“You don’t look anything like your profile photo.”

Chad Hollister was blunt and to the point. Chad. Hollister. Had to be a fake name, Tate thought to himself, smoothing his napkin over his lap and struggling to keep his right leg from tapping uncontrollably. No way anyone’s parents ever named their kid that for real.

Then again, why wouldn’t he be blunt and to the point? According to his Grad-Grinder app profile stats, Chad was 6’4”, 210 pounds of pure, erotic sex appeal. His words, not Tate’s. Though Tate could hardly argue with the stats. After all, Chad was even bigger, sexier, leaner and more erotic in person.

If only he wasn’t such a grade-A dickwad.

Tate wriggled and nodded back across the table in the crowded Gastro Pub Chad had chosen for their date, just one of many in the small but quaint beach town of Seabreeze, South Carolina. “Not for nothing, Chad, but ... neither do you?”

“Yeah.” Chad grunted, grinning thick, All-American lips above a divot in his chin you could fly a paper airplane through. “I look better, actually. Remind me when we’re done here to update my profile photo.”

Tate sat heavy in his seat, feeling like the blind date was over before it even began. Not that he was surprised, actually. Guys like Chad would always and forever be out of his league.

“What, we’re not done already?”

Chad peered back at him, all gritting teeth and dimpling cheeks and that single solitary, ink black curl dangling just so over his broad, unlined forehead, Superman style. After a deafening silence, so long Tate thought he might have heard half of the entire song playing over the restaurant’s sound system, Chad shrugged broad shoulders beneath a fitted dress shirt and sighed. “I mean, we’re here, right? Might as well grab a drink while we’re at it.”

As if on cue, a server appeared beside their not-so-cozy table for two, perkily blond, overly eager and nothing short of statuesque in her trendy pinstriped butcher’s apron over khaki slacks and a plain black T-shirt. Her body language made it clear she was there for Chad, and Chad alone. Had probably, from the looks of the disgruntled trio of servers glaring at her from a nearby serving station, angled to wait on their table with a hasty game of rock, paper, scissors.

“Hi, guys!” Her voice was as breathy as her gushing breasts, heaving just beneath the apron that barely covered them. “I’m Gia and I’ll be your server tonight. Can I get you something to drink?”

Although Tate assumed the question was intended for both of them, the way Gia had positioned herself, she was clearly addressing Chad. And Chad alone. “I’d love something sweet and savory tasting,” he purred, suddenly turning on the charm after flat-out negging Tate through the first five minutes of their doomed from the start date. “You know, Gia, like ... you?”

Tate was glad the server’s back was to him so that she wouldn’t see the immediate gag reflex that initiated upon his date’s effusive dad flirting. Gia ate it up, naturally, her entire body wriggling as if she might have already gotten her happy ending before they’d even finished ordering!

“You’re in luck,” she giggled anxiously, preening as she pointed to the drink menu they’d been ignoring since they both sat down. “Our nightly special is the blackberry bramble, a heady mix of blackberry brandy, tequila, and sage-infused vodka.”

Tate struggled with another gag reflex, this time for very different reasons. But Chad ordered it, as predictably as Gia squealed in delight to have sold one of the night’s obnoxious, odious and no doubt overpriced drink specials. “And you?” She turned her beaming smile on Tate, though he couldn’t help but notice it dim considerably in Chad’s absence.

“I’ll just grab a club soda with lime,” he managed to blurt before she nodded perfunctorily and closed her server book, as if his order wasn’t important enough to even write down the way she’d scrawled nothing short of a short novella while taking Chad’s order.

“I’ll get working on those right away you two,” Gia prattled, all while drinking Chad in like a connoisseur might a freshly opened bottle of rare wine. With a breathtaking wink and a pole-worthy turn on her nonskid work shoes, Gia sauntered off, shaking her moneymaker and anything else that might entice Chad to take a second look.

Tate was barely aware that he was staring -- gawking, was more like it -- until he turned back to their so-called date. “Jealous?” Chad teased, the first inkling that he might be more than just a brainless flirt machine, after all.

“Of that?” Tate rolled his eyes and fiddled with his napkin. “You’re aware we met on a gay dating app, right?”

Chad shrugged, big broad shoulders doing magical things to his already snug dress shirt. “I’m aware.”

“You think she knows?” Tate glanced over at Gia, currently canoodling with the other servers between knowing glances Chad’s way.

“They never do,” Chad sighed, not giving the poor girl the time of day. “That is, until it’s too late.”

The thought was more than alarming. “What, you ... go for that?”

“Sometimes,” Chad sighed, pinning Tate’s eyes with his own. “If I can’t find someone more my, uh, type.”

“But do you enjoy that?” Tate asked. “With a woman, I mean?”

Another casual shrug. “Hey, a hole’s a hole, right?”

Tate clucked his tongue, wondering why he was surprised a Neanderthal would speak, well ... Neanderthal. “Ah, a born romantic, I see.”

“What, like you’re some kind of a saint over there?”

“Hardly, I just ...” Tate cocked his head, jutting his chin out gently. “Are we fighting already?”