Dinner was amazing, but everything that came after, not so much. Ryder had gone above and beyond to make me forget our unwanted audience, and it worked to some extent, and after a time, I really did forget that they were even there. We didn’t pretend to be two old friends playing catch up, but neither did we go crazy with the PDA.

It turned out to be just the perfect end to a crappy day, and by the time we left the restaurant, I was beyond happy that we’d got our first outing since ...