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and walk around the car to get in. I’m fairly certain I’m grinning like a child, but I passed the point of caring a while ago. It’s not my normal MO—none of this is. In fact, if you told me six months ago that I’d be on a date in an undershirt because I’d burned a three-hundred-dollar button-down doing a flaming shot of cheap flavored liqueur, I would have happily laughed in your face. But then, six months ago, I’d never seen Landon before.
    I climb in, put the car into drive, and head towards Swingers. It’s a bit of an institution in LA, and the food is actually great, even if I’ve only ever eaten it when I was drunk in college or soaking up a hangover the next day. A middle of the night trip to a diner isn’t what I had in mind for our date, though. I’ll have to try again to take her somewhere special. There’s an incredible restaurant down in Cabo, and she said she’s never been out the country—though it’s definitely too soon for weekend getaways. Not for other women I’ve dated, but I am constantly reminding myself to move slowly with her. Moving slowly isn’t my MO either. This whole process is an exquisite kind of torture.
    Landon is drumming her fingers idly on the armrest between us. Each one is tipped by the same bright-pink polish she had on the very first time I saw her. She’d be shocked if she knew I notice that pink polish—hell, I’m shocked that I notice it. But that’s how it’s been since the very first time I saw her. She was there, I saw her, and then I couldn’t not see her. The very first time—that very first day—she was just a girl in an elevator. But there’s something about Landon: her energy, her enthusiasm for life, her innocence. Even her optimism, which should repel me, somehow manages to pull me in tighter. As jaded and cynical as I am, as much as I told myself I’d never let myself feel this way about someone again, I can’t help it. I’ve been enthralled from the beginning.
    She was a disaster that day. Way too overdressed for the office, slowly choking to death on a muffin, too prideful to ask for help. I chuckle at the memory and reach for her dancing fingers. My sweatshirt is entirely too big for her, and she has to shake her hand loose of the material before she can entwine her fingers with mine. I’m not going to lie—I fucking love that she’s wearing something of mine. If I thought she was adorable before—with her gigantic hair and the fact that she’s still reapplying lip gloss even though she’s got a black eye—the sight of her in my sweatshirt just proves I don’t know anything.
    I didn’t know that I’d become so aware of her so quickly. I didn’t know that her bright-eyed innocence wouldn’t annoy me at all—that it would actually become a balm to scars I thought I’d buried long ago. I had no idea how refreshing it would be to date someone so opposite me in so many ways. How fun it would be to choose the unexpected, to find joy in something as simple as a well-lit street in the middle of the night. That’s the thing about Landon: she sees things in a different way, and when I’m with her, I see them that way too.
    I help her out of the car when we get to the restaurant. As soon as her feet touch the ground, she slides her arm through mine and leans into me. I have to stop myself, like always, from throwing her over my shoulder and driving us right back to my house. Move slowly —that’s my new MO. She grins up at me, and even in the streetlight I can make out the freckles that cover her nose.
    Oh yeah, moving slowly is exquisite torture. But I know deep in my gut, in a place I thought someone else had destroyed, that she’s the one I want. So I’ll do anything, including torture myself, to move at her pace and to make sure she understands that.
    Because this girl—she’s it for me. She is the answer to a question I didn’t know I had. And so I’ll go as slowly as she needs me to. I’ll eat breakfast in the middle