The Anchor Nurse had been my choice, because even though it was a sort of charmless cross between a down-and-out Cheers and a very sketchy episode of Murder, She Wrote, it was cheap, it was dim enough to flatter, and the food came out as fast as if it were the chow line at the state prison. I mean, the closest I’d ever gotten to a prison was a mishap with Google Maps on my way to Portland—but I felt like it was a pretty good guess. As soon as you said, No pickles on that burger, boom! It was on the table. Sometimes with pickles, sometimes without, but still—awesome! But the speed of the service was a good thing not only because I was hungry, but also for strategic bad-date purposes. This date might be bad, might be good, but I had to hedge my bets. The last thing I wanted was to get stuck in a four-course meal at the Admiral’s Table with a guy who was one or all of the below, a list that I had carefully curated down to four deal-breaking points, all completely, 100% nonnegotiable:

1. Some sort of investment banker who was “summering in Maine” and who wore loafers with his shorts.
2. Some sort of real estate agent who was “summering in Maine” and who wore socks with his loafers.
3. A man who picked his fingernails until they bled.
4. A man who looked at my general uterus area and asked my age.

Tonight’s date was named Jed, which was somehow hot in theory, when it was under a tiny low-res photo, but somehow less so in person standing out in the evening sun in the parking lot…mostly because he was wearing loafers with what looked like barely there socks, like I’d wear with a new pair of half-priced flats from Target. Uh-oh.

He caught me considering his ladies socks and wiggled his toes. I thought maybe I heard his toe-knuckles crack. “Kinda gay, right?”

I stared hard at him. I might have a new deal-breaker to add to my list. “Sorry?”

“Fucking things give me blisters,” he said. “Gotta do what you gotta do.”

Like buy flip-flops! “I guess.”

He made a move to open the door for me, but then… Walked through it first.

Oh, yay.

Fletcher, who was behind the bar and owned the place, cleaned out a pint glass and slowly shook his head at me as if to say, This again?

I pursed my lips and flashed my eyes to say, Stop busting my fanny. Fletcher turned his gum over in his mouth, and the glass squeaked.

On television, one of the Red Sox stole home, and the crowd went wild. Fletcher didn’t even turn to look. He kept his eyes on me, shaking his head. I’d known Fletcher just as long as I’d known Max, but while Max was a huge part of my life, my heart and soul, Fletcher was more the big brother who heckled my questionable decisions like a fed-up longtime fan with season tickets on the third-base line. For chrissake, Rosie. For chrissake!

He looked Jed up and down and locked in on the loafers. He paused his glass cleaning, closed his eyes, and raised his eyebrows. You can pick them. You sure can. “Table for two,” said Jed as he hunted-and-pecked for letters on his Blackberry.

Fletcher flicked his finger at the Seat Yourself sign, but Jed didn’t notice, so I led him across the bar to the table by the window.

Jed was slow on the follow-up, and I was already sitting on the booth side by the time he joined me. He put his Blackberry in his front shirt pocket and glanced around like he’d just been woken up from a dream. He sniffed hard. “Smells weird in here.”

It wasn’t the Anchor Nurse that smelled weird, of course, but the thousands of angry crustaceans being processed right outside. I glanced out at the fishing boats moored to the docks. “Not from around here, then?”

He shook his head. I thought maybe I saw some dandruff flake from his gelled hair. Then he looked at his chair with an undisguised horror and brushed off some nonexistent dust. He touched the table with his palms, like he was pretty sure it was going to be sticky. As he got Fletcher’s attention for a wet rag, presumably, I looked away—I don’t think I could be with a man who wanted clean tables at a dive bar—and that was when the door squeaked open.

And in came Max. Only thing that was missing was the theme song from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

He was cocky, brawny, and not at all what I needed right now. Also, why were his clothes all wet? What had he done? Slipped off the deck? He gave Fletcher a flick of his chin, effortlessly masculine, and they did that handshake thing where they half hugged over the bar. Lots of biceps, lots of thumping of fists on backs. So many burly muscles, so much rugged, tanned skin. I refocused on Jed, who looked like he might own stock in a company that specialized in SPF 100. In my periphery, though, I could still see Max. As he left the man hug, he looked over at me, looping his foot around a barstool and taking a seat at the corner spot, watching me all the time. I met his stare, and he actually did the two-fingered point at his eyes and then at me.

Cocky bastard.

This was a first. He’d often threatened to come with me, to “show up and make sure the fucker didn’t cross any lines with my Rosie,” but he’d never actually shown up. He’d never actually gone this far. But now here he was, a little sunburned, in his favorite old jeans, which were dripping. I pulled my phone from my purse, but I didn’t see any messages about why he’d be soaking wet at five o’clock on a Friday, which was a real bummer. Even if it had been because he slipped on his deck, he’d normally have told me about it right away. But not this time.

Unless his phone got soaked! Had to be. He’d never intentionally keep me out of the loop.

But even that lame excuse fell away as soon as he took his phone from his pocket.

Suddenly I realized that while I’d been staring at Max, trying to assemble a reason for his wetness, Jed had been talking. I tuned in just in time to hear the words, “…summering in Maine.”

Not this again. “Your profile said you were an entrepreneur.”

“That’s right,” he answered, trying to do that man-chin-flick thing that Max did so well and which Jed did…so badly. “Half real estate, half investment banking.”

I tried desperately to catch Fletcher’s eye, so we could order some drinks—hard cider cured all ills—but he was having a powwow with Max, and no sooner had they parted than Max glanced at me and winked, to say he’d taken charge of our drinks.

I flared my nostrils in our universal signal of No.

Max just laughed and took a few gulps of his beer. Yep.

No, I could not be distracted by him. I would give Jed of the barely there ladies socks a fair shot. I would. I was getting too old to be picky. I’d shot all the fish in the barrel. I had to make chicken salad from chicken shit. All the adages combined, and that’s where I was. Making chicken salad from the dead fish in the barrel. I can do this.

Which was when Jed leaned back in his chair, looked at my uterus, and asked, “How old did you say you are?”