I spent forty-five minutes deciding what to wear, which was more time than I'd spent on anything else that week.

Not because I was anxious about the clothes specifically. I knew what I was going to wear about twenty minutes in — a dark green dress I'd had for two years, simple, the kind of thing that reads as put-together without trying too hard. The remaining twenty-five minutes were for something else. Standing in front of my closet, not really looking at my clothes, thinking in circles.

I had told my sister a version of what I was doing. Not the whole version. She knew I was meeting someone for dinner, someone older, someone I'd connected with online. She didn't ask too many questions, which was either because she trusted my judgment or didn't want to know the details. I was grateful either way.

I left my apartment thirty minutes early and walked the long way. The restaurant was in a part of the city I didn't go to often — newer, the kind of block where the buildings look clean in a way that costs money. I stopped at a coffee shop two streets over and sat for fifteen minutes with a tea I didn't really want, watching the door to make sure I arrived exactly on time, not early.

He was already there. He was older than I expected — or maybe exactly as old as I'd expected and I just hadn't actually let the number land until I saw him in person. He stood up. He said my name like a question, checking he had the right person, even though we'd exchanged photos, and that small human uncertainty made me feel better.

We sat. I ordered what he recommended. I spent the first twenty minutes listening more than talking, which I do when I'm nervous, and he didn't seem to notice or mind. He asked things. Real things. At some point I relaxed enough to start asking things back.

There was a moment — maybe an hour in — when I suddenly noticed his hands. The way he set down his wine glass, the way his hands rested on the table between sentences. I noticed I was noticing and then felt embarrassed and then the embarrassment passed.

He was easy to be with. That was the unexpected thing. I had prepared myself for it to feel like a job interview or an audition or something with a higher electrical charge. It mostly felt like a dinner. A very good dinner, with someone paying enough attention that it registered.

When the check came I watched him handle it. He did it the way people handle things they have done so many times it doesn't require thought. I noticed a feeling I didn't expect: something adjacent to relief. Not because of the check itself. Just the ease of it.

We walked out. He asked if I'd gotten home okay later, which I thought was slightly formal but also sweet. He got in a car that was waiting. I walked half a block and then stopped and stood there for a second.

I lay in my bed afterward for a long time without sleeping.

I tried to catalogue what I was feeling. The list was: a little elevated, a little uncertain, more okay than I expected, faintly hungry again even though we'd eaten a lot, and something I couldn't name that was somewhere between excitement and wistfulness. Like when you read the last page of something good and you're not sure whether you want to start over.

I had gone in prepared to evaluate an experience and came out with a different question: what exactly was I evaluating it against?

I looked at the ceiling. I texted my sister that it was fine. She said cool and a question mark. I said yeah. She sent a thumbs up and I put my phone down.

I fell asleep eventually. In the morning the feelings had settled into something quieter. Mostly I thought: that was real. Whatever it was, it was real. And I didn't know what to do with that, but it was something.