “Look Ashley, when you fell on me the other day at work, I thought at first that you were just klutzy but then you finally said yes to a date with me, and so now I know that you were trying to show how much you li—”

The cab pulls to a stop and before he can say another word, I quickly unbuckle my seat belt and slide out of the cab, leaving Fredrick with the tab. After all, I let him feel me up for a whole two city blocks. Surely he can pay a cab bill.

I’m heading up the sidewalk to my apartment, fumbling through my purse for my keys; where are my goddamn keys? And then I hear him behind me.

“Ashley, wait, I wasn’t done!” he calls out. My hand closes around my keys just as his hand closes around my arm. “I really think we have something special between us,” he says, sliding up toward my tits.

Oh hell no.

“Fredrick, you’re wrong,” I say, my hand firmly wrapped around my keys…and the miniature can of mace that is attached to them. “I’m sorry, I just don’t feel anything for you.”

“Now come on,” he says in a patronizing tone of voice. “I think we both know what’s happening here. You’re just scared of what you’re feeling for me.” His hand is now on my breast and I’m pulling my can of mace out of purse and aiming it straight at his…

He’s gone, thrashing through the yew brushes lining the sidewalk, howling as he goes, and in his stead is…Apollo?